Mr. Clarinet

The dynamics of the family fell into place. Gustav Carver ruled the roost absolutely, without question or opposition. It was his show and everyone around him was an extra, a hired hand, even his family.

The old man sucked all the energy and personality out of the room and assimilated it into his. It was why Allain appeared so changed from when Max had last seen him, demoted from the regal to the regular; and it was why Francesca was reduced to a silent bit of arm candy. Gustav must have been a terrifying father to grow up under, thought Max, the sort who disowned what he couldn't break and bend.

The living room was vast. Three of the walls were lined with antique books—hundreds of them; collection after gold-embossed collection—their spines forming tasteful blocks of color—maroons, greens, royal blues, chocolate browns—against which furniture was offset to highlight its subtleties. He wondered how many of their books the Carvers had actually read.

It took a certain type of person to lose themselves in a book. Max wasn't one of them. He preferred physical activity to sitting down, and he'd outgrown made-up stories as a kid. Until he'd gone to prison, Max had only read the papers and anything related to a case he was working on.

Sandra had been the reader in the household—and a voracious one, too.

The light in the room—coming from spotlights in the ceiling, and tall lamps placed in all four corners—was a warm, comforting, intimate golden-ochre, the glow of fireplaces, candles, and oil lamps. Max could make out two armor breastplates and peaked helmets, mounted on pedestals, standing at either end of the bookcases to the right of the room. On the wall opposite him, between two arched windows, was a large portrait of a woman, while below it ran a long mantelpiece massed with framed photographs of various shapes and sizes.

"Your name? Mingus? It's black American, no?" Gustav said.

"My dad was from New Orleans. A failed jazz musician. He changed his name before he met my mom."

"After Charles Mingus?"

"Yeah."

"One of his pieces is called—"

"'Haitian Fight Song,' I know," Max interrupted.

"It's about la gague—our cockfights," Gustav informed him.

"We've got those in Miami too—"

"They're rougher here—primal." Gustav smiled broadly at him. The old man's teeth were sandy-colored and black at the roots.

Max's eyes fell on the lilies in the vase. There was something wrong with them, something that jarred with the room's nobility.

"Do you like jazz?" Gustav asked him.

"Yes. You?"

"Some. We saw Mingus give a concert here once, in Port-au-Prince, at the Hotel Olffson. Long time ago."

Gustav fell quiet and stared over at the portrait on the wall.

"Come," he said, pushing himself up out of his chair with his cane. Max stood up to help him, but Gustav shooed him away. He was about Max's height, although slightly stooped and a lot narrower about the shoulders and neck.

Gustav took Max over to the mantelpiece.

"Our Hall of Fame—or in-fame-ey, depending on your politics," Carver announced with a guffaw, spanning the breadth of the mantelpiece with a sweep of the arm.

The mantelpiece was made of granite, with a thin band of intertwined laurel leaves painted around the middle in gold. It was a lot wider than he had expected, more ledge than mantelpiece. Max looked across at all the photographs. There were well over a hundred there, five rows deep, each one turned at a different angle so that its core figures were visible.

The photographs were in black frames, with the same gold-leaf pattern running around the inside of their borders. At first glance, Max saw only unfamiliar faces staring back at him, in black-and-white, sepia, and color—Carver's forebears: men old and older, women mostly young, everyone Caucasian—and then, flitting in between the aristocratic profiles and posed box-camera shots of yesteryear, were shots of the younger Gustav—fishing, playing croquet in plus fours, with his wife on their wedding day, and, most of all, shaking hands with celebrities and icons. Among those Max recognized were JFK, Fidel Castro (those two photographs placed side-by-side), John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Norman Mailer, William Holden, Ann-Margret, Clark Gable, Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Truman Capote, John Gielgud, Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor. Carver never seemed dwarfed or rendered irrelevant in the stars' auras; on the contrary, Max thought his seemed the more commanding presence, as if he were really posing in their snapshots.

There were two photographs of Sinatra—one of the Chairman meeting Carver, the other of him kissing an awestruck Mrs. Carver on the cheek.

"How did you find him? Sinatra?" Max asked.

"A tadpole who thought he was a shark—and a complete vulgarian too. No class," Carver said. "My wife adored him, though, so I forgave him virtually everything. He still writes to me. Or his secretary does. He sent me his last compact disc."

"L.A. Is My Lady?"

"No. Duets."