Season of the Machete Read online

  Also, every country represented on the Elizar beth’s Fancy bus sent some kind of special help: Germany; the United States; England; Canada; France; Israel; Trinidad; Jamaica; Argentina; Texas. Ballistics, riot, and interrogation experts were hurried in from New York and Washington. More federal marshals were flown in to help keep order in the cities. Headhunters, including a special team called’ ‘Czech”—came from as far away as Eastern Europe. Bounties totaling more than $150,000 were set.

  Learning that “an English-looking man” was being sought, a small group was set up at Interpol’s Secretariat in St. Cloud, France. Information on known gunrunners and mercenaries was collated and sent out from Interpol’s Criminal Records Department. Extensive checks were made on the dead men, Kingnsh Toone and the Cuban, Blinkie Tomas.

  Through all of this, Campbell and Harold Hill’s “lead” on the Roses was never once questioned. Even the bitterest of police-world cynics wouldn’t speculate and couldn’t come up with what had actually happened in the Caribbean.

  By early night of the first day, the hunt had turned up eight tall blond men. Two-thirds of the twelve.

  Looking in on the eight—all blond, all handsome as hell, all between six feet two and six feet four— Federal Marshal Stuart Leedman of Los Angeles got the feeling that somebody wasn’t telling him everything he needed to know about this grisly case. Something was as fishy as San Diego Sea World, Stu Leedman was thinking.

  “Now what do you do for a living?” he asked Antoine Coffey, a wispy blond who had listed his address as the World of Free Spirits.

  The blond model seemed confused by the question. “A living?”

  “Yeah,” Stu Leedman said. “What do you do for money, Antoine? How do you pay the rent? Get money to go to the movies?”

  Coffey smiled suddenly. “Oh, that” he whispered. “Thhodomy, you mean.”

  Marshal Stuart Leedman stood up in the quiet examination room and screamed at the open door.

  “Who ordered in all these blond faggots?” His voice carried up and down the serene, dignified hallway of the U.S. embassy. “What thefuck, Jesus Christ, shit is going on around this pisshole?”

  It was every bit as maddening and confusing as the machete murders themselves. More so, because it came on top of them … which was exactly the way Damian wanted it.

  Port Gerry, San Dominica

  Tuesday Evening.

  His nose pressed against the cool green glass of the number 9 bus window, Peter watched a row of flowered shirts drift by on Station Street. Stranger in Paradise, he thought.

  He saw pink-and-purple shirts like the Spanish in big cities always wore. Leather mushroom caps and tiny fedoras. Black wraparound sunglasses. San Dominican country boys trying to look like the Tonton Macoutes.

  People seemed to be forever waiting for buses around San Dominica, Peter had begun to notice. The Elizabeth’s Fancy bus massacre was mind-blowing when you thought about it like that. It was like attacking an interstate highway in the United States. Severing a main artery.

  Black women in homemade dresses and sandals were pressed up closer to the station. A nest of young conchie girls. “Queen bees,” they called them around Coastown.

  As the number 9 bus started to brake, Macdonald put his hand on the Colt .44 under his shirt. His heart started to thump…. Peter had begun to imagine the tall blond man waiting around every corner, behind every palm tree. Like some slick, handsome bogeyman. Waiting just for him….

  The bus station was a wooden shack covered with antique beer and Coke signs worth more than the building itself. Stopping in front, the number 9 bucked and shivered like an old belly dancer. All the people and livestock being transported inside woke up suddenly. Chickens squawked and flapped red-and-white wings like fans. A goat started kicking the seats, and an old black man started kicking the goat.

  “Ay maum in dat blue dress!” a Rude Boy shouted out a bus window.

  There was a loud whooshing of steaming hot air, and the driver said something Macdonald couldn’t follow. People started walking off the bus, though, and Peter guessed that he was there.

  This hole-in-the-wall must be the summer capital of Port Gerry.

  Eating a thirty-cent meat pie from the station canteen, Peter climbed a dark street with no sidewalks. With dreary two- and three-story limestone buildings on either side.

  The pie smelted like bad breath, the street smelted like human sweat. Peter’s body felt as if it would collapse pretty soon…. The last time he remembered feeling so bad was when he’d had dysentery in Thailand.

  He was feeling lonely as hell, too. Thought about Jane constantly.

  The first time he’d seen her at the Plantation Inn, he’d thought she was trouble. Quiet—only with a bad dose of New York city smug … quick wise-ass front. Shooting down every guy who said hello to her at the inn. In Peter’s mind she was a blond version of Ali MacGraw. Trouble …. One weekend, though, he’d asked her if she wanted to go on a cross-island trip with him. See the West Hills’ jungle. See the beaches on the other side. And surprise! She’d said sure …. Twenty-four hours later the two of them still hadn’t stopped talking. An amazing day of straight talk about each other. Striking chords in each other like crazy. Strangers, practically. Crying together before the first day was over. Huddled together on a dark, deserted beach called Runaway … because they’d both been so damn lonely. Because there’d been so many things they’d wanted to tell somebody ….

  Halfway up the hill, Peter saw a sign: RENT. Another sign: ROOMS; it showed a little black angel sleeping on folded hands.

  A doorway at the crest of the hill read WELCOME, and that seemed just about right to Peter.

  A tall goateed man and a boy sat at a buckling table covered with dominoes, in the foyer.

  “Yes, mon?” The older fellow spoke. A soft, serious voice, much more businesslike than Peter expected from the look of the place from outside.

  “I need a room, please. I’m very tired.”

  The black man looked at Peter strangely. Shrugged. Then he went to a little school desk, where he scrawled a line in a red ledger. He took six dollars in advance for the room.

  “Dis bway will take yo’ up. Yo’ be served breakfas’ in de mornin’, mon.”

  The young boy pointed to a dark stairway. Then he walked ahead of Macdonald, holding a candle in a soup dish.

  The boy began to whisper to Peter as they climbed the stairs. His small candle slowly revealed the hotel, like in a murder mystery.

  “T’marra yo’ cum fishin’ in me fadder boat, mon. Catch grouper. Lotsa big snappers, too.”

  Peter suddenly started to laugh when they reached the top of the stairs. “I’m sorry.” He turned to the boy. “I’m not laughing at you. I can’t go fishing tomorrow, though.”

  “Too bad, mon. Yo’ missin’ good shit.”

  Peter and the black boy turned into a slanting, lopsided hallway with unpainted doors on both sides of a long, tattered runner. A dim light shone at the other end of the hall. A black telephone sat on the floor under the light. Suddenly Peter understood that this was an all-black hotel. Welcome.

  Inside his room, he hid his wallet between the rusty pipes of the sink. He bumped his head hard on the pipes and felt strangely, ridiculously exhilarated. For a minute he even forgot about the tall blond man. The butcher.

  Then he just sat on the bed with his head propped up so he faced the door. With the Colt revolver lying across his boxer shorts. Listening to the ricky-tick rhythms of reggae out in the streets; listening to pigs rooting in the hotel’s backyard.

  Before he could sleep, he had the urge to go back out into the moldy hallway. He picked up the black telephone and asked for number 107. He got through to a- night operator with a beautiful lilting voice. Nightbird. Then to a groggy, very distant-sounding woman. Then to Jane.

  “Hiya, Laurel.” Peter’s face lit up with a sleepy smile. “This is Oliver Hardy speaking. I think I’m going crazy, babe ….”

  CHAPTE
R TWENTY-THREE

  Our strategy for Brooks Campbell was a simple one: we tried to give him too many choices and produce decision stress. Harold Hill was a completely different problem. We went right for Hill’s balls.

  The Rose Diary

  Fairfax Station, Virginia

  At 2:30 in the morning, two Virginia state troopers, James Walsh and Dominick Niccolo, tramped across the dewy back lawns of a big white house way out in the sticks.

  A nearby neighbor had reported that something strange was going on at the house. What sounded like screams for help.

  Around at the back, the policemen discovered that the kitchen door wasn’t locked. Not all that unusual for the rural community of Fairfax Station. Not usual, though.

  Inside the kitchen they were greeted with the loud ticking of an electric clock. The hum of a refrigerator. The indistinct sounds of an empty, or sleeping, house.

  The kitchen was lit by an orangish night-light over the sink. Several coffee cups and half a box of Dunkin’ Donuts were sitting on the kitchen table. The remains of half a dozen sandwiches.

  Dom Niccolo turned on the hall light and called out in a high-pitched tenor’s voice. “Hello. Is anyone home? This is the Virginia State Police.”

  No answer.

  The two men continued to walk through the dark house, turning on lights. Calling out, “Is anyone home?”

  A standard lamp in the living room was already on. As they entered the comfortably furnished room, they were startled by the loud crashing of the refrigerator making ice.

  “That son of a bitch.” James Walsh grit his teeth.

  The troopers heard another noise. A young black retriever came running downstairs, wagging its tail and jumping up on the two men, licking them.

  “Pup scared the shit out of me, too.” Walsh grinned.

  “Jesus Christ, Jimmy.” Dom Niccolo knelt to look closer at the dog. “She has blood all over her side. Look at this, Jimmy.”

  Both men unholstered their sidearms.

  “This is the Virginia State Police!” Niccolo called from the foot of the stairs.

  “We better get some more help here,” Walsh whispered.

  Niccolo motioned for him to shut up. “Come on.”

  Dominick Niccolo, then James Walsh, headed up the shag-carpeted stairway. Both men had their guns pointed up into the dark hallway above.

  Right at the top of the stairs they found a woman.

  Carole Hill was barefoot, dressed in a flowered blouse and white walking shorts. Blood was caked on her face and chest. A pool of blood was on the carpet beside her.

  Two bedrooms down the hall, James Walsh found a teenage boy.

  Mark Hill was inside his clothes closet. The boy was gagged and tied up with a telephone wire. But at least he was alive.

  In the master bedroom, Dominick Niccolo was calling the trooper barracks in Alexandria. “The house is on Shad Stream Road,” he said into a pink princess telephone. “Belongs to Mr. and Mrs. Harold Hill. The husband doesn’t seem to be here …. Johnny, you won’t believe this, but there’s a three-foot machete stuck in the poor woman’s heart. Jimmy Walsh is up here puking in the hallway. Hurry up, will you? …”

  The machete murders had come to America. Almost to Langley. Just fourteen miles from the White House.

  The warning couldn’t have been any clearer.

  May 9, 1979, Wednesday

  Stalk Tall Blond Man

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  From the Rose Diary

  In December of 1978 I had wired, then telephoned, our last important player—an expensive English shooter named Clive Law son. At that time, Lawson was buying and selling cocaine and four-star pornography in North Miami Beach, Florida.

  During our eventual phone conversation, I told Lawson that Senor Miguel Alvarez of Caracas (Pie-tra Forte) and Anthony Patriarca of Miami (Cosa Nostra) were my sponsors; that I was interested in purchasing a large stock of 16-millimeter films I heard he had, or could get.

  “Do you have anything that might stimulate older gentlemen?” I asked him over the phone. “Large, private screenings for older gentlemen?”

  Lawson said that he might have something. He didn’t know. He didn’t do business over the phone.

  On the fifteenth of December, we met in the very unlikely Poodle Bar at the Fontainebleau Hotel.

  For our meeting, the English killer was wearing a wrinkled white shirt. A funky plaid sports jacket. Thick, black-rimmed glasses that were so square-looking, I couldn’t quite believe them …. Because, you see, Clive Lawson was an exceptionally handsome man. A little like Michael Caine from a distance. A lot like Damian.

  He ordered Tanqueray with a twist, and I had something chic, like Campari. Both of us played our parts for a while, then I simply announced to him that I was Carrie Rose.

  After that admission, we talked about the Congo and Southeast Asia—places where we’d both worked and vaguely heard of each other. We talked about how Clive had fallen into the pornography business through the Pietra Forte—the so-called Latin-American Connection. We talked about Damian and me.

  Then, as factually yet vaguely as possible, I explained something about San Dominica to the English killer.

  “As a further introduction,” I said at the end of my opening gambit, “I have to tell you that we can’t let anyone in on the total picture down there. Like who holds the contract. That’s rule number one …. On the other hand, we’re offering very large fees for peripheral work that shouldn’t be all that hard.”

  The green eyes behind Lawson’s black-rimmed glasses sparkled like large emeralds. He had a relaxed, confident manner that I was beginning to like. “My favorite sort of work,” he said. “Do go on.”

  “For one week in May,” I continued, “your job will be to lead the San Dominican police on a wild-goose chase all over the island. That’s where your time in the Congo fits in nicely for our purposes. It’s also where you earn your money.”

  Lawson’s eyebrows arched a little. “Will I be shooting at people? Or getting shot at?”

  “If you’re careless, you’ll get shot at, I’m sure. The usual ground rules apply, Clive. There will be at least two hits for you. Probably military targets. Lower-echelon assholes.”

  The tall blond man smiled. He understood perfectly. At least he thought he understood: he was to run cover for our escape.

  “How much?” he asked next.

  “Fifty thousand dollars.”

  Lawson started to laugh. “No haggling, ay? I don’t even get a chance to try and bargain you up. All right, I mink so …. How about sixty? I assume I have to get my own behind out of there ….”

  “Sixty is fine.”

  “Money in advance, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I laid it right out in front of the English killer. A fat brown envelope on the Fontainebleau bar.

  Damian and I had just purchased one of the most expensive pigeons in the history of crime. One of the keys to our getting away with murder.

  On the morning of May 8, 1979—Tuesday—we let our pigeon fly. We had Clive Lawson make a big kill, while impersonating Damian.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Behind every successful woman, there’s a big prick.

  The Rose Diary

  May 9, 1979; Coastown, San Dominica

  Wednesday Morning. The Ninth Day of the Season.

  Harold Hill hadn’t slept well the night of the eighth.

  At 5:30 in the morning he called Brooks Campbell’s home in Coastown. Yet another bizarre phone call for poor Campbell.

  “We have to get that kid Macdonald,” Hill blurted out with no introduction whatsoever—as if he and Campbell had been carrying on the conversation all night. “For all we know now, we could have Damian Rose locked up already. We can’t identify him by ourselves.”

  Brooks Campbell tried to wake himself up in a hurry. Hill was saying something that sounded important. Hill was saying something ….

  “We, uhh … n
eed someone who knows what Rose looks like,” Campbell finally managed.

  “Exactly,” Harold Hill said. “So let’s concentrate on Macdonald as much as we can today.”

  The configurations changed a little at 8:00 A.M. At eight Langley reached Hill with the news about his wife.

  Langley didn’t understand, though. Carole Hill’s murder didn’t make any sense.

  Harry the Hack understood. Either he got Damian Rose, or Damian Rose would get him.

  Port Gerry, San Dominica

  That morning Peter woke with the bright Caribbean sun streaming in two windows, exploding on a mirror nailed over the sink.

  A doctorbird stood on one of the windowsills, pecking at wood splinters …. The velvet, skull-capped head eyed the sleepy-faced man coldly, sneezed, then resumed its noisy woodworking.

  “Hey. Be sociable or beat it,” Peter said to the bird. He was feeling better—okay, human, anyway. Something about the hotel room, all the sunlight probably, the nearby water, reminded him of his family’s place up on Lake Michigan.

  In daylight the hotel was both pleasant and pleasantly ridiculous. There were different patterns of tacky wallpaper on three of the four walls, but he could also see a wide lane of cherry blue sea without getting out of bed.

  “God, throw me a crumb,” Peter whispered to the open window.

  Sitting yogi style on the rumpled gray sheets, the ex–West Point man in him wrote out a formal battle plan on the back of a single postcard he found in the nightstand.

  Rockefeller resort (Caneel Bay).

  Fly Martinique? St. Thomas?

  New York City … transfer to Washington.

  Senator Pflanzer. State Department? Washington

  Post?

  Janie flight out.

  Fish’n Fool.

  The Great Escape … the pretty good escape, anyway.

  There was a sharp rap at the hotel room door, and Peter’s stomach did a dramatic elevator-shaft drop. He grabbed the Colt .44 under his bed-sheets.