Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’re right. He will totally lose his shit if he finds out about the book.”

“It won’t be from me.”

“So how much you want in order to keep your big mouth zipped?”

“That’s funny. You’re the second person today who thought I was trying to blackmail them when I wasn’t.” Ryskamp put on his sunglasses to watch a dark-haired woman on a paddleboard catch a nice wave. She was good.

Suzi said, “He told me he and his wife haven’t done it in forever. Is that true?”

“Were you planning to be at the Commander’s Ball? I didn’t see you on the list.”

“Not as Suzi Spooner. My birth name’s different. He said he’s gonna get me a fake date, so it’s all cool.”

“Oh.”

“I never been to his mansion, the Casa Whatever. You gonna be there?”

“I will,” Ryskamp said emptily. “Should be quite an evening.”

TWENTY-TWO

Angie took a bite. “Not bad. What is it?”

“Coyote,” her host replied.

“From where?”

“Eastbound lane, mile marker nineteen. Years ago, you never saw those gnarly fuckers around here. Now they’re a-thriving.”

He had grilled the stringy hind quarters over an open fire. Angie could hear a generator running on the far side of the camp; that would explain his internet connection, and the heat lamps that warmed the big strange cage at night.

“Not a cage—an enclosure,” he said without irony.

After everything she’d heard about him, Angie still wasn’t prepared for the live, in-person experience. His height, for starters. The funky pink shower cap that clashed with his military camo and boots. A beard as unruly as Spanish moss.

For someone his age he displayed a freakish vitality; the soothing cave-deep voice and movie-star smile, which were part of the legend, failed to offset the thrumming, unsettled force of his presence.

Then there was the damn iguana egg that he was attempting to hatch in his empty eye socket. One of the first things he’d done was flip up the patch and show the speckled white bulge to Angie. If that was a test, she assumed she passed. At least he hadn’t chased her off the island.

When she’d told him her name, he had seemed surprised. “Jim Tile sent you?”

“He told me it was okay to call you Skink.”

“There’s no reason to call me anything. You won’t be staying.”

“Can I see them? Please.”

“What—my books?” Wryly he had gestured toward the library-styled walls of the enclosure. The fissures of his face put the hard years on raw display, the corrosive sorrow and anger.

“Let’s eat,” he’d said, and cooked up the road-kill coyote, which actually tasted terrible. It was another test Angie passed. The only beverage that the governor offered was dark rum in a Dixie cup.

After they were done eating, he scrubbed the pan with swamp water while Angie doused the fire. She asked him what was in the large freezer, and he said frozen rabbits, sorbet, and expired hemorrhoid suppositories.

She said, “I’m actually on your side. You’re aware of that, right? And I know you’re not insane.”

“Do you now?” He laughed and laughed.

“Come on, Governor. Show me what you’ve been up to.”

Angie pointed at the trees, festooned with crispy, translucent snake sheds that fluttered whenever a breeze snuck through. “You should rent this place out for Halloween parties,” she said.

Skink grunted. “Let’s get on with it.”

Angie unknotted the bag that she’d brought, depositing the dead python in smooth flaccid coils at his feet.

“One of yours?” she asked.

He knelt to examine the snake’s bullet-punctured head. “The bikini shop on Worth Avenue,” he said.

“Not just any bikini shop—the First Lady’s bikini shop.”

“I guess my intel was solid.”

“And sneaking one of these suckers into the shipment of presidential Key Lime pies—that was slick, too,” Angie said. “Who told you the bakery truck always stops at the same gas plaza?”

“What can I say?”

“Start by telling me why. Is there a particular political point you’re trying to make?”

“If you were truly on my side, you wouldn’t need me to spell it out.”

Angie stood back while he skinned the python, which he proclaimed would make a “sporty” vest. Afterward he hacked up the meat, wrapped it in wax paper, and placed the pieces in the commercial-size freezer.

She said, “I’m not here to stop you, Governor. I doubt if I even could. Still, out of professional courtesy, maybe you can give me a sense of what’s coming.”

Skink tossed his head back and roared. “You, my dear, are cute as a button!”

Angie followed him over to the enclosure. From the front wall of books he removed a rectangle of tempered glass. After wriggling through the aperture, he called back to her: “No sudden movements, por favor .”

The sight inside the cage was jolting. Angie had never been afraid of snakes, but she’d never seen so many enormous constrictors in one place, confined together. For habitat Skink had constructed a web-like scaffold of stripped tree branches—cypress, live oaks, mahoganies—covered by chicken-wire mesh that let in the sun and rain. The pythons in the boughs shined like blown glass; some were crawling, some were balled up asleep.

Angie tried to count them all but quickly she became dizzy. Through the chicken-wire dome she spotted a jet high in the sky making a marvelous rainbow-colored contrail. Meanwhile the eyes of the pythons draped in the tallest branches began throbbing like embers, which was impossible.

Skink said, “Is this the first time you’ve ever done acid?”

“What?”

“I micro-dosed your ass. It was the rum.”

“That’s not funny, Governor.” Angie looked for a safe place to sit down.

“Relax. I’m tripping, too.” Skink steadied her in his arms. “It’s legit head therapy. I’ve been reading all about it in medical journals. A euphoriant that helps fight depression, they say.”

“Let go of me,” she said, though she didn’t mind being held.

“Also good for anxiety.”

“What’s the biggest python in here?”

“Twenty-three feet, eleven inches.”

Angie whistled. “World record. Nice work.”

For some reason she was clutching the front of his Army shirt. Her fingernails glinted like candy ice, which intrigued her. She cleared her throat saying, “I take back what I said about you not being insane.”

The pythons in the scaffold were becoming more active.

“They think it’s supper-time,” said Skink. “That isn’t a joke, by the way.”

“Not even a twenty-four-footer can swallow that fool in Palm Beach.”

“Hell, I know. I’m just havin’ a little fun.”

“Well, you got the Secret Service all worked up,” Angie said.

“Harmless capers.”

“Uh, no .”

Now there were snakes on the ground around them. Angie didn’t flinch. She thought they were beautiful, the way they kept changing colors. She wanted to feel their feathery tongues flick at her skin, making sparks.

“How long does a micro-dose last?” she asked Skink.

“Depends on the participant. Usually a couple hours.”

“Ah. Okay. Wow.”

He was still holding her. “It was better when I was hiding from all human contact. For a while I couldn’t tell you what year, month or day it was. The setback, God help me, was deciding to reconnect. Once I turned on the goddamn internet, no more sleep. President Shitweasel never fails to light my fuse. Just last Thursday he let a coal barge unload ten thousand tons of toxic ash at the port of Jacksonville. Dumped all of it in a landfill upwind from a playground. You shouldn’t have wasted your time at vet school, Angie. Pediatric oncology—that’s the future!”