Mr. Clarinet

BEFORE SHE'D DISAPPEARED in November 1994, Claudette Thodore had lived with her parents, Caspar and Mathilde, on the Rue des Ecuries in Port-au-Prince, close to an old military barracks.

The Rue des Ecuries linked two busy main roads, but was practically shielded from view at either end by gigantic palm trees. It was one of those tiny, blink-and-it's-gone places only ever known to locals, or outsiders looking for a shortcut, who forget it as soon as they've passed through it.

Max had got directions from Mathilde. She spoke perfect English, with Midwest inflections, possibly Illinois, not a hint of Franco-Caribbean.

As they got out of the car, Max caught a smell of fresh flowers mixed in with mint. Up ahead stood a man with a bucket and a mop, washing the road. The farther down the road they walked the more the smell intensified and made Max's nostrils smart. The houses either side of them were hidden behind solid metal gates and walls topped with stiletto spikes and razor wire. Only the tops of trees and telegraph poles, the rims of satellite dishes and filaments of TV aerials poked over, but there was nothing else to see. Max guessed the houses were bungalows or single-story buildings. He heard the furious sniffing of dog snouts under the gates, sucking up their smell through the gaps, breaking them down into familiar and unfamiliar. None of the dogs barked to alert their masters of strangers in their midst. That's because, Max knew, they were attack dogs. They never made a sound. They let you come all the way into their terrain, too far in to get back out, and then they went for you.

The mop-man eyed them as they approached, not once stopping what he was doing. Chantale nodded and greeted him. The man didn't reply, just looked them up and down through slitted eyes and a scowl, his body language oozing tension.

"I bet he's got Syrian roots," Chantale whispered. "He's washing the street with mint and rosewater. It's a Syrian custom, meant to ward off evil spirits and attract good ones. There was an influx of Syrian merchants here about forty or fifty years ago. They opened these little boutiques that sold everything to the poor. Every morning they'd sweep the street around the shop and douse it in herbal potions to bring them luck, prosperity, and protection. A few of them obviously got it right because they made a lot of money."

The Rue des Ecuries was the cleanest street Max had seen in Haiti so far. There wasn't a scrap of garbage anywhere, no stray animals and vagrants at the sides, no graffiti on the walls, and not a single crater or pothole in the road, which was immaculately paved with gray stone. It could have been any quiet, prosperous, middle-class side street in Miami or L.A. or New Orleans.

Max banged on the Thodores' gate four times, as Mathilde had asked him to. Soon after, he heard footsteps coming from behind the wall.

"Qui lŕ?"

"My name's—"

"Mingus?" a woman asked.

A dead bolt snapped back and the gate was opened from the inside, groaning horribly on its hinges.

"I'm Mathilde Thodore. Thanks for coming." She beckoned them in and then made more infernal sounds as she pushed the gate shut. She was wearing sweatpants, sneakers, and a loose Bulls T-shirt.

Max introduced himself and shook her hand. She had a firm grip that went with her direct, almost challenging stare. Had she smiled more, she might have been an attractive, even beautiful woman, but her face was hard and unyielding, the sort of mien you develop after seeing too much of the downside of life.

They were in a small courtyard, standing a few feet away from a modest, orange-and-white bungalow with a sloping tin roof, half hidden by untended bushes. A thick palm tree grew tall behind it, draping the structure in a blanket of yellow-dappled shade, while off to the right stood a swing, its chains rusted solid. Max guessed Claudette had been an only child.

Then his eyes fell on two bright green dog bowls set out near the swing, one holding food, the other water. He looked back, toward the wall, and found a big, house-shaped kennel.

"Don't worry about him. He won't bite," Mathilde said, noticing Max staring at the kennel.

"That's what they all say."

"He's dead," Mathilde answered quickly.

"I'm sorry," Max offered, but he wasn't.

"The food and water's for his spirit. You know how this country runs on superstition? We feed the dead better than we feed ourselves here. The dead rule this land."

* * *

Inside, the house was small and cluttered, the furniture too big for the available space.

The walls were covered in photographs. Claudette was in every one—bright-eyed, open-mouthed baby pictures framed and hung on walls, pictures of her in her school uniform, snaps of her with her parents, grandparents, and relatives, all of their faces orbiting hers like planets in a solar system. She was a happy child, smiling or mugging in every picture, the center of attention in group shots—physically and photogenically, the eye of the camera drawn to her. There was a photo of her standing outside the Miami church with her uncle Alexandre, which looked like it might have been taken after a service, because he was in his robes and there were smartly dressed people in the background. There was another of her standing next to a black Doberman. At least a dozen showed the girl with her father, whom she seemed to favor in both looks and with the lion's share of her affections, because she didn't smile so broadly or laugh at all in the few snaps of her and her mother.

The couples sat on opposite sides of a dining table. Caspar had given his guests a nod and a quick grip of the hand when they'd walked in, but he hadn't so much as said a welcoming word.

He didn't take after his brother. He was short and stocky, thick arms, bulky shoulders, neckbreaker hands lashed with veins, flat, wide fingers. His manner was gruffness skirting rudeness. His hair, thinning on top and cut low, was more salt than pepper. His face—far more forbidding than his wife's, starting to droop at the jowls and pool under the eyes—coupled with the way he was grinding his teeth, gave him a passing resemblance to a pissed-off mastiff. Max placed him in his midforties. He wore the same clothes as his wife, who sat next to him, drinking a glass of juice.

"You Bulls fans?" Max asked them both but looked at Caspar, hoping to break the ice.

Silence. Mathilde prodded her husband with her elbow.

"Lived in Chicago sometime," he answered, not making eye contact.

"How long ago?"

No answer.

"Seven years. We came back when Baby Doc was overthrown," Mathilde said.

"Should've stayed put," her husband added. "Come back here, want to do some good, bad's all that happens to us."

He said a little more but Max didn't catch it. He had a gravelly voice that buried more than it carried.

Mathilde looked at Max and rolled her eyes, as if to say he was always like that. Max guessed then that Claudette's disappearance had hit him the hardest.

He found a picture of father and daughter, both laughing. Caspar looked younger there, his hair darker and fuller. The picture wasn't that old, because Claudette looked as she did in the shot her uncle had given him.

"What else happened to you?"

"Apart from our daughter?" Caspar asked bitterly, finally looking Max straight in the face, his eyes small and bloodshot, silver points mired in sad, angry crimson. "What hasn't? This place is cursed. Simple as that. Ever notice how nothin' grows here? No plants, no trees?"

"It hasn't been good for us here," Mathilde quickly picked up. "Caspar used to be a fireman in Chicago, then he had an accident and got an insurance payout. We'd been talking about giving it up in the States and coming back here, so when we got a chance we thought let's go for it."

"Why did you leave Haiti?"

"We didn't—I mean, our parents did, in the early sixties, because of Papa Doc. My dad had some friends with links to dissident groups in Miami and New York. They tried to mount a coup, which failed. Papa Doc didn't just round up the culprits, but all their families and friends and their friends and family. Just to make sure. That was his way. Our parents guessed it was only a matter of time before the Macoutes came for all of us, so we got out."

"Why did you want to come back?" Max asked. "Chicago's not a bad place."

"What I been tellin' myself every time I kick myself," Caspar grumbled.

Max laughed, more out of encouragement than mirth. Caspar dead-eyed him back. Nothing was shaking him out of his grief.

"I think we both grew up in America with this sense of loss for what we'd left behind," Mathilde explained. "We always called this place 'home.' We had all these really fond memories of old Haiti. Especially the people. There was a lot of love here. Before we got married we swore we'd come back to live here one day—we swore we'd come 'home.'

"We used some of the insurance money to buy into a store opposite a gas station, selling cut-price food and basic essentials to the poor. People didn't like us coming over here and just opening up a business and making money. They've got a word for us here. They call us 'diaspora.' It used to be an insult, like we'd chickened out, turned our backs on the country and only came back when things were good. Nowadays it's just another word, but back then—"

"Then it was all we heard," Caspar interjected. "Not among the everyday people—they were always cool to us, kind folk, mostly. We had a good relationship with them. Way we operated wasn't too different from the way Koreans operate in the black neighborhoods in Chicago—employ a few locals, treat 'em well, be respectful to everyone. We had no problem there at all. But the ones like us—with the businesses, our peers and neighbors—we lived up in Pétionville then—they made it clear they didn't like us around. Called us all kinds of trash. See, the only way they woulda respected us was if they'd known us all their lives."

"So we ignored it and kept ourselves to ourselves, worked hard, treated people as best we could. After a while we moved down here. It was better. Our neighbors are people like us—immigrants, outsiders," Mathilde said, patting Caspar on the arm for him to calm down. "It's nice here. Real clean too."

"We're a tight community," Caspar said. "We operate a 'zero-tolerance policy' here."

"Against who?"

"Everyone we don't know. They're discouraged from, you know, settling down here. It's OK for them to pass through, as long as they do it quick. Animals and especially people. Plus we all take turns in sweeping the street, morning and evening, before sundown. We all look out for each other."

Caspar allowed himself a small, knowing smirk that told Max that he enjoyed busting the heads of those luckless homeless folk who bedded down in his street for the night. It was probably the only thing that made him feel good anymore. A lot of ex-cops Max had known were like that. They missed the juice of being out on the street and took the kind of jobs where they could still just about get away with roughing people up—club security, corporate muscle, bodyguards. Caspar was probably reverting to the person he'd been before happiness had intruded into his life and blown him off course.

"We've been happy here," Mathilde picked up. "Claudette made it complete. I had her a few months after we moved in. We hadn't been planning on starting a family, and I even thought I was too old, but she came into our lives and lit up all sorts of places in us we didn't know were there."

She stopped and looked at her husband. Max couldn't see her face but he knew from the way Caspar's look softened that she was about to dissolve in tears. He put his arm tenderly around his wife's shoulders and pulled her to him.

Max glanced away toward the pictures on the wall above them. They were good people. Mathilde, especially. She was the guts and brains of the pair, the one who kept her husband in check, the one who kept their show on the road. She'd been the disciplinarian in the family, which was why her daughter had preferred her father, who no doubt caved in at her first demand. He thought of Allain and Francesca Carver. They were a million miles apart, heading in opposite directions, no warmth or closeness between them, despite their grief. He'd known the loss of a child to wreck the strongest of marriages as easily as it pushed the most dysfunctional ones over the finish line. Claudette's disappearance, however, had united the Thodores, reaffirmed, in the darkest way, the thing that had brought them together.

He focused on a medium-sized photograph of Claudette on a swing, being pushed by her father, while the Doberman watched from a corner.

Mathilde blew her nose and sniffed.

"Business was good, even though the political climate wasn't," she continued, her composure regained. "One month we had two presidents and three coups. You could always tell whenever something was going down, because our business wasn't too far from the palace. Whoever was in power at the time would send his guys out to buy a load of extra gas for his getaway.

"The thing about this country is that all the gas comes from the U.S., so any time they want to bring down a president they threaten to stop the gas from coming in. Whenever there was a real danger of that happening you'd see one of the oil company's management roll up to the gas station—always these big fat sweaty white Americans looking like Bible salesmen. They'd tell the station manager to expect extra shipments because they'd had 'drought warnings'—their code for another changeover in leadership.

"The gas never stopped coming in because they were quiet coups. Not a shot fired. You'd be watching some TV program and then there'd be an intermission and a general would make an announcement on TV: this month's president had been arrested or exiled for treachery/corruption/speeding/whatever and the army had taken temporary control of the palace, and that would be that. Everyone carried on as usual. No one thought an embargo would ever happen. And then it did."

"We went out of business. A lot of our stuff came from the U.S. or Venezuela. Ships couldn't get through," Caspar said. "Claudette used to ask me why I wasn't going to work. I told her it was so I could watch her grow."

"They burned our business down—just before the marines landed," Mathilde said.

"Who?" Max asked.

"The military. They just wanted to make life as difficult for the invaders as possible. They set fire to a lot of amenities. I don't think it was personal—at least, not against us."

"Oh no?" seethed Caspar. "That was our life. It don't get more personal than that."

Mathilde didn't know what to say. She looked away, found one of the pictures, and fixed on it, as if willing herself there, back in time to happiness.

Max stood up and walked away from the table. Behind them were a sofa, two armchairs, and a medium-sized television on a stand. The television had a layer of dust on it, as if it hadn't been watched in a while or simply didn't work. He noticed a shotgun parked near the window. He looked at the courtyard, taking in the swing and the kennel and the gate. Something wasn't right about it.

"What happened to your dog?" he asked, turning back to the table.

"He was killed," Mathilde said, getting up and coming over to him. "The people who took our daughter poisoned him."

"You mean they came in here?"

"Yes. Come with me."

She led Max out of the open-plan area and into a short, dark corridor. She opened a door.

"Claudette's room," she said.

The Thodores had resigned themselves to the fact that they weren't going to see their little girl again. The room was a shrine, preserved, probably, more or less the way they had last remembered it tidy. Pictures Claudette had drawn were on the walls—mostly family sketches—Dad (tall), Mom (not as tall), Claudette (minute), the dog (in between her and Mathilde), standing outside their house—drawn in crayon, as jerky stickpeople. Dad was always blue, Mom red, Claudette green, and the dog was black. Her drawings of the Rue des Ecuries home showed the human figures twice the size of the house. Other pictures were simply squares of painted single colors with Claudette's full name at the bottom, written in an adult hand.

Max looked briefly out of the window and back to the room. He took in the bed—low, blue spread and a white pillow, rag doll peeking out from over the throw. He noticed the throw was smooth everywhere but in the middle, where it had been sat on and crumpled. He imagined either parent coming in and playing with the doll, soaking up their daughter's memory and crying their eyes out. He'd put money on Caspar being the more frequent visitor.

"The day she disappeared…I went to wake her up. I came in the room and saw her bed was empty and her window was wide open. Then I looked out and saw Toto—our dog—lying on the ground, near the swing," Mathilde said.

"Was anything broken in the house? Glass?"

"No."

"What about the front door? Had it been forced?"

"No."

"Did you notice anything about the lock? The keys don't often turn all the way after they've been picked."

"It worked OK. Still does."

"And it was just the three of you in here?"

"Yes."

"Anyone else have the keys to this place?"

"No."

"What about the previous owner?"

"We changed all the locks."

"Who changed them?"

"Caspar did."

"And you're sure you locked the front door that day?"

"Yes. Certain."

"Is there a back way in?"

"No."

"What about the windows?"

"Everything else was closed. Nothing was broken."

"What about a basement?"

"Not here."

"What's behind the house?"

"Empty lot. There was an art gallery, but it's closed down. The wall's fifteen feet high and covered with barbed wire."

"Barbed wire?" Max mumbled to himself. He looked out of Claudette's window at the wall. There were spikes running along it but none of the coils of razor wire he'd seen around the neighboring houses.

"I refused to have it," Mathilde said. "I didn't want it to be the first thing my daughter saw when she woke up."

"It wouldn't have made much difference," Max said.

He went back outside and walked over to the gate. There were bushes to the right. They would have made a noise if the kidnappers had landed in them. The kidnappers therefore came over the left-hand side of the wall, where the drop was ten feet into clear ground. They probably used a ladder to get up from the street.

They had to have scoped the place out before they came in. That's how they knew where the dog kennel was and which side to go over.

Typical predator behavior.

Max turned around and looked back at the house. Something in that bedroom wasn't right. Something didn't fit.

He started walking toward the house, putting himself in the mind of the kidnapper who had just poisoned the dog. Claudette's room was to the left of the front door. How many of them had come for her? One or two?

Then he caught sight of Mathilde through her daughter's window, standing with her arms crossed, watching him advance.

No windows broken. No locks picked. No doors forced. No way in around the back. How had they entered the house?

Mathilde opened the window and started talking to him. He didn't hear her. As she'd started to speak, she'd accidentally knocked something off the sill, something small.

Max walked over and looked down at the ground. It was a painted wire figurine of a man with a birdlike face. Its body was orange, its head black. The figurine didn't have a left arm, and, when he studied it closer, it didn't have a full face.

He'd just begun to understand what had happened.

He picked up the figurine.

"Who gave her this?" Max showed it to Mathilde.

Mathilde looked lost. She took the figurine and closed her hand around it, sweeping the windowsill with her eyes.

Max went back into the house.

There were half a dozen more wire birdmen lined up on the windowsill, by the bed, hidden by the glare of the sun coming through the glass. They were the same shape and color, except for the last one, which was broader because it was two figurines—the birdman and a little girl in a blue-and-white uniform.

"Where did she get these?"

"At school," said Mathilde.

"Who gave them to her?"

"She never gave me a name."

"Man, woman?"

"I thought it was a boy, or one of her friends. She also knew a couple of children from Noah's Ark."

"Noah's Ark? The Carver place?"

"Yes. It's a few roads down from the Lycée Sainte Anne—that's Claudette's school," Mathilde said, and gave Max the name of the street.

"Did your daughter ever mention anyone talking to her near the school? A stranger?"

"No."

"Never?"

"No."

"Did she mention Ton-ton Clarinet?"

Mathilde sat down heavily on the bed. Her bottom lip was trembling, her mind churning. She opened her hand and stared at the figurine.

"Is there something you're not telling me, Mrs. Thodore?"

"I didn't think it mattered—then," she said.

"What?"

"The Orange Man," she said.

Max searched the drawings on the walls anew, in case he'd missed one of someone with half a face, but he'd seen everything there was to see there.

He thought back to the story of the kids who'd disappeared in Clarinette. The mother said her son had told her that "a man with a deformed face" had abducted him.

"Max?" Chantale called out from the doorway. "You need to see these."

Caspar was standing next to her with a tube of rolled-up papers in his hands.

* * *

From the way Claudette had told it, her friend, The Orange Man, was half-man, half-machine. At least his face was. He had, she said, a big gray eye with a red dot in the middle. It came so far out from his head he had to hold it with one hand. It made a strange sound too.

Caspar said he'd laughed when she'd told him. He had a thing for sci-fi films—Robocop, Star Wars, and the two Terminator films were his favorites, and he often used to watch them on video with his daughter, despite Mathilde's protests that Claudette was too young. To him, The Orange Man was a hybrid of R2D2 and the Terminator when his face comes off and reveals the machine beneath. Caspar didn't take it seriously, because he didn't believe his daughter's friend was any more real than those movie robots.

Mathilde was even less inclined to believe in her daughter's stories about The Orange Man. When she'd been her daughter's age, she had had an imaginary friend too.

Neither of her parents worried unduly when, in the last six months before her disappearance, Claudette began drawing more and more pictures of her friend.

* * *

"You never saw him? The Orange Man?" Max asked the Thodores, all of them back at the dining table, the drawings spread out before them. There were over thirty of them—from tiny crayon sketches to big paintings.

The basic design was of an orange stick person with a huge head. The head was D-shaped and made up of two joined-up vertical halves—a rectangle on the left and a circle on the right. The circle resembled a face, albeit an indistinct one—a slit for an eye, another for the mouth, no nose, a lopsided triangle passing as an ear. The other half was more detailed and scary-looking. It was dominated by a large, swirling circle where the eye should have been, and a mouth of sharp, upward-pointing fangs, closer to daggers than teeth. The figure's body was missing its left arm.

"No."

"Did you ever talk to her about him? Ask who he was?"

"I used to ask her if she'd seen him sometimes," Caspar said. "Usually she'd say yeah she had."

"Nothing else? She mention him being with anyone else?"

They both shook their heads.

"How 'bout a car? She say if he drove?"

Again, a shake of the heads.

Max looked back at the drawings. They weren't in any kind of order but he could see what had happened, how The Orange Man had first gained Claudette's trust before moving in on her. The initial drawings showed the man from a distance, in profile, standing tall among three or four children, all in orange, head flat in front and round at the back; a protuberant beak where a nose should have been. The children became fewer—down to two, then, most frequently, one—Claudette herself, standing before him, just like the figurine on her windowsill showed. In all the group pictures, the children stood apart from the man, but in the ones where it was just The Orange Man and Claudette, they were holding hands. The paintings showing Claudette's family life chilled Max to the core. She depicted The Orange Man standing right in front of the house, next to the dog, or with the family when they'd gone to the beach.

Claudette knew her kidnapper. She'd let him into her bedroom. She'd gone willingly.

"She say why she called him 'The Orange Man'?"

"She didn't call him that," Caspar answered. "I did. She brought home one of these pictures one day. I asked her who it was of and she said it was her friend. That's what she called him—mon ami—my friend. I thought she meant a school friend. So I said, 'Hey, you're friends with an orange man,' and it stuck."

"I see," Max said. "What about her friends? Did they ever talk about The Orange Man?"

"No, I don't think so," replied Mathilde. She looked at Caspar, who shrugged his shoulders.

"Did any other children go missing from Claudette's school?"

"No. Not that we know of."

Max looked at his notes.

"What happened the day of the—when you noticed Claudette was gone? What did you do?"

"We went looking," Caspar said. "We went house-to-house. Pretty soon we had a posse out helping us—neighborhood people, all canvassing, stopping people in the street, asking questions. I think, by the end of the day, between us, we'd covered every inch of two square miles. Nobody saw nothing. Nobody knew anything. That was the Tuesday, the day she went missing. We spent the next two weeks just looking for her. One of the guys here, Tony—he's a printer. He made these wanted posters, which we put up all over. Nothing."

Max scribbled a few notes.

"Were any ransom demands made?"

"No. Nothing. We didn't have much, outside Claudette and each other," Caspar said, his voice slipping on a tear, a wobble going through his tough exterior. Mathilde took his hand and he clasped it back. "Are you gonna find her for us?"

"I promised your brother I'd look into it," Max said, giving both of them an impassive look that was meant to flatten any hope they had.

"How are you coming along with the Charlie Carver case?" Mathilde asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Any leads?"

"I'm not at liberty to discuss that, Mrs. Thodore. Client confidentiality. I'm sorry."

"So you think it's the same people?" Caspar asked.

"There are similarities but there are differences," Max replied. "It's too soon to say."

"Vincent Paul thinks it's the same people," Caspar said, matter-of-factly.

Max stopped scribbling and stared blankly at the paper in front of him.

"Vincent Paul?" Max said as casually as possible. He looked briefly at Chantale, who caught his eye and directed his gaze to a set of photographs hung in an upper-left-hand corner.

"Yes. You know him?" asked Caspar.

"Only by reputation," Max said, and stood up. He pretended to stretch his arms and neck. He walked around the table to the photographs on the wall, shaking imaginary pins out of his hands.

There it was, in a corner, second in from the edge of the wall, a family photograph—Claudette, aged about three, Mathilde and Caspar, looking happier and an age younger, Alexandre Thodore in priest's collar, and, in the middle of them, sitting down, probably so he could fit into the shot, Vincent Paul, bald and beaming. The priest had his arm around part of his huge back.

Max guessed what it meant—Vincent Paul had been donating some of his drug millions to Little Haiti—but he'd keep it to himself.

He returned to his place.

"After we'd searched as much we could we asked the marines for help," said Mathilde. "I mean, we're both American citizens, so's Claudette, but you know what happened? We saw a captain and all he wanted to know was why we'd left the U.S. for a 'shithole like this'—that's what he called it. Then he told us the soldiers 'were too busy to help,' that they had 'democracy to restore.' On our way back to our car we walked by a bar and there was a whole bunch of marines in there, busy 'restoring democracy' by getting loaded on beer and dope."

"What happened with Vincent Paul?"

"We went to him after the U.S. Army turned us down."

"Why didn't you go to him first?"

"I—" Mathilde began, but Caspar cut her off.

"How much do you know about him?"

"I've heard good and bad, mostly bad," Max answered.

"Same as Mathilde. She didn't want us going to him."

"It wasn't that—" Mathilde began, but caught the don't-try-and-deny-it-again look her husband was giving her. "OK. With the troops here and everything, I didn't want it known that someone like him was out looking for our daughter. I didn't want us getting arrested as accessories or sympathizers."

"Sympathizers?"

"Vincent was tight with Raoul Cedras—the head of the junta the invasion overthrew. They were good buddies," Caspar explained.

"I thought Aristide would be more Paul's type?" Max said.

"It started out that way, for sure. Aristide was a good guy once, when he was a priest, helping the poor in the slums. He did a lot for them. But the day he got elected president was the day he started turning into Papa Doc. Corrupt too. Pocketed millions in foreign aid. Two weeks into his term Vincent wanted to cap his ass."

"I never thought people like Paul had principles."

"He's a compassionate man," Mathilde said.

"So he helped you?"

"A lot," she said. "He spent a month searching the whole island for her. He had people looking for her in New York, Miami, the Dominican Republic, the other islands. He even got the UN to help."

"Everything but hire a private investigator," Max said.

"He said if he couldn't find her nobody could."

"And you believed him?"

"We would if he'd found her," Mathilde said.

"Anyone else get in touch with you? The Carvers had other guys looking for their son before me. Any of them talk to you?"

"No," Caspar said.

Max jotted down a few more notes. There was one more thing he needed to know from the Thodores. "From what I've heard, loads of kids go missing here every day. Vincent Paul must have a lot of people coming to him for help. Why did he help you?"

The couple looked at each other, unsure of what to say next.

Max made it easy on them:

"Look. I know what Vincent Paul's up to, and I truly do not give a flying fuck. I'm here to find Charlie Carver and Claudette too, if I can. So, please, level with me. Why did Vincent help you out?"

"He's a friend of the family—my family," Caspar said. "My brother and him go back a ways."

"Paul gives your brother's church in Little Haiti money, right?"

"Not just that," said Caspar. "My brother runs this shelter for Haitian boat people in Miami. Vincent pays for it. He's invested a lot of money in Little Haiti, helped a lot of people get on their feet. He's a good man."

"Some people might beg to differ," Max pointed out and left it hanging right there. He stopped himself from saying that down the road from Little Haiti, in Liberty City, there were ten-year-old kids selling Vincent Paul's dope while one or more of their parents were probably smoking their lives to hell with the same shit. The Thodores wouldn't give a good damn about any of that right now, and why should they?

"Some people could beg to differ about you too, Mr. Mingus," Mathilde retorted gently, making a point as distinct from driving one home.

"They usually do," Max said. He smiled at them both. They were decent people: honest, hardworking, and basically good; the very same kind of people he'd sworn to protect. "Thanks for all your help. Please don't blame yourselves for what happened to Claudette. There's nothing you could've done. Nothing at all. You can stop burglars and murderers and rapists, but people like The Orange Man, they're invisible. They're like you and me on the outside, usually the last people you'd suspect."

"Find her for us, please," Mathilde said. "I don't care about the people who took her. I just want our daughter back."

Chapter 41

"DO YOU STILL think Vincent Paul took Charlie?" Chantale asked in the car. They were driving to the first of the Faustin addresses on the page from the phone book.

"I'm not rulin' nothin' out. Fact he helped look for Claudette doesn't mean a damn thing. I'll know when I talk to him," Max said, putting two of the wire figurines he'd taken away with him under the dashboard with a couple of pictures of The Orange Man. He was going to send the figurines to Joe for fingerprinting.

"Do you know how to reach him?"

"I've a feeling he'll find me," Max said.

"It's your gig." Chantale sighed. She hadn't mentioned the temple and she didn't seem to be mad at him either. She was behaving normally, flashing her easy smile and occasionally laughing her lusty laugh, all affectionate professionalism. She was a tough one to read, a consummate politician, mistress of on-tap pleasantness.

"Did your husband discuss his cases with you?"

"No. We had a rule about not bringing our work home with us. You?"

"I wasn't married when I was a cop. But yeah, me and Sandra used to talk about what I was workin' on."

"She ever crack a case for you?"

"Yeah, a couple of times."

"Didn't that piss you off? Make you doubt your abilities?"

"No." Max laughed and smiled at the memory. "Never. I was proud of her—real proud. I was always proud of her."

They stopped in traffic. Chantale studied him as they waited. Max caught her at it and tried to read what conclusions she was coming to. She gave nothing away.

* * *

All of the first five Faustin houses on Max's list had been destroyed by fire, mobs, the army, a hurricane, and a UN helicopter crash. No one nearby knew who Eddie Faustin was.

The sixth house they went to was at the edge of the Carrefour slum. It was the only intact structure on a road otherwise made up of ruins converted into hovels. The house was set a little away from the street, with steps leading up to the front door. All the windows were bare. Max noted that the panes, while filthy, were all intact. No one answered the door when they knocked. They checked the windows but the place appeared deserted, despite the furniture in the front rooms and the white sheets Chantale reported hanging on the clothesline in the backyard, when Max had given her a boost so she could see over the wall.

They asked a couple of passersby about who lived in the house. They said they didn't know, that the house had been that way for a long time. No one entering, no one leaving.

"How come no one's moved in—from off the street?" Max asked.

They couldn't say.

Max decided he'd come back at night to take a closer look. He didn't want Chantale there when he broke in. He'd put her through enough.

Traveling down the rest of the list took them to houses whose owners were long gone, leaving their shells to the poor. The former home of Jerome Faustin was overflowing with famine kids with bellies so bloated they had to walk with their legs wide apart to keep their balance. It was a variation on the same picture in the next house, only these children were sitting down to eat with their parents—dried leaves, mud cakes, and a bucket of greenish water. Max didn't believe they were going to put any of it in their mouths until he saw a little girl of about five bite off a piece of the baked dirt. He felt ready to gag, but he held it in—partly out of respect for these poor souls, who hadn't eaten what he could easily lose and not miss, and partly out of fear that his vomit would make it into their food chain. He wanted to give their parents all the money in his pocket but Chantale advised him against it, telling him to buy them food instead.

They found a store and bought a few sacks of maize, rice, beans, and plantain. They came back and left it in the front yard. The children and adults looked at them curiously and carried on eating their meal.

Max and Chantale moved on. By late afternoon, they'd finished. They'd talked to two old ladies, who'd offered them lemonade and stale cookies, a man on his porch looking at a year-old newspaper, a mechanic and his son, a woman who asked them to read to her from a German Bible, another who thought Max was a priest. Max was now sure the house in Carrefour belonged—or had belonged—to Eddie Faustin.

After he'd taken Chantale home, he drove back there.

Chapter 42

MAX WAITED UNTIL nightfall; then he went around to the back of the house, climbed over the wall, and dropped down into a garden of dead grass and withered bushes.

He picked the two back-door locks and let himself in.

He turned on his flashlight. Inside, the dust lay so thick and soft it looked like Christmas-card snow. No one had been here in a long while.

There were two floors and a basement.

He went upstairs. Large rooms with plenty of good-quality furniture—cupboards, closets, chest of drawers, tables, and chairs, all in mahogany, clawed brass-feet on everything. Marble or glass coffee tables. Brass beds with still-hard mattresses, well-upholstered armchairs and sofas.

The place had barely been lived in, but whoever had owned the house must have felt safe enough here, at the edge of the slum, a few feet away from a cauldron of poverty, desperation, and violence. There were no bars on any of the windows. Max guessed the owners were locals, well known in the slum; fuck-with-us-at-your-peril feared—Eddie Faustin, ex-Macoute? Maybe? No way to confirm it yet.

He went down to the basement. It was hot and humid, a rancid scent in the air. His flashlight picked out the damp on the walls, the bricks greasy with moisture. There was something on the ground.

He found a light switch. A single bulb on a cord lit up the large, black, kite-shaped vévé on the ground. It had been drawn in blood. The vévé was divided into four sections, a different symbol in the first three, a photograph in the last. The photograph was of Charlie, sitting in the back of a car—possibly an SUV—looking straight at the camera.

He read the vévé clockwise—first the Mr. Clarinet symbol, followed by an eye, a circle with four crosses and a skull in it, and, last, the photograph. There was a corolla of purple wax in the center of the vévé. Assuming this was Eddie Faustin's place, he'd most likely performed the ceremony before he'd kidnapped Charlie.

Max slipped the picture into his wallet.

The basement was otherwise empty.

He was about to leave the house when he remembered there were things he'd left unchecked. He went back upstairs. The dust was so thick it muffled his steps. He sneezed twice.

He found nothing.

He tapped the walls. Solid. He looked under the chairs. He moved the furniture. He broke sweat shifting the heavy cupboards.

He pushed an oak closet.

He heard something fall on the floor.

It was a videotape.

* * *

Back in Pétionville, Max played the tape.

It began with a boy walking down a street. He was dressed in the Noah's Ark uniform—blue shorts and a short-sleeved white shirt—and carrying a satchel on his back. Max put his age at between six and eight years old.

He was being filmed from inside a car.

The screen fizzled into black and a new image cut in: a group of about twenty children, all in uniform, gathering in front of the gates of Noah's Ark. The camcorder panned across the crowd, laughing and playing, some children chasing each other, some paired off, others grouped together talking, until it found the boy from the first shot, chatting with two friends. It zoomed in on his face—cute rather than pretty—and then on his mouth, wide, smiling—and then it pulled away, capturing the boy's head and torso and a little of the background, and then it moved to the boy's right, just above his shoulder, and settled on a little girl, bending over to tie her shoes. A boy had lifted her skirt all the way up her back and he and his friends were laughing. The girl was as oblivious to the boys as she was to the cameraman recording her humiliation. When she stood up and her skirt fell back into place the boys ran away laughing.

The next image was of the boy in class, from outside, the cameraman standing somewhere on the left, hidden by bushes which blew in and out of the shot. The boy was listening to the teacher, making notes, often raising his hand. His face lit up whenever he knew an answer, a mixture of pride and happiness stealing into his features. If he was picked to answer, he'd smile as he spoke and carry on smiling afterwards, savoring his triumph. He was a front-of-the-class kid, one mature and disciplined enough to understand the importance of studies and the value of education, one who probably never got into trouble and would have made his parents proud—if they were around to see him. He had lively, clever, inquisitive eyes; eyes that wanted to know about all they could see.

Static suddenly filled the screen and then it went black again. It stayed that way for a long time.

Max let the tape run. His heart was pounding and he was getting a familiar fluttering in the pit of his belly, something he hadn't had since his early days as a detective, when he was on the verge of making a grim discovery; one part anticipating the find, one part fearing it, one part knowing it would be worse than before. At the start, it had always been more horrific than anything he'd imagined, the lengths one human being would go to to ensure the utmost suffering of another. Before he'd gone to jail, he was numb to it, immune, the limits of his imagination ending at the pit of hell. If he'd found someone dead of a single gunshot to the head, he'd consider the murderer a paragon of mercy and compassion—of all the things they could have done, they'd chosen the quickest, simplest way of taking life.

Prison had returned those first-time feelings to him, intact, as if all those years of going through the leftovers of monsters' feasts had happened to another.

The screen went white for a few seconds, then, briefly, blue, before a completely different place appeared—a concrete building the size of an aircraft hangar set in the middle of lush vegetation. Max paused the tape and studied the frozen, flickering image. It didn't look like anywhere in Haiti. There were trees all around the structure, an abundance of green, a health and vitality to the surrounding land.

He hit PLAY.

The next image was taken inside the building—a spacious hall with sunlight streaming in through high windows.

A line of children, alternating between boys and girls, all aged under ten, were walking up to a table draped in a red-and-black silk cloth. The children were immaculately dressed in black and white—black skirts and white blouses for the girls, black suits and white shirts for the boys. They approached the table and drank from a large, gleaming gold chalice, exactly as they would have done at Holy Communion, except there was no host to swallow and no priest officiating, only a man stepping up to the table after every child had drunk and, with a gold ladle, topping up the receptacle with a thin, greenish liquid.

He saw the boy from the beginning of the video stepping up to the chalice, taking it between his hands, and draining it. Then he put the chalice back exactly where he'd found it and stared right into the camcorder. His eyes were dead space, twin vacuums sealed in a skull; every ounce of life, thought, and personality they'd possessed in the earlier shots was gone for good. The boy left the table and followed the line of children leaving the hall, his walk slow and labored, as if he had someone inside him pulling levers to make him move. All the children moved the same way, with old steps.

Max knew what the liquid was. He'd had it. He knew what it did. It was a potion—zombie juice.

Like in the movies, voodoo zombies were technically the living dead—only they weren't really dead at all, but in a deep catatonic state. They were normal people who had been poisoned with a potion that completely incapacitated them. Their minds were working. They were fully conscious, but they could neither move nor speak. They didn't even appear to be breathing. They had neither a heartbeat nor a discernible pulse. After they'd been buried, the houngan or bokor—usually the person responsible for their condition—would dig them up and give them an antidote. They would regain consciousness, only not as the people they were before, but as near vegetables. The priest hypnotized the zombies and made them his slaves—either for himself or whoever was paying him. They did whatever they were told.

Boukman had used zombies.

Max pressed PLAY.

The boy was back in the front row of another classroom, only this time his eyes were barely moving and his face was expressionless, his features not registering that he was taking in a single thing about the proceedings. The camera pulled away and showed someone addressing the class from the left.

It was Eloise Krolak, the principal of Noah's Ark.

"You fuckin' bitch," Max whispered, freezing the tape as her face came clearly into view. Her features were pointed and severe, almost rodentlike in their alignment.

He knew from then on that the rest of the tape would only get worse.

He hit PLAY.

He was right.

When it was finished, Max sat there watching the static on the screen, unable to move. He stayed where he was for a long time, shaking.

Chapter 43

MAX CONSIDERED TELLING Allain about the tape, but he held off. He'd gather his evidence first.

He copied the tape, packed the original up with the figurines, and drove to the FedEx office in Port-au-Prince.

He let Joe know what was coming. He also asked him to see what he could find on Boris Gaspésie.

He drove to Noah's Ark. He parked up the road and fixed his mirror so he could see the gate.

He walked in and checked to make sure Eloise Krolak was there. He saw her addressing her pupils the same way she was talking to the zombie kids in the video. He thought back to the video, to the things he'd seen being done to those children. He felt suddenly sick.

He went back to his car and waited for her to come out.

* * *

In the afternoon it rained.

Max had never known rain like it. In Miami it poured—sometimes all day, all week, sometimes all goddamn month—but the rain fell and dribbled away into puddles or disappeared into the ground and back into the air.

In Haiti rain attacked.

The sky went near black as rain swarmed out of dense storm clouds and swooped down on Port-au-Prince, drenching the city to its foundations, turning bone-dry earth to running mud within seconds.

The sewers in the street quickly flooded and belched waste back up on the streets, which ran black and brown. In the houses around him rooftop reservoirs filled up to the brim and spilled over or broke clean off their rusted fittings and crashed to the ground; power went and came and went again; pipes burst, trees were stripped of leaves, fruit, and even bark; a roof caved in. Confused and panicked people ran into equally dazed and terrified pets, cattle, and strays, all of them collapsing into struggling, thrashing, conjoined heaps. Then came the rats, hundreds of them, flooded out of their holes, scuttling downhill toward the harbor in a great wave of rank, diseased fur, squealing in panic and fear. Great blasts of thunder blew holes in the atmosphere and sheets of lightning followed, quickly flashing up every detail of the damaged, drowning streets, awash with mud and shit and teeming with vermin, before snatching the vision back into darkness as if it had been an illusion.

The rain stopped. Max watched the storm move out to sea.

* * *

Eloise Krolak didn't leave Noah's Ark until after six-thirty, when she was picked up in a silver Mercedes SUV with tinted windows.

Max tailed the car out through the city and along the mountain road to Pétionville. It was dark now. Traffic was heavy.

They slowed to a crawl at the end of a long, thick, red-neon streak of stalled taillights. Max was four cars behind.

The opposite side of the road was mostly free. Barely anyone seemed to be heading into the capital at this hour.

Except for the UN.

A convoy passed the traffic jam—two jeeps followed by a truck, then, moving slower, another jeep, whose occupant was shining a flashlight into each of the stalled cars.

The beam passed Max. He looked straight ahead and kept his hands on the wheel.

He heard the jeep stop.

Someone knocked on his window.

Max didn't have his passport on him, only his AmEx card in his wallet.

"Bonsoir monsieur," the UN soldier said. Blue helmet, uniform, young white face.

"Do you speak English?" Max asked.

The soldier caught his breath.

"Name?" he asked Max.

Max told him. He'd hardly finished saying his last name before the soldier had pulled a pistol and was aiming it at his head.

He was made to get out of the car. When he did, he was immediately surrounded by half a dozen men aiming rifles at his head. He put his hands up. They frisked him, took his gun, and frog-marched him off the road to where the truck and three jeeps were parked. Max protested his innocence, yelled at them to call Allain Carver or the American Embassy.

He felt something prick his left forearm and saw the syringe sticking out of his arm, the plunger going down, clear fluid going in, someone counting down in his ear.

He should have been worried, but the dope took care of that. He had no fear. Whatever it was they'd given him was beautiful shit.

Part 4

Chapter 44

"HOW ARE YOU feeling?" Vincent Paul asked Max, after he'd pointed for him to take a seat in an armchair facing his desk. They were in Paul's study—discreet air-conditioning, walls lined with bookcases, framed photographs, flags.

"Where am I?" Max asked back, his voice croaky.

He'd been in a room with no windows for two days. That was where he'd come to when the injection had worn off. His first feeling was panic: he'd checked himself all over for missing parts, scars, and bandages. Nothing had been done to him. Yet.

He'd had regular visits. A doctor and a nurse—plus three armed guards—had come to check him out. The doctor had asked him a bunch of questions. He'd spoken English with a German accent. He hadn't answered any of Max's questions. On day two, he stopped coming.

Max had been fed three times a day and given a daily American newspaper, in which nothing was ever reported about Haiti. He'd watched cable TV on the set at the foot of his bed. The morning they'd taken him to meet Vincent Paul, they'd shaved his face and head and given him his clothes back—washed and pressed.

"You should relax. If I wanted you dead I could have let those little kids rip you to pieces," Paul said in a low, deep voice Max felt in his gut. Paul was very dark, with eyes set so far back in his skull they were reduced to two moving, gleaming pinpoints of reflected light, as if he had fireflies buzzing around in his sockets. His face was barely lined. He looked mature but nowhere near the age Max guessed him to be: early fifties. Bald dome, long, fine nose, huge jaw, thick eyebrows, short, stout neck, no fat, all muscle, making Max think all at once of Mike Tyson, a mapou trunk, and a bust of a cruel tyrant with pretensions to greatness. Even seated, he was imposing, everything about him exaggerated and monumental.

"It's not dying that concerns me," Max said. "It's how much of me you'd leave alive."

Max wasn't outwardly nervous, but inside he was wired with anticipation. Very little in his life had prepared him for a moment like this—captured, utterly at the mercy of a foe. He didn't know what was around the next corner. If Paul carved him up and turned him into Beeson, he thought, he'd blow his brains out first chance he got.

"I don't follow." Paul frowned. The hands that had crushed and torn a man's testicles from his body were folded across his lower chest, abnormal in their girth, intimidating in their size, hands nature had made so big they'd needed each an extra pinkie to keep in proportion. And he'd had a manicure. His nails glowed.

"You carved up one of my predecessors so he can't hold his shit," Max said.

"I don't follow," Paul repeated slower.

"Didn't you—or one of your guys—split Clyde Beeson in two and rearrange his insides?"

"No."

"What about that Haitian who was working the case? Emmanuel Michaels?"

"Michel-ange—" Paul corrected him.

"Yeah."

"—who was found by the docks with his penis stuffed down his throat and his balls in his cheeks?"

"Was that you?"

"No." Paul shook his head. "Michelange was fucking somebody's wife. The husband had him taken care of."

"Bullshit!" Max reacted instinctively.

"If you ask around you'll see that it's not. It happened two weeks into his investigation."

"The Carvers know about this?"

"They would if they asked around," Paul said.

"How did they know it was the husband?"

"He confessed to it. He did it in his bedroom, with his wife watching."

"Who'd he confess to?" Max asked.

"The UN."

"And?"

"And what?"

"They take him in?"

"Sure. For as long as it took him to tell them what he'd done. Then they let him go. He runs a hotel and casino near Pétionville. Doing well. You can talk to him, if you want. The place is called El Rodeo. His name is Frederick Davi."

"What about his wife?"

"She left him," Paul answered, face deadpan, his eyes laughing. Max carried on his questioning.

"OK. Darwen Medd? Where is he? Did you kill him?"

"No." Paul shook his head, looking surprised. "I don't know where he is. Why would I want to kill him?"

"A warning. Like the one you sent out to the UN rapists," Max said through a dry mouth.

"That wasn't a warning. That was punishment. And there hasn't been another rape by the occupiers since," Paul said and smiled. "I knew you were following me that time. You weren't hard to miss. Good cars stand out here."

"Why didn't you do anything?"

"I've got nothing to hide from you," Paul said. "Tell me more about your predecessors."

Max explained. Paul listened, his face solemn.

"It wasn't me. I assure you. Although I can't say I'm sorry to hear about Clyde Beeson." Close up, Paul's accent favored English over French. "Pathetic little toerag. A lump of greed waddling on those two stumps he calls legs."

Max managed a smile.

"So you met him?"

"I had them both brought here for questioning."

"Shouldn't it have been the other way around?"

Paul smiled but didn't answer. He had a mouth of bright white teeth. He suddenly looked disarming and pleasant, almost boyish, the kind of person you could imagine doing good deeds and meaning them.

"What did they tell you?"

"What you're going to tell me: how the investigation is progressing."

"You're not my client," Max said.

"How much do you know about me, Mingus?"

"That you'll torture the information out of me."

"Something we have in common." Paul laughed, picking up a file from his desk and holding it up. It had Max's name on it in bold capitals. "What else?"

"You're a major suspect in the kidnapping of Charlie Carver."

"Certain people think my name's a euphemism for everything that goes wrong here."

"Witnesses placed you at the scene."

"I was there." Paul nodded. "But I'll get to that."

"You were seen running away with the kid in your arms."

"Who told you that? That old woman outside the shoe place?" Paul chuckled. "She's blind. She told Beeson and Medd the same thing. If you don't believe me, go and check when we're done. And you might want to look in the shop too. She keeps her dead husband's skeleton in there in a glass case, opposite the door. You'd swear someone's watching you."

"Why would she have lied to me?"

"We lie to white people here. Don't take it personally. It's in the DNA." Paul smiled. "What else do you think you know about me?"

"You're a suspected drug baron, you're wanted in connection with a missing person in England, and you hate the Carvers. How am I doing so far?"

"Better than your predecessors. They didn't know about England. I take it you got that from your friend"—Paul flicked through some pages in the file until he came to the one he wanted—"Joe Liston. You two have a lot of history, don't you? The MTF, 'Born to Run,' Eldon Burns, Solomon Boukman. And that's just when you were in the police. I have a lot more information on you."

"I bet you got everything there is to get." Max wasn't surprised that Paul had looked into him, but hearing him mention Joe got him worried.

Neither said a word. They studied each other, Paul leaning right back in his chair so even the reflection vanished from his eyes and left Max looking deep into two barrels.

The silence widened and then congealed around them. Max couldn't hear anything going on outside. The room was probably soundproofed. There was a long couch with cushions piled up on one side, a book beside it on the floor, open, facedown. The couch was as wide as a single bed. He imagined Paul lying there and reading, engrossed in one of the many bound volumes on his shelf.

The room was closer to a museum than an office or a study. A framed Haitian flag hung on one of the walls—tattered and dirty, with a burn hole in the white center. Facing it was a blown-up black-and-white photograph of a tall, bald man in a dark pinstriped suit holding a young child's hand. They were looking at the world with level, questioning stares—especially the child. Behind them, blurred, was the Presidential Palace.

"Your father?" Max motioned to the picture. He'd guessed from the eyes that they were related, although he was a lot lighter than his son. He could have passed for Mediterranean.

"Yes. A great man. He had a vision for this country," Paul said, fixing Max with a stare he could feel but barely see.

Max got out of his chair and went over to the photograph for a closer look. There was something very, very familiar in the father's face. Vincent was wearing the same clothes as his father. Neither was smiling. They looked as though they'd been stopped hurrying somewhere important, and had posed out of politeness.

Max was sure he'd seen Perry Paul before—no, certain of it. But where?

He returned to his seat. A thought began to form in his mind. He dismissed it as impossible but it came right back at him.

Vincent Paul sat forward, smiling as if he'd read Max's mind. The light finally reached his eyes and revealed them to be a pale hazel color with a hint of orange about them—surprisingly delicate, pretty eyes.

"I'm going to tell you something I never told the other two," Vincent said quietly.

"What?" Max asked, as a cold wave of anticipation began to build up around his shoulders.

"I'm Charlie Carver's father."

Chapter 45

"THE WOMAN YOU know as Francesca Carver was once called Josephine Latimer," Vincent began. "Francesca is her middle name. The rest of it came later."

"I first met her in Cambridge, England, in the very early seventies. I was a student at the university there. Josie lived there with her parents. I met her in a pub one night. I heard her before I saw her—laughing, filling the place with laughter. I looked for her across the room and found her, staring right at me. She was stupendously good-looking."

Vincent smiled warmly as he spoke through his memory, his head leaning back a little, staring more toward the ceiling than at Max.

"And you helped her skip the country so she didn't have to go to jail for killing someone in a hit-and-run. I know," Max broke in. "Question is: where'd he go? That damsel-in-distress-rescuing guy? The one who threw his life away for love?"

The question caught Paul off-guard.

"I didn't throw my life away," he countered.

"So you'd've done the same thing all over?"

"Wouldn't you?" Paul smiled.

"A little regret's always healthy," Max said. "Why do you hate the Carvers?"

"Only Gustav."

"What's Allain doing right?"

"He's not his father," Paul answered. "When Josie and I arrived in Haiti, we went to my family home in Pétionville. My family lived on a large estate on top of a hill. I hadn't told anyone I was coming, just to be on the safe side.

"When we got there we found that the whole place—that's five big houses, one of which I remember my father building practically with his bare hands—the whole lot had been bulldozed by order of Gustav Carver. My father owed him money. He collected—and how."

"That's pretty extreme," Max said.

"Carver has an extreme dislike of competition. If it had been a straight business debt, I could just about have accepted it as 'fair.' That kind of thing happens in business all the time. But this wasn't business, this was personal. And when it's personal Carver always plays to the absolute finish."

"So what happened?"

"The short version: my family had two very successful businesses—import-export and construction. We were undercutting Carver on certain products, sometimes by up to fifty percent, sometimes more. People stopped buying from him and came to us. We also had a project to build a hotel for pilgrims going to Saut d'Eau, the sacred waterfalls. It was going to be low budget, but with the volume of business it was going to attract, we would have made a fortune. Gustav Carver was furious. He was losing face and a lot of money—and the only thing that man hates more than losing money is the people he's losing it to.

"He secretly bought the Banque Dessalines. We'd taken out a loan for some business expansion. Gustav bought our debt and called it in. We didn't have the cash on hand, so he shut us down, made us bankrupt. He took over the Saut d'Eau project and then he killed us financially, ruined my family's reputation, smeared the Paul name.

"Then, to cap it all, after he'd literally reduced our world to rubble—do you know what he did? He used the bricks from our estate to build his bank. That was all too much for my father. He was a very proud man but he wasn't a fighter. He shot himself."

"Jesus!" Max gasped. If Paul wasn't exaggerating—which Max doubted he was—he understood his hatred of Carver. "What about the rest of your family?"

"Two sisters and a brother, no longer in the country or ever likely to come back."

"Your mother?"

"She died in Miami the day we arrived. Pancreatic cancer. I didn't even know she was ill. Nobody told me."

"Aunts, uncles, cousins?"

"I have no family in Haiti. Outside of my son—if he's here."

"What about your friends?"

"True ones are a rare commodity at the best of times, but in Haiti, unless they've known you all your life, 'friends' in the monied circles we used to move in have the habit of becoming scarce when you hit a lean patch and extinct if you're ruined. To them, the only thing worse than not having any money is having had it and lost it. They shun you like your misfortune's contagious. I asked one of my father's 'friends' of long standing for some help—somewhere to stay and a small loan to tide me over until I got back on my feet. This was someone my father had helped out a lot in the past. He turned me down flat, said I wasn't a viable risk," Paul said bitterly. Max could practically see the loathing coming off him.

"So what did you do after you saw what had happened to your estate? Did you have any money?"

"No. Not a cent." Paul laughed. "What I did have was Anaďs, my nanny. I was a virtual son to her. She'd cared for me ever since I was born. In fact, she'd helped deliver me. We were so close I swore she was my real mother. Knowing my father, I wouldn't have been too surprised. He and my grandfather weren't exactly advocates of monogamy.

"Anaďs took us in. She lived in a tiny little house in La Saline. We all slept and ate in the same room, washed at an outdoor tap. It was a life I'd seen but never thought I'd know, and as for Josie, well, she got a serious culture shock, but she used to say English prison was worse."

"You never thought of going back to England, facing the music?"

"No."

"What about her?"

Paul sat up and pulled his chair in closer to the desk.

"I wasn't going to let the woman I loved go back to hell, not when I had the power to stop it."

"So you did wrong to do right? At least you're consistent."

"What else could I have done, Mingus?"

"Do the crime you do the time."

"Sorry I asked. Once a cop…"

"No," Max cut him off. "She killed somebody because she was drunk behind the wheel. She was no saint. She wasn't in the right. And you know that, same as me. Think about the victim's family: flip the picture and it's her getting killed in a drunk hit-and-run, and you're left with the grieving. You'd see things very differently, believe me."

"Those three kids you killed, do you think about their families?" Vincent asked icily.

"No, I don't," Max spoke through gritted teeth. "Know why? Because those three 'kids' raped and tortured a little girl for fun. I know they were fucked up on crack, but most crackheads don't do that to people. Those shitheels didn't deserve their lives. The guy Francesca killed is a whole different ballgame and you know it."

Vincent pulled himself right in to the desk, cupped his massive fist in his palm and fingers and leaned over. Max saw his disarmingly pretty eyes again.

Neither of them spoke. Max held Vincent's stare for the longest time. The big man finally broke the standoff. Max resumed his questioning.

"Anyone come out here looking for you? Cops?"

"Not that I knew of then, but it was only a matter of time before our trail led to here. We lived in La Saline for a year and a half. We were safe there. It's the kind of place where you don't go to unless you live there, or know someone, or have a well-armed military escort—or want to commit suicide. It's exactly the same now."

"How were the people toward you?"

"Fine. They accepted us. Obviously Josie might as well have come from outer space, but we never had a single problem all the time we were there.

"For a living we worked at a local petrol station, and then we ended up managing it. We did something quite innovative at the time here. We added a diner, a carwash, a garage, and a small shop. Anaďs ran the diner and Josie ran the shop. She dyed her hair brown. I only employed people from La Saline. We had to pay off a couple of Macoutes for protection—Eddie Faustin and his teenage brother, Salazar.

"I could tell Eddie had a serious thing for Josie. He'd be round there every day, bringing her something, always when I was out getting supplies. She always refused to take it, but in the nicest way, so as not to offend him."

"What did you do about it?"

"What could I do? He was a Macoute—and one of the most feared ones in the country."

"Must have pissed you off, being that weak?"

"Of course it did." Vincent looked at him quizzically, trying to determine his angle.

Max didn't have one. He'd wanted to get a rise out of Paul, deliberately unsettle him.

"Go on."

"Business was good. Two years after we'd arrived, we moved out of La Saline and bought a small house in town. I thought we were pretty much safe. No one had come after us. We could relax a little. Josie had taken well to life in Haiti. She really took to the people and they to her. She never really got homesick, but obviously she missed her parents. She couldn't even send them a postcard to let them know she was OK, but she accepted that that was the price to pay for her freedom.

"Things went wrong the morning Gustav Carver stopped for petrol. I refused to serve him. His driver got out, pulled a gun on me, and ordered me to pump gas. Of course, the minute he did that he and his car were suddenly surrounded by anybody who was around—some twenty people, some of them had guns, others machetes and knives. They would have killed him and old man Carver if I'd given the word, but what better punishment than to humiliate a proud man in front of the son of the man whose life he'd destroyed? I tell you it was sweet.

"I took the gun off the driver and told him and his boss to clear off my property. The driver had to push the car three miles in the hot sun to the next petrol station—because there were no cell phones then, car phones didn't work out here, and we don't exactly have emergency breakdown services to come and bail you out if you break down.

"Carver was looking at me through the back window like he wanted to kill me. Then he saw Josie and his expression changed. He smiled, at her, but—mostly—at me.

"I'm not sure if things would have been different if I'd let Carver fill his car up and drive away. It's not the way I really live my life. I can't imagine a situation where I'd ever kowtow to that evil bastard. If I did that, I might as well have driven those bulldozers through my family estate myself.

"But, all that day and the next, I kept expecting the worst, that a couple of carloads of Macoutes would come for me."

Vincent broke off and looked away at the photograph of him and his father. His face was rigid, his lips pinched tight, his jaw clamped shut. He was trying hard not to explode—whether in anger or sadness, Max couldn't tell. He doubted Paul had opened up to anyone in many, many years, so that all the emotions he'd felt at the time had been bottled up, sealed away and never given the space to dissipate.

"It's all right, Vincent," Max said quietly.

Paul took a few deep breaths, regained his composure, and continued.

"A few weeks later Josie went missing. Someone told me she'd gone off in a car with Eddie Faustin. I sent people out looking for her, but they couldn't find her. I went to Faustin's house. They weren't there. I carried on looking. I combed the city, I went to all the spots Faustin hung out. She was nowhere to be found.

"When I got back home there was Gustav Carver, waiting for me indoors. After the petrol incident, Carver had done some digging. He had two Scotland Yard detectives with him, as well as a copy of Josie's police record, and a whole bunch of English newspapers with headlines about her case and how she'd skipped the country. Some papers even claimed I'd kidnapped her, and had cartoons showing me as King Kong. Carver said it was a good likeness.

"He told me he'd had a long chat with Josie and that she'd understood her predicament and agreed to his terms. But it all hinged on me saying yes—or so he said. If I said no, the detectives would take Josie and me back to England. If I gave my consent they'd go away and say we weren't in Haiti."

"What did he want you to agree to—giving up Josie?"

"Yes. He wanted her for his son, Allain. She was to remain with him for the rest of her life, bear him children, and have absolutely no contact with me whatsoever. That was it. As for me, well, I was free, as long as I never made any attempt to see her or contact her ever again. Oh, and I had to personally pump Carver's gas whenever he stopped by."

"And you agreed?"

"I had no choice. I reckoned he would have sent me back to England and kept Josie in Haiti. At least, me staying in the country meant that I was close to her."

"I don't get it," Max said. "Carver destroyed your father and everything your family had built up. Why not go the whole way and get rid of you too?"

"You obviously don't understand the man, Mingus." Vincent chuckled sourly. "You've been to his house? You've seen the Psalm haven't you—in gold, near that picture of his dead wife? Psalm twenty-three, verse five?"

"Yeah, I've seen it."

"Did you read it?"

"Yeah, I know it: 'Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.' It's from the famous 'The Lord is my Shepherd' Psalm. And?"

"I take it you didn't do too well in RE."

"RE?"

"Religious Education—sorry, you probably call it 'Bible study.'"

"I did OK."

"The meaning of psalm twenty-three, verse five, is this: in ancient times, the best form of revenge on your enemies wasn't death or imprisonment, but for them to watch you living it up and having a good time. After all, isn't success the greatest triumph over those who've hated you and wished you ill?"

Max was struggling to stay objective, neutral, even on his client's side, but what Paul was saying, coupled with the things he'd heard and read about Gustav Carver, were tempting him out of his professional shell.

"So he kept you here so you could watch Allain step out with the love of your life?"

"Technically, yes," Paul chuckled. "But…theoretically, no."

"What do you mean?"

"She wasn't stepping out with Allain."

"But I thought…" Max stopped. He was lost.

"What kind of detective are you? I thought you were supposed to be good—no, the best."

Max didn't say anything.

"You mean you really didn't notice anything at all?" Vincent was on the verge of laughing. "About Allain?"

"No, should I?"

"You've lived in Miami all your life, you've just spent seven years in prison, and you still can't tell a queer a mile away!"

"Allain?!!?" Max was shocked all over again. Something else he hadn't expected or seen coming. He could normally tell people's sexual orientation, not that it was too hard to spot in America—especially Miami—where people tended to be more open and upfront about which way they swang. Had his skills deteriorated that much?

"Yes, Allain Carver is a homosexual—G-A-Y—a massissi, as we call them here. Actually, Mingus, I'm not so surprised you missed it. Allain's very discreet and straight-acting.

"There had been rumors about him for years, but no proof. Allain's never shat on his own doorstep. He just goes for long weekends in Miami, San Francisco, New York. Does his thing there, bottles it up over here."

"How do you know?"

"I've got photographic proof—videos too. Clyde Beeson took them for me. I employed him—anonymously, through a second party—about ten years ago."

"Figures. He fishes for shit," Max said. His head was still spinning. "So I guess coming out here is a big no-no?"

"Squared. You know what they say about gays? They say: 'There aren't any in Haiti—they're all married with kids.' It's like that all over the Caribbean. Homosexuality is viewed as a perversion, a sin."

"Poor Allain," Max said. "All his money, influence, status, position—and he has to sneak around pretending he's something he isn't."

"He's not a bad guy," Vincent said. "Quite the opposite, in fact."

"So why did you get those pictures taken?"

"To smear him. I was going to plant the pictures in the Haitian press."

"Why?"

"Ying and yang. The ying, to liberate Allain, free him of his secret. The yang—revenge on Gustav, to embarrass him. The timing would have been perfect: the old man was in poor shape. Baby Doc had fallen from power, his wife was dying, his health wasn't good—I thought a little public humiliation would push him over the edge—you know, kill him with natural causes."

"Why didn't you see it through?"

"I couldn't do that to Allain, exploit the poor guy's sexuality, trample over him so I could get to his father."

"How honorable," Max sneered. "I can see where you're coming from and God knows you've got as good a motive as any, but if you hate him that much why don't you just shoot the bastard?"

"Once bitten, twice shy."

"You tried that?"

"Eddie Faustin stopped the bullet."

"That was you? Figures." Max nodded. "So, Gustav married Allain to Francesca to put an end to the rumors?"

"Yes." Vincent nodded. "And…"

"And?"

"That wasn't all Gustav wanted her for. He also wanted her for himself—not just for sex, but for breeding. He desperately wanted a grandson. All he has is granddaughters and he's backward enough to believe that men make better leaders.

"He spent most of a decade trying to get her pregnant. He referred to their sessions as 'making a deposit.'" Vincent laughed bitterly. "Josie had two miscarriages, a stillbirth, a daughter who only lived for six months, but no son.

"We got involved again in the late eighties. When she got pregnant with Charlie, Gustav thought it was his, the country thought it was Allain's, and I knew it was mine and Josie's. Besides, I've got the results of a paternity test. She was barely sleeping with Gustav by then. She'd managed to limit him to the days when she was ovulating—although she'd lied to him about which days those were, so he was basically too early or too late.

"She had Charlie in Miami. Allain was with her. They're actually very good friends, you know. He helped her get through the early years in that family. As far as he saw it, he and Josie were in the same boat—obviously at opposite ends."

Max let out a deep breath.

"Why are you telling me this now? Why not earlier?"

"Because I'm telling you now. The time and place are right."

"Why didn't you tell Beeson or Medd?"

"Beeson I didn't trust. Medd…I didn't think he was good enough."

"So I meet your standards?"

"Up to a point."

"Thanks," Max mumbled sarcastically, although he agreed with Paul. He wasn't as good as he used to be. Or maybe he'd never been that good in the first place; or maybe he'd just got very lucky for a very long time, because a lot of breakthroughs were little more than that—luck, and the carelessness of the criminals who made it happen.

He put his doubts to one side. He'd go back to them later, sometime.

"What was your relationship with your son like?"

"I used to see Charlie once a week."

"Who chose his name?"

"I had no say in it," Paul said sadly.

Max took advantage of Paul's moment of fragility to clear up something that had been bugging him since his first night in the country.

"What's wrong with Charlie?" he asked.

"He's autistic," Paul replied quietly.

"Is that it?" Max was incredulous.

"It's a big deal to us—and to him." Paul sounded hurt.

"But why the secrecy?"

"Gustav Carver doesn't know. And we didn't know if we could trust you with the information."

"Did Beeson or Medd know?"

"No." Paul shook his head.

"When did you find out he was autistic?"

"We both knew something was wrong, pretty much from the time he started walking. He wasn't communicative like a normal baby."

"How did that make you feel, when you found out? When you were told?"

"We were both shocked and confused at first, but—"

"No, I asked how you felt."

"Bad, at first. Because I knew there were things that I'd never be able to do with my son," Paul said, his voice cracking a touch. "But you know, that's life. It isn't all yours. Charlie's my boy, my son. I love him. That's all there is to it."

"How did you keep all that from Gustav Carver?"

"A lot of luck and a little cunning. He's also not the man he once was. The stroke left him a bit soft in the head. But I'll say this about him. He loves my boy with every ounce of his wretched body. Obviously he doesn't know Charlie isn't his, let alone about the autism—but take it out of that context and watching them together was really quite touching. The old man helped Charlie take his first steps. Josie showed me the video she shot, said it was almost a shame the child wasn't his. She said the kid made him nicer. I don't believe her. If he'd known the truth about my boy he would have beaten his brains out with his bare hands."

"If that's the case, why didn't Francesca—Josie—and Charlie move in with you?"

"Josie didn't want Charlie growing up in an environment like mine. And she's right. Someone will probably punch my clock one day, Mingus. I know that. I wouldn't want the two people I love most in the world getting caught in the crossfire."

"Why don't you quit, walk away?"

"You never quit this life of mine. It quits you."

"That is true," Max agreed. "Why'd you do it in the first place?"

"To get Josie back. I picked the fastest route to the kind of money and power I'd need to take on Carver if I had to. I took a look at how the Haitian military were smuggling Colombian-cartel cocaine in and out of the country and I saw ways it could be improved. That's all I'm going to say."

"Wasn't there another way?"

"To make a billion dollars in twenty years—in Haiti? No."

"Your motive's original—the reason you got started—I'll give you that. Twenty times outta ten all you hear is some wannabe Scarface say, you know, he got into it 'cause of his neighborhood, 'cause he had no opportunity, 'cause his moms never loved his ass as much as her boyfriend did. Peer pressure this, socioeconomic conditions that. Blah-blah-blah. That's all you ever hear. But you—out of everything you could've said, you tell me you turned to drug-dealing for love." Max snickered. "That is some unbelievable shit, Vincent. And you know what is even more unbelievable? I believe you!"

"I'm glad you see the funny side." Vincent fixed Max from the bottom of his sunken stare, the beginnings of a smile on his lips. "I'm putting you back in circulation this evening. When Allain asks where you were, you weren't with me, understood?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now, let's talk a little more."

Chapter 46

MAX WAS BLINDFOLDED and put in the back of an SUV. The trip to Pétionville took a good while, a lot of it uphill over bumpy ground, leading Max to think that Paul's hideout was in the mountains. There were two other people in the car with him: Vincent Paul and the driver. There was plenty of talking in Kreyol, some laughter.

Max reviewed the conversation he'd had with Paul, starting with the truth about Charlie's parentage, the shock of which still reverberated through him. He hadn't doubted it was the truth when he'd studied the photograph of Vincent with his father. Charlie looked something like the younger Vincent had, but he took strongly after his paternal grandfather—same eyes, same expression, same stance. Paul had shown him an album of family photographs going back to the late 1890s, every face in it containing a trace element of the missing boy's physiognomy; all of Paul's ancestors had been white or very light-skinned—right up until his black grandmother. He explained that Charlie turning out the color he had wasn't really that uncommon in Haiti, given the nation's mixed bloodline. Max thought about Eloise Krolak and the blue-eyed, near-Caucasian descendants of Polish soldiers in the town of Jérémie. As a formality, Paul had shown Max a copy of Charlie's paternity test.

They talked about the investigation. Paul told him he'd been in the area when Charlie had been kidnapped. He'd rushed to the scene, arriving in time to see the mob pull Faustin out of the car and stab and beat him to death, before cutting off his head, sticking it on a spiked pole, and dancing it away into the slum. Charlie was gone. Nobody had seen him being taken out of the car, but then nobody had seen how Francesca had managed to end up halfway down the road either. Paul guessed that Francesca had held on to Charlie so tightly, the kidnappers had had to carry or drag them both away until they'd broken her grip. He had no witnesses to this, only people who'd seen Francesca coming to on the sidewalk.

Paul had checked out Faustin. He'd been to Saut d'Eau and spoken to Mercedes Leballec, and he'd checked out the house in Port-au-Prince. He'd found the vévé, but nothing else. The trail had gone cold from there. He thought the boy had been kidnapped by one of Gustav's many enemies and smuggled out of the country via the Dominican Republic. He'd searched there too, but drawn a blank. Paul was sure Charlie was dead.

They'd discussed Claudette Thodore. Paul didn't think the kidnappings were related.

Max revealed some but not all of what he'd uncovered. He didn't mention the tape he'd found nor the potential Noah's Ark connection. He didn't mention what it told him—that Haitian children were being stolen, brainwashed, and turned into potential sex toys for foreign pedophiles.

Paul knew he'd been following someone from Noah's Ark but he didn't know whom. Max refused to tell him, because he didn't have the evidence he needed. Paul agreed to let him complete his investigation and offered to help him in whatever way he could.

* * *

The blindfold came off on the outskirts of Pétionville. The SUV they'd been riding in was wedged between a military jeep with UN markings and Max's Land Cruiser.

Max stared out at the passing streets in the near evening, right before the end of daylight. Christmas was coming but there was no sign of the impending holiday—no Santas, no trees, no tinsel. It could have been any time of the year. He wondered what Haiti had been like before its troubles, in more peaceful times. Had those ever existed here? He was starting to care a little about the place, to want to know more about it, to want to know how it could produce people like Paul, for whom he had to admit a repulsed admiration—loathing his methods but lauding his intentions, and even understanding his reasons for getting into the business he was in. Would he have gone the same way if he'd had Paul's life? Possibly, if he hadn't fallen apart first. Would Paul have gone the way Max had? Probably not, but if he had he'd have steered a clearer, quicker course and never fallen down the way Max had.

* * *

"We didn't talk payment," Paul said as they rolled into the Impasse Carver.

"Payment?"

"You don't work for free."

"You didn't hire me, so you don't owe me," Max said.

"I'll give you something anyway—for your troubles."

"I don't want anything."

"You'll want this."

"Try me."

"Peace of mind."

Max gave him a quizzical look.

"Solomon Boukman."

"Boukman?" Max started. "You got him?"

"Yes."

"How long have you had him?" Max kept his tone and posture as even as he could, riding out the shock waves, stifling any signs of anger or excitement in his voice.

"Since your country returned him to us. The really dangerous ones—the killers, the rapists, the gang leaders—I have picked up at the airport."

"What do you do with them?"

"Lock them up and let them rot."

"Why don't you just kill them?"

"They didn't commit their crimes here."

"What about the rest? Do you give 'em jobs in your HQ?"

"I don't employ criminals. Bad for business, especially in my line of work."

Max had to laugh. They pulled up outside the gate of his house.

"Find out what happened to my son and I'll bring you and your nemesis together. Just you, him, four walls, no windows. He won't be armed and you won't be searched," Vincent said.

Max thought about it for a while. He'd wanted Boukman dead in America, and when he'd heard they'd let him go he'd still wanted him dead. But now he wasn't sure he could shoot him in cold blood. In fact, he knew he couldn't do it. Boukman might've been a monster, the worst criminal he'd ever encountered, but killing him would make Max no better than him.

"I can't accept that, Vincent. Not that way," Max said and got out of the car.

Paul wound down the window.

"Your country had him and they let him go."

"That was their business. I'm not a cop anymore, Vincent. You seem to forget."

"You too." Vincent smiled and handed Max back his Beretta and holster. "I didn't think you'd accept."

Paul nodded to his driver. The car started up.

"Oh, and, by the way—remember I told you how Gustav Carver bulldozed our family estate? This is what he built over it. Enjoy your stay," Paul said and flashed a smile both sad and defiant, before the tinted window blocked it from view and Max found himself staring at his reflection as the car drove away.

Chapter 47

THERE WERE FIVE telephone messages waiting for him—Joe, Allain, and three from Chantale.

He called Allain first. He stuck to the script he'd formulated in the car on his way back: act as though nothing had happened and everything was the same as before. He didn't say anything about Eloise Krolak for now. It was still early in the investigation and he only had the videotape to go on. Instead, he explained that he'd spent the last few days chasing down a lead that had turned into a dead end. Allain thanked him for his dedication and hard work.

Max phoned Joe. The big man was out on a case. He wouldn't be contactable for the rest of the night.

He had a shower and made a pot of coffee. He was halfway through his first cup when the phone rang. It was Chantale.

She sounded relieved when she heard his voice. They had a long talk. Max told her the same lie he'd told Allain. He didn't know how much he could trust her. How much did she know about Charlie? And what about Allain? Had she guessed he was gay? Women were supposed to be able to spot that kind of thing.

Chantale told him that her mother's condition was deteriorating. She didn't think she'd last until Christmas. Max used that as an excuse to tell her not to come by the next day. He didn't want her around while he tailed Eloise. He said he'd cover for her with Allain. She said OK, but her voice said it wasn't.

After they were done, he went and sat out on the porch. The dark air was alive with the chatter of the nocturnal insects. A light wind was blowing behind the house, caressing the leaves and carrying with it the sweet fragrance of jasmine and burning trash.

He thought things through:

Vincent Paul didn't kidnap Charlie.

So, who did?

Was it one of Paul's enemies or one of Carver's?

If it was the last, did they know the truth about Charlie's parentage?

What about Beeson and Medd?

They must have come a lot closer than he had and they'd paid for it.

The thought of Beeson getting to something before him stirred up the dormant vestiges of his competitive pride. He got close to angry, imagining the sweaty little ferret almost cracking the case when he couldn't seem to get to first base.

Then he remembered what had happened to his old rival and he let the thought go.

He needed to talk to Beeson again, find out what he knew. He'd ask Joe to bring him in.

Until then, all he had to go on was Eloise Krolak.

Whether or not she was connected to Charlie's disappearance was something he'd soon find out.

Chapter 48

THE FOLLOWING EVENING Max watched Eloise being picked up outside Noah's Ark by the silver SUV. It had just turned six p.m. He tailed the car to Pétionville, where it pulled into the driveway of a two-story house on a tree-lined residential street near the town center.

Max drove down the road, trained his sights on the house, and parked at the end.

After an hour, he took a walk to check the place out. It was pitch-black outside. Not only was the street completely deserted, but no one seemed to be living in any of the other houses either. There wasn't a single light coming from any of them. And neither did he pick up a single sound, other than the song of the cicadas and the branches creaking above his head. It was eerily quiet. He didn't even hear the mountain drums.

He inspected the house from the opposite side of the road. A TV was on in an upstairs room. He wondered if Eloise was watching a video like the one he'd found.

He returned to the Land Cruiser.

* * *

The SUV pulled out of the house just after seven a.m. They were almost immediately held up in traffic. Pétionville was already teeming with people milling around the indoor market—a wide, mustard-colored building with a rusted brown tin roof. The streets were already open for business, men and women of all ages selling fish, eggs, live chickens, dead chickens—plucked and unplucked—mounds of questionable-looking red meat, homemade sweets, potato chips, soft drinks, cigarettes, and booze. The country might have been limping and crawling through the ages, but there was a vibrancy about the people in the early morning Max hadn't ever felt in any American city.

It took them twenty minutes to get on the road to Port-au-Prince and another fifty to make it to the capital. Eloise got out in front of Noah's Ark and waved to the SUV as it drove away to the Boulevard Harry Truman with a honk of the horn.

Max followed the vehicle along the coastal road. As the Banque Populaire came into view, the SUV indicated that it was turning right into the entrance reserved for staff and VIPs.

Max sped past as the SUV entered through the gates, then he did a U-turn and headed back toward the bank. He drove around the building until he found the customer entrance.

As he was rolling into the public parking lot, he saw someone he recognized walking toward the main doors. The person stopped in midstep, turned around, and started heading back in the direction they'd come from.

There was only a medium-sized hedge separating the two parking lots, staff, and general public. Max could clearly see the SUV and the figure hurrying toward it.

It all made so much sense.

He suddenly understood why Claudette had drawn her kidnapper orange.

It was his hair—that ginger afro.

The Orange Man.

Maurice Codada, the head of security.