Mr. Clarinet

"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."