The tall blond man stood with a rifle in the crook of his arm, looking out over the sea.
Peter's first thought was that the blond man was enjoying some impromptu hunting. Pigs, most likely.
He could see the man's car parked a little way up the road. Green sedan. License plate CY and a few numbers.
Local?... Hadn't seen him around.... Must be renting a villa.... Looked rich enough. Snobby,too....
For some reason Peter took the man to be an Englishman.... He saw the flash of a tag marked 'Harrods' inside the man's jacket.... The tall blond Englishman. Smashing.
As he passed by, the blond man turned and yelled out to him. Almost as if he'd been in a trance.
He yelled 'Constitutional!' Some long word....
Macdonald took it for a greeting. Waved. Kept riding.
He even picked up his speed a little. The slightest show-off move: Daniel Morelon imitation. That saved him, they said.
The whole scene took less than fifteen seconds. Fifteen mind-bending, life-changing seconds. Then, another turn down the Shore Highway
bicycle flew downhill like a bat whistling-Peter was startled by a loud thrashing in the kelly green bush leading down to the beach.
He expected a little band of goats or some wild pigs. What he saw were two sweating, barebacked blacks running up the hill.
One of the men, the Cuban, was covered with blood. Smears that looked like finger paints.
All of which would eventually send tremendous shock waves through the CIA, the Cosa Nostra, the San Dominican government.... At a cost of one and a quarter million dollars, the Roses weren't supposed to leave witnesses.
As for Peter Macdonald, he was in deep trouble... but at least he was on the run.
CHAPTER FIVE
In Paris, he would sleep no more than three or four hours during the months before we left for the Caribbean. Usually, he'd go to bed around five in the morning.
Until then, he'd just be sitting in front of a gooseneck lamp, turned so the bright light was almost shining in his face. Thinking things through. He'd, sleep three or four hours, then be up by nine at the latest.
Thinking some more about the machetes.
The Rose Diary
Michael O'Mara and his wife, Faye, were walking very, very slowly.
Sand worshipers, they plodded westward, from cove to shining cove.
Sixty-year-old Faye hummed absently to herself. She made up a silly tune for 'She sells seashells by the seashore.'
From a distance, Mike and Faye looked like two old men down on the beach... as they turned a sharp bend and entered Turtle Bay.
'No wonder I'm so damn achy and tired,' Mike said, hitching his baggy, electric blue swim trunks every fourth or fifth step, walking with his feet splayed out like a large arthritic duck.
'I can't sleep at these goddamn, ridiculous hotel prices. Who can sleep at forty... no. What is it? Fifty?... No, forty. Say thirty dollars every time you snooze.... I'll wait'll Coastown to sleep at those prices. At those prices, I'll wait'll we get back home if I have to.'
Faye laughed right into the long ash of Mike's cigar. 'That's very humorous, Miguel.'
She stooped to pick up a nutmeg seashell, and her stomach bounced like a beach ball in her onepiece bathing suit. 'Ha. Ha. Ha. That really cracks me up. Hee, hee. See, I'm laughing.'
'Laugh away. Room in Coastown's thirty bucks for a double. European plan. That place I think I could sleep, maybe. Shit fire and save matches. Skip eatin' dinners altogether. Cut out the goat steaks easy enough.
Which part Faye didn't really hear-not this time around on the familiar broken, skipping record: Mike. Instead the big white-haired lady seemed annoyed at the shell she'd just found.
'I hate some people.' She weighed the tiny shell scientifically in her palm. 'The way they make ashtrays out of these beautiful things. Nature's wonders. Such a waste. And sooo tacky.'
Mike O'Mara briefly examined his wife's new treasure. He thought he heard somebody coming and looked off toward the bushes. Nothing. Couldn't see worth a shit anymore.
He dropped her seashell in the rope net bag he was dragging along the hot sand. Began to feel a little like a Fairmount Park sanitation man, he thought. Asshole seashells.
'Who gets this work of art?' he asked in the seldom used, nonshouting voice he used as 'good old Mike,' doorman and purveyor of goodwill at the Rittenhouse Club in Philadelphia. 'That one goes to Libby Gibbs.' Faye stooped for another shell, a rose murex, she thought. 'Uhnn... which leaves Aunt Betsy, Bobo, Yacky. And Mama.
Mike stooped down and splashed cool water around his ankles. Pink, swollen, starting-to-blister ankles. Damn. Jaysus Christ Almighty. was he actually paying good money to be tortured like this?
When he straightened up, he took his wife's soft, flabby upper arm. Danunit, he owed her this trip. He really did. Second honeymoon? Whatever you wanted to call it.
'Faye Wray,' he said. 'It's just that I don't understand why we have to fly away to some isd.... Then buy
