Authors: Season of the Machete
Just after it hit, lights flashed on and off down on the water. A small motor boat started to come in toward shore.
Carrie.
“Your guns, Colonel,” Damian Rose announced. “Enough guns and ammunition to take over the entire island … if you’ll listen to just a bit of advice.”
As early as 6:00
A.M.
on the sixth day, there were bold, unnerving machete murders in the two most expensive hotels in San Dominica’s two principal cities.
In Coastown, a young fashion photographer from Greenwich, Connecticut, was found floating facedown in a pretty courtyard swimming pool in the Princess Hotel. A black-handled sugar-cane machete was sticking out of the man’s back like an exclamation point to the crime.
In Port Gerry, an English barrister’s wife was hacked to pieces while she was gathering hibiscus in the garden of the exclusive Spice Point Inn. The woman was then bundled up in Spice Point towels and thrown onto the inn’s dining veranda by fleeing, half-naked black men.
Also very early in the morning, both the
Gleaner
and the
Evening Star
received Dead Letters. In these new communications, Colonel Dred claimed responsibility for the morning’s hotel murders.
Dred also warned that the rate of race killings on San Dominica would escalate by 1,000 percent daily until an interest in all hotels, restaurants, and other major businesses was turned over to the people.
Someone at the
Gleaner
calculated that since four people had died so far on the fifth, a minimum of forty people had to die on May 6.
Then four hundred … then four thousand …
May 6, 1979, Sunday
Princess, Spice Point, Hit
We’re conditioned to expect things to happen at a certain rate. To have a certain rhythm. What we did on San Dominica was to take all of the prevailing rhythms away.
The Rose Diary
May 6, 1979, Coastown, San Dominica
Sunday Morning. The Sixth Day of the Season.
At 7:15 the morning of the sixth day, Peter Mac-donald stepped through the kitchen door of Brooks Campbell’s expensive villa in Coastown, shouted, “Scrambled eggs!” and knocked the handsome CIA man down with a hard, right-handed punch to his Greco-Roman nose.
“You better stay right down there,” Peter yelled as Campbell tried to push himself to his feet. He took out the Colt .44 and pointed the barrel at an imaginary target, one-half inch in circumference, centered between Campbell’s hazel-brown eyes.
“What the hell do you want?”
“Just the truth,” Peter said quietly. “I’m not going to go into what’s happened to me since the last time you fucked me over—how I came to sleep in your garage last night—but I want to know everything you know about the machete murders. I want to know all your so-called state secrets.”
Very slowly, cautiously, Campbell got to his feet. “There’s only one problem with what you’re saying,” he said to Peter. “I just don’t believe you’d shoot me. I know you wouldn’t.”
The next thing Brooks Campbell saw was the big steel handle of the Colt .44. It struck him sideways across the cheekbone, and he crashed down on the yellow tile floor again.
“You
will
believe I’ll shoot you in a minute,” he heard dimly. A brown workboot stamped down hard on his chest, then he was pulled up roughly by his hair. Suddenly he felt a hot streak go down the right side of his face.
“Now, dammit, you better talk to me, mister. I know how to do shit like this. Torturing men. Believe me I do.”
Campbell was beginning to focus in on the heat burner of his own kitchen stove. The coil was red hot—a glowing orange—and his hair was starting to smoke. Bacon cooking on another burner was spitting all over the other side of his face.
“I swear to God I’ll fry your goddamn ear!” Macdonald yelled at him, army drill instructor style.
“We know the Mafia is involved somehow!” Campbell finally screamed out. “Let me up. I’m burning, Macdonald!”
Peter loosened his stranglehold, but not so much that Campbell could get up. “I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean. The Mafia … the Mafia what?”
“They’ve been trying to get the assembly here to legalize casino gambling for years…. Now they’re going to get what they want—or they say they’ll destroy this place. Blow up San Dominica and write it off as a tax loss…. That’s all we know. I swear it. Macdonald, I’m on fire!”
Peter finally let go of Campbell. What he’d heard started to make a little sense. It explained some of the things that had happened.
“What does Colonel Dred have to do with that? With the Mafia? Casino gambling?”
The CIA man was holding his ear as if it had been bitten into. He was wearing a gold-and-red dragon kimono, and for once in his life Brooks Campbell looked ridiculous.
“We don’t know how or even
if
they got to Dred.” He continued to tell half-truths with some conviction. “Apparently, something big is coming up soon. Those letters in the newspapers are actually warnings to the assembly. Some big horror show is coming. What you don’t understand is that we’re all going wild trying to stop it from happening.”
“I’m getting a feeling mat you’re lying again,” Peter said. He opened the refrigerator and looked inside. He threw Campbell some ice for the bruise on his-face. Then he took a long, sloppy swig of orange juice from an open jug.
“All right.” He waved the cowboy pistol at Campbell. “This has been a little better than our first talk, I guess. I’ll be back if I need to know anything else from you. Just don’t ever make the mistake of thinking that I wouldn’t shoot you. I’d shoot you. I don’t even like you.”
Peter backed out the kitchen door, then ran to the BMW.
Now what kind of horror show could be coming up? he wondered as he eased the motorcycle down palm-lined lanes and backed out toward the rain forest. Would the Mafia get mixed up in something like this? And how does the blond man fit in? A mercenary? To do what?
But, Christ, this was a hell of a lot better than being a bartender for a nutty German storm trooper…. Maybe he should become a cop, or a Philip Marlowe-type detective or something. Someday soon….
After his success with Campbell, Peter was at least feeling alive again. That was a start.
Coastown, San Dominica
A seagull flapped up Parmenter Street. Dipped to scrutinize natives setting up a brightly colored fruit mart. Angled right shoulder, wing first, and glided like a clever wooden airplane over the exclusive crimson-roofed Coastown Princess Hotel.
Sitting pretty with a big supply of steaming coffee, kipper and eggs, fresh rolls and sweet butter, Carrie Rose was out on her loggia at the Princess.
She was just beginning to compose a long, personal entry in the million-dollar diary. When she wrote, she told about a particular late summer afternoon in Paris. An afternoon that had provided a key to the whole thing.
August 10, 1978; Paris
The place was called Atlantic City, and it was a trendy little bistro recently sprung up as a haven for Americans on the avenue Marceau.
The cafe was already famous for its twelve varieties of
le hamburger.
And, to a lesser extent, for its big wooden posters illustrating different trivial points about a seedy boardwalk resort in southeastern New Jersey.
DID YOU KNOW THAT?
THE FIRST EASTER PARADE IN AMERICA WAS HELD IN ATLANTIC CITY …
THE FIRST FERRIS WHEEL WAS OPERATED IN ATLANTIC CITY….
THE FIRST MOTION PICTURE WAS MADE IN ATLANTIC CITY….
THE FIRST PICTURE POSTCARDS WERE FROM ATLANTIC CITY….
Floppy white hat covering half of her face, Carrie Rose walked back slowly into the dark bar. She heard “Lady Marmalade” playing on the jukebox.
“Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? …”
White butterfly stockings swished softly as she continued until she saw the wheelchair. Then Carrie realized that, for the first time in a long time, she was frightened.
“The incomparable, infamous Mrs. Rose.” Nickie Handy spoke to her from the corner of a candlelit booth. “Now what could your pleasure be this lovely, shitty afternoon?”
As Carrie slid into the oaken booth, she kissed the top of Nickie’s head. Her ex-partner. Then, as she settled in across from her old friend, she couldn’t help staring at the crippled man’s face.
Nickie Handy, still not thirty years old, had no left cheek now. No left side to his face. Just sagging flesh hanging off a cheekbone.
“I should come see you more than this,” she said softly. “Both Damian and I are rats, Nickie. We really are bad.”
A waitress came and Carrie ordered a bottle of pouilly-fuisse. Nickie made a remark about the French girl’s breasts. “Sow’s teats,” he said with a crooked little smile.
“Let’s have it. Let’s have it.” He turned back to Carrie. “Don’t hand me this visiting-the-local-VFW crap. Buying your hot-shit wines and all that …”
“All right. I came to talk to you about the shooting. Saigon.”
A surprised look dropped over Nickie Handy’s sad, Quasimodo face. “Let’s not,” he said. Then suddenly his face twisted up like a pretzel and he raised his voice.
“You’re looking at me like a fucking cat, Carrie. That disdainful look Siamese cats get. Bee-utiful! I love it, you cunt.”
“You’re paranoid.” Carrie continued to speak softly, almost lovingly. “Damian and I are doing a job with Harold Hill. Harry the Hack and your
very good friend
Brooks Campbell. Who would you suggest we go talk to?”
The cripple took his mug of beer and slowly spilled it out onto the pine-and-sawdust floor. “Bee-utiful!”
“Hey! Hey! Hey!” a dark-bearded French bartender, called back. “Behave yourself, Nickee!”
Handy screwed up his face again. Some kind of awful tic, apparently.
“Brooks Campbell was supposed to be paying me in that alley in Saigon. Blew my head off instead. Hello, Nick.
Blam! Blaml Blam! …
Left me for a fucking cold stiff in the sewer, Carrie.
“Dead chink mouse floated past my nose. I thought I was in hell already. Crippled in the sewer. Face messed up like it is.
Your new partners, you say?”
“There was no provocation for what they did, Nickie? Privateering? … It was just a double cross?”
“Straight double cross! Me and a poor gook bastard. I think he even kept my money for himself. Brooks Campbell. Fucking movie-star face.”
“Those awful bastards, Nickie.”
“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.
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.”