James Patterson (11 page)

“I have no moral reactions anymore,” Damian said. “Sometimes, though, I feel a kind of icy, grand compassion.”

The Rose Diary

May 5, 1979; West Hills, San Dominica

Saturday Morning. The Fifth Day of the Season.

Peter was beginning to get his second worm’s-eye view of those sneaky, dirty little wars that had come of age—or at least back into vogue—during the 1960s.

For a terrifying few minutes he had a pretty clear vision of man’s inhumanity to man. Of the bizarre contrivances some men will use to gain an advantage. The horror of being alone and unknowing in the middle of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. Of being an absolute nobody in the greater scheme of things. A zero on the world’s Richter scale. A gook.

A thick, dark liquid was dripping dead center on his chest. Motor oil, he realized after a few fuzzy-eyed seconds.

A train was coming!

A train was getting close to his hiding place in the West Hills’ jungle. Colonel Dred’s turf.

A train? Peter considered. Hiding place? He was going buggy.

He rolled over sideways and peeked through reeds of tall grass; tried to clear his sore throat of pollen and dew. Two lizards walked by at his eye level, one following the other. They seemed to be well acquainted. To be good friends, maybe lovers… The two lizards stopped and played in the grass like small dinosaurs. Quite gregarious little monsters. Red bubbles throbbed under their green-and-blue chins.

Macdonald slowly rolled out, away from the BMW. He sat in the grass and picked grass and stones out of his arm and watched the sun as it peeked through trees dripping heavy moss. The sky was flaming over the leaf cover. Hot, hot, today.

Hiding out, he considered once again, trying the feeling out like a new sports coat. On the run.

After another minute massaging hopeless thoughts, Peter got up and started to make a fire. Gathered leaves and a few sticks, twigs, grass reeds, anything dry. He went over to the motorcycle and pulled out the German’s dandy cross-country kit…. In a few minutes he’d make instant Nescafé coffee. Powdered eggs. Some kind of dried, salty beef.

Crouched over the small fire, the young man gulped down the equivalent of four eggs, the worst coffee he could imagine, mystery meat, and a chocolate bar that came all the way from West Germany
chust for such an occashun.

While he finished the quick meal, Peter thought about Jane. He considered going into Coastown to get her. Decided against it. She was better off as far away from him as possible. Probably as far away as possible from the San Dominican police, too. For the moment Jane was fine where she was. Which was more than he could say for himself.

After he finished breakfast, he went back to the BMW’s shiny black leather saddlebags. He took out a
West Point
T-shirt and unwrapped the Colt .44.

It seemed strange, unreal, as he held the old gun. He turned the chamber and saw all eight shells. He examined the gun further, remembered the army shooting ranges at West Point that were hidden in massive gray-stone buildings on a hill above the football field, Michie Stadium. He remembered a seedy shooting range inside a steaming, tin-roofed building in the Cholon section of Saigon.

Peter slowly raised the long-barreled Colt. Aimed at a mottled banana tree leaf. Aimed at a tiny chattering yellow bird. Aimed at a small green coconut. Finally at a small black snake slithering up a gom-mier tree.

The tree was a good thirty-five paces away. Thirty-five yards. What pistol enthusiasts regard as trick or showboat shooting.

Looking like an old-fashioned duelist, aiming ever so carefully, Peter squeezed the trigger gently.

The distant head of the black snake exploded as if it were rotten inside. The rest of the snake dropped from the gommier like a loose vine.

In a way, the neat shot pleased and surprised him. He really hadn’t expected the showpiece revolver to be so well balanced. As for the shooter—well, he knew all about the other shooter.

“Hoo boy!” Peter said out loud to the
deangerous
West Hills. “Now what, hotshot?”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

The John Simpson Roses. Strange, blue blood family. Damian’s fourteen-year-old brother was caught cheating on a bloody exam at the Horace Mann School. Teenager swallowed half a beaker of sulfuric acid. Didn’t die because the dose was so high he vomited it all up. He was crippled from his neck down, though. In an institution ever since. Damian’s mother living in an institution year-round, too. Father rides round and round Manhattan and London in a big black limo provided by a multinational bank. Damian planning to kill his father in the limo one day….

The Rose Diary

Mercury Landing, San Dominica

Saturday Afternoon.

The shoreline at Mercury Landing was pretty and very secluded.

Black cliffs rose high on either side of a silver of gleaming white sand. There was a glen of royal palm trees. Yellow birds. Flocks of parrots, as in an open-air pet store. A big red sun over the sea like God’s angry eye.

There was a big white house over the sea, too. And on one side of the house, a dark green sedan was hidden in the shadows of casuarina trees.

There could be no doubt about one thing: San Dominica was a paradise on this earth.

Down on the beach at Mercury. Landing, a man and woman were walking in the nude. Without her clothes, Carrie Rose’s legs seemed a little too long, a little bowed. Her feet were slightly too large and too flat.

These were nitpicks, however, because the slender young woman was quite beautiful without clothes.

Walking beside her, Damian was almost as impressive to look at. The tall blond man wore nothing, but he had an expensive terry-cloth jumpsuit draped over one arm. He had broad shoulders and well-muscled legs. A hard, flat stomach. Pretty blond hair.

A long, sun-tanned cock hung out of the light, curly hair between Damian’s legs.

“The killing should all be over now,” Carrie was saying to him, with the little midwestern twang always in her voice. “It’s taking too long, Damian. A week is too long.”

Damian just smiled at her. He glanced out at a boat coming over a distant reef. A gray smudge on a wiggly black line. “You just want the tension you’re feeling to be over,” he said in a soft, detached voice. “It isn’t taking too long at all. It’s perfect so far. This island is as insane and paranoid as a madhouse…. Besides, in two days or so you get to leave. You can even start to spend all our money. Buy yourself a few cars or something, Carrie.”

Carrie Rose slipped her arm around her husband’s firm waist. “I want you to leave with me. I think it will be better that way. Will you do that, Damian? Leave with me?”

“If I leave”—Damian started to raise his voice—“then Campbell and Harold Hill will come looking for us. Sooner or later they’ll find us. Suddenly a big black car will arrive at our villa somewhere or other. Their short-haired killers will come down on us like little Nazis. Kill us. Become heroes. Write books and make movies like
The French Connection.

“Look at how it’s growing.” Damian suddenly changed moods, smiled unexpectedly. “Irreverent little beast.
Big
beast.”

As he was talking, his penis had extended itself straight out and to the left. Blood had gone to its tip—which was just touching Carrie’s bare leg.

She pushed it away. “If I have to tell you everything explicitly, I’m frightened this time. You’re playing too many games this time. I don’t want us to end like this…. You mentioned little Nazis before. Well, we’re going to be searched for like Nazis.”

Damian threw up his arms like a Frenchman. “Let them search. Let them search. They looked for Eichmann for twenty years. They’re stupid, Carrie. Remember that. They are all stupid, bumbling idiots.”

Carrie just bowed her head. She let her long hair swing from side to side, brushing over her breasts.

For the next few minutes they walked along the lip of the cove in silence.

“If I were to lie down in the water there?” She finally spoke….

The two beautiful people walked to where the white sand was slicked-over wet. Damian put down the expensive terry-cloth suit, and Carrie lay on it. Damian kneeled over her—began to lower himself slowly. For a fleeting moment his clear blue eyes seemed almost gentle to her.

“So tell me, Carrie,” he said, “how was your handsome stockbroker?”

Saturday Evening.

The main coup de theatre was staged that night, Saturday, May 5.

At eleven o’clock automobile headlights appeared at Mercury Landing’s high, silver-painted front gates. Emerging from the shadowy gates, the Cuban waved the first car on.

Standing at the other end of the driveway, Damian Rose could hear gravel being crushed under heavy automobile tires.

One hour late, but they were coming, anyway.

The tall blond man checked a Smith & Wesson revolver under his suit jacket. A small snub-nosed .38. A very appropriate weapon for the evening’s performance, Rose thought… Tonight he was going to play Hammett for the locals.

As he continued to watch down the hill, a second and third set of headlights turned onto the pitch-black driveway. One pair of lights was outrageously cross-eyed. It exposed tall Bermuda grass on one side of the car, palm trees and purplish sky on the other.

The three cars completely disappeared for a moment. They passed behind bay trees and bushes called fire-of-the-forest, where six local gunmen had been told to wait. Just wait.

Then bright headlights sprayed all over the vined walls and windows of the whitewashed main house. The cars began to park in a glen of casuarinas in front of the villa.

Ready or not, Damian thought to himself, this is it. Curtain time.

He rehearsed all his lines one final time before he had to go on.

Out on a large flagstone terrace at the rear of the villa, Kingfish Toone could be heard speaking pidgin English with a French-Congolese accent.

“We are prepare to offer you cash only,” the broad-shouldered mercenary explained to the four guerrilla leaders who had just arrived. “One hundred twenty-five thousand. You could buy whatever you like with the money. Guns. Whatever you like. That is my final offer, Colonel.”

Dassie “Monkey” Dred let his pretty chocolate face fall between his long legs. His long cornbraids fell. He began to laugh in a loud, crude voice.

Then he started making bird noises out oh the terrace.

“Ayeee! S’mady take dis monkey-mahn away fram me,” Dred said to no one in particular. “Dis Africahn smell lak hairdresser fram Americah.”

Kingfish Toone smiled along with Dred’s men. The African had met and dealt with this type of madman before.

Across the terrace, the Cuban sat on a small wicker rocking chair, saying nothing at all.

“That smell is something called soap. You’ve never smelled soap before, have you?”

A tall white man spoke from the doorway leading back into the house. His blond hair was all wet, slicked back close to the scalp, like something out of
Esquire
or
Gentlemen’s Quarterly.
He was wearing an expensively tailored cream gabardine suit. Appropriate accoutrements, perfectly matched. An inlaid ivory watch. An ivory ring. A black Gucci belt and Gucci loafers.

Damian Rose ran his hand back over his wet hair once again. Then he crossed the patio to the young, bearded revolutionary. As he walked, his jacket swung open, revealing a fancy belt holster and the Smith & Wesson.

“Colonel Dred.” Damian smiled like a Clint Eastwood character. “Your work is admired far off this island. In Europe, I’m talking about. In black America.”

The guerrilla soldier’s face softened for a split second that wasn’t lost on Rose. Then Dred dismissed the compliment with a wave of his hand. He spit on the terrace.

“Yo’ very well-train ape”—he indicated King fish Toone sitting across the terrace—“has offered me—what is it?—cash…. I don’t need dat. I have all kind cash from ganja sellin’.”

Rose’s soft blue eyes never left the much darker eyes of the San Dominican. “First of all, my ‘well-trained ape’ could rip off your coconuts in abaut five seconds’ time, Colonel. Secondly, whatever your problem is, we can find a solution.”

“He wants the guns used in this raid.” The Cuban spoke in Spanish from his seat across the terrace. “He has trouble buying guns.”

“For obvious reasons.” Damian turned back to Dred. “I don’t want to arm you that well, Colonel…. You may have the guns, however. We’ll give you two hundred fifty M-16’s. Plus handguns.”

“Fifty t’ousan’ rounds of ammunition. At least fifty machine guns,” Dred shouted. His three officers smiled and clapped their hands like Barnum and Bailey chimps.

The lips of the tall blond man parted in a slight smile. He slid his hands back over the wet hair again. He took out a pack of English cigarettes.

“I can’t give you the machine guns,” Damian said flatly.

Suddenly Monkey Dred was on his feet, shouting at the top of his lungs. His cornbraids shook like a hundred dancing black snakes. A U.S. Army ammunition belt around his waist jounced and jangled.

“Forty machine guns, den! Deliver at least one day before dat
massacree.”

Damian Rose picked up a camphor candle from a patio table. He lit his cigarette with it. The word
massacree
rolled over his tongue.
Massacree.

“One fifty-millimeter machine gun. For you!” Rose let the cigarette dangle. “But the other guns to be distributed
right now.
Plus a bonus of twenty-five thousand rounds of ammunition…. If I could offer you more, I would. It’s not my money, Colonel…. Our friends in Cuba know what you need, and what you don’t.”

A loud laugh came up from somewhere deep in the black man’s chest. “All right, den!” he shouted.

Damian Rose smiled. Friends in Cuba indeed… he’d won. Massacree!

He heaved the red jar and camphor candle far down the hillside toward the Caribbean. The lamp hit a distant, invisible rock. It broke with the pop of a light bulb.