Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

Maybe Pruitt was putting on a show, or maybe this time he’d really unraveled. There was no way to know if he was armed, and the thought of him shooting at Krista and Joel—even if only to rattle them—terrified Angie.

She rolled up close and began tapping the minivan with the front bumper of her pickup. The poacher looked in the rearview, shaking his fist. Angie responded with a spirited double flip-off and continued bumping.

Pruitt was no longer paying attention to Joel and Krista in the VW, which was pulling away. To challenge Angie he sped up erratically, slowed down, then accelerated rapidly again. She wouldn’t back off. The next time she made contact, she heard one of her headlights shatter. By now Pruitt was so upset that he was bouncing like a beet-faced toddler in a high chair. When Angie motioned with a mocking forefinger for him to follow her, he shook his head heatedly at the mirror.

So she rammed him again and stuck out her tongue as she passed on the left side, in the crosshatched pavement between the road and the northbound interstate entrance. She was betting that Pruitt couldn’t resist chasing her, and she was right. He veered off and tailed her to the second ramp, which looped to the highway’s southbound lanes. Angie was hoping other motorists on Okeechobee were dialing 911, though she also knew that road rage was so common in South Florida that incidents falling short of a point-blank homicide were not a police priority.

Once the two vehicles merged into the torrent of cars and trucks on I-95, Pruitt dropped back so far that no one except Angie would have known he was pursuing her. Like a plump green bee, the van flitted in and out of view in her mirrors. She groped beneath her seat for the phone but couldn’t extricate it. Her next hope was to flag down a cop car—as luck would have it, she saw exactly zero on the drive between West Palm and Lake Worth.

Pruitt was less than a quarter-mile behind when Angie wheeled into the apartment complex where she lived. She didn’t park in the lot but drove headlong across the sidewalks and over the grass, mowing down a ponytail palm before stopping a few feet from her front door. She dashed inside and hurriedly assembled the most serious-looking weapon she owned: the tranquilizing rifle that she saved for bears, wild boars and other large, noose-resistant critters.

When Angie ran back out, she saw the green minivan parked behind her truck. She approached from the passenger side, the dart gun raised to her shoulder.

The van’s engine was running, the windows were open, and the radio was blasting Outlaw Country on Sirius. Nobody was in the front seat.

She called Pruitt’s name several times before stepping closer. Drops of fresh blood were visible on the gray upholstery, and a revolver lay on the floorboard between the accelerator and brake pedal. Dangling like a severed claw from the steering wheel was a clenched prosthetic hand.

Angie backed away, got the phone from her pickup truck, rushed inside, and called Chief Jerry Crosby. A few minutes later, when she peered out the window, the minivan was gone.

TWENTY-FIVE

“It was a rental,” the police chief informed Angie when she went to see him later. “The county dragged it out of Lake Mangonia this morning.”

“And Pruitt?”

“No corpse in the van. No gun, either. He hasn’t turned up at any hospitals.”

Angie sniffed the air. “I believe I smell cannabis.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure.”

They were alone in Crosby’s office at the police department. The door was shut. He looked different, like the off-switch had been flipped.

She said, “I get it, Jerry. You’re stressing big-time, and that’s allowed. I sure wouldn’t want your job.”

He took the bong out of a drawer and offered her a hit. She declined but encouraged him to fire up.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he said. “I’d be sacked in two seconds.”

Angie asked if Paul Ryskamp had told him about her trip to the Everglades. The chief said yes, he’d been advised that a mentally unstable individual might be freeing multiple pythons on the island to disrupt the Commander’s Ball.

With a drowsy shrug he added, “The information has been shared with my officers, at least half of whom will crap their pants if they see a snake.”

“Have them call me right away. I’ll be on the property.”

“Yes, I heard,” said Crosby.

In fact, he’d just returned from the Winter White House, having been summoned to escort a woman named Suzanne Carhart Brownstein off the property through a maze of private hallways. Ms. Brownstein, an adult entertainer whose stage name was Suzi Spooner, had been fucking the President cross-eyed inside his private suite when the First Lady arrived to show him the gown she’d chosen for the Commander’s Ball. The President himself had requested the fashion preview but soon thereafter lost track of time, precipitating an awkward scenario in which the First Lady and her Secret Service agents were forced to wait outside his locked door, squeamishly enduring a chorus of bovine rutting.

Mockingbird’s composure had dissolved somewhat quickly, and she’d made her presence known vocally and also by hammering on the wall with a five-inch stiletto heel. No Secret Service personnel were available to transport the disheveled stripper—all agents from the backup teams were on Potussy duty—so the decision was made to call Chief Jerry Crosby, who was known as reliable and savvy. He used an unmarked police car to transport Ms. Brownstein from the presidential estate to a waterfront cabana at the Breakers, which she confided had been visited by the leader of the free world. After dropping her off, the chief had gone back to the station, retreated to his office, and, for the first time in his police career, got baked while on duty.

“What’s your guess on what happened to Pruitt?” Angie asked.

“Maybe he shoots himself by accident in the front seat.”

“But—”

“Injuring the same arm the mechanical hand is attached to.”

“So he leaves it hooked on the steering wheel? What’s with that?”

“Say he yanks it off his arm ’cause of the pain,” said Jerry Crosby. “Say the gunshot’s just a flesh wound, no major organs. He sees you coming with a rifle, bolts from the van and hides somewhere till you go back inside.”

“Maybe. But it’s still ultra-weird.”

“He will be found, one way or another. Until then, you be extra careful.”

“Yes, sir,” Angie said.

“How’s Beltrán holding up? I heard he got stabbed pretty bad.”

“And you’re surprised?”

“I’m sorry. I truly am.” The chief put the bong back in his desk. “The President of the United States wants the kid to stay locked up—a guy in my position, at the local level…you think the White House would ever listen to me? Hell, they basically gagged the state attorney.”

Angie knew Crosby was hoping for her to say she understood his dilemma, but she wouldn’t let him off the hook that easy. He could have done more; he had all the proof he needed that Diego was telling the truth—the second conch pearl from the railroad tracks, the Chevy Malibu videos. When the prosecutors had refused to act, Crosby should have gone to the damn governor.

“Diego won’t be in that jail much longer,” Angie said matter-of-factly.

“How do you know?”

“Because I’m meeting with somebody that can make it happen.”

“Tell me who.”

“Nope. Can’t do that.”

“Aw, come on, Angie Armstrong.”

She said, “You need a cup of coffee.”

The chief felt looser than a bobble-head doll. He planted both elbows on his desk to self-stabilize.

“Well, okay, how soon is soon?” he asked. “When’s your big meeting?”