on board a bus. The names are Damian and Carrie Rose. '
The slip-catch was that the United States was handling the search like a top-secret, national security matter. The clear implication: Somebody had goofed again in the Caribbean. The exact nature of the mistake remained a secret. A top secret.
Before it was over, though, some wisenheimer at Interpol had nicknamed the operation Bay of Pigs H. By Sunday that slogan was a headline in London's Observer.
Beginning unofficially at 6:00 P.m. on May 8, officially at 9:00 A.M. on the ninth, a straight-faced, very serious attempt was made to take the eightyone-by-thirty-nine-mile island of San Dominica, turn it upside down, and shake, shake, shake it like a child's piggy bank. The long-shot hope was that both Roses and Peter Macdonald would tumble out into the waiting arms of Brooks Campbell and Harold Hill.
Beginning at nine, government sound trucks began to rumble through major cities and the - surrounding countryside. These trucks broadcast the politest lilting-voiced descriptions of a tall, blond, English-looking man; of a young American man, Peter Macdonald.
Meanwhile CCF soldiers and U.S. Marines from Georgia and Florida searched the beaches, the grasslands, even the island's large, steamy rain forest: West Hills. An exhaustive house-by-house, hotelby-hotel search was begun in the cities of Coastown, Port Gerry, and Cape John. Also, every country represented on the Elizabeth's Fancy bus sent some kind of special help: Germany; the United States; England; Canada; France; Israel; Trinidad; Jamaica; Argentina; Texas. Ballistics, riot, and interrogation experts were hurried in from New York and Washington. More federal marshals were flown in to help keep order in the cities. Headhunters, including a special team called 'Czech'-came from as far away as Eastern Europe. Bounties totaling more than $150,000 were set. learning that 'an English-looking man' was being sought, a small group was set up at Interpol's Secretariat in St. Cloud, France. Information known gunrunners and mercenaries was collated and sent out from Interpol's Criminal Records Department. Extensive checks were made on the dead men, Kingfish Toone and the Cuban, Blinkie Tomas.
Through all of this, Campbell and Harold Hill's 'lead' on the Roses was never once questioned. Even the bitterest of police-world cynics wouldn't speculate and couldn't come up with what had actually happened in the Caribbean.
By early night of the first day, the hunt had turned up eight tall blond men. Two-thirds of the twelve.
Looking in on the eight-all blond, all handsome as hell, all between six feet two and six feet fourFederal Marshal Stuart Leedman of lose Angeles got the feeling that somebody wasn't telling him everything he needed to know about this grisly case. Something was as fishy as San Diego Sea World, Stu Leedman was thinking.
'Now what do you do for a living?' he asked Antoine Coffey, a wispy blond who had listed his address as the World of Free Spirits.
The blond model seemed confused by the question. 'A living?'
'Yeah,' Stu Leedman said. 'What do you do for money, Antoine? How do you pay the rent? Get money to go to the movies?'
Coffey smiled suddenly. 'Oh, that,' he whispered. 'thhodomy, you mean.'
Marshal Stuart Leedman stood up in the quiet examination room and screamed at the open door. 'Who ordered in all these blond faggots?' His voice carried up and down the serene, dignified hallway of the U.S. embassy. 'What thefuck, Jesus Christ, shit is going on around this pisshole?'
It was every bit as maddening and confusing as the machete murders themselves. More so, because it cwne on top of them... which was exactly the way Damian wanted it.
Port Gerry, San Dominica
Tuesday Evening.
His nose pressed against the cool green glass of the number 9 bus window, Peter watched a row of flowered shirts drift by on Station Street. Stranger in Paradise, he thought.
He saw pink-and-purple shirts like the Spanish in big cities always wore. Leather mushroom caps and tiny fedoras. Black wraparound sunglasses. San Dominican country boys trying to look like the Tonton Macoutes.
People seemed to be forever waiting for buses around San Dominica, Peter had begun to notice. The Elizabeth's Fancy bus massacre was mindblowing when you thought about it like that. It was like attacking an interstate highway in the United States. Severing a main artery.
Black women in homemade dresses and sandals were pressed up closer to the station. A nest of young conchie girls. 'Queen bees,' they called them around Coastown.
As the number 9 bus started to brake, Macdonald put his hand on the Colt.44 under his shirt. His heart started to thump.... Peter had begun to imagine the tall blond man waiting around every corner, behind every palm tree. Like some slick, handsome bogeyman. Waiting just for him....
The bus station was a wooden shack covered with antique beer and Coke signs worth more than the building itself. Stopping in front, the number 9 bucked and shivered like an old belly dancer. All the people and livestock being transported inside woke up suddenly. Chickens squawked and flapped red-and-white wings like fans. A goat started kicking the seats, and an old black man started. kicking the goat.
'Ay maum in dat blue dress!' a Rude Boy shouted out a bus window.
There was a loud whooshing of steaming hot air, and the driver said something Macdonald couldn't follow. People started walking off the bus, though, and Peter guessed that he was there.
This hole-in-the-wall must be the summer capital of Port Gen-y.
Eating a thirty-cent meat pie from the station canteen, Peter climbed a dark street with no sidewalks. With dreary two- and three-story limestone buildings on either side.
The pie smelled like bad breath, the street smelled like human sweat. Peter's body felt as if it would collapse pretty soon.... The last time he remembered feeling so bad was when he'd had dysentery in Thailand.
He was feeling lonely as hell, too. Thought about Jane constantly.
The first time he'd seen her at the Plantation Inn, 'd thought she was trouble. Quiet-only with a bad dose of
