Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,61
divorced, childless, no mortgage (I rent), and my personal vehicle’s paid for. More importantly, I plan to retire soon and—short of espionage, counterfeiting T-bonds, or recreational cannibalism—there’s practically nothing a senior agent at my pay grade can do to screw himself out of his pension.”
“Translation, please.”
“I wouldn’t mind putting my ass on the line to spring Diego Beltrán.”
“You mean your smirking, self-important ass,” said Angie.
“Was that a wink? Pretty sure it was.”
“Congratulations, sir. You’re back in play.”
“I can’t promise that anybody’ll listen to me. At least anybody who matters.”
Angie was a little drunk, so she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s go to your place.”
“Really?”
“Really. But no sex yet.”
Once again the agent was jolted by her candor, and he tried to recover: “That’s all right. It’s only our first date.”
“No, you don’t understand. We’re not doing it until the day Diego Beltrán walks out of the county jail.”
“Uh…okay.”
“And is publicly exonerated,” Angie said.
“Holy Christ, you’re serious.”
The server brought the check, which Angie handed to Ryskamp.
He said, “So, your plan is to leak the Burns note to…whom?”
“Local media. Cable news. Politico. The networks. “
“No, pick just one. Make it an exclusive. Much bigger impact.”
“You mean like Maddow or Anderson Cooper?”
“That’s the idea. Prime-time audience.”
“And after the story breaks,” Angie said, “you, my friend, will go straight to the state attorney to point out that the suicide note cripples his case against Beltrán and, by the way, where’s his proof that the kid belongs to a ‘terrorist group’ targeting supporters of the President? Tell him the Secret Service needs to know everything he knows. And since he doesn’t have jackshit, you’ll be duty-bound to advise him to clear Diego’s name.”
“Duty-bound might be pushing it.”
“What’s the matter, Paul? You said they couldn’t fire you.”
“No, I said was planning to retire early.”
“And you’d still collect your pension, right?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Sounds like you’re having second thoughts,” Angie said. “That’s fine. Then we’ll just stay friends, you and I.”
“So let me see if I’ve got this right: You’re proposing a straight-up trade—me helping a random border-jumper in exchange for the possibility of sleeping with you.”
“Poor baby. I’m sure you’ve had worse offers.”
Ryskamp raised his cup. “Way worse,” he said.
MUSCLE OF LOVE
FIFTEEN
On the night of March 13th, chilly and moonlit, an itinerant transmission mechanic named Ajax “Hammerhead” Huppler disappeared from his boat while casting for snook along the Intracoastal Waterway, within sight of Casa Bellicosa.
Huppler, who grew up near West Palm, had since childhood spent most of his free time with a fishing rod in his hands. His parents preferred to explain this obsession as a love for the wild outdoors, though Ajax himself was never heard to express such feelings. More manifest was a corrosive antisocial streak; Ajax detested the company of other people, including his relatives. Only when he was alone on the water did he feel at ease.
At age thirty-six, Ajax lived by himself in a townhouse devoid of family photographs. His core furnishings were an XBox console, a 60-inch plasma, a motorized recliner, and a secondhand ironing board. For sex he relied upon paid escorts, who were required to come dressed as cockney chambermaids. He was an excellent car mechanic though his contemptuous attitude never failed to get him fired; over the years he’d worked in the repair shops of a dozen major dealerships between Miami Gardens and Fort Pierce. He was a power-train virtuoso—he could fix anything from a plug-in Prius to a vintage Corniche—yet he was always undone by garage politics. On the night Ajax went missing he was unemployed, embittered, and bombed on Budweiser.
It was nearly midnight when his seventeen-foot skiff was spotted drifting toward the seawall of the Winter White House. A Coast Guard speedboat made the interception and dropped off two athletic ensigns, a man and a woman. Seconds later they both dove off the transom and swam rapidly back to their patrol vessel. Other crafts in the presidential security force were summoned, and soon the waterway was a-twinkle with so many red, green, and blue lights that it looked a Christmas flotilla.
Mockingbird stood watching the scene from her second-story bedroom. She wore only a lacy white thong and a pair of pink conch-pearl earrings, five carats each. After setting her glass of cabernet on the windowsill, she took an unauthorized disposable phone from a makeup drawer and dialed Special Agent Keith Josephson.
He was sound asleep at a hotel on the mainland.
“Hi, hon, it’s me,” the First Lady said. “What the hell is