Mr. Clarinet

you sure?' Max asked.

'You haven't much else to offer me, have you?'

He laughed. Stuck-up bitch. She wanted his word? Sure, why not? What was the big deal? He could always break it. It wouldn't be the first time. Words, promises, handshakes, and vows meant nothing to him outside friendship.

'I give you my word, Mrs. Carver,' Max said, sounding sincere and reflecting it in the steady eyes he fixed on Francesca. She appraised him and seemed satisfied.

The cassette recorder was on and picking up everything she was saying.

'You were on the right track, back there in the house, about Eddie Faustin,' she began. 'He was involved in the kidnapping. He was the inside man.'

'You came here to tell me that?'

'I wanted to speak to you freely. I couldn't talk to you in front of Gustav. He won't hear a bad word about Faustin. The man took a bullet for him and that makes him a saint in Gustav's book,' Francesca said, pulling hard on her cigarette. 'He's so stubborn. No matter what I told him happened during the kidnapping, he just dismissed it completely?said I couldn't possibly remember anything because I'd been knocked out. And even afterwards, when we went through Faustin's quarters and found what he had in there?'

She broke off and held her forehead in her fingertips, rubbing circles around her skin. It looked more dramatic than therapeutic.

'What did you find?'

'Faustin used to live in the old stables, behind the main plantation house. They were converted into small apartments for the family's most trusted restavecs. After the kidnapping his apartment was emptied and they found a doll?a voodoo doll?in a box under his bed. The doll was of me.'

'Did he hate you?'

'No. This was a love?or lust?charm. It was made with my real hair, and the wax was embedded with my fingernail and toenail clippings. He'd collected them, or paid one of the maids to collect them.'

'Did you ever suspect he was doing that?'

'Not at all. Faustin was a trusted employee. Always polite, very professional.'

'You didn't feel that he had any desires for you?ever catch him looking at you?er?inappropriately?'

'No. Servants know their place here.'

'Sure they do, Mrs. Carver. That's why Faustin helped kidnap your son,' Max slipped in sarcastically.

Francesca flushed angrily.

Max didn't want to piss her off too much, in case she clammed up. He moved it along:

'What happened on the day of the kidnapping?'

She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another almost immediately.

'It was on the morning of Charlie's third birthday. You could see the American warships that were bringing the invading troops, right there on the horizon, opposite Port-au- Prince harbor. Everyone was saying the Americans were going to bomb the National Palace. There was rioting and looting going on in Port-au-Prince. People would leave their homes in the mountains and walk down to the city with carts and wheelbarrows to carry the stuff they were looting from shops and houses in the capital. It was anarchy.

'You'd know how bad it was by smelling the air. If you picked up the smell of burning rubber, it meant looting and rioting was going on. Protesters closed off roads with barricades of burning tires. Sometimes you could look out and see these two or three columns of thick black smoke stretching all the way from Port-au-Prince up to the sky. That would mean it was really bad.

'And it was really bad when we drove into town in the bulletproof SUV that morning. Rose was sitting in the front with Eddie Faustin. I was sitting in the back with Charlie. He was happy. He let me play with his hair. I was running it in and out of my fingers. We were going to the Rue du Champs de Mars, not too far from the National Palace.

'It was very very dangerous in town that day. Constant gunfire. I lost count of the bodies we passed in the streets. Faustin said we needed to stop somewhere secluded and wait for the shooting to stop, so we parked in the Boulevard des Veuves. It's usually packed, but that day it was deserted. I knew something was very wrong with Faustin. He was sweating a lot and he'd been looking at me in the rearview mirror the whole drive down.

'All our cars are meant to have loaded guns under the seats. I checked under mine. Nothing. Faustin saw me looking and when I caught his eye again he smiled as if to say 'They're not there, are they?' He'd locked the doors. I tried not to show how scared I was getting.

'The gunfire died down. Rose asked Faustin why we weren't moving. Faustin told her to mind her own business?really rudely. I shouted at him to watch his mouth. He told me to shut up. That's when I knew something was really really wrong. I got hysterical. I screamed at him to let us out of the car. He didn't reply. Then some kids turned up outside. Just street kids. They saw our car and came over. They looked inside. One of them said Faustin's name and started shouting and pointing at us.

'More people started coming over?adults now, with machetes and clubs and tires and cans of gasoline. They were chanting 'Faustin-assassin, Faustin- assassin' over and over. Faustin used to be a feared Tonton Macoute. He'd made a lot of enemies, a lot of people wanted him dead.

'The crowd massed up around the car. Someone threw a rock at the back window. It bounced off without damaging the car, but it was some kind of signal because they stormed us. Faustin drove out of there, but he didn't get far because people had put up a barricade at the end of the road. He started reversing but the mob had caught up with us. We were trapped.'

Francesca stopped there and took a deep breath. She'd turned pale, her stare cowering.

'Take your time,' Max said.

'People came out from behind the barricades and rushed the car,' she continued. 'Pretty soon it was surrounded. People were chanting 'Faustin-assassin' and then they were hitting the car with clubs and rocks, kicking it and rocking it. They smashed the windows. And then they started stabbing at the corners of the roof with something. Faustin got a machine gun out from under his seat. Rose was screaming. So was I, I suppose. Charlie was calm through it all, just looking out at everything like it was so much scenery. The last thing I remember is running my hand through his hair, hugging him, telling him everything would be OK. After that?The next thing I remember was coming to in the road.

'I was lying in the same street, but hundreds of yards away from the car. I don't know how I got that far. There was this old woman in a pink dress, sitting on the other side of the road, in front of a shoemaker's, looking straight at me.'

'What did you do next?'

'I went back to the car. It was overturned. The street was empty. There was blood everywhere.'

'How badly were you hurt?'

'Just concussed. A few bruises, a couple of cuts. Rose was dead. Faustin was gone. And so was my little boy,' she said, lowering her head.

She started crying. Silent, rolling tears first, then sniffles, and finally the deluge.

Max paused the tape and went to the bathroom and fetched some toilet tissue. He gave it to her and sat and watched as she cried herself dry. He held her and it helped her get through the worst. He didn't mind her so much now, and he was sure she wouldn't mind him much now either. She had no choice.

'Let me fix us some coffee,' Francesca offered, standing up.

He sat back and watched as she took a steel percolator and a round metal tin from one of the row of glass-fronted cupboards running along the wall over the sink. The kitchen was painted a glossy cream-yellow, easy to wipe clean.

Francesca added bottled water and coffee to the pot and put it on the stove. She went to another cupboard and pulled down two cups and saucers. She wiped the insides of the cups with a dishcloth she found on top of the fridge. She seemed to be enjoying herself, as a tiny smile made its way to her lips and lit up parts of her eyes while she busied herself. Max supposed she missed a life without servants.

He looked at his watch. It was now four-fifteen. It was still dark outside but he could hear the first birds of morning chirruping in the garden, competing with the insects. Chantale was due at the house at eight. Too late to go bed. He'd have to skip sleep.

The coffee brewed with a low whistle. Francesca decanted it into a thermos pot and brought it over to the table with the cups, saucers, spoons, a jug of cream, and a bowl of sugar all on a tray. Max tasted the coffee. It was the same stuff he'd had at Carver's club. Probably the family's homegrown brand.

They sat in near silence. Max complimented her on the coffee. She smoked first one then another cigarette.

'Mrs. Carver??'

'Why don't you call me Francesca?'

'Francesca?what were you and your son doing going to Port-au-Prince that day?'

Max lifted