Mr. Clarinet

"The myth goes that he was originally a French boy soldier, a mascot—very common in those days. He was in one of the regiments sent to rule Haiti, back in the eighteenth century. He entertained the troops by playing his clarinet for them. The slaves working in the fields used to hear his playing and it made them angry because they associated the sound and the music the boy made with captivity and oppression.

"When the slaves rose up, they overpowered the boy's regiment and took a lot of prisoners. They made the boy play his wretched instrument while they slaughtered his comrades one by one. Then they buried him alive, still playing his clarinet," Thodore spoke gravely. It might have been folklore, but he was taking it very seriously. "He's a relatively new spirit, not one I grew up fearing. I first heard people talking about him twenty or so years ago. They say he leaves his mark where he's been."

"What kind of mark?"

"I haven't seen one, but it's supposed to look like a cross, with two legs and half a beam."

"You said children have 'always' gone missing in Haiti? You got any idea how many that is a year?"

"It's impossible to say." Thodore opened his palms to indicate hopelessness. "Things there are not like here. There's nowhere and no one to report the missing to. And there is no way of knowing who these children are or were, because the poor don't have birth or death certificates—that is only for the rich. Almost all of the children who go missing are poor. When they disappear it's as if they never existed. But now—with the Carver boy—this is different. This is a rich society child. Suddenly now everyone is paying attention. It's like here, in Miami. If a black child goes missing, who cares? Maybe one or two local policemen go looking. But if it's a little white child, you call the National Guard."

"With all due respect, Father, that last part, that's not quite true, no matter how it sometimes appears," Max said, keeping his tone level. "And it was never that way with me, when I was a cop here. Never."

The priest looked at him hard for a moment. He himself had cop's eyes, the ones that can tell sincerity from bullshit at a thousand paces. He offered Max his hand. They shook firmly. Then Father Thodore blessed him and wished him well.

"Bring her back," he whispered to Max.

Part 2

Chapter 7

THE FLIGHT OUT to Haiti was held up for an hour while it waited on a homeward-bound con and his two armed guards.

Inside it was packed to near capacity. Haitians—mostly men—heading home with bags of food, soap, and clothes, and boxes and boxes of cheap electrical goods—TVs, radios, video recorders, fans, microwaves, computers, boom boxes, which they'd half-or quarter-jammed into the overhead luggage compartments.

The stewardesses weren't complaining. They appeared to be used to it. They picked their way past the brand-name obstacles with straight-backed poise and stuck-on professional smiles, always managing to squeeze through without creasing their bearing, no matter how tight the space.

Max could tell the visiting expats apart from the natives. The former were tricked out in standard ghetto garb—gold chains, earrings, and bracelets; more on their backs and feet than they had in the bank—while the latter were dressed conservatively—cheap but smart slacks and short-sleeved shirts for the men, midweek church dresses for the women.

The atmosphere was lively, seemingly unaffected by the delay. The conversations rolled out loud and clear, Kreyol's dueling rhythms bouncing back and forth off each other and from all corners of the plane. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. The voices—deep and guttural—collectively drowned out the in-cabin preflight Muzak and all three pilot announcements.

"Most of those people live in houses with no electricity," said the woman sitting next to Max, in the window seat. "They're buying those things as ornaments, status symbols—like we'd buy a sculpture or a painting."

She told him her name was Wendy Abbott. She had lived in Haiti for the past thirty-five years with her husband, Paul. They ran an elementary school in the mountains overlooking Port-au-Prince. It catered to both the rich and the poor. They always made a profit, because very few of the poor believed in education, let alone knew what it was for. Many of their pupils either went on to the Union School, where they were taught the American curriculum, or to the more expensive and prestigious Lycée Français, which prepared them for the French baccalauréat.

Max introduced himself and left it at his name.