Mr. Clarinet

she had a firm jaw and a chin so deeply clefted it resembled a hoof. She made Max think of an eccentric and slightly scary reclusive old movie queen, postchemotherapy. He shot a quick, comparative look at Philippe, now slouching on a stool behind her, his hands on his lap. He couldn't see one iota of a resemblance.

She bade them to be seated with a regal sweep of her hand.

'You're looking for the boy? Charlie?' she spoke as soon as they'd taken their places.

'That's right,' Max replied. 'Do you have him?'

'No,' Mercedes answered emphatically.

'But you know Eddie Faustin?'

'Knew. Eddie is dead.'

'How d'you know he's dead? They never recovered his body.'

'Eddie is dead,' she repeated, wheeling her chair up closer to the table.

Max noticed the big stainless-steel whistle she was wearing on a string around her neck. He wondered whom it was for?the dogs, Philippe, or both.

'Eddie ever tell you who he was working for?or with?'

'We wouldn't be sitting here right now if he had.'

'Why's that?' Max asked.

'Because I'd be rich and you wouldn't be here.'

Something behind her left shoulder caught Max's eye. It was a life-size brass sculpture of a pair of praying hands, standing upright in the middle of a draped table. The table was flanked by two long candles on Delphic column?styled sticks. A chalice and an empty, clear, glass bottle were placed either side of the hands. A dog skull, a dagger, a pair of dice, a metallic sacred heart, and a rag doll were arranged behind them in a semicircle. But the display's focal point was the objects he noticed last of all, placed directly below the hands on a brass dish that might have been a communion-wafer plate: a pair of porcelain eyes, the size of ping-pong balls, with bright blue irises staring right into his.

It was an altar used in black-magic ceremonies. He remembered finding a lot of them in Miami back in the early eighties, when the Cuban crime wave hit and broke all over the city; bad guys prayed to bad spirits for protection before they went off and did bad things. Most cops had loudly dismissed the altars as superstitious bullshit, but deep down they'd been more than a little creeped out by them. It was something they didn't understand, an influence they couldn't curtail.

'So, Eddie said nothing at all about the people he was working for?' Max continued.

'No.'

'Not one single detail? Didn't he even tell you if he was working for a man or a woman? If they were black or white? Foreign?'

'Nothing.'

'Didn't you ask?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'I wasn't interested,' she answered in a flat, matter-of-fact way.

'But you knew what was going down?' Max leaned a little over the table, just like he used to do when he was shaking down a stubborn witness in the interrogation room. 'You knew he was gonna kidnap that kid.'

'It was none of my business,' she replied very calmly, completely unruffled.

'But surely you thought it was wrong, what he was doing?' Max insisted.

'I'm no one's judge,' she answered.

'OK,' Max nodded and sat back. He glanced across at Chantale, who was following the proceedings intently, and then at Philippe, who was yawning.

He looked back at the altar, connected with the staring eyeballs, and then took in the background. The wall behind Mercedes was painted turquoise. A headless wooden cross hung in the middle of it diagonally, its beam bristling with long nails, crudely hammered, some bent, most sticking out at crooked angles. The cross looked like it was meant to be falling from heaven.

'How long had you known Eddie?'

'I helped him get his job with the Carver family,' Mercedes answered, smiling slightly as she saw Max looking at the things behind her.

'How did you help him?'

'It's what I do.'

'And what is that?'

'You know,' she said and her mouth stretched into a smile that showed a row of tiny teeth.

'Black magic?' Max asked.

'Call it what you will,' she said with a dismissive wave.

'What did you do for him?'

'Mr. Carver had a choice between Eddie and three others. Eddie brought me something from each of his competitors?something they'd touched or worn?and I went to work.'

'Then what?'

'Good fortune is not forever. It has to be repaid?with interest,' Mercedes pushed her chair back a little.

'They say Eddie died bad. Is that how he paid?'

'Eddie owed a lot.'

'Want to tell me about it?' Max prompted.

'He came to me with all his problems after he got the job with Carver. I helped him out.'

'What kind of problems?'

'The usual?women, enemies.'

'Who were his enemies?'

'Eddie was a Macoute. Almost everyone he'd ever beaten and robbed wanted him dead. And then there were families of people he'd killed, women he'd raped, they were out to get him too. It's what happens when you lose power.'

'What did you get out of him in return?'

'You wouldn't understand?and it's also none of your business,' she said firmly and waited to see Max's reaction.

'OK,' Max said. 'Tell me about Eddie and Francesca Carver.'

'Some things in life you just can't ever have. I tried to warn him against pursuing that madness. I didn't see a good end for it. Eddie wouldn't listen. He had to have her, the same way he'd had to have everything else in his life. He thought he was in love with her.'

'Wasn't he?' Max asked.

'Not Eddie.' She chuckled. 'He knew nothing about that. He'd raped all the women he hadn't paid for.'

'And you worked for him?'

'And you haven't worked for bad people?' She laughed deeply, in the middle of her throat, without opening her mouth. 'We're not that different, we're both for hire.'

As far as Max could tell, she had nothing to hide, but she was keeping things from him just the same; he sensed it, some vital piece of information slipping through the cracks of everything she was saying.

'How did you try and bring Eddie and Mrs. Carver together?'

'What didn't I try? I tried everything I knew. Nothing worked.'

'Had that ever happened to you before?'

'No.'

'Did you tell Eddie?'

'No.'

'Why not?'

'He wasn't paying me to fail,' she said.

'So you lied to him?'

'No. I tried something else?a rare ceremony, something that's only done in desperation. Very risky.'

'What was it?'

'I can't tell you,' she said. 'And I won't tell you.'

'Why not?'

'I'm not allowed to discuss it.'

She looked a little afraid. Max didn't push her.

'Did this thing work?'

'Yes, at first.'

'How?'

'Eddie told me he had a chance to take off with the Carver woman.'

''Take off'? Like elope?'

'Yes.'

'Was he more specific?'

'No.'

'And you didn't ask because it didn't interest you?' Max said.

She nodded.

'So how did it go wrong?'

'Eddie's dead. It can't go more wrong than that.'

'Who told you he was dead?'

'He did,' Mercedes said.

'Who? Eddie? '

'Yes,' she answered.

'How'd he do that?'

She pulled herself back closer to the table.

'Do you really want to know?'

Close up, she smelled of menthol cigarettes.

'Yes,' Max said. 'I