Season of the Machete Read online

  “Your partners,” Nickie said again. “I love it! I love it!”

  Carrie and the crippled man sat drinking in the Americanized bar until after, five o’clock. At that point American business types began to crowd inside. Tourists and backpacking hippies from the nearby L’Etoile. By 5:30 it was impossible to hear a normal conversation inside the tacky bistro.

  Saying something about cigarettes, Carrie reached inside her shoulder bag. Then she leaned over deep into the dark booth and shot Nickie Handy dead. Two soft little pfftts that were never heard over the din. Heart shots. Quicklike, because she didn’t want him to hurt.

  Nickie lay down on the scarred wooden table like a good little drunk.

  Carrie’s mind was racing as she elbowed her way but and onto the avenue. Two very good reasons for the murder.

  First of all, poor Nickie was one of the few people left who could still identify her and Damian. Second, she’d liked Nickie too much to let him live like that. To let him go where he was obviously going.

  Slightly dizzy from the bar scene, she crossed the avenue Marceau in a sea of Renaults, Simcas, wolf whistles. Up some side street. Stacked heels clicking, white butterfly stockings singing silk.

  She took off the floppy white Easter bonnet. Tossed it over a slat fence into somebody’s yard. She took off the uncomfortable high-heeled pumps and got into the black flats that were in her shoulder bag.

  At avenue Montaigne, she met Damian. The two of them embraced for a long moment. Then the pretty young couple walked arm in arm across the murky, slow-moving Seine.

  Almost at once, they began to prepare to be double-crossed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The effect that we wanted most on San Dominica was helpless confusion. A feeling like darkness and light being turned on and off at our will. Things suddenly being dangerous that weren’t supposed to be dangerous…. More important, there had to be no way to chart any of it. No known patterns.

  The Rose Diary

  Wylde’s Fall, San Dominica

  Between seven Sunday morning and the late afternoon, nothing happened on San Dominica that hadn’t been happening for the previous thousand years or so. The more than 150 beaches were pearly white, striking, and perfect; the royal blue skies were clear and pure—a 1,000 percent improvement on any metropolitan sky; the sunshine was uninterrupted.

  And while nothing terrifying was happening, the Americans and Europeans still on the island had time to sit back and think about what had happened. Not least of all, the sixty-one members of the government assembly had time to consider their unlucky alternatives for the future.

  At four in the afternoon, Colonel Dassie Dred stood on the verge of worldwide fame.

  Looking down from the second highest and most beautiful waterfall in the Caribbean—Wylde’s Falls—he could see a barefoot black boy and a white couple making the popular walking tour up the many-tiered water shoots.

  The three people sloshed through the most beautiful, black, freshwater pools. They splashed together in cascading ten- and twenty-foot-high falls; occasionally shouted to one another over the crashing roar of the blue water; stopped once for a misty camera shot.

  When the young guide finally turned the rocky comer beneath his hiding place, Dred extended his hand through a clump of bushes. The small boy allowed himself to be pulled up, leaving the white couple looking up at the leering face of the revolutionary. “Yo’ go home now,” Dred said to the boy. “Nemmine be lookin’ back.”

  As he spoke, two of his men jumped through banana leaves into the bubbly pool below. One man came swinging a cane machete sideways like a baseball bat.

  The long knife caught a screaming, thirtyish-looking woman across the front of her Town & Country summer blouse. The hard blow upended her in a clumsy three-point fall.

  The second, stronger soldier brought his knife straight down. The woman’s blond, bankerish-looking husband stood still for a moment, then he split from the shoulders down and toppled over Wylde’s Falls.

  Meanwhile, down at the park’s entry gates, a handful of tourists and lounging guides were watching the day’s final climbers make their way down the tricky falls. As they watched two couples and their guides climb down slowly, a body—a swimming woman, it looked like—shot headfirst around a high curve in the swift water. The swimming woman disappeared again; then toppled over a smooth lip of the black rock; then caught sideways up against a jutting boulder shooting bubbly white water high in the air.

  A man split like broken scissors came down next. The body made it around the jutting rock, bounced down several small falls, skimmed past the terror-stricken crowd at the gates, then disappeared without a sound into the sea.

  Colonel Dred had conducted his first official machete raid, and as it had been skillfully designed to be, it was the very best one so far.

  Dred was ready.

  Trelawney, San Dominica

  Sunday Evening.

  A greasy dish of sticky brown rice sat in front of him. Gray shredded goat. Some shellfish that wasn’t lobster, wasn’t crab or shrimp, wasn’t really edible.

  Peter Macdonald thought he saw a small black claw rise up and swim in the stew. He gobbled it up. It was sixty cents for the meal and green tea— a bargain.

  After his Sunday dinner, Macdonald sat in a dark rear corner of the native restaurant. He slowly smoked two cigarettes. He nervously pushed his hand back through his hair twenty or thirty times within five minutes or less.

  Sitting there all alone, Peter remembered a dumb movie he’d seen once. Some handsome blond actor had played a man who’d simply gone to The New York Times to get out of a pack of trouble. Gone to the Times the way people used to go to the police—and the next thing you knew, everything was copacetic. The man in the movie was safe and sound.

  The screen credits rolled up over the man’s frozen, smiling face. “America the Beautiful” played. Everybody in the theater went home as happy as clams.

  Idle speculations of a drowning man.

  Because what exactly could he tell The New York Times? Peter had begun to speculate. What could he tell anybody, really? That he’d seen this tall blond Englishman—maybe an Englishman—in the vicinity of one of the San Dominica machete murders? That he’d held a State Department man’s face to the burner of an electric stove, and the man had begun to scream about the Mafia?

  Suddenly the restaurant’s waitress and cook were standing over him. A small, moon-faced black girl, she’d been flitting all night around the main room like a trapped moth. Table …table …window …stove …table …window.

  Nobody would let the moth-girl out, though … table.

  “Yo’ lak yo’ lobster, yes, mahn?” Loose translation: You’re crazy to eat in here. Let me outside, please. I’m a moth.

  Peter smiled at the moth thought; at something in the young girl’s eyes. “Good food,” he said softly. “Better than at the big hotels.”

  The waitress remembered the words later for the San Dominica police. She said that the young Amer ican left the restaurant around nine. That he’d gotten on a motorcycle outside.

  The police told her that the American man had gone a little crazy on account of all the murders. They said they wanted him for questioning. Nothing serious.

  Coastown, San Dominica

  Almost simultaneously with the police interview in the Trelawney restaurant, four men in expensive raw-silk suits—Park Avenue bankers, from the look of them—sat down to dinner on a handsome screened-in porch on the big estate in Coastown proper.

  The four were San Dominica’s prime minister, Joe Walthey; Great Western Air Transport’s Brooks Campbell; the Forlenza Family’s Isadore Goldman; and Goldman’s man on San Dominica, a beachboy type by the name of Duane Nicholson.

  The meal that the four men were served began with Chincoteagues; then a Montrachet; stuffed lamb en ballon; buttered celery; corn. In the wings was a grand floating island.

  All in all, a most delicious, civilized feast.


  On and off, the men watched the leggy mistress of Prime Minister Walthey swimming laps in the blue-bottomed pool that stretched out directly in front of the porch.

  On and off, Izzie Goldman tried to explain the facts of life and death to the other three. A thin, liver-spotted hand floated out in front of the gangster as he spoke.

  “I’m seventy-four years old,” he said quietly, so that they all had to concentrate on his words. “I don’t understand why you ask me all these schoolboy questions about the Roses.” Goldman sighed. “Why can’t you let them do their work? Pay the money and forget about it.”

  “Because they’re a liability,” Brooks Campbell said to him. “Because I have my orders from way, way up the ladder.”

  The old man took a bird bite of his lamb. “They’re too smart to carry tales.” He talked and chewed. “I don’t understand why everybody is trying so hard to make another Bay of Pigs catastrophe here.”

  “This is hardly the liberation of Cuba.” Campbell pointed a finger at the old man. “And besides, I think Rose has gone crazy. We never saw any plans like this. A few murders, yes. Massacres, no.”

  The prime minister of San Dominica brushed a fly away from his wine.

  Joseph Walthey, “Jose,” was a short, stocky black. Forty-one years old. A demagogue and potentially a dictator. The black man had a neat pencil mustache, a big thumb of a nose, a very bumpy, pocked complexion.

  “Just for the sake of… dinner talk”—he spoke with a soft, diplomatic lilt—”why won’t you answer a few of our questions, Mr. Goldman? What possible harm, could come from ridding the world of these two murderers, for example?”

  The old man sank even farther into his big rattan chair. His gray suit coat bunched terribly around a pink-and-brown silk tie. Pink flamingos were crushed all over the tie.

  The prime minister’s girlfriend dived into the pool again, and lzzie Goldman heard an insane old song start up in his mind.

  Hubba hubba, ding ding

  Baby, you got everything

  What a face, what a jigger!

  What a shame that you’re a nigger!

  Vaude-ville—bring it back! Please! Quick!

  “Above and beyond everything else that was wrong here”—he glanced across, the table at Brooks Campbell—“I don’t think you’ll catch them. Let them go back to France, Mr. Campbell. Prime Minister. Let it end after tomorrow. Trust me on this.”

  To his immediate left, Duane Nicholson sat flicking ashes from his cigarette into his empty dinner plate.

  “No. We want the Roses dead,” Brooks Campbell repeated. “That’s our position.”

  Isadore Goldman stared at the beachboy Nicholson before making his next statement on the matter. “The people who put their cigarettes in their plates,” the old man finally said, “should have to eat out of their ashtrays.”

  And those were absolutely Isadore Goldman’s last words on the fiasco.

  Trelawney, San Dominica

  A little after nine, Peter Macdonald hid the BMW motorcycle in thick brush, then walked inside the Trelawney bus station.

  The station was one small, dim room that smelled as if an army had stopped to urinate and delouse there.

  Peter examined a schedule for buses going across the island to Port Gerry. At Port Gerry, he thought he had a way to get off San Dominica safely. A way to get some help. Maybe. The question was whether to travel anonymously by bus or quickly by bike.

  None of the hang-arounds inside the station seemed to be noticing him, he believed. That was good, at least.

  He sat down on one of the long gray benches. Saw a newspaper headline crumpled up under another seat, DOUBLE MURDERS! DRED ON THE MOVE.

  Almost 9:15 now … starting to miss Jane like hell. Remembering what it was like to be lonely.

  He began to read a six-foot-high-by-ten-foot-wide community blackboard. A child’s handwriting, it looked like.

  NOW THAT ELECTION RESULTS ALL OVER THE CARIBBEAN HAVE TURNED OUT VICTORIOUS FOR SOCIALISTS, AND JOE IS SERIOUSLY ILL, I THINK WE SHOULD TAKE A LONG LOOK AT COMING ELECTIONS.

  JOE’S PLAYBOY ATTITUDE IS UNBECOMING AN EXECUTIVE TO OFFICE. PROFESSOR SAM HAS ONLY FOUR YEARS OF SCHOOLING (CHECK RECORDS OF THE BAINTY SCHOOL IN COASTOWN), WHILE I AM, AS YOU KNOW, GRADUATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST INDIES.

  THOSE OF YOU WHO VOTE FOR “JOE” ARE VOTING FOR THE FOLLOWING: MORE CONTROL BY FOREIGNERS, CIA, HIGH PRICES, LOW WAGES, MORE CONTROL BY FOREIGNERS, WILDNESS IN STREET BY COLONEL DRED, NO PRICE CONTROLS, UNSANITARY—WITH FOOD SPREAD ON THE GROUND WHERE WE WALK, SPIT, ETC., TO BE SOLD TO CONSUMERS. MORE CONTROL BY FOREIGNERS. EVEN DRED HIMSELF WOULD BE PREFERRED BETTER THAN OLD BLACK “JOE.”

  TOMMY (THOMAS WYASS).

  Macdonald the sign reader. Looking for direction? Clues? More control by foreigners. Prime Minister Joe Walthey. Dred on move.

  Peter read: FORBIDDEN IN THIS TERMINAL: SMOKING, SCREAMING, OBSCENE LANGUAGE, SHELLING OF PEANUTS, EATING OF CHEWING GUM. THANK YOU. TOMMY.

  Peter was chewing gum, smoking, screaming obscene language inside his brain. He went into a dark wooden phone booth, where he could chew and smoke his brains out in peace.

  He thought about where he ought to spend the night. Port Gerry? The woods again? … No one ever teaches you how to survive in America. Not even the army, really. They just teach the army how to survive.

  Finally, against all his previous resolves, against his whole idea of trying to keep her out of this, Peter decided that he had to call Jane.

  First he called her friends in Coastown. She left, they told him. Jane had gone back to the inn. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.

  Peter made the call to Turtle Bay. Number ninety. The Plantation Inn. Switchboard operator. “Cottage number fourteen, please… Jane, it’s me. Peter. I’ve been trying to call you all day in Coastown.”

  “Oh, Peter! Where are you?”

  There was a short pause at his end of the line.

  “I want you to go back to the States,” Peter finally said. “See what Westerhuis can do to get you on a flight out of here…. Janie?”

  “Dammit all to hell, Macdonald! Tell me where you are. Cool it, Peter.”

  Peter smiled for a second. That was Jane. He stopped the melodramatics and told her where he’d been for the past day. Then he told her what he thought they ought to do now. What they shouldn’t do. Only after he’d gone through it all—the talk about himself—did Jane mention the blond Englishman.

  “He was here, Peter.”

  Small, shocking statement. He was here.

  “I saw him this afternoon. I think … it had to be him. He was blond, maybe six feet two …”

  Peter stopped her. Suddenly it was as if he were a combat officer again, giving orders that must be followed. “I want you to lock and latch all the doors and windows right now, Jane.”

  “Everything is locked. Just come and get me.”

  He tried to visualize the room. The cottage itself. Fool’s Hot Toast. He tried to imagine how he would go about attacking it. Defending it.

  “All right, that’s good. Will you turn off all the lights in there? Do it right now, okay?”

  “Okay! Okay!”

  He heard the sound of the phone being set down.

  He’d been right there. Peter considered again. Came down into the inn as if he had some kind of diplomatic immunity. Brass balls, at least.

  Suddenly he had a quick flash of the tall blond figure standing over Turtle Bay four days earlier. Looking as if he owned the place. Looking as if he owned the goddamn world.

  Then Jane was back on the phone. Whispering, all of a sudden.

  “It’s pitch black in here,” she told him. “I can see a couple walking out on the beach. Oh, Peter, this is so creepy I don’t believe it’s happening.”

  “For what it’s worth,” Peter said, “I’m on my way.”

  Turtle Bay, San Dominica

  The sound outside cottage number fourteen was something like bomp.

  Bomp, bomp … bomp, bomp, b
omp.

  The noise stopped suddenly, and Jane Cooke stood perfectly still, quiet and afraid, inside the dark bedroom. First she caught her breath, then she tried to figure, out the sound.

  Rose apples—she finally solved the small mystery. The noise was rose apples dropping onto the bungalow roof.

  Jane realized that she was letting herself get a little confused now. Stop it. Grab control.

  One of her hands slid along the cool limestone wall. Her cheek pressed lightly against the wall. Long blond hair brushed against it. Her fingers groped along the sloppily laid wallpaper. Ruffles. Air pockets. Then an end to the wall altogether … doorjamb … gritty bathroom tile.

  She put her face under the faucet. Soaked herself. Drank some rusty-tasting water. Then she put down the toilet seat cover and sat. Took cigarettes out of her T-shirt pocket. Looked down and saw the dark outline of a book on the floor. All the President’s Men. Their bathroom book.

  She smoked three cigarettes while thinking about her and Peter’s situation. She heard another small noise … beetles flying against the window. Woof! Like getting punched in the stomach. She decided she ought to be out where she could at least watch the front window.

  The big window at the front of the bungalow was showing a crystal-clear black-and-white movie.

  No more couple walking on the beach … thin, smoky, purplish clouds drifted past a full moon. Old, shriveled night clouds. A low line of frothy white surf running around the cove, outlining it like whipped cream.

  She’d been all right until Peter called, Jane started to think….

  A lot of men had ogled her around the inn. Even tall blond ones. Even tall blond ones who might look a little English….

  Nice girl from the capital of South Dakota, she thought…. Boyfriend accidentally witnessed a murder. Just a glance. No more than ten seconds! Must be an Alfred Hitchcock film … macabre throughout, ghoulish like Frenzy, but a happy ending. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant clink champagne glasses, then kiss.

  Thinking about the tall blond Englishman again. The Tall Blond Englishman. Couldn’t keep her hands from shaking now. Funny—odd, that is. He’d been drinking by himself on the Pineapple Terrace. A very good-looking, serious man. Nice tan. Black wraparound glasses that made her think of the Mediterranean. She thought he’d been watching her while she taught a little girl how to get water out of her ear. “First, hop on the foot opposite the clogged-up ear. Here—like this, silly-face. Now. Bang the side of your head. Bang it good….”