Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,45

greed, but rather as a principled effort to collect something that was rightfully his. He hoped his outburst had worried the hotline operations office, though the woman had yet to identify herself as a representative.

“Are you, like, Judith’s boss?” Uric demanded.

There was a pause. “Yes, that’s right,” replied the woman, who had introduced herself as Miss Baez. “I’m her supervisor.”

“Then she must’ve told you I want all the reward money right now, not just half. That was the goddamn deal. So it’s a real bad idea for that old lady’s family to pull any last-minute bullshit. They’d never a found her, weren’t for my tip. And I been straight with you guys from day one. I always acted in—what the fuck do lawyers call it?”

“Good faith,” said the woman on the other end of the line.

“That’s it. Good faith!”

“Sir, I understand how you feel.”

“Really? Then go tell your people I want the whole hundred grand.”

“Consider it done,” Miss Baez said. She read off the address of a SunTrust branch near the Kravis Center and told him to be there Monday morning at ten a.m. She added, “There’ll be some paperwork regarding the withdrawal of the family’s funds, but your identity will remain protected.”

“Secret from the cops, too, right?” Uric asked.

“Well, of course.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic!”

“It’s good we got this settled,” said Miss Baez, “for the family’s sake as well as yours.”

Something occurred to Uric. “Yo, how’d you get my number?”

“Excuse me?”

“Judith said you people don’t save phone numbers and that’s how come she couldn’t ever call me back. But you just called me.”

Miss Baez said, “To preserve the confidentiality of tipsters, we don’t log incoming phone numbers until we’ve selected the proper recipient of the reward money, which in this case is yourself. That’s why we kept your number. Judith should’ve explained that part.”

It made enough sense to Uric. He was grinning like a chimp that picked a padlock at a banana warehouse.

“Yo, tell Judith I’m sorry I yelled at her,” he said, “and thanks for your help. I’ll see you at the bank tomorrow.”

“Oh, I won’t be there personally,” Miss Baez told him, “but you’re very welcome.”

Uric tossed his cell on the passenger seat and high-fived himself. Jauntily he bounded out of the van, which Tripp Teabull had made him leave in the truck shed at the back of the estate. A security goon with a black muscle shirt and a head like a shoebox led him through an unmarked doorway and up a flight of stairs to a small office where Teabull awaited. He had cleaned the crusted blood from his swollen nose.

“Done with all your important calls?” he asked Uric snidely.

“Strictly business, my man.”

“What’s so damn funny? Are you high?”

“How come I need a reason to smile? It’s just another beautiful fuckin’ day in paradise.”

Teabull glared. “Seriously, Mr. Burns.”

“Seriously. Blue skies, bright sunshine, all that happy Florida shit. So, just hand over my sixteen grand for the snake job, and you won’t have to look at my smiley face no more.”

“Well, about that…”

“Well, what?” Uric said.

Then he heard the door close behind him.

* * *

—

They got a table on the outside patio at the Brazilian Court. Angie didn’t mind that other women, recharging with cocktails after their ruthless shopping forays on Worth Avenue, kept staring at her outfit. She rolled up her left sleeve to show off her opossum bite. Nobody took the tables on either side of them.

Jerry Crosby ordered a beer. Angie got a gin-and-tonic.

“Start from the beginning,” he said.

“You might want to take notes.”

“Not here I don’t.”

“Understood,” said Angie, and gave him the whole story: euthanizing the enormous python at Lipid House; the burglary of her apartment and the subsequent theft of the frozen reptile from her warehouse unit; the pickup call from the Secret Service, which had confiscated the mangled snake—minus the lump—from a road on the First Lady’s motorcade route; Angie’s visit to Germaine Bracco, from whom she’d learned about the stolen Chevy Malibu; the nude bar that the Bracco brothers had patronized, where Angie had obtained the name of Keever’s accomplice; her phone chat with Uric Burns, who thought she was calling from the tipster hotline…

Crosby intently listened, ignoring his beer. Angie wasn’t sure if he believed her or not. She encouraged him to call Special Agent Paul Ryskamp at the Secret Service, because Ryskamp knew her to be a truthful person.

“I’m sure you’ve got a million questions,” Angie said.

The chief started to respond, then merely shook his head.

She took out