by Carl Hiaasen
“Ah ha! Now it’s your turn to tell me a story,” she said.
“When the time’s right.”
Lady Gaga interrupted—Angie’s phone ringing. This time the spoofed caller ID showed a South Dakota area code. She said, “That’s my six o’clock stalker. Wanna say hi?”
The chief reached for her phone. “Sure, why not.”
* * *
—
Mockingbird had never heard of conch pearls until her husband mentioned them during his press conference, which she was forced to watch while on a treadmill at Casa Bellicosa. The gym had been cleared out for security before the First Lady arrived, but every muted television in the place was tuned to Mastodon’s golf-course monologue about Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons, complete with word captioning. Having dodged the haughty Potussies as a group, Mockingbird couldn’t recall if she’d ever met the dead woman. She was, however, intrigued by her husband’s depiction of the stolen jewels.
After finishing her workout, Mockingbird hurried upstairs and went online to research the pearls; they looked delicate and sensuous, glistening in the dark wet palms of Bahamian boatmen. The First Lady wondered why at least one of the Hadids or even Gwyneth hadn’t tweeted about these trendy tropical gems. Fluidly she scrolled through the websites of Tiffany and other high-end jewelry stores, most of which offered small selections of handmade pieces. However, in the advertisements, the individual pearls appeared puny and pallid.
An aide dispatched by Mockingbird to scour Worth Avenue located a pair of conch-pearl earrings styled by Mikimoto. The sales clerk couldn’t say for certain where in the Caribbean the mother shells had been harvested, so Mockingbird passed without even asking the price. She wanted only wild island specimens.
There was a light triple-knock on the door, and Agent Keith Josephson appeared. He was escorting a server who bore a silver tray holding a plate of avocado slices, a modest wedge of Belgian cheese, seven fried kale chips and a tall glass of room-temperature papaya juice. The name pin on the young man’s uniform said “Spalding” and, beneath that in smaller letters, “Cape Town.” It was a practice at Casa Bellicosa to include the hometowns of the employees—not to honor their diverse backgrounds so much as to reassure club members that the staff was being recruited from cultures that were educated, tidy, and unthreatening.
When Mockingbird spotted the young man’s name pin, she said, “Spalding, do you have conch shells down in Cape Town?”
The First Lady had never before spoken to him, so Spalding’s response betrayed a touch of the jitters. He said, “Actually, South Africa is world-famous for its sea shells. The beaches are covered with them. People come from everywhere—”
“Yes, but only queen conchs make pearls this color.” She repositioned her laptop to show him the pictures.
“I can follow up on that for you,” he said. “My little brother dives at Jeffreys Bay.”
“That’s so kind of you. Let me know what he says, please.” Mockingbird gave him the smile that she saved for men who’d been led to believe she was icy and stuck-up.
Spalding was appropriately charmed. He took his time laying out the First Lady’s lunch selections on the coffee table.
“Keith, I need to speak to you,” she said to the Secret Service man, “after you take Spalding wherever he needs to go now.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Mockingbird closed her laptop, popped a kale chip in her mouth and, while chewing, said, “My afternoon schedule has changed. I told Leena to push the disabled Girl Scout awards back an hour because I need some personal time.”
“I’m on it,” said the Secret Service man, who didn’t look like a “Keith” to Spalding. He looked Middle Eastern, though he spoke with an American accent.
He led Spalding down the hall and waited beside him until the elevator arrived. Spalding stepped inside, pressed the button for the first floor, and nodded goodbye. Before the doors began to close, Agent Keith turned away and strode briskly back toward the First Lady’s private quarters.
Spalding peeked out of the elevator. From behind, it appeared that the Secret Service man was loosening his necktie.
TWELVE
Winter residents of Palm Beach inevitably return north forever, either in caskets or urns. Funeral services for Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons were held at her Cape Cod estate, where she’d wanted her ashes scattered.
The Potussies chipped in to charter a mid-sized Citation with a well-stocked minibar. They were plastered by the time the jet touched down, though Fay Alex Riptoad pulled herself together enough to speak movingly at the podium under the lawn tent. Chance and Chase Cornbright were up next, dressed in matching cashmere top coats. They stood side-by-side reading alternate paragraphs from a eulogy that scrolled on a teleprompter laced with black crepe. The Potussies agreed that Kiki Pew would have been embarrassed by her sons’ torpid performance.
Mastodon didn’t attend the chilly seaside event but he sent the Vice President, who’d never met Katherine Fitzsimmons but warmly praised her as a martyred patriot. The VP then launched into seven-and-a-half minutes of stock diatribe about the immigration crisis, citing Kiki Pew’s death as worst-case proof of the dark menace lurking on the edge of America’s borders. If the other mourners were bothered by the naked political exploitation of their friend’s funeral, they didn’t let on. Several chased down Sean Hannity to have their prayer cards autographed before he boarded a Fox helicopter back to Manhattan.
The town of Palm Beach sent an elaborate flower wreath but no official representative. Council members feared setting a costly precedent; scores of prominent part-time residents died every season, and the municipality’s modest travel budget would be sapped by April if the mayor and his wife flew north for every funeral.
As the last crumbs of Kiki Pew Fitzsimmons were being sprinkled from a New England bluff into the Atlantic Ocean, Palm Beach Police Chief Jerry Crosby sat twelve hundred miles away watching videotapes of the back street leading to the service entrance of Lipid House. The footage had been recorded by a security camera at a neighboring generic mansion, but the owner had been vacationing in Bali when Mrs. Fitzsimmons vanished. Once he returned to town, he voluntarily turned over digital files holding a week’s worth of surveillance loops.
The images were of better-than-average quality, and Crosby immediately advanced the time-stamped sequence to the night of the White Ibis Ball. Angela Armstrong’s python hypothesis could be dismissed if Kiki Pew had been recorded alive and well, departing the Lipid House grounds through the rear gates. The videos showed a flurry of party trucks, florist vans, and catering vehicles, but no lone person could be seen leaving on foot from the service driveway from sunset until dawn. Crosby clicked on fast-forward to the end of the file, speeding through the herky-jerky frames until he noticed one particular car turning into the back entrance:
A white Chevy Malibu Super Sport, arriving on the third morning after Mrs. Fitzsimmons disappeared.
It stayed less than an hour. The broken front headlight was easy to spot when the Malibu pulled out, driven by a white male. A companion, also white, sat on the passenger side. The chief froze the video, but the car’s grimy windshield made it impossible to positively identify the occupants as Keever Bracco and Uric Burns, whose most recent mug shot—complete with dented forehead—lay on Crosby’s desk near the railroad conch pearl.
Unfortunately, the recovered Malibu had already been cubed for scrap. The county’s overworked auto-theft squad had elected to spend zero time searching for microscopic evidence in a vehicle that had been submerged for days in murky water. A corpse in the back would have piqued their interest, but the Malibu’s trunk was empty. “Except for a mudfish,” the owner of the impound lot had told Crosby.
And no one, of course, would have found it noteworthy that the SS insignia was missing from rear end of the vehicle.
Another item on the chief’s
desk was the Fitzsimmons autopsy report. Kiki Pew was ruled to have died from asphyxiation caused by massive trauma from an unknown source or sources. She was drunk at the time of her death, and blood tests additionally revealed a .18 g/L plasma concentration of the drug MDMA, commonly known as Ecstasy. Because she had been purposely entombed in concrete, the coroner’s speculation about her final hours did not include the scenario of a random reptile attack. In any event, testing a victim’s skin and garments for digestive python enzymes had not yet become standard post-mortem procedure in Florida.
Finally, stacked on Jerry Crosby’s desk beneath the autopsy findings, was a file detailing the short, peculiar criminal record of Angela Christine Armstrong. The case had received almost no publicity because the media paid little attention to wildlife agencies, the poaching of a deer being of less interest to the public than gang shootouts at the county fair.
If a regular road cop had forcibly severed the limb of a criminal suspect and fed it to an alligator, it would have sparked an uproar. Yet, because Crosby had a soft spot for animals, he found himself empathizing with Angie as he read her account of the airboat incident. In the court transcripts, Pruitt came across as an unrepentant asshole, the same impression that the chief had taken away from their short exchange on the phone, while he and Angie were at the Brazilian Court.
“Ms. Armstrong says you call every night and threaten her,” Crosby had said to Pruitt.
“And who the hell are you?”
The chief had told him.
“Bullshit,” was the one-handed stalker’s response. “You’re just another loser she’s boning. Better break it off now, dude, unless you want to end up as dead as her.”
“Every one of these calls you make is a felony.”
Pruitt, taunting: “There’s no way to trace ’em, so they’ll never catch me. Now put Angie on the line, Chief Dicklicker, or whoever you really are.”
Crosby had hung up and asked Angie if she wanted to press charges.
“Not necessary. I keep tabs on him, Jerry.”
“You know where he lives? What kind of car he drives?”
“As of last week, yes.”
“And you’ve got a gun at home? Just in case.”
Angie had smiled. “I’m a felon, remember? No bang-bang allowed.”
The chief seldom met women who made him wonder what it might be like to be single again, but Angie Armstrong was one who did. The voice, the eyes, the attitude. He chased from his mind whatever adolescent fantasy was forming; after all these years, Crosby was still crazy about his wife.
Before leaving his office, he locked away Angie’s arrest file and the thumb drive containing the Chevy Malibu video. Then he went to scope out the SunTrust bank branch where Uric Burns was due to arrive the following morning with the aim of collecting $100,000 from the Fitzsimmons family tipster fund.
* * *
—
Joel came by Angie’s apartment to watch the Heat-Bulls game. He brought tortilla chips and a bowl of sketchy guacamole. At halftime Angie received a call from man who identified himself as the manager of a country club in the western part of the county. He said there were mice in the kitchen.
“We don’t do mice, sir,” she told him.
“Please? I can’t get anybody else out here on a Sunday. Your website says twenty-four-seven service.”
“Our website also says we don’t remove and relocate house rodents. We find it not to be worth the trouble and expense. Just go buy some traps at Home Depot.”
The manager said, “Would three thousand dollars make it cost-effective?”
Angie asked him to hold on. When she whispered the details of the ridiculous offer, Joel said, “Jump on it. Miami’s already down by nineteen.”
“Maybe they’ll make a run.”
“Sure, and maybe Jennifer Lawrence will show up topless at my front door. Take the gig, Angie. I’ll go with you.”
The man on the phone gave her directions to the club, Loxahatchee Downs. Angie had never heard of the place. Joel said it was new: Golf, tennis, equestrian, sporting clays and a six-figure membership fee.
Angie stacked some small box traps in the truck and waited for Joel to finish texting his latest girlfriend, who in her fifth leisurely year at UF had switched majors again, this time from art history to philosophy. The move in no way improved the young woman’s employment prospects, but Angie kept her doubts to herself. Joel usually came to his senses.
The sun went down during the drive to Loxahatchee Downs, way out in cattle country. Surrounded by pines and palmetto scrub, the clubhouse and facilities weren’t visible from the road. Angie would have missed the turnoff had it not been for the lighted sign above a one-lane entrance. Beyond the closed gate was a winding, unlit road.
Joel looked up the club’s website on his phone and learned that the grand opening was three weeks away. When Angie tried to call the manager back, she got a recording that said no such phone number was in service.
That fucking Pruitt, she thought.
Before she could back up, a car with its headlights off pulled in behind her truck, blocking the only way out. The driver was wearing a rubber Mitch McConnell mask.
“Run,” Angie said to Joel.
“What?”
“Get your ass into the woods. Now!”
Something landed with a metallic bang in the bed of her pickup.
“Joel!” she yelled.
“Okay, I’m going.”
“Keep your head down.”
“No shit.”
Angie jumped out the door and sprinted. The moment she heard the explosion behind her, she wondered if it had been a mistake to let Chief Jerry Crosby speak with her stalker. Instead of being scared off, Pruitt had snapped.
With no light, Angie ran at a cautious jog, weaving through the tall pines, palmetto thickets and moon shadows. The long khakis protected her arms and legs, but random twigs and thorny vines clawed at her face. She wasn’t concerned about running up on a wild animal because she’d dealt hands-on with every species from bears to rattlesnakes. However, she was worried about Joel, who had no experience with nighttime transit in deep woods. When her cell began ringing, she pulled it from her pocket and knelt behind a tree. Joel was on the other end of the line.
“Tripped over a damn log,” he reported. “I’m pretty sure my ankle’s broken.”
“How far’d you get from the road?”
“I dunno. Maybe twenty yards.”
“That’s all?” said Angie. “Then keep your voice down. He’s gonna hear you.”
“The prick already took off. Can’t you see the flames?”
“No, but I smell smoke.”
“That’s your truck burning,” Joel said.
“Well, I’m not surprised.”
“Whatever he threw at us went off like a grenade.”
“Probably homemade.”
“That’s still fucked up, Angie.”
“Stay where are you are. Don’t move,” she told him.
“Duh. I actually can’t walk.”
“I’ll find you.”
“You won’t need a flashlight,” Joel said. “It’s a big-ass fire.”
* * *
—
Paul Ryskamp spent part of his Sunday afternoon interviewing Diego Beltrán at the county jail. Despite the uptight presence of a lawyer from the Public Defender’s Office, Beltrán seemed eager to answer questions from the Secret Service agent, who came away convinced that the young Honduran had no role in the death of Katherine Pew Fitzsimmons. Ryskamp expected the Palm Beach police chief to confirm Beltrán’s exculpatory revelation that the chief had found a second conch pearl along the railroad tracks.
Later, at the office, Ryskamp gathered the other agents and handed out the Potussies directive from the head of Mastodon’s securit
y detail.
“These are all elderly white females,” one agent observed as he skimmed the roster, which included dates of birth.
“That’s correct,” Ryskamp said. “Mastodon requested that each of these individuals receive round-the-clock protection, beginning tomorrow. Washington has promised to send us warm bodies to fill the shifts.”
“Does Washington understand how ridiculous this is?” asked another agent, reflecting the mood of the room.
“Of course they understand,” said Ryskamp. “No one’s pretending this assignment is anything but a colossal waste.”
“Paul, what does ‘Potussies’ even mean?”
“It stands for ‘POTUS Pussies.’ The name might suggest they’ve got a sense of humor, but I’m told they take themselves quite seriously. They’re infatuated with Mastodon, and they’re getting a ton of media since his press conference.”
A third agent spoke up: “The deceased woman—has anyone got a speck of evidence she was really murdered by terrorists? Or that the Guatemalan kid they busted, Diego Whatever-the-fuck, is connected to a radical cell?’
“The answer to both questions is a hard no,” said Ryskamp. “And the young man is from Honduras, not Guatemala. I just spent two hours interviewing him.”
“So where did Mastodon come up with this crazy conspiracy shit?”
“He just pulled it out of his ass, like everything else. Plays huge with his fans.”
“Paul, how long do we have to hang with these old birds?”
“The memo says indefinitely, but that could also mean short-term.”
Ryskamp was trying to sound an optimistic note, for he was sensitive to the demoralizing effect of Mastodon’s antics. As a price for her silence, one of his West Coast mistresses demanded to be met by the Secret Service every time she flew into Dulles. The ride to the White House always included a leisurely stop at a luxe mall in Chevy Chase, where the woman would hang full shopping bags on the arm of whichever miserable agent had been assigned to accompany her. If nosy GAO investigators ever asked to examine the duty logs, that particular guest of the President would show up as a visiting niece of the Taiwanese ambassador, not the twice-divorced manager of a wine bar in east San Francisco.
