Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,12
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.
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