Mr. Clarinet

places marked out by big, gray rocks of roughly the same size with smoothed-down surfaces and the surnames chiseled in deep, crude capitals.

'I didn't tell you everythin',' Philippe said, as he led them past the makeshift tombstones. 'The slaves didn't just drink their blood and steal their uniforms, they took their names too. See?' he pointed out a rock with the name VALENTIN gouged into it. 'Ask around town and every name you hear'll come right back to this place.'

'Wasn't that a contradiction in terms?' Max asked. 'If they wanted to be truly free, what would they want with the slave masters' names?'

'Contradiction?' Philippe smiled. 'It was all about eradication.'

'So why leave this behind? Why bury the bodies?' Max asked.

'Haitians are big on respect for the dead. Even white dead. Didn't want to get haunted by no French-speakin' ghosts.' He smiled and looked at Max. On the walk over, Max had undone the trigger guard on his holster.

'Somethin' went wrong somewhere, though,' Philippe said as he led them to a wide clearing that separated the soldiers' graves from the other tombstones in the cemetery. A single rock stood in the middle, marking out a plot of dry, bare, reddish-brown earth where no grass grew. No name was carved into it.

'Napoleon's army had a lot of boys in it?some as young as eight, orphans who got conscripted. The garrison here was real young. The commanding officer was twenty,' Philippe said, looking down at the grave. 'That there is where they buried the garrison's mascot?don't know how old he was, but he wasn't more'n a boy. Don't know his name neither. He used to play the clarinet to the slaves working these fields. They took care of him last.

'They made him play his clarinet while they strung his buddies up by the legs and opened their throats into a bucket. They didn't do that to him. They put him in a box and buried him alive right here.' Philippe touched the ground with his foot. 'They say they heard him playin' his clarinet long after they'd put the last fistful of dirt down over his head. Went on for days, this thin music of death. Some people say when there's a strong wind blowin' through here, they hear the sound of the clarinet mixed in with the stench of these oranges here no one wants 'cause they feed off the dead.'

'What went wrong with the spell?' Max asked.

'If you believe in that kind of stuff, Baron Samedi turns up to claim the bodies the slaves have offered him and he finds the kid still alive. He adopts him as a sidekick, puts him in charge of his children's division.'

'So he becomes the children's god of death?'

'Yeah?only he isn't a god as such, 'cause no one worships him like they do the Baron. He's more a bogeyman. And he don't wait for the kids to die neither. He just takes 'em alive.'

Max remembered what Dufour had told him about going to the source of the Mr. Clarinet myth to find out what had happened to Charlie. He was here, at the source, where the myth had sprung. So, where was the answer?

'How do you know all this? About the soldiers and stuff?'

'I grew up with our history. My mother told me when I was a kid. Her mother before that, and so forth, all the way back. Word of mouth keeps things alive better than books. Paper burns,' he replied. 'Fact, unless my radar's all wrong, my mother's the one you come here looking for, right?'

'Your mother?' Max stopped, confused. 'What's your last name?'

'Leballec,' Philippe smiled.

'Why didn't you say so sooner?'

'You didn't ask.' Philippe chuckled. 'You come 'bout the boy, right? Charlie Carver? Same as them other white guys did.'

Just then, Max heard heavy footfalls and twigs snapping in the orchard right behind him. He turned around and saw three large oranges rolling across the ground toward the fence.

'So your mother's the??'

'?bokor, yeah, that's right. Bet you wasn't 'spectin' that, right? Woman be up in here, runnin' shit? Women do everythin' in this country 'cept run the damn place. They did, Haiti wouldn't be on the train to Shitsville like it is now.' Philippe nodded.

'Where is she?' Max asked.

'A short way away.' Philippe nodded his head eastwards and started walking; then he stopped and turned around and looked Max right in the eye. 'When you get out?'

'When did you?' Max asked back. He could always tell an ex-con from the tension in their neck and shoulders, the way their bodies were in a permanent state of alert, ready to fend off an attack. Philippe had it in spades, and so did Max.

'Two years back.' Philippe grinned.

'They deport you?'

'Sure did. Only way I was ever gettin' out this side of a body bag. I was one of the first they sent over, the guinea pig.'

'You ever meet someone called Vincent Paul?'

'Nope.'

'Know who he is?'

'Yup. Sure do.'

Philippe motioned with his thumb for them to get going, took a few steps forward, then stopped again.

''Case you wonderin' what it was I did?it was a murder,' he said. 'Pre-meditated. Got into some shit with a guy. Escalated into a no-way-out situation. One day I just rolled up to him and blew him away. Only part I regret's gettin' caught. You?'

'Same ballpark,' Max said.

Chapter 37

THE LEBALLECS LIVED half an hour away from the cemetery, at the end of a dirt road that crossed another field and was broken up by a stream, before leading down a sharp slope to a grassy plain overlooking the waterfalls. They hadn't had to look far for the building material: their home was a sturdy one-floor rectangle whose walls were made of the same sandstone as the abandoned building shell near Clarinette.

Philippe made them wait outside with the dogs while he went to talk to his mother.

Max heard the hum of a generator coming from behind the house.

A dark shape appeared at the bottom of the window nearest the front door, hovered in the glass for a moment, and then vanished.

A while later, the door opened and Philippe beckoned them in. The dogs stayed put.

Indoors it was cool and dark. The air smelled pleasantly sweet, like a well-stocked candy shop, with hints of chocolate and vanilla, cinnamon, aniseed, mint, and orange, all threading in and out of range, never quite settling into a definite fragrance.

Philippe showed them into a room where his mother sat waiting at a long table draped in black silk cloth, trimmed with purple, gold, and silver thread. She was in a wheelchair.

The room was windowless but brightly lit by thick, purple candles positioned in tight rhomboid formations on the floor, or placed in multiple brass candelabras, stood on objects of varying height and length, themselves also shrouded in black cloth. The candles on the ground were three-quarter crosses, the heads substituted by the flame.

The room should have been boiling hot, but the temperature was the bearable side of chilly, thanks to the air-conditioning running on full power and an overhead fan they could hear clicking and grinding above them. The artificial breeze caused the flames to undulate gently on their wicks, making the walls appear to be turning slowly around them, like a great, shapeless beast stalking its prey and biding its time, waiting for its moment, savoring the dread.

Philippe did the introductions. His voice was tender and his body language respectful when he addressed his mother, telling Max she was someone he loved and feared in equal measure.

'Max Mingus, may I introduce you to Madame Mercedes Leballec,' he said and stepped off to one side.

'Bond-joor,' Max said, automatically and unconsciously bowing his head. There was an innate authority about her, a power that thrived on the humility and intimidation of others.

'Mr. Mingus. Welcome to my house,' she spoke in French-accented English, slowly and graciously, enunciating each word in a smooth voice that came across as studied and mannered, one she specially laid on for strangers.

Max placed her in her late sixties or early seventies. She was wearing a long-sleeved blue denim dress with pale wooden buttons down the front. She was completely bald, her cranium so smooth and shiny it seemed as if she'd never had hair. Her forehead was high and steep, while her facial features were cramped close together, squashed down, smaller and less defined than they should have been. Her eyes were so minute Max could barely find their whites, their movements those of shadows behind spyholes. She had neither eyelashes nor eyebrows, but wore an abstract version of the latter in the shape of two bold, arcing, black strokes beginning at the edges of her temples and tapering down to points that almost met in the gap between her forehead and the start of her flat, funnel-shaped nose. Her mouth was small and made a fishlike pout;