Mr. Clarinet

The husband had him taken care of.'

'Bullshit!' Max reacted instinctively.

'If you ask around you'll see that it's not. It happened two weeks into his investigation.'

'The Carvers know about this?'

'They would if they asked around,' Paul said.

'How did they know it was the husband?'

'He confessed to it. He did it in his bedroom, with his wife watching.'

'Who'd he confess to?' Max asked.

'The UN.'

'And?'

'And what?'

'They take him in?'

'Sure. For as long as it took him to tell them what he'd done. Then they let him go. He runs a hotel and casino near Petionville. Doing well. You can talk to him, if you want. The place is called El Rodeo. His name is Frederick Davi.'

'What about his wife?'

'She left him,' Paul answered, face deadpan, his eyes laughing. Max carried on his questioning.

'OK. Darwen Medd? Where is he? Did you kill him?'

'No.' Paul shook his head, looking surprised. 'I don't know where he is. Why would I want to kill him?'

'A warning. Like the one you sent out to the UN rapists,' Max said through a dry mouth.

'That wasn't a warning. That was punishment. And there hasn't been another rape by the occupiers since,' Paul said and smiled. 'I knew you were following me that time. You weren't hard to miss. Good cars stand out here.'

'Why didn't you do anything?'

'I've got nothing to hide from you,' Paul said. 'Tell me more about your predecessors.'

Max explained. Paul listened, his face solemn.

'It wasn't me. I assure you. Although I can't say I'm sorry to hear about Clyde Beeson.' Close up, Paul's accent favored English over French. 'Pathetic little toerag. A lump of greed waddling on those two stumps he calls legs.'

Max managed a smile.

'So you met him?'

'I had them both brought here for questioning.'

'Shouldn't it have been the other way around?'

Paul smiled but didn't answer. He had a mouth of bright white teeth. He suddenly looked disarming and pleasant, almost boyish, the kind of person you could imagine doing good deeds and meaning them.

'What did they tell you?'

'What you're going to tell me: how the investigation is progressing.'

'You're not my client,' Max said.

'How much do you know about me, Mingus?'

'That you'll torture the information out of me.'

'Something we have in common.' Paul laughed, picking up a file from his desk and holding it up. It had Max's name on it in bold capitals. 'What else?'

'You're a major suspect in the kidnapping of Charlie Carver.'

'Certain people think my name's a euphemism for everything that goes wrong here.'

'Witnesses placed you at the scene.'

'I was there.' Paul nodded. 'But I'll get to that.'

'You were seen running away with the kid in your arms.'

'Who told you that? That old woman outside the shoe place?' Paul chuckled. 'She's blind. She told Beeson and Medd the same thing. If you don't believe me, go and check when we're done. And you might want to look in the shop too. She keeps her dead husband's skeleton in there in a glass case, opposite the door. You'd swear someone's watching you.'

'Why would she have lied to me?'

'We lie to white people here. Don't take it personally. It's in the DNA.' Paul smiled. 'What else do you think you know about me?'

'You're a suspected drug baron, you're wanted in connection with a missing person in England, and you hate the Carvers. How am I doing so far?'

'Better than your predecessors. They didn't know about England. I take it you got that from your friend'?Paul flicked through some pages in the file until he came to the one he wanted?'Joe Liston. You two have a lot of history, don't you? The MTF, 'Born to Run,' Eldon Burns, Solomon Boukman. And that's just when you were in the police. I have a lot more information on you.'

'I bet you got everything there is to get.' Max wasn't surprised that Paul had looked into him, but hearing him mention Joe got him worried.

Neither said a word. They studied each other, Paul leaning right back in his chair so even the reflection vanished from his eyes and left Max looking deep into two barrels.

The silence widened and then congealed around them. Max couldn't hear anything going on outside. The room was probably soundproofed. There was a long couch with cushions piled up on one side, a book beside it on the floor, open, facedown. The couch was as wide as a single bed. He imagined Paul lying there and reading, engrossed in one of the many bound volumes on his shelf.

The room was closer to a museum than an office or a study. A framed Haitian flag hung on one of the walls?tattered and dirty, with a burn hole in the white center. Facing it was a blown-up black-and-white photograph of a tall, bald man in a dark pinstriped suit holding a young child's hand. They were looking at the world with level, questioning stares?especially the child. Behind them, blurred, was the Presidential Palace.

'Your father?' Max motioned to the picture. He'd guessed from the eyes that they were related, although he was a lot lighter than his son. He could have passed for Mediterranean.

'Yes. A great man. He had a vision for this country,' Paul said, fixing Max with a stare he could feel but barely see.

Max got out of his chair and went over to the photograph for a closer look. There was something very, very familiar in the father's face. Vincent was wearing the same clothes as his father. Neither was smiling. They looked as though they'd been stopped hurrying somewhere important, and had posed out of politeness.

Max was sure he'd seen Perry Paul before?no, certain of it. But where?

He returned to his seat. A thought began to form in his mind. He dismissed it as impossible but it came right back at him.

Vincent Paul sat forward, smiling as if he'd read Max's mind. The light finally reached his eyes and revealed them to be a pale hazel color with a hint of orange about them?surprisingly delicate, pretty eyes.

'I'm going to tell you something I never told the other two,' Vincent said quietly.

'What?' Max asked, as a cold wave of anticipation began to build up around his shoulders.

'I'm Charlie Carver's father.'

Chapter 45

'THE WOMAN YOU know as Francesca Carver was once called Josephine Latimer,' Vincent began. 'Francesca is her middle name. The rest of it came later.'

'I first met her in Cambridge, England, in the very early seventies. I was a student at the university there. Josie lived there with her parents. I met her in a pub one night. I heard her before I saw her?laughing, filling the place with laughter. I looked for her across the room and found her, staring right at me. She was stupendously good-looking.'

Vincent smiled warmly as he spoke through his memory, his head leaning back a little, staring more toward the ceiling than at Max.

'And you helped her skip the country so she didn't have to go to jail for killing someone in a hit-and-run. I know,' Max broke in. 'Question is: where'd he go? That damsel-in-distress-rescuing guy? The one who threw his life away for love?'

The question caught Paul off-guard.

'I didn't throw my life away,' he countered.

'So you'd've done the same thing all over?'

'Wouldn't you?' Paul smiled.

'A little regret's always healthy,' Max said. 'Why do you hate the Carvers?'

'Only Gustav.'

'What's Allain doing right?'

'He's not his father,' Paul answered. 'When Josie and I arrived in Haiti, we went to my family home in Petionville. My family lived on a large estate on top of a hill. I hadn't told anyone I was coming, just to be on the safe side.

'When we got there we found that the whole place?that's five big houses, one of which I remember my father building practically with his bare hands?the whole lot had been bulldozed by order of Gustav Carver. My father owed him money. He collected?and how.'

'That's pretty extreme,' Max said.

'Carver has an extreme dislike of