Mr. Clarinet

/>

'You two's had more pressin' bidnis to talk over, I'm sure,' Joe said.

The waiter brought the Cokes and bourbon. Joe took the shot glass, quickly checked around, and tipped the drink on the floor.

'For Sandra,' he said.

Pour out a little liquor for the dead, spirit for spirit. Joe did that every time someone close to him died. Right then solemnity threatened to invade their space, get the better of the moment. Max didn't need it. They had things to talk over.

'Sandra didn't drink,' Max said.

Joe looked at him, read the traces of humor left over on his lips, and burst out laughing. He had a big laugh, a rolling rumble of joy that filled the room and made everyone look their way.

Max stared at the photograph of his godson. Jethro was holding a basketball up on splayed fingertips. The boy was twelve but already tall and broad enough to pass for sixteen.

'Takes after his daddy,' Max said.

'Jet loves his ball.'

'Could be a future there.'

'Could be, but best let the future be the future. Besides, I want him to do well in school. Kid's got a good head on him.'

'You don't want him to follow in your footsteps?'

'Like I said, the kid's got a good head on him.'

They clinked glasses.

Max handed him back the photographs and looked over at the main bar. It was packed. Brickell Avenue bankers, businessmen, white-collar workers with loosened ties, handbags on the floor, jackets draped carelessly over the backs of their chairs, hems trailing on the ground. He homed in on two executive types in similar light gray suits, both clutching Bud bottles and talking to a couple of women. They'd just met, exchanged first names, established common ground, and now they were searching for the next conversation lead-in. He could tell all that from the tensed-up body language?stiff-backed, alert, ready to run off after the next best thing. Both men were interested in the same girl?navy blue business suit, blond highlights. Her friend knew this and was already looking around the bar. Back in his bachelor days, Max had specialized in going for the ugly friend, reasoning that the better-looking one would be expecting attention and would play hard to get and leave him holding his dick and a big tab at the end of the night. The woman who wasn't expecting to get hit on would be more likely to give it up. It had worked nine times out of ten, sometimes with the unexpected bonus of the good- looking one making a play for him. He hadn't liked most of the women he'd dated. They were challenges, notches, things to be possessed. His attitudes had changed completely when he'd met Sandra, but now that she was gone all those old thoughts were coming back to him like the ghost of an amputated limb, sending him feelings out of nowhere.

He hadn't had sex in seven years. He hadn't thought about it since the funeral. He hadn't even jerked off. His libido had shut down out of respect.

He'd been faithful to Sandra, a one-woman man. He didn't really want anyone else, anyone new, not now. He couldn't even imagine what it would be like again, going through all that bullshit conversation, pretending to be a sensitive guy when the only reason you'd gone up to her was to see if you could fool her into a fuck. He was looking at the whole scene below him with the pioneer's distaste for the follower.

Joe pushed the file over to him.

'Dug up a little on the Carvers of Haiti,' Joe said. 'Mostly back story, nothing current. The video's got a load of news footage about the Haitian invasion. Allain Carver's in there somewhere.'

'Thanks, Joe,' Max said, taking the files and putting them down on the seat beside him. 'Anything on them here?'

'No criminal records, but Gustav Carver, the dad? He's got a mansion in Coral Gables. Got B&E'd six years back.'

'What they take?'

'Nothing. Someone broke in one night, took one of their fine-china dinner plates, shit on it, put it on the dining-room table and left without a trace.'

'What about the security cameras?'

'Nada. I don't think the case got followed through. Report is only two pages?looks more like a complaint than a crime. Probably some pissed off ex-servant.'

Max laughed. He'd heard of far stranger crimes, but the thought of Allain Carver finding that on the table when he came down to breakfast was funny. He started to smile, but then he thought of Boukman and his expression wilted.

'So, you wanna tell me what happened with Solomon Boukman? When I went to New York he was sitting on death row, one last appeal away from the needle.'

'We ain't in Texas,' said Joe. 'Things take time in Florida. Even time takes time here. A lawyer can take up to two years to put in an appeal. That stays in the system for another two years. Then you got yet another two years before you get in front of the judge. Add all that up and it's 1995. They turned down Boukman's last appeal, like I knew they would, only?'

'But they fuckin' set him free, Joe!' Max said, raising his voice to a near shout.

'Do you know how much a one-way ticket to Haiti costs?' Joe said. 'A hundred bucks, give or take?plus tax. Do you know how much it costs the state to keep a man on death row? Hell?forget that. Do you know how much it costs the state to execute a man? Thousands. See the logic?'

'The victims' families 'see the logic'?' Max said bitterly.

Joe didn't say anything. Max could tell he was angry about it too, but there was something else eating away at him.

'You wanna tell me the rest, Joe.'

'They cleaned out Boukman's cell the day he left. Found this,' Joe said, handing Max a sheet of school exercise-book paper sealed in an evidence bag.

Boukman had cut out a newspaper picture of Max at his trial and stuck it in the middle of the paper. Underneath it, in pencil, in that strange, childlike writing of his?capitals, all letters bereft of curves, strokes linked by dots and drawn so straight he appeared to have used a ruler?he'd written: YOU GIVE ME REASON TO LIVE. Below that, he'd drawn a small outline of Haiti.

'Fuck's he mean by that?' Joe asked.

'He said that to me at his trial, when I was givin' evidence,' Max said and left it at that. He wasn't going to spring the truth on Joe. Not now. Not ever, if he could help it.

He'd come face-to-face with Boukman twice, before his arrest. He'd never been so terrified of another human being in all his life.

'I don't know about you, but there was somethin' really scary about Boukman,' Joe said. 'D'you remember when we busted in there?that zombie-palace place?'

'He's just a man, Joe. A sick, twisted man, but a man all the same. Flesh and blood like us.'

'He didn't so much as groan when you laid into him.'

'So? Did he fly off on a broomstick?'

'I don't care how much Carver's payin' you, man. I don't think you should go. Give it a pass,' Joe said.

'If I see Boukman in Haiti, I'll tell him you say hello. And then I'll kill him,' Max said.

'You can't afford to take this shit lightly,' Joe said, angry.

'I'm not.'

'I got your piece,' Joe lowered his voice and leaned over. 'New Beretta, two hundred shells. Hollow point and regular. Gimme your flight details. It'll be waitin' for you in Departures. Pick it up before you get on the plane. One thing: don't bring it back. It stays in Haiti.'

'You could get into serious shit for this?arming a convicted felon,' Max joked, hiking up the sleeves of his sweatshirt to just below his elbows.

'I don't know no felons, but I do know good men who take wrong turns.' Joe smiled. They clicked glasses.

'Thanks man. Thanks for everything you did for me when I was away. I owe you.'

'You don't owe me shit. You're a cop. We look after our own. You know how it is and always will be.'

Depending on what they'd done to get there (most rapes and all kiddie-sex crimes were out, but everything else was tolerated, cops who went to jail were protected by the system. There was an unofficial national network, in which one state police department looked out for a felon from another state police department, knowing that the favor would be returned in spades sometime down the line. Con-cops would sometimes be kept in a maximum-security prison for a week or two and then quietly transferred out to a minimum-security white-collar jail. That was what happened to those who'd killed suspects, or got caught taking backhanders or stealing dope and selling it back on the street. If they couldn't swing a transfer, a fallen cop would be segregated, kept in solitary, have his meals brought to him by the guards, and allowed to shower and exercise alone. If solitary was all booked up, as it frequently was, the cops would be put in General Population, but with two guards watching their backs at all times. If a con did make a move on a jailbird cop, he'd get thrown in the hole long enough for the guards to put the word out that he was a snitch, and let out just in time to get shanked. Although Max was arrested in New York, Joe had had no trouble making sure his friend got five-star security treatment at Attica.