Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

At age thirty-six, Ajax lived by himself in a townhouse devoid of family photographs. His core furnishings were an XBox console, a 60-inch plasma, a motorized recliner, and a secondhand ironing board. For sex he relied upon paid escorts, who were required to come dressed as cockney chambermaids. He was an excellent car mechanic though his contemptuous attitude never failed to get him fired; over the years he’d worked in the repair shops of a dozen major dealerships between Miami Gardens and Fort Pierce. He was a power-train virtuoso—he could fix anything from a plug-in Prius to a vintage Corniche—yet he was always undone by garage politics. On the night Ajax went missing he was unemployed, embittered, and bombed on Budweiser.

It was nearly midnight when his seventeen-foot skiff was spotted drifting toward the seawall of the Winter White House. A Coast Guard speedboat made the interception and dropped off two athletic ensigns, a man and a woman. Seconds later they both dove off the transom and swam rapidly back to their patrol vessel. Other crafts in the presidential security force were summoned, and soon the waterway was a-twinkle with so many red, green, and blue lights that it looked a Christmas flotilla.

Mockingbird stood watching the scene from her second-story bedroom. She wore only a lacy white thong and a pair of pink conch-pearl earrings, five carats each. After setting her glass of cabernet on the windowsill, she took an unauthorized disposable phone from a makeup drawer and dialed Special Agent Keith Josephson.

He was sound asleep at a hotel on the mainland.

“Hi, hon, it’s me,” the First Lady said. “What the hell is going on behind the house?”

“Uh, don’t know. I’ve been in bed for an hour.”

She described what she was seeing from her window. “There’s helicopters all over the place. How fast can you get here?”

“Why? Where’s Strathman?”

Strathman served as the lead agent on Mockingbird’s Secret Service detail when Josephson was off-duty.

“He’s right where he always is, sitting in the hallway sexting one of his girlfriends,” she said. “But I don’t need anything from him, Keith. I need you.”

Josephson swung his feet to the floor. “Let me see what I can find out.”

He first called Paul Ryskamp, who’d also been sleeping and knew nothing about the incident on the waterway behind Casa Bellicosa.

“Try Strathman,” Ryskamp advised Josephson. Then he said: “Are you somewhere you can talk?”

“My room.”

“That’ll work. So, Keith, you know what I’ve got to ask—”

“It’s Ahmet.” He was fully awake now. “Come on, man. A little respect.”

Ryskamp said, “Sure. As long as nobody’s listening in.”

“How’d you like if it they changed your name to Osama?”

“On the other hand, you didn’t have to say yes. You could’ve stayed ‘Ahmet’ and gone back to TSD.”

TSD was the agency’s Technical Security Division, which monitors the intruder sensors and explosive-detecting devices on the White House grounds.

“But you wanted to move up the ladder, and who doesn’t?” Ryskamp continued. “Still, can we agree it was a poor decision to start boning the First Lady? We’ve talked about this.”

“Talked as friends, you said. Off the clock, off the record.”

“Yeah, and as a friend I’m asking if it’s still going on between you and her.”

“Honestly, I’m not comfortable with that question.”

Ryskamp groaned. “Honestly, you both must have lost your minds.”

“I really care about her, Paul. She’s nothing like the person you read about in the media. She’s funny, really smart, warm—”

“Okay, let’s also agree a magnetic, beautiful woman. Can’t you find one who isn’t married to the goddamn President of the United States?”

“She says they haven’t done it in years. Not even a handy.”

“You promised to end this.”

“I did. I mean I tried. She’s lonely. Bored out of her mind. And it’s not like we do it in the Lincoln Bedroom. We’re careful. We pick our moments.”

“In what universe,” Ryskamp said, “do you see a happy end to this story? Soon as it hits the Times or Politico , your career’s finished—and then, P.S., the agency gets raked by every whistle-dick subcommittee chairman in Washington.”

“That won’t happen.”

“Oh really?”

“Paul, this thing between her and me won’t ever get out because it can’t . Mastodon would go high-octane batshit, as in suddenly-I-feel-like-bombing-Iran batshit. His people in the White House will do whatever it takes to keep a rumor like this buttoned up—and that includes paying off the tabloids.”

“Love your optimism, Ahmet.”

“Gotta go. That’s her calling back.”

“Mockingbird?”

“I bought her a burner phone.”

“True love,” Ryskamp said. “Shakespeare was born too soon.”

“Let me know when you find out what’s going on behind the Casa. I’ll be up.”

“Oh, I’m sure you will.”

—

The ensigns who’d boarded Ajax Huppler’s boat thought it was empty, but it wasn’t. They leaped off because they saw a huge snake coiled in the bow.

A Special Forces diver attached a rope to the vessel, and the Coast Guard runabout slowly towed it to a marina. The reptile didn’t move during the ride, nor did it react to the helicopter spotlight that illuminated Huppler’s skiff until it was secured to the dock. At that point a uniformed Palm Beach cop wearing black gloves and night-vision goggles stepped aboard and shot the animal nine times with a semiautomatic. The casting deck was penetrated by numerous slugs, some of which went all the way through the hull with predictable consequences.

By dawn, when Chief Jerry Crosby got there, the skiff was sitting perilously low in the water. None of the well-armed first-responders had been brave enough to touch the dead snake, which Crosby recognized as the same species that had swallowed Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons. He recruited two unenthusiastic officers to help him transfer the python to a large garbage can. Angie Armstrong arrived within an hour to examine the remains.

She peered into the can saying, “You’re right, that’s another big Burmese. Fifteen-footer, easy.”

A crime-scene tent had been erected to block gawkers from taking photos. Crosby told Angie that the registered owner of the vessel was missing: “Ajax Huppler. White male, thirty-six. He went out fishing alone last night. They found his truck and trailer at the Curry Park ramp.”

“Does he happen to own a python?” Angie asked.

“No pets, according to his mother. Not even a potted plant. She describes him as a solitary soul. His father says creepy loner.”

“How tall?”

“Five-ten.”

“Weight?”

“An even deuce,” Crosby said.

Together they overturned the garbage can and spread the bullet-riddled snake on the dock. Stepping back from the gore, Angie said, “Good news. This one didn’t eat anybody.”

“You’re sure?”

“See, no lump. Also, it’s not big enough to swallow someone as beefy as your missing angler.”

“Then what happened out there?”

“Well, pythons do love water,” she said. “I’m guessing it got tired from the long swim and crawled up into Huppler’s boat for a rest. If he’s not a fan of snakes, he probably freaked the fuck out and jumped overboard.”

Crosby said, “They counted nine empty beer cans on the skiff.”

“The contents of which would not improve one’s judgment, or endurance.”

“None of the life vests are missing.”

“Supporting the theory of a sudden exit.” Angie shrugged. “Let’s hope the poor guy’s clinging to a piling behind one of these mansions, waiting to be rescued.”