Mr. Clarinet

* * *

That evening Max called Vincent Paul and told him everything he'd found out. Paul listened in silence.

"We'll go get them in a few hours' time—early tomorrow morning," Paul said quietly. "I want you to interrogate them. Get everything you can out of them. Do whatever you have to, to get them to talk."

Chapter 49

MAX WAS COLLECTED by Paul's men shortly after three a.m. and driven to the Codada-Krolak house. The couple were being held separately in the basement.

Max checked on both of them before going to inspect their house.

* * *

Max crossed a red-and-black-tiled foyer that led into an open-plan living-room area, furnished with a huge TV, a video recorder, a sofa, several armchairs, and a few potted palms.

On the right was a well-stocked bar, complete with upholstered stools. Max checked behind it. He opened the till. It was stuffed with banknotes and coins. The notes were gourdes with Papa and Baby Doc's faces on them. He found a loaded .38 under the bar, as well as a small stack of CDs of Haitian and South American music. Hanging on the wall next to the bar was a Papa Doc–era Haitian flag, black and red instead of blue and red. He understood then that it went with the design of the tiles.

The Duvalier theme continued upstairs. Dozens of black-and-white photographs hung in the corridors—a younger Papa Doc in a white coat, smiling from the middle of a group of poor people, all of them abject and miserable in their clothes and surroundings, yet smiling quite happily. Many, Max noticed, were missing limbs, hands, and feet. It must have been taken at the time of the yaws epidemic. At Duvalier's feet sat a group of tough-faced young children, all of them black except for one—a light-skinned boy with freckles. It was Codada.

Max followed Codada's evolution from child thug to man thug. He posed with Bedouin Désyr and the Faustin brothers, now in Macoute uniforms—navy-blue shirts and pants, bandannas around their necks, guns in their belts, eyes hidden behind thick wraparound shades, booted feet on dead bodies, all smiles.

He stopped at a series of photographs showing Codada supervising a construction site. His mouth dropped open. Clarinette's temple was somewhere in the background of almost every shot.

He looked in the master bedroom. Codada and Eloise Krolak slept in a four-poster bed with a huge TV at the foot of it.

A small framed painting of a boy in a blue uniform with red trousers playing a flute hung on one wall. Max instantly recognized it as the same painting that had been hanging on the wall of the Manhattan club he'd first met Allain Carver in, right near where they'd been sitting. He'd seen it elsewhere too—Codada's office in the bank.

He took the painting down and turned it over. There was a label on the back:

"Le Fifre, Edouard Manet."

Max heard voices in the corridor. Two of Vincent's men were coming out of a room at the end.

He walked down to it. It was a large study, furnished with a desk and computer nearest the door, a library of bound books at the far end, and, in between, a dark green leather armchair and another big television set. A woman was there, working at the computer.

The drawers had all been opened, their contents piled on top of the desk: five bricks of used $100 bills, stacks of photographs, half a dozen CDs—each a different color—and two trays of floppy discs labeled 1961 through 1995.

Max went over to the bookcase, pausing at another portrait of Papa Doc, this one very different from the ones he'd already seen in the house. Here the dictator, dressed like Baron Samedi, in a top hat, tails, and white gloves, sat at the head of a long table in a blood-red room, staring straight at the viewer. Others sat around him, but their faces weren't shown. They were shadowy, ambiguously human forms, rendered in a shade of brown so somber it was practically black. In the middle of the table was a white bundle of some sort. He looked closer at the canvas and recognized a baby.

He looked away and moved over to the bookshelves. The books were arranged in blocks of color—blue, green, red, maroon, brown, and black—and had their titles stamped on the spines in gold letters. He homed in on a title: Georgina A. The book next to it was called Georgina B, the one after, Georgina C. He pulled it out and opened it.

No pages. The "book" was really a video case in disguise, like the kind of hollowed-out Bible he'd known junkies to stash their works and supplies in. Max took out the plain black cassette. A photograph of a scared-looking preteen girl was underneath. He opened cases A and B and found a different photograph in each. In the first, she was smiling at the camera, in the second, she looked confused.

He went through the rest of the shelves. Tapes everywhere, all of them stored in cases branded with girls' names. There were no boys anywhere, no Charlie or Charles A–C.

But he found Claudette T.

And he found Eloise.

"What've you got?" the woman asked from behind the desk. New York accent.

"Videotapes. What about you? What's on the computer?"

"Sales records—everything up to 1985 has been scanned from ledgers. And there's a database on the machine. This couple has been selling kids to men," she said.

"I'll come and look in a minute," Max said, going back to the television. He turned it on and fed Eloise A into the video player.

It was impossible to put a date on the footage, but there were only hints of the adult Eloise in the child whose face filled the screen for at least two solid minutes. She couldn't have been more than five or six then.

Max stopped the tape when the abuse started.

The woman at the desk had stopped working. Her expression, teetering between disgust and despair, told him she'd seen what he had.

"Let's see what you're working on?" Max asked, quickly going over to her.

She showed him her screen—an image of a blank sheet of paper divided into six vertical columns, headed Nom, Age, Prix, Client, Date de Vente, and Addresse. It was from August 1977, and showed which child had been sold to which client and where they'd been taken to.

He quickly scanned this last column: of the thirteen children listed, four had gone either to the U.S. or Canada, two had been taken to Venezuela, one apiece to France, Germany, and Switzerland, three to Japan, one to Australia. The buyers were identified by their full names.

They looked at the database.

It was quite a history.

The database was divided into years, and then subdivided into countries.

Apart from their names, addresses, dates of birth, occupations, and places of employment, there was also a record of the buyers' (called "clients" on the database) salaries, sexual orientation, marital status, number of children, and the names and addresses of their contacts in business, politics, media, entertainment, and other areas.

The first recorded transaction was dated November 24, 1959, when Patterson Brewster III, managing director of The Dale-Green Pickle and Preservatives Company "adopted" a Haitian boy called Gesner César.

The adoption cost $575.

The most recent adoption recorded was that of Ismaëlle Cloué by Gregson Pepper, a banker from Santa Monica, California.

The cost was $37,500 (S). (S) signified standard service—no frills, no benefits, no shortcuts, no special favors; the buyer chose his "item" (as the children were referred to in the database section listing their details), paid, and left with him or her. The price remained constant and there was no competition for the item.

If one or more other buyers were interested in the same child, then the sale went to auction (A), with the price starting at its current standard rate.

The highest paid for a child at an auction was $500,000 for a six-year-old girl, by the Canadian chief executive of an oil company based in Dubai. That was in March 1992.

Other service categories were: (B), which stood for Bon Ami (good friend), or a buyer who could reserve a child of his choice from the menu, without facing competition. The cost was higher—between $75,000 and $100,000—depending on the child's popularity and the buyer's "additional value" (found in a separate box on the database, below the contacts section: this signified a buyer's clout—his links with governments; someone of high value was charged at the lower end of the scale).

(M), Meilleur Ami (best friend), or a buyer who ordered ŕ la carte. He got almost anything he wanted, brought to him from anywhere. For that privilege he could pay anything between $250,000 to $1,000,000.

Many buyers were graded (R)—recurrent purchasers—with numbers indicating the amount of times they had used the service. Most were R3 or R4, but several hit double figures, the highest being an R19.

There were 2,479 buyer names on the database. Of those, 317 came from North America. They included bankers, diplomats, stockbrokers, senior cops, senior clergy, senior military personnel, doctors, lawyers, high-level businessmen, actors, rock stars, movie producers and directors, a media magnate, and one former talk-show host. Max recognized only a handful of the names, but most of the organizations, establishments, and companies they were attached to were household names.

The "menus" consisted of files of photographs of individual children—a head shot and three full body shots—clothed, in underwear, and naked—which were sent to buyers via e-mail. The buyers would reply with their choice.

In the days before the Internet, the buyers had met up at private clubs and had been given the files in paper form. Many preferred this method, because they said e-mails were vulnerable to hackers.

Max next studied a photograph file showing children and their corresponding buyers. The buyers either had been snapped unawares from a distance, or their images had been lifted straight from video footage.

One whole file was devoted to pictures of buyers in or around the place where they kept the children, which Max recognized from the tape he'd found at the Faustin house. They had been photographed meeting and greeting each other, and inspecting the mouths of children standing on what looked like auction blocks. The buyers never looked at the camera, which led Max to think that they were being photographed in secret.

The final photos in the series showed them boarding boats bound for a nearby coastline.

Blackmail, Max thought immediately.

"Do you know where that is?" Max asked.

"Looks like these photos were taken on La Gonâve. It's an island off the coast."

"Could you look up a name for me on the database. First name Claudette—two ts—last name Thodore."

The woman brought up her details and printed them out. Claudette had been sold to a John Saxby in February 1995. He lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Max thought of the rest of the North American buyers and how he could set all those enslaved children free. He'd give Joe a copy of all the evidence. His friend would be a hero: when it was all over and the indictments had been handed down, they'd make him chief of police.

But first things first.

He returned to the basement.

Chapter 50

"CAN WE GET you anything Mister Co-da-da? Water? Coffee? Something like that?" Max offered, starting things off on a cooperative note. He had an interpreter with him—a short, sweaty man with Oriental features and brilliantine in his hair.

Codada sat with his hands tied behind his back, ankles chained together, bare lightbulb burning right above his head. Eloise Krolak was locked in the next room.

"Yes. You can get out of my house and then go fuck yourself." Codada surprised Max by replying in English, his French accent as strong as his defiance.

"I thought you couldn't speak English."

"You think wrong."

"Obviously," Max said.

Codada had on sharkskin pants and black pinstriped socks that matched the silk shirt he wore open three buttons down to his pale, milky chest. Max counted four gold chains around his neck. On his way over to the house, Max had been told that the Codadas had been surprised coming back from a nightclub in the mountains.

"Why d'you think you're here?" Max asked.

"You think I have boy—Charlie?" he answered, pronouncing "Charlie" as Tssharlie.

"Correct. So let's not waste each other's time. Do you have him?"

"No."

"Who does?"

"God." He looked skywards.

"You saying he's dead?"

Codada agreed with a nod. Max looked at his eyes. Codada was looking straight at him, not a hint of a lie, voice steady, truth-telling. It meant nothing, of course, for now. Codada probably hadn't worked out that he was a dead man either way.

"Who killed him?" Max asked.

"The people—dey keeel Eddie Faustin—en męme temps—?"

"So, you're telling me the mobs who attacked Eddie Faustin killed Charlie too? That what you're sayin'?"

"Oui."

"How do you know this?"

"I—investiger?"

"You investigated it?"

Codada nodded.

"Who told you?"

"In the street where it happen. Témoins. Wit-ness. The people talk to me."

"So you had witnesses, who saw this happen?" Max pointed to his eyes. "How many? One? Two?"

"More. En pille moune. Many. Ten. Twenty. It was big big scandale here. Like if the daughter of Clinton kidnapped." Codada flashed a smile. His gold tooth caught the light and an instant, warm, yellow light poured out of his mouth. "Charlie dead. I say dis to him father very many times. 'Your son he dead,' I say but him not listen."

"You told Allain Carver this?" Max played dumb.

"Non. I tell him father." Codada smiled more intensely, ready to drop the bomb on him. "Gustav. Gustav father of Charlie."

Max wasn't going to tear the ground away from Codada's feet just yet. He returned Codada's smile with one of his own. A bolt of panic pierced the confidence in the head-of-security's face.

"Tell me about Eddie Faustin. Were you good friends?"

"Not friend."

"You didn't like him?"

"Him and him brother, Salazar, they work for me in the police."

"You mean the Ton-ton Mackooots?"

"Yes, we was Macoutes." Codada tried to straighten himself up in his chair, failed, resigned himself to a slump.

"Did Eddie work for you afterwards—when the Mackooots finished?"

"Non."

"Did you see Eddie at all afterwards?"

"Only when he drive Monsieur Carver."

"You didn't talk to him?"

"I say hello, how you do."

"Did you meet up? Go for a drink?"

"A drink? With Eddie?" Codada looked at Max as though he was suggesting something not only impossible but utterly absurd.

"Yeah, why not? Talk about old times?"

"'Old time'?" Codada laughed. "When we Macoutes, Eddie Faustin work for me. I his boss."

"So you don't mix with the help either. You do some of the worst things imaginable, but you won't spend quality time with some guy, because he was your subordinate back in the glory days of Doc? You people have some fucked-up standards, let me tell you." Max shook his head and looked at Codada straight on. "Anyway, Eddie Faustin was going to kidnap Charlie. Did you know that?"

"Non. No true," he insisted.

"Yes, true. Yes very true."

"I say no true."

"Why is that?"

"Eddie"—Codada pulled a proud face—"a good man. He never do bad to Monsieur Carver. He love Monsieur Carver like…like him father."

"Eddie tell you that?"

"No. I see. I know. I feel."

"Is that right? You see, you know, you feel? OK. I know Eddie was working for Charlie's kidnappers. That was why he drove the car to that road that day. He was waiting for them to come and take the boy."

"Non!"

"Yes!"

"Who tell you dis—dis shit?"

"I investigay too," Max said. "And it's not shit."

Codada's face said he didn't believe him, told his interrogator he thought he was bluffing.

Max decided to switch lanes and ask him about other things. He went over to a corner of the room and picked up one of the prompts he'd brought from Codada's house—Claudette's videotape.

"Tell me about your business?"

"'Business'?" Codada searched him.

"That's what I said."

"I no 'ave 'business.'"

Max glanced at the door. An armed man was guarding it. His interpreter was standing against the wall behind Codada.

"You ever steal children?"

"I no steal children."

"Bullshit!" Max thundered. "You and your crew stole children to sell to rich perverts. That is your business!"

"Non!" Codada snapped back and tried to stand, but he fell flat on his face.

Max put one foot on Codada's back and pushed down hard until he heard the vertebrae cracking.

"YES! You did, you lying cocksucker!" Max seethed as he ground his foot down harder on Codada's spine, making him gasp in pain. "You stole those kids and you took them to La Gonâve and sold them to kiddie rapers like yourself. I bet that's what we're gonna find when we go there—we're gonna find your latest batch of merchandise. You sackful of fucking shit!"

Max stamped on him hard and Codada cried out.

"Pick him up!" Max snapped at the men.

They set him back in the chair.

Max opened Claudette's videotape box and showed him her photograph.

"You know her?"

Codada didn't answer, just winced in pain.

"John Saxby—the guy who bought her? Tell me about him: what does he do? And don't talk shit because we've got your accounts—your business accounts. Answer me."

"I no more want speak," Codada said, looking past Max, his eyes going dull as he focused on the door.

"Oh, you 'no more want speak'? Well, fuck you Maurice, because I'm as good as it fucking gets for you. Think I'm giving you a hard time now? This is easy time, Maurice, because you either speak to me now, or Vincent Paul will make you speak. Do you understand?"

"Good kop, bad kop?" Codada sneered.

"There are no cops here, Maurice. And there's no good either. You're through. You hear me? You're over. You know why? I'm going to talk to Eloise. I'm going to make her tell me what you won't. You understand me?" Max said, mouth close to Codada's ear. "You still 'no more want speak'?"

Codada didn't reply.

Max turned and walked out of the room.

Chapter 51

ELOISE SHOT MAX a furtive look when he walked into the room, then stared down at the plain white handkerchief in her cuffed hands.

"Eloise? My name is Max Mingus. I'm investigating the kidnapping of Charlie Carver."

No reply.

"I know you speak English as well as I do," Max said. She stayed silent, kept her eyes on the handkerchief, her body slightly hunched forward, as if she would have drawn her knees up to her chest if she could.

"Let me paint the picture for you. This is going to go very very badly for you both," Max kept his voice low and soft, his tone non-threatening, one of shared intimacy. "You know who Vincent Paul is. I've seen what he does to people and trust me, it is not pretty."

She didn't even move.

"Eloise, I'm not like him. I want to help you. I've seen the videotapes of you when you were a little girl. I've seen what that man in the next room did to you. If you help me, I promise you that I will talk to Vincent about you. I'll explain to him that it wasn't really your fault you got involved in the things you did. You might have a good chance of getting out of this alive."

Silence.

Then Max heard the unmistakable boom of Vincent Paul's voice outside the house.

"Eloise. Save yourself. Please," Max implored. "If you don't help me, Vincent Paul will kill you. He's not going to take your past into account. He's not going to care that you were once a little girl, that that evil bastard out there snatched you from your home and raped you and abused you. He's just going to see what he's looking at—a teacher, someone responsible for the lives of young vulnerable children, orphans, who let evil men abuse them and even participated in it. I won't blame him for his actions, Eloise. Think about it. Think about it hard. I'm offering you a way out. That sack of shit in the next room isn't worth it."

Max walked out and saw Paul standing in the corridor. He greeted Max with a half-smile and a slight nod.

"Give her this." Vincent put something small and wet into Max's palm.

Max looked at it and went back in to Eloise.

"Recognize this?" he asked her.

Her eyes widened and teared up when she recognized what the bloody gleaming chunk of metal between Max's fingers was.

"You leave him alone!" she screeched.

"If you don't tell us what we want to know, Eloise, we are going to take him apart, piece by piece." He grabbed her hand and pressed her lover's gold front tooth into her palm.

She stared at Max, her eyes poisoned darts. He knew then that she wasn't the warped innocent he was almost sure she'd be. She wasn't any kind of victim at all. She was every bit as guilty as Codada.

"You're still going to kill us whatever," she sneered, French accent smothering American inflections.

Paul walked in, dragging Codada behind him by his cuffed legs.

Eloise cried out when she saw him. She tried to stand.

"Sit down!" Max thundered. "You will answer my questions or that child-raping scumbag over there will lose a lot more than his teeth. Understand?"

Max didn't wait for an answer.

"Charlie Carver? What did you do with him?"

"Nothing. We don't have him. We never had him. We never would have had him. You've come to the wrong people, detective."

"Have I?" Max got in her face. He'd come back to Charlie later. "Where is Claudette Thodore?"

"I don't know who she is."

Max pulled the picture out of his wallet and showed her. She glanced at it for a second.

"She wasn't one of mine."

"What do you mean?"

"I didn't work with her."

"'Work with her'? What do you mean?"

"I didn't groom her."

"'Groom her'?"

"Teach her etiquette—table manners—the things you need to know in polite society."

Max was about to ask her to expand on what she'd said, but Codada gurgled something from the floor.

"He says he'll talk now," Paul translated.

"Yeah? Well, I don't want to listen to him right now. Take him back."

Vincent dragged Codada out.

Max turned back to Eloise.

"Grooming—go, tell me."

"You mean you can't figure it out?" Eloise sniggered.

"Oh, I know what it is," Max sneered. "I just want to hear it from you."

"Our clients are all very wealthy men, people who move in high society circles. They like their product to be of a certain standard."

"Their 'product' being these children?"

"Yes. Before selling them we teach them table manners, and the correct way to behave around adults."

"As in saying 'please' and 'thank you' when they're being raped?"

Eloise didn't answer.

"Answer me."

"It's more than just that." She got defensive.

"Oh?"

"Ill-mannered people get nowhere in life."

"And you're what—doing them a favor, teaching them how to hold a knife and fork at some pedophile's dinner table? Give me a motherfucking break, Eloise!" Max shouted. "Why'd you do it, Eloise? I saw those tapes. I saw what happened to you."

"You saw, but you didn't see," she countered, boring into Max with hard eyes. "You should look again."

"Why don't you just fill me in on what I'm missing?"

"Maurice loves me."

"Bull-shit!" Max spat.

"Why?" she countered calmly. "What did you expect to find? A victim? A helpless, weeping adult-child? Someone right out of your training manual?" She was defiant and angry, her voice falling just outside a shout. Yet, in spite of this, her delivery was completely devoid of passion, as if she had been rehearsing this speech all her life and the words had lost their meaning to her, become a row of audio dots she had to follow until they stopped.

"It's easy for you to paint us all as innocent, vulnerable little victims, but we're not all the same. Some of us beat the system. Some of us come out on top."

"You call this coming out on top?" Max threw his hands around the room. "You're gonna die and you're gonna die bad."

"No one has ever treated me as well as him. Ever. In my whole life. I have no regrets. If I could change anything, I really wouldn't," she said calmly.

"Tell me about Maurice. How did he steal you? What was his technique?"

"He didn't 'steal me,'" she said impatiently. "He rescued me."

"Whatever." Max sighed. "Just tell me how he did it."

"The first thing I remember about him was his camera—he had a Super 8 then. It covered half his face. I used to see him in the mornings. Me and my friends would wave to him. He'd talk to us, give us things—candy, these little wire figurines he made of us. He paid me the most attention. He made me laugh. My friends were so jealous." Eloise smiled. "One day he asked me if I wanted to go away with him—go on a trip to a magical place. I said yes. And the next thing I knew, I was sitting next to him in a car. Best decision I ever made."

Max tried to swallow but his mouth was arid. She was right. She wasn't what he was expecting. He knew all about Stockholm syndrome, where kidnap victims fall in love with their captors, but he'd never encountered that in a child-abuse case before.

He was deeply confused—and lost and horrified, and the worst part was he couldn't help himself from showing it, letting her see into him, letting her have the edge on him, the authority.

"But—what about your family?"

She let out a sour laugh, her face rigid, her eyes cold and fixed.

"My family? You mean my 'apple-pie Mom and Dad,' like you have in America? Is that what you think when you speak of my 'family'?"

Max looked at her blankly.

"Well, it wasn't like that, let me tell you. The little I can remember I'd give anything to forget. Eight to a tiny one-room house, so poor the only thing I had to eat was dirt cake. Do you know what dirt cake is? It's a little cornmeal and a lot of dirt mixed together with sewer water and left outside to dry into a cake. That's what I ate every day."

She stopped and looked at him defiantly, goading him to come back at her with something bigger, to try and net her with some homespun morality.

When she saw he wasn't going there, something in her changed and became unsure. Then she breathed deeply through her nose, held in the air, closed her eyes, and lowered her head.

She held her breath for well over a minute, her eyeballs squirming back and forth behind her eyelids, her fingers screwing up the corners of her handkerchief, and her lips moving fast but soundlessly, either in prayer or conflict with her conscience. Then, one by one, the neurotic motions timed out: she put the handkerchief down on her lap and rested her hands, palms down. Her lips froze and her eyes rolled to a stop.

Finally, she exhaled through her mouth, opened her eyes, and addressed Max.

"I'll tell you everything you need to know. I'll tell you where we keep the children and who we sell them to. I'll tell you who is involved, and who we work for."

"Who you work for?"

She opened her eyes and met his.

"You didn't think Maurice ran this all by himself, did you?" She laughed.

Paul came back in.

"Maurice is many things, but clever isn't one of them." She giggled fondly, and then almost immediately flipped into business mode. "I'll tell you absolutely everything—but on one condition."

"Try me," Max said.

"You let Maurice go."

"What? Absolutely no fucking way!"

"You let Maurice go and I'll tell you. He was just a cog in a very big wheel. We both were. If you don't let him go, I won't talk. You might as well turn your guns on us now."

"Done," Paul suddenly interrupted, making Eloise start. "As long as we verify whatever information you give us, I'll let him go."

"Give me your word," Eloise said.

"I give you my word."

Eloise bowed her head solemnly to indicate they had a deal.

Max didn't know if he believed Paul would let Codada walk, but he put that to the back of his mind.

Paul put his hand on Max's shoulder and tapped it, which Max understood as a sign to resume the interrogation.

"Tell me who you're working for."

"Can't you guess?"

"Eloise, you've got a deal. We ain't going to play cat-and-mouse no more. We ain't going to play clever. I ask you a question, you give me an answer—and you tell me the truth. Simple as that. Understood?"

"Yes."

"Good. Who are you working for?"

"Gustav Carver," she said.

"No fucking shit, Eloise!" Max yelled. "I know he's your fucking boss already! He runs Noah's Ark. He runs the bank where your motherfucker child-rapist lover works!"

"But you asked who we're wor—"

"Don't get fucking cute with me!" Max leaned all the way over to her. "You hold out on me anymore, I swear to God I'm going over and capping Maurice myself."

"But I'm telling you it's Gustav Carver! He is our boss. He is behind this. He runs this. He owns this. He started it! He invented it!" Eloise insisted, her voice trembling. "Gustav Carver. It's him. He's been doing it for almost forty years. Stealing children, turning them out, selling them for sex. Gustav Carver is Tonton Clarinette."

Chapter 52

"MAURICE FIRST MET Monsieur Carver—Gustav—in the 1940s. He lived in a village in the southwest, about fifteen miles out of Port-au-Prince. At that time one of the most widespread diseases in Haiti was yaws. Maurice's area was the most heavily infected. Yaws is a lot like leprosy.

"Maurice told me these stories about how it attacked his parents. His mother was the first to get it. First her arms withered, then her lips fell off, then her nose was eaten away. They were driven out of the village. They lived in a clapboard shack, Maurice and what was left of his parents. He watched them fall apart, literally."

"How come he didn't get it?" Max asked.

"Le Docteur Duvalier—François Duvalier—Papa Doc—saved him."

"Was that how they met?"

"Yes. The shack was on the way to the village. The doctor was setting up a hospital nearby and he found Maurice sitting there between the bodies of his parents. Maurice was the first person he inoculated."

"I see," Max said.

"They had a problem with protecting their medical supplies. They were always getting raided by the locals. So Maurice organized a gang to act as security. Kids his age, some younger. They watched over Le Docteur Duvalier while he was working, and they watched over the hospital at night. They were very effective. They used catapults, knives, and clubs. They carried their weapons around in macoutes—these straw satchels you see the peasants carrying. Duvalier called them 'mes petits tontons macoutes'—my little men with bags. The name stuck."

"That's so cute." Max laughed sarcastically. "What about Gustav Carver? Where does he come in?"

"Monsieur Carver was always around. He was the first white man Maurice had ever seen. Medical supplies were impossible to get hold of. It was Monsieur Carver, with his business contacts, who brought the supplies from America.

"Maurice went to work for Le Docteur Duvalier. He was responsible for Le Docteur Duvalier's safety during his presidential campaign."

"When did they start stealing children?"

"Le Docteur Duvalier, as well as being a doctor, was also a bokor—you know what that is?" she asked him condescendingly.

"I've been here long enough, lady," Max responded, giving her a hard look. She smiled at him, for the first time, very nervously, showing crooked, yellowed front teeth. She reminded Max of an old rat. All she needed were stick-on whiskers. "I also know that there's voodoo and there's black magic. I know enough about one to tell it from the other. So, stop me if I'm wrong, but Papa Doc was practicing black magic, wasn't he?"

"He dealt with the dead, the spirits. That's why he needed children."

"How?"

"The only thing that separates us from the spirit world is our bodies. When they go we become spirit. Spirits used to be people and like people they can be fooled," Eloise said, stretching her fingers, which were short and thin, like broken brown pencil stubs held together with Scotch tape.

"So what's the point of being a ghost—a spirit—if you can't see what a mortal's up to?"

"This is where you have black magic. Le Docteur Duvalier used the souls of children—the purest, most untainted souls you can find, the ones the spirits will always speak to and help out."

"How did he get their souls?"

"How do you think?"

"He killed the children?"

"He sacrificed them," Eloise replied, again condescendingly.

"So Maurice and his crew used to steal children for Papa Doc?"

"Yes. He stole to order, because Le Docteur Duvalier wouldn't take just any child off the street. He was very specific about who he wanted. It was different every time. Sometimes he'd need a boy, sometimes a girl. They had to be born on a certain date, they had to come from a certain region. They had to be under a certain age. Never over ten. Their souls became less pure at that age. They started developing into adults then. They knew more."

"And the spirits wouldn't talk to them as much," Max concluded.

"Yes."

"So Maurice stole these children and Gustav Carver knew all about it?"

"Yes, he did—and more than that: he was in charge of procuring the children. Le Docteur Duvalier would specify what he wanted to Monsieur Carver. Monsieur Carver and Maurice would look around the country, photographing likely subjects. They would present the photographs to Le Docteur Duvalier, who'd choose the one he wanted."

Max's blood ran cold. Her eyes weren't lying and her body language wasn't deceptive or panicked. She was telling the truth. It figured. It fit. Everyone knew Gustav Carver was close to Papa Doc, that they went back a long way. Gustav was an opportunist. He probably saw in Duvalier a ruthlessness identical to his own—and the same will to act without conscience or remorse.

"What did Papa Doc use these children—these children's souls—what did he use them for?"

"To trick his enemies."

"How?"

"We all have a guarding spirit—a guardian angel, I suppose. They watch over us, protect us. When he'd captured a child's spirit, Le Docteur Duvalier made it do his bidding. He used them to fool the guardians who watched over his enemies into giving away their secrets, see if they were plotting to get rid of him."

"And for that he got—? What did Baron Samedi give him? The presidency?"

"Yes. And once he'd got it, Baron Samedi kept him in power, gave him dominion over all his enemies—as long as he made the offerings and continued to do his loas' bidding."

"And you believe this?"

"Maurice said Baron Samedi used to appear in the room during the ceremony."

"Yeah? Sure it wasn't the same guy was in that James Bond movie?"

"You can mock all you want, Mr. Mingus, but Le Docteur Duvalier was a very powerful man—"

"—who killed children—defenseless, innocent children. I don't call that 'powerful,' Eloise. I call that weak, and cowardly and evil," Max interrupted.

"Call it what you want," she bristled. "But it worked. No one killed him. No one overthrew him—and your people never invaded our homeland."

"I'm sure there are more earthly reasons for that, and your Doc is dead," Max said. "Talk to me about Carver and Codada. The child kidnapping. At what point did it become a business?"

"Once Le Docteur Duvalier was in power, he rewarded Monsieur Carver with business contracts and monopolies. Maurice became security advisor. Many people who had originally backed the president fell out of favor with him, but this never happened to Monsieur Carver or Maurice. They were at his bedside when he died."

"Touching," Max quipped. "So Carver built his modern business empire on the backs of kidnapped children?"

"Not to begin with. It was just expansion, growth, like they cut down forests to build roads and towns. Le Docteur Duvalier needed to make his offerings to keep going.

"Maurice told me Monsieur Carver saw the business potential when a CEO from a bauxite mining company came to Haiti. The island is naturally rich in bauxite. Monsieur Carver got involved in a potential deal, but he was up against a mining conglomerate from the Dominican Republic. He hired a private detective to do some research into the company, investigate its management. The managing director was a pedophile. He liked little Haitian boys.

"He kept a young boy in a house in Port-au-Prince. During the week the boy went to a private school. He was taught etiquette—table manners, the correct way of conducting himself in civilized company—"

"Just like you taught?" Max interrupted.

"Yes."

Max could see more pieces of the awful puzzle coming together. It suited Carver's MO: he wasn't a creator, he was a parasite. He'd been born into wealth and had set about acquiring more, not through entrepreneurship but by buying or bulldozing his way into ownership of businesses others had devoted their lives to setting up and running.

He thought of the old man, his house, his bank, his money. He felt suddenly irrelevant, canceled out. What was he now? A man who did good things for bad people?

"Go on," he murmured.

"The managing director was a family man, old money, with good connections in the Dominican government. A scandal like that would have ruined him."

"So—don't tell me—Gustav Carver presented the man with the evidence and made him pull out of the deal?"

"Yes, sort of, but not quite," Eloise said. "Monsieur Carver didn't know anything about bauxite mining, so he brought the Dominicans in as partners anyway."

"And, seeing the success he'd had, and probably working out that pedophiles are an elite little group who tend to know each other, he started providing the Dominican or his 'friends' with fresh 'supplies'?" Max followed on.

"That's correct."

"And these 'friends' were either businessmen who Carver could cut deals with or connected to the kinds of people who could help him expand his empire?"

"That's it."

"So, he got them children and they gave him contracts and money in exchange?" Max asked.

"And—most importantly—more connections—others like them, or others not like them—very very powerful people. Monsieur Carver acquires people. It's how he built his business empire into what it is—and not just here, in Haiti. He has interests all over the world."

She stopped talking and opened up the handkerchief in her lap and folded it, very neatly, from left to right, into a triangle, which she doubled up to make another. She smoothed out the surface of the shape, admired it, and undid it, working backwards.

"But there's more to it than just money and clout, isn't there?" he resumed. "The sweet dirt he has on them, these high-up, powerful people? He must have enough to bury them ten times over. He owns them. He has power over them. They're his slaves. He tells them to jump, they ask 'how high?' Right?"

Eloise nodded.

"What about Allain Carver?" Paul looked at Eloise. "Is he involved in this?"

"Allain? No. Never!" She smirked and then sniggered.

"What's so funny?" Max stared at her. Her smirk was irritating the hell out of him—it was the I-know-better look teachers had.

"Monsieur Carver called Allain his 'dickter'—daughter with a dick. He said if he'd known Allain would turn out a faggot, he would have given him away to one of his clients—for free." She laughed.

"Fancy that," Paul cut her off. "He thinks gays are perverts but pedophiles aren't."

She tried and failed to hold his look. She went back to her handkerchief, which she rolled, like pastry, into a cylinder.

"So Allain didn't know anything?" Max picked up again.

"I didn't know anything about it, Max," Paul said. "I believe her. I know Allain. He doesn't even know about most of his father's legitimate businesses. I've got the inside track, remember? Gustav kept this one really secret. To be doing something like that in a place this small—and still keep it secret. That takes some doing. And to keep it so hidden that even I haven't heard about it…"

"Everyone was implicated," Eloise said. "That's why no one spoke about it. And with his connections, if something ever did look like it was going to get out…"

"He'd crush it into nothing," Paul finished.

Max thought about Allain. Unless he found evidence that completely exonerated him, Max decided he'd interrogate him about what he did and didn't know, all the same, just to be sure.

"Tell me about Noah's Ark."

"No one suspected a thing. Everyone thought it was just a simple charity—and it was, for the wrong children."

"What do you mean by 'wrong children'?"

"The surplus—and the ones that didn't get sold."

"Where did they end up?"

"Monsieur Carver found jobs for them."

"Nothing wasted." Max looked at Paul. Paul's face was rigid, his jaws clamped shut, his lips pressed tightly together. From the way he was standing, six-fingered hands half-formed into fists, Max knew he was getting ready to blow. He hoped he'd have time to get everything out of Eloise before Paul tore her head off.

"When did you start 'grooming' the children?"

"I must have been fifteen or sixteen. Monsieur Carver was very proud of me. He called me. I was his favorite." She smiled, her eyes tearing up and at the same time glowing with a cold, burning pride.

"Monsieur Carver already knew something about vodou potions, the ingredients that go into making the serum they give to people to turn them into zombies. He'd studied up on all that kind of stuff. He's a trained hypnotist, you know. He told me he'd always worked on children—poor slum kids."

"How? Sexually?"

"He taught them manners."

"So was it Carver's idea to take these rough kids and shape them—'groom them'—into obedient sex slaves with perfect table manners, so they'd pass in those upper circles?"

"Yes. No one buys a half-finished car."

"Is he still doing it? Hypnotizing kids?"

"Once in a while, yes, but he's passed his skills on to people in La Gonâve."

Max stared at a long, thin crack running down the length of the wall in front of him, breaking his concentration and letting his mind wander. He was feeling angry now, bitterly sick to his stomach. He was seeing himself back at Gustav's side, looking at Mrs. Carver's portrait, empathizing with the old man because they were both widowers who'd lost what they'd loved the most. He'd cherished the image, held it up as proof that Gustav Carver wasn't a monster but a man…still a human being. Not even the things Vincent had told him about the old man had completely destroyed the image. But this—what he'd heard now, what he was listening to—had dissolved his fondness for the old man in acid. He wished she was lying. But she wasn't.

He had to go on, finish it.

"With the adopted kids: What happened if something went wrong, say they tried to escape or tried to tell someone what's happening?"

"They're conditioned not to. Their new owners are supplied with serum, which keeps them in a"—she broke off and searched for the word, smiling when she'd landed on it—"'cooperative' state. We also have people on hand to help. If anything goes wrong, the owner calls a number and we take care of it."

"Like a maintenance service for a—a washing machine."

"Yes." She smiled condescendingly. "A 'maintenance' service, as you put it. It covers everything from reorienting a child—that means hypnotizing them again—to, if the matter is serious, removing him or her from circulation."

"You mean killing them?"

"That has been necessary, yes." She nodded. "But seldom."

"What about when these kids get older, d'you kill 'em too?"

"That has sometimes been necessary also," Eloise agreed. "But seldom. Usually they grow up and move on. Sometimes they stay with their owner."

"Like you did?"

"Yes."

"What about if I was a client with special desires? Say I wanted an Asian kid."

"That can easily be arranged. We have branches all over the world. We'd just fly one in for you."

Max switched back to Charlie.

"What about a handicapped child?"

"It hasn't been done before, not that I know of. But there are no limits, no extremes, no places we won't go—but that has never been requested," she said.

Max gave Paul a quick look and shook his head. They didn't have Charlie. They didn't take him.

"Who kidnapped Charlie Carver?" he asked her.

"No one. He is dead. I'm sure of it, Maurice is sure of it. He spoke to a lot of witnesses who were there when the mob attacked the car. They all said they saw the boy being trampled and kicked around on the ground by people running at Eddie Faustin."

"What about his body?" Max turned back to Eloise.

"He was a three-year-old child. Easy to miss."

"But wouldn't the mob have left it behind?"

"Why? A mother or father could have taken his clothes for their own child."

Paul breathed deep through his nostrils. Although his face was rigid and emotionless, Max heard the hurt echo deep within him in the way the air passed into his lungs with staccato rhythms. Paul believed her. His son was dead.

Max studied Eloise to see if she'd heard or noticed anything, but she was keeping her eyes down, worrying the edges of her handkerchief.

Max couldn't be sure Charlie was dead. Something screamed at him that it wasn't so.

What about Filius Dufour? What about Francesca's certainty that he was still alive?

The voice of reason countered:

You believe an old fortune-teller and a grieving mother? Come on!

Max was almost done with Eloise.

"And how involved was Gustav Carver in the day-to-day running of this business?"

"Up until his stroke he was very involved in it. Like I said to you before, he is Tonton Clarinette."

"How?"

"He played his part in hypnotizing the children."

"How?"

"Did you find the CDs in the study?"

Max nodded.

"Did you listen to them?"

"Not yet. What'll I hear?"

"Do-re-mi-fa-sol—each individual note, played on a clarinet, with a short gap in between. On each CD an individual note is held longer. For example, on the blue one it's re, on the red one it's fa, and so on. They're codes," Eloise explained. "They get implanted into the children's minds when they're being hypnotized.

"There are six stages to our hypnosis process. The first three strip away what you know and the last three replace it with what we want you to know. For example: a lot of the children—say ninety percent of them—were off the streets. They didn't know anything about table manners, using a knife and fork. They ate like monkeys, with their hands. Under hypnosis, they'd be conditioned not to do that, to lose the association of consuming food with their fingers, to forget they ever ate food like that—to unlearn, if you will."

"But they could learn that anyway?" Max said.

"Of course. Most people learn through repetition, trial and error. But that's time-consuming," she explained.

"So their minds associated a certain behavioral pattern with a certain code? Like a reaction—like that dog that got taught to sit up and salivate whenever it heard a bell ringing—Pavlov's dog?"

"That's exactly it—conditioning," Eloise said.

"And let me guess: the perverts used the codes to keep the kids in line?"

"Yes." Eloise nodded. "The Clarinette codes induced Pavlovian reactions. The clients play a certain set of codes to get what they want out of their child. For example, if they want full sexual compliance, they play a disc where the codes run backwards. If they want the child to be on his or her best behavior in front of adult company, they'd play a disc where re is the dominant note. You get the picture?"

"In Technicolor," Max mumbled disgustedly. He looked at Paul and felt his gaze buried deep behind the shadows in his sockets. He sensed waves of rage coming off him. He turned back to Eloise. "You used that zombie potion too, didn't you?"

"How did you know?"

"Got it all on tape," Max said.

"Tape? Where did you find it?" She looked worried.

"It doesn't matter. Answer my questions: zombie juice—why was it used?"

"To keep the children docile and receptive to conditioning. It's easier to manipulate a stupefied mind. Clients are provided with bottles of the solution to use at home. It was part of the deal," she said.

Max shook his head and then rubbed his temples. He needed to stop—stop hearing this, stop being here.

"So you're telling me that's Gustav Carver on those CDs, right? Playing the clarinet?"

"He used to participate in the hypnosis. He'd sit and play his clarinet to condition the children. When you get to the headquarters in La Gonâve you'll find the video vault—there are plenty of tapes and photographs of him sitting in the middle of groups of children," Eloise said. "Maurice told me he once asked him why he participated, why he didn't just record the notes once. Monsieur Carver said it was the closest he came to having absolute power."

"When did he stop playing?"

"Sometime in the mideighties—because of his illness. He might have retired, but his myth didn't."

"Mister Clarinet—Ton-ton Clarinet?"

"Yes, like I keep saying, Tonton Clarinette is real. Tonton Clarinette is Monsieur Carver—Gustav Carver."

"But if it's all supposed to be a secret, how did the myth get out?"

"A few of the children escaped over the years," she said quietly. "Not from us, but from their masters. Three are still at large."

"Was one called Boris Gaspésie?"

"Yes. How did you know?"

"I ask, you answer. What about the others?"

"Two girls—Lita Ravix and Noëlle Perrin."

Max wrote down the two names. He was done with her. He gave a long, hard look, searching those ratlike features for something close to regret or shame for what she'd done. There was nothing of the sort there. There never had been.

He nodded to Paul to indicate that he was through, then he got up and left the room.

Chapter 53

MAX PACED AROUND in the street outside the house, his head churning with all the revelations.

He'd need to see all the evidence and, above all, confront Gustav Carver to be sure—even if he believed Eloise was telling the truth. She didn't have a lying way about her, because all the self-preservation instincts had been brutalized out of her. Liars tripped themselves up with inconsistencies and improbabilities, often in the smallest details, the loose threads that when tugged unraveled the whole tapestry. What Eloise had told him all fit, all flowed in one direction.

What he couldn't understand was what Gustav had been thinking, getting outsiders in to investigate Charlie's disappearance. Hadn't he thought that they might find out about his business along the way? Hadn't he at least considered it a risk?

Of course he had, Max concluded. You don't stay on top of your game for as long as Gustav had by flying close to the sun. People like Gustav never took blind risks; they took informed risks. They didn't just look before they leaped, they knew every single millimeter of the ground they'd land on.

But then, like all absolute tyrants, Carver had always had his own way. He'd never met a challenge he hadn't flattened. So what if he got found out? What could one person do against Carver and his network of contacts who, even if they were a fraction as powerful as Eloise had suggested, would wipe that person clean off the face of the planet? Carver considered himself untouchable, and with good reason.

Had Gustav Carver been behind what had happened to Beeson and Medd? Had they got too close? No. Max didn't think so. At least definitely not Beeson. Beeson would have tried to blackmail Carver and Carver would have had him killed. Why leave him alive so he could tell people what he knew?

So what about the reason he'd originally come here? Charlie Carver? What had happened to him?

He didn't know for sure, but he suspected Charlie was dead.

What about Eddie Faustin? What part did he play? He'd definitely been trying to kidnap the boy the day he was killed. That was beyond doubt. Faustin had been waiting for the kidnappers to come and get Charlie at a prearranged rendezvous, and then the mob had turned up and things had gone badly wrong.

Or had it?

Maybe Eddie had been set up, double-crossed by the kidnappers. It was possible. They'd paid the mob to start a riot around the car and kill him. It would make sense if the kidnappers wanted to avoid being identified—or suspected.

Yet Codada had said that Faustin was loyal to Gustav Carver, that he loved Carver like a father. Why would he betray Carver? What had the kidnappers offered him? Or maybe they hadn't offered him anything at all—maybe they had something on him. That wasn't hard—an ex-Macoute with bloody hands, now working for the head of a child sex ring.

How much had Faustin known about Gustav's business? Was the kidnapping related to it?

But that still left Charlie unaccounted for and unexplained.

What was there to go on?

He didn't know. He'd hit a dead end.

Where to now?

* * *

Half an hour later, Paul came out to join him in the street.

"She's given me the location of the place in La Gonâve. They've got about twenty kids in there now. They used a cargo boat to get them over there. Every month they filled the hold up with new kids," Paul said. "We'll be getting them out tomorrow evening."

"What about the military here?"

"It'll be a joint operation with the UN. I have a good friend there," Paul explained.

"What about Gustav?" Max asked.

"You bring him in."

"Me?"

"Yes, you, Max. Tomorrow. I want to avoid casualties. If we go up to the Carver estate his people will start shooting. The Americans are stationed quite close by and they'll come to investigate. Knowing them, they'll kill all of us and tell Carver to have a nice day."

"He's got a lot of security."

"You'll have plenty of backup, if you need it. Our guys will follow you up to the estate and wait close by. You'll have radio contact with them."

"Assuming I get him out, where do I take him?"

"Get him out on the main road. We'll take him from there."

Max didn't want to do it. He'd never had to bring a client in.

"Make sure you tell Francesca so she's out of the way. Allain too."

"It's in hand," Vincent said and started heading back to the house.

"What about them—Codada and Eloise?" Max asked. "You gonna let them live?"

"Would you?"

Chapter 54

THE NEXT MORNING Max woke up with the phone ringing in his ears.

It was Joe. He was all apologies. He said he'd been too busy to work on the stuff Max had asked for.

Max told him he needed to talk to Clyde Beeson. Joe said that was the main reason he was calling.

Beeson had been found dead in his trailer. Forensics estimated he'd been there at least two weeks. His pit bull had eaten away one leg and was working on the second when the cops had broken down the door. Although the postmortem report had yet to confirm it, it looked like suicide. Beeson had opted out with his Magnum.

Max took the news quietly, bitterly disappointed that he hadn't had a chance to have a detailed talk with Beeson about the case that had ruined his life.

He wasn't surprised that Beeson had died bad. He'd had it coming. He'd scored impressive results and made a small fortune off the back of them, but he'd pissed off a lot of people along the way; Max had been one of them, Joe another. He'd come within a hair of ruining their lives. They'd come within a hair of killing him.

Max had loathed and despised him.

"Anything you want to say about the late Clyde Beeson?" Joe asked.

"Yeah. Adiós, motherfucker."

Chapter 55

GUSTAV CARVER SMILED warmly when he saw Max walk into the living room, his great gargoyle face turning into something straight out of a horror cartoon as it registered, processed, and displayed his pleasure: his eyebrows creased into upward arrowheads, his brow furrowed disjointedly like the spring bands on a collapsed chest expander, and his lips thinned to pale pink rubber bands as they stretched and curved toward his earlobes.

"Max! Welcome!" Gustav shouted to Max across the empty space.

They shook hands when they met. Carver overapplied his grip and accidentally pulled Max forward into him. They bumped shoulders, awkwardly, jock-style by default, neither knowing the drill. Carver, who had been using his other hand to balance himself on his silver-topped black cane, staggered back and threatened to keel over on his back but Max grabbed hold and steadied him. Gustav righted himself with Max's help, took in the remains of the minor panic in Max's expression, and giggled almost coquettishly. He smelled strongly of booze, cigarettes, and musky cologne.

Max noticed a tall Christmas tree in the corner of the room, not too far from Judith Carver's portrait. It had fiberoptic lights hidden among the branches, which morphed continuously into shades of red, purple, and blue before stopping at a steady all-white and then repeating the color changes. The rest of the tree was decorated with twinkling gold and silver streamers, hanging baubles, and a golden star at the top. It was surprising to find something so tacky in Carver's tasteful surroundings.

Gustav seemed to read Max's thoughts.

"That's for the servants. Those damn lights fascinate them, simpletons that they are. One night of the year I let them use the room. I buy presents for them and their children and they go and find them. Do you like Christmas, Max?"

"I'm not sure anymore, Mr. Carver," Max said quietly.

"I hate it. It's when I lost Judith."

Max stayed silent—not out of awkwardness but because nothing in him was moving in the old man's favor.

Gustav looked at him curiously, brow tensing, eyes narrowing and crinkling at the corners, a hostile wariness about his expression. Max met his gaze with a blank look, giving nothing away except his indifference.

"How's about a drink?" Carver insisted rather than offered. He wafted his cane over the armchairs and sofas. "Let's sit."

He sunk into the armchair one haunch at a time, his bones creaking and popping with the strain. Max didn't offer to help him.

Gustav clapped his hands and barked for a servant. A black-and-white-uniformed maid stepped out from the darkness surrounding the doorway, where she had probably been standing the entire time. Max had neither seen nor sensed her until she appeared. Carver asked for a whiskey.

Max sat close to the armchair.

Carver leaned across to the coffee table and picked up a silver box filled with unfiltered cigarettes. He took one out, put the box back, and picked up a smoked-glass ashtray with a silver lighter inside it. He lit up, took a deep drag, and held on to the smoke for a few seconds before letting it out slowly.

"From the Dominican Republic, these," Carver said, holding up the cigarette. "They used to make them here. Hand-rolled. There was a shop in Port-au-Prince run by two women—ex-nuns. Tiny place called Le Tabac. All they did all day was sit in the window and roll cigarettes. I watched them once for about an hour. I just sat in the back of my car and observed them at it. Pure concentration, pure dedication. Such craft, such skill. Customers would come in all the time and interrupt them to buy a couple of cigarettes. One would serve while the other carried on. Me? I'd buy two hundred. The amazing thing is that all of those cigarettes were identical. You couldn't tell them apart. Amazing. Such precision, dedication. You know, I used to make all my employees sit outside the shop to watch those ladies work—to teach them to adopt virtues like diligence and attention to detail in their work for me.

"Those cigarettes were wonderful. A deep, rich, and very satisfying smoke. The best I've ever had, I think. These aren't too bad, but there's nothing like the original."

"What happened to the shop?" Max asked out of politeness rather than interest. He had to cough and clear his throat to make his voice heard—not that there was a blockage. He was getting nervous, dark energy coursing through him, muscles tightening, his heart pumping ever harder and louder.

"Oh, one of them got Parkinson's disease and couldn't work anymore, and the other closed up the shop to look after her. Or so I heard."

"At least it wasn't cancer."

"They didn't smoke." Carver laughed as the maid reappeared with a bottle of whiskey, water, ice, and two glasses on a tray. "I always drink and smoke at this time of year. Damn the doctors! What about you? Care to indulge?"

Max said no with a shake of his head.

"But you will join me for a drink?"

An order, not an offer: Max nodded and tried a smile, but the insincerity made his lips coagulate into a crumpled pout. Carver shot him another curious look, this one laced with suspicion.

The maid deflected attention off him by pouring the drinks. Carver took his whiskey neat. Max took it with ice and water almost to the brim. When she was gone, they clinked glasses and toasted each other's health, the coming year, and a happy conclusion to Max's investigation. Max pretended to take a sip.

He'd sat at home trying to work out the best way to tell Carver that he was taking him in. He'd contemplated just walking in and confronting him with what he knew and then marching him out to his car. But he'd nixed that, because he wasn't a cop.

He'd decided to get Carver to confess to what he'd done, own up to having masterminded the sex ring, and even explain his actions and justify them. He'd spent the entire day planning it, how he'd lure Carver further and further into implicating himself, all the while shutting off every escape route until the old man's admission of guilt became a formality, the symbolic toppling of the chessboard king.

All day in the house, he'd worked up his strategy, anticipating the many possible turns the confrontation would take and preparing the response he'd have waiting at every corner. He rehearsed his questions and worked on his voice until he reached the light, conversational, friendly, open, seemingly unguarded tone he was looking for: all bait and no hook.

Paul had called in the afternoon, told him to go get the old man after they'd taken the house in La Gonâve. He'd arranged for Allain to phone him on the pretext of inviting him up to the house for an update. Paul said that Allain was pretty broken up at having to make the call. To him, it was his father he was betraying, not a criminal he was setting up for the fall.

By nightfall, everything was straight in his head. He'd showered, shaved, and changed into a loose shirt and pants. At around nine Allain had called. Max guessed Paul's operation had been a success.

As he was driving out of the house, he'd been stopped by some of Paul's men in a jeep. They'd handed him an unsealed envelope and told him he was to give it to Gustav when the time was right.

Then they told him he'd have to wear a wire when he saw Gustav.

That had upset everything—at least in his head.

He'd never worn a snitch socket in his life. He'd been on the other end, listening in. They were leads you put on vermin to take you to bigger vermin.

He was told it was for his own protection, that he couldn't go in there carrying a walkie-talkie.

Yes, sure, that made perfect sense, but it was the rest he objected to—being Paul's stoolie, getting Gustav Carver to incriminate himself on tape, to confess and sign his death warrant.

He'd thought about it—not long, because he didn't have much time and he really didn't have any option but to accept what he couldn't refuse.

They'd all gone back to the house. He'd shaved his chest and they'd taped the mic just above the nipple, the wire running down his torso and curling around his back like an elongated leech, stopping at a receiver and battery clipped to his trousers.

They ran a test. He heard his voice loud and clear.

They walked back to their cars. He asked how things had gone in La Gonâve. He was told they'd gone very well.

On his way driving up to the Carver estate, he decided that the thing he wanted most of all for Christmas was to be done with this, with Haiti, with Carver, with this case.

He accepted that his case was over: Charlie Carver was dead and his body would most likely never be recovered. The mob that had killed Eddie Faustin had trampled him to death.

That fit, that made sense, and added up quite tidily, at least on paper.

It would do, but it wasn't really enough. Not for him, not if he wanted to sleep easy for the rest of his life.

He needed more proof that the boy was dead.

But how would he get it? And why?

Then again, whom was he kidding with that bullshit now? He wasn't a private detective anymore, remember? That was all over. He was finished. Hell, he'd been finished from the moment he'd shot those kids in New York. He'd crossed a line you didn't come back from. He was a convicted murderer; he'd taken three young lives in cold blood. That canceled out everything he'd once been and much of what he'd stood for.

And now he was setting up his former client. He'd never ratted out a client before and he'd never known an investigator who had—not even Beeson. It was something you didn't ever do, part of a long code of inviolable ethics, all of it unwritten, all of it handed down in whispers and winks.

Carver was, not surprisingly, drinking a very good scotch. Max could smell the quality coming out of his glass, even under all the water it had been doused with.

"Allain and Francesca will be down shortly," Gustav said.

No they won't, thought Max. Max had passed them both on his way up, being driven away by Paul's men.

"So? How's the investigation going?" Gustav asked.

"Not too well, Mr. Carver. I think I've hit a dead end."

"It happens in your profession, I'm sure, as it happens in most professions that require brains and drive, no? Go down a road and hit a block, what do you do? You go back to the start and find another way around."

Carver drilled Max with a fierce look from his practically black eyes. The old man was dressed as Max remembered him from the last time they'd met—beige suit, white shirt, black shoes buffed to a dazzle.

"Is this constipation of yours a very recent thing? Allain told me, not a few days ago, that you were onto something—close to a breakthrough?" Carver's voice had an undertow of contempt about it now. He crushed out his cigarette and put the ashtray on the table. A maid came almost immediately and replaced the ashtray with an identical, clean one.

"I was onto something," Max confirmed.

"And?"

"It wasn't what I was expecting."

Gustav studied Max's face, looked it over as though he'd seen something about it he hadn't seen before; then he smiled very slightly.

"You will find my grandson. I know you will." He slung back his drink.

Max thought of three possible responses to that—witty, sarcastic, and bubble-bursting confrontational. He used none; merely smiled and lowered his eyes to make Carver think he was flattered.

"Are you all right?" Carver asked, scrutinizing him. "You don't seem yourself."

"What self would that be?" Max asked, only it wasn't a question, it was a statement.

"The man who was here last. The one I admired—the gung-ho shitkicker, John Wayne–Mingus. Sure you're not coming down with something? You haven't been with one of the local whores, have you? Open those legs and you'll find an encyclopedia of venereal disease." Carver chuckled, missing what was happening right next to him. Max had taken his gloves off. The interrogation was about to start.

Max shook his head.

"So what's the matter with you, eh?" Carver swiftly leaned over, clapped Max hard on the back, and laughed. "You haven't even touched your damn drink!"

Max stared hard at Carver, who stopped laughing. He was still smiling but it was only wrinkles and teeth; all merriment had fled his face.

"It's Vincent Paul, isn't it?" Gustav sat back. "You've spoken to him. He told you things about me, didn't he?"

Max didn't reply, didn't let it rattle him. He just carried on giving Gustav his spotlight beams, his face a mask of indifference.

"I'm sure he told you some terrible things about me. Terrible things. The sort that would make you question what you're doing working for me—'monster' that I am. But you have to bear in mind that Vincent Paul hates me—and a man who hates that hard is always going to work overtime to justify that hatred and—especially—to convert others to his way of thinking." Carver chuckled but he didn't meet Max's eye. He leaned over the table and took another cigarette out of the box. He tapped either end on his palm before putting it in his mouth and lighting it. "You, of all people, I'm sure don't need that pointed out to him."

"He didn't take Charlie," Max said.

"Oh what utter blasted rubbish!" Carver thundered, making a fist of his cigarette hand.

"He was there the day Charlie was kidnapped, but he wasn't the kidnapper," Max insisted, raising his voice but staying calm.

"What is the matter with you, Mingus?" Carver said, wheezing a little. "I tell you it's him."

"And I tell you, quite clearly, it isn't him. He didn't do it. Kidnapping children isn't his style, Mr. Carver," Max said pointedly.

"But he's a drug dealer."

"Drug baron, actually," Max corrected.

"What's the difference—do they live a year longer?"

"Something like that, yeah."

"So what did he say to you, Vincent Paul?"

"Many things, Mr. Carver. Many many things."

"Such as…?" Carver threw his arms open in mock invitation. "Did he tell you what I did to his father?"

"Yeah. You ruined his career, and—"

"I didn't 'ruin his career.' The poor sap was going out of business anyway. I just put him out of his misery."

"You destroyed their estate. You didn't have to do that."

"They owed me money. I collected. All's fair in love and war, Mr. Mingus. And business is war—and I love it."

Carver laughed acidly. He poured himself more whiskey.

"How did you feel, after the Paul sob story?"

"I could understand why he would hate you, Mr. Carver," Max answered. "I could even sympathize with someone like him, in a place like this, where you're only as powerful as you make yourself, and that old-school eye-for-eye-and-tooth-for-tooth revenge is the only way you get even.

"And I understand how someone like you, who knows the true meaning of hatred and hating, would see the point of view of someone like Vincent Paul—a man who hates another man because of some bad stuff one did to the other. You wouldn't have it any other way, Mr. Carver. Because for you, there is no other way. Hatred begets hatred and you're all right with that. Suits you fine."

"So you think I'm a 'monster'? Join the club!"

"I wouldn't call you a monster, Mr. Carver. You're just a man. Most men are good, some are bad—and then some are real bad, Mr. Carver," Max said, keeping his voice low but clear, his eyes two blade points.

Carver sighed, downed his whiskey, and dropped his cigarette in the glass, where it fizzled out in the residue.

"I know what you do," Max said quietly.

"I don't follow," Carver responded, puzzled.

"Well. At this very moment your property in La Gonav is under new ownership. Your business there has been closed down."

That hit Carver so quick and hard he had no time to cover up his shock. For a fraction of a second, Max saw him exposed and looking as close to scared as he imagined a man ever could be without screaming.

Carver reached slowly for his cigarette box. As a precaution, Max unclipped the trigger guard on his gun holster, even though he doubted the old man was packing or anywhere near a firearm.

The maid appeared silently out of the shadows, replaced the whiskey glass and ashtray with clean ones, and hurried out, head bowed.

Max wasn't going to force anything out of the old man, because he didn't think he'd have to. Carver would talk when he was good and ready.

The old man poured himself another whiskey, this one almost to the brim. Then he fired up another cigarette and settled back in his chair.

"I assume you already know what Paul's men will find there in La Gonâve?" Carver asked, a little wearily.

"Children?"

"Twenty or so," Carver confirmed with a calm and openness that disconcerted Max.

"You've got records there too, right? Details of each and every sale—who, what, where."

"Yes." Carver nodded. "Filmed and photographic evidence too. But those aren't the crown jewels. By going into that house, the way you people have…Do you have the slightest idea what you're opening up?"

"Tell me."

"This will make Pandora's Box look like a tin of peanuts."

"I understand you're well connected, Mr. Carver," Max dead-panned.

"Well connected!" He laughed. "Well connected? I'm plugged into the fucking grid, Mingus! Do you know I am one phone call from having you killed and two calls from making you disappear without a trace, make it like you never existed. Do you know that? That's the kind of power I wield—THAT is how 'well connected' I am."

"I don't doubt that, Mr. Carver. But those one or two phone calls aren't gonna help you now."

"Oh? Why not?"

"The phone lines have been cut. Try it," Max pointed to a telephone he spied on the other side of the room.

When he'd driven up the mountain road, he'd seen people working on the telegraph poles.

Carver snorted contemptuously and pulled hard on his cigarette.

"What do you want from me, Mingus? Money?"

"No." Max shook his head. "I have questions I need answers to."

"Let me guess: Why did I do this?"

"That's a good enough place to start."

"Do you know that in Greek and Roman times it was common for adults to have sex with children? It was commonplace. It was accepted. Today, in the non-Western world, girls are married off to grown men at the age of twelve, sometimes. And in your country, teenage pregnancies are legion! Underage sex, Mr. Mingus, is everywhere—always was, always will be."

"Those were no teenagers."

"Oh damn you and your stupid morality, Mingus!" Carver spluttered, stabbing out his cigarette and swallowing a good gulp of whiskey. "People like you with your self-righteous codes of conduct and ethics, with your secular notions of right and wrong, you always end up working for people like me—people unencumbered by things like 'feelings' and 'consideration for others'—the very things that hold you back. I do things you wouldn't even think about doing. You think you're tough, Mingus? You've got nothing on me."

"Some of those kids looked no more than six years old," Max said.

"Yeah? You know what? I've had a freshly born baby stolen from right under its mother's nose, because that was what one of my clients desired. It cost him two million dollars and bought me a lifetime's influence. It was worth it."

Carver was raging on whiskey fumes, but this wasn't the drunk bragging of a man who didn't give a fuck until the hangover kicked in. He would have said the same thing and had the same attitude in identical circumstances if he'd been sober. He meant every word he said.

The maid reappeared, replaced the whiskey tumbler and ashtray, and quickly left with the used ones.

"What's the matter, Mingus? You look ill. This too much for you to handle?" Carver sneered, slapping the armrest. "What were you expecting—a mea culpa? FROM ME?!!? FUCK THAT!"

Max doubted the old man really understood his predicament. Decades of having everything his own way had blinded him to the obvious and the certain. He'd never faced someone he couldn't bribe, corrupt, or destroy. Nothing had stood in his way that he hadn't bulldozed or bought out. Right now, he was probably thinking that all of his pedophile clients would come to his aid, that the pervert cavalry would come riding over the hill to rescue him. Maybe he was thinking of bribing Max out of taking him in. Or maybe he had something else up his sleeve, some trapdoor that would suddenly open beneath his feet and drop him to freedom.

From outside the room Max heard a short cry and the sound of breaking glass. He looked at the doorway and saw nothing.

"But you're a father yourself…" Max began.

"That never stopped anyone and you know it!" Carver snapped. "What do you take me for? I'm a professional: I keep an emotional distance from everything I do. It allows me to perform unpleasant tasks with impunity."

"So you admit that what you've been doing is—"

"Unpleasant? Of course it is! I hate the people I deal with. I despise them."

"But you've done business with them for—"

"Close to forty years, yes. You know why? I have no conscience. I eradicated that from my way of thinking a long time ago. Having a conscience is an overrated pastime." Carver edged closer to him. "I may hate them, but I understand pedophiles. Not what they do—that's not for me. But who they are, where they're coming from. They're all the same. They never change: they're all ashamed of what they do, of what they like, of what they are. And most of all they're all terrified of being found out."

"And you exploited that?"

"Absolutely!" Carver exclaimed, clapping his big hands together for emphasis. "I'm a businessman, Mingus, an entrepreneur. I saw a market with a potentially loyal customer base and plenty of repeat trade."

"You also saw people you could blackmail…"

"I never 'blackmailed' anyone, as you put it. I've never had to threaten a single one of my clients into opening doors for me."

"Because they already know the score?"

"Exactly. These are people who move in higher planes. People whose reputations are everything. I've never abused our relationship, never asked for more than, maybe, two favors from any one person in all the time I've known them."

"And these 'favors'?" Max asked. "What did they give you? Trade monopolies? Access to confidential U.S. government files?"

Carver shook his head, smirking.

"Contacts."

"More pedophiles? Ones on even higher planes?"

"Absolutely! You know the theory that you're only six people away from any one person? When you have the esoteric interests my clients do, Mr. Mingus, you're more like two people away."

"Everybody knows everybody else?"

"Yes. To a degree. I don't deal with any everybody."

"Only the ones you can get something out of?"

"I'm a businessman, not a charity worker. There has to be something in it for me. Risk versus reward." Carver reached for another cigarette. "How do you think we got to you, in prison? All those calls? Did you ever think of that?"

"I guessed you had juice."

"Joose!" Carver erupted in laughter, mimicking Max's accent. "Joose, you call it? Ha, ha! You damn Yankee Doodlers and your slang! Sure I've got joose, Mingus! I've got the whole fucking orchard—and the pickers and the pressers and the damn packagers! How about a prominent East Coast senator who's very good friends with someone on the damn Attica board? How's that for joose?"

Carver lit his cigarette.

"Why me?" Max asked.

"You were—in your prime—one of the best private detectives in the country, if not the best, if your ratio of solved-to-unsolved cases was anything to go by. Friends of mine sung your praises till they were blue in the face. You even came damn close to uncovering us once or twice in your earlier career. Damn close. Do you know that? I was suitably impressed."

"When?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out." Carver smiled as he blew pale-blue tusks of smoke through his nose. "How did you find out about me? Who broke? Who cracked? Who betrayed me?"

Max didn't reply.

"Oh come on Mingus! Tell me! What does it fucking matter?"

Max shook his head.

Carver's face dropped to an ungainly angry heap somewhere past his nose. His eyes narrowed to slits and blazed behind them.

"I order you to tell me the name!" he yelled, grabbing his cane from the back of the chair and pushing himself up.

"Sit down, Carver!" Max shot up from his chair, snatched the cane, and pushed the old man roughly back on his seat. Carver looked at him, surprised and afraid. Then he glanced at the cigarette burning in his ashtray and crushed it out.

"You're outnumbered here." He leered up at Max. "You could beat me to death with that"—he nodded at the cane—"but you wouldn't get out of here alive."

"I'm not here to kill you," Max said, glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see the maid coming for the ashtray and maybe others with her, rushing to their master's defense. There was no one there.

He dropped the cane on the couch and sat down.

Then heavy footsteps entered the room. Max turned around and saw two of Paul's men standing near the entrance. He held his hand up for them to stay put.

Carver saw them and snorted contemptuously.

"Looks like the odds just changed," Max said.

"Not really," Carver said.

"Your servants? You got them from Noah's Ark, didn't you?"

"Of course."

"They weren't good enough for your 'clients'?"

"That's right."

"They were lucky."

"Really? You call their life 'lucky'?"

"Yeah. They didn't spend their childhood getting raped."

Carver gave him a long look, scrutiny that gradually turned to amusement.

"How long have you been here, Mingus, in this country? Three, four weeks? Do you know why people have children here? The poor, the masses? It's not for the same cutesy reasons you have them back in America: you know, because you want to—most of the time.

"The poor don't plan to start families here. It just happens. They just breed. That's all there is to it. They fuck, they multiply. They're human amoebas. And when the babies are old enough to walk their parents put them to work, doing what they do. Most of the people in this country are born on their knees—born slaves, born to serve, no better off than their pathetic ancestors."

Carver paused for breath and another cigarette.

"You see—what I do, what I've done—I've given these kids a life they couldn't possibly hope to have, a life that their dumb, illiterate, no-hoper parents couldn't even have dreamed about because they weren't born with the brains big enough. Not all of them suffer. I've educated almost all the ones I couldn't sell, and all those who made the grade I've given jobs to. A lot of them have gone on to do very well for themselves. Do you know what I've helped create here? Something we didn't have before—a middle class. Not rich, not poor, but in the middle, with aspirations to do better. I've helped this country become that little bit more normal, that little bit more Western, in line with other places.

"And as for those I sold. Well, do you know how some of them end up, Mingus? The clever ones, the tough ones, the survivors? When they get old enough, they wise up and they play their sugar daddies like big fat pianos. They end up wealthy, set for life. Most of them go on to lead perfectly normal lives in civilized countries—new names, new identities—the past just a bad blurry memory—if that.

"You think of me as evil, I know, but I have given thousands of people honor, dignity, money, and a home. I've given them someone they can respect when they look in the mirror. Hell—I gave them the damn mirror too. In short, Mr. Mingus, I've given them life!"

"You're not God, Carver."

"Oh no? Well then, I'm the next best thing in a place like this—a white man with money!" he thundered. "Servitude and kowtowing to the white man is in this country's DNA."

"I beg to differ, Mr. Carver," Max said. "I don't know too much about this place, true. But from what I can see, it's been royally fucked over by people like you—you rich folk with your big houses and servants to wipe your asses. Take, take, take—never give a damn thing back. You're not helping anyone but yourself, Mr. Carver. Your charity's just a lie you tell people like me to make us look the other way."

"You're sounding just like Vincent Paul. How much is he paying you?"

"He's not paying me anything," Max said.

Carver held his eyes for a short moment and looked away, tightening his paw into a fist.

Max looked at the open cigarette box, and a mad craving suddenly leaped out of nowhere and jumped on his shoulders. He suddenly wanted a smoke, something to do with his hands, something to take the edge off what he was sitting through. Then he spied his glass of diluted whiskey and considered for a while downing that, but he shook off the temptation.

"I knew about little Charlie, you know," Carver said without turning to Max, addressing the bookshelves instead. "I knew the first time I saw him. I knew that he wasn't mine. She tried to keep it from me. But I knew. I knew he wasn't mine."

"How?" Max asked. He hadn't expected this.

"Not completely mine," Carver continued in the same tone, as if he hadn't heard Max's question. "Autism. It's a possessive illness. It keeps a little of the person for itself and never ever relinquishes what it has."

"How did you know?"

"Oh, different things," Carver said. "Behavioral patterns not quite right. I know about children, remember?"

Max reached into his pocket and took out the envelope Paul's men had given him. He slipped out the two photocopied sheets of paper that were inside and handed it to the old man.

Then he stood up and stepped away.

Gustav opened the sheets of paper and looked at the first. He blinked and snuffled. He looked a little closer, his mouth half-opening in a bemused grin, but still heavy with sadness. He shuffled the pages—first, second, second, first—scrutinizing each. Then he held a page in each hand and looked from one to the other, back and forth, his eyes growing tinier and tinier as they disappeared behind ever more finely slitted lids. The loose folds of drooping flesh on his face began to shake, going bright red at the edges, starting around his jaw, moving up to under his eyes. He stiffened and took a deep breath.

And then he looked right at Max and screwed up the pages in his hands, chewing down the paper with his fingers. When he dropped them on the floor, they were crushed and compressed into tiny pellets.

When Max had opened the envelope, he'd found copies of the results of the paternity test proving Vincent Paul was Charlie Carver's father.

Carver slumped back in his chair, his complexion ashen, his eyes vacant, the fight gone out of him, a monument brought crashing down to earth. If he hadn't heard what he had from the old man's lips, Max might have felt sorry for him.

They remained there in silence, one in front of the other, for a very long and slow-moving moment. Gustav Carver's eyes were pointed right at him, but their stare weightless and empty, like a dead man's.

"What do you mean to do with me, Mingus?" Carver asked, his voice sucked clean of its authority and thunder, little more than a rattle in his throat.

"Take you in."

"Take me in?" Carver frowned. "Take me in where? There are no jails here."

"Vincent Paul wants to talk to you."

"Talk to me!" Carver laughed. "He wants to kill me, Mingus! Besides, I won't say a word to that…that peasant!"

"Suit yourself Mr. Carver." Max took the cuffs off his belt.

"Wait a moment." He raised his voice. "Can I have one last drink and cigarette before you do that?"

"Go ahead," Max said.

Carver poured out another large whiskey and lit one of his unfiltered cigarettes.

Max sat back down in his place.

"Mr. Carver? One thing I can't understand is, with all your contacts, how come you never took Vincent Paul out?"

"Because I'm the only person who could. Everyone would have known it was me. There would have been a civil war," he explained.

He drew on his cigarette and sipped his drink.

"I never did like filters. Killed the taste." Carver blew on the orange tip and laughed. "Do you think they've got cigarettes in hell, Mingus?"

"I wouldn't know, Mr. Carver. I don't smoke."

"Think you can do a little something for me?" Carver asked.

"What?"

"Let me walk out of my house? On my own? Not between those…goons." He flicked his eyes at the men by the doorway.

"Yeah, but I'll have to cuff you. Precaution."

Carver finished smoking and drinking and offered Max his wrists for the cuffs. Max made him stand up, turn around, and put his hands behind his back. He groaned as the cuffs locked on tight.

"Let's go." Max started leading him out toward the door, holding him tight because Carver was staggering and limping heavily.

They hadn't gone five paces before Carver stopped.

"Max, please, not like this," he slurred, gasping booze and stale tobacco in Max's face. "I have a pistol in my office. A revolver. Let me finish it myself. You can empty the chamber, leave me the one bullet. I'm an old man. I don't have long."

"Mr. Carver. You stole hundreds of children and ruined not just their lives, but their families' lives too. Most of all, you stole their souls. You destroyed them. You took their futures. There isn't a punishment enough for you."

"You self-righteous little prick," Carver spat at him. "A cold-blooded killer lecturing me on morality, you—"

"You done now?" Max interrupted him.

Carver dropped his gaze. Max started dragging him toward the door. Paul's men came forward. Carver stumbled along for a few steps and then stopped again.

"I want to say good-bye to Judith."

"Who?"

"Judith—my wife. Let me look at her painting just one more time. It was such a good painting, so lifelike, so much like her," Carver said, his voice breaking.

"It's not her. She's dead. And you're sure to see her soon."

"What if I don't? What if there's nothing? Just one more look, please, Mingus."

Max thought of Sandra and relented. He waved the men back and took him to the portrait.

He propped the old man up as Carver gazed up at the picture of his wife and mumbled to her in a mix of French and English.

Max looked at the Hall of Fame—the mantelpiece and all the framed photographs of the Carvers pressing flesh with the great and the good. He wondered if he'd find any of those famous names in the records.

Carver stopped his babbling and leered at Max.

"None of them are clients, don't worry," he slurred. "But they're no more than two people away. Remember that. Two people."

"OK, let's go." Max took Gustav's arm.

"Get your hands off me!" Carver jerked himself roughly out of Max's grip and tried to step back, but he lost his already precarious balance and fell heavily to the floor, landing on his back, his cuffed wrists taking the brunt of his weight.

Max didn't move to help him.

"Get up, Carver."

The old man rolled over on his side, painfully, gasping and groaning. Then he was on his front. He tilted to his right side, pulled up his left leg, and tried to push himself up, but it was his bad side, the one he needed the cane to support, and his leg only executed a quarter-move before it froze up and he rolled back onto his chest. Carver caught his breath and blinked. Then he scraped and wriggled and budged forward along the floor toward Max, wincing and snorting in agony.

When his face was at Max's toes, the old man looked up as far as he could.

"Shoot me, Max," he pleaded. "I don't mind dying. Shoot me here, in front of my Judith. Please!"

"You're getting up, Carver," Max said impassively, stepping behind the old man and grabbing him roughly up by the cuff chains. He pulled him back to his feet.

"Don't hand me over to Vincent Paul, please, Max, please. He'll do unspeakable things to me. Please shoot me, please. I can accept it from you."

"You make a lousy beggar, Carver," Max said into his ear.

"Shoot me, Max."

"Carver, at least try and have some dignity. See this?" Max unbuttoned three buttons on his shirt and showed Carver the microphone taped to his chest. "You don't want Vincent Paul's people coming and carrying you out of here, do you?"

"Isn't that called entrapment?"

"Not here."

With an expression halfway defeated and all the way disgusted, Carver nodded solemnly to the door.

"Let's go."

Max led him out of the house.

There were three jeeploads of Paul's men outside.

All the servants and security had been rounded up and stood in the middle of the grass, guarded by four people with rifles.

"In America I'd get a fair trial," Carver said as he eyed the scene.

"In America you'd get the best defense lawyer your money could buy. Justice may be blind, but it sure ain't deaf and you know same as me—ain't nothin' talks louder than cold hard cash."

A few of the servants called out to Carver, their voices plaintive and confused, sounding like they were asking what was wrong, what was going on.

"You know what he's going to do to me, Max? That animal will rip me up and throw me to the savages. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you?"

Max gave the cuff keys to one of Paul's men, as another took hold of Carver.

"Maybe I'll be like you then," Max said.

"How so?" Carver asked.

"Bypass my conscience."

"Bastard!" Carver spat.

"Me?" Max almost laughed. "What does that make you?"

"A man at peace with himself," Carver sneered.

Max signaled to the men to take Carver.

That was when the old man erupted:

"DAMN YOU, Max Mingus!—DAMN YOU! And DAMN Vincent Paul! And DAMN each and every one of you gun-toting monkeys! DAMN YOU! And…and DAMN that little BASTARD runt and the TREACHEROUS BITCH that hatched him! I hope you NEVER find him! I hope he's DEAD!"

He glared at Max with intense loathing, his breath heavy and tired, a wounded dying bull contemplating one last angry charge.

A total silence hung over the front of the house, as if Carver's roar had sucked in every immediate noise in its wake.

All eyes were on Max, waiting on his riposte.

A short time later it came:

"Adiós motherfucker."

Then, looking at the men whose hands were clamped on Carver's arms and shoulders:

"Get this sack of shit out of here and bury him deep."

Chapter 56

ON HIS WAY back, Max stopped off at La Coupole, where a party was in full swing. The Christmas decorations were out. The place had been decked out in tinsel, streamers, and there were flashing multicolored lights in the shape of pine trees, stuck to the walls.

The music was hideous—a medley of Christmas carols set over an unchanging pumping techno beat, sung in English by a Germanic female vocalist with an approximate grasp of the language, which rendered her pronunciation comic: "holy night" was sung as "holly nit," "Bethlehem" became a place called "Bed-ahem," "Hark the herald angels sing" turned into "Hard Gerald ankles sin." The atmosphere, however, was jubilant and friendly, people out having a good time. Everyone was smiling and dancing—outside, inside, behind the bar, probably in the bathroom too. Plenty of jokes and laughter were breaking up the music. The American soldiers were mixing with the UN peacekeepers, and both, in turn, were mixing with the locals. Max noticed that there were a lot more Haitians there—men and women. To his dismay, when he looked a little bit closer he noticed that all of those women were whores—dresses too tight, makeup on too thick, all wearing wigs and those shopwindow stares that pulled you in—and the men were their pimps; hanging back but clocking any man who came within glancing radius of their walking ATMs.

Max bought a double rum and moved out of the bar to watch the dancers in the courtyard. A drunk marine asked him if he was military police, someone else asked him if he was CIA. A red-faced girl with gold studs in her ears held plastic mistletoe over his head and kissed him with lips wet with beer. She asked him if he wanted to dance and he said no thanks, maybe later. Her voice was pure Oklahoma. He watched her go off and do the same thing to a Haitian standing by the DJ booth. Seconds later, they were dancing close.

He felt bitter about what had happened, bitter about Carver, bitter about working for him. He didn't care if he'd helped bring down the old man, he didn't care that the old man was now sitting somewhere waiting for Vincent Paul to come and pass sentence. It wasn't what he'd come here for.

The horror of what he'd seen on those tapes danced dervish-like in his head.

Before he'd shot the three kids who'd tortured Manuela he'd felt an endless hollowness in his stomach; a feeling of nothing making any difference ever again, of everything just getting worse and worse until today's sickest crime became tomorrow's cat-scratch. Then he remembered what he was doing there, why he'd taken the case, why he'd devoted almost two years of his life to solving it. Manuela had smiled at him. Just the once. It was when they were on the beach—he, Sandra, and Manuela. He was setting up the parasol and deck chairs. A black and white couple had strolled by hand-in-hand, and the woman had told them how cute their child was. She was pregnant. Max had looked at Sandra and Manuela sitting there together, and at that moment, for the first time, he'd wanted a family. Manuela might have read his mind because she caught his eye, looked right into him, and smiled.

He'd thought of her and only her as he'd shot her killers. The last of them—Cyrus Newbury—hadn't gone quietly. He'd screamed and cried, pleaded for his life, recited half-remembered prayers and hymns. Max had let him beg himself weak, beg until he lost his voice. Then he blew Newbury away.

The rum had a calming effect on him. It smothered his troubles, floated them away to someplace where nothing really mattered for a while. It was good stuff, sweet painkiller.

A couple of whores in straight black wigs sidled over to him and sandwiched him, smiling. They were near-identical twins. Max shook his head and looked away. One of the girls whispered something in his ear. He didn't understand what she was saying, the music muffled her words to all but the sharpest sounds. When he shrugged his shoulders and pulled an I-don't-understand expression, she laughed and pointed to somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Max looked over at the clump of moving bodies—jeans, sneakers, T-shirts, beach shirts, tank tops—not seeing what he was meant to see. Then a camera flash went off. A few of the dancers were surprised and turned around to look for the source of the flash, then went back to their moves.

Max searched for the photographer from where he was, but he didn't see anyone. The girls walked away. He stepped down on the dance floor and picked his way through the crowd to where the flash had come from. He asked the nearest dancers if they'd seen the photographer. They said no; like he, they'd only seen the light.

Max went back inside the bar to look for the girls. They were talking to two marines. Max went up to them and was going to ask about the flash, but when he looked at them, he realized that they weren't the two girls who'd accosted him. He mumbled an apology and continued looking around the bar, but he never saw them. He asked the barman, but the barman just shrugged. He checked the bathroom area: no one. He went outside and looked up and down; the streets were deserted.

He had a few more drinks inside. He got talking to a Sergeant Alejandro Diaz, a Miami resident. Diaz was sure Max was CIA. Max played him along for quiet laughs, neither confirming nor quelling the sarge's suspicions. They talked about Miami and how much they both missed the place. Diaz told him many of the places Max referred to—clubs, restaurants, record stores, dance halls—were long gone.

Max went off home at around three a.m., reaching his gate twenty minutes later.

He went to the living room, took off his gun holster, and slumped down on the chair.

He considered getting up and completing the journey to bed, but he couldn't be bothered. It was too far.

He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Chapter 57

THE NEXT DAY he got a call from Allain, who wanted to see him that afternoon.

* * *

Allain was pale—waxy-looking, with a slight bluey tinge to his ghostly skin. A rash of stubble had advanced across the lower half of his face, and there were deep shadows under his eyes, spreading to the start of his cheeks. Max could tell he'd slept in his clothes. He was wearing his jacket to conceal a badly crumpled shirt, whose collar was crushed and whose cuffs he hadn't bothered to roll down. His tie was on crookedly, his top button undone. He'd combed his hair back but was running low on brilliantine; clumps of hair were already starting to pull away from the main, leaning off to the side and pointing in different directions. It was as if someone had taken the old Allain, the first one Max had met, and gone over him with a wire scrubber: he was still recognizably all there, but much of the gloss had come off.

They were in a meeting room on the top floor, sitting on opposite sides of a round table. They had a great view of the sea through the smoky-gray glass. Max thought there was water in the carafe in front of them, but when he poured himself a glass, alcohol fumes wafted out. Max tasted it. Neat vodka. Allain was almost through the glass he'd poured himself. It was three in the afternoon.

"Sorry," Allain said sheepishly. "I forgot."

He wasn't drunk.

Allain had Max's plane ticket waiting for him on the table. He'd be leaving on the eleven-thirty flight back to Miami the following day.

"Chantale'll take you," Allain said.

"Where is she?"

"Her mother died on Tuesday. She took her ashes back to her hometown."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Max said. "Does she know what happened?"

"Yes. Some," Allain said. "I haven't told her the full details. I'd appreciate it if you kept those to yourself."

"Sure."

Max turned the subject to the raid in La Gonâve. Allain told Max what they'd found, looking absolutely horrified as he reeled off the details. When he'd said as much as he could, he broke down and wept.

After he'd recovered, Max resumed his questioning. Had his father never mentioned La Gonâve to him? No, never. Had his father ever played him the clarinet? No, but Allain knew he played. His father was also a fairly gifted trumpeter. Had he ever been suspicious of why his father had such a vast array of business contacts? No. Why should he? The Carvers were important people in Haiti. He remembered meeting Jimmy Carter before he'd run for president. In Haiti? No, Georgia. His father had done a deal to import Carter's peanuts after the Haitian crop had failed. Carter had even come by to say hello when he was in the country negotiating for the junta's peaceful surrender.

Max went back and forth like this, and the more he asked and the more Allain answered, looking Max in the eye with sad, bloodshot eyes, vision slowly steaming up with alcohol and heartbreak, the more he convinced Max that he really didn't have a clue about what had been going on around him.

"He hated me, you know," Allain blurted out. "He hated me for what I was and he hated me for what I wasn't."

He ran his hands back over his hair to smooth it down. He wasn't wearing his watch. Max noticed a thick, pink scar over his left wrist.

"What about you, Allain? Did you hate him?"

"No," Allain replied tearfully. "I would have forgiven him if he'd asked me."

"Even now? With all you know?"

"He's my father," Allain replied. "It doesn't excuse what he's done. That still stands. But he's my father all the same. All we have here is ourselves and our families."

"Did he ever use any of those psychological techniques on you?"

"What? Hypnosis? No. He wanted to get a shrink to straighten me out, but Mother wouldn't let him. She always stuck up for me." Allain looked at his blurred reflection on the table. He finished his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then he suddenly clicked his fingers and patted at his jacket.

"This is for you." He pulled out a crumpled but sealed envelope, which he held out to Max between his fingers.

Max opened it. Inside was a receipt for a money transfer into his account in Miami:

$5,000,000.

Five million dollars.

Max was speechless.

A big pile of money on a plate.

Tomorrow he was going back to Miami. He had his life to restart. The money in his hand would be a great big help, maybe all the help he'd ever need.

Then a shadow stole up and chilled the vision.

"But…" Max started, looking up from the zeros.

He remembered Claudette Thodore, sold for the money that went into the Carver empire, an empire made out of the flesh of children. Some of that money was in his hands, and that money was his future.

"Isn't it enough?" Allain looked suddenly frightened. "I'll gladly pay you more. Name it."

Max shook his head.

"I've never been paid for a job I didn't finish," he said finally. "I can't even tell you for sure what happened to Charlie."

"Vincent's back on the case again," Allain said. "He liked you, you know, my father. He said you were an honorable man."

"Yeah? Well, I don't like him," Max answered. "And I can't accept this money."

He put the receipt on the table.

"But it's in your account. It's yours." Allain shrugged. "Besides, the money doesn't know where it's come from."

"But I do. And that's a big problem," Max said. "I'll wire it back to you as soon as I get the chance. So long, Allain."

They shook hands, then Max walked out of the boardroom and headed for the elevator.

* * *

He parked his car near the pastel pink Roman Catholic cathedral and walked off into downtown Port-au-Prince.

Close to the Iron Market, he stopped by a building that claimed it was a church, despite looking like a warehouse from the outside.

He pushed the door open and went into what was, quite simply, the most extraordinary, beautiful chapel he'd ever seen.

At the end of the aisle, behind the altar, covering the entire wall from the ground up to three shuttered windows under the vault, was a mural, some twenty-one feet tall. He walked down between the plain-looking wooden pews and took a seat in the second row from the front. A dozen or more people—mostly women—were sitting or kneeling in various places.

The Virgin Mary, in a yellow dress and blue cape, dominated the Nativity panel. She came toward the viewer with her hands clasped over her heart, two angels behind her, holding up the ends of her cape. Beyond was an open, thatched structure, like a hut with a roof but no walls, very similar to ones he remembered seeing from his car window on rides in and out of Pétionville.

The mural panels were capped and linked by angels, playing music or bringing down garlands to the scenes below, suggesting that Jesus's life, from beginning to rebirth, was one act.

He'd sometimes cracked cases after a solo brainstorm in a church; an hour or so sitting contemplating eyeless icons and stained-glass windows, breathing in stale candle fumes and feeling the weight of all that humbled silence around him. That had helped him get his head straight and his thoughts in line.

What now? Where was he going after this?

In the immediate future, there were the same old problems he was facing before he went away: he'd have to go back to the house and face all its happy memories massed behind the door, ready to engulf him the minute he walked in, a welcoming party of ghosts. He thought of Sandra again and sorrow mounted up in hot, damp pressure behind his eyes and his nose.

When he got back to Miami, his career as a private detective would be over; the end of everything he knew how to do and still, somehow, wanted to do—despite the things he'd seen, all the danger he'd been in; despite fearing that he wasn't that good anymore, that there were things here he might have missed.

What was he going to take away from Haiti? What was he going to gain? Not money, not the satisfaction of a job well done because—and for the very first time in his career—he hadn't solved the case. He was leaving unfinished business behind. The little boy's face would haunt him for the rest of his life. He was still really none the wiser about what had happened to him. It was all speculation, conjecture, rumor. Poor kid. A double innocent.

He'd helped bring down an international pedophile ring—or at least started the process of its collapse. He'd saved the lives of countless children and spared their parents a taste of death in life, of having to carry on with a loved one gone. But what of the children they'd find and free? Could they be healed? Could the process be reversed, could they put back what had been taken away? He'd have to wait and see.

Wait and see: that was the best and worst he could expect from his life now. The thought spooked and then depressed him.

He left the church an hour later, stopping a woman coming through the front door to ask her the name of the place.

"La Cathédrale Sainte-Trinité," came the reply.

Outside, the sun dazzled him and the heat and noise disoriented him for a while, as he walked through the streets, farther and farther from the cool, quiet, innate somberness of the church.

He got his bearings again and walked back to where he'd parked the car. It was gone. Shards of broken glass on the sidewalk told him what had happened.

He didn't mind. In fact, he really didn't care.

He retraced his steps and found the Iron Market. Opposite was a long row of parked tap-taps waiting for custom—1960s hearses, coupes, and sedans, and the voodoo-psychedelia of their painted exteriors. He asked the driver at the head of the queue if he was going to Pétionville. The driver nodded and told him to get in.

They waited for a full forty minutes for the car to fill up with people coming in off the streets with baskets of vegetables, rice, and beans, live chickens, and dead wet fish. Max found himself wedged tightly in the corner, almost buried beneath the half a dozen bodies crammed in the back, a large woman sitting on his lap.

When the driver was good and ready, they left. He took the back streets out of the capital, where the only competing traffic were people and livestock. Inside the car it was lively, everyone seeming to know everyone else, everyone talking to one another—everyone, that is, except Max, who couldn't understand a damn word.

* * *

He packed his case and had dinner at a restaurant near La Coupole.

He ate rice, fish, and fried plantain, and left a good tip before walking out of the door with a wave and a smile to the pretty young girl who'd served him.

As he walked back home, he watched the children—bedraggled, skinny, bloated bellies, filthy, dressed in rags, many in tight packs, scavenging through rubbish heaps, some playing games, some hanging around on street corners, a few stumbling barefoot behind their parents. He wondered what he'd saved them from.

Chapter 58

"I'M SORRY ABOUT your mother, Chantale," Max said as they drove to the airport. They were halfway there and they'd barely spoken.

"In a way I'm not," she said. "Her last days were really bad for her. She was in a lot of pain. No one should have to go through that kind of suffering. I really hope she's gone to a better place. All her life she believed in the one after this."

Max didn't have anything to say to that, anything that would sound sincere and comforting in its conviction. He'd gone through the same thing right after Sandra had died. Her death had felt final, a sudden, complete stop and nothing coming after. Life had felt utterly worthless to him.

"What are you going to do?" he asked her.

"I'll see. For now, Allain wants me to stay on and help him out. He's in charge of everything at the moment. I don't think he can cope. It hit him real hard."

"Yeah, I know. I appreciate you driving me here. You didn't have to."

"I couldn't let you leave without saying good-bye."

"It doesn't have to be 'good-bye,'" Max said. "It could be 'see you later' or 'see you soon.' Why don't you give me a call when you get back to Miami—" He started writing down his number, got past the area code, and then realized he'd forgotten it. "I'll have to call you."

She looked at him, met his eye, and let him stare right at her sadness, a pain so deep she'd lost sight of it, so intense it was on the verge of overwhelming her. He felt clumsy and stupid. Wrong move at the wrong time in the wrong place.

"I'm sorry."

She shook her head, whether in forgiveness or disbelief, he couldn't tell.

They pulled up opposite the airport.

Chantale took his arm.

"Max, don't call me. You're not ready. Not for me, not for anyone," she said, doing her best to smile with her quivering lips. "You know what you need to do when you get home? You need to bury your wife. Mourn her, cry, let it out, wash her ghost right out of your heart. Then you can move on."

Part 5

Chapter 59

BACK IN MIAMI, back at the Kendall Radisson Hotel. They hadn't given him the same room that he had before, but they might as well have, because it was identical to the last one—two single beds with brown-and-yellow tartan bedspreads, a bedside table with a Gideon's Bible inside, a writing desk and chair with a hazy mirror that needed a more vigorous polish, a medium-sized TV, and an armchair and table by the window. The view wasn't any different either—Starbucks, Barnes & Noble, an ice cream parlor, a carpet warehouse, and a cheap Chinese eatery; beyond that, some of Kendall's quiet houses, set away from the road, drowned in trees and shrubbery. The weather was good, the sky a deep, liquid blue, the sun nowhere near as intense as he had become used to in Haiti.

When he'd got out of the airport, he hadn't even bothered trying to take the route home, just told the cabdriver to bring him straight here. He'd made the decision on the plane, right after takeoff, when the wheels had left the runway and his guts had dropped through his seat. He didn't want to spend Christmas or see 1997 in at his house, the memorial to his past life, his past happiness. He'd return there on January 2, when he was set to check out.

* * *

It wasn't over.

He couldn't get Charlie Carver out of his head.

Where was the kid?

What had happened to him?

He'd never left unfinished business for this very reason—it kept him up nights, it haunted him, it wouldn't let him be.

He hit Little Haiti. The shops, the bars, the market, the clubs. He was the only white face there. No one bothered him, plenty of people spoke to him. He often thought he recognized faces he'd seen in Port-au-Prince and Pétionville, but they were no one he'd met.

He ate dinner every night at a Haitian restaurant called Tap-Tap. The food was great, the service temperamental, the atmosphere warm and raucous. He sat at the same table—facing a noticeboard with a missing-persons poster of Charlie stuck in the middle.

* * *

He chewed over the case in his head. He went through it chronologically. He laid out the evidence. He added it up. Then he worked in other detail—background, history, people.

Something wasn't right.

There was something he hadn't seen, or something he'd overlooked, or something he wasn't meant to see.

But what, he didn't know.

It wasn't over.

He had to know what had happened to Charlie Carver.

Chapter 60

DECEMBER 21: JOE called him just after eight a.m., to tell him they'd rescued Claudette Thodore and arrested Saxby. Saxby had started spilling his guts the minute they'd slapped the cuffs on him, trying to cut a deal with everyone from the arresting officer to the paramedic, promising to tell them about a private club in Miami and bodies dumped in the Everglades, in return for a reduced sentence.

Father Thodore was on his way to Fort Lauderdale to see his niece.

Joe asked Max what he was doing staying at the Radisson. Max couldn't think of anything remotely intelligent to say, so he told his friend the truth. To his surprise, Joe told him he knew where he was at and he should take all the time he needed. No sense in rushing into what he'd got the rest of his life to work out and get over.

They made arrangements to meet at The L Bar the next night. It was the first chance they'd had to meet since Max's return. Joe had been busy: Christmas always brought out the crazies.

* * *

Buy you a drink, lieutenant?" Max asked Joe's reflection in the booth window.

Joe stood up with his hand out, face a big ear-to-ear grin.

They hugged.

"You look good now, Max," Joe commented. "Not like you spent the last ten years hangin' upside down in a cave."

"You lost weight, Joe?" Max asked. Next to Vincent Paul, no man would ever be big again, but Joe had definitely lost more than just his place in Max's league table. His eyes were wider, there was a hint of cheekbone, a finer edge to his jaw, and his neck was somewhat slimmer.

"Yeah, dropped a few pounds."

They sat down. The barman came over. Max ordered a double Barbancourt rum neat, Joe the same with Coke.

The two old friends talked. It was easy and unhurried. They started small and built up to big. The drinks kept coming. Max told his whole story pretty much straight down the line, unraveling everything piece by piece, as it happened, and ending with Vincent Paul in Pétionville. Joe said nothing the whole way through, but Max watched the light slowly dying out of his friend's expression as he gave a detailed account of what he'd discovered. He wanted to know what would happen to Gustav Carver.

"I guess he'll be turned over to some of the parents whose children he stole."

"Good. I hope they each gets a slice of him. One for every child," Joe growled. "I hate them motherfuckers man! Hate them!"

"What's happening with the organization?"

"The Florida perverts we can handle. We've put together a squad to take them down. That's happening in the next few days," Joe said. "The rest I'm in the process of giving to friends of mine in the other states. Feebs will get their piece too. It's gonna be a big job. Expect to be hearin' about this for a long while to come."

They clicked glasses.

"Now, I got somethin' for you. It isn't gonna be of no use now, but you asked for it so I brought it along anyway," Joe said, handing Max a brown envelope. "First up: Darwen Medd. He's dead."

"What? When?"

"April this year. Coast Guard boarded a boat from Haiti, looking for illegals. Found Medd in the cargo hold. Naked, hands and feet tied, tongue cut out, sealed in a barrel. Autopsy report said he'd been in there at least two months before they found him. Also said he was alive when they took his tongue, still alive when they sealed him up."

"Jesus!"

"This may not have been the same people who cut Clyde Beeson open. I did a little digging. When Medd went off to Haiti to work this case, he was on the verge of being arrested by the Feebs for drug trafficking. He was helping an ex-client of his bring stuff in from Venezuela. A lot of people I talked to think this was their work. The barrel had Venezuelan markings on it, and the boat had stopped off there before going to Haiti."

"How clean was the cut to his tongue?"

"Scalpel. Professional—well, except for the way they let him bleed."

Max took a long pull on his drink.

"Same person did Beeson," Max said.

"Not necessarily…" Joe began.

"What else you got?" Max cut in.

"Remember that evidence you couriered me? Print on that videotape helped us solve an old case."

"Yeah?"

"You remember before you went out there you asked me to look into the Carver family? The only thing I could find on file was a B&E on their house here, where nothing got taken but the burglar took a king-size dump on one of their fancy plates?" Joe laughed. "Get this—the prints the lab took off the videotape was the same as the prints they found on the turd plate."

"Yeah?"

"Uh-huh. Gets better—much better." Joe leaned closer, with a smile. "Now, we still don't have a file on the perp, just the match. Not here in the U.S. anyhow. If we'd bothered to run the plate prints with the Mounties we would've known exactly who The Turdman was."

"And…?"

"That other guy you asked me to look into—Boris Gaspésie," Joe said.

Max felt his pulse quicken as a cold jolt passed down his spine.

"Tell me."

"Wanted for two homicides in Canada."

"What happened?"

"Boris must've been one of those Carver kids, 'cause he was adopted by this man, Jean-Albert Leboeuf, a surgeon. Leboeuf was also a pedophile. Went to Haiti all the time.

"Boris killed him when he was twelve. Stabbed him more than fifty times. They found pieces of the guy splashed all over the place. The kid had split him open from his neck to his guts. Real precise cuts too. He told the detectives who interviewed him that his so-called adoptive dad made him watch videotapes of his operations. Used to tell him that he'd do the same thing to him if he told anyone what was going on between them.

"Boris also told the cops his real last name was Gaspésie, and that he'd been kidnapped and brainwashed in Haiti. They bought the first part, but not the second. The adoption papers were all in order.

"Court was real lenient on the kid. They put him in a hospital outside of Vancouver. He was there for about six months, doin' real well, no complaints, model patient. Then, one day, out of the blue he gets into a fight with one of the other kids in there. Witnesses say the kid pulled a knife on Boris and Boris defended himself. Only he over- defended himself, knowhumsayin'? Put his attacker in a coma.

"Boris gets put in the hospital's secure wing. He gets attacked again—only this time it's one of the staff—this male nurse who'd been on the job a month, goin' at him with a syringe full of adrenaline."

"Carver had sent people to kill Boris," Max said.

"That's what it looks like now, yeah. Back then, who knew? Only Boris, I guess, because the next thing that happened was he escaped, went on the run. They had a manhunt but they never found him."

"When did all of this happen?"

"Nineteen-seventy, seventy-one," Joe said.

The waiter came over. They ordered refills.

"Like I said, Boris is wanted by the Canadian police for two homicides. One's a banker called Shawn Michaels, the other a businessman called Frank Huxley—"

"Again? Those names?" Max said, pulse quickening.

"Shawn Michaels and Frank Huxley," Joe said. "Mean anything to you?"

"Some," Max said. "Carry on."

"Boris's bloody prints were all over their dead bodies. He'd tortured them for at least three days before he killed 'em."

"How d'he kill 'em?"

"Cut their windpipes with a scalpel."

"Figures," Max said. He opened the envelope and took out a sheaf of photocopied pages held together with a thick paper clip. The first page was the report on the murder. Max looked through the pages Joe had given him, turning back one after the other until, clipped somewhere in the middle, he found a copy of Boris Gaspésie's mugshot. It wasn't a good copy, but he clearly recognized the unsmiling teenage face as an early draft of the man he'd known as Shawn Huxley.

Huxley was Boris Gaspésie.

Huxley had handled the tape he'd found at Faustin's house.

He'd found Faustin's house because of the page from the phone book in the box handed to him by Dreadlocks/"Darwen Medd" at Saut d'Eau.

He hadn't seen Dreadlocks's face.

Boris Gaspésie was Dreadlocks too?

Why had he gone to Saut d'Eau in the first place?

Huxley had told him Beeson and Medd had gone there.

Huxley had been guiding him all along.

Huxley had kidnapped Charlie.

The world fell out from under Max's feet and he stood suspended over one great big void.

"There's another thing, Max," Joe said. "You and Boris got something in common."

"What?"

"A person: Allain Carver. Around the time of the shit-on-the-plate incident, a 'Shawn Huxley' got caught drunk-driving on U.S. 1. He got booked and put in the drunk tank. Gave his profession as journalist. Made one phone call. To Allain Carver, who came and bailed him out in two hours.

"You know, I almost missed it. It was late in the day and I thought I'd better try cross-referencing the names of Gaspésie's vics in case he was using their ID. I typed in 'Shawn Huxley' by accident."

"You can be the luckiest person in the world and the worst cop in the history of law enforcement, but that good luck'll get you through every time. When it's the other way around you get blamed and fired," Max said.

"Ain't that the truth." Joe chuckled, then his face got serious. "Whatchu' gonna do, Max?"

"Makes you think I'll do anythin'?"

"I thought you'd do nothing, I woulda told you nothing."

Chapter 61

"VINCENT? IT'S MAX Mingus." The line wasn't good, a lot of static and squeals.

"How are you, Max?"

"I'm good, Vincent, thanks. I think I know who took Charlie."

"Who?"

"I'm coming back tomorrow."

"You're coming back?" Vincent sounded surprised. "What? Here? To Haiti?"

"Yeah. Tomorrow. First flight I can get."

"You don't need to do that, Max," Vincent said. "I can handle it from here. Really. Just tell me."

"Negative," Max said.

"What do you propose?" Vincent asked.

"Let me finish my job. Give me a week tops, from touchdown. If I don't get anywhere then I'll tell you what I know and haul ass back here. Anything happens to me on the search and I don't make it, I've left all the information you need with Joe Liston. He's got your number. He doesn't hear from me a week from tomorrow, he'll tell you everything."

"OK. It's a deal."

"Here's what I need from you: first up, I want to make as little noise as possible coming back. No one outside your most trusted can know I'm in the country."

"I'll have some people meet you on the runway, take you out through the military exit."

"Good. Next: I'll need a good car."

"OK."

"And a gun."

The morning of his departure, he'd taken the Beretta apart and dropped its components in Pétionville's open sewer holes.

"Consider it done."

"Thanks. I'll call you before I leave."

"OK."

"And another thing, Vincent—same as before, this is still my gig. You let me run things."

"Understood," he said.

"See you very soon."

"Indeed," Vincent said. "Oh, Max?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you."

Part 6

Chapter 62

CHANTALE HAD JUST finished loading two cases into the back of her Fiat Panda and locking the door to her house when he walked up to her and tapped her shoulder.

"Max!" she jumped with shock and gasped when she saw him, a confused smile tripping across her lips. She was dressed in jeans and a light blue blouse, small gold studs in her ears, a thin chain around her neck, and minimal makeup, the look one of formal informality. She took traveling seriously.

"Where's Allain?"

"He's gone. Left the country," she said, worry creeping into her face. He was blocking her way to the car. "I'm going too. My plane's leaving in a couple of hours and I really want to beat the traffic, so…"

"You aren't goin' nowhere, Chantale," Max pulled out the Glock Vincent Paul had handed him when he'd picked him up at the airport.

She panicked.

"Look, I didn't know anything was wrong until yesterday," she said. "Allain came by early in the morning. I'd just woken up. He told me not to go back to the bank because he was letting me go. He said something had gone wrong and he had to go talk to the family lawyers in New York. He didn't know when he'd be back. He gave me a receipt for a money transfer to my Miami bank account. Said it was my golden handshake."

"Did you try and find out what had happened?"

"Sure. I called a couple of friends in the bank, but they didn't know anything. They didn't even know I wasn't coming back."

"How much did he give you?"

"Not as much as you."

"How much?" he insisted.

"A million."

"That's a lot of money, Chantale."

"Allain's a generous guy."

"What else did you do for him apart from being his personal assistant?"

"Nothing!" she snapped. "How dare you—"

"Where's Charlie?"

"Charlie? I don't know."

She looked scared, but she didn't seem to be lying. Had she even guessed Allain was gay?

"How much do you know?" Max asked. "What's Allain been up to since I've been gone?"

She scrutinized him, trying to read him, work out his angle. He tapped the gun against his leg impatiently.

"He's been doing a lot of money transfers. I overheard him yelling at someone on the phone about the time some of them were taking. I took a couple of calls from banks in the Caymans, Monaco, Luxembourg…"

"Do you know how much money?"

"No. What is going on, Max?" she said.

Max handed her a copy of Gaspésie's teenage mug shot.

"Ever see him with Allain?"

"He's a boy," she said.

"He grew up. Look hard. His name might be—"

"—Shawn Huxley?" she offered.

"You know him?"

"Yeah. He said he was a journalist, and an old friend of Allain's."

"How many times did you see them together?"

"Two, three times at the most. He always came to see Allain at the bank. He was there just last week. He asked me if I wanted to come water-skiing with him that weekend. He's been renting Allain's beach house."

"Where's that?" Max asked.

She told him. It was three hours away. He asked her to write down the directions.

"Do you know anything else about Huxley? Did you ever hear what they talked about?"

"No. I know they laughed a lot the last time they met," she said, then her expression darkened. "Did Allain and Huxley kidnap Charlie?"

"Why d'you think I'm back?"

"That's impossible!" she said.

"How well d'you know Allain?" he asked. When she didn't reply, he told her what he knew for sure, watching her face express first surprise (Allain's sexuality, Huxley's true identity), then disbelief (that Vincent was Charlie's father); then complete bewilderment (all of it at once) took over.

She leaned against the wall, unsteadily, as if about to faint. Max gave her time to settle herself.

"I don't know anything about any of that, Max. I promise you."

Their eyes met.

"I want to believe you," he said. He'd been taken in by Allain, Huxley, and Gustav. He didn't want to add her to the list.

"I've told you all I know. I just want to get out of here. I just want to catch my plane. Please."

"No." He shook his head and took hold of her arm. "You're missing that plane—and every other plane until this gets cleared up."

"But I don't know anything."

He took her onto the sidewalk and beckoned to the car parked behind his. A man and a woman got out of the back and came over.

"Keep her in the house until you hear otherwise," Max said. "Treat her well. Don't hurt her."

Chapter 63

CARVER'S BEACH HOUSE overlooked a tiny scrap of paradise—a small but utterly beautiful white-sand beach, hidden away deep in a cove of dark rock, surrounded by mountains on one side and postcard-perfect blue ocean on the other.

Max had watched from above as Huxley and two women had gotten into a speedboat moored off a jetty and gone off water-skiing. Then he'd walked over to the house.

* * *

The house—a Spanish-style villa of the kind semiwealthy expats bought as retirement or holiday homes in Miami—was surrounded by a thick, twenty-foot-high cement wall, topped with spikes, broken glass, and razor wire. Yet when Max pushed the metal double gate, it opened wide onto a paved courtyard, swimming pool, and deck chairs. Under normal circumstances, there was no need to close it. They were perfectly isolated amid an area of small, white, chalky rocks, tufts of wild grass, cacti, and barren coconut trees with yellow-green leaves.

He stepped inside and pushed the gate shut.

* * *

There was one other person Allain Carver loved as much, or possibly even a little more, than himself—his mother. There was a shrine to her in the corner of the living room, a slab of gleaming polished granite inlaid with her black-and-white photograph—a professionally shot studio portrait making her look glamorous and distant, a star in her own universe. Her name and dates of birth and death were stamped below her image and gone over in gold leaf. The shrine was completed with a small pool, in which several round purple candles floated.

All the other pictures in the house—hung on the walls or placed on furniture—were of Allain, from his late teens on. Max was surprised to see snaps of a man who looked like the most strenuous physical activity he'd ever undertaken was walking to and from his car, surfing, white-water rafting, hang-gliding, mountain climbing, parachuting, bungee jumping, and rappelling. Carver was grinning broadly in every photograph, clearly in his element in each of them, living life to the full and as close to the edge as he could take it.

Max realized how little he'd known Allain, how much he'd been taken in by him, and whom he'd been up against. This was a side of him people didn't know or even suspect he had. Here, alone, Allain Carver had truly been himself.

The rest of the living room was minimally furnished. A dining table was placed near the back window, overlooking a veranda and then the sea, no doubt perfect for intimate sunset dinners. There were only two chairs, facing each other at either end of the table. At the opposite end of the room, facing the gate and pool, was a leather sofa and a wall-mounted TV screen, with a chrome-and-wood coffee table in between. A four-shelf bookcase, lined with everything from leather-bound encyclopedias to gay erotic fiction took up an entire wall, while a solitary island of two reclining easy chairs, a lamp, and another table stood in the middle of the room. There was a CD player with a curving rack filled with music, most of it classical.

The house reeked of stale cigarettes, cold reefer, and perfume.

Max checked for weapons and found an eight-shot Smith & Wesson revolver taped under the dining table. He emptied the shells into his pocket.

He checked out the kitchen, which was to the left. There was a fridge and freezer, both well stocked with food, the fridge full of fresh produce—plenty of salad and fruit. He found a bottle of water and drank half of it. There were stacks of well-thumbed cookbooks and a folder of recipes cut from magazines, in a corner on the shelves. The dishwasher was on.

He found another revolver on top of the fridge. He removed the shells.

He crossed back out through the living room. The bathroom was spacious, with a sunken tub and a shower, plenty of toiletries, both male and female. Next he went to the master bedroom—dominated by a king-size bed with a brass-rail bedstead. It had the same great view of the sea and the horizon as the living room. He could see the speedboat pulling a skier. The bed was unmade. Clothes were strewn on the floor—mostly women's.

There was a revolver in the nightstand. He added the shells to his collection.

He went into the first guest bedroom and found it completely empty except for a blue Globetrotter suitcase and matching overnight bag placed side-by-side near the door. The suitcase was padlocked shut. Max opened the bag and found a British Airways one-way first-class ticket to London from Santo Domingo, dated January 4—the next day. In a side pocket, he found a British passport belonging to Stuart Boyle.

The photograph inside was of the man he'd known as Shawn Huxley.

Huxley's appearance had changed a little—he'd lost the mustache and his hair had grown out to a short afro. He looked mature. He was smiling at the camera.

The house felt empty. It was quiet. He couldn't even hear the waves.

The second room had two overnight bags in it, which belonged to the women Huxley was with. He also found a photocopier and a box of paper. The machine had been unplugged. Max opened the copier lid. Nothing. He opened the box. Empty.

He looked around the rest of the room. Nothing to see.

He stared at the copier. He moved it away from the wall. A layer of dust and two dead insects.

No weapons in either room.

Max went to the master bedroom and watched the boat in the middle of the window.

After an hour of water-skiing, they turned back toward land.

Chapter 64

THE GIRLS CAME in first. Kreyol, laughter.

Then Huxley, shutting the door, talking.

More laughter.

Max was in the first guest room, sharing space with Huxley's suitcase and phony ID.

He suddenly remembered the bottle of water he'd drunk from. It was a new bottle he'd uncapped. If they went to the kitchen, they'd know someone was in the house.

Shit!

There was a bump next door, in the master bedroom, followed by voices, then short laughter.

One set of feet—flip-flops—outside, right by the door.

The door handle budged and moved down.

Max stepped back from the door, gun cocked.

Silence.

The air-conditioning went on.

Max waited.

The flip-flops retreated.

Another set of feet—bare—padded across the corridor and headed for the living room.

The toilet flushed. Flip-flops followed the feet.

A woman's playful scream, Huxley growling, then a moan.

The second woman's voice, talking from the bedroom, then laughing.

Max listened. He heard nothing. He thought of the water. He had to move in.

Flip-flops followed by bare feet came back and went into the bedroom.

Talking, giggling.

Max moved near the door and waited.

He heard Huxley talking low. Moving around on the bedsprings.

Max opened the door a crack. Silence.

Max stepped out on tiptoe.

Huxley spoke again.

More gasping, moaning, climbing in pitch.

Max braced himself. His head was clear. He was here for Charlie, to find out where they were keeping him or where they'd buried him. He wasn't here for revenge. He was just finishing his job and closing out his career. He had the element of surprise on his side. They wouldn't be expecting him.

Huxley said something else.

Now's the time.

Max stepped silently into the room.

Some scene.

All three were so into it they didn't realize he was in the room.

The two women were on the bed, naked, heads buried between each other's thighs. Huxley was in a chair opposite, yellow Triumph T-shirt, powder-blue flip-flops, shorts around his ankles, mouth agape, his erection in his hand, stroking slowly.

Max aimed the Glock at his head.

Huxley was so lost in his show he didn't notice Max standing in front of him, at point-blank range.

Max cleared his throat.

The girl on the bottom looked up at him, freed her head, and screamed.

Huxley stared at Max like he was a hallucination, his expression normal and relaxed as if he were waiting for his brain to flip his sanity switch back on and make the vision disappear.

When it didn't, he panicked. He tried to keep it from showing overall, but the color left his face, his nostrils flared, his eyes opened up more, and his lips parted and stayed half-open.

The second girl screamed. They both sat up and grabbed the sheets to cover themselves. Dark-skinned, high cheekbones, full, plump lips—beautiful. Huxley had great taste.

Max put his finger to his lips for them to be quiet and stepped away from the bed in case they tried to lunge at him.

"Charlie Carver," he said to Huxley. "Dead or alive?"

Huxley cracked a smile.

"I told Allain you'd be back," he said, sounding almost pleased. "Especially when you wired him his money back. He couldn't believe it. I knew you were onto us then. I knew it was only a matter of time before you came to finish your job. I knew it. I've never seen someone cut and run so fast. Allain ran away like his asshole was on fire."

"Answer me."

"Charlie's alive."

"Where've you got him?"

"He's safe. Near the Dominican Republic border."

"Who's got him?"

"A couple," Huxley stammered. "They haven't harmed him at all. He's virtually like a son to them."

"Let's go get him," Max said.

Chapter 65

HUXLEY DROVE. MAX sat next to him with the gun trained on his waist.

"When was the last time you saw the kid?" Max asked.

"Three months ago."

"How was he?"

"Very well. Healthy."

"Any speech?"

"What?"

"Can he talk?"

"No. He won't."

It was midafternoon. Huxley explained that they would be driving back to Pétionville, then up the mountain road, past the Carver estate, stopping close enough to see the lights in the houses in the Dominican Republic. He hoped to reach the place where Charlie was being held by late evening.

"Tell me about the people who've got the kid."

"Carl and Ertha. Old folk, in their seventies. The most dangerous object they've got in the house is a machete—and that's for coconuts. Carl's an ex-priest—"

"—Another one," Max quipped.

"—originally from Wales. He knew Allain's mother very well. He helped Allain in his teens, when he discovered he was gay."

"Carl gay?"

"No. Women and the spirit you buy in bottles are his thing."

"That why he got kicked out of the Church?"

"He fell in love with Ertha, his housemaid, and left of his own accord. Mrs. Carver supported them. She bought them the farmhouse near the border. Allain made sure they never wanted for anything. They're good people, Max. They've treated Charlie as their own. He's been very happy there, really blossomed. It could have been much worse."

"Why wasn't it? Why didn't you kill him? Why go through all this trouble, this risk of getting caught by keeping the kid alive?"

"We're not monsters, Max. That was never part of the plan. Besides we like Charlie—what he represented. Gustav Carver, with all his power and money and contacts—the old fool didn't even know the kid wasn't his—let alone that it was Vincent Paul's—his sworn enemy's."

Huxley halved his speed when they entered Pétionville, and then slowed to a crawl once they got into the densely populated center, where the distinction between street and sidewalk was buried under masses of moving and stationary bodies. They drove up the hill past La Coupole.

"How did you find us out?"

"It's what I do," Max said. "Remember that videotape you planted in Faustin's house? You fucked up. You left your prints on it. One loose thread's usually all it takes to catch the big fat fish."

"So, if it hadn't been for that—?"

"That's right," Max said. "You coulda spent the rest of your sorry-ass life pullin' your pudding—or whatever life you had left. See, with Allain running off the way he did, it would only have been a matter of time before Vincent Paul caught up with you."

"I was planning to leave tomorrow," Huxley said bitterly, tightening his grip on the wheel, all four knuckles popping out. Fighter's hands, Max thought. "Vincent Paul wouldn't have known about me. Hardly anyone saw us together. Only Chantale knew my name—well, one of them."

"Was she in on this?"

"No," Huxley said. "Absolutely not. Allain debriefed her on where you'd been and who you'd seen every day, but she didn't know what was really goin' on—any more than you did."

"Why don't you tell me 'bout that, what was 'really goin' on'—right from the start?"

"How much do you know?" Huxley asked. They were heading up the precarious mountain road. They passed a jeep in a ditch. Children were playing on it.

"Broad strokes—this: you and Allain kidnapped Charlie. Motive: to bring down Gustav Carver. Allain was in it for money first, then revenge. You were in it for payback then greenback, but payback before all else. How am I doin'?"

"Not bad." Huxley smirked. "Now, where do you want me to start?"

"Wherever you want."

"OK. Why don't I tell you all about Tonton Clarinette—Mr. Clarinet?"

"Go ahead. I'm all ears."

Chapter 66

"MY SISTER PATRICE—I used to call her 'Treese.' She had these beautiful eyes—green—like Smokey Robinson's. Cat's eyes on dark skin. People used to stop and stare at her she was so beautiful." Huxley smiled.

"How old was she?"

"No more than seven. It was hard to tell things like age and dates and stuff, because we were illiterate and innumerate, like our parents and their parents before them, like everyone we knew. We grew up in Clarinette, dirt-poor. As soon as we could walk we were helping our parents with whatever they were doing to put food on the table. I helped my mother pick fruit. I'd put mangoes and genip in baskets; then we'd go down to the roadside and sell them to pilgrims going to Saut d'Eau."

"What about your dad?" Max asked.

"I was scared of him. He was a real bad-tempered guy. Beat you over nothing. I'd look at him the wrong way and he'd get this thin stick and whip my little ass. He wasn't like that to Treese, though. No. He worshipped her. Made me jealous.

"I remember the day the trucks came to the village—big trucks, cement mixers. I thought monsters had come to eat us up. My dad told us the men driving them said they were going to put up huge buildings and make everyone in the town rich. He went to work on the site. Perry Paul owned it then. I think the idea was to build some sort of cheap accommodation for the pilgrims who come to Saut d'Eau. Most come from very far and they've got nowhere to stay. He built the temple too. I guess he wanted to create some kind of voodoo Mecca.

"After Gustav Carver put Paul out of business, he took over the project. There was a management change. Things were different. This man arrived one day—strangest-looking man I'd ever seen—a white man with orange hair. You never saw him working. All he ever seemed to do was play with kids. He became our friend. We used to play soccer. He bought us a ball.

"He was a fun guy. He made all the kids laugh. He told us stories, gave us presents—candy, clothes. He was like a great dad and a big kid brother all rolled into one. He used to film us too with this Super 8 camera he had. It made him look like half his face was this black ugly machine with a protruding round glass eye—kind of creepy and funny at the same time. He filmed Treese most of all.

"One day he took me and Treese to one side and told us he was going away. We were real sad. My sister started to cry. And he said not to worry, he'd take us with him if we wanted to come. We said yes. He told us to promise not to tell our parents anything, otherwise he couldn't take us.

"We agreed. We left the village that afternoon without telling anyone. We met our friend in a car all the way down the road. There was another man with him. We'd never seen him before. Treese started saying maybe we should go back. The stranger got out of the car, grabbed her, and threw her inside. He did the same to me. We both started crying as they drove off. Then they injected us with something, and I don't remember much else that happened after that—how we got to the house on La Gonâve or anything."

They'd passed the Carver estate and were heading uphill along a bumpy, potholed stretch of road. They'd had to stop once for a broken-down truck and another time for a man coming down the mountainside with his herd of skeletal goats.

"You saw the tape, right? The one I left for you? You watched it?"

"Where'd you get it?" Max changed gun hands.

"I'll tell you later. You saw what was on it—the potion they gave us?"

"Yeah." Max nodded.

"My memory's pretty fucked up from that whole 'indoctrination process.' You couldn't put me on a witness stand because whatever I've got up here"—Huxley tapped his cranium—"my brain is like spaghetti. I remember things like they were in a dream. I don't know how much of it is disassociation and how much is down to the zombie juice they fed us.

"It wasn't as strong as the stuff the voodoo priests make people catatonic with, but it was enough to make you lose all control of your senses. They used to feed it to us every day. Like communion. We'd go up, receive this green liquid in a cup, drink it.

"Then there was the hypnosis with music notes. Gustav Carver would sit in the middle of this all-white room and we'd stand around him in a circle, holding hands. He played his clarinet to us. And while he was playing we'd get our 'instructions.'"

"What about your sister? Where was she in all this?" Max asked.

"I don't know. The last time I remember seeing her was in the back of the car when we were kidnapped." Huxley shook his head. "She's most likely dead. We weren't allowed to grow up."

"How do you know this?"

"I'll come to that too," Huxley answered, and then resumed his story. "I was sold to a Canadian plastic surgeon called Leboeuf. He always looked at me like he was stripping me down to the bone. He made me watch him doing his operations. I learned how to cut people up. I got handy with knives. I taught myself to read out of medical books.

"Justice was on my side when I killed him, but it was also in Gustav Carver's pocket because they never tied Leboeuf in with him. No one believed what I told them about being kidnapped in Haiti, about being brainwashed, about Tonton Clarinette, about my sister. Why should they? I'd just cut a man up into little pieces and redecorated the house with his insides."

"What about when the cops searched the house for evidence, right after they'd found the body?"

"They didn't find anything linked to Carver—or if they did, it never found its way out into the open. The old man had tentacles everywhere," Huxley said. "I busted out of the hospital they had me in because Gustav tried to have me killed in there. No one believed a damn word I said. It was a nuthouse. I wasn't surprised. By the time they did start thinking that maybe there was something in it, I was gone, a fugitive, on the run, a wanted man.

"I lived on the street. I hustled. I did what I had to do. I didn't like some of it, but that's the life I was handed. All the while I was on the run I started putting it together—what had happened, who was behind it. I remembered a person LeBoeuf had known—not someone from the surgery, a friend of his. Shawn Michaels. He was a banker.

"I tracked him down. I made him tell me about Carver's business—how it worked, everything."

"Then you killed him?" Max said.

"Yeah." Huxley nodded. "I took his address book. He knew other pedophiles, people he'd recommended Carver's service to."

"You went after them?"

"I only got to one."

"Frank Huxley?"

"That's right. He had a stack of videotapes of what went on in La Gonâve and Noah's Ark. The tape you found was a compilation I made—you know, a preview of forthcoming horrors."

"What about the rest of the people in the address book?"

"They were too hard to get to."

"What about Allain, when did he come into the picture?" Max asked.

"In Canada I lived out on the street most of the time. I knew a lot of hustlers," Huxley said. "So did Allain. He went in for rough trade. We had mutual acquaintances. These two guys I knew were always bragging about this wealthy Haitian they were bangin'. I got curious. I found out who he was.

"I went to this bar Allain always went to to meet his pickups. We got talking. When I found out he hated his old man almost as much as I did, we were in business."

"So you put together a plan to bring down the old man?"

"Essentially, yes. Our motives were very different. Allain was just this poor spoiled little rich boy whose daddy didn't give him any love on account of his sexuality. He could've lived with this if one of his lovers hadn't worked for the family's law firm in Miami. He told Allain the old man had completely cut him out of his will. He'd left it all to his in-laws and closest lieutenants.

"The way the Carver business is set up is that if the old man is taken ill or has to go away somewhere urgently, responsibility for running things falls to the next most senior Carver in Haiti. Allain had covered for his father while he was away before, so he knew the ropes. He'd found out there was over half a billion dollars in various 'rainy day' cash accounts. As head of the Carver empire he could do what he wanted with the money—"

"But he needed the old man out of the way first?" Max finished.

"That's right," Huxley said. "Allain didn't have the first fucking clue how to get at the money. The guy's got cunning but no street smarts—and waaaay too many feelings. Mine are pretty much dead."

"So it was your idea to kidnap the boy?"

"Absolutely," Huxley confirmed proudly. "Most of it was. We'd kidnap the boy, hole him up somewhere very safe, bring in an outside investigator and steer him toward discovering Gustav."

"By 'steer' you mean plant a trail of clues?"

"That's right."

"Or literally hand them to me like you did—"

"—out by the waterfalls? Yeah. That was me under that wig."

"Suited you," Max said sourly.

It was now dark. Huxley had killed his speed. They were the only people out on the road. Max had checked behind him to see if Vincent Paul's escort had kept up. Max had been followed to the beach house, and then back to Pétionville. He couldn't see anyone behind them.

"Of course it was important you got on with Vincent Paul too. He had to trust you, open up to you. He didn't do that with Beeson and Medd."

"Is that why you killed 'em?"

"I didn't kill either of them," Huxley began. "I made examples of them."

"You cut Medd's tongue out and stuffed him into a barrel—some fuckin' example!"

"He choked to death," Huxley corrected. "Look, I admit what I did was a bit…extreme—barbaric, even. But with reward money that big, we couldn't afford to have every asshole and lucky-chancer coming out here and trying their luck. It acted as a deterrent. People got wind of what had happened to Beeson and suddenly they had better offers for jobs out in Alaska. Yours is a small world, Max. All you private eyes know each other."

"But what did they do wrong?"

"Beeson was too close to the old man. He was reporting directly to him, bypassing Allain. Plus he fucked up with Vincent Paul. They didn't hit it off. He was next to useless to us," Huxley explained. "And Medd—he was almost there, but then he got suspicious about the clues he was getting. He told Allain it was all too obvious, too easy. It was only a matter of time before he found us out. I took preemptive action."

"What about the Haitian guy?"

"Emmanuel? Emmanuel was a lazy motherfucker. Too busy fucking around to do any serious work. I would have cut his dick off myself, someone hadn't thought of it first."

"And then you got me?" Max said.

The road had flattened out. The surface was unusually smooth and the wheels seemed to glide along it, the car's engine emitting a soothing hum. The stars had begun to appear in the sky, the galaxies so close they resembled rhinestone clouds. The whole way there Huxley had been calm and assured. Not once had he even asked Max what he planned to do with him. It had occurred to Max that they weren't going to find Charlie Carver at all, that Huxley was taking him to the place where he'd cut up Beeson and Medd. If that's what it was, it wouldn't happen to him. He wouldn't let it. He'd kill Huxley at the slightest hint of something going wrong. Not that he really believed Huxley had that in mind at all. Huxley had lived most of his life seeking revenge for his sister and for himself. Now he had it he didn't really care what came next.

"You were the one I always wanted for this job," Huxley said. "I'd followed your trial, every day. I read up about you. I really respected what you did. I felt like you were on my side, like if we'd ever meet up one day you'd be one person who'd at least understand where I was coming from, what I'd been through."

"People feel the same way about their favorite rock stars." Max punctured his bubble. "Take it a little further and it's called stalking."

"Guess your life's made you a hardass too, huh?" Huxley laughed.

"My life's been a failure," Max said. "Any way you look at it. Doing what I did made no difference—except to me. It didn't bring back the victims, it didn't turn back the clock and give them back their innocence. It didn't help their parents, their families. Not in the long run. Closure's bullshit. You never recover from that kind of loss. You take your tears with you to the grave.

"And as for me—I lost the only genuinely good thing I ever had. My wife. She died when I was in prison. I never got to hold her again, touch her, kiss her, be with her—never got to tell her how much I loved her—all because of the life I'd led. All that 'good' I thought I was doing, it added up to one big zero. It put me in jail. If that ain't failure, I don't know what is."

Max looked through the windshield, into the darkness.

"How come Gustav let Allain do the hiring?" he asked.

"He didn't. That dinner you went to? That was your interview with Gustav. If he hadn't liked you, you would've been on the next plane back to Miami," Huxley said.

"That ever happen?"

"No. Allain and I chose well."

They drove on in silence for a while. Max holstered the Glock.

"Tell me about Eddie Faustin?"

"Using him was my idea too," Huxley said.

"How did you turn him? I thought he was loyal to the old man."

"Everyone has their price."

"What was Eddie's?"

"Francesca. She was Faustin's wet-dream girl. I told him if he helped us out he could have her—through his bokor—Madame Leballec. She was a good friend of my mother's," Huxley explained.

"Hold up," Max said. "You told Mrs. Leballec to tell Eddie he could 'have' Francesca? So she was a fake?"

"Yes and no. She has some powers, but she's a black magician—a witch. Lying's part of their repertoire," Huxley said. "She has many believers."

"So, when we went to see her and Eddie's 'spirit' told us to go to the temple—"

"—where you met me, and I gave you the box that had Eddie's address in it, where you found the videotape."

"You'd paid her to show us the way?"

"Yes. And, by the way, she's no cripple either—and Philippe's her lover, not her son. And please don't ask me how she tricked the séance out, 'cause I don't know," Huxley said and then he laughed.

"Shit!" Max said. "OK—back to Faustin."

"Eddie was deeply troubled. Paranoid that all the bad stuff he and his brother did when they were Macoutes was catching up with him. He was visiting Madame Leballec on a monthly basis to get his fortune read.

"And that's where we came in. Allain paid Madame Leballec a lot of money to give Faustin a tailor-made fortune—one where he got the girl of his dreams and lived happily ever after.

"She told Faustin that a man he'd never met was going to approach him about a top-secret job. She told him he had to do it if he wanted his dreams to come true."

"So you met him?"

"Yeah, one night outside the taffia shack where he went. When he heard what I was proposing he didn't want to go along with it. He rushed off back to Madame Leballec. We'd anticipated that. She upped the ante. She persuaded Faustin that Charlie Carver was really a spirit who had escaped from Baron Samedi and had possessed the boy. The boy needed to be handed back to Baron Samedi's envoy—namely me."

"Bullshit!"

"He fell for it."

"Christ!"

"Faustin was so stupid it was practically a talent. Factor in the superstition that everything that goes bump in the night is some madcap spirit and you've got the perfect fanatic."

"OK, tell me about the kidnapping. Things didn't go according to plan, did they?"

"In what way?" Huxley asked.

"The riot," Max replied.

"No, that was planned. Faustin had a lot of enemies. We paid some of them to be where we told Faustin to be. He thought I was going to walk up to the car and take the child away."

"The nanny—Rose—died."

"Faustin killed her, we didn't."

"Did you intend for Faustin to die?"

"Yes."

"Who took Charlie?"

"I did. I was in disguise, among the crowd attacking the car. I grabbed the boy, disappeared with him."

They went through a small village of thatched huts. Max saw no signs of life whatsoever, except for a small, tethered goat, caught in the headlights, munching on a bush.

"So, who was Mr. Clarinet? Carver or Codada?"

"They both were. Codada filmed the kids and stole them to order. Carver stole their souls and sold their bodies."

"What about that symbol? That bent cross with the broken-off arm?"

"You didn't recognize that?"

"No." Max shook his head.

"Manet's Le Fifre. Remember that painting? The soldier boy with the flute? It was the organization's badge, how they recognized each other. There was one hanging in the club you met Allain in. He sat you where you'd notice it. There was one in Codada's office, when Allain took you to meet him. There was another in Noah's Ark, right outside Eloise Krolak's classroom. There's one hanging in every club. The symbol is an outline of the painting. It was meant to be subliminal," Huxley said and chuckled. "Maybe it was too subliminal."

"You could've made this easier, just left me an anonymous note telling me who to look for."

"No," Huxley said. "It couldn't be that easy. You'd have wanted to know who was behind the note. You would have found us."

"But couldn't you have just blown the whistle on the Carvers?"

"Here? You'd have better luck whispering to the deaf. And you know what happened in Canada. That wasn't the way it was going to work," Huxley said.

They continued in silence. Max tried not to think about the way he'd been played from the very beginning to the very end, and tried to focus instead on the positive outcome, that he would soon be freeing Charlie from his captors and reuniting him with his real parents. That was the main thing, the important thing, the only thing. That was why he'd come here.

He didn't know what he was going to do about Huxley.

"What about Allain?" Max asked. "Where'd he go?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. He never told me. We settled up and that was the last I saw of him. I don't expect he'll ever be found."

"So you did get money out of it?"

"Yeah, sure. I didn't want to go back to preying on horny faggots," Huxley said. "We're not too far now."

Max checked his watch. It had turned eight p.m. In the distance he could see the lights of a town. He guessed they were close to the Dominican Republic.

"Unlike you, Max, I have no regrets. Mine might have been a poor life, a miserable life even—but it was my life. Not theirs—mine. And it was my sister's life too. Our lives. Ours to keep, ours to live. They took it from us. They took her from me. So, I took it all from them.

"Allain didn't give a shit about those kids. He was horrified and disgusted by what his father was doing, sure, but you know, it was always really just about him. Not anyone else. He just wanted to rip his dad off, piss in his face and steal his money. He used to say the only things worth doing in life are worth doing for money. I never understood that mentality.

"You say you made no difference, that you're a failure? You shouldn't think that way, Max. You killed monsters and saved the lives of the children they would have fed on. Just like I did."

The road was taking them downhill, closer to the border. Gaining on his left, on top of a nearby mountain, Max saw the lights of a house.

"Charlie's in there," Huxley said and turned off the road.

Chapter 67

CARL AND ERTHA were waiting for them by the door. Ertha, dressed in a loose brown dress and sandals, was a voluminous Creole woman of indeterminate age, with the sort of kind and gentle face it was impossible to imagine angry. Carl was half her height and next to her appeared close to skeletal. His head was way too big for his body, a pumpkin speared on a dressed-up broomstick, and he made it even larger by wearing what was left of his hair—a thick, chestnut-tinged, gray mane sprouting out from the sides—down to his shoulders. His face—heavily lined, weathered, pocked, bloated, boiled red—was as classic a lush mug as Max'd ever seen, home to a million stories with ordinary beginnings, extraordinary middles, and forgotten endings. His eyes, however, were a remarkably clear and brittle blue, making Max think that he'd kicked the bottle quite recently, cleaned up in time for the rest of his life.

They were both smiling at the car and at Huxley as he got out. Then they saw his face and their features drooped, and sadness filled their expressions and bodies, changing their posture from welcoming to edgy.

Max stepped out and they stared at him with contempt, already knowing what—or who—he'd come for. They looked him over, sizing him up as he came forward. They weren't impressed.

The couple walked into the house and led them to a room where the door was open. They stepped aside. Huxley gave Max a nod to go ahead in.

Sitting on his haunches on the floor, Charlie, now five, was threading ring pulls through a long bootlace. The first thing Max noticed about him was his eyes, which were essentially the same as in his pictures, except a little larger and sparkling with intelligence and mistrust. He was a beautiful child, whose innocence was shaded with a capacity for mischief, his features taking more after his father's than his mother's. Max had expected Charlie to be sitting on his hair, or at least for it to be braided and sitting in a wound-up coil on top of his skull, but Charlie had since surrendered it to scissors and styling. It was trimmed short and combed neatly, with a part in the middle. He was dressed in blue shorts, white socks, shiny black shoes, and a red-and-white-striped sailor T-shirt with an anchor on the right breast. He looked happy, healthy, and very well—even lovingly—looked after, about as far removed from any kidnap victim Max had ever found and freed.

Max crouched down and introduced himself to Charlie. Confused, Charlie looked for help to Huxley, standing behind Max. Huxley crouched down and spoke to the boy in French—Max heard his name repeated twice—and then he tousled Charlie's hair, picked him up, and spun him around. Charlie's eyes lit up and he laughed, but formed no words. He was beyond speech.

After Huxley had set him down, Charlie fixed his mussed hair until it was exactly the way it had been when they'd first seen him. Then he resumed threading his ring pulls, selecting one from a pile on the floor and adding it to the chain he was working on. He completely ignored Max, didn't even act as if they were in the same room.

Huxley left the room and went next door to talk to Carl and Ertha, who were standing close to the doorway, looking in. He took them away, one arm around each, out of Max's earshot.

Max stepped out to look. Ertha had turned away, facing a wall and a framed black-and-white picture of priests in black cassocks, one of whom must have been a younger Carl. She was biting her hand to stifle her crying.

Carl tugged Huxley away from her, back toward the door, and spoke close to his ear, looking, as he did, over at Ertha, who was now leaning against the wall for support.

Huxley came back to Max and whispered to him.

"Carl's just told me we'd best take Charlie now, while we can. If we stay much longer Ertha will be too upset to let him leave."

Huxley went into the room and picked Charlie up off the ground, so suddenly that the boy let go of his necklace and all the ring pulls slipped off the lace and fell on the floor. Charlie's face suddenly went bright red and he looked very angry as he was carried out of the room. He made low, moaning sounds, as if he were imitating a trapped and wounded animal's cry for help.

Charlie's expression turned from anger to confusion as he passed Ertha and Carl, now together. Ertha's head was buried in Carl's shoulder and she was holding on to him tightly, arms overlapping across his narrow back, refusing to see what was happening. Carl wasn't looking their way either as he stroked the back of Ertha's head, the two of them right then about the saddest, most broken two people Max had ever seen.

Charlie reached out for them both as Huxley carried him out through the door. The boy's mouth opened and his eyes darted from Max to Carl and Ertha in panic and bewilderment. Max braced himself for the kid's notorious screaming. It didn't come. Instead Charlie started bawling like any other small child—loudly and hysterically—but no different from any normal child.

They left the house and Max shut the door behind him. No sooner had he done so than he heard Ertha release her grief, and even the little of her pain that he heard as he walked away pierced him to the quick and made him very briefly question what the hell he thought he was doing taking the boy away from here—a healthy atmosphere and these good, loving people—and taking him to the outskirts of an open sewer and his father, the drug baron.

Max opened the car door and told Huxley to put Charlie in the back.

Huxley settled Charlie in the car and closed the door.

"What now?"

Max held out his hand. Huxley shook it.

"Stay off the roads," Max said. "Vincent Paul ain't too far behind."

"Thanks Max," Huxley said.

"So long, Shawn…Boris—whatever."

"Take care of yourself, Max Mingus," Huxley said as he stepped away from the car and into the darkness, the night quickly engulfing him.

He got into the car, started the engine, and drove down the hill without looking back.

He turned onto the road and drove away.

He knew he wouldn't have to wait long before he met Vincent Paul on the road.

And sure enough, not five minutes later, he saw the headlights of an approaching convoy.

Chapter 68

EARLY THE NEXT morning, Vincent Paul, Francesca, and Charlie came to collect him.

Paul drove, Max sat in the passenger seat, Francesca and Charlie in the back. The three made small talk, most of it inconsequential, words spoken for the sake of passing from one moment to the next and beating back the silence in between—the weather, political rumors, jokes about Hillary Clinton's eyesore pink suits.

Charlie ignored them all. He had his forehead pressed to the window and spent the whole drive staring at the parched landscape whizzing by in a wiry, sandy blur. He was dressed in new jeans, a blue T-shirt, and sneakers. Max noticed how long his legs were. He'd take after his father. He'd be a tall man.

Francesca stroked her boy's shoulder and back with long, soft caresses. From time to time, as she spoke, she'd glance at him and let her eyes rest on him. The smile never left her face.

Max would be flying out in a UN plane bound for Miami International. Once there, he'd be escorted out, bypassing customs. He suddenly thought Vincent would ask him to carry drugs through for him, but just as suddenly as the thought entered his mind, the voice of sober reason cut it in two: Paul would hardly need a mule when he had the UN.

They drove through a side entrance, away from the main terminal, which took him onto the patched runway where a military green DC-10 was parked. The passenger door was open and steps had been wheeled up to it. The runway was otherwise empty.

"Am I the only cargo?" Max asked.

"No. You're the only passenger," Paul corrected him, shutting off the engine. They sat together, looking at the plane.

"What about Chantale?"

"I've let her go. She'll be leaving for Miami in a few hours."

"Gustav Carver, Codada, Eloise Krolak? What's happened to them?"

"What do you think?" Paul said, his face impassive. "The world has to balance, wrongs have to be righted. You know how it is."

Max nodded. He did.

"What are you going to do with yourself, back in Miami?" Paul asked.

"I've got things to balance in my world, things to make right," Max said.

"Well, Gaspésie got away." Paul stared at Max from the bottom of his sunken sockets. "And, of course, Allain Carver's on the run too. Want the job?"

"No." Max shook his head. "You know, Vincent, you should let it go. It's worked out good for the three of you. You both got Charlie back—safe and sound. You've all got each other. You should be thankful. Most of the time it doesn't end that way."

Paul made no comment, just stared out at the runway.

"What about you?" Max asked. "What are you going to do?"

"I'm thinking of changing the way I do a few things." Paul looked back at his family and smiled.

"Well, the Carver empire's all yours now," said Max. "Pity the old fucker didn't live to see that."

"Do you believe in God, Max?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Then Gustav is seeing all of this happen—from his house in hell."

They both laughed as one. Francesca didn't join in. Charlie kept staring out of the window.

They all got out of the car.

Two jeeploads of Paul's bodyguards, which had been following them on the way to the airport, pulled up nearby. Paul walked over to them, leaving Max alone with Francesca and Charlie.

Max realized that he hadn't spoken to Francesca since that night she'd come to see him in his house. He guessed now that Vincent Paul had dropped her off there right before he'd saved his life in the street.

"And what about you?" he asked her.

"What about me?"

"Is this it? Are you gonna stay here?"

"Why not? It's home. For better and for worse." She laughed and put her hands loosely around Charlie's shoulders. Then a shadow crossed her face. "Will you say anything? About me?"

"Don't worry about that," Max said.

He looked at Charlie. Charlie looked back at him, his eyes focusing on Max's chin. Max crouched down to get to eye level with him.

"So long Charlie Carver," Max said.

"Say bye-bye to Max," Francesca said, waving Charlie's hand.

Max smiled at him.

Charlie smiled back.

"Be safe." Max ruffled Charlie's hair. Charlie immediately put his hands up and rearranged it the way it had been.

Francesca hugged him and kissed his cheek.

"Thank you, Max."

Max walked over toward the plane, where Paul stood watching two of his men, each carrying a heavy army kitbag up the passenger steps.

"Is that what I think it is?" Max asked Paul.

"No," Paul said. "Wouldn't dream of it. That is for you, though."

"What is it?"

"Twenty million dollars—ten on behalf of the Thodores for the safe return of Claudette, and the rest is from us for bringing Charlie back."

Max was stunned.

"The reason you initially came here was for money. The reason you came back was for our son—and for that they can't ever print enough money."

"I don't know what to say," Max said finally.

"Say au revoir."

"Au revwoar."

"Au revoir, mon ami."

They shook hands.

Paul turned and went back to where Francesca and Charlie were standing.

Max climbed the passenger steps. When he reached the top, he turned around and waved at the three of them once more. Then he homed in on Charlie and waved just to him. The boy raised his arm slightly but then changed his mind and let it drop.

Max looked out at Haiti one last time—low-lying mountains, low-hanging sky, bone-dry landscape, sparse vegetation. He wished it well, the very best. He didn't think he'd ever see it again. A lot of him hoped he never would.

EPILOGUE

TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS in $100 bills.

He couldn't resist it. He had to look.

He took out a stack of bills. He split the paper band containing them and they spilled on the floor.

He was still too numb to react. He'd never ever seen this kind of money before, not even on a drug bust.

He slipped a couple of hundreds into his wallet and scooped the rest up and put it away in the bag. He checked the other one.

More money—and a white envelope with his name on it.

He opened it.

It was a Polaroid. He barely recognized it—the where and when it had been taken; then he remembered the last time he was in La Coupole: the photographer's flash.

He was standing staring straight at the camera, rum glass in hand, looking tired and drunk. One of the two whores who'd accosted him was standing close to his left, the other was mostly out of the frame.

In her place, pointing a gun at his head, with a huge smile on his face was Solomon Boukman.

Max turned the photograph over. YOU GIVE ME REASON TO LIVE was written on the back in Boukman's unique capitals, same as the note they'd found in his prison cell.

Max's heart began to race.

He remembered how he'd been surprised to find the trigger guard of his holster undone. He looked at the photograph again. Boukman was holding his Beretta to his head. He could have pulled the trigger. Why didn't he?

YOU GIVE ME REASON TO LIVE.

A chill swept through Max, right then. His insides turned ice-cold. There was a note from Paul inside the envelope:

Max—We found this in the villa you were staying in. On the pillow. He got away from us. I didn't tell you then, because of what was happening. We're looking for him. Don't worry. He won't get away again. Be safe. VP

No you won't. You won't get him, thought Max. You should've killed him when you had the chance.

Max looked back at the photograph and studied Boukman's face.

They'd meet again, he knew it—not tomorrow, not even soon, but sometime down the line. It was inevitable, the way some things simply are. They had unfinished business.

* * *

Christmas Eve.

Max walked out of Miami airport and found a cab. He put the bags in the back and got in.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

Max hadn't given his next move any thought. He considered going back to the Radisson Kendall again, maybe for a week, to get his head together and a few things straight.

Then he thought better of it.

"Home," Max said, giving the driver the address of his house in Key Biscayne. "Take me home."

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WITH VERY SPECIAL thanks to Claire Wachtel and Beverley Cousins.

And to those without whom…

Dad; The Mighty Bromfields: Cecil, Lucy, Gregory, David, Sonia, Colin, Janice, Brian, and Lynette; Novlyn, Errol & Dwayne Thompson; Tim Heath, Suzanne Lovell, Angie Robinson, Rupert Stone, Jan & Vi, Sally & Dick Gallagher, Lloyd Strickland, Pauli & Tiina Toivola, The Count, Jonathan Burnham, Joe Veltre, Andrew Holmes, Ken Bruen, Ali Karim, Mr. G, Rick Saba, Christine Stone, Robert & Sonia Philipps, Al & Pedro Diaz, Janet Clarke, Tomas Carruthers, Chas Cook, Clare Oxborrow, Michael und die Familie Schmidt, Georg und die Familie Bischof, Haarm van Maanen, Bill Pearson, Lindsay Leslie-Miller, Peter Myles, Claire Harvey, Emma Riddington, Lisa Godwin, Big T, Max Allen, Alex Walsh, Steve Purdom, Simon Baron-Cohen, Marcella Edwards, Mike Mastrangelo, Thor, Seamus "The Legend" and Cal De Grammont, Scottish John, Anthony Armstrong Burns of E2, Shahid Iqbal, Abdul Moquith, Khoi Quan-Khio, mon frčre Fouad, Whittards and Wrigley's.

…thank you!

About the Author

NICK STONE is the son of eminent historian Norman Stone and a Haitian mother who is a descendant of Haiti's oldest family, the Aubrys. Raised in Haiti and a graduate of Cambridge University, he lives in London.

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Credits

Jacket Photograph Š Getty Images

Copyright

MR. CLARINET. Copyright Š 2007 by Nick Stone. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.