Mr. Clarinet

"Fancy that," Paul cut her off. "He thinks gays are perverts but pedophiles aren't."

She tried and failed to hold his look. She went back to her handkerchief, which she rolled, like pastry, into a cylinder.

"So Allain didn't know anything?" Max picked up again.

"I didn't know anything about it, Max," Paul said. "I believe her. I know Allain. He doesn't even know about most of his father's legitimate businesses. I've got the inside track, remember? Gustav kept this one really secret. To be doing something like that in a place this small—and still keep it secret. That takes some doing. And to keep it so hidden that even I haven't heard about it…"

"Everyone was implicated," Eloise said. "That's why no one spoke about it. And with his connections, if something ever did look like it was going to get out…"

"He'd crush it into nothing," Paul finished.

Max thought about Allain. Unless he found evidence that completely exonerated him, Max decided he'd interrogate him about what he did and didn't know, all the same, just to be sure.

"Tell me about Noah's Ark."

"No one suspected a thing. Everyone thought it was just a simple charity—and it was, for the wrong children."

"What do you mean by 'wrong children'?"

"The surplus—and the ones that didn't get sold."

"Where did they end up?"

"Monsieur Carver found jobs for them."

"Nothing wasted." Max looked at Paul. Paul's face was rigid, his jaws clamped shut, his lips pressed tightly together. From the way he was standing, six-fingered hands half-formed into fists, Max knew he was getting ready to blow. He hoped he'd have time to get everything out of Eloise before Paul tore her head off.

"When did you start 'grooming' the children?"

"I must have been fifteen or sixteen. Monsieur Carver was very proud of me. He called me. I was his favorite." She smiled, her eyes tearing up and at the same time glowing with a cold, burning pride.

"Monsieur Carver already knew something about vodou potions, the ingredients that go into making the serum they give to people to turn them into zombies. He'd studied up on all that kind of stuff. He's a trained hypnotist, you know. He told me he'd always worked on children—poor slum kids."

"How? Sexually?"

"He taught them manners."

"So was it Carver's idea to take these rough kids and shape them—'groom them'—into obedient sex slaves with perfect table manners, so they'd pass in those upper circles?"

"Yes. No one buys a half-finished car."

"Is he still doing it? Hypnotizing kids?"

"Once in a while, yes, but he's passed his skills on to people in La Gonâve."

Max stared at a long, thin crack running down the length of the wall in front of him, breaking his concentration and letting his mind wander. He was feeling angry now, bitterly sick to his stomach. He was seeing himself back at Gustav's side, looking at Mrs. Carver's portrait, empathizing with the old man because they were both widowers who'd lost what they'd loved the most. He'd cherished the image, held it up as proof that Gustav Carver wasn't a monster but a man…still a human being. Not even the things Vincent had told him about the old man had completely destroyed the image. But this—what he'd heard now, what he was listening to—had dissolved his fondness for the old man in acid. He wished she was lying. But she wasn't.

He had to go on, finish it.

"With the adopted kids: What happened if something went wrong, say they tried to escape or tried to tell someone what's happening?"

"They're conditioned not to. Their new owners are supplied with serum, which keeps them in a"—she broke off and searched for the word, smiling when she'd landed on it—"'cooperative' state. We also have people on hand to help. If anything goes wrong, the owner calls a number and we take care of it."

"Like a maintenance service for a—a washing machine."

"Yes." She smiled condescendingly. "A 'maintenance' service, as you put it. It covers everything from reorienting a child—that means hypnotizing them again—to, if the matter is serious, removing him or her from circulation."

"You mean killing them?"

"That has been necessary, yes." She nodded. "But seldom."

"What about when these kids get older, d'you kill 'em too?"

"That has sometimes been necessary also," Eloise agreed. "But seldom. Usually they grow up and move on. Sometimes they stay with their owner."

"Like you did?"

"Yes."

"What about if I was a client with special desires? Say I wanted an Asian kid."

"That can easily be arranged. We have branches all over the world. We'd just fly one in for you."

Max switched back to Charlie.

"What about a handicapped child?"

"It hasn't been done before, not that I know of. But there are no limits, no extremes, no places we won't go—but that has never been requested," she said.

Max gave Paul a quick look and shook his head. They didn't have Charlie. They didn't take him.

"Who kidnapped Charlie Carver?" he asked her.

"No one. He is dead. I'm sure of it, Maurice is sure of it. He spoke to a lot of witnesses who were there when the mob attacked the car. They all said they saw the boy being trampled and kicked around on the ground by people running at Eddie Faustin."

"What about his body?" Max turned back to Eloise.

"He was a three-year-old child. Easy to miss."

"But wouldn't the mob have left it behind?"

"Why? A mother or father could have taken his clothes for their own child."

Paul breathed deep through his nostrils. Although his face was rigid and emotionless, Max heard the hurt echo deep within him in the way the air passed into his lungs with staccato rhythms. Paul believed her. His son was dead.

Max studied Eloise to see if she'd heard or noticed anything, but she was keeping her eyes down, worrying the edges of her handkerchief.

Max couldn't be sure Charlie was dead. Something screamed at him that it wasn't so.

What about Filius Dufour? What about Francesca's certainty that he was still alive?

The voice of reason countered:

You believe an old fortune-teller and a grieving mother? Come on!

Max was almost done with Eloise.

"And how involved was Gustav Carver in the day-to-day running of this business?"

"Up until his stroke he was very involved in it. Like I said to you before, he is Tonton Clarinette."