Mr. Clarinet

There were things Max could have said right then in defense of his homeland, about how America at least offered people a choice, about how anyone with enough will, determination, discipline, and drive could make a success of themselves there, and how it was still the land of opportunity. But he didn't go there. This wasn't the time and place for a debate.

"Ever make a mistake?" Max asked instead. "Have an Einstein cleaning your toilet all his life?"

"No. Never," Carver replied defiantly. "Anybody can be an idiot but not everybody can be intelligent."

"I see," Max said.

"You don't approve, do you? You don't think it's fair?"

"As you said, Mr. Carver. This ain't my country. I'm just a dumb-ass American with a head full of rhetoric and no right to talk about right and wrong," Max replied sarcastically.

"The average life expectancy here is around forty-eight. That means you're middle-aged at twenty-four." Carver's tone got back on an even keel. "People who work for us, who go through our system, they live beyond that. They get old. They see their children grow up. Just like people are meant to.

"We are saving lives and we are giving lives. You might not understand but the whole of Europe used to run that way before the French Revolution. The rich looked after the poor.

"Do you know that when they see us coming, people abandon their children so we might pick them up and give them a better life? It happens all the time. What you see here may look bad from a distance, Max, but close up it's really quite the opposite."

Chapter 34

THEY LEFT FOR Saut d'Eau at four a.m. the following day, Chantale at the wheel. The waterfalls were only forty miles north of Port-au-Prince, but thirty of those constituted the worst roads in Haiti. When the weather was good, a round trip by car took an average of ten hours; when it was bad, it took a day and a half.

Chantale had brought a small hamper of food for the trip. Although there were plenty of places to stop off along the way, and the waterfalls had a little tourist town nearby called Ville Bonheur, you could never be sure what you were eating. Household pets and pests alike were often passed off as pork, chicken, and beef.

"Why are you going to Saut d'Eau—exactly?" Chantale asked.

"First up: I want to talk to this Le Balek guy. Faustin knew who kidnapped Charlie. He might've shared the information, or left a clue with him. Plus Clarinet was the last place my predecessors went to before they disappeared. I want to find out why, what it was they saw or heard. They must've been on to something."

"Don't you think whoever's behind this would've taken care of any loose bits of evidence by now?"

"Yeah." Max nodded. "But you never know. Maybe they overlooked something. There's always that chance."

"Slim," Chantale said.

"Way it always is. You always hope your perp's dumber and sloppier than you are. Sometimes you get lucky." Max chuckled.

"You didn't mention Filius Dufour."

"What, that go-to-the-source-of-the-myth crap? Last thing I'm gonna do is act on a fortune-teller's advice. I deal in fact, not fantasy. You know an investigation's running on fumes when you bring the occult in as a partner," Max said.

"I don't think you believe that," Chantale said.

"If he cared about the kid and really knew anything he'd have said."

"Maybe he wasn't allowed to say anything."

"Oh? Who by? The ghosts he talks to—or whatever the fuck he does. Come on, Chantale! The guy knows as much as me—nothing, nada, bupkis."

For the first hour, they drove in complete darkness, leaving Pétionville and crossing a billboard–and telegraph–pole studded plain on their way to the mountains. The ride was surprisingly smooth until they took a long hairpin bend around the first hills, and the terrain turned first to gravel and then to rubble. Chantale killed the speed and turned on the radio. American Forces Radio was playing "I Wish I" by R. Kelly. Chantale quickly changed the dial and got the Wu Tang Clan rapping "America"; then she turned to another station and got Haitian talk radio, the next was broadcasting a church service, the ones after that were from the Dominican Republic and blasted out a mixture of salsa, talk, a sports match—probably soccer, judging from the pace—and another church service—all in Spanish. It made Max smile, because it reminded him of Miami radio—only far less corporate and slick than they would ever have allowed back home.

Chantale dug a cassette tape out of her bag and pushed it into the player. She pressed PLAY.

"Sweet Micky," she explained.