Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

“Doubtful,” said Crosby. “The feds had an armada out there all night, plus three choppers.”

“Why the feds?”

“Because the wind blew Huppler’s skiff toward Casa Bellicosa.”

“Ah. That means our fearless leader’s in town.”

“No, but the First Lady is. Are we done with this damn thing?”

“Yes, sir, we are.”

The chief helped Angie fold the bloody reptile back into the garbage can. She snapped on the lid and said, “It’s weird, though. This part of the coast is definitely not their usual habitat.”

She’d chalked off the Burmese that grabbed Katherine Fitzsimmons as a geographic outlier, yet here was another jumbo edition straying out of its established range, crossing a busy waterway on a chilly winter night when it should have been dozing in a faraway swamp.

“How do you think it got here?” Crosby asked.

“Maybe they’re bailing out of the Everglades to find more prey.”

“I wish they’d wait until the season’s over.”

“These are encroachments, Jerry, not an infestation.”

“Thanks for clarifying. I feel so much better.”

Together they lugged the can of dead reptile to her new pickup truck. Angie waved goodbye and headed for the Turnpike, where a state biologist with a casket-sized cooler was waiting at the service plaza. On her return drive to the city, Angie called the jail and asked if she could see Diego Beltrán. After a lengthy hold, a deputy came on the line and said Mr. Beltrán would be available for a ten-minute visit.

Angie was resolved to stay upbeat. She still felt bad for raising the young man’s hopes so high after she’d leaked the Uric Burns suicide note to MSNBC. Rachel Maddow had gone beast-mode, condemning the “No More Diegos!” campaign as xenophobic propaganda, calling for Beltrán’s immediate release, and demanding monetary reparations be paid to him and his family.

For his part, Special Agent Paul Ryskamp had kept his word and paid a discreet visit to the state attorney, who murkily refused to budge.

Meanwhile the White House had shot back with a counter-leak so clever and slick that it couldn’t possibly have been devised by the President. Attributed to sources in the Justice Department, the story fed to Fox News and OAN asserted that Uric Burns had falsely exonerated Beltrán in his suicide note in order to protect Burns’s own loved ones, who feared a violent retaliation by Beltrán’s fellow terrorists—the same brutal gang that had “abducted and assassinated” presidential loyalist Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons. The Fox exclusive said Burns believed his family would be spared if, in his final act, he pretended never to have met the murderous Honduran outlaw.

Every word of the leak was fiction, and Angie naively had hoped that someone in the Burns family would step forward to debunk it. Instead a bespectacled lawyer-spokesperson went on CNN, saying Uric’s parents and siblings were still grieving for him and his victims, and collectively would have no comment.

So, months later, Diego remained in jail. The cell beside his was now occupied by a loose-fingered accountant, the llama molester having posted bail and fled the jurisdiction. Wyoming was the rumor.

Diego forced a smile as he entered the interview room. He looked listless and thinner than the last time Angie had seen him.

“That’s not what paralegals wear,” he said of her khaki capture garb. “I can’t believe they let you in here like that.”

“Gotta be the briefcase.” She opened it to reveal a stack of legal-sized file folders padded with blank copy paper. Diego made a sound like a deathbed chuckle.

“Unfortunately, I’ve got nothing new to report,” Angie said.

“Well, I do. I’m on my third set of lawyers. All the others quit because of death threats.”

“Maddow mentioned your case again on her program last night.”

“Whoopee,” said Diego. “The President tweeted about me seventeen times in the last sixteen days. Your friend in the Secret Service said this would be over by now. He said the lazy old bastard would get bored with the ‘narrative’ and forget about me.”

Angie said, “All of us were hoping that would happen.’’

“Those maniacs are still demonstrating out front. Didn’t you see them?”

“Yes, but not as many as before.”

“ One is too many,” Diego said in a raw voice.

The President’s political-action committees were still hawking “No More Diegos!” merch on their websites—hoodies, caps, pennants, coffee mugs, tumblers, and other kitsch featuring a crude, sneering likeness of Beltrán’s face. That very morning, Angie had spotted one of the bumper stickers on a Range Rover with dealer tags.

She told Diego that she’d deposited a hundred dollars in his commissary account. “You’re losing weight, dude. Buy yourself some candy bars.”

“Protection is what that money will buy, and not much, but thanks. How’s the raccoon-wrestling trade?”

“I got a dope new truck,” Angie said. “Camo rims.”

Diego actually laughed. “You should have your own TV show.”

“I swear you’ll get out of here soon. Too many people know the truth.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Angie.”

She drove home, showered, and tried to nap. Spalding called and asked her to meet for lunch at the Breakers. When she pointed out that she couldn’t afford lunch at the Breakers, Spalding said he was buying and told her to wear anything except those butch safari clothes.

She arrived early and took a seat at the Seafood Bar, overlooking the Atlantic. Beside her was a well-fed couple from Montreal counting and recounting their oysters. They had ordered three dozen, and the husband fiercely suspected they’d been shorted. Angie turned her eyes to the ocean, which was royal indigo and regimented with whitecaps to the horizon.

Tonight would be her sixth date with Paul Ryskamp, who had so far been rewarded with nothing more intimate than hand-holding and breezy good-night kisses. Yet still he kept asking her out, hoping she’d cave, even though Diego Beltrán remained behind bars.

Angie was seriously considering it. She liked the agent, and their pact had begun to feel punitive. His supervisor had chewed him out for intervening with the case prosecutor; a letter of reprimand was being drafted. Paul tried not to act bothered, but he confided to Angie that if he continued lobbying for Diego’s release he’d be probably be transferred to a desk post in Washington—a dull, demeaning end to an otherwise solid Secret Service career. The man deserved better. He also deserved to get laid. Angie held her phone under the edge of the bartop, where the oyster-slurping Canadians couldn’t see it, and sent a breakthrough text to Ryskamp: “Change of plans. Bring condoms tonight.”

“Condoms plural?!” he messaged back.

Angie mic-dropped the phone into her handbag. Spalding entered the restaurant followed by Christian, the height-lacking tanning bed technician, who greeted Angie with a hope-filled smile. The three of them went to a table and Spalding ordered a round of mimosas. Christian said he’d flown down to Palm Beach in advance of the President’s arrival later that week. Spalding complimented Angie on her white satin jeans and joked that she ought to dress like a heterosexual more often.

“Kiss my white satin ass,” she replied.

Soon they were joined by a third man that Christian introduced as The Knob. His shaved head looked like a cypress stump. He was tall and wide enough to cast shade over the table. One chubby hand clutched what appeared to be a taxidermied Pekingese, but was later disclosed to be a vividly lush hairpiece attached to a skull cap. The Knob wore ample slacks and a too-snug golf shirt that tragically failed to conceal the outline of floppy, simian breasts. Both his cheeks were freckled and peeling, while his squinty eyes sat in odd circles of milky-white skin. In a flat voice he said hello while rocking slightly from one thick leg to another.