Squeeze Me

The choice of codename is descriptive of the character of the sitting President in the novel. A mastodon is a massive lumbering beast, now extinct, that resembles an elephant. The author depicts POTUS in much the same way. He is obese and ungainly, with an excessive appetite for food and sex.

The President’s physical ungainliness is matched by his mental awkwardness. He has a short attention span, makes frequent verbal mistakes, and doesn’t verify his facts. Because he has free access to social media, he is able to trumpet his false claims to a broad audience and create fake catastrophes that serve his own political agenda. His erratic behavior causes trouble for everyone in his administration. Several of the President’s traits are no doubt intended to recall former US president Donald Trump, notably his preference for his Florida property, propensity for tanning and golfing, unnatural-looking hair, and rampant, unchecked social media use.

The First Lady’s codename may be a veiled allusion to Ladybird Johnson. However, the reference to a mockingbird also indicates her contempt for her ridiculous husband. In contrast to her spouse, Mockingbird is politically astute. She also seems capable of genuine emotion. The author makes it clear that Agent Keith’s love for her is returned.

By the end of the book, it becomes apparent who the real power component of the First Couple is. Diego is only freed through Mockingbird’s intervention. Although her motives are somewhat selfish and politically based, she can get things done—unlike her husband.

Skink is an eccentric old recluse who lives in the Everglades. He dines on roadkill and routinely micro-doses with LSD. Skink’s earlier years as the state’s governor left him embittered by the political system so that he retreated to nature for solace, but his hatred of the establishment doesn’t allow him to remain in quiet retirement. Once he hears of Kiki’s death, the news gives him the inspiration to unleash a swarm of pythons among the ultra-wealthy residents of Palm Beach. Since the President is the embodiment of everything that Skink deplores about government, the python attack is meant to drive him away from Skink’s beloved Florida and back to Washington. The plan doesn’t work, but Skink takes comfort in the fact that he may have opened some people’s minds a bit.

Diego is a native of Honduras, educated in the United States, who becomes a hapless victim of circumstance. After re-entering America illegally to avoid persecution in his native country, he picks up a conch pearl that he finds lying on the railroad tracks. This simple act implicates him in Kiki Pew’s murder and places him at the center of a fake controversy stirred up by the President.

Diego is attacked verbally in the media and physically by fellow inmates. The situation becomes so unendurable that the young man tries to take his own life. Fortunately, Angie intervenes and finds an innovative way to get him released. Afterward, Diego flees to New Jersey, a state that takes a much more tolerant view toward people named Diego.