Mr. Clarinet

line />

Max stopped scribbling and stared blankly at the paper in front of him.

'Vincent Paul?' Max said as casually as possible. He looked briefly at Chantale, who caught his eye and directed his gaze to a set of photographs hung in an upper-left-hand corner.

'Yes. You know him?' asked Caspar.

'Only by reputation,' Max said, and stood up. He pretended to stretch his arms and neck. He walked around the table to the photographs on the wall, shaking imaginary pins out of his hands.

There it was, in a corner, second in from the edge of the wall, a family photograph?Claudette, aged about three, Mathilde and Caspar, looking happier and an age younger, Alexandre Thodore in priest's collar, and, in the middle of them, sitting down, probably so he could fit into the shot, Vincent Paul, bald and beaming. The priest had his arm around part of his huge back.

Max guessed what it meant?Vincent Paul had been donating some of his drug millions to Little Haiti?but he'd keep it to himself.

He returned to his place.

'After we'd searched as much we could we asked the marines for help,' said Mathilde. 'I mean, we're both American citizens, so's Claudette, but you know what happened? We saw a captain and all he wanted to know was why we'd left the U.S. for a 'shithole like this'?that's what he called it. Then he told us the soldiers 'were too busy to help,' that they had 'democracy to restore.' On our way back to our car we walked by a bar and there was a whole bunch of marines in there, busy 'restoring democracy' by getting loaded on beer and dope.'

'What happened with Vincent Paul?'

'We went to him after the U.S. Army turned us down.'

'Why didn't you go to him first?'

'I?' Mathilde began, but Caspar cut her off.

'How much do you know about him?'

'I've heard good and bad, mostly bad,' Max answered.

'Same as Mathilde. She didn't want us going to him.'

'It wasn't that?' Mathilde began, but caught the don't-try-and-deny- it-again look her husband was giving her. 'OK. With the troops here and everything, I didn't want it known that someone like him was out looking for our daughter. I didn't want us getting arrested as accessories or sympathizers.'

'Sympathizers?'

'Vincent was tight with Raoul Cedras?the head of the junta the invasion overthrew. They were good buddies,' Caspar explained.

'I thought Aristide would be more Paul's type?' Max said.

'It started out that way, for sure. Aristide was a good guy once, when he was a priest, helping the poor in the slums. He did a lot for them. But the day he got elected president was the day he started turning into Papa Doc. Corrupt too. Pocketed millions in foreign aid. Two weeks into his term Vincent wanted to cap his ass.'

'I never thought people like Paul had principles.'

'He's a compassionate man,' Mathilde said.

'So he helped you?'

'A lot,' she said. 'He spent a month searching the whole island for her. He had people looking for her in New York, Miami, the Dominican Republic, the other islands. He even got the UN to help.'

'Everything but hire a private investigator,' Max said.

'He said if he couldn't find her nobody could.'

'And you believed him?'

'We would if he'd found her,' Mathilde said.

'Anyone else get in touch with you? The Carvers had other guys looking for their son before me. Any of them talk to you?'

'No,' Caspar said.

Max jotted down a few more notes. There was one more thing he needed to know from the Thodores. 'From what I've heard, loads of kids go missing here every day. Vincent Paul must have a lot of people coming to him for help. Why did he help you?'

The couple looked at each other, unsure of what to say next.

Max made it easy on them:

'Look. I know what Vincent Paul's up to, and I truly do not give a flying fuck. I'm here to find Charlie Carver and Claudette too, if I can. So, please, level with me. Why did Vincent help you out?'

'He's a friend of the family?my family,' Caspar said. 'My brother and him go back a ways.'

'Paul gives your brother's church in Little Haiti money, right?'

'Not just that,' said Caspar. 'My brother runs this shelter for Haitian boat people in Miami. Vincent pays for it. He's invested a lot of money in Little Haiti, helped a lot of people get on their feet. He's a good man.'

'Some people might beg to differ,' Max pointed out and left it hanging right there. He stopped himself from saying that down the road from Little Haiti, in Liberty City, there were ten-year-old kids selling Vincent Paul's dope while one or more of their parents were probably smoking their lives to hell with the same shit. The Thodores wouldn't give a good damn about any of that right now, and why should they?

'Some people could beg to differ about you too, Mr. Mingus,' Mathilde retorted gently, making a point as distinct from driving one home.

'They usually do,' Max said. He smiled at them both. They were decent people: honest, hardworking, and basically good; the very same kind of people he'd sworn to protect. 'Thanks for all your help. Please don't blame yourselves for what happened to Claudette. There's nothing you could've done. Nothing at all. You can stop burglars and murderers and rapists, but people like The Orange Man, they're invisible. They're like you and me on the outside, usually the last people you'd suspect.'

'Find her for us, please,' Mathilde said. 'I don't care about the people who took her. I just want our daughter back.'

Chapter 41

'DO YOU STILL think Vincent Paul took Charlie?' Chantale asked in the car. They were driving to the first of the Faustin addresses on the page from the phone book.

'I'm not rulin' nothin' out. Fact he helped look for Claudette doesn't mean a damn thing. I'll know when I talk to him,' Max said, putting two of the wire figurines he'd taken away with him under the dashboard with a couple of pictures of The Orange Man. He was going to send the figurines to Joe for fingerprinting.

'Do you know how to reach him?'

'I've a feeling he'll find me,' Max said.

'It's your gig.' Chantale sighed. She hadn't mentioned the temple and she didn't seem to be mad at him either. She was behaving normally, flashing her easy smile and occasionally laughing her lusty laugh, all affectionate professionalism. She was a tough one to read, a consummate politician, mistress of on-tap pleasantness.

'Did your husband discuss his cases with you?'

'No. We had a rule about not bringing our work home with us. You?'

'I wasn't married when I was a cop. But yeah, me and Sandra used to talk about what I was workin' on.'

'She ever crack a case for you?'

'Yeah, a couple of times.'

'Didn't that piss you off? Make you doubt your abilities?'

'No.' Max laughed and smiled at the memory. 'Never. I was proud of her?real proud. I was always proud of her.'

They stopped in traffic. Chantale studied him as they waited. Max caught her at it and tried to read what conclusions she was coming to. She gave nothing away.

* * *

All of the first five Faustin houses on Max's list had been destroyed by fire, mobs, the army, a hurricane, and a UN helicopter crash. No one nearby knew who Eddie Faustin was.

The sixth house they went to was at the edge of the Carrefour slum. It was the only intact structure on a road otherwise made up of ruins converted into hovels. The house was set a little away from the street, with steps leading up to the front door. All the windows were bare. Max noted that the panes, while filthy, were all intact. No one answered the door when they knocked. They checked the windows but the place appeared deserted, despite the furniture in the front rooms and the white sheets Chantale reported hanging on the clothesline in the backyard, when Max had given her a boost so she could see over the wall.

They asked a couple of passersby about who lived in the house. They said they didn't know, that the house had been that way for a long time. No one entering, no one leaving.

'How come no one's moved in?from off the street?' Max asked.

They couldn't say.

Max decided he'd come back at night to take a closer look. He didn't want Chantale there when he broke in. He'd put her through enough.

Traveling down the rest of the list took them to houses whose owners were long gone, leaving their shells to the poor. The former home of Jerome Faustin was