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
