Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

Angie eventually resigned, pleading guilty to one felony count of aggravated assault and one misdemeanor charge of illegally feeding wildlife. The gator in question was a popular dock denizen nicknamed Lola. Over the years she’d received so many chicken bones and marshmallows from clueless tourists that she eagerly approached every occupied vessel she saw, expecting a handout.

Which is literally what she got, in Pruitt’s case.

Ironically, the amputation served to benefit the poacher when he went to court for killing the deer. Not wishing to be viewed as a hard-ass on the handicapped, the judge sentenced Pruitt to probation and a token $100 fine. However, his beloved airboat was confiscated, and that—more than the missing hand—fueled his ongoing fury toward Angela Armstrong. Every new call displayed a different area code and phone number, Pruitt being skilled at spoofing caller IDs. His punctuality was also impressive, and somewhat uncharacteristic of redneck whack jobs.

Still, after so much time and still no attempts on her life, Angie found it hard to take the man seriously. She did, as a precaution, keep tabs on Pruitt’s whereabouts, job status, bank loans and registered vehicles. Fortunately she still had data-savvy friends at the sheriff’s office. The info on Pruitt’s dogs came from veterinary vaccination records.

Angie showered and drove to Applebee’s with an eye on her rearview. Nobody followed her. She sat in a corner, and ordered a salad and iced tea. When the server inquired about the bandage on her arm, Angie told him she’d had a gaping skin biopsy. It was a line devised to end the conversation, yet instead it elicited an over-long monologue in support of homeopathic cancer remedies. Angie made a mental note to wear long-sleeved shirts in public until the opossum bite healed.

She skipped dessert and returned home. The door was unlocked, the apartment ransacked.

Angie sighed and said, “Well, fuck a duck.”

For years her stepson had told her she was a dumbass for renting on the first floor, even if it saved seventy bucks a month. Still, this was the first successful break-in. Entry had been achieved at the rear of the building, through a bathroom window. A glossy imprint of the burglar’s large right sneaker was visible in the tub.

By the time the cops arrived, Angie had taken inventory. Her main concern was the money from the Lipid House python job, five thousand in fifties. The cash sat untouched, inside a white box marked “Wound Care” that Angie kept in a cabinet under the kitchen sink.

The only items missing from the apartment were her laptop and checkbook.

A Taser that she hid under the mattress was on the floor, near the foot of the bed.

“Do you own a firearm?” one of the officers asked.

“I do not, sir,” Angie said.

“How come? Everyone on this block’s got a gun.”

“Multiple guns,” the other cop added.

Angie shrugged. “I’m a convicted felon.”

Amused, the cops looked at each other.

“And your point is…?” one said to Angie.

“I know the law.”

“All that means is if you had a firearm and it got stolen, you wouldn’t tell us.”

“Probably not. However, if I did own a firearm, why would I bother keeping that lame-ass bug zapper?” Angie motioned toward the Taser.

The officers conceded the point, but they ran her name and D.O.B. anyway, checking for warrants. Angie didn’t mind; she was clean.

When she asked if the cops planned to dust the apartment for fingerprints, they showed her a discarded medical glove that they’d found on the sidewalk. “Your visitor didn’t leave any prints,” one of them said. “Doesn’t mean he was a pro. Any shithead watches CSI knows to use these.”

“But there’s only one glove.”

“Which he dropped by mistake, I’m sure. The other one’s probably still in his pocket.” The officer handed a copy of the burglary report to Angie and said, “You got insurance, right?”

“Not much, sir.”

After the cops were gone, Angie grabbed a flashlight and went outside to see if the burglar had left any clues behind the building. She was looking for more that pointed to Pruitt. A search of the area beneath the broken bathroom window revealed only shards of glass.

But when Angie looked inside a nearby dumpster, she spotted her checkbook discarded among the trash bags. She climbed in to retrieve it.

The blank checks were untouched though, oddly, the register in which Angie wrote down her payments and check numbers was missing. It would be useless to an ordinary burglar.

Angie called Joel and said, “Somebody busted into the apartment. Came in through the bathroom window, but please don’t be a smartass and sing the song.”

“What have I been telling you? Rent that place on the third floor!”

“All he took was my laptop.”

“Not the art collection?” Joel said.

“Walked right past the Chagall. Go figure. Anyhow, I was thinking maybe you should stay away from here for a while.”

“Why? It was probably just kids. Your neighborhood has a very active chapter of the Future Felons of America.”

Angie said, “There’s a possibility my six o’clock stalker is taking it to a new level. I’d feel better if you weren’t in the target zone.”

“You mean Pruitt? Come on, burglary isn’t his M.O.”

“The cops found only one glove.”

“Right or left?”

“Right.”

“Damn,” said Joel.

“I can still meet you out for dinner on our weekends.”

“But who’s gonna clean your apartment, Angie?”

“I bet there’s a tutorial somewhere on Google.”

Joel said, “Then at least get your cheap ass off the first floor. Promise?”

“Love you, kid. Good night.”

Angie nailed a sheet over the window before sitting down to pee. She went to bed with the Taser positioned on her nightstand. As she sometimes did, she thought back to the regrettable night that she’d fed a piece of Pruitt to Lola the alligator. Most of all, she remained dismayed by the fact that the reptile had been shot afterward and sold to a hide tanner—the state-proscribed fate for gators that lose their fear of humans. Lola was now somebody’s handbag, while Pruitt was sporting a state-of-the-art polymer prosthetic that cost $6,000. Angie had paid for the device out of her own pocket, in compliance with the court order. Her listless defense lawyer never sent a bill for his fees, which she later learned were paid by an anonymous benefactor. Angie figured it was somebody from PETA, which had publicly denounced the judge for handing out such a light sentence to a poacher of baby deer.

She fell asleep anticipating another enigmatic dream. Tonight’s feature starred the commander-in-chief himself. Angie had been summoned to Casa Bellicosa to unfasten a screech owl from the presidential pompadour, which the low-swooping raptor had mistaken for a road-kill fox. When Angie arrived, the commander-in-chief was lurching madly around the helipad, bellowing and clawing at the Velcro skull patch into which the confused bird had embedded its talons. The owl was still clutching a plug of melon-colored fibers when Angie freed it. Swiftly she was led to a windowless room and made to sign a document stating she’d never set foot on the property, or glimpsed the President without his hair. A man wearing a Confederate colonel’s uniform and a red baseball cap stepped forward and hung a milk-chocolate medal around Angie’s neck, after which she was escorted at sword-point out the gates.

She awoke with renewed certainty that Carl Jung was full of shit. Dreams meant nothing—nonsense farted by a restless subconscious.

Angie spent all the next day removing a population of fruit-eating bats from the stately but vulnerable bell tower of a Lutheran church in Hobe Sound. She caught a career-high total of seventeen, which she released at dusk in a public park before driving home exhausted. Dinner was a microwave pizza. After one glass of wine Angie pitched into bed still smelling of bat piss.