Карл Хайасен - Squeeze Me

It was a rare dreamless sleep, mercilessly interrupted by the goddamn phone. Groping in the dark, Angie by mistake snatched the Taser from the nightstand and with a hot crackle she fired both barbs into her pillow.

On the second swipe she found her cell.

“Is this Ms. Armstrong?”

“Who are you, sir?”

“This is Johnny Sanford at Safe N’ Sound. I’m the co-owner.”

Safe N’ Sound was the warehouse yard on South Dixie Highway where Angie rented storage space.

“May I ask what time it is, Mr. Sanford?”

“Uh. Three-fifteen a.m.”

“So this will likely be unwelcome news,” Angie said.

“Our security service called. Your space is K-44, right?”

“Yup.” Angie sat up in bed. “I assume it wasn’t a false alarm.”

“Not this time.”

“Well, fuck.”

“They used a bolt cutter on the padlock,” Sanford said.

“How many other units got hit?”

“Just yours.”

“I feel special.”

“How fast can you be here?” Sanford asked. “The police have some questions.”

I’m sure they do, thought Angela Armstrong.

FOUR

The marriage had been Angie’s first and only. Dustin was twenty-one years older, smart, charming, and self-confident. He was also, in her eyes, arrestingly youthful. Although he listed his occupation as a life coach, most of his income came from modeling in TV commercials for a chicory-based edible called Luv Buzz, a trendy though medically unproven treatment for male fatigue and depression.

Angie first met him when she was sent to his house to sedate a confused black bear. Lured from the woods by the scent of the chicory gummies, the animal had broken into Dustin’s garage and gobbled a thirteen-pound bag. It was in a manic state, hurling itself in all directions and emitting a piteous croak, by the time Angie arrived. She had to fire three times before getting a dart in the wild-eyed bear, and by then Dustin’s cherry Targa was totaled. He remained phenomenally calm, even philosophical, despite an unsatisfactory exchange of phone calls with his insurance company.

Angie married him six months later, and loved him until the day he bailed. She adored his son, too. Joel’s mother, Dustin’s first wife, had died after sinking her golf cart in a lake during the inaugural member-guest tournament at the Jupiter Glades Country Club. The toxicology report showed she had enough Xanax in her blood to etherize a sumo wrestler.

Joel was a toddler when the tragedy happened. He was ten when his father introduced her to Angie, who was attracted to the idea of an instant family; in her teens she’d lost her own mother to cancer, and had no brothers or sisters. Her father hadn’t spoken to her since the day she’d quit his veterinary practice, the same morning a cocker spaniel died while Angie was removing a ping-pong ball from its stomach. Surgically she hadn’t done anything wrong, and it wasn’t the first animal she’d lost on the table. The dog was old and had heart problems, but watching the life-light fade from its eyes crushed Angie worse than any other experience. She couldn’t figure out why this time and not the others, but she knew she was done.

The state of Florida was pleased to give her a job as a wildlife officer. Being overqualified did not elevate her prospects for a proper wage, but over time Angie saved enough money to repay her father for the tuition to veterinary school. He never responded except for cashing the check. Later, when she went to prison, she didn’t bother writing him. By then she was single again, Dustin having dumped her a few years before she fed Pruitt’s hand to the alligator.

Angie sometimes wondered if they’d still be married had she stuck with those damn yoga classes. God knows she tried. The crowded, windowless studios made her claustrophobic, and that mandatory loop of Eastern chimes was so annoying. Why the fuck couldn’t they play Pearl Jam?

“I’m not cut out for this, Dustin,” she’d said after one blazingly sweaty Bikram session. “Serenity is overrated.”

He didn’t get angry; that wasn’t his style. Instead he took up with one of the community’s freshly divorced, self-discovering female yoga fanatics that traveled in packs, ever-alert and lithe as meerkats.

Looking back, as Angie too often did, she regretted overlooking other signal differences between Dustin and herself. For one thing, he disliked being around animals; he claimed their presence interfered with his meditations. Joel would have loved to own a dog or a cat, but dear old dad wouldn’t even buy the kid a hamster. That, Angie knew, was a red flag missed.

One time Dustin had chased after a small garter snake in the yard, swinging at it frantically with a 24-inch carbon steel crowbar. He’d missed the snake completely but pulverized three toes on his right foot.

Angie was reminded of the incident by the sight of a similar crowbar—definitely not her ex-husband’s—on the floor of her rented storage unit. This one had been used to snap the hinges on the lid of the freezer.

“What’s inside that black bag in there?” the cop asked. He happened to be one of the same pair who’d answered the burglary at Angie’s apartment.

“Dead coyote,” Angie replied.

“And that thing?”

“Juvenile otter.”

“What the hell?” the cop’s partner said, with exaggerated disgust.

Angie explained that she was in the business of removing so-called nuisance wildlife from human environs. The coyote had been shot by a horse trainer, and nobody at the stable wanted to handle the corpse for fear of rabies. As for the poor little otter, it had failed to outrun a pit bull mix owned by an eccentric obstetrical nurse in Greenacres.

“Most of my trade is alive,” Angie felt compelled to add.

“Then how come you collect the dead ones and freeze ’em?”

“I don’t collect them, sir. There’s a place way out west, some woods near Loxahatchee, that’s where I bury them. It’s a long drive, so I usually wait until I’ve got a full truckload.”

The cops said they’d never met a woman in her line of work. Without comment Angie acknowledged that most critter-removal companies were owned by men.

Mr. Sanford wasn’t much help. To the police he proclaimed: “I had no idea she was using our premises for this!”

“Oh, Johnny, that’s bullshit,” Angie said. “When your granddaughter’s pet bunny croaked, who showed up on my doorstep with the shoebox?”

Sanford lowered his eyes and licked his mustache. The first cop said to Angie: “You’re on an epic bad-luck streak, ma’am. Any chance this incident was connected to the break-in at your apartment?”

“The thought crossed my mind.”

“What else you keep in this freezer?” the second officer asked in a serrated tone. “Maybe a leafy green substance?”

“No, sir,” said Angie. “There’s only one item missing, by the way.”

“Which would be…?”

“A dead Burmese python.”

“No shit? How big?”

“Eighteen feet, eleven inches.” Before unspooling the tape measure, Angie had laid out the Lipid House specimen in the parking lot and carefully aligned the severed head with the neck.

She added, “One person couldn’t carry it alone.”

The first cop snorted. “Then how the hell’d a girl your size drag it in here all by yourself?”

“Two sturdy youths from the neighborhood agreed to help me. Ten bucks each,” Angie said. “I told them it was a rubber prop from a movie set. Otherwise they wouldn’t come near it. Somehow it fit in the bottom of the freezer.”

The second cop asked where the python had been found.

“The island of Palm Beach,” said Angie, “winter enclave of the sun-drenched one-per-centers.”