Mr. Clarinet

Francesca Carver smiled limply, as if offstage arms were desperately winding up her smile at great strain. She took Max's extended hand in a cold, clammy clasp, which briefly reminded him of his and Joe's patrol-car days, when they'd "shit-sifted"—hand-searched for drugs hidden at the bottom of backed-up toilets. Most of the time they'd had to use their bare hands, because they hadn't brought gloves to the bust. He remembered how month-old sewage had the same texture as cold, raw hamburger—the same feeling he was getting from Mrs. Carver's hand.

Their eyes met and locked. Her irises were a light, washed-out shade of blue that registered faintly against the whites, like the ghost of a long-forgotten ink drop on laundered fabric. Her look was pure beat cop—wary, probing, doubtful, edgy.

Francesca was beautiful, but in a way that had never done it for him—a distinguished, distant beauty that spoke status, not sexiness. Delicate, porcelain-pale skin; perfectly balanced features, with nothing bigger or smaller than it should be, everything symmetrical and in exactly the right place; high, sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin, and a slightly upturned nose that was the perfect platform for a disdainful or withering look. Manhattan WASP, Florida belle, Palm Springs princess, Bel Air blue blood—Francesca Carver possessed the sort of face that launched a dozen country clubs and required annual membership or good connections to get close to. Her life, he imagined, was four-hour lunches, crash diets, monthly colonic irrigations, manicures, pedicures, facials, massages, liposuction, twice-weekly trips to the hairdresser, a nanny, a personal trainer, a daily/weekly/monthly allowance, limitless reserves of small talk. She was Allain Carver's perfect foil.

But all was not completely right about her. A few things let her down and fractured the facade. She was drinking what must have been four straight shots of neat vodka out of a large tumbler; her dark-blond hair was packed into a tight, severe bun that exposed her face and drew attention to its thinness and pallor, to the shadows under her eyes and the vein in her left temple, thumping away under her skin, her pulse accelerated, tense.

She said nothing and their exchange remained wordless. Max could tell she didn't approve of him, which was odd, because parents who called him in to look for their missing children usually regarded him as though he was the next best thing to a superhero.

"And my father, Gustav Carver."

"Pleased to meet you," Gustav said to Max. His voice was gravelly and expansive, a smoking shouter's voice.

They shook hands. The elder Carver displayed a lot of strength for someone his age, who'd also suffered a stroke. His handshake, applied with minimum effort, was a bonecrusher. He had a forbidding set of paws, the size of catcher's mitts.

He took the heavy black-and-silver-topped cane he'd rested across the arms of his chair and rapped on the couch to his left, close to him.

"Sit with me, Mr. Mingus," he growled.

Max sat down close enough to the old man to smell mild menthol coming off him. Father looked nothing like son. Gustav Carver resembled a gargoyle, at rest between demonic eruptions. He had a huge head with a swept-back, brilliantined mane of thick silver. His nose was a broad beak, his mouth thick-lipped and bill-shaped, and his small, dark brown eyes, peering under the drapes of sagging eyelids, glistened like two freshly roasted coffee beans.

"Would you care for a drink?" Gustav said, more order than invitation.

"Yes, please," Max said and was about to ask for water, but Gustav interrupted him.

"You should try our rum. It's the best in the world. I'd join you, but I've had mutinies in the pumphouse." He patted his chest, chuckling. "I'll drink it through you."

"Barbancourt rum?" Max asked. "We get that in Miami."

"Not the deluxe variety," Gustav snapped. "It's not for foreigners. It never leaves the island." His accent was closer to English than his son's.

"I don't feel like alcohol right now, Mr. Carver," Max said.

"So what can I offer you?"

"Water, please."

"That's another deluxe drink here," Carver said.

Max laughed.

Gustav barked at a male servant who came quickly over from near the doorway, where Max hadn't noticed him standing when he'd walked in. Carver ordered Max's water in words that left his mouth like a blast from a starting pistol.

Looking at the servant practically fleeing the room, Max caught sight of Allain, sitting at the other end of the couch, staring blankly into space, playing with his fingers. Max realized he hadn't been conscious of Allain's presence in the room after he'd been introduced to Gustav. He stole a look at Francesca, on the opposite chair, and saw her sitting in the same way—back upright, hands folded on her lap—staring in the same way at a different nothing.