Season of the Machete Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  If you purchase this book without a cover you should be aware that this book may have been stolen property and reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher. In such case neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  Copyright © 1977, 1995 by James Patterson

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Dale Fiorillo

  Caver art by James Montalbano

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group USA, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of HachetteBook Group USA, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover by Little, Brown and Company

  ISBN: 978-0-7595-6757-3

  First eBook Edition: April 1995

  Contents

  FOREWORD

  THE PREFACE

  PART 1: THE SEASON OF THE MACHETE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PART II: THE PERFECT ESCAPE

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  PART III: THE PERFECT ENDING

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  THE EPILOGUE: The Summer Season

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  RAVES FOR JAMES PATTERSON AND HIS NOVELS ALONG CAME A SPIDER

  “A first-rate thriller—fasten your seat belts and keep the lights on.”

  —Sidney Sheldon

  “As engrossing as it is graphic, Along Came a Spider is an incredibly suspenseful read with a one-of-a-kind villain who is as terrifying as he is intriguing. Has to be one of the best thrillers of the year.”

  —Clive Cussler

  “What a large charge it is to come upon such a good writer so unexpectedly.”

  —Richard Condon

  “All at once comes Along Came a Spider, with terror and suspense that grabs the reader and won’t let go. Just try running away from this one.”

  —Ed McBain

  BLACK MARKET

  “A taut thriller that rivals the best of Ludlum and Follett.”

  —Chattanooga Times

  “A gripper!”

  —United Press International

  “A tough, twisting tale that will keep even the bulls and bears reading past the opening bell,”

  —New York Daily News

  “You cannot put it down… tense, gripping… pays off in gilt-coated, hard-edged entertainment.”

  —Atlanta Journal & Constitution

  “A gripping, fast-moving yarn that will keep the reader turning pages.”

  —Houston Post

  The novels of James Patterson

  FEATURING ALEX CROSS

  Double Cross

  Cross

  Mary, Mary

  London Bridges

  The Big Bad Wolf

  Four Blind Mice

  Violets Are Blue

  Roses Are Red

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  Cat & Mouse

  Jack & Jill

  Kiss the Girls

  Along Came a Spider

  THE WOMEN’S MURDER CLUB

  The 6th Target (and Maxine Paetro)

  The 5th Horseman (and Maxine Paetro)

  4th of July (and Maxine Paetro)

  3rd Degree (and Andrew Gross)

  2nd Chance (and Andrew Gross)

  1st to Die

  OTHER BOOKS

  You’ve Been Warned (and Howard Roughan)

  The Quickie (and Michael Ledwidge)

  Maximum Ride: Saving the World and Other Extreme Sports

  Step on a Crack (and Michael Ledwidge)

  Judge & Jury (and Andrew Gross)

  Maximum Ride: School’s Out — Forever

  Beach Road (and Peter de Jonge)

  Lifeguard (and Andrew Gross)

  Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment

  Honeymoon (and Howard Roughan)

  santaKid

  Sam’s Letters to Jennifer

  The Lake House

  The Jester (and Andrew Gross)

  The Beach House (and Peter de Jonge)

  Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas

  Cradle and All

  Black Friday

  When the Wind Blows

  See How They Run

  Miracle on the 17th Green (and Peter de Jonge)

  Hide & Seek

  The Midnight Club

  Season of the Machete

  The Thomas Berryman Number

  For previews of upcoming James Patterson novels and information about the author, visit wwwjamespatterson.com.

  April 30, 1980; Turtle Bay

  On the gleaming white-sand lip of the next cove, Kingfish and the Cuban can see a couple walking on the beach. They are just stick figures at this distance. Absolutely perfect victims. Perfect.

  Hidden in palm trees and sky blue wild lilies, the two killers cautiously watch the couple slowly come their way and disappear into the cove.

  The Cuban wears a skull-tight, red-and-yellow bandanna; rip-kneed khaki trousers; scuffed, pale orange construction boots from the Army-Navy Store in Miami. The man called Kingfish has on nothing but greasy U.S. Army khakis.

  The muscles of both men ripple in the hard, beating Caribbean sun.

  The bright sun makes diamonds and blinking asterisks all over the sea. It glints off a sugar-cane machete hanging from the belt of the Cuban.

  The weatherbeaten farm implement is two and a half feet long and sharp as a razor blade.

  South of their hiding place, a great wrecked schooner—the Isabelle Anne—sits lonely and absurd, visited only by yellow birds and fish. Thirty yards farther south, the beach elbows around steep black rocks and makes a crystal path for walking. At this sharp bend lie reef fish, coral, sargassum, oyster drills, sea urchins.

  Soon now, the two killers expect the couple to emerge from the cove and reappear on the narrow white path. The victims.

  Perhaps a dark, bejeweled prime minister up on holiday from South America? Or an American politician with a coin- and milk-fed young woman who was both secretary and mistress?

  Someone worth their considerable fees and passage to this serene and beautiful part of the world. Someone worth $50,000 apiece for less than one week’s work.

  Instead, a harmless-looking pair of adolescents turn the seaweed-strewn bend into Turtle Bay.

  A bony, long-haired rich boy. A white-blond girl in a Club
Mediterranee T-shirt. Americans.

  On the run, they clumsily get out of their shirts, shorts, sandals, and underwear. Balls and little tits naked, they shout something about last one in is a rotten egg and run into the low, starry waves.

  Twenty or thirty feet over their heads, seagulls make a sound almost like mountain sheep bleating.

  Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa!

  The man called Kingfish puts out an expensive black cigar in the sand. A low, animal moan rises out of his throat.

  “ We couldn’t have come all this way to kill these two little shits.”

  The Cuban cautions him, “Wait and see. Watch them carefully.”

  “Aaagghh! Aaagghh!” The boy offers tin-ear bird imitations from the rippling water.

  The slender blond girl screams, “I can’t stand it. It’s so goddamn unbelievably beautiful!”

  She dives into sparkling aquamarine waves. Surfaces with her long hair plastered against her head. Her white breasts are small, nubby; up-pointed and rubbery from the cool water.

  “I love this place already. Don’t ever want to go back. Gramercy Park—yeck! I spit on East Twenty-third Street. Yeck! Yahoo! Yow!”

  The Cuban slowly raises his hand above the blue lilies and prickle bushes. He waves in the direction of a green sedan parked on a lush hill overlooking the beach.

  The sedan’s horn sounds once. Their signal.

  An eerie silence has come over the place.

  Heartbeats; surf; little else.

  The boy and girl lie on fluffy beach towels to dry under the sun. They close their eyes, and the backs of their eyelids become kaleidoscopes of changing color.

  The girl sings, “‘Eastern’s got my sunshine …’”

  The boy makes an impolite gurgling sound.

  As the girl opens one eye, she feels a hard slap on the top of her head. It is painfully hot all of a sudden, and she feels dizzy. She starts to say “Aahhh” but chokes on thick, bubbling blood.

  Pop … pop …

  The slightest rifle shots echo in the surrounding hills.

  Bullets travel out of an expensive West German rifle at 3,300 feet per second.

  Then Kingfish and the Cuban come and stand over the bodies on the blood-spotted towels. Kingfish touches the boy’s cheek and produces an unexpected moan, almost a growl.

  “I don’t think I like Mr. Damian Rose,” he says in a soft, French-accented voice. “Very sorry I left Paris now. He’s let this one live … for us.”

  The dying nineteen-year-old coughs. Blue eyes rolling, he speaks. “Why?” the boy asks. “Didn’t do anything….”

  The Cuban swings the machete high. He chops down as if he were in the thickest jungle brush, as if he were cutting a tree with a single stroke.

  Chop, wriggle, lift.

  The killer meticulously attacks both bodies with the long broadsword. Clean, hard strokes. Devastating. Blood squirts high and sprays the killer. Flesh and bone part like air in the path of the razor-sharp knife. Puddles of frothy blood are quickly soaked up by the sand, leaving dark red stains.

  When the butchering is over, the Cuban drives the machete deep into the sand. He sets a red wool hat over the knife’s handle and hasp.

  Then both killers look up into the hills. They see the distant figure of Damian Rose beside the shiny green car. The handsome blond man is motioning for them to hurry back. He is waving his fancy German rifle high over his head.

  What they can’t quite see is that Damian Rose is smiling in triumph.

  THE PREFACE

  The Damian and Carrie Rose Diary

  Consider the raw power and unlimited potential of the good old-fashioned “thrill kill.” Under proper supervision, of course.

  The Rose Diary

  January 23, 1981; New York City

  At 6:30 A.M. on the twenty-third of January, the birth date of his only child, Mary Ellen, Bernard Siegel—tall, dark, slightly myopic—began his “usual” breakfast of loose scrambled eggs, poppyseed bagel, and black coffee at Wolfs Delicatessen on West Fifty-seventh Street in New York City.

  After the satisfying meal, Siegel took a Checker cab through slushy brown snow to 800 Third Avenue. He used his private collection of seven keys to let himself into the modern dark-glass building, then into the offices of the publisher par excellence for whom he worked, and finally into the largest small office on that floor—his office—to try to get some busywork done before the many-too-many phones began to ring; to try to get home early enough to spend time with his daughter. On her twelfth birthday.

  A young woman, very, very tan, squeaky clean, with premature silver all through her long, sandy hair, was standing before the dark, double-glazed windows.

  The woman appeared to be watching 777 Third Avenue (the Building across and down Third Avenue), or perhaps she was just staring at her own reflection.

  Bernard Siegel said, “One—how the hell did you get in here? Two—who the hell are you? Three—please leave.”

  “My name is Carrie Rose.” The woman turned to face him. She looked to be twenty-eight or twenty-nine, spectacularly poised and cool.

  “I’ve come to make you an even more famous man than you are now. You are Siegel, aren’t you?”

  The editor couldn’t hold back a slight smile, the smallest possible parting of thin, severe lips. She called him “Siegel.”

  Damn these shameless, impudent young writers, he thought. Had she actually slept in his office to get an interview? To give lucky him first crack at this year’s Fear of Flying, or Flying, or The Flies!

  Squinting badly, pathetically, for a man under forty, Siegel studied Carrie Rose. Mrs. Carrie Rose, he was to find out soon. Wife of Damian Rose. Soldier of fortune herself.

  Under closer scrutiny, the young woman was striking, tall, and fashionably trim. Vogue-ish.

  She had on large tortoiseshell eyeglasses that made her look more sharp-witted than she probably was; the blue pin-striped suit was meant to keep Siegel off his guard, he was sure. An old Indian dodge.

  “All right, I’m Siegel,” the nearsighted editor finally admitted. “I’m hardly famous. And this sort of clever, gratuitous nonsense doesn’t cut it with me…. Please leave my office. Go back and write one more draft of your wonderful book. Make a regular-hours appointment with my—”

  “Oh, but you are famous, Bernard.” The woman interrupted him with an ingenue’s toothy grin. “You’re so well known, in fact, that busy people like myself go to great inconvenience to give you million-dollar book properties. Books that will make, at the very least, dents in history.”

  Siegel laughed. A cruel little laugh, but she deserved it.

  “Only a million for it?”

  Carrie Rose laughed, too. “Something like that.”

  She examined Siegel closely, then looked casually around his office at the unmatched oak and pine bookcases on two of the walls; an Olivetti Lettera typewriter tucked inside the banged-up rolltop desk, with sheafs of crisp white bond stacked neatly beside it; new, shiny book jackets pinned to a cork board; manuscripts in different-color typewriter-paper boxes.

  The editor.

  Siegel put down his briefcase, kicked off his loafers, and sat on his chair. He gave her a long cold stare. “Well, where is this magnum opus?”

  “You haven’t had it ghostwritten yet,” the young woman said. Carrie Rose. “Your writer’s source material will be a diary my husband, Damian, and I kept last year. An unusual, very original diary that will cost you two million dollars. It’s about… an awful nest of machete murders. Over a hundred of them.”

  The pretty woman said it very coolly … “an awful nest of machete murders.”

  PART 1

  The Season of the Machete

  March–July, 1979

  Death in Lathrop Wells

  CHAPTER ONE

  Damian theorized that within fifty years man would move onto and into the sea. San Dominica was only a very small beginning. An exploratory expedition. Kid stuff. The people who enginee
red it didn’t understand their own inner motivation … three-fifths of the world is water, and that was about to be fought over on a staggering scale….

  The Rose Diary

  February 24, 1979; Lathrop Wells, Nevada

  As the stupid, piggy Chevrolet Impala floated through buzzard-infested desert, Isadore “the Mensch” Goldman was thinking that he was slightly surprised there really was a state of Nevada.

  Every so often, though, the Chevrolet passed a tin road sign with PROPERTY OF THE STATE OF NEVADA stamped into it by some convict at Washoe County Jail.

  Once, Goldman even saw some Nevadans: a woman and small children with frayed ankle boots, turquoise jewelry, faces the color of pretzel sticks.

  Somewhere out here they tested H-bombs, the old man was thinking. At Mercury, Nevada.

  Then the seventy-four-year-old’s mind went walking.

  He remembered something itchy about the still-not-to-be-believed Bay of Pigs invasion. Then a very brief, fuzzy association he’d had with Rafael Trujillo that same year: 1961.

  Goldman’s history. All leading up to February 24, 1979. The biggest day of the old man’s life.

  Maybe.

  A man named Vincent “Zio” Tuch was patting Isadore’s gray-striped banker’s trousers at one baggy knee. Death spots were all over Tuch’s unsteady hand.

  “Bizee Izzee, what are you thinkin’?” Tuch rasped. “You thinkin’ this is a big-fashion setup, Izzie? That’s what I’m thinkin’.”

  “Aahh … I’m getting too damn old to think all the time.” The consigliere casually dismissed the powerful old capo. It was a typically stupid, if wellmeant, Mustache Pete question.

  Old Tuch told him to go make shit in his own pants—which was also typical.

  Also typical was the fact that the caporegime smelled of cheap hair tonic spilled over twenty-year-old dandruff.

  Goldman had flatly predicted that the final meeting at Lathrop Wells would be ridiculous beyond human belief. Even he was surprised. It had the consistency of Silly Putty. It looked like the opening scene of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.

  To begin with, both sides arrived at the farm in the most absurd “anonymous-looking” automobiles.

  Goldman watched and counted bodies through the green-tinted windows of his own Impala.