Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

“It must’ve broke in through the back door,” Fleck said as he led Angie inside.

The living room was neat and newly renovated. White walls and pale furniture made it feel less cramped. Fleck was dressed up for a legit job—navy slacks, white shirt, club necktie. Obviously the guy worked Saturdays, so Angie figured he must be in sales—new cars maybe, or household audio components.

Fleck took out a handgun, which he passed to Angie saying, “I couldn’t do the deed myself. Truth is I’ve never fired this thing.”

It was a Glock nine, of course, the favored armament of modern white suburbanites. Angie made sure the safety was on before placing the weapon on a hallway table. She went back to her truck, rigged the capture noose and put on some long canvas gloves.

“Can I watch?” Fleck asked.

“No, sir. You get hurt, I lose my insurance.”

“All right. But at least can I ask how much is this gonna cost?”

“Four hundred dollars,” Angie replied.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Five-fifty, if it’s a female with little ones.”

“Unbelievable,” Fleck muttered. “You take plastic?”

“Effortlessly.”

The pudgy raccoon sat splay-legged on its haunches, finishing a Triscuit. It growled at Angie while nimbly plucking another cracker from the box. The animal’s furry dome of a tummy was evidence of a prolonged feast. The kitchen was a wreck—the cabinet doors had been flung open, the countertops strewn with rice, raisins, dry macaroni, granola, flour, pistachios and Lucky Charms. A half-eaten blueberry Pop-Tart extruded from a toaster that the raccoon had unplugged and dragged to the floor.

Angie noticed the animal eyeing her long-handled noose.

“Sorry, compadre ,” she said, “but we gotta take a ride.”

From the hallway came a voice: “Don’t you need to shoot it so they can test for rabies?”

“It’s not rabid, sir. Just cheeky.”

Behind Angie, the swinging kitchen door moved. It was Fleck, holding the damn Glock again.

He whispered, “I thought you could use some backup.”

“Back your ass up those stairs,” Angie told him, “and wait with your family.”

Transferring the raccoon to the truck was, as usual, a clamorous enterprise. Plenty of bare-fanged snapping and writhing—Angie’s trousers saved her shins from being shredded. Afterward the Fleck children emerged with upraised phones to snap photos of the sulking intruder inside the transport kennel.

Angie shook off her gloves and processed Fleck’s AmEx with her mobile card reader, which rejected it on three attempts.

“Your chip slot isn’t working,” Fleck protested.

“It works fine,” said Angie.

“Then there’s some sort of screwup by American Express.” Fleck was striving to appear more irritated than embarrassed. “I’m afraid I don’t have four hundred in cash on me. Will you take a personal check?”

“Don’t even go there.”

“So…what happens if I can’t pay you right now?”

“What happens is I re-deposit this unruly creature in your domicile.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No, Señor Fuckwhistle, I am not.”

“I went from ‘sir’ to ‘Señor Fuckwhistle?’ ”

Angie put on her gloves again. “I didn’t come here to get stiffed. This bad boy’s going straight back to the kitchen.”

Fleck bolted inside to fetch his wife’s MasterCard, which sailed through Angie’s reader on the first try. Angie promised to email a receipt.

After departing Otter Falls, she drove all the way to the Seminole reservation at Big Cypress. There were closer places to have staged the release, but she enjoyed the long ride across the blond saw grass marsh. It was a rare stretch of South Florida interstate with a view that wasn’t savagely depressing.

Angie took the Snake Road exit and continued north to an area with lots of tall timber and relatively few hunters. When she reached down to unlatch the door of the carry kennel, the raccoon huffed at her. She stepped back and saluted as the animal grumpily walked into the woods. In a perfect world, it would never again catch the scent of a Pop-Tart.

For a while Angie cruised slowly along the back roads of the reservation, hoping to see a panther or a bear. She didn’t get home until seven-thirty. Joel was sitting in her TV chair watching a PBS special about calving glaciers.

“I thought this was your dad’s weekend,” said Angie.

“He asked me to skip his turn.”

“Ah. The equestrian must be visiting.”

“Actually, they’re living together now,” Joel said.

“Well, well.”

“And she can’t ride for a while. She got thrown and cracked her pelvis.”

“Ouch. What’s your old man going to do for fun? Or should I say who?”

“She’s getting around pretty good. You want a drink, Mom?”

Joel fixed her the usual, a tall gin-and-tonic. He showed up every other weekend, as if there was court-ordered custody sharing. He and Angie joked about it. She felt good that her grown ex-stepson still cared enough to hang out with her. A while had passed since Joel’s father, Dustin, had divorced her. It had happened when Angie still worked for the state.

The kid had been a senior at FSU when she left for prison, fourteen months at Gadsden Correctional. On Angie’s orders, Joel didn’t visit. Soon after graduating, he moved back south and began alternating weekends between his dad’s place in West Palm and Angie’s apartment in Lake Worth. Sometimes he brought along a girlfriend, and sometimes the girlfriend showed promise.

“Tell me some stories,” he said to Angie.

“Well, let’s see. I had a fragrant morning in Margate, your basic dead opossum-under-a-porch. Next call was two feral cats behind the funeral home in Coral Springs, then a raccoon at a townhouse in West Boca.”

“Dumpster coon?”

“Break-in artist. Big sucker, too.”

Joel, who’d majored in business, had helped Angie Armstrong set up her critter-removal company, Discreet Captures. He’d even ordered magnetized signs for her truck, though Angie removed them because people kept flagging her down to ask if she was one of those TV bounty hunters.

Joel said, “Let’s grab dinner.”

“I need to clean up first.”

He pinched his nose and said, “Take all the time you need.”

When Angie stepped out of the shower, her phone was ringing. The caller ID showed the 561 area code. A man on the other end identified himself as “Tripp Teabull, with two P’s.” He said he managed the Lipid estate in Palm Beach.

Angie asked, “Did Mr. Lipid die and leave me some money?”

“Not that kind of estate. It’s a private compound on the island.”

“So you would be the caretaker.”

“Manager,” Teabull said tautly. “We need you out here right away.”

“It’s late, sir, and I have a dinner date,” Angie said. “Tell me what you’ve got.”

“What we’ve got is a nightmare.”

“No offense, but everyone who calls me says that.”

“Does everyone who calls offer you a fee of two thousand dollars?”

Angie stepped back into her dirty khakis.

“The address, please,” she said.

—

She drove up the driveway of Lipid House and pulled into the valet line. Moments later a brawny, brick-headed fellow in a pale tuxedo approached her truck and asked to see her invitation.

“I have none, sir.”

“You must be at the wrong place. This is the Stars-and-SARS event.” The man wore an ear bud, and a peanut microphone clipped to his lapel. He said, “Please turn this vehicle around and leave.”

Angie said she’d been summoned by the manager of the estate. “He made it sound like an emergency,” she added.