Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

She added, “He got my emerald stud, too. It’s an heirloom!”

Angie spotted the green gem lying on the pavers where the fleeing boyfriend must have spit it out. The crowd surrounding the scene parted for Paul Ryskamp, running ahead of William and two other Secret Service agents. After ducking under the velvet ropes, they were quick to heed Angie’s warning not to come any closer. After she’d tipped off Ryskamp about the tree-island menagerie, all the special agents assigned to the President’s ball had received a crash course on python behavior.

“Jesus, how big is that?” Ryskamp asked, short of breath.

“Twenty-three feet, eleven inches,” Angie said.

“So it’s one of his.”

“Yes, sir. The grand prize.”

“Wait,” one of the other agents cut in, “you know this snake?”

“Oh, I believe it’s a new world record,” said Angie.

Suddenly the Burmese lashed out with a hiss, snapping the empty air inches from Fay Alex’s nose. She rolled to the side, yeeping.

Like a hoodless cobra, the upraised python struck again wildly and then again. Without moving her eyes off the snake, Angie took the gun out of her handbag.

“That big fucker is seriously whacked,” she informed Ryskamp. “Get these people away from here.”

TWENTY-SEVEN

Buttered with aloe, Mastodon put on a top hat to hide the scorched remains of his state-of-the-art mane. Stoically he returned to the Grand Ballroom to greet his admirers, who couldn’t make sense of his Lincolnesque headwear in the context of the tribal mask.

The President was moving from table to table when unrest began to rumble through the audience. Guests were murmuring and pivoting in their seats to eye the doors; a handful of people in the back of the room got up and darted out, emboldening others to do the same. Fuming, Mastodon barked at The Collusionists to play louder, but hardly anyone was paying attention to the music. As the place emptied, only diehards such as the Potussies held their positions.

In a fit, the President charged outside to locate the source of the buzz-killing disturbance. He was as unstoppable as a water buffalo, and his Secret Service detail shoved aside fan after fawning fan—donors and ass-kissers alike—in a rush to keep pace. The flying wedge halted at a velvet cordon separating onlookers from an elegantly dressed young woman pointing a handgun at something that looked like a theme-park creation.

One of Mastodon’s agents reflexively took him to the ground as the others whipped out their P90s.

“I can try the machete,” the armed woman said, “but it’s gonna be messy.”

On Paul Ryskamp’s order, all weapons—including Angela Armstrong’s illegal Ruger—were put away to avert a friendly-fire calamity. Fay Alex Riptoad’s agent, William, rushed forward and dragged her to safety, inadvertently kicking her missing emerald into a thorny hedgerow.

There was a collective gasp when Mastodon, having lost his top hat and Bakongo mask while being tackled, arose with his baked ham of a mug uncovered. No further incentive was needed to make the crowd shrink back, but the retreat accelerated when the giant python began writhing wildly, like a broken hose.

“I think he micro-dosed the damn thing,” Angie whispered to Ryskamp. “All we can do is back off and wait.”

“The snake’s tripping?”

“It’s, uh, not inconceivable.”

“Okay, Angie, just to be clear,” Ryskamp said, clearing his throat, “you’re telling me the crazy old fuck fed LSD to a twenty-four-foot killer python?”

“Look, I know you guys don’t train for situations like this.”

“There’s never been a situation like this. Anywhere. Ever.”

She said, “Please send someone to get the machete from my truck.”

Slowly the Burmese stopped flailing, and became as still as a moonbeam. Its elevated head overlooked the now-distanced crowd, though its eyes seemed fastened on one burly figure standing well apart but ringed by other men in constant motion.

Mastodon stared back with a bewitched, child-like expression. Even as his Secret Service team hustled him away, he continued raptly gazing over one shoulder at the surreal, unblinking behemoth.

Later, crossing the north courtyard, the President and his security detail encountered the First Lady with her retinue.

“My God, what happened to you?” Mockingbird said to her husband. “Your face looks like a baboon’s ass.”

Thereby establishing beyond any doubt that she hadn’t forgiven him for subjecting her to Suzi Spooner’s sex yelps while she’d waited in her new Tom Ford gown outside his suite.

“It was the goddamn tanning bed,” he mumbled swollenly. One of his agents handed him the replica tribal mask. Another produced the top hat, slightly dented.

Mastodon took both items and said, “All right, now we can go back to the ballroom.”

His wife shrugged. “Sure. Fine.”

“No, Mr. President, it’s too risky,” his lead agent interjected. “You and the First Lady should return to your quarters until the grounds are secure.”

“Aw, fuck that shit,” Mastodon said. “I’m not missing my own party.”

Mockingbird turned to Agent Ahmet Youssef. “What do you think, Keith?”

Ahmet, who had a crick in his neck from the Chesterfield romp, refitted his earpiece so that he could better hear the ongoing chatter about the reptile in the pavilion. He reported that the situation appeared to be under control, and that there was no longer a threat.

Mockingbird testily motioned for her husband to line up at her side for their standard amicable-couple entrance. Hoping for a thaw in attitude, he said, “The pink earrings look fantastic with that gown.”

“These pearls? They’re my faves,” she said. “Give me your hand. Let’s get this over with.”

—

Th at’s a shame about your dress, Angie heard over and over in the bathroom.

“Will those stains come out?” one woman asked.

“Unlikely.”

“Listen, dear, I’ve got a phenomenal dry cleaner on the mainland.”

“It’s snake blood,” Angie said. “But thanks anyway.”

She washed up as well as she could. The decapitation had been clean—one hard swipe of the machete—but she still got splattered.

Fuck the Versace. That animal was so big and beautiful.

She sat in a stall and cried for a while. The python’s problem was being on the wrong continent; her problem was being in the wrong state of mind. A job was a job.

Using the pistol would have been easier but way more dangerous; Paul Ryskamp was right—there were too many bystanders. Angie had waited to make her move until the crowd grew bored and started filtering back toward the ballroom. After a while the snake rose higher—tilting its nose upward, as if sniffing the flowers in the trellis—and remained fatefully extended in that surrreal, perpendicular pose. Angie wondered about the acid trip it was experiencing, what kind of hallucinations might visit such a primeval brain.

Oh well, she thought. The end was quick.

She dried her tears, fixed her eyeliner, and walked out of the restroom. Ryskamp was pacing outside, speaking into his sleeve. He accompanied Angie to her pickup so she could stow the gun and the machete, and retrieve her first-aid kit. Along the way they could hear the President’s reboot of the Commander’s Ball, a second “Hail to the Chief” melting improbably into “Bennie and the Jets.”

After locking the truck, Angie followed Ryskamp to Casa Bellicosa’s storied billiard room. There she began stitching up the violently pruned left ear of Fay Alex Riptoad, who was too vain to let herself be seen by any of the prominent physicians attending the event, especially the widowers.