Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,100
sport,” Angie said.
They ordered beers and toasted Joel’s new assistant-manager job at Staples. He said he was scheduled to start the following week. Krista wanted to hear more about Angie’s upcoming gig at the Commander’s Ball, but Angie said she wasn’t supposed to talk about it, which was the truth.
“Are you bringing a date?” Krista asked.
“No, a machete.”
Joel said, “She isn’t joking.”
“I’m not allowed to have a gun,” Angie elaborated. “It’s the law.”
“Okay. Wow.” Krista had no follow-up questions.
After lunch, Angie got in her pickup and headed out Okeechobee Road toward the interstate. Joel and Krista were in the same lane, directly ahead in Krista’s VW sedan. They’d all stopped at the railroad tracks, waiting for a half-empty passenger train to pass, when Angie noticed who was driving the green minivan behind her.
It was Pruitt, the dumb lunatic. He had a stranglehold on the steering wheel with his good hand—gloved—and his bare prosthetic. His disguise was neon-framed shades, a dark knit cap, and an unfortunate Rasta-style beard. Under different circumstances, Angie would have burst out laughing. But clearly Pruitt was on the hunt, undaunted by the interactive bobcat experience that Angie had arranged at his sister’s place.
The crossing gates went up and traffic began to move. Angie grabbed for her phone but it fell down the crack between her seat and the console. She was taken by surprise when Pruitt flew past her and then suddenly cut back, forcing her to stomp the brakes. When she caught up to him, he was tailgating Krista’s VW.
Angie got a chill down her neck. Krista and Joel were probably busy talking, unaware of what was happening. They’d be going north on I-95, and the entry ramp was already in sight. Angie considered sideswiping Pruitt’s minivan but she decided to wait; she couldn’t risk causing a crash that might hurt other drivers.
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,