saw it in the way he held the boy in the photograph, and in the way he looked back at the two of them together.
He handed Max the photograph and walked along the mantelpiece, stopping almost at the very end and retrieving a smaller picture from a back row. He stood where he was and studied it.
Max looked at the photograph?the Carver family gathered around the patriarch and his grandson. There were four daughters?three took after their mother and were beauties based on the same template as Francesca's, while the last one was short and fat and looked like a younger version of her father in drag. Francesca stood next to her, and Allain ended the row on the right. Another man was in the picture?about Allain's age but much taller and with short, dark hair. Max guessed he was an in- law.
Carver came back to where he'd been standing. Max noticed he walked with a slight limp on his left side.
He took the baptism photo back and leaned in close to Max.
'I'm very glad you're working on this,' he said, dropping his voice to a whisper. 'I'm honored to have a man like you here. A man who understands values and principles.'
'As I told your son, this may not have a happy ending,' Max said, also whispering. He usually kept his feelings in check with clients, but he had to admit he liked the old man, despite everything he'd read about him.
'Mr. Mingus?'
'Call me Max, Mr. Carver.'
'Max, then?I'm old. I've had a stroke. I don't have much time left. A year, maybe a little more, but not much. I want our boy back. He's my only grandson. I want to see him again.'
Gustav's eyes were watering again.
'I'll do my best, Mr. Carver,' Max said and he meant it, even though he was almost a hundred percent sure Charlie Carver was dead, and was already dreading having to tell the old man.
'I believe you will,' Carver said, looking at Max admiringly.
Max felt ten feet tall, ready to get to work. He'd find Charlie Carver?if not his body, then his ghost and the place he haunted. He'd find out what happened to him and who was responsible. Then he'd find out why. But he'd stop there. He wouldn't dispense justice. The Carvers would want that satisfaction for themselves.
His eyes fell on something he hadn't seen until then, something not immediately apparent unless the viewer was up close?words, stamped into the mantelpiece pillars and filled in with gold paint. They were from Psalm 23, the best-known one, which starts, 'The Lord is my shepherd?'?only these quoted the fifth verse:
'Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.'
A maid walked up to them.
As Max and Carver began to walk toward the door, Allain and Francesca rose from their seats and followed them. For a while, Max had completely forgotten they were all in the same room.
Chapter 11
DINNER WAS SERVED by two maids in black uniforms with white aprons. They were silent and unobtrusive, serving the first course?two slices of prosciutto, with chilled cantaloupe, honeydew, galia, and watermelon?with the minimum of fuss, their presence a brief shadow at the shoulder.
The dining room, black-and-white-tiled, like the living room, was brightly lit by two huge chandeliers and dominated by the banquet table that could sit twenty- four. Judith's portrait hung on the left-hand wall, her face and torso looming over the end of the table, her essence filling the place she had no doubt occupied in body. The table was decorated with three vases of artificial lilies. Max and the Carvers sat close together at the opposite end. Gustav was at the head, Francesca faced Allain, and Max was placed next to her.
Max looked down at his place setting. He'd landed in alien territory. He didn't stand much on ceremony and etiquette. Other than the restaurants he'd taken his wife and girlfriends to, the only formal dinners he'd attended were cop banquets, and those had been like frat parties, disintegrating into roll fights and rude food-sculpture contests.
Cutting his ham, Max looked at the Carvers. They were still on the melon. They ate in silence, not looking at each other. The percussive tap of metal on porcelain was the only sound filling the cavernous dining room. Gustav kept his eyes fixed on his food. Max noted the way the fork trembled in his fingers as he brought it up to his mouth. Allain stabbed at his food, as though trying and failing to crush a zigzagging ant with the point of a pencil. He brought pieces of fruit up to his lipless mouth and snatched them in, like a lizard swallowing a fly. Francesca held her cutlery like knitting needles, dissecting her fruit into small morsels she then dabbed into her mouth without really opening it. Max saw how thin and pale and veinless her arms were. He noticed she was trembling, too, a nervous tremor, worries rattling inside of her. He glanced back at Allain and then again at her. No chemistry. Nothing left. Separate rooms? Miserable couple. Did they still argue or was it all silence? It was more than just the kid. These were two people staying together like bugs on sap. Max was sure Carver had someone on the side. He looked after himself, kept up his appearance, cut a dash. Francesca had given up. Poor woman.
'How long've you been in Haiti, Mrs. Carver?' Max asked, his voice filling the room. Father and son looked his way, then Francesca's.
'Too long,' she said quickly, just above a whisper, as if implying that Max shouldn't be talking to her. She didn't turn her head to look at him, merely glanced his way out of the corner of her eye.
Max swallowed the ham with a loud, hard gulp. It hurt his throat going down. There was another slice to go but he didn't touch it.
'So, tell me, Max?what was prison like?' Gustav barked across the table.
'I don't mind talking about it,' Max said to Allain. He'd been expecting the old man to ask him about his past.
'I shouldn't have taken the Garcia case,' he started. 'It was too close, too personal. My wife and I knew the family. They were friends. Her friends first, then mine. We babysat their daughter, Manuela, sometimes.'
He saw her again, now, in front of him. Four years old, her grownup features budding, crooked nose, brown eyes, curly brown hair, impudent smile, always talking, a little Inca. She'd loved Sandra, called her 'Auntie.' Sometimes she'd want to come and spend the night with Sandra even when her parents were with her.
'Richard and Luisa had everything most people wish for. They were millionaires. They'd been trying for a baby for years. There'd always been complications. Luisa had had three miscarriages and the doctors told her she couldn't get pregnant again?so, when Manuela came along they thought it was a miracle. They loved that little girl.'
Manuela hadn't liked Max much, but she'd inherited her father's smooth, diplomatic skills and, even at that age, she'd understood the importance of not offending people unless you were sure you could get away with it. She'd been polite to Max and called him 'Uncle Max' to his face, but when she thought he couldn't hear she referred to him as 'Max' or 'he.' It had always made him smile, hearing the future adult in the child.
'They contacted me as soon as they got the ransom demand. I told them to go to the cops, but they said the kidnappers had warned them not to or the girl would die. Usual TV-movie shit,' Max said, talking to the room. 'Never trust a kidnapper, least of all one who tells you not to go to the cops. You'll find they don't know what they're doing, and nine times out of ten the victim gets hurt. I told Richard all this, but he still wanted to play it by their rules.
'He asked me to be the bag man. I was to drop the ransom off and wait for the kidnappers to call and tell me where to find Manuela. I delivered the money near a pay phone in Orlando. Some guy on a motorbike picked it up. He didn't see me. I was hiding across the street. I got his registration, make of the bike, his basic physical description.
'The call never came. I ran the bike details by a cop friend of mine on the job. It belonged to one of Richard's employees. I got the information I needed out of him and turned him over to the cops.
'He told me Manuela was being held at a house in Orlando. I went there and she was gone,' Max said. He saw Francesca Carver twisting her napkin tight under the table, loosening it and then twisting it again with a hard wrench of her hands.
'The ransom guy had given me the names of his accomplices. Three of them, still teenagers. Seventeen. Two boys, a girl. Black. All three had records. The girl was a runaway, turned hooker. One of the boys was the ringleader's cousin.'
The maids came in and cleared away the plates and refilled the glasses with water and juice. Allain and Gustav were giving him their full, undivided attention. He felt them hanging on his every word. Francesca wasn't looking at him. The vein in her temple was throbbing again.
'There was a manhunt, first state, then national, the FBI got involved. They spent six months looking for Manuela and the kidnappers and they found nothing. I was out looking
