flattery. He'd slotted straight back into velvet predator mode like he'd never given it up. Things went either way from here?either she'd pick up on his words and bat them back to him with a spin of her own, or she'd let him know no way was it going any further.
Chantale gripped the wheel a little too tight with both hands and looked straight ahead.
'I don't think your countrymen know the difference out here,' she said bitterly.
She wasn't going for it. It wasn't a direct rebuff, but she wasn't yielding. Max heard a corrosive anger in her words, the sort of defense mechanism you build after a heartbreak. Maybe she'd recognized his play because she'd fallen for it before?and been burned.
'He must've hurt you pretty bad, Chantale,' Max said.
'He did,' she replied curtly, speaking to the windscreen, cutting off the conversation's circulation by turning on the radio and turning it up loud.
They took a sharp left turn around the side of the mountain they were driving down and as they cleared it, Max saw Port-au-Prince spread out before him, a few miles below, spilling out from the coastline like a splurge of dried vomit waiting for the sea to wash it away.
* * *
There was a heavy U.S. military presence in central Port-au-Prince, a cordon of humvees, machine gun?mounted jeeps, and footsoldiers in body armor massed opposite and all around the National Palace, where the current president?Aristide's successor and close associate, a former baker and rumored alcoholic called Preval?lived and ran his country as far as his puppet strings would stretch.
According to Huxley, who'd filled Max in, the current Haitian constitution forbade a president from serving consecutive terms, but did allow him or her to serve alternate ones. Preval was considered by many to be little more than Aristide's gofer, keeping the seat warm and ready for his master's inevitable return. Democracy was still a fluid thing.
'Damn Americans!' Chantale said as they passed a jeep full of marines. 'No offense.'
'None taken. Don't you agree with what's happening?'
'I did at first, until I realized invading this place was nothing but a preelection publicity stunt on Clinton's part. He'd messed up in Somalia, the U.S. was humiliated, his credibility hurt. What do you do? Pick on a near-defenseless black country and invade it in the name of 'democracy' and 'freedom,'' Chantale said bitterly, and then she laughed. 'You know how they sent Jimmy Carter in to negotiate peace with the junta, after they'd refused to stand down?'
'Yeah, I saw that?.' Max said. In prison, he thought. 'Mr. Human Rights himself. I hated that asshole. He ruined Miami.'
'The Mariel boatlift?'
'Yeah. It used to be an OK place, full of retired Jewish folk and right-wing Cubans plotting to kill Castro. It was real quiet, real conservative, low crime, peaceful. Then Castro sent his criminals and psychos over in the boats, mixed in with all the decent, law-abiding refugees who just wanted to start a new life, and thanks to El Jimbo we were fucked without a guidebook. It was hell bein' a cop back then, let me tell ya. We didn't know what hit us. One minute Miami's a nice place to bring up your kids, the next it's Murder Capital, USA.'
'Guess you voted for Reagan?'
'Every single Miami cop did in 1980. Those that didn't were sick or weren't registered.' Max smiled.
'I used to be a Democrat. I voted for Clinton in '92, Dukakis before. Never again,' Chantale said. 'Did you hear what happened in the so-called peace talks between Carter and General Cedras?the head of the junta?'
'No. Tell me.'
'Carter came over, TV cameras rolling. He meets with General Cedras and his wife. And it's Mrs. Cedras who does the negotiating. She gets Carter to agree to pay each member of the junta ten million dollars, guarantee them safe passage out of the country and immunity from prosecution. Done deal.
'Then she wants the U.S. to protect their houses. And she negotiates with Carter for the U.S. government to rent out their houses to embassy staff. Done deal. And finally?and this is where it almost fell apart?Mrs. Cedras wanted her black leather sofa freighted out to Venezuela, where they were all moving to. Carter said no deal. Why? Because Carter wasn't authorized to pay for a moving company. Everything else was fine, but not that.
'They argued and bickered and it went back and forth. Finally, when it looked like it was going to be a deal breaker, Carter called Clinton and got him out of bed to explain the situation. Clinton was pissed off. He really chewed Carter out, screamed at him so loudly people said they could hear what he was saying in the other room. Anyway, Clinton OK'ed it and the sofa went into exile with the junta.'
Max burst out laughing.
'Bullshit!'
'True rumor,' Chantale said.
They laughed.
The Presidential Palace itself was a gleaming, expansive, two-storied, brilliant white edifice. It soaked up and part- reflected the sunlight so that it appeared luminous when viewed against its dark backdrop of surrounding mountains. The red-and-blue Haitian flag hung from a mast above the main entrance.
They drove around a pedestal mounted with a statue of General Henri Christophe, one of Haiti's first leaders, on his horse, facing the palace and the U.S. troops. Groups of young Haitian men sat or stood around the bottom of the pedestal, clothes fluttering off skinny limbs, eyeing their occupiers, watching the traffic, or staring vacantly into space.
The rest of the city, what he saw of it, was a dump?a rancid, rusted, busted-up, busted out ruin of a place. Port-au-Prince wasn't just in bad shape, it was in no shape at all. Reeling, tilting, tottering on the verge of collapse, virtually everything about the place needed a million-dollar face-lift or, better still, a complete demolition-and-rebuilding job. A row of gingerbread houses?doors long gone, shutters hanging off hinges?in what must once have been a wealthy part of town, stood filthy and derelict, squatted in by God knew how many people, some of whom Max saw hanging off the balconies.
There were no traffic lights anywhere. Max had seen exactly one set since they'd left Petionville, and those weren't working. The streets, like almost every street he'd seen in Haiti, were cracked and potholed. The cars that rolled down them were belching, farting, patched-together, wrecking-yard salvage, bursting with people. A few colorfully painted
The city made Max sad in a way he'd been before. Through the detritus, the near rubble, Max saw a few proud and fine grand old buildings that must have looked glorious in their prime and would have been impressive again if restored. Yet he couldn't see this ever happening. If capital cities are meant to be shopwindows for the rest of the country, then Port-au-Prince was a car showroom that had been looted and set on fire and left to burn, nearly unnoticed, until rain had finally come and doused the flames.
'I remember when the pope came here,' Chantale said, turning down the radio. 'It was in 1983, a year before I went to the States. Jean-Claude Duvalier?Baby Doc?was still in power. Well, it was really his wife, Michele. She was running the country by then.
'She cleaned the streets up, all the ones you see here. They were full of beggars and merchants who sold their stuff off big wooden tables. She made them pack up and move elsewhere, where the pope couldn't see. There were handicapped people here too?physical and mental?they used to camp out here and beg at the roadside. She got rid of them too. The streets were resurfaced and whitewashed. A few hours before the pope drove down in his motorcade, Michele had the road hosed down with Chanel perfume. I was standing right there when it happened. The smell was so strong it gave me a headache and stayed in my clothes for months and months, no matter how many times my mother washed them. I've had a Chanel allergy ever since. If someone's wearing it I get headaches.'
'What did they do with the handicapped people?'
'Same thing that happened to them in the midseventies, when they decided to make the country more attractive to tourists. They rounded them all up?the sick, the lame, the needy?and they shipped them off to La Gonave. It's a small island off the coast.'
'I see,' Max said, patting himself down for a notebook. He couldn't find one. 'What happened to them? Are they still there?'
'I don't know. Some of them I suppose stayed on. These were dirt-poor people living as close to the ground as rats. No one cared about them,' Chantale replied as Max picked up the small army knapsack lying at his feet, where he'd put his camera and tape recorder. He'd packed a pen but no paper.
Chantale opened her breast pocket and handed him her small notebook.
'Never forget the fundamentals.' She laughed.
Max scribbled down the details.
'Have you heard of Ton Ton Clarinet?'
'You say 'tonton,' Max, not 'tonnn-tonnn.' You sound like you're imitating an elephant walking.' She laughed again. 'Tonton Clarinette's an
