Season of the Machete Read online

  “He’s just a boy,” Carrie said to the Cuban as she got back inside the dark American car. “Isn’t it funny that they would be interested in him?”

  “Solamente tres dias mas,” is all the Cuban said.

  Just three days more.

  May 4, 1979, Friday

  45 U.S. Marshals Arrive

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We’d carefully plotted out a funhouse maze of confusion. Confusion on all fronts. Like a blizzard in summer, where it’s never even snowed before….

  By May 4, ordinary farmers wielding machetes in their fields stimulated heart attacks. A black man wading in the surf— even an unfamiliar black lifeguard— was enough to send piggy little whites scurrying inside their expensive straw- roofed huts. Fishing boats that drifted too close to shore were waved away by private guards with rifles. No one shut their eyes sunbathing on the beaches…. And countless tourists spent their suntime in dingy prop airline and government offices. Pan Am, Eastern, Prin-Air, BOAC, all put on extra flights, but even these couldn’t accommodate the exodus…. So far, we were pretty much on schedule.

  The Rose Diary

  The fourth day was much quieter—four island deaths reported. All of them grisly machete murders, however.

  Early in the morning, forty-five United States federal marshals were flown in to help keep order in the larger cities of San Dominica. Some of these same State Department marshals had been used during the American Indian uprising at Wounded Knee.

  Eight Vietnamese-style HSL-1 helicopters came in from Pensacola, Florida, to help with surveillance and search work.

  Because they’d been painted with green-and-brown combat camouflaging, the helicopters provided one of the scarier sights for the remaining tourists. Suddenly it looked and sounded as if they were in the middle of an undeclared war zone. Army helicopters were continually swooping down out of the lush green hills, as in the opening scenes in M*A*S*H.

  More witnesses to the machete murders were being found: “a veritable anthology of fascinating, conflicting stories,” one French newspaper would eventually write. Five hundred eleven people queststioned so far, but no one other than Peter Macdon-ald claiming to have seen a white man with the raiding parties of blacks.

  The chance of Macdonald’s story having any effect now seemed rather small, in fact.

  There were simply too many chiefs on the scene, too many chiefs prowling around the ghoulish morgues, too many hip experts who thought they understood what was going down.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  What we did on San Dominica was something like turning loose Charles Stark weather and Caril Fugate, Speck, Bremer, Manson, and Squeaky Fromme. All in one place at the same time.

  The Rose Diary

  May 4, 1979; Coconut Bay, San Dominica

  Friday Morning. The Fourth Day of the Season.

  Lieutenant B. J. Singer, a 1966 Annapolis product, sat on an undersized aluminum beach chair, reading a book called Supership. His wife, Ronnie, lay beside him with The Other Side of Midnight propped up in the sand.

  Neither of the Singers was a very enthusiastic reader.

  Suddenly Supership slipped through B.J.’s fingers.

  The shiny hardcover book hit the metal arm of the beach chair, then fell broken-backed onto the sand. B.J.’s head dropped back.

  “What?” Ronnie said.

  “I can’t stand it.” Her husband sat with his eyes closed, with coconut butter glistening all over his body. “I hate this sitting around. I feel like a goddamn kid who has to have his mother come with him every time he wants to take a swim or go explore. Or do anything!”

  Ronnie Singer looked up from her paperback. She closed one eye to the bright 10:00 A.M. sun. “Oh, go ahead, then.” She spoke with the softest, teasing Texas accent. “You go drown yourself, honey. Get your head cut off by the Zulus…. See if Mom really cares. Mom doesn’t care a damn.”

  B.J. crossed one hairless leg over the other. The big redheaded man growled at his wife.

  “Ohhh … Mom cares,” Ronnie then cooed from her beach blanket.

  “I would like … to take off this itchy swimsuit now. On our own personal private beach. And soak up some of our own private sun on my own shriveled private parts. And dip those poor neglected bastards in our sparkling blue sea…. Just like the TV ad suggested. Remember the TV ad for this place?”

  Ronnie Singer closed her book with a dull thud. The little blond woman let out a large-size sigh. Her big breasts expanded impressively under a thin polka-dot strip of bathing suit. Mom, she called herself.

  “All right, let’s go for a walk, sailor.”

  “I’ll do it.” B.J. flashed a smile.

  “I don’t know if I’m brave enough to take off my clothes, though.”

  “Swish, swish, swish,” B.J. kidded her.

  “Very funny, B.J. Cool it.”

  They walked north through two pretty coves. To a smaller, more private beach where the big brown hulk of a wrecked schooner sat out a few hundred yards from shore.

  When they came up, even-steven with the rigless boat, B.J., then Ronnie, waded out into clear blue-green water full of tiny angelfish.

  Ronnie slipped off the top of her suit and let her sand white breasts float free on the water. She started to laugh, to blush even.

  Once the cool water got up around his chest, the navy man turned to check out the kelly green of West Hills. “Prettiest damn jungle …,” he started to say.

  Then he saw two shirtless blacks lying in a grove

  of baby palms. Unbelievable, heart-freezing sight. You never believe it can happen to you.

  “Oh, Jesus, my God,” he whispered to Ronnie. “They’re on this beach.”

  The young couple began to swim out toward the shipwreck. Slow wading at first, then an athletic breaststroke.

  “Go behind it.” B.J. had taken command. “You make-it okay, Ronnie?”

  Damian Rose’s first rifle shot hit with a thunk eight yards in front of them.

  The Singers pulled up short. Then they kept going toward the old wreck. Much more frantic now. Hard, splashing strokes.

  A second shot kicked up water less than a foot away from B.J. A third shot echoed in the distance but never seemed to hit anywhere. B.J. didn’t let on that he’d been hit in the back.

  Finally they were in the long, cool shadow cast by the schooner. The boat towered thirty to forty feet over their bobbing heads. Ugly rot and barnacles were visible all over the sides.

  As they swam around one corner of the schooner, Ronnie felt a strong sweep of water at her side. Like a cold spring. The topless woman turned her head slightly—saw a four-, maybe five-foot sil-verish shadow not twelve inches away. For a moment she stopped swimming altogether. Her head dipped underwater. She had quick, panicky thoughts of her two young sons back in Newport News; of her mother, of drowning.

  Another silver streak surfaced at B. J. ‘s side. Flashing. Twisting. At least a sixty-pound great barracuda. Two of them now.

  “Swim easy,” B.J. gasped. “Stay behind the boat. No matter what. Swim easy, babe.”

  The cigar-shaped fish seemed to glide in the water. Back and forth with the larger humans, touching their tails as if exploring; showing off sharp, pointy teeth.

  Feeling the pain in his upper back, B.J. finally floated under the schooner’s sagging bowsprit. From there he could see the beach clearly.

  He spotted the two barebacked blacks retreating up into the hills. He couldn’t see the rifleman anywhere…. He watched the blacks until they disappeared into thick, thick jungle. Watched until the pain in his back was too great.

  Then he and Ronnie paddled around the boat— a man and a woman—and the two big, surging fish.

  The Singers were careful not to make sudden movements as they swam. They were careful to do as little splashing as possible. As little breathing.

  And finally, when the young man and woman got into four or five feet of water—when they could just touch bottom—the great barracuda
s turned away. The fish flashed their tails and headed back toward the old wreck…. B.J. and Ronnie ran the last fifty yards to shore.

  As the Singers lay on the wet sand like ship-wrecked survivors, Damian Rose squeezed, squeezed, shot them both dead anyway.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  To be simplistic about things, I just didn’t want to live and die in some godforsakenwhistle-stop. Like Madame Bovary.

  The Rose Diary

  Coastown, San Dominica

  At eleven o’clock that morning, Carrie Rose lounged beside a 2,500,000-gallon saltwater swimming pool at the Coastown Princess Hotel.

  Next to her at the poolside bar, a thirty-three-year-old stockbroker from New York, Philip Becker, was lamenting the decline and fall of the good life. He was also trying to put the make on Carrie.

  “It is a sad, shitty affair.” Philip Becker eulogized San Dominica in a most-good-natured way. “Here you finally make time for a vacation. You pay out two thousand, say, for ten glorious days of not having to schlepp around Manhattan with all the gum snappers, panhandlers, the general roll call of sewer snipes…. And then suddenly, slam-bam, you don’t just get a little rain to ruin your good time…. You don’t get a sunburn…. You get a bloody revolution!”

  Carrie shook out her long sandy hair, exposed the tiniest mother-of-pearl earrings. She was beginning to smile at the way Becker was telling his dim-witted stories.

  “I like “the way you say that.” She rested her hand on the back of his. “You get a revolution!” she repeated his thought.

  “That is exactly what we have here,” the stockbroker said. “Machete knife behind every palm tree.” He was beginning to stare openly at her breasts now; her long legs; brown swimmer’s stomach; her crotch.

  “This Dred—excuse me, Colonel Dred—is going to do some major league bloodletting now. Which means I’m going back to the safer confines of New York.”

  “All of a sudden a hundred and fifty thousand tourists and landowners want to get off this island at the same time,” Carrie said.

  Philip Becker smiled. He raised his glass in a mock salute. “To, uh … Colonel Monkey Dred, who, uh, ruined our respective vacations. Up yours, Monkey.”

  At which point Carrie Rose decided that she liked this one well enough. Philip Lloyd Becker. A wonderfully confident man. Nearly as smooth as Damian Simpson Rose.

  Smooth Philip continued to smile at her. He was gallant. Handsome. Physically nice: a walking advertisement for the New York Athletic Club. And he was as empty-headed as the proverbial dizzy blonde.

  When he finally asked her if she wanted to go back to his suite, Carrie said yes.

  That was the beginning of a little cherchez la femme side plot. Also an experiment.

  Friday Afternoon

  Down and out in Coastown, as disoriented as people in a Neil Simon situation, Peter and Jane first got the bum’s rush at San Dominica’s Government House. Then at the Gleaner and the Evening Star newspaper offices.

  “If, indeed, there is a mysterious white man involved,” a British-sounding Uncle Tom at Government House explained, “he’ll most surely turn up when we catch Colonel Dred. And, right now, we are trying to put all our efforts into catching Dred.”

  “Well, Jesus Christ, man. Don’t let us keep you from the manhunt,” Peter said before Jane could pull him away.

  At noon the two of them wandered through the crowded Front Street marketplace. Children were selling green coconuts, yams, fresh fish. Tinny record-shop speakers blasted songs like “Kung Fu Fighting.” Jane was getting leers and lazy smiles from all the local males.

  “Take a taxi ride, lady?”

  “Eat me coconut?”

  One block off Front Street they went out onto the very famous and beautiful Horseshoe Beach.

  “This could be the nicest day anywhere, ever,” Jane said as they began to walk on the gleaming sand. “God!”

  The entire surface of the Caribbean was nearly white, glittering with the brightest galaxy of stars. Jane’s long blond curls were shining…. She was the blond beauty you always see at the beaches but nobody ever seems to get.

  As the two of them walked along—in spite of their best intentions not to—they began to feel wonderfully calm and content. As if nothing really mattered except the buttery sun, getting a tan, keeping the sea spray in their faces.

  “It’s so grand, Peter. Kowabunga! Old Indian expression of delight and awe—from The Howdy Doody Show.”

  “Kind of makes you wonder why somebody would pick central Michigan to settle in. Any cold climate. Oh, Caleb, isn’t that the most gorgeous stretch of tundra! Let’s build our house there.”

  “Oh … hush, puppy.”

  Walking barefoot, carrying loafers and sandals, they passed under a low wooden pier. Pilings coated with seaweed and barnacles. Some sort of hot-sauce-and-clams bar chattering overhead. As they emerged from under the dark, rotting planks, Peter happened to glance up at the boardwalk. What he saw snapped his perfect mood like a twig.

  Sauntering along, carefree as tourists, were the black killers from Turtle Bay. The Cuban and King-fish Toone. Even more disturbing, the smaller of the two was pointing down at the beach. Right at Jane and him.

  “Janie, we don’t have time to think this out,” he said, “but I want you to get ready to run like an absolute madwoman. The killers from Turtle Bay are at our beach.”

  Meanwhile the two blacks hurried to a set of wooden stairs twisting down to the sand. Dressed in lightweight suits and fedoras, they looked like duded-up Caribbean businessmen.

  Peter looked back once and saw the two men running. Strong-looking bastards. Coming like goddamn madmen, knocking sunbathers down and stepping on them. What the hell were they figuring on? A public execution?

  “Let’s go. Run!”

  Split-splat. Split-splat. Bare feet kicked sand high, kicking sand on people sunbathing on either side of their running track. Jane running fast, thank God. Jesus!

  Trying to keep up the pace, Peter scrambled for some smart idea of what to do now. He looked back over his shoulder again. Almost trainwrecked into a family drag-assing hotel towels.

  American sun dreamers doing absolutely zilch, backing away from the chase. Kitty Genovese goes to the Caribbean.

  Stumbling through a particularly jammed beach towel parking lot, Jane could feel her chest and thighs starting to burn up. A slight stitch in her side. A hundred yards ahead she spotted squat limestone buildings. Showers. Dressing rooms. Shooting from the roof of the little complex, a white stairway to the boardwalk.

  “Peter! Way up there!”

  A few strides farther on, Peter grabbed the cabana jacket of a tall, very hairy man. “Help us!” he gasped. “Will you call the police?”

  The hairy man shoved him. Stepped back. “Keep your hands off. Get away from me, you.”

  Nobody listened. No wonder the police and the U.S. embassy people had been so strange—they couldn’t believe somebody was trying to help.

  Even more terrified, the young man and woman started to run again.

  They broke through crowds heading in to shower and dress in the limestone buildings. Fat boys with plastic footballs. Strong smells of sun lotions. Not really feeling these people who hit off their bodies. Numb, everything unreal.

  Inside the bathhouse was a large, cool concrete room. No discernible purpose for the room. Twenty or thirty people were milling around. Rude Boys smoking corncob pipes. Four different doors going out.

  “Stairs?” Peter screamed at a pink face under a big straw hat. Princess.

  “The stairs!” Jane screamed with him now. “Tell us where!”

  As Princess pointed left, Peter and Jane heard a commotion starting up behind them.

  Suddenly a black lifeguard ran out of one of the concrete hallways. O. J. Simpson with cornbraids. He yelled in a booming voice at the two men just coming through the main entrance.

  Booooomm!

  A single, unbelievable explosion echoed through the bathh
ouse. Bright red blood sprayed all over. The shocked lifeguard crashed back into a limestone wall. He came off the wall face first, braids jangling, down onto the concrete floor.

  All kinds of people were screaming, “Murder!” in the strange bare room. People diving on the floor … a hole as big as a baseball in the lifeguard’s back. Red Rorschach splatter. Total panic.

  Peter and Jane were off and running again, feeling shitty about the young black guy. Left—but they didn’t see any stairs there.

  “You got any ideas?”

  “No.”

  “Holy shit!”

  Another wild mouse left and they found doors. BATHROOM, MEN’S SHOWER, CLOSET, WOMEN’S SHOWER, MAINTENANCE. Then they were at a complete dead end in the building. Fresh out of clever ideas, too.

  Then Jane got her idea. “Here.”

  Inside WOMEN’S SHOWER, billowing steam hit them like a sudden hot log. They saw the bare rump of a white woman. Two rumps. Rows of gray lockers and benches.

  “Look for a place to hide in here.”

  The bare woman went left, Peter and Jane right. As they did—dragging each other around sharp locker corners—they heard the big metal door to the corridor open and shut again.

  “Nice try,” Peter said.

  He yanked at a wooden door and they were inside a narrow tiled room with five or six showers running water. Down through the waterfalls they saw a naked black woman and a little girl of about three.

  The girl had a head full of creamy soapsuds. She was looking at the strange, intruding white couple as if they were the real Laurel and Hardy. The girl’s mother looked terrified, though. Hands across her breasts, she started to scream.

  “Please,” Jane whispered, walking right back through the showers, dragging Peter. “I know how it must look, but some men are chasing us. Please don’t scream.”

  At the end of the row of showers, the two of them slipped into a narrow alcove.

  “Hidden from the front door, at least,” Jane whispered to Peter.

  “What do yo’ want in here?” The black woman finally spoke to them.