Mr. Clarinet

The sound of a lid being unscrewed came from Dufour's direction, then a smell of kerosene and rotting vegetables overtook and flattened the pleasant scent of fresh lime that had been the room's only perfume. Chantale screwed up her face and moved her head out of the way of the worst of the stench. Max paused the tape recorder.

Dufour said nothing by way of explanation. He rubbed his palms, then his wrists and forearms, and then he did his fingers one by one, popping their respective knuckles when he was finished. The smell went from bad to nasty to nearly unbearable, forming an acrid rubbery taste in the back of Max's throat.

He looked away from the old man's direction and glanced around the room. His eyes had acclimated to the quarter-light and he could see more now. All about him surfaces gave off the tiniest reflections of lamplight, reminding Max of photographs of crowds holding their lighters aloft during rock concerts, a butane Milky Way. To his left, were the shuttered windows, the fierce sun penetrating through the smallest fissures in the wood, beaming in from the outside in phosphorescent dots and dashes, a blinding Morse code.

Dufour closed the container and said something to Chantale.

"He says he's ready to continue," she said to Max.

"OK." Max switched the recorder back on and stared straight ahead of him, where he could vaguely make out his host's head and a pallid blur where his face was. "Who made the appointments? You or Mrs. Carver?"

"Me."

"How did you notify them?"

"By telephone. Eliane—my maid—she called Rose, Charlie's nanny."

"How much notice did you give them?"

"Four, five hours."

Max scribbled this down in his notebook.

"Was there anyone else with you at the time?"

"Only Eliane."

"No one came to the house while you were with him? No visits?"

"No."

"Did you tell anyone Charlie was coming to see you?"

"No."

"Did anyone see Charlie coming here?"

"Everyone in the street."

Dufour laughed as soon as Chantale had finished translating, to confirm that he was joking.

"Did you notice anyone suspicious watching your house? Anyone you hadn't seen before?"

"No."

"No one hanging around?"

"I would have seen."

"I thought you didn't like daylight?"

"There is more than one way to see," Chantale translated.

Fasten your seatbelts, hold on tight—mystic mumbo-jumbo Disneyland here we come, Max felt like saying, but didn't. He'd been here before, in a similar situation, talking to a voodoo priest who was rumored to have supernatural powers. That was back when he was looking for Boukman. The most powerful thing about that guy had been his smell—bathtubs of rum and months of skipped showers. He'd humored the priest, cut him slack, and come away from their encounter with a working understanding of Haiti's national religion. Sometimes—though not often—it paid to tolerate and indulge.

"You're not asking me the right questions," Dufour said through Chantale.

"Yeah? What should I be asking?"

"I'm not the detective."

"Do you know who kidnapped Charlie?"

"No."

"I thought you could see into the future?"

"Not everything."

How convenient. I guess that's what you tell people when their relatives suddenly die.

"For example," Dufour continued, "I can't tell people when their loved ones are going to die."

Max's heart skipped a beat. He swallowed dry.

Coincidence: no such thing as mind reading.

Something—or someone—stirred behind him. He heard a floor-board subtly creak, as though it was being stepped on firmly but slowly. He glanced over his shoulder but couldn't see anything. He looked at Chantale. It seemed she hadn't heard anything.

Max turned back to Dufour.

"Tell me about Charlie. About when he came to see you? What did you do when he came?"

"We talked."

"You talked?"

"Yes. We talked without speaking."

"I see," Max said. "So you—what? Used telepathy—ESP, ET—what?"

"Our spirits talked."

"Your spirits talked?" he asked, as neutrally as possible. He desperately wanted to laugh.

They had officially entered the realm of bullshit, where everything happened and the far-fetched was never far enough. He'd play along, he told himself, until the rules got too fucked-up and the situation threatened to change owners. Then he'd weigh in and turn the tables.

"Our spirits. Who we are inside. You have one too. Don't confuse your body with your soul. Your body is simply the house you live in while you're here on earth."

And don't confuse me with a dickhead.

"So, how did you do that—talk to his spirit?"

"It's what I do, although…it's not something I've ever done with a living person before. Charlie was unique."

"What did you talk about?"

"Him."

"What did he tell you?"

"You were told why he came to see me?"

"Because he wasn't talking, yeah—and?"

"He told me the reason why that was."

Max saw something cross his peripheral vision to his right and quickly turned to catch it, but there was nothing to see.