Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,53
his skull was a daily reminder of the risks posed by choosing unreliable partners. As soon as the Prince had revealed himself to be weak of resolve, a potential snitch, Uric saw him as a ticking time bomb. End of story.
Such was Uric’s pride in his own survival instincts that he was embarrassed to have walked into Tripp Teabull’s trap at Lipid House. Fright would have been a more useful reaction, but Uric acted super cool. He was confident he could talk his way out of the situation, though he’d barely gotten started when Teabull told him to shut the fuck up. The two muscle-shirted dudes who hauled him downstairs were even less interested in conversation.
During the long, uncomfortable ride, Uric began to comprehend he was in deeper-than-usual shit. The feeling would grow stronger with each passing hour. It wasn’t the first time he’d pissed off the person who had hired him, or been stiffed after a job. It wasn’t even the first time he’d been locked in a car trunk for a night.
It was, however, the first time anyone had strung a rope around his neck and led him like a lame horse across a bridge. The nervousness changed to relief when he saw his own white van parked on the other side. That meant the goons weren’t going to kill him; they were just going to kick his ass and let him go.
Tripp Teabull hated the sight of Uric’s filthy Dodge on the property, and he probably didn’t want Uric coming back to get it. That would explain why he’d ordered the van brought to the bridge.
Sweet, Uric said to himself. Least I won’t have to hitchhike home.
Which was the second-to-last thought to enter his mind.
The last was: Aw fuck.
* * *
—
Teabull had been awaiting a call from Angela Armstrong ever since Mauricio had told him about her unannounced visit. With Uric and the Prince now gone, Teabull believed that the young wildlife wrangler was the only person out of his sphere of control who knew the true circumstances of Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons’s death at Lipid House. When Angela failed to make contact after a few days, Teabull decided to send a preemptive message. He hired a reputable Hialeah arsonist to drive to Palm Beach County and firebomb Angela’s pickup truck. The explosion was to be ignited in her presence, maximizing the psychological impact.
Afterward, Teabull met up with the torch artist in the parking lot of a Walgreens.
“Well?” Teabull asked.
“Easy peasy.”
“Did she freak out?”
The arsonist chuckled and showed his rubber mask to the caretaker.
Teabull grimaced. “Mitch McConnell?”
“Scary shit, right? The store was all out of Nixons. You got my money, chico?”
Teabull had not ordered Angela Armstrong killed because—unlike the death of Uric and his dipshit partner—hers would have drawn plenty of police and media attention. He hoped she was sharp enough to connect the burning of her truck to the Fitzsimmons matter, and would be deterred from future meddling.
If not, she still had no way of proving what had really happened to Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons. Without the testimony of the python thieves, Teabull thought, nobody would ever believe Angela Armstrong.
He was wrong about that.
At dawn on the morning after the firebug-for-hire bombed Angie’s pickup, Palm Beach Police Chief Jerry Crosby sat watching and re-watching street-cam video of a white 2014 Malibu SS jouncing at a stupid speed over a railroad crossing. The impact popped a plastic logo off the car and flung open the trunk. Out flew a flexible mass that resembled an intricately embroidered hawser; it uncoiled in midair before landing in the middle of the street on the other side of the tracks.
The Malibu kept going. Moments later, a line of flashing lights approached from the opposite direction—a ten-vehicle motorcade, mostly black SUVs, which rolled to an organized stop. Motorcycle cops followed by armed men in plain suits swarmed both lanes to surround the road obstruction, which was unidentifiable in the video. Crosby knew what he was looking at: an enormous headless snake. He wondered which of the SUVs was carrying the First Lady of the United States.
After hiding the thumb-drive of the video, the chief drove to the SunTrust bank. His stakeout team was already in place—six officers in three unmarked sedans, and a pointlessly masked sniper on the roof. Inside the lobby, the branch manager and tellers waited anxiously, coached on how and when to duck.
Ten o’clock came and went. No sign of Uric Burns. At eleven sharp Crosby’s cell phone