Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,108
them had artificial joints, partial skull plates, or penile implants.
At first Fay Alex Riptoad had been irked when William rushed off, but at the moment she was glad for some privacy. She had detailed herself as a flamboyantly statuesque version of Abigail Adams, and now Stanleigh Cobo’s nose was planted in her bunched, powdered cleavage. Sniffling like a French bulldog, he fumbled somewhat brutishly to unfasten the front of Fay Alex’s sparkly, one-of-a-kind gown.
“Down, big boy,” she teased.
“I’m jacked up on narwhal,” he said. “It’s now or never.”
“Jacked on what?”
“Check this out.” He grabbed one of her hands and placed it on his groin.
“Whoa, Stanny.” It had been a long time since Fay Alex had heard herself giggle.
“At your service, Mrs. Adams.”
“If you rip the dress,” she said, closing her eyes, “I’ll yank your goddamn nuts off.”
It was only moments later, after Cobo had pulled Fay Alex on top of him, that while sucking on one of her emerald-studded earlobes he noticed movement in the bougainvillea vines above.
A bronze-striped head, as big as a cocaine brick, poked out of the leaves. Cobo’s cry died in his throat. Petrified, he watched foot after foot of the colossal body unwind from the trellis beams while the beast’s stone-eyed face—probing night scents with a gossamer tongue—levitated over the lovers’ bench.
Ultimately it was Fay Alex who shrieked, Cobo having clamped his jaws together in terror. He was gone by the time Angie Armstrong reached the pavilion. She found an older woman with a shredded ear sprawled on the paving stones. The woman’s hair had been styled and dyed as a Continental-era flag, and the front of her spangled gown was unbuttoned.
“Stanleigh, you asshole!” she yelled in the direction of her companion’s cowardly flight.
“Don’t move,” Angie said.
“Why are you just standing there? Get over here and help me up!”
“Do not fucking move.”
“You know who I am?”
“A damn fool,” said Angie, “if you don’t listen to me.”
Fay Alex sat upright and finally saw the snake—it was descending fluidly from the bougainvilleas, arranging itself on the meditation bench one muscular coil after another. Calculating that she was within striking range, Fay Alex shut up. Anxiously she glanced back and forth between the endless-seeming reptile and the rude young woman in the jungle-print Versace.
Guests were streaming out of the ballroom to see the tumult, forcing the club’s security guards to hastily erect a velvet-rope perimeter. The Collusionists gamely tried to halt the exodus by cranking up their amps and delivering the tightest cover of “Sugar Magnolia” that Angie had ever heard.
“What’s your name?” she asked the woman on the ground.
“Fay Alex Riptoad.”
“What happened to your ear?”
“Some horny idiot bit me.”
Mrs. Riptoad was still bleeding, and would likely need stitches.
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