Mr. Clarinet

"You're getting up, Carver," Max said impassively, stepping behind the old man and grabbing him roughly up by the cuff chains. He pulled him back to his feet.

"Don't hand me over to Vincent Paul, please, Max, please. He'll do unspeakable things to me. Please shoot me, please. I can accept it from you."

"You make a lousy beggar, Carver," Max said into his ear.

"Shoot me, Max."

"Carver, at least try and have some dignity. See this?" Max unbuttoned three buttons on his shirt and showed Carver the microphone taped to his chest. "You don't want Vincent Paul's people coming and carrying you out of here, do you?"

"Isn't that called entrapment?"

"Not here."

With an expression halfway defeated and all the way disgusted, Carver nodded solemnly to the door.

"Let's go."

Max led him out of the house.

There were three jeeploads of Paul's men outside.

All the servants and security had been rounded up and stood in the middle of the grass, guarded by four people with rifles.

"In America I'd get a fair trial," Carver said as he eyed the scene.

"In America you'd get the best defense lawyer your money could buy. Justice may be blind, but it sure ain't deaf and you know same as me—ain't nothin' talks louder than cold hard cash."

A few of the servants called out to Carver, their voices plaintive and confused, sounding like they were asking what was wrong, what was going on.

"You know what he's going to do to me, Max? That animal will rip me up and throw me to the savages. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you?"

Max gave the cuff keys to one of Paul's men, as another took hold of Carver.

"Maybe I'll be like you then," Max said.

"How so?" Carver asked.

"Bypass my conscience."

"Bastard!" Carver spat.

"Me?" Max almost laughed. "What does that make you?"

"A man at peace with himself," Carver sneered.

Max signaled to the men to take Carver.

That was when the old man erupted:

"DAMN YOU, Max Mingus!—DAMN YOU! And DAMN Vincent Paul! And DAMN each and every one of you gun-toting monkeys! DAMN YOU! And…and DAMN that little BASTARD runt and the TREACHEROUS BITCH that hatched him! I hope you NEVER find him! I hope he's DEAD!"

He glared at Max with intense loathing, his breath heavy and tired, a wounded dying bull contemplating one last angry charge.

A total silence hung over the front of the house, as if Carver's roar had sucked in every immediate noise in its wake.

All eyes were on Max, waiting on his riposte.

A short time later it came:

"Adiós motherfucker."

Then, looking at the men whose hands were clamped on Carver's arms and shoulders:

"Get this sack of shit out of here and bury him deep."

Chapter 56

ON HIS WAY back, Max stopped off at La Coupole, where a party was in full swing. The Christmas decorations were out. The place had been decked out in tinsel, streamers, and there were flashing multicolored lights in the shape of pine trees, stuck to the walls.

The music was hideous—a medley of Christmas carols set over an unchanging pumping techno beat, sung in English by a Germanic female vocalist with an approximate grasp of the language, which rendered her pronunciation comic: "holy night" was sung as "holly nit," "Bethlehem" became a place called "Bed-ahem," "Hark the herald angels sing" turned into "Hard Gerald ankles sin." The atmosphere, however, was jubilant and friendly, people out having a good time. Everyone was smiling and dancing—outside, inside, behind the bar, probably in the bathroom too. Plenty of jokes and laughter were breaking up the music. The American soldiers were mixing with the UN peacekeepers, and both, in turn, were mixing with the locals. Max noticed that there were a lot more Haitians there—men and women. To his dismay, when he looked a little bit closer he noticed that all of those women were whores—dresses too tight, makeup on too thick, all wearing wigs and those shopwindow stares that pulled you in—and the men were their pimps; hanging back but clocking any man who came within glancing radius of their walking ATMs.

Max bought a double rum and moved out of the bar to watch the dancers in the courtyard. A drunk marine asked him if he was military police, someone else asked him if he was CIA. A red-faced girl with gold studs in her ears held plastic mistletoe over his head and kissed him with lips wet with beer. She asked him if he wanted to dance and he said no thanks, maybe later. Her voice was pure Oklahoma. He watched her go off and do the same thing to a Haitian standing by the DJ booth. Seconds later, they were dancing close.

He felt bitter about what had happened, bitter about Carver, bitter about working for him. He didn't care if he'd helped bring down the old man, he didn't care that the old man was now sitting somewhere waiting for Vincent Paul to come and pass sentence. It wasn't what he'd come here for.

The horror of what he'd seen on those tapes danced dervish-like in his head.

Before he'd shot the three kids who'd tortured Manuela he'd felt an endless hollowness in his stomach; a feeling of nothing making any difference ever again, of everything just getting worse and worse until today's sickest crime became tomorrow's cat-scratch. Then he remembered what he was doing there, why he'd taken the case, why he'd devoted almost two years of his life to solving it. Manuela had smiled at him. Just the once. It was when they were on the beach—he, Sandra, and Manuela. He was setting up the parasol and deck chairs. A black and white couple had strolled by hand-in-hand, and the woman had told them how cute their child was. She was pregnant. Max had looked at Sandra and Manuela sitting there together, and at that moment, for the first time, he'd wanted a family. Manuela might have read his mind because she caught his eye, looked right into him, and smiled.

He'd thought of her and only her as he'd shot her killers. The last of them—Cyrus Newbury—hadn't gone quietly. He'd screamed and cried, pleaded for his life, recited half-remembered prayers and hymns. Max had let him beg himself weak, beg until he lost his voice. Then he blew Newbury away.

The rum had a calming effect on him. It smothered his troubles, floated them away to someplace where nothing really mattered for a while. It was good stuff, sweet painkiller.

A couple of whores in straight black wigs sidled over to him and sandwiched him, smiling. They were near-identical twins. Max shook his head and looked away. One of the girls whispered something in his ear. He didn't understand what she was saying, the music muffled her words to all but the sharpest sounds. When he shrugged his shoulders and pulled an I-don't-understand expression, she laughed and pointed to somewhere in the middle of the crowd. Max looked over at the clump of moving bodies—jeans, sneakers, T-shirts, beach shirts, tank tops—not seeing what he was meant to see. Then a camera flash went off. A few of the dancers were surprised and turned around to look for the source of the flash, then went back to their moves.