James Patterson - Season of the Machete

The Season of the Machete
By: James Patterson
Copyright 1977
April 30, 1980; Turtle Bay
On the gleaming white-sand lip of the next cove, Kingfish and the Cuban can see a couple walking on the beach. they are just stick figures at this distance. Absolutely perfect victims. Perfect.
Hidden in palm trees and sky blue wild lilies, the two killers cautiously watch the couple slowly come their way and disappear into the cove.
The Cuban wears a skull-tight, red-and-yellow bandanna; rip-kneed khaki trousers; scuffed, pale orange construction boots from the Amy-Navy Store in Miami. The man called Kingfish has on nothing but greasy U.S. Army khakis.
The muscles of both men ripple in the hard, beating Caribbean sun.
The bright sun makes diamonds and blinking asterisks all over the sea. It glints off a sugar-cane machete hanging from the belt of the Cuban '
The weatherbeaten farm implement is two and a half feet long and sharp as a razor blade.
South of their hiding place, a great wrecked schooner-the Isabelle Anne-sits lonely and absurd, visited only by yellow birds and fish. Thirty yards farther south, the beach elbows around steep black rocks and makes a crystal path for walking. At this sharp bend lie reef fish, coml, sargassum, oyster drills, sea urchins.
Soon now, the two killers expect the couple to emerge from the cove and reappear on the narrow white path. The victims.
Perhaps a dark, bejeweled prime minister up on holiday from South America? Or an American politician with a coin- and milk-fed young woman who was both secretary and mistress?
Someone worth their considerable fees and passage to this serene and beautiful part of the world. Someone worth $50,000 apiece for less than one week's work.
Instead, a harmless-looking pair of adolescents turn the seaweed-strewn bend into Turtle Bay.
A bony, long-haired rich boy. A white-blond girl in a Club Mediterranee T-shirt. Americans. On the run, they clumsily get out of their shirts, shorts, sandals, and underwear. Balls and little tits naked, they shout something about last one in is a rotten egg and run into the low, starry waves.
Twenty or thirty feet over their heads, seagulls make a sound almost like mountain sheep bleating.
Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! Aaaaaa! The man called Kingfish puts out an expensive black cigar in the sand. A low, animal moan rises out of his throat.
"We couldn't have come all this way to kill these two little shits."
The Cuban cautions him, "Wait and see. Watch them carefully."
"Aaagghh! Aaagghh!" The boy offers tin-ear bird imitations from the rippling water.
The slender blond girl screams, "I can't stand it. It's so goddamn unbelievably beautiful!"
She dives into sparkling aquamarine waves. Surfaces with her long hair plastered against her head. Her white breasts are small, nubby; up-pointed and rubbery from the cool water.
"I love this place already. Don't ever want to go back. Gramercy Park-yeck! I spit on East Twentythird Street. Yeck! Yahoo! Yow!"
The Cuban slowly raises his hand above the blue lilies and prickle bushes. He waves in the direction of a green sedan parked on a lush hill overlooking the beach.
The sedan's horn sounds once. Their signal.
An eerie silence has come over the place.
Heartheats; surf; little else.
The boy and girl lie on fluffy beach towels to dry under the sun. they close their eyes, and the backs of their eyelids become kaleidoscopes of changing color.
The girl sings, " 'Eastem's got my sunshine..........
The boy makes an impolite gurgling sound.
As the girl opens one eye, she feels a hard slap on the top of her head. It is painfully hot all of a sudden, and she feels dizzy. She starts to say "Aahhh" but chokes on thick, bubbling blood.
Pop... pop...
The slightest rifle shots echo in the surrounding hills.
Bullets travel out of an expensive West German rifle at 3,300 feet per second.
Then Kingfish and the Cuban come and stand over the bodies on the blood-spotted towels. Kingfish touches the boy's cheek and produces an unexpected moan, almost a growl.
"I don't think I like Mr. Damian Rose," he says in a soft, French-accented voice. "Very sorry I left Paris now. He's let this one live... for us."
The dying nineteen-year-old coughs. Blue eyes rolling, he speaks. "Why?" the boy asks. "Didn't do anything.
The Cuban swings the machete high. He chops down as if he were in the thickest jungle brush, as if he were cutting a tree with a single stroke.
Chop, wriggle, lift.
The killer meticulously attacks both bodies with the long broadsword. Clean, hard strokes. Devastating. Blood squirts high and sprays the killer. Flesh and bone part like air in the path of the razor-sharp knife. Puddles of frothy blood are quickly soaked up by the sand, leaving dark red stains.
When the -butchering is over, the Cuban drives the machete deep into the sand. He sets a red wool hat over the knife's handle and hasp.
Then both killers look up into the hills. they see the distant figure of Damian Rose beside the shiny green car. The handsome blond man is motioning for them to hurry back. He is waving his fancy German rifle high over his head.
What they can't quite see is that Damian Rose is smiling in triumph.
PREFACE
The Damian and Carrie Rose Diary
Consider the raw power and unlimited potential of the good old-fashioned "thrill kill." Under proper supervision, of course.
The Rose Diary
January 23, 1981; New York City
At 6:30 A.M. on the twenty-third of January, the birth date of his only child, Mary Ellen, Bernard Siegel-tall, dark, slightly myopic-began his usual" breakfast of loose scrambled eggs, poppyseed bagel, and black coffee at Wolf's Delicatessen on West Fifty-seventh Street in New York City.
After the satisfying meal, Siegel took a Checker cab through slushy brown snow to 800 Third Avenue. He used his private collection of seven keys to let himself into the modern dark-glass building, then into the offices of the publisher par excellence for whom he worked, and finally into the largest small office on that floor-his office-to try to get some busywork done before the many-too-many phones began to ring; to try to get home early enough to spend time with his daughter. On her twelfth birthday.
A young woman, very, very tan, squeaky clean, with premature silver all through her long, sandy hair, was standing before the dark, double-glazed windows. The woman appeared to be watching 777 Third Avenue (the building across and down Third Avenue), or perhaps she was just staring at her own reflection.
Bernard Siegel said, "One-how the hell did you get in here? Two-who the hell are you? Three-please leave."
"My name is Carrie Rose." The woman turned to face him. She looked to be twenty-eight or twenty-nine, spectacularly poised and cool. "I've come to make you an even more famous man than you are now. You are Siegel, aren't you?"
The editor couldn't hold back a slight smile, the smallest possible parting of thin, severe lips. She called him "Siegel."
Damn these shameless, impudent young writers, he thought. Had she actually slept in his office to get an interview? to give lucky him first crack at this year's Fear of Flying, or Flying, or The Flies?
Squinting badly, pathetically, for a man under forty, Siegel studied Carrie Rose. Mrs. Carrie Rose, he was to find out soon. Wife of Damian Rose. Soldier of fortune herself.
Under closer scrutiny, the young woman was striking, tall, and fashionably trim. voguish.
She had on large tortoiseshell eyeglasses that made her look more sharp-witted than she probably was; the blue pin-striped suit was meant to keep Siegel off his guard, he was sure. An old Indian dodge.
"All right, I'm Siegel," the nearsighted editor finally admitted. "I'm hardly famous. And this sort of clever, gratuitous nonsense doesn't cut it with me.... Please leave my office. Go back and write one more draft of your wonderful book. Make a regular-hours appointment with my-"