Mr. Clarinet

"Yeah." Huxley nodded. "I took his address book. He knew other pedophiles, people he'd recommended Carver's service to."

"You went after them?"

"I only got to one."

"Frank Huxley?"

"That's right. He had a stack of videotapes of what went on in La Gonâve and Noah's Ark. The tape you found was a compilation I made—you know, a preview of forthcoming horrors."

"What about the rest of the people in the address book?"

"They were too hard to get to."

"What about Allain, when did he come into the picture?" Max asked.

"In Canada I lived out on the street most of the time. I knew a lot of hustlers," Huxley said. "So did Allain. He went in for rough trade. We had mutual acquaintances. These two guys I knew were always bragging about this wealthy Haitian they were bangin'. I got curious. I found out who he was.

"I went to this bar Allain always went to to meet his pickups. We got talking. When I found out he hated his old man almost as much as I did, we were in business."

"So you put together a plan to bring down the old man?"

"Essentially, yes. Our motives were very different. Allain was just this poor spoiled little rich boy whose daddy didn't give him any love on account of his sexuality. He could've lived with this if one of his lovers hadn't worked for the family's law firm in Miami. He told Allain the old man had completely cut him out of his will. He'd left it all to his in-laws and closest lieutenants.

"The way the Carver business is set up is that if the old man is taken ill or has to go away somewhere urgently, responsibility for running things falls to the next most senior Carver in Haiti. Allain had covered for his father while he was away before, so he knew the ropes. He'd found out there was over half a billion dollars in various 'rainy day' cash accounts. As head of the Carver empire he could do what he wanted with the money—"

"But he needed the old man out of the way first?" Max finished.

"That's right," Huxley said. "Allain didn't have the first fucking clue how to get at the money. The guy's got cunning but no street smarts—and waaaay too many feelings. Mine are pretty much dead."

"So it was your idea to kidnap the boy?"

"Absolutely," Huxley confirmed proudly. "Most of it was. We'd kidnap the boy, hole him up somewhere very safe, bring in an outside investigator and steer him toward discovering Gustav."

"By 'steer' you mean plant a trail of clues?"

"That's right."

"Or literally hand them to me like you did—"

"—out by the waterfalls? Yeah. That was me under that wig."

"Suited you," Max said sourly.

It was now dark. Huxley had killed his speed. They were the only people out on the road. Max had checked behind him to see if Vincent Paul's escort had kept up. Max had been followed to the beach house, and then back to Pétionville. He couldn't see anyone behind them.

"Of course it was important you got on with Vincent Paul too. He had to trust you, open up to you. He didn't do that with Beeson and Medd."

"Is that why you killed 'em?"

"I didn't kill either of them," Huxley began. "I made examples of them."

"You cut Medd's tongue out and stuffed him into a barrel—some fuckin' example!"

"He choked to death," Huxley corrected. "Look, I admit what I did was a bit…extreme—barbaric, even. But with reward money that big, we couldn't afford to have every asshole and lucky-chancer coming out here and trying their luck. It acted as a deterrent. People got wind of what had happened to Beeson and suddenly they had better offers for jobs out in Alaska. Yours is a small world, Max. All you private eyes know each other."

"But what did they do wrong?"

"Beeson was too close to the old man. He was reporting directly to him, bypassing Allain. Plus he fucked up with Vincent Paul. They didn't hit it off. He was next to useless to us," Huxley explained. "And Medd—he was almost there, but then he got suspicious about the clues he was getting. He told Allain it was all too obvious, too easy. It was only a matter of time before he found us out. I took preemptive action."

"What about the Haitian guy?"

"Emmanuel? Emmanuel was a lazy motherfucker. Too busy fucking around to do any serious work. I would have cut his dick off myself, someone hadn't thought of it first."

"And then you got me?" Max said.

The road had flattened out. The surface was unusually smooth and the wheels seemed to glide along it, the car's engine emitting a soothing hum. The stars had begun to appear in the sky, the galaxies so close they resembled rhinestone clouds. The whole way there Huxley had been calm and assured. Not once had he even asked Max what he planned to do with him. It had occurred to Max that they weren't going to find Charlie Carver at all, that Huxley was taking him to the place where he'd cut up Beeson and Medd. If that's what it was, it wouldn't happen to him. He wouldn't let it. He'd kill Huxley at the slightest hint of something going wrong. Not that he really believed Huxley had that in mind at all. Huxley had lived most of his life seeking revenge for his sister and for himself. Now he had it he didn't really care what came next.

"You were the one I always wanted for this job," Huxley said. "I'd followed your trial, every day. I read up about you. I really respected what you did. I felt like you were on my side, like if we'd ever meet up one day you'd be one person who'd at least understand where I was coming from, what I'd been through."

"People feel the same way about their favorite rock stars." Max punctured his bubble. "Take it a little further and it's called stalking."

"Guess your life's made you a hardass too, huh?" Huxley laughed.

"My life's been a failure," Max said. "Any way you look at it. Doing what I did made no difference—except to me. It didn't bring back the victims, it didn't turn back the clock and give them back their innocence. It didn't help their parents, their families. Not in the long run. Closure's bullshit. You never recover from that kind of loss. You take your tears with you to the grave.

"And as for me—I lost the only genuinely good thing I ever had. My wife. She died when I was in prison. I never got to hold her again, touch her, kiss her, be with her—never got to tell her how much I loved her—all because of the life I'd led. All that 'good' I thought I was doing, it added up to one big zero. It put me in jail. If that ain't failure, I don't know what is."

Max looked through the windshield, into the darkness.

"How come Gustav let Allain do the hiring?" he asked.

"He didn't. That dinner you went to? That was your interview with Gustav. If he hadn't liked you, you would've been on the next plane back to Miami," Huxley said.

"That ever happen?"

"No. Allain and I chose well."