appraising a life-size ice sculpture of the President swinging a golf club. One of them, a distinguished-looking man with a cane, spotted Angie and began walking toward her. He had close-cropped white hair and wire glasses. She didn’t recognize him until he got close.
“You look nice, Angela.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Beautiful evening. Good music. Interesting conversations.”
“Horseshit,” Angie said. “How’d you score an invitation?”
Jim Tile laughed. “I didn’t.”
“Tell me what’s going on.”
“Aren’t you cold in that dress?” he asked guilelessly.
They moved to a place where they could talk, next to a statue that was supposed to be Julius Caesar though it looked more like John Goodman in Raising Arizona. Angie asked Tile how he’d made it past all the security.
“Look at this crowd, young lady,” he said. “You think these rich proper white folks gonna make a scene and turn away a fine-looking black man in a tuxedo, the only black man in this whole damn zip code? Especially when he’s old and a little confused, and then he drops a few names they’ve heard before. Names of people he actually knows—political types, and so forth.”
Angie said, “But there’s a guest list.”
“You should see all the characters outside, trying to crash this party. Scammers, posers, pouty-ass billionaires that didn’t get an invite. I feel sorry for the Secret Service tonight.”
“Mr. Tile, I need to know if he’s here. And what about the snakes?”
The old man motioned around the grounds with his cane and said, “This is a damn big slice of habitat. You should get back to work, Angela.”
* * *
—
It had turned into the weirdest, most frenetic shift of Jerry Crosby’s law-enforcement career. While most of his officers were working traffic control and perimeter security at the Commander’s Ball, other large though less-exclusive galas were underway all over the island. The police chief was sitting in his SUV in front of Casa Bellicosa and monitoring the dispatch calls when the shit totally demolished the fan, shortly after sunset.
The first big python interrupted the Carpal Tunnel auction at the Alabaster Club. The second snake derailed the Scoliosis raffle at the Founders Club. A third Burmese appeared in a gin fountain at the Pilgrim Club, then another at the Plymouth Club, then the Sailfish Club, then the Marlin Club, then the Snapper Club, then the Bath Club, and finally the Salt Club.
Angie Armstrong was tied up at the Winter White House, so Jerry Crosby went and killed each of the pythons himself. All the event managers begged him not to further disrupt their festivities by using a gun, but Crosby had no experience wrestling lethal reptiles and no time to debate other options. He left the dead snakes lying where he shot them, and was assured more than once that he’d be out of a job the following Monday. After a certain number of threats, he no longer gave a flying fuckeroo.
A text from Agent Paul Ryskamp brought the chief speeding back to Casa Bellicosa, where the Cornbright brothers had been intercepted stepping onto the seawall after arriving on an inflatable outboard. The boat was the tender for their new yacht, the Inheritance, which Chase and Chance had inconveniently anchored near the main channel of the Intracoastal Waterway, for maximum exposure.
The Secret Service had whisked the Cornbrights from the seawall to a secure storage room filled from floor to ceiling with bootlegged Canadian toilet paper. When Crosby walked in, the young men and their wives were loudly griping that they’d been humiliated in front of the other members and guests. The chief informed them that it was he who’d gotten their names on the ticket list, and that everyone else but them understood that Casa Bellicosa was to be accessed only through the front portico, where armed agents were overseeing the ID checkpoints and metal-detectors.
“So what if we came in a boat instead of a car? That’s no reason to treat us like we’re Al-Qaeda!” Chase snapped.
With narrow-eyed reproach, his brother added, “Chief Crosby, what do you think our mother would say about all this?”
“She’d say you’re acting like spoiled little turds.”
The chief led the stewing young men and their spouses to the Grand Ballroom, where the other guests had congregated in anticipation of dinner and POTUS’s arrival. Crosby saw that sequin party masks were being distributed at each table. He overheard a server say they were leftovers from Mardi Gras Night.
A confused Cornbright spouse said: “Is this a costume ball? Nobody told us!”
“What if they re-themed the event?” fretted