by Carl Hiaasen
Passing through a regiment of sweaty lawn workers, Angie counted four men in straw hats spaced around the shore of the koi pond, as if serving as sentries. Eventually she spotted Mauricio, the groundskeeper, wearing industrial earmuffs and sprawled in the shade of a massive strangler fig. He got up and led her to an out-building where badminton rackets hung on paneled walls and lacquered croquet mallets, arranged by color, lined the floorboards.
Sliding the earmuffs down around his neck, Mauricio said, “What brings you back to this side of the bridge?”
Angie said she needed to speak with Teabull.
“He’s off-property today. Whassup? Don’t tell me they shorted you on the pay.”
“No, sir. It’s about Mrs. Fitzsimmons.”
“Who?”
“The woman who disappeared from here the night before Teabull called me to come get the python from the tree,” Angie said.
Maurice got fidgety. “What about her?”
“You’re in a tricky position, loyalty-wise. I totally understand. But somebody stole that Burmese. They broke into my warehouse unit.”
Mauricio reacted with a baffled grunt. “Who’d want to jack a dead twenty-foot snake?”
“Actually, it was eighteen-eleven. My first question was why. The second was how they knew it was me who had the remains. Did you mention my name when you told people about the euthanization?”
Mauricio raised his hands. “The what?”
“When I chopped off its head.”
“Are you kiddin’? I didn’t even tell my wife. Mr. Teabull, he was hard-core about that. The whole staff got the same order: ‘Don’t say a word about what happened.’ ”
Angie picked up a red croquet mallet and let it swing by the tip of the handle from her fingers, like a pendulum. “Looks brand-new,” she said.
“They get polished every week. Even the mallet heads.”
“Every week? This is a whole other universe.”
“Anybody can take the ride. All you need is money.”
Angie made a baseball batter’s swing with the mallet before returning it to the rack. She said, “The missing woman’s family is offering a big reward. It was on TV today.”
“Like how much?” Mauricio asked.
“Hundred grand.” She was watching closely, but his expression didn’t change. “Look, Mauricio, we both know what really happened to Mrs. Fitzsimmons. So does Tripp Teabull with two P’s.”
The groundskeeper wheeled and stalked out the door. Angie caught up. As they walked past the pond, she said, “Your lookouts are just for show, right? Because she would have floated up by now.”
“You need to leave, Ms. Armstrong.”
“Know why that python got stolen from me?”
“Probably for the skin is all. To make boots, belts, crap like that.”
“No, sir, they stole the snake,” Angie said, “because they knew I was taking it to scientists who were going to slice it open and find what was inside. And that would have created some seriously shitty publicity for this place, actually for the whole island. ‘Giant Reptiles Picking Off Helpless Palm Beach Widows!’ ”
“We’re done,” Mauricio snarled sideways. He said nothing more until they reached Angie’s pickup. Then: “You were a smart girl, you’d go back to the mainland, bank the five grand you got for this job and keep your crazy-ass theories to yourself.”
Angie said, “Let me explain something. In addition to ripping off my storage unit, at least one of these cockheads—whoever they are—broke into my home, my personal domicile. Try to appreciate the indignity I’m experiencing, the sense of violation.”
“I’ll let Mr. Teabull know you stopped by.”
“Excellent,” said Angie. “And feel free, sir, to tell him my line of inquiry.”
FIVE
Mockingbird’s motorcade was only ten vehicles long. It was short compared to her husband’s, but still she hated the attention it attracted, the way people on the streets stopped to gawk. Some waved; some flipped her off. One time, riding to the island from the airport, she saw a young man stick out his tongue and grab his crotch as her armored stretch Cadillac rolled past. He wasn’t even one of the regular protesters; he was a U.S. postal carrier, in uniform.
And, actually, kind of hot.
Since then, Mockingbird tried not to look at the people lining the motorcade route. After visiting a special-needs school in Liberty City, she’d spent a few hours listlessly shopping for blouses at Bal Harbour. Her Secret Service detail had phoned ahead and arranged for her to enter the stores through a rear entrance. The best shops offered private fitting rooms, so Mockingbird had no interaction with other customers. Most of them likely didn’t know she was there.
Now the motorcade was speeding back toward Palm Beach. Mockingbird’s husband would be flying in soon for a round of golf, followed by a private dinner with Saudi royalty that the First Lady would definitely not be attending—her call, not the President’s. Mockingbird had chosen to spend the evening with two girlfriends from New York; one taught hypothermal sex exercises in Chelsea, and the other was a retired model who married and divorced professional baseball players, usually infielders.
Soon after exiting the interstate, Mockingbird’s security procession braked to a full halt, which was unusual. She heard the agents in her car communicating by radio in cool, practiced tones to those in the vehicles ahead and behind.
“What’s going on, Keith?” Mockingbird asked.
“There’s an unexpected delay ahead of us, ma’am.”
Unlike other First Ladies, she chose not to be addressed as “Mrs.” Keith said he had to call her something, so “ma’am” was their compromise.
“It doesn’t appear to be a threat,” he said. “We expect the police to clear the situation any minute.”
Other agents from the escort materialized on foot to surround Mockingbird’s limousine. The formation blocked her view.
“Is it a car accident?” she asked, removing her sunglasses.
“No, ma’am. It’s an animal in the road.”
Mockingbird figured that somebody’s dog had gotten off its leash and was running loose. She put her glasses back on, and settled in to wait.
Keith said, “The President has been informed of the situation.”
“Did the President sound like he gave a shit?”
“It shouldn’t be much longer.”
“All right, Keith.”
At first, she had disliked the code name chosen for her by the Secret Service. Then she’d watched a YouTube video about actual mockingbirds, which were crafty, graceful, and melodious.
Like me, she thought. Once upon a time.
The President’s Secret Service code name was “Mastodon.” He loved it.
“Perfect!” he’d boomed when he was told. “Fearless, smart, and tough.”
And enormous, she’d said to herself. Don’t forget fucking enormous.
On only his second day in the White House, the President had ordered his chief of staff to arrange a trip to the National Zoo for a close-up look at a real mastodon. The chief of staff wasn’t brave enough to tell the President the truth, so he cooked up a story that the zoo’s beloved mastodon herd was on loan to a wildlife park in Christchurch, New Zealand. The President had scowled, muttered something about “those snotty Kiwis,” and soon gotten sidetracked by another daft notion.
“Is it a dog in the road?” Mockingbird asked Keith, who was positioned in the front passenger seat.
“No, ma’am, it’s a snake.”
Mockingbird scooted forward. “Really? What happened? I want to see!”
“I don’t have that information,” said Keith, using two fingers to snug the fit of his earbud. “There’s no danger whatsoever. The snake is very large, but it’s dead.”
Mockingbird leaned l
eft and right, peering through the bulletproof windshield, trying to see around the other agents.
“How do they know it’s not just sleeping?” she asked.
“Because the head’s been removed, ma’am.”
“Can’t we get closer? Please, Keith?”
The agent said, “They’re taking some pictures. I’ll show them to you later.”
“That’s not the same.” Mockingbird sat back, frowning. “Not at all.”
She enjoyed nothing about being First Lady, but she felt especially smothered by the ironclad timetables upon which each day was structured. Once inside the limousine, she was captive cargo—no spontaneous detours, no carefree changes of plans. How often does a person get the chance to see a humongous headless serpent?
“But you said there isn’t any danger, Keith. So why can’t I just—”
“Buckle up, please, ma’am. We’ve been cleared to proceed.”
* * *
—
Looking back, Uric would admit they should have dealt with the dead python before getting trashed at the titty bar.
The name of the joint was Prime Vegas Showgirls, which the Prince after four bourbons complained was false advertising; a flame-haired dancer with whom he’d been chatting had confided that she’d never been west of Tallahassee. Meanwhile Uric allowed himself to get bewitched by a rangy Russian brunette with a Jiminy Cricket tattoo on each of her dimpled butt cheeks. The conversation between dance numbers was appreciably less monotonous than the choreography.
Hazy hours passed, and a coral sun was peeking over the horizon by the time the empty-pocketed burglars emerged from the strip club. Yet even Prince Paladin, who was more wasted than Uric, grasped the problem.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Now we gotta ditch that fuckin’ snake in broad daylight.”
“Chill your drunken ass. I know a place.”
But, in truth, Uric couldn’t think of another safe location. The remote rock-mining pit where he’d planned to dispose of the reptile in the dark would now be open, bustling with dredges, cranes and dump trucks.
Had he been sober and clear-thinking, Uric wouldn’t have been steering the stolen Malibu—its tail end sagging under the heft—toward the busy, heavily policed island of Palm Beach. He would have been racing in the opposite direction, toward a landfill or a cane field.
Lipid House was quiet. Uric parked under the arched stucco portico. Although he’d done several jobs for Tripp Teabull, he had never been invited to the estate. Likewise the Prince had never seen a real mansion up close. No one approached the car, so the men got out and waited in the shade.
“Dude, the trunk’s leakin’,” the Prince observed.
Uric dolefully studied the slow drip coming from somewhere under the Malibu’s rear bumper. The goddamn snake was melting.
“It’s gonna stink,” the Prince said.
Uric slapped him in the nuts. “This is all your fault, draggin’ me to that lame-ass bar.”
The doors opened and out walked Teabull wearing charcoal slacks, loafers, and an Oxford shirt with the cuffs rolled up. He stared coldly at the men, glanced at the Malibu, and then with open palms raised his arms. Silently he mouthed the words: “What the fuck?”
They all clambered into the car, which Uric drove to the back of the property. Teabull told him to park in the golf-cart shed.
Uric said, “We need to unload the snake. You got any ideas?”
Teabull kicked open the passenger door and practically rolled out of the car. “The damn thing’s in the trunk? The deal was—Are you serious? Are you dicking with me?—because the deal was you bury it way out west, somewhere it’ll never be found.”
The Prince said, “Yo, they was complications.”
Uric added, defensively, “Shit, the hardest part of the job got done. We found the motherfucking snake and we stole the motherfucking snake.”
Teabull was livid. Mauricio had told him about Angela Armstrong’s visit—and how much she already knew.
“Why in God’s name did you bring it back here?” he yelled at the two hired thieves. “All you had to do was call.”
“Phone died,” said Uric, which was the truth. There was no charger in the stolen Malibu.
“You guys reek of booze,” Teabull croaked. “Are you drunk?”
The Prince said, “We were drunk. Now we’re just hungover.”
Uric told Teabull to focus on the problem. “Think hard, bro. There’s gotta be a place around here to drop this load.”
“On the island? Are you insane? This is Palm Fucking Beach.”
Teabull pointed one of his loafers at a puddle widening beneath the car. “Don’t tell me the gas tank’s leaking. This shed’ll blow like a napalm bomb.”
The Prince said, “Don’t worry, man. That ain’t gasoline.”
“The snake was in a deep freeze when we jacked it,” Uric explained.
A hot surge of nausea wobbled Teabull. “So you’re saying it’s…thawing?”
Uric offered to pop the trunk. “Then you can see with your own damn eyeballs that we really got this thing.”
“Don’t open it! I believe you.”
In almost a decade as the caretaker-manager of Lipid House, Teabull had smoothed over—and covered up—many difficult situations arising from the bad behavior of club members or their guests. There had been thefts, fistfights, unsought nudity, indiscreet sex, drug overdoses, rowdy vandalism, and one felony stabbing (a surgeon wielding a Wusthof steak knife had forcefully attempted to remove a benign but unsightly mole from the neck of his carping father-in-law).
Still, no member in good standing had ever expired on the estate, at least officially, during Teabull’s coolheaded tenure. Thanks to his friendly relations with first-responders, even the indisputably deceased victims of heart attacks on the property were rushed to a nearby emergency room for a convincing charade of resuscitative efforts before the official pronunciation of death—purposely delayed by hours—was issued. The hospital, not Lipid House, would be listed as the location of demise.
Teabull pondered the steep challenge now facing him. Not only had Katherine Pew Fitzsimmons, society matron and presidential fan-girl, perished on the grounds, but her once-removed, half-digested corpse was now back at the scene, reheating inside the dead monster that had devoured her. Teabull longingly thought back to the great job offer he’d turned down last season—managing a Waspy Cape Cod yacht-and-tennis club where the average member’s age was only fifty-six. The climate there was way too cold for pythons or boa constrictors or whatever the fuck had gobbled Kiki Pew.
“Stay with the car. I need to make a call,” he said to Uric and his idiot sidekick.
Not far down A1A, near the Par-3 golf course, a Venezuelan currency trader had torn down an old mansion and was currently pouring the foundation for a new 28,000-square-foot villa that he would occupy three weeks a year, at most. Teabull was on good terms with the supervisor of the concrete project, who had done some work at Lipid House.
When the man answered his phone, Teabull said, “Hey, Jackson, when do your guys break for lunch?”
“Twelve-fifteen is our usual.”
“Take ’em all to the crab shack. It’s on me.”
“You’re so fulla shit.”
“No, I’m serious,” Teabull told him. “I’m buying for the whole crew today.”
“What’s the catch?” the concrete man asked.
“You cut me a sweet break on the formwork for our driveway last year. Billed us the residential rate instead of commercial.”
“Yeah, I remember. No biggie.”
“So this is me saying thanks. Who else is working on that site today?”
The concrete man said, “Nobody. Just us.”
“Then you should take a whole hour,” Teabull suggested. “Try the tuna poke. It’ll blo
w your mind.”
He returned to the seeping Malibu, wrote down the address for Uric and told him exactly what to do. He explained that the deepest pours would be the load-bearing footers for the outside walls. “If you can’t find anything wet enough, leave the premises immediately.”
“My life motto,” said Uric.
“You’ve got shovels?”
The Prince said they were in the back seat. Uric asked Teabull if he’d brought their money.
“What a comedian. Ha, ha, ha,” the property manager said. “When the job’s done is when you get paid—and it’s a long damn way from being done.”
He scowled at the puddle swelling beneath the car. The drip of foul fluids had become audible.
“You need to get the hell outta here,” Teabull said.
“Where? We got, like, three hours to kill,” the Prince complained, tapping the face of his wristwatch.
“I don’t care where you go. Pick a beach. Find a dog. Throw him a fucking Frisbee, whatever. Just get this damn car off the property.”
Uric and the Prince drove to the luncheonette at Green’s Pharmacy, ordered breakfast, and sat at the counter for the rest of the morning. Like most burglars, they looked night-worn and skittish. Still, nobody asked them to move. Shortly after noon, they departed for the villa-under-construction near the Par-3. There they scouted for signs of workers or other possible witnesses, but saw no one.
Uric parked the Malibu between a pair of rotund mixing trucks. The drivers were gone, but they’d left the drums turning to keep the compound loose. Uric and the Prince prowled around the property, checking inside the ground frames to find the freshest pour. One long section of concrete, the base for an east-facing wall, was still wet. When the Prince tossed a rock, it landed with a plop. Just for kicks, he lobbed another one.
