Mr. Clarinet

"Inglishhh?"

"Yeah, English. You speak?"

The kid stood his ground and looked at him.

Max heard it before he saw it, something slicing through the air, something heavy, aimed right at his head. He ducked and the kid in the suit swung into space.

Max dug a furious left-right combination into the kid's ribs and solar plexus. The kid gasped and cried out as he folded over like paper, sticking his chin straight out for a right hook, which Max slammed home and sent him sprawling to the floor.

Max grabbed the kid in a choke hold, pulled out his Beretta, and jammed the barrel through his mouth.

"Back the fuck up or he dies!" he yelled, looking all around him. The kid was flailing at him with his hands, kicking at the ground, trying to tip Max over. Max stamped on one of the kid's hands with his bare heel. He heard bones give and a strangled cry boil in the middle of the kid's throat.

No one moved.

What now?

He couldn't exactly drag the kid around with him as he looked for his way home, checking every street until he found it. No way. Maybe he could use him as a shield, push him as far away from the crowd as possible, then cut him loose and go on his way.

No way would they let him.

He could try and shoot his way out.

But no, he wouldn't use it. Not on fucking children.

He'd fire in the air and run as they hit the deck or scattered or panicked.

"Put your gun away!"

Max jumped.

The booming voice had come from above, in the black sky, behind him, downhill. Still keeping his hold on the kid, Max shuffled around toward Pétionville. The view ahead was completely blocked by the man's body, which Max couldn't see but sensed, massive and heavy, the thunder in dark, roiling clouds.

"I won't ask you again," the man insisted.

Max took his gun out of the kid's mouth and slipped it back in his holster.

"Now let him go."

"He tried to fuckin' kill me!" Max yelled.

"Let him GO!" the man boomed, making some children jump and drop their rocks.

Max freed his assailant.

The man barked something in Kreyol and blinding-white overhead lights came on. Max looked away, hand up against the glare. He saw the kid on the ground, blood all down the front of his suit.

Suddenly Max could see every millimeter of the immediate street. The children were standing around him three rows deep. They were all skinny, dressed in filthy rags, many only in shorts, turned away from the light, hands shielding their eyes from the glare.

The same voice barked in Kreyol again.

The kids all dropped their rocks in a collective crash. The rocks rolled down the road, some thudding into Max's bare feet.

Max squinted into the lights. The voice was coming from above the row of floodlights.

The voice boomed again and the children scampered, a stampede of tiny, mostly bare feet ripping down the road, puttering away as fast as they could. Max saw them running through Pétionville's square, over a hundred of them. They would have torn him to pieces.

He heard the sound of a big engine turning over and saw twin sets of exhaust fumes rising up behind the lights, in the shape of upended pine trees. It looked like a military jeep. He hadn't even heard it coming.

The man's accent was straight-up English—not a hint of French or American in it.

Max felt the man looking down on him, at least a good extra foot taller. And he felt his presence—powerful, magnetic, and crushing—enough to fill a palace.

He came closer to Max.

Max looked but couldn't see his face.

The man reached down and grabbed the kid by the middle of his jacket and plucked him clean off the ground, as though picking up something he'd dropped and come back for. Max only saw his bare forearm—thickly veined and heavily muscled, bigger than one of Joe's biceps—and his fist—blunt and heavy and crude as a sledgehammer head. Max swore the man had six fingers. He'd counted five knuckles not four when he'd seen the hand bunch up the boy's suit jacket into a handle.

The man was a giant.

The overhead lights went out and the main ones flicked on, dazzling Max all over again. The engine kicked into action.

Max's vision regrouped in time to see the jeep reversing quickly down the hill. It reached the roundabout, turned left, and headed off down the road. Max tried to see the people inside but he couldn't make anyone out. From where he stood, it looked empty, driven by spirits.

Chapter 14

WHEN THEY WERE gone, he stumbled around the now-empty streets, looking for the elusive road home. The drunkenness came and went in waves, dumb dizziness tripping over moments of lucidity.

Eventually, by a process of elimination, which involved retracing his steps to the bar and then going down each of the four right-hand turn-offs between the bar and the center of town, he found the Impasse Carver.

It was the road he'd been closest to when he was surrounded by the kids.

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