"Les enfants perdus," the priest said. "The lost children."
"Kidnapped too?"
"Those are the ones we know of. There are many many more. Most Haitians can't afford cameras."
"How long's this been happening?"
"Children have always gone missing in Haiti. I started putting photographs on the board very soon after I started working here, in 1990. In our other religion a child's soul is highly sought after. It can open many doors."
"So you think it's a voodoo thing?"
"Who knows?"
There was a sadness in the priest's voice, a weariness that suggested he'd gone through every possibility a million times over and come back empty.
Then Max realized that this was personal for the priest. He looked back at the board, and searched through the photographs that hung off it like scales, hoping to find a striking family resemblance so he could broach the subject. He found nothing so he went for it anyway.
"Which one of these is yours?"
The priest was initially shocked, but then he smiled broadly.
"You're a very perceptive man. God must have chosen you."
"I played the right hunch, Father," Max said.
The priest stepped forward up to the board and pointed at a photograph of a girl right next to Charlie's.
"My niece, Claudine," the priest said. "I confess I put her there so some of the rich boy's aura would rub off."
Max took Claudine's picture down. Claudine Thodore, 5 ans, 10/1994.
"Went missing a month later. Thodore? Is that your last name?"
"Yes. I'm Alexandre Thodore. Claudine is my brother Caspar's daughter," the priest said. "I'll give you his address and number. He lives in Port-au-Prince."
The priest took a small notebook out of his pocket and scribbled his brother's details on a piece of paper, which he tore out and handed to Max.
"Did your brother tell you what happened?"
"One day he was with his daughter, the next day he was looking for her."
"I'll do my best to find her."
"I don't doubt that," the priest said. "By the way, the kids in Haiti? They have a nickname for the bogeyman who's stealing the children, Tonton Clarinette. Mr. Clarinet."
"Clarinet? Like the instrument? Why?"
"It's how he lures the children away."
"Like the Pied Piper?"
"Tonton Clarinette is said to work for Baron Samedithe vodou god of death," Father Thodore said. "He steals children's souls to entertain the dead with. Some say his appearance is part man, part bird. Others say he is a bird with one eye. And only children can see him. That's because he was a child himself, when he died.
"The myth goes that he was originally a French boy soldier, a mascotvery common in those days. He was in one of the regiments sent to rule Haiti, back in the eighteenth century. He entertained the troops by playing his clarinet for them. The slaves working in the fields used to hear his playing and it made them angry because they associated the sound and the music the boy made with captivity and oppression.
"When the slaves rose up, they overpowered the boy's regiment and took a lot of prisoners. They made the boy play his wretched instrument while they slaughtered his comrades one by one. Then they buried him alive, still playing his clarinet," Thodore spoke gravely. It might have been folklore, but he was taking it very seriously. "He's a relatively new spirit, not one I grew up fearing. I first heard people talking about him twenty or so years ago. They say he leaves his mark where he's been."
"What kind of mark?"
"I haven't seen one, but it's supposed to look like a cross, with two legs and half a beam."
"You said children have 'always' gone missing in Haiti? You got any idea how many that is a year?"
"It's impossible to say." Thodore opened his palms to indicate hopelessness. "Things there are not like here. There's nowhere and no one to report the missing to. And there is no way of knowing who these children are or were, because the poor don't have birth or death certificatesthat is only for the rich. Almost all of the children who go missing are poor. When they disappear it's as if they never existed. But nowwith the Carver boythis is different. This is a rich society child. Suddenly now everyone is paying attention. It's like here, in Miami. If a black child goes missing, who cares? Maybe one or two local policemen go looking. But if it's a little white child, you call the National Guard."
"With all due respect, Father, that last part, that's not quite true, no matter how it sometimes appears," Max said, keeping his tone level. "And it was never that way with me, when I was a cop here. Never."
The priest looked at him hard for a moment. He himself had cop's eyes, the ones that can tell sincerity from bullshit at a thousand paces. He offered Max his hand. They shook firmly. Then Father Thodore blessed him and wished him well.
"Bring her back," he whispered to Max.
Part 2
Chapter 7
THE FLIGHT OUT to Haiti was held up for an hour while it waited on a homeward-bound con and his two armed guards.
Inside it was packed to near capacity. Haitiansmostly menheading home with bags of food, soap, and clothes, and boxes and boxes of cheap electrical goodsTVs, radios, video recorders, fans, microwaves, computers, boom boxes, which they'd half-or quarter-jammed into the overhead luggage compartments.
The stewardesses weren't complaining. They appeared to be used to it. They picked their way past the brand-name obstacles with straight-backed poise and stuck-on professional smiles, always managing to squeeze through without creasing their bearing, no matter how tight the space.
Max could tell the visiting expats apart from the natives. The former were tricked out in standard ghetto garbgold chains, earrings, and bracelets; more on their backs and feet than they had in the bankwhile the latter were dressed conservativelycheap but smart slacks and short-sleeved shirts for the men, midweek church dresses for the women.
The atmosphere was lively, seemingly unaffected by the delay. The conversations rolled out loud and clear, Kreyol's dueling rhythms bouncing back and forth off each other and from all corners of the plane. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. The voicesdeep and gutturalcollectively drowned out the in-cabin preflight Muzak and all three pilot announcements.