Mr. Clarinet

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.