Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

Alexandra smiled warily. “Eight. Why?”

“Close enough. I’ll take the other boot, too.”

A mile from the stable, Angie pulled the truck off the road and freed the squirrel near a stand of Florida pines. When she got back to her apartment, Joel was stocking the refrigerator. She told him about Alexandria summoning her to Wellington.

“A little creepy,” he said.

“Is that the same horse that threw her?”

“No idea. She owns a bunch.”

Angie said, “Well, I hope your ankle’s healing better than her pelvis.”

“Almost as good as new.”

“Want a sandwich? I see you loaded up on Boar’s Head.”

“I’m meeting Krista in Delray. Why don’t you come along?”

Krista was Joel’s latest girlfriend, and they were together nearly all the time. Angie didn’t see Joel as often as before, but she approved of the relationship. She simply wasn’t in the mood for a group lunch.

“Rain check,” she said. “I need to clean my new boots.”

It didn’t take long. After vacuuming the squirrel droppings from the left one, she applied Lysol liberally with a rag. The right boot was sanitized the same way, after which Angie spritzed perfume inside both. While waiting for them to dry, she watched an episode of Fleabag and ate a turkey sub with pickles and mustard. Then she put on a black tank top, denim cutoffs, and two pairs of thick socks, because Alexandria’s feet were a size-and-a-half larger.

The riding boots felt mighty fine when Angie did a runway walk down the hall of her apartment. She got in the truck and drove to the Lake Worth Pier, where she sat on a bench and watched shivering tourists fake-frolic for Instagram in the chilly surf. Now that Ryskamp had bailed, Angie needed someone else to help execute her plan for freeing Diego Beltrán. One person came to mind as both trustworthy and connected. She thought about it a while before she returned to her pickup and made the call. Jerry Crosby suggested they meet at the Brazilian Court.

He grinned when Angie walked in.

“What’s so amusing, Jerry?”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen you out of uniform.”

“This is my jaunty alter ego,” she said. “I do have a life, you know.”

They took a table in a warm panel of sunshine on the patio. Angie ordered a Bloody Mary and the police chief had a raspberry iced tea. He told her the body of the missing Alex Huppler had been recovered in the Intracoastal.

“He got plowed by a couple of morons on Jet Skis, which made extra work for the medical examiner,” he said. “Ironically, the morons happened to be Mrs. Fitzsimmons’s sons.”

“What a colorful little town you have here,” Angie said.

“There was no snake-related trauma on the dead fisherman.”

“Can’t we call that good news?’

“On another subject: Your least favorite stalker dropped off the radar. Has he been in touch?”

Pruitt had remained in jail for only a few nights after Crosby had him arrested back in January. Angie hadn’t heard a peep since the asshole had made bond.

“No more phone calls,” she said, “but he’s poaching again. Deer and gators.”

“Who told you that?”

“One of the wildlife officers I used to work with. Evidently Pruitt has broadened his prosthetic talents to cocking a rifle.”

“Let me know if he makes contact. I’m serious, Angie.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you still seeing Paul Ryskamp?”

“Who?” she said.

“Right. None of my business.”

“Did you ever interview Tripp Teabull about my two murdered burglars?”

“Teabull’s gone. I thought you heard,” the chief said.

“Dead?”

“No, fired.”

It had happened shortly after No-More-Diegos.net, an anti-immigration website inspired by the President, posted a shocking, wholly invented “reconstruction” of Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons’s last night. The graphic animation depicted the doomed Potussy being snatched from the grounds of Lipid House by the homicidal border jumper, Beltrán, accompanied by his two burly white followers, Uric Burns and Keever Bracco. Viewed by more than two million people, the video featured a drone shot of the lush walled estate overlaid by the imagined path of the black-clad kidnappers through the festive topiary to the koi pond.

Within hours of the posting, more than a dozen major galas and balls scheduled at Lipid House had been canceled. The events were quickly re-booked at Casa Bellicosa, the President having big-heartedly offered their sponsors a five percent discount on the standard one-night rental fee. Reeling from the catastrophic loss of revenue, the board of the Lipid House Trust blamed Tripp Teabull’s complacence for the belated blast of negative publicity about Mrs. Fitzsimmons’s death. Teabull had been hustled out the gates by a replacement security team, and was now rumored to be working as the caretaker at a fly-in hunting lodge in Newfoundland.

“So he got away with it,” Angie said to Crosby.

“He did a good job covering his tracks. Plus, nobody gives a shit that Burns and Prince Percocet are dead.”

“Because of those two, Diego’s still in jail. Because of the damn stolen pearls.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t do anything about that.”

“But you can, Jerry. Absolutely.”

“We had this talk before. The answer’s still no.”

“I’ve got some new information that you need to hear.” Angie dropped her voice to tell him about the First Lady’s daring affair with the Secret Service agent named Keith.

The chief said, “First of all, I don’t believe it. Second, how in the world does that help Diego Beltrán?”

“Are you kidding?” Angie laid out her plan, step-by-step, then whispered, “Your job would be totally safe. All you’ve got to do is hook me up with the right person at Casa Bellicosa.”

“Now you’ve lost your damn mind,” Crosby said.

“It’ll work. I know it will.”

“No way, Angie.”

“Meaning no way will it work?”

“Meaning no way will I get involved.”

She said, “I don’t need an answer right now.” She purposely hadn’t told him about Paul Ryskamp’s reaction to the plan, or the last thing he’d said before he walked out of her apartment: What you’re proposing, Angie, is an actual crime.

“Please, Jerry,” she said.

“Back off. I can’t help you.”

“But, deep down, you wish you could?”

“Deep down, I wish I had a vineyard in Bordeaux. Goodbye.”

He got up and left. Just like that. Didn’t even offer to pay for his damn tea. That was two walk-outs in one day.

When the server brought the bill, Angie looked up and said, “Can I ask you something, Philippe? When did testicles go out of style?”

The young man paled, and went from chipper to chastened. “I’m super sorry, ma’am. Was, uh, the service unsatisfactory?”

“Not at all, sir. I’m just venting.”

Angie paid the tab, exited proudly in her boots, and drove home determined to think up a new strategy.

SEVENTEEN

Mockingbird ate lunch alone—tuna salad with kiwi crescents—at a corner table in one of Casa Bellicosa’s informal dining rooms. Keith Josephson and two other agents were triangularly positioned nearby. Between bites, the First Lady would look up and wave mechanically at gawking club members and their guests. She didn’t like sitting alone, but the alternative was joining her husband at a raucous patio barbecue for a mob of TV wrestlers who’d performed in his latest anti-impeachment commercial.

The night before, he had called Mockingbird to his suite and asked her to arrange a photo session with the women who called themselves the Potussies. At first she had declined.