Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

“Yeah, Paul, but in most cases it’s a neglected pet that gets aggressive and strangles the owner. Hell, a ten-footer’s big enough to choke somebody,” Angie heard herself saying, “just not big enough to swallow ’em.”

Jerry Crosby pressed his knuckles to his temples and walked away mumbling.

Ryskamp said he was done, too. He took out an unmarked envelope and handed it to Angie. She grinned and said, “That was fast. Thank you, sir.”

“Don’t do anything that could put you back in prison.”

“Who, me?”

“One more thing,” the agent said. “Since I’m ninety-nine-point-nine-percent sure the Secret Service has no profiling formula for individuals who drive around ‘unleashing’ giant snakes, my last question is: What kind of psycho should we be looking for?”

“I have no idea, Paul. But if I were you—”

“Oh, absolutely. We’re taking the President and First Lady back to Washington.”

But the President and the First Lady refused to go.

—

The daily deluge of death threats had dropped to a trickle, but Diego Beltrán knew better than to relax. Now that the venture capitalist charged with making child pornography had fallen seventeen times on his fork in the cafeteria, Diego was the highest-profile inmate at the Palm Beach County Jail.

Held alone in a cell, he felt scalding stares whenever he walked down the corridor. He was the only prisoner branded a killer terrorist by the President of the United States, and there was no Honduran brotherhood to protect him while he was in custody. The other inmates derisively called him “Pinky” because of the conch pearl he was alleged to have stolen from the rich old woman he was alleged to have slain.

Diego kept his mouth shut. Every few days the garrulous scumbag in the cell next to his would be replaced by a new garrulous scumbag, who immediately would try to initiate incriminating conversation. It was from one such aspiring snitch that Diego first heard of DBC-88, the Diego Border Cartel, a nonexistent alien gang of which he supposedly was the leader. Diego couldn’t stop himself from chuckling when the snitch—an addled fentanyl mule from southern Mississippi—asked if he and his friends could join the group.

The other prisoners knew little about Diego except what they’d heard, and they were suspicious of his unwillingness to open up. One of many personal facts that he chose not to share was that he’d learned how to box while in college, won several amateur matches, and on two occasions had knocked a larger opponent unconscious. That information would have been useful to a man named Tuck Nutter. He was doing eight months for stealing Amazon packages from the porch of a group home for seniors, though he considered himself first and foremost an American, and a thief second.

One day Nutter was approached in the chow line by an inmate who said a group of patriots on the outside was offering serious bank for the death of Diego Beltrán. When Nutter asked who those people were, he was told they were part of a small but well-connected organization dedicated to saving the country from a takeover by dark-skinned, non-English-speaking foreigners.

Nutter, a fledgling white supremacist who shared similar views, asked how much money was being offered.

“Six thousand dollars,” the inmate whispered, and handed him a shiv.

“Tell ’em I’ll do it for fifty-six hundred. Aryan discount.”

Although he’d never killed anybody, Tuck Nutter was under the misimpression that it happened all the time in jails and would be easy to get away with because prisoners didn’t rat each other out.

The weapon was the sharpened handle of a plastic soup ladle. Nutter tested it by stabbing his mattress and was satisfied with the damage, although the rounded spoon end of the shiv proved awkward to grip. For days he continued to rehearse by goring his bedding, and then one afternoon he contrived to be in the shower area at the same time as Diego Beltrán.

It was a galloping ambush, and poorly executed. Nutter slipped on the wet tiles, clipped a faucet with his hip, and dropped the shiv. While fumbling to retrieve it he left his upper body unprotected and Diego, wearing only a towel, threw a flurry of upper cuts that flattened the hapless porch pirate. He awoke with swollen eyelids and a cracked sternum in the medical wing of the jail.

The next morning, when Diego met with his defense lawyers, he told them what had happened. They promised to try to get him transferred to a more secure facility.

“How about ICE detention?” he said. “I was safer there.”

“We’re still working on that.”

“Is the President’s mob still outside?”

“Not very many.”

“It’s definitely trending the right direction,” the other attorney added. “At least nobody spit on us today.”

“Finally some good news,” Diego said tonelessly, staring at his bruised knuckles. “That’s so encouraging.”

NINETEEN

Pruitt was staying at the first-floor apartment of a divorced sister who was away for the winter, working as a pansexual escort in London. Paul Ryskamp was able to locate the poacher because the genius had gone online and ordered ten boxes of Remington bullets on a stolen AmEx card. The ammo was delivered by UPS to the sister’s address, signature required.

Angie Armstrong arrived before dawn and found an unlocked sliding door in the back. After shooing Pruitt’s Bichon and Labradoodle out of the apartment, she carried the hissing travel kennel to the threshold and set loose the occupant—a robust male bobcat weighing twenty-four pounds. Angie had captured it at an orchid farm where it had been feasting on the owner’s juicy domestic ducks.

She watched as the nub-tailed cat darted down the hallway seeking an escape. There was a cry, and Pruitt emerged at a run wearing only tartan boxer shorts and his mechanical hand. He was searching for the deer rifle that Angie had already kicked underneath the sofa.

Pruitt looked up and shouted, “The fuck are you doin’ here?”

“I heard you were in need of a specialist.” She stood blocking his way and wielding the long-handled noose. From the bedroom arose a low, feral rumble.

Pruitt said, “Get that goddamn cat outta here.”

“First we need to reach an agreement.”

“Just ’cause I only got one hand don’t mean you can take me, bitch. I’ll go all Jaime Lannister on your ass.”

Pruitt grabbed a mop and charged back down the hall. Angie heard tables overturn and lamps crash as he flailed at the agile intruder. Moments later he lurched out of the bedroom and flung the mangled mop.

“I’m gonna call the cops!” Pruitt rasped. “Say you busted into my place.”

“Great idea. When they come, they can bring your outstanding warrants.”

Through a doorway Angie could see the bobcat. Agitated but unharmed, it was crouched on the handlebar of a Peloton bike.

Pruitt himself looked wobbly and distraught, his pale legs striated with bleeding claw marks. He shook his polymer fist at Angie and told her to go fuck herself with the catch pole.

Without blinking she slipped the noose around his neck and jerked with sufficient emphasis to put him on his knees.

“Ever bother my stepson again, I’ll kill you,” she said, “and not in a statutorily humane way.”

Pruitt shook his head back and forth, swiping at the capture pole. Angie hung on easily and waited for him to tire. Soon he fell wheezing on the carpet; his watery eyes were half-open, his cheeks the color of ripe turnips.

“Listen up, Señor Fuckwhistle,” Angie said. “I’m about to remove the noose from your neck and chase after the bobcat. I suggest you shelter.”

Pruitt grunted. “Don’t trash this fuckin’ place. It ain’t even mine.”