Mr. Clarinet

Then one day—quite recently—their mother, Merveille, by now an old woman—went to all her friends' houses, telling them her son had returned, and that they should all come and see him. She got together a large group of people and brought them back to her house, but when they arrived, there was no one there. She insisted the boy had returned, that he was well dressed and very rich. She showed them the thick roll of money he'd given her, all crisp, new bills. When she asked him what had happened, where he'd disappeared to, he said a man with a deformed face had taken him and his sister away.

The people didn't really believe her, but they went along with her, because she was suddenly the richest woman in town. Privately, they said she was mad.

Merveille waited for her boy to return. He never did. She waited and waited and wouldn't leave her house in case he turned up. She called his name out over and over again: "Boris."

In the end, she went crazy. She started hallucinating and turned violent whenever people tried to help her. She had no other family and lost all her friends.

And then one day all the noises in her house stopped. When a group of people finally plucked up the courage to enter the house, she was gone and she hadn't been seen since. No one knew what had happened to her. It was a mystery.

* * *

"So what do you think, detective?" Chantale asked, wiping her mouth with a paper napkin.

"About the missing kids? Maybe they were abducted, and maybe that woman's son did come back—how else would she have gotten all that money?" Max said. "But you know, this whole story could just be another myth."

They were in the car, eating the lunch Chantale had made—pork loin, avocado, and gherkin sandwiches on thickly sliced homemade bread, potato and red pepper salad, bananas and Prestige beer. The radio was on low, an American station playing AOR power anthems back-to-back—the Eagles, Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Reo Speedwagon. Max flipped the dial to Haitian babble and left it there.

It was late afternoon. The light was starting to fade and the clouds were thickening above them, slowly sealing off the sky from view.

"What about Vincent Paul?"

"He's still my main suspect. He's the only constant, the one who keeps popping up everywhere. Perhaps he kidnapped Charlie to get back at the Carvers for an actual or perceived hurt to his family. Of course, I've got absolutely no proof of this." Max finished off his beer. "I need to talk to Paul, but I've got a better chance having a one-to-one with Bill Clinton. Besides, I'm assuming Beeson, Medd, and that Emmanuel Michaelangel guy tried to do exactly the same thing, which could be why they ended up the way they did."

"What if it's not him?" Chantale said. "What if it's someone you don't know about yet?"

"I'll have to wait and see. That's what most detective work comes down to, you know, waiting and watching."

Chantale laughed out loud and shook her head with a weary sigh.

"You really remind me of my ex-husband, Max. This is the kind of thing he used to say when he knew he was getting nowhere on something. He was a cop. Still is. Miami PD, in fact."

"Yeah? What's his name?" Max was surprised but almost immediately realized he shouldn't have been. The voodoo aside, she was a straight arrow, conservative, a safe pair of hands—exactly the kind of woman most cops married.

"Ray Hernandez."

"Don't think I know him."

"You don't. He was still in uniform when you quit," she said. "He knew all about you. Followed your trial every day. Used to make me tape the news when he was out on duty, case he missed something."

"So you knew who I was? Why didn't you say anything?"

"What was the point? Anyway, I thought you'd guess Allain had told me the basics about you."

"You got that right," Max said.

"Ray despised you. Said you were a thug with a badge. You, Joe Liston, Eldon Burns, the whole MTF division. He hated the lot of you, hated the way you brought down the good name of the police."

"What did he do, your Raymond? What division?"

"When he made plainclothes? First Vice, then Narcotics. He wanted Homicide but to get it he had to play ball with the kind of people who held you in high esteem."

"That's the way of the world. It's all about politics, mutual dependencies, credit in the favors bank," Max said. "You don't get to where you want to be without breaking hearts and stepping on people." He could imagine what type of guy her husband was—the kind of self-righteous, ambitious prick who'd end up working in Internal Affairs, because they promoted faster and rewarded backstabbing and betrayal. "How come you and him broke up?"

"He was cheating on me."

"What an asshole!" Max laughed and she joined him.

"That he was. Were you faithful to your wife?"

"Yeah," Max nodded.

"I can imagine."

"Oh yeah?"

"You're about as brokenhearted as I've seen anyone be," she said.

"That obvious?" Max replied.