Squeeze Me - Carl Hiaasen Page 0,96
work.
TWENTY-FOUR
Angie tried not to think much about politics. It didn’t seem to matter who was in power—nothing got better in the besieged, breathtaking world she cared about most. The Everglades would never be the lush unbroken river it once was; the shallows of Florida Bay would never be as pure and sparkling with fish; the bleached dying reefs of the Keys would never bloom fully back to life. Being overrun and exploited was the historical fate of places so rare and beautiful.
Every year, Angie diligently wrote checks to the Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund, but she was too much of a loner to jump into the fray. No meetings, no rallies, no Facebook petitions. Never once had she fired off an angry letter to a congressman or a county commissioner. Sometimes she wondered if she was too cynical, or just too lazy.
The sitting President of the United States was a soulless imbecile who hated the outdoors but, in Angie’s view, at this point Teddy Roosevelt himself couldn’t turn the tide if he came back from the dead. All the treasured wilderness that had been sacrificed at the altar of growth was gone for all time. More disappeared every day; nothing ever changed except the speed of destruction, and only because there were fewer pristine pieces to sell off, carve up and pave.
Surely the old ex-governor knew this. Angie found herself envying his capacious anger and high torque after a lifetime of crushingly predictable futility. The man was seriously bent, but he also was high-functioning.
The tree island—abandoned. What the fuck?
Gone were his walls of great books, his laptop, the generator, the cooking pans, the freezer packed with dead rabbits. Also gone were his pythons, of course, even the skin sheds that he’d strung throughout the treetops. Gone was his boat, as well.
And somehow he’d done it in one night, cleaned out the whole damn camp—like he’d been planning the move, like he’d hung around just long enough to give Angie a peek.
“And he never told you his name?” Paul Ryskamp asked.
“No, sir,” she said, which was technically true.
Jim Tile was the person who’d divulged Skink’s identity, but the retired lawman wasn’t available to be interviewed by the Secret Service. After Angie’s second visit to the island, she had driven directly to the assisted-living facility. There she’d been told that Tile had been taken to the hospital after complaining of chest pains. And when she’d arrived at the hospital, she learned he wasn’t there and that nobody fitting his description had been treated in the emergency room.
By then she’d already made up her mind to shield both of them, Skink and his ailing old friend. Giving up their names wouldn’t stop whatever was about to happen in Palm Beach.
“How’d you track down this nut job?” Ryskamp asked her.
“A tip.”
“From what, a swamp informant?”
“A highly placed swamp informant,” Angie said.
“You’re not telling me even half of what you know.”
“I’ve told you the important parts, Paul.”
“Thanks, I suppose. But now what?”
“I don’t know. Prepare for a plague of pythons?”
“Shit, Angie.”
“Major fuckage,” she agreed, “from a party planner’s perspective. But from a professional standpoint, the situation is containable.”
“Containable to what?”
“The category of nuisance. Burmese don’t want to be around human activity. They’ll be hiding, not roaming the ballroom.”
Ryskamp whistled dismally and sat up. “God, I hate snakes.”
“Not as much as I hate your Silk Rockets. They actually squeak,” Angie said. “Or was that you?”
He wasn’t listening. She flicked the condom wrapper off the nightstand and said, “One star out of five, comfort-wise. Also, that color? Mighty distracting.”
“I’ve got to call Washington.” He rolled out of bed and put on his robe.
“Wait, Paul, one thing I forgot to tell you.”
“Uh-oh. What?”
“You were amazing,” Angie said.
He broke into a grin. “Stay right there.”
“Dream on, sailor boy.”
Angie had phoned him late in the afternoon to say she had major python news. To her surprise, he suggested meeting at Pistache, a French restaurant with patio seating on Clematis. All during cocktails and dinner, they didn’t talk business; Ryskamp told stories from a long-ago trip to Paris, and Angie offered theories on the provenance of the escargot. Never had she seen him so relaxed, and she was puzzled that he didn’t hound her for the promised information. He didn’t even ask for an update on her frowned-upon plan to clear Diego Beltrán—she’d been looking forward to bragging that she no longer needed any covert help from him, or from Jerry Crosby.
Afterward it had been Ryskamp’s idea