Mr. Clarinet

Fraser Carver died in 1947, leaving his business empire to Allain's father, Gustav. Gustav's twin, Clifford, turned up dead in a ravine in 1959. Although the official cause was given as a car accident, no vehicle, wrecked or otherwise, was found near the body, whose every bone appeared to have been broken at least once. The CIA report quoted an unnamed witness who saw members of the militia—the FSN or Tonton Macoutes, as they were more commonly known—grab Clifford off a residential street and bundle him into a car. The report concluded that Gustav Carver had had his brother killed with help from his friend and close associate, François "Papa Doc" Duvalier, the country's president.

Gustav Carver had first met François Duvalier in Michigan in 1943. Duvalier was one of twenty Haitian doctors sent to the city's university to train in public-health medicine. Carver was in town on business. They were introduced by a mutual friend, after Duvalier, who knew of the family by reputation and legend, insisted on meeting Gustav. Carver later told a friend about this meeting and said he was convinced that Duvalier was bound for greatness, a future president of Haiti.

By then three quarters of the country's population were plagued by yaws, a highly contagious and crippling tropical disease, which ate away at limbs, noses, and lips. Its victims were invariably the shoeless poor, as the disease entered their bodies through their bare feet in the form of a spirochete.

Duvalier was sent to the most infected area of Haiti, the Rural Clinic of Gressier, fifteen miles southwest of Port-au-Prince. He quickly ran out of the penicillin he needed to cure the sick and sent for more supplies from the capital, only to be told that their stock was almost depleted and that he would have to wait another week for supplies to come in from the United States. He sent a message to Gustav Carver for help. Carver immediately dispatched ten truckloads of penicillin, as well as beds and tents.

Duvalier cured the entire region of yaws and his reputation spread among the poor, who hobbled great distances on crumbling legs, to be cured. They nicknamed him "Papa Doc." Thus "Papa Doc" became a popular hero, a savior of the poor.

Gustav Carver funded Duvalier's 1957 presidential election campaign, and supplied some of the muscle to bully voters who couldn't be bribed into supporting the good doctor. Duvalier eventually won by a landslide. Carver was rewarded with more monopolies, this time in the country's lucrative coffee and cocoa businesses.

Haiti entered another dark age when Papa Doc declared himself "president for life" and went on to become the most feared and reviled tyrant in the country's history. Both the army and the Tonton Macoutes killed, tortured, and raped thousands of Haitians—either on the orders of the government or, more often than not, for personal reasons, usually to steal a plot of land or take over a business.

Gustav Carver continued to build his vast fortune, thanks to his coziness with Duvalier. The latter not only rewarded him with more monopolies—including sugar cane and cement—but also had accounts in Carver's Banque Populaire d'Haďti, where he regularly deposited the millions of dollars in U.S. aid he received every three months, then siphoned most of it to Swiss bank accounts.

Papa Doc died on April 21, 1971. Jean-Claude took his father's place as "president for life" at the age of nineteen. Although nominally in power, Baby Doc had absolutely no interest in running Haiti and left it all to his mother, and later his wife, Michele, whose wedding to Baby Doc made the 1981 Guinness Book of World Records as the third most expensive ever; while in the same year, an IMF report rated Haiti the poorest country in the Western hemisphere.

* * *

Miami dawn. Max finished reading and stepped out onto the balcony. Like the best businesspeople, the Carvers were ruthless opportunists. And like the best businesspeople, they'd have a phone book's worth of enemies.

The feeble sunlight had yet to fade out most of the stars, and the breeze still had the chill of night about it, but he was sure it was going to be a nice day. Every day out of prison was a nice day.

Chapter 5

CLYDE BEESON HAD fallen far. Life hadn't just kicked him in the teeth; it had plugged the gaps with papier-mâché. He couldn't even afford a house. He lived in a trailer park in Opa-Locka.

Opa-Locka was a shithole, one of Dade County's most derelict areas, a small gray wart on Miami's toned, bronzed, depilated, hedonistic ass. It was a nice day, with clear, light blue skies and unbroken sunlight drenching the landscape, which made the area, with its neglected and crumbling Moorish-inspired architecture, seem all the more desolate.