Squeeze Me

On her way to visit Skink again, Angie bitterly contemplates the ecological incursions into the Everglades: “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” (270). When she arrives at the old man’s campsite, she finds everything gone. The ex-governor has packed up all his snakes and equipment and stolen away. Angie tracks down Ryskamp to let him know about a potential python threat from an eccentric activist but doesn’t reveal Skink’s identity. The two reignite their romance. Ryskamp confesses that he plans to retire and move to Key West right after the fundraiser. He can’t stand working for the current administration any longer.

Meanwhile, Diego is still having a rough time in jail. Another gang has attacked him. One of the guards tells him of a rumor that someone outside has offered $10,000 to have him killed by the weekend as a gift to the president. The immigrant feels overwhelmed by despair. When a guard hands him a bottle of prescription painkillers for his most recent attack, Diego contemplates suicide.

The next day, Angie goes shopping for a party dress for Saturday and has lunch with Joel and his girlfriend. Afterward, she notices Pruitt in disguise, following the young couple in a minivan. Fearing that he might do them harm, Angie rams Pruitt from behind to divert his attention to her. The two engage in a car chase all the way to Angie’s front door, where she runs inside to get a tranquilizer gun. When she comes out, she finds Pruitt’s vehicle empty. His prosthetic hand is still gripping the steering wheel, and there is a gun on the floorboard. She runs inside to call Crosby, but the minivan is gone when she emerges.

Angie goes to tell Crosby about Pruitt’s mysterious disappearance. She finds the police chief smoking marijuana in his office. He has never done this before on the job, but the antics leading up to the Commander’s Ball have left him in a state of permanent anxiety. When he asks about Diego, Angie says she’s figured out a way to help him. She doesn’t reveal her plan but says it involves gaining access to an important person who will be at the party Saturday.

At the same time, Skink has surfaced in a new location. He has cleaned himself up and is in the process of renting some storage space for a few days in the Palm Beach area. He tells the warehouse manager that he needs a large unit with air-conditioning and an electrical outlet. The manager doesn’t ask any questions. A few days later, the unit is cleaned out, and the manager finds a single book left on the floor for him to find:

The title of the book was The Zurau Aphorisms, written by somebody named Kafka. It had been left open to a page upon which two sentences had been underlined with a green ballpoint: The mediation by the serpent was necessary. Evil can seduce man, but cannot become man (291-92).

On the night of the fundraiser, Angie appears in a Versace designer dress and immediately begins an inspection of the grounds. To her surprise, she sees Tile dressed in a tuxedo. He is the only Black guest and admits to Angie that he crashed the party. The President thinks he is Morgan Freeman. Angie knows that Tile is onsite to assist Skink in his scheme, but Tile won’t disclose the details.

While Angie is dealing with the python threat at Casa Bellicosa, Crosby is busy killing pythons at eight other charity events being held that night in Palm Beach. After he shoots each snake, he makes no attempt to hide the remains. The bizarre events of the evening leave him numb to consequences.

As the party at Casa Bellicosa gets underway, the guests are presented with Mardi Gras masks. The reason soon becomes apparent when the President arrives wearing a top hat with his face covered by a wooden tribal fertility mask that was previously a wall hanging. This is a makeshift attempt to cover the President’s face after yet another tanning bed malfunction. When he emerged from his tanning session that afternoon, “Mastodon’s complexion was the color of eggplant when he punched his way through the canopy. His goggles were fogged, his signature forelock was spiky and charred, and the Velcro base of his skull cap emitted an audible sizzle” (299).

As the president addresses his admiring throng at the party, his speech is nearly inaudible because of the mask. He makes some heated remarks about “No More Diegos,” which are televised and reach the ears of Diego in the county jail. Having reached a level of complete despair, the immigrant takes an overdose of Ambien, hoping it will kill him. Unaware of these developments, the President continues with his diatribe before introducing the First Lady, who is nowhere to be seen. She is currently having sex with Keith in another part of the club.

Meanwhile, Fay Alex has found a new escort for the evening. When the couple strolls out to the garden to have a romantic encounter, she doesn’t realize that they are being observed by a 24-foot python in the tree above. Her date runs away screaming after accidentally biting off part of her earlobe in his panic. Ryskamp arrives in time to rescue Fay Alex and summon Angie to deal with the snake.

Angie notes that the huge python is extremely aggressive as it lunges toward Fay Alex. In the ensuing confusion, Secret Service agents tackle the President, and his disguise falls off, revealing his shocking appearance: “There was a collective gasp when Mastodon, having lost his top hat and Bakongo mask while being tackled, arose with his baked ham of a mug uncovered. No further incentive was needed to make the crowd shrink back” (307).

Sizing up the situation, Angie believes that Skink may have fed the reptile LSD before releasing it. She orders all the Secret Service agents to holster their weapons and clear the area of spectators. She then kills the creature with her machete. Afterward, she retrieves her first aid kit and stitches up Fay Alex’s ear.

Once the excitement is over, Ryskamp receives a message that the First Lady wants a private word with Angie. Angie has managed to pass a note to Mockingbird via her servant friend Spalding. The First Lady assumes that Angie wants to blackmail her since the latter has threatened to leak Mockingbird’s affair with Keith to the public via the gossip media source TMZ. Angie also knows about the President’s affair with a woman who is planning to publish a book about him.

In exchange for her silence, Angie wants Mockingbird to get Diego released immediately, assuming he lives after his suicide attempt. It takes little time for the First Lady to have a confidential talk with her husband to arrange Diego’s release and to bribe his mistress to kill the book deal. She threatens to divorce Mastodon if he doesn’t do as she says. The facts that might be revealed during the divorce proceeding could ruin his political career, and the President acquiesces: “The most powerful person on the planet had nothing to say as he helplessly watched his ball-busting wife march off with her Secret Service team” (320).

After the party ends, Angie walks out with Tile. When he climbs into his vehicle, she realizes that his driver is Skink. She stops to chat briefly with the old activist and hears a pounding coming from the trunk. He confesses that he has Pruitt tied up in the back and that he will be relocating the poacher for a time out in Big Cypress Swamp.

Crosby drives the newly released Diego to the airport. His request for asylum has been approved, and he is on his way to a new life in New Jersey working for the Census Bureau. The police chief has resigned, knowing that the Palm Beach community would have made him their scapegoat for the snake epidemic: “Casa Bellicosa had been furloughing staff since the night of the python apocalypse. Cell-phone video of Chief Crosby shooting a thirteen-footer […] at the Pilgrim Club had gone viral, killing the Palm Beach social season as dead as the Burmese” (326).

Angie is getting ready for a trip to the Florida Keys, where she will spend some vacation time with the newly retired Ryskamp. Before she leaves, she visits Skink in his new camp. She is upset with the old man because so many pythons died. He explains that they were an invasive species whose days were numbered anyway. At least, he gave them a few well-fed months before the end. When Angie asks why he released them, he says, “‘The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.’ That’s from Emerson, by the way. All I was hoping to do is stretch some goddamn minds” (335).

Angie points out that Kiki got killed because of his prank. Skink says that her death wasn’t caused by one of his snakes. In fact, her death was what gave him the idea for his python apocalypse. Apparently, that event was nature’s commentary on Palm Beach, the Potussies, and their president.