Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,43
That’s when they found a jewel belonging to Kikey Pew in his possession, an incredibly rare gem. They tell me the island people call it a conch pearl.”
The President rhymed conch with “haunch.”
“It’s ‘conk,’ ” Ryskamp said under his breath, but no harm done—the “island people” would get a laugh out of it.
The agent was also relieved to have heard nothing in Mastodon’s announcement that threatened to complicate his own job. Even with the possible involvement of an illegal migrant, the murder of Katherine Fitzsimmons was strictly a local homicide case. The FBI or ICE might offer assistance, but there was no angle that would require the expertise of the Secret Service…
Until the President cocked his head, flared his nostrils, puffed his scrotal cheeks and declared:
“Unfortunately, the tragic death of Mrs. Fitzsimmons appears to be much more sinister than just the usual kidnapping and robbery. I’ve received some very disturbing information about Señor Diego, a very malo hombre who I’m told is from Honduras, a country infested with violent street gangs. But, folks, what happened in Palm Beach wasn’t an ordinary street crime. It seems Diego and his accomplice, the late Mr. Broccoli, might have targeted Mrs. Fitzsimmons not because she was rich, elderly and slow, but because she was a dear friend of mine and very active in a women’s political group that has proudly and loudly supported this presidency—especially my crusade to secure America’s borders. In other words, it’s very possible—and I say possible, because we’re not ready to release all the details—but let’s call it an extremely high probability that the brutal murder of Kikey Pew Fitzsimmons was an act of political terrorism aimed at me and my administration.”
Ryskamp stared numbly at the screen. He was the only one in his office who knew that Mrs. Fitzsimmons had actually been killed and eaten by a snake. The other agents offered their usual assessment of the President’s melodramatic performance.
“This is a show of the shit variety,” one remarked.
“He’s a pathogen,” sighed another.
Mastodon railed on a while longer, making air quotes with his stubby doll fingers whenever mentioning the name Diego, and thundering that this was exactly the bloodthirsty breed of invader that the White House had been warning the nation about.
“They’re storming across our wide-open borders to prey on our most precious citizens! Women, children—and now helpless, rich, old patriots like Kikey Pew Fitzsimmons. Well, my fellow Americans, guess what. This stops now! It ends here! No more Diegos! You have my solemn word as your president. No more Diegos!”
With Arthurian flair, Mastodon thrust his custom-made Ping putter toward the heavens. He kept it high as he parted the press corps and moved toward a line of parked golf carts.
Ryskamp turned off the TV and sat down to wait for his phone to ring.
“Maybe he’ll forget about it in a few days,” one of the other agents said hopefully. “That happens a lot.”
“Not this time. No way.”
“You think he could be right about this Diego kid being involved in the old woman’s death?”
Ryskamp looked up with a rueful smile. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t fucking matter whether he’s right or not. That’s the scary part.”
ELEVEN
Chief Jerry Crosby dry-heaved twice over his laptop while watching the President’s press conference. Afterward he phoned the county sheriff, who confirmed that Keever Bracco’s weighted corpse had been discovered in a waterway by a tow crew salvaging a stolen Chevy Malibu. The sheriff said he knew of no link between the car and Bracco’s murder, adding, “Who dumps a body in the same canal where he sunk a stolen car? You either lock the body inside the damn trunk, or you go bury it somewhere far away. What a moron.”
“But it’s probably true that Bracco was murdered by his partner,” said the chief, “to shut him up. That’s the only part of the President’s story that didn’t sound like horseshit.”
He reminded the sheriff that Diego Beltrán couldn’t have killed Bracco because Beltrán had been in custody for days. “He had nothing to do with the death of Katherine Fitzsimmons, either. I’ll bet my badge on it,” Crosby said.
The conch pearl that the chief had found on the railroad tracks was in a baggie on his desk.
“What gang was our fearless leader yapping about at his press conference?”
“No fucking clue,” the sheriff replied. “If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”
Crosby was sickened by the cynical motives of the President’s conspiracy theory, and also by the damage caused. Diego Beltrán