Now he regretted not reversing the vasectomy when he'd had the chance. He'd thought about it a year into his marriage, when being with Sandra had started changing him for the better and, with it, little by little, changing his attitudes toward starting a family. It would have meant everything to him to still have something of her left behind, even a trace he could love and cherish as he had loved and cherished her.
He thought about their house again.
They had a large kitchen with a counter in the middle. He used to sit there at night, trying to get his head around a case that was keeping him awake. Sometimes Sandra would join him.
He saw her again now, dressed in a T-shirt and slippers, hair pillow-frazzled, a glass of water in one hand, Charlie's headshot in another.
"I think you should take this case, Max," she said, looking across at him, her eyes all puffed up with broken sleep.
"Why?" he heard himself ask.
"Because you got no choice, baby," she said. "It's that or you know what."
He woke up with a start, fully dressed on the bed, staring at the blank ceiling, his mouth dry and tasting of rotted beef.
The room stank of stale reefer, taking him right back to his cell after Velasquez had taken a nightcap hit before saying his prayers in Latin.
Max stood up and staggered over to the desk, twenty jackhammers busting out of his cranium. He was still mildly stoned. He opened the window and the freezing-cold air tore into the room. He took a few deep breaths. The fog in his head retreated.
He decided to take a shower and change his clothes.
* * *
"Mr. Carver? It's Max Mingus."
It was nine a.m. He'd gone to a diner and eaten a big breakfastfour-egg omelet, four pieces of toast, orange juice, and two pots of coffee. He'd thought things through one more time, the pros and cons, the risk factor, the money. Then he'd found a phone booth.
Carver sounded slightly out of breath when he answered, as if he was cooling down from a morning run.
"I'll find your son," Max said.
"That's great news!" Carver almost shouted.
"I'll need the terms and conditions in writing."
"Of course," Carver said. "Come by the club in two hours. I'll have a contract ready."
"OK."
"When will you be able to start?"
"Assuming I can get a flight, I'll be in Haiti on Tuesday."
Chapter 2
BACK IN MIAMI, Max took a cab from the airport to his house. He asked the driver to take the longer way around, down Le Jeune Road, so he could check out Little Havana and Coral Gables to get a feel for how far his hometown had come in seven years, check the pulse beating between the poles, from barrio to billionaires' row.
Max's father-in-law had been looking after the house. He'd picked up the bills. Max owed him $3,000, but that wasn't a problem, because Carver had given him a $25,000 cash advance in New York when he'd signed the contract. He'd played dumb and brought Dave Torres with him to read through it and witness it. It had been funny watching Torres and Carver pretend they'd never met. Lawyers are great actors, second only in talent to their guilty clients.
Max stared out of the passenger window but not much was getting through. Miami: Seven Years Later was passing him by in a glistening blur of cars, more cars, palm trees, and blue sky. It had been raining when the plane touched down, one of those almighty Sunshine State soakings where the raindrops hit the ground so hard they bounce. The downpour had stopped a few minutes before he'd walked out of the airport. He couldn't focus on the outside when there was so much going on within. He was thinking about returning to his old home. He hoped his in-laws hadn't decided to spring a surprise welcome-back party on him. They were good-hearted, always well-intentioned people, and it was just the sort of good-hearted, well-intentioned shit they'd pull.
They'd passed Little Havana and Coral Gables and he hadn't even noticed. Now they were on Vizcaya's main highway and heading for the Rickenbacker Causeway.
Sandra had always met him at the airport when he'd been away on a case, or out of town to meet a potential client. She'd ask him how it had gone, although she could always tell, she said, by looking at him. They'd walk out of the Arrivals section and she'd leave him waiting outside the terminal while she went and got the car. If things had gone well, he'd do the driving. On the way home, he'd tell her what had happened and what he'd done to make it so. By the time they'd reached the front door, he'd have talked the case dry and the subject would be closed, never to be mentioned again. Sometimes he'd come out into Arrivals beaming, triumphant, vindicated, having flown out someplace on a wild hunch that had turned up one of those golden leads that bring a case to a swift and happy conclusion. Those occasions were few and far between, but they were always Occasions. They'd go out dancing, or to dinner, or down The L Bar if there were other people to thank. But two times out of three Sandra did the driving, because she'd have read failure in Max's body language, resigned despair in his face. She'd make light small talk while he sat and brooded in silence, staring out at the sky through the windscreen. She'd sprinkle domestic trivialities in his thought stream, stuff about mended curtains and cleaned carpets and new household appliances, stuff to let him know that their life went on despite the deaths he'd uncovered and had to report back to a hoping-against-hope spouse or relative or friend.
She'd always been there, waiting at the barrier, the face for him.
He'd looked for her, of course, when he'd come through Arrivals. He'd looked for her in the faces of women who might have been waiting for men, but none of them looked as she always had.
He couldn't go back to the house. Not now. He wasn't ready for that museum of happy memories.
"Driver? Keep driving, don't take the turn," Max said as he heard the indicator lights go on.
"Where we goin'?"
"The Radisson Hotel, North Kendall Drive."
* * *
"Hey Max Mingus! Wassappenin' wit'chu?" Joe Liston's voice boomed down the phone when Max called him from his hotel room.
"Good to hear your voice, Joe. How you been?"
"Good, Max, good. You home now?"
"No. I'm staying at the Radisson in Kendall for a few days."
"What's wrong wit' your house, man?"
"Sandra's cousins are there," Max lied. "I thought I'd give them the run of the place a while longer."