Mr. Clarinet

rocks.

Max freed his assailant.

The man barked something in Kreyol and blinding-white overhead lights came on. Max looked away, hand up against the glare. He saw the kid on the ground, blood all down the front of his suit.

Suddenly Max could see every millimeter of the immediate street. The children were standing around him three rows deep. They were all skinny, dressed in filthy rags, many only in shorts, turned away from the light, hands shielding their eyes from the glare.

The same voice barked in Kreyol again.

The kids all dropped their rocks in a collective crash. The rocks rolled down the road, some thudding into Max's bare feet.

Max squinted into the lights. The voice was coming from above the row of floodlights.

The voice boomed again and the children scampered, a stampede of tiny, mostly bare feet ripping down the road, puttering away as fast as they could. Max saw them running through Petionville's square, over a hundred of them. They would have torn him to pieces.

He heard the sound of a big engine turning over and saw twin sets of exhaust fumes rising up behind the lights, in the shape of upended pine trees. It looked like a military jeep. He hadn't even heard it coming.

The man's accent was straight-up English?not a hint of French or American in it.

Max felt the man looking down on him, at least a good extra foot taller. And he felt his presence?powerful, magnetic, and crushing?enough to fill a palace.

He came closer to Max.

Max looked but couldn't see his face.

The man reached down and grabbed the kid by the middle of his jacket and plucked him clean off the ground, as though picking up something he'd dropped and come back for. Max only saw his bare forearm?thickly veined and heavily muscled, bigger than one of Joe's biceps?and his fist?blunt and heavy and crude as a sledgehammer head. Max swore the man had six fingers. He'd counted five knuckles not four when he'd seen the hand bunch up the boy's suit jacket into a handle.

The man was a giant.

The overhead lights went out and the main ones flicked on, dazzling Max all over again. The engine kicked into action.

Max's vision regrouped in time to see the jeep reversing quickly down the hill. It reached the roundabout, turned left, and headed off down the road. Max tried to see the people inside but he couldn't make anyone out. From where he stood, it looked empty, driven by spirits.

Chapter 14

WHEN THEY WERE gone, he stumbled around the now-empty streets, looking for the elusive road home. The drunkenness came and went in waves, dumb dizziness tripping over moments of lucidity.

Eventually, by a process of elimination, which involved retracing his steps to the bar and then going down each of the four right- hand turn-offs between the bar and the center of town, he found the Impasse Carver.

It was the road he'd been closest to when he was surrounded by the kids.

* * *

Back at the house, Max went to his room, took out his wallet, unclipped his holster and gun, and dropped them on the bed. He peeled off his suit, turned beige to brown, sweat-soaked all the way through to his back and underarms and butt. It was ruined. The trousers stank. The left leg was black and stiff and sticky up to the knee.

It was hot and humid inside. He turned on the fan to stir up the dead air and blow up some cool breeze. His hands were shaking, currents of fear and rage passing back and forth through his veins and arteries, making his heart pound fast, pumping adrenaline into his bloodstream. He was thinking back to those kids. Part of him wanted to go back outside and kick their raggedy, Live Aid?handout asses to voodoo heaven. Another part of him wanted out of this godforsaken country on the next boat-people armada. And yet another part of him was curled up and made small and hiding its humbled head in shame.

He remembered Huxley's card and the Sinatra CD in his pocket. The card was still there but the CD was gone. He realized that it had been knocked out of his pocket when he'd fallen down the crater. He bundled the suit up and tossed it into a corner of the room. He undid his shirt and wiped himself down, then he took off his underwear, balled them all together, and walked to the bathroom, where he tossed them into the laundry basket before getting into the shower.

He turned on the water, and a freezing-cold white streak tore out of the showerhead and blasted his skin. He gasped in shock and went to turn down the jet, but he sensed all the pent-up rage and fear and frustration churning inside him, unspent and untapped, the kind of thing that would bug him every time he stepped out of the house if he didn't release it, vent it. He turned the faucet up full, making the pipes shake and rattle and threaten to pop the brackets that held them against the wall. He let the icy water bash and pound into his flesh until it started to hurt. He held on to the pain as he focused on the humiliation he'd just had to crawl his way out of.

He'd been shamed, shamed by a bunch of little kids. They'd have killed him if it hadn't been for that guy in the jeep. What could you do when it was kids who were threatening to take your life? If you killed them, you burned in hell. If you didn't, they burned you.

No solution, no release. His anger crawled away until it found a hole big enough to hide in and wait for the poor unsuspecting bastard who provoked it.

He dried off and went back to his room. He was too damn hopped up to sleep. He wanted more rum. He knew he shouldn't, that it was the wrong way to drink, that if he did he'd be taking familiar steps back to alcoholism, but right now, at this moment, he didn't give a good fuck about any of that.

He changed into khakis and a white T-shirt and padded to the kitchen.

He opened the door and switched on the light.

Francesca Carver sat at the table.

'The fuck are you doing here?' Max snapped, taking a step back in shock.

'I've come to talk to you.'

'How did you get in?'

'We own this house, remember?' she answered with haughty impatience.

'What do you want to talk about?'

'It's about Charlie?things you need to know before you go any further.'

* * *

Max went off and got his notebook and tape recorder, while Francesca sat at the table, drinking a glass of bottled water she'd found in the fridge and smoking a French Gitanes cigarette that came in a fancy-looking blue-and-white pack. They stank like hell but they suited her?the sort of thick, all-white cigarettes classic-movie heroines from the forties and fifties were always puffing on at the end of holders.

Max guessed he hadn't smelled her cigarettes when he'd walked into the house because the stench coming off him had been far worse.

'Before I start, you've got to promise me one thing,' she said, when Max returned.

'That depends,' Max said. She looked very different, much prettier, more relaxed, less ravaged. She'd changed into a pale blue blouse, long denim skirt, and sneakers. She wore her hair down and a little makeup, much of it concentrated around her eyes.

'You can't repeat any of this to Gustav.'

'Why not?'

'Because it'd break his heart if he knew?and with his heart already hanging by a thread. Can you promise me this?'

Bullshit, Max thought. She had no love for Gustav Carver. Besides, what kind of fool did she take him for, packaging it all in soft, plaintive tones, reaching for his nearest, fattest heartstring? She must have been to acting school, to do that with her voice, change pitch, wrap each word in a tear before uttering it.

'What's the real reason?' Max asked, looking her straight in the eyes, finding the pupils, holding them.

She didn't flinch. Her eyes met his and held them back. Her stare was cold and hard and remorseless; it said: seen the very worst, seen it all, seen too much of it, still standing?fuck you.

'If Gustav knew what I'm about to tell you, he'd be absolutely livid.'

'You mean Charlie's not his grandson?'

'No!?and how dare you!' she snapped. She looked disgusted. Her face flushed light purple, stare-stabbing him. She took a short drag on her cigarette and dumped it in a cup half-filled with water she'd taken to using as an ashtray. The butt hissed as it went out.

'Sorry.' Max smiled at her. 'Just checking.'

She'd walked right into it. Good?a weakness. He didn't know if he'd hit a raw nerve buried under a truth or upset an applecart of prudishness. He was stabbing in the dark, testing the depth of her sincerity. So far, she was holding up.

'Tell me what you want to tell me, Mrs. Carver.'

'I want your word.'

'Are