maybe a year or two younger; balanced diet?healthy. There were lines on his neck and crow's-feet etched at the ends of his small, sharp blue eyes. With his golden skin he could have passed for white South American?Argentinean or Brazilian?bloodlines going all the way back to Germany. Untouchably handsome but for his mouth. That let him down. It resembled a long razor cut where the blood had just started to bubble but not yet run over.

The coffee came in a white porcelain pot. Max poured himself a cup and added a measure of cream from a small jug. The coffee was rich and strong, and the cream didn't leave a greasy slick on the surface; it was connoisseur stuff, the kind you bought by the bean and ground yourself, not the average brews you picked up in the supermarket.

'I heard about your wife,' Carver said. 'I'm sorry.'

'Me too,' Max countered curtly. He let the subject die in the air, then got down to business. 'You said you had a job you wanted me to look at?'

Carver told him about Charlie. Max heard the basics and flat-out said no. Carver mentioned the money and Max quieted down, more out of shock than greed. In fact, greed didn't even enter into it. While Carver was talking numbers, he handed Max a manila envelope. Inside were two glossy black-and-white photographs, a headshot, and a full-length bodyshot?of a little girl.

'I thought you said your son was missing, Mr. Carver?' Max said, holding up the picture.

'Charlie had a thing about his hair. We nicknamed him Samson because he wouldn't let anyone go near it. He was born?somewhat unusually?with a full head of the stuff. Whenever anyone tried to sneak up on him with a pair of scissors he screeched?this deafening howl. Quite terrifying. So we left it alone. I'm sure he'll outgrow the phobia eventually,' Carver said.

'Or not,' Max said bluntly, deliberately.

Max thought he saw Carver's face change for an instant, as a shadow of humanity stole away a fragment of his all-business composure. It wasn't enough to make him warm up to his potential client, but it was a start.

Max studied the headshot. Charlie didn't look anything like his father. His eyes and hair were very dark and he had a large mouth with full lips. He wasn't smiling. He looked pissed off, a great man interrupted in the middle of his work. It was a very adult look. His stare was intense and stark. Max could feel it prodding at his face, humming on the paper, nagging at him.

The second photograph showed Charlie standing in front of some bougainvillea bushes with almost the same expression on his face. His hair was long all right, bow-tied into two drooping bunches that poured over his shoulders. He was wearing a floral- patterned dress, with frills on the sleeves, hem, and collar.

It made Max sick.

'It's none of my business and I ain't no psychologist, but that's a sure-as-shit way to fuck a kid's head up, Carver,' Max said, hostility upfront.

'It was my wife's idea.'

'You don't seem the henpecked kind.'

Carver laughed briefly, sounding like he was clearing his throat.

'People are very backward in Haiti. Even the most sophisticated, well-educated sorts believe in all kinds of rubbish?superstitions?'

'Voodoo?'

'We call it vodou. Haitians are ninety percent Catholic and a hundred percent vodouiste, Mr. Mingus. There's nothing sinister about it?no more than, say, worshipping a half-naked man nailed to a cross, drinking his blood and eating his flesh.'

He studied Max's face for a reaction. Max stared right back at him, impassive. Carver could have worshipped supermarket carts, for all he cared. One person's God was another person's idea of a good joke, as far as he was concerned.

He looked back at the photograph of Charlie in his dress. You poor kid, he thought.

'We've looked everywhere for him,' Carver said. 'We ran a campaign in early 1995?newspaper and TV ads, billboards with his picture on them, radio spots?everything. We offered a substantial reward for information, or, better still, for Charlie himself. It had predictable consequences. Every lowlife suddenly came out from under a rock and claimed they knew where 'she' was. Some even claimed they'd kidnapped 'her' and made ransom demands, but it was all?the sums they wanted were trivial, way too small. Obviously, I knew they were lying. These peasants in Haiti can't see past the ends of their noses. And their noses are very flat.'

'Did you follow up on all the leads?'

'Only the sensible ones.'

'First mistake right there. Check everything out. Chase every lead.'

'Your predecessors said that.'

Bait and hook, Max thought. Don't go there. You'll get drawn into a pissing contest. Still, he was curious. How many people had already worked on the case? Why had they failed? And how many were out there now?

He played indifferent.

'Don't get ahead of yourself. Right now we're just having a conversation,' Max said. Carver was stung, brought down to a level he usually didn't frequent. He must have been surrounded by the sort of people who laughed at all his jokes. That was the thing about the very rich, the rich born and bred: they swam in their own seas and didn't breathe the same air as everybody else; they lived parallel, insulated lives, immune to the struggles and failures that shaped character. Had Carver ever been forced to wait until next month's paycheck for a new pair of shoes? Been turned down by a woman? Had property repossessors knocking on his door? Hardly.

Carver told him about the danger, brought up the predecessors again, hinted that bad things had happened to them. Max still didn't rise to it. He'd gone into the meeting a third of the way determined not to take the job. Now he was almost at the halfway mark.

Carver clocked his indifference and switched his talk to Charlie?when he'd taken his first steps, how he had an ear for music?and then he went into a bit more detail about Haiti.

Max listened, feigning interest with a fixed look, but behind it he was going away, back into himself, delving, working out if he could still cut it.

He came up strangely empty, unresolved. The case had two obvious angles?financial motive or some possible voodoo bullshit. No ransom, so that left the latter, which he knew a bit more about than he'd let on to Carver. Or maybe Carver knew about him and Solomon Boukman. In fact, he was certain Carver did know about that. Of course he did. How couldn't he, if he had Torres on his payroll? What else did Carver know about him? How far back had he gone? Did he have something stored up, ready to spring on him?

Bad start, if he wanted to take it farther. He didn't trust his future client.

* * *

Max ended their meeting telling Carver he'd think about it. Carver gave him his card and twenty-four hours to make up his mind.

* * *

He took a cab back to his hotel, Charlie Carver's photographs in his lap.

He thought about ten million dollars and what he could do. He'd sell the house and buy a modest apartment somewhere quiet and residential, possibly in Kendall. Or maybe he'd move out to the Keys. Or maybe he'd leave Florida altogether.

Then he thought about going to Haiti. Would he have taken the case in his pre-con prime? Yes, certainly. The challenge alone would have appealed to him. No forensics to fall back on and cut corners with, just pure problem-solving, brain work, his wits pitted against another's. But he'd mothballed his talents when he'd gone to prison, and they'd quietly wasted away with inattention, same as any muscle. A case like Charlie Carver's would be up the hill backwards, the whole way.

* * *

Back in his room, he propped the two photos up on his desk and stared at them.

He didn't have any children. He'd never cared for kids all that much. They tried his patience and fried his nerves. Nothing would piss him off more than being stuck in a room with a crying baby its parents couldn't or wouldn't shut up. And yet, ironically, many of his private cases had involved finding missing children, some mere toddlers. He had a hundred- percent success rate. Alive or dead, he always brought them home. He wanted to do the same for Charlie. He was worried that he couldn't, that he'd fail him. Those eyes, sparkling with precocious rage, were finding him again, all the way across the room. It was stupid but he felt they were calling out to him, imploring him to come to his rescue.

Magic eyes.

* * *

Max went out and tried to find a quiet bar where he could have a drink and think things through, but everywhere he passed was full of people, most of them a generation younger than he, most of them happy and loud. Bill Clinton had been reelected president. Celebrations everywhere. Not his scene. He decided to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels at a liquor store instead.

While he was looking for a store, he bumped into a guy in a white puffy jacket and ski hat pulled down almost to his eyes. Max apologized. Something fell out of the man's jacket and landed at his feet. A clear plastic Ziploc bag with five fat joints rolled tampon-style. Max picked it up and turned to give it to the man, but he was gone.

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