Season of the Machete

by James Patterson

  His mind had just gone snap. Snap, crackle, pop.

  Peter didn’t give a shit. He did: but he didn’t.

  What he wanted now—what he’d been thinking about since late last night—was how he could get his revenge. Everything was beautifully simple, for a change. Just one guiding light. Get the blond mercenary somehow. Blow his brains out. Just like Jane, only slower.

  Sitting in the bathtub, Peter figured out one other important thing. He figured that he probably wouldn’t have to worry about looking for the blond Englishman. One day he’d look up—and the blond man would just be there. Just like at Turtle Bay.

  At nine o’clock Damian sat inside a Coastown church and carefully studied the place.

  A small black boy came up to him, and Damian made the most horrifying face he could imagine. The boy laughed like a banshee. Visitors in the church turned to complain, then they began to smile, too.

  Meanwhile the hired English killer was accelerating the merry wild-mouse chase around San Dominica.

  He was also managing to round out Damian’s flat and, until then, rather bloodless character. Clive Lawson was getting Rose labeled as a first-class pervert.

  Sitting on one of the stonework terraces of the ramshackle Royal Caribbean Hotel, Lawson eyed a cocky little stinkpot chugging up toward Coastown under big mackerel clouds.

  In a dilapidated white-wicker chair two feet across from him, a naked, mewing seventeen-year-old was expounding some sort of psychedelic swami—Moon—Castaneda gibberish about organic orgasms. The adult-breasted teen had gray streaks in very long black hair. Her face was long, too, spare and striking.

  “Like … like saffron and ocher paints … are like mixing on the insides of my eyelids,” she said in a whispery voice that made the revelation sexy if nothing else.

  Meanwhile she stuck two long fingers deep inside herself.

  Clive Lawson watched the girl’s fingers work back and forth, back and forth, like two long legs walking in dune grass. Very slowly he masturbated himself with both hands.

  The girl’s name was Stormy Lascher. Half of her brain had been blasted away by acid and psilocybin; the other half departed while she was working at a massage parlor inside New York’s once mediocre Commodore Hotel.

  The blond Englishman, she was discovering— chauvinist and dirty old thirty-three-year-old that he was—also had an interesting (blue-veined, cocky-hatted, well-muscled) Capricorn prick. In fact, his standard equipment compared favorably with the slimmer, cuter rocketships on so many of the college boys from nearby Sunshower Beach.

  “I’m going to come any sec,” the seventeen-year-old screamed, pointing her dirty silver-toed feet up like a ballet dancer. “Oh, Jesus. Jesus Christ.”

  Stormy started to shiver, moan, and she brought a long tab of amyl nitrite up to her little pug nose. As she broke open the tab, she heard the blond man say very clearly, “I’m the one they’re looking for. The Englishman. Now there’s one for your record book, Storm.”

  The long-haired girl nodded her head once—then nothing but bright, mixing paints were there.

  By ten A.M. the English killer was on the road up to Coastown, heading toward another of his targets.

  By ten Denise “Stormy” Lascher was sitting out on the terrace of room 334, screaming like the hopeless madwoman she would one day become.

  At a little after eleven the police, the army, and the CIA swarmed over the Royal Caribbean like ants on a gingerbread castle. Harold Hill and Brooks Campbell marched through the ornate front lobby together, Campbell carrying a bulky M-16 rifle. The police stopped all regular elevator service and began to search the ancient, sprawling dinosaur from the cellar up to the gabled rooftops.

  Hill, Campbell, and Dr. Johnson went directly to room 334, where Denise Lascher was being detained. The hysterical teenager told them that the man must have left before all the police came bursting in. She didn’t know for sure…. Yes, he was tall. Blond-haired. Like Michael Caine, she said. No, she didn’t remember anything specific he’d said. Just that he was the one … the machete killer everyone was looking for.

  Harold Hill rummaged through the trash baskets in the suite’s bedroom and bath. The gray-haired CIA director found empty, crushed packs of Dunhill cigarettes, marijuana roaches, an empty carton for Remington rifle shells, a box of French ticklers. Garbage.

  Meanwhile Meral Johnson had put out an alert for the car the tall blond man had been seen driving. A blue 1979 Mustang, license number 3984-A, according to the hotel register.

  Johnson sent his men and the American inspectors around the hotel to interview as many of the guests and help as possible. At the same time he had roadblocks set up outside Carolinsted and all through the surrounding villages.

  Dr. Johnson had the feeling that they might finally be closing in on him. The black man hadn’t slept for two days now; he was obsessed with getting the blond mercenary. More so than any of them, he believed privately … Johnson alone understood that the tall blond man had destroyed San Dominica.

  In front of the hotel, Campbell and Harold Hill leaned on a driftwood fence railing, both of them chain-smoking.

  “I haven’t known what to say about Carole.” Campbell flipped his cigarette onto the beach sand. “I’m sorry. I hope you know how I feel, Harry.”

  “You feel that you have to say something,” Harold Hill said, and smiled cruelly. “That’s all you feel, Brooks.”

  Campbell let his eyes drift out over the soothing, beautiful Caribbean. “What about Macdonald?”

  “If we catch Rose, Macdonald makes the ID. I’d hate to do it off that photokit drawing…. I’m also prepared to try him as bait for Rose. If we can be clever enough to do that discreetly.”

  “I think Rose might try to hit Macdonald anyway. What else is keeping him around here?”

  Harold Hill extended his hands, palms up. He didn’t know.

  The two men walked back across the hotel’s rolling lawns. As they approached a waiting Puma helicopter, men in blue jumpsuits began to take off the plane’s chocks and hawsers.

  “We’re getting very close to him now,” Harold Hill said, “or vice versa.”

  At eleven o’clock Peter made the first of four tape recordings for the CIA’s more than 8.5-billion-item computer files.

  For an hour and a half straight he talked into a reel-to-reel Sony for the edification of two very hip academic-type interrogators from Washington. He told them about his odyssey through the West Hills jungle; about everything he’d seen at Turtle Bay; about his feelings toward the U.S. government after Watergate; after Cambodia; after, say, Jane had been killed….

  In short, the two interrogators were trying to determine whether Peter was going to give them any trouble.

  At twelve-thirty a police artist started a photokit drawing of Damian Rose, based on what Peter could remember from the unbelievable fifteen-second tableau on the shore Highway.

  By one o’clock his interrogators were in the offices of Alcoa Aluminum, color copying a fair likeness of the tall blond man.

  Also at one o’clock, Peter asked the CIA for a gun to protect himself, but he was refused.

  At two a crowd of agents removed him from the Golf and Racquet Condominiums. Things were going too fast all of a sudden. Everything fuzzy and unclear.

  They took an elevator two floors down to the lobby. Then a fast walk through a garden—to a gray Ford with little American flags on the fenders. Switched back two cars to a blue Mercury Cougar with the shiniest front grille in captivity.

  Doors shut like clockwork, then the blue Mercury jerked away from the curb. Flashed past palm trees and stately casuarinas. Tires screeched out onto Orange Boulevard, where unconcerned blacks sold bananas and papaya on the sidewalks.

  Off to the Church of Angels. Off to see a lot of the victims, including Jane.

  Sitting in back—arms folded, mind folded—Peter wondered why they had decided to go to the church in broad daylight. He forgot the thought momentarily. Saw Jane bli
nking on and off like neon lights. Saw the blond man over Turtle Bay. Saw himself on the flashy green Peugeot bicycle.

  “You all right, Pete?”

  “Yeah. Sure. I was just thinking…. ”

  Inside the medium-size Catholic church, Harold Hill and Brooks Campbell waited in the sacristy. Both Washington men were wearing lightweight business suits; they looked appropriately respectful.

  They were discussing important logistics with an oblate priest, Father Kevin Brennan. They wanted to know where all the side and back doors were. Where the press could get their photographs but not get in the way. Where an assassin—“if an assassin had it in mind, Father”—might try to hide inside the church.

  Meanwhile a crowd from the streets was starting to gather and move inside the front doors of the church. The crowd also included both Clive Lawson and Damian Rose.

  As the government car swept around the church’s circular driveway, Peter couldn’t help thinking that the baby cathedral wasn’t a bad place for a sniper. Ugly deranged crowd; busy city streets; lots of carnival confusion.

  Stepping out of the official-looking Mercury, he heard the crowd’s loud chant.

  “United. State. Murderers!

  “United. State. Murderers!

  “Haile Selassie!

  “Haile Selassie!”

  He watched a blur of black faces craning long necks, bulging veins, trying to find out what was going on all over their island.

  It was so goddamn weird. A lot like Saigon in ‘73. It made Peter feel like getting up with a microphone—explaining that most people in the United States were okay. That they didn’t want all the island’s bauxite—they didn’t want to hurt anybody. Period.

  Five men in dark suits and crisp white shirts met him on the creaking front steps of the church. Brooks. Campbell. Dr. Johnson. Harold Hill. The American ambassador himself.

  A young Catholic priest took Peter by the arm. Brief condolences and clumsy apologies were exchanged. Then the entourage quickly moved inside.

  A TV news cameraman followed close behind them, stumbling along like a proud uncle at a wedding.

  Two marines followed with MAT submachine guns.

  Meanwhile Peter had put on his old baseball hat. Like Green Berets wearing their hats to funerals. Fuck your silly rules; conventions; fuck you!

  “Not in here, Peter,” the priest whispered. “The hat. Please.”

  Peter heard nothing but the sound of two rows of plain wooden coffins being lined up in front of the church’s central altar. The boxes contained bodies still unclaimed after the Elizabeth’s Fancy massacre. They held the two dead agents from Mandeville Hospital. One of the temporary Red Cross coffins held Jane.

  “I know how you feel, Peter. But you’re showing disrespect for Our Lord in this way.”

  “I doubt it means diddly-shit one way or the other to Our Lord. If it does, I don’t buy his act, either.”

  Finally Father Brennan pointed to a particular coffin to the right of the bright gold-and-red altar.

  Peter stopped in front of a coffin with a place card: JANE FRANCES COOKE.

  He looked down the line of U.S. embassy and police officials. Praying? Reciting the Pledge of Allegiance? … The scene reminded him of the aftermath of some large tragedy he’d seen in some news clip. Hundreds of bodies laid out in a grammar school cafeteria. Mourners searching for friends and relatives. Violated in their grief by television cameras.

  “Aren’t you going to open it?” he finally said to the priest. “I’d like to see her once more, please.”

  “We haven’t been doing that,” the priest said in a whisper. “These aren’t the best conditions, Peter.”

  “I’d like to see her. I think we can all take it.”

  “Will you take off your hat?” the priest asked again.

  Peter took off the baseball hat, and the oblate consented to lift the lid for a brief viewing. It wasn’t what he thought best—but the police chief said yes; the American ambassador said yes; and the young American man seemed to know what he wanted….

  With a loud tearing noise, the lid came off.

  Peter looked down and saw a young-looking woman, only vaguely recognizable, surprisingly small now…. Jane had been prepared with what looked like an old lady’s face powder and rouge. Her long blond curls looked brittle and stiff, like the artificial hair on a child’s doll. They hadn’t even used one of her own dresses….

  Oh, my God, no, Peter said over and over to himself. Oh, God, Jesus. Goddammit. Goddammit. If all those bastards hadn’t been watching him, he would have let himself cry.

  At the same time, Damian was watching the English killer, high up in the church’s choir loft. He was just three aisles behind Clive Lawson. No more than twelve feet away.

  The expensive killer had had one opportunity, but he’d resisted it. Basically a good decision, Rose was thinking, calculating. This church was an interesting place for a shot, spectacular and unexpected—a thrill till—but maybe it wasn’t the best place. Nonetheless, I would have done it here, Damian thought. Maybe on the way out….

  He studied Peter Macdonald standing in front of his girlfriend’s coffin; he watched Brooks Campbell, Hill—ducks on a pond.

  Soon, however, he saw Clive Lawson quietly leave the choir loft, then the church altogether. The English killer had on a dark, contemporary rug that made him look like many of the news reporters. Like the Secret Service men, for that matter. Not bad for a traveling disguise.

  It appeared that the grand finale, the coup de grace, was going to have to wait just a little bit longer.

  Damian left the Church of Angels with the main body of the crowd. He was an odd-looking sight with his baggy yellow trousers; his parasol; his jester’s cap held respectfully in one hand.

  Almost instantly he was accosted by a mob of kids who wanted to play with Basil, the Children’s Minstrel.

  Thursday Evening.

  All Thursday, San Dominica had been overturned and researched as desperately as it should have been the very night of the Elizabeth’s Fancy massacre.

  Owners of stores, cafes, taverns, and private homes were badgered by agents with the photokit drawing made from Peter’s description.

  Each and every motel, hotel, inn, chalet, hacienda, villa, lodge, casa, caravansary—black or white in clientele—all were assaulted by marauding teams of local police and U.S. federal marshals. Rude Boys were hired to go out and mine for information in the larger city underworlds; among the cocaine and ganja dealers. Thousands of ordinary people were held up at the airports and boat docks, as well as at the major roadblocks set all over the island.

  Neither Damian Rose nor Clive Lawson turned up in any of the searches, however. Like a Martin Bormann, a Mengele—they were simply not the type of fish that wind up in a police dragnet.

  Bay of Pigs II was fast becoming Bay of Panic.

  At 7:00 P.M. that night, a communications expert, Harvey Epstein, thought that he’d lucked into the first gold strike of the entire manhunt.

  At the time of the discovery, Epstein was playing Canfield solitaire on the floor of a VW van. The van was parked about three hundred yards behind a large villa owned by the Charles Forlenza Family (Sunasta Hotels) on San Dominica. Inside the van, Epstein was illegally bugging the Forlenza phones.

  For two straight days now the only thing he’d heard was the Forlenza cook calling in her giggly orders for groceries at a place called the Coastown Gourmet Market. When the phone rang at seven, Harvey had a hunger attack.

  He pressed his earphones to one ear only, uncovered a club ace. Listened.

  “Hello.”

  The first voice he recorded was a hood named Duane Nicholson. Nicholson was the man Isadore Goldman had brought with him to Government House on May 6.

  Epstein assumed that the second voice was that of Damian Rose.

  “I’m going to need those favors done for me,”

  Rose said. “Put your part of things into operation.”

  “
Tomorrow, right?” Nicholson asked.

  Click. Buzz.

  “Son of a bitch. Harvey! Son of a bitch!”

  In less than an hour Campbell and Harold Hill were listening to the tape in Coastown.

  “Interesting.” Campbell recognized the silky voice. “It was Rose.”

  Still under guard at the Golf and Racquet Club, Peter sat in front of the San Dominican Broadcasting Corporation’s blurry evening news.

  For the first time in two days he was clear-headed enough to consider the effect of a sniper’s bullet. Every president’s daydream … your car windshield splattered against a bug. Half an ounce of steel entering your forehead at three thousand feet per second. Insane and nauseating.

  Around 8:30 he made a phone call to his family in Grand Rapids.

  His mother couldn’t understand why air force one hadn’t flown him home already. “Make them put you on the first plane out of that place,” Betsy Macdonald told Peter. “My God, they’ve put you through enough already. They can come right up here to ask you any more questions they have. Tell them that, Peter…. ”

  Peter’s father wanted to know what the real story was. He’d talked to his friend Senator Pflanzer, and Pflanzer wanted to know, too. “Pete, don’t take any chances for those sorry bastards,” Colonel Edward Macdonald said—Big Mac. “They’re not doing shit for us anymore—the whole damn government. They don’t deserve anything back from us. I mean it.”

  As he listened, occasionally talked, Peter tried to picture Big Mac and Little Betsy. He saw them maybe ten years younger than they really were now. He saw the Super Six posing like some roughneck hockey team.

  “I’ll try to get home real soon,” he said to his father. “Tell that to Mom. Tell my brothers, too. Miss the hell out of all of you. I really do.”

  After the call, Peter just sat in the dark pseu-dotropics condominium bedroom. Thinking.

  He imagined a slow-motion pistol shot to a man’s forehead. Like the famous Vietnamese execution photograph. The tall blond man’s head actually vaporizing.

  At 1:30 in the morning one of the CIA agents came into the bedroom—a little Italian guy who was always imitating Peter Falk.