The John Simpson Roses. Strange, blueblood 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 midwestem 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 he roes. 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 walking, 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, humbling 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 pitchblack driveway. One pair of lights was outrageous y 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.
