Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,20

Armstrong’s visit—and how much she already knew.

“Why in God’s name did you bring it back here?” he yelled at the two hired thieves. “All you had to do was call.”

“Phone died,” said Uric, which was the truth. There was no charger in the stolen Malibu.

“You guys reek of booze,” Teabull croaked. “Are you drunk?”

The Prince said, “We were drunk. Now we’re just hungover.”

Uric told Teabull to focus on the problem. “Think hard, bro. There’s gotta be a place around here to drop this load.”

“On the island? Are you insane? This is Palm Fucking Beach.”

Teabull pointed one of his loafers at a puddle widening beneath the car. “Don’t tell me the gas tank’s leaking. This shed’ll blow like a napalm bomb.”

The Prince said, “Don’t worry, man. That ain’t gasoline.”

“The snake was in a deep freeze when we jacked it,” Uric explained.

A hot surge of nausea wobbled Teabull. “So you’re saying it’s…thawing?”

Uric offered to pop the trunk. “Then you can see with your own damn eyeballs that we really got this thing.”

“Don’t open it! I believe you.”

In almost a decade as the caretaker-manager of Lipid House, Teabull had smoothed over—and covered up—many difficult situations arising from the bad behavior of club members or their guests. There had been thefts, fistfights, unsought nudity, indiscreet sex, drug overdoses, rowdy vandalism, and one felony stabbing (a surgeon wielding a Wusthof steak knife had forcefully attempted to remove a benign but unsightly mole from the neck of his carping father-in-law).

Still, no member in good standing had ever expired on the estate, at least officially, during Teabull’s coolheaded tenure. Thanks to his friendly relations with first-responders, even the indisputably deceased victims of heart attacks on the property were rushed to a nearby emergency room for a convincing charade of resuscitative efforts before the official pronunciation of death—purposely delayed by hours—was issued. The hospital, not Lipid House, would be listed as the location of demise.

Teabull pondered the steep challenge now facing him. Not only had Katherine Pew Fitzsimmons, society matron and presidential fan-girl, perished on the grounds, but her once-removed, half-digested corpse was now back at the scene, reheating inside the dead monster that had devoured her. Teabull longingly thought back to the great job offer he’d turned down last season—managing a Waspy Cape Cod yacht-and-tennis club where the average member’s age was only fifty-six. The climate there was way too cold for pythons or boa constrictors or whatever the fuck had gobbled Kiki Pew.

“Stay with the car. I need to make a call,” he said to Uric and his idiot sidekick.

Not far down A1A, near the Par-3 golf course, a Venezuelan currency trader had torn down an old mansion and was currently pouring the foundation for a new 28,000-square-foot villa that he would occupy three weeks a year, at most. Teabull was on good terms with the supervisor of the concrete project, who had done some work at Lipid House.

When the man answered his phone, Teabull said, “Hey, Jackson, when do your guys break for lunch?”

“Twelve-fifteen is our usual.”

“Take ’em all to the crab shack. It’s on me.”

“You’re so fulla shit.”

“No, I’m serious,” Teabull told him. “I’m buying for the whole crew today.”

“What’s the catch?” the concrete man asked.

“You cut me a sweet break on the formwork for our driveway last year. Billed us the residential rate instead of commercial.”

“Yeah, I remember. No biggie.”

“So this is me saying thanks. Who else is working on that site today?”

The concrete man said, “Nobody. Just us.”

“Then you should take a whole hour,” Teabull suggested. “Try the tuna poke. It’ll blow your mind.”

He returned to the seeping Malibu, wrote down the address for Uric and told him exactly what to do. He explained that the deepest pours would be the load-bearing footers for the outside walls. “If you can’t find anything wet enough, leave the premises immediately.”

“My life motto,” said Uric.

“You’ve got shovels?”

The Prince said they were in the back seat. Uric asked Teabull if he’d brought their money.

“What a comedian. Ha, ha, ha,” the property manager said. “When the job’s done is when you get paid—and it’s a long damn way from being done.”

He scowled at the puddle swelling beneath the car. The drip of foul fluids had become audible.

“You need to get the hell outta here,” Teabull said.

“Where? We got, like, three hours to kill,” the Prince complained, tapping the face of his wristwatch.

“I don’t care where you go. Pick a beach. Find a dog. Throw him a fucking Frisbee, whatever. Just get this damn car