Mr. Clarinet

The Carvers were dysfunctional but they weren't the worst family he'd ever met. They were standing together in adversity, supporting each other in their own way.

In all likelihood, Charlie had been stolen to get back at the old man rather than the son. Gustav was likely to have a long list of enemies. If they were rich, they'd have enough money and clout to delegate a kidnapping to hired hands that wouldn't know whom they were working for.

Or did they? Three private investigators had come and gone—one was dead, one was missing, presumed dead, one was gruesomely fucked up. All three must have come real close to finding the kid—or led someone to believe they were.

He downed his third rum. People were staying well out of his way. A couple of Americans were talking to the prostitutes. They were all on first-name terms but they'd never done any business. The girls looked disinterested. The soldiers probably didn't want to get AIDS, and there wasn't a condom thick enough to dispel the myth that the disease had started in Haiti.

A Haitian man was clinging to the fringes of a small group of Americans, listening intently to their conversation, hanging on to every word, parroting the ones he understood. If someone said "fuck" or "shit" or dropped a brand or celebrity name, the Haitian would echo it, slapping his thigh and laughing at an obscenity, or nodding his head and saying "Yes man!" or "That's right yo!" in his impression of an American accent, which sounded like Chinese yodeling. Once in a while the group would look at the guy and laugh, some indulgently, some mockingly. A few would stay quiet; they'd taken a profound dislike to their hanger-on. Max could see it in their faces, the way they stood, the smallness of their eyes when they tried not to look at him, the way they winced when they heard him imitating them. They'd probably wanted nothing more than a quiet night out.

The Haitian was wearing a baseball cap backwards, a baggy T-shirt with the Stars and Stripes on the front and back, loose jeans, and Nike sneakers. A real fan of his conquerors.

Then Max saw what was really happening.

The Haitian was actually talking to someone Max hadn't seen, standing in the middle of the group, hidden from view by his comrades. Max only noticed him when one of them went to the bar for more drinks.

He was a buzz-cut blond with a tiny nose and a thick mustache. He was having fun with the Haitian, pretending to teach the guy English when all he was really doing was making him demean himself.

Max listened in.

"Repeat after me: 'I,'" Buzz-cut said, hands moving like an orchestra conductor's.

"Aye—"

"Live—"

"Leave—"

"In—"

"Eeen—"

"A—"

"Ayy—"

"Zoo—"

"Zoooo—"

"Called—"

"Kall—"

"No: call-dah—"

"Kall—durgh—"

"Good—I live in a zoo called—Haiti."

"—Ayiti?"

"What? Yeah, yeah—high tits—whatever the fuck you sambos call this fuck hole." Buzz-cut laughed and his crew harmonized—except for the dissenters, one of whom had caught Max's eye and looked at him in helpless apology, as if to say, it's them not me.

Max didn't give a fuck about him and his educated guilt. It was the Haitian he felt for. It was pitiful to watch and it made Max mad. He was reminded of Sammy Davis Jr.'s Uncle Tom routine in those Rat Pack Vegas shows he had on videotape. Frank and Dean would be humiliating him onstage, calling him every polite racist epithet in front of the audience, who'd be whooping and laughing, while Sammy would slap his thigh and clap his hands and open his mouth wide, looking like he thought it was all just a good joke, but his eyes would be cold and detached, his soul someplace else entirely, and that open mouth would suddenly seem to be howling in pain and—mostly—anger, drowned out by a drumroll and cymbals, and more audience guffawing. The Haitian was like Sammy had been, only he wasn't having it so hard because he, at least, didn't understand what Buzz-cut was saying and doing to him.

Right then, for the first time in his life, Max felt very briefly ashamed to be an American.

He turned back to the bar and shook his glass at the barman for a refill. The barman poured him his fourth Barbancourt and asked him how he was liking it. Max told him it was just great.

A man walked up to the bar and ordered a drink, speaking in Kreyol. He talked a little with the barman and made him laugh.

He turned to Max, smiled politely, and nodded to him.

Max nodded back.

"Did you just get here?" the man asked.

Max didn't know if he meant the bar or the country. The rum was starting to kick in hard. He was looking over the edge of sobriety, contemplating the plunge.

"Max Mingus, right?" the man asked.

Max stared at him too long to feign mistaken identity. He said nothing and waited for the man's next move.

"Shawn Huxley." The man smiled, holding out his hand. Max didn't take it. "Relax—I'm a journalist."

Ingratiating tone, ingratiating smile, ingratiating body language: all the mannered sincerity of a snake posing as a used-car salesman.

"Look, I get a list of daily arrivals from my man at the airport—Mingus, Max, AA147. It's not a common name."

French-American accent. Not Haitian, not Cajun. Canadian?

Good-looking guy, close to pretty: smooth caramel skin, Oriental eyes, a thin mustache crowning his upper lip, and his hair cut in a fade, carefully shaped around the forehead and temples. He wore khakis, a short-sleeved white shirt, and sturdy black shoes. He was Max's height and a third of his build.

"Not me," Max grunted.

"Come on—it's no big thing. I'll buy you a drink and tell you about myself."

"No," Max said, turning away and facing the bar.

"I can imagine how you feel about the press, Max. What with those guys in the Herald digging all that stuff up about you before your trial—and all the trouble they gave your wife—"

Max glared at Huxley. He didn't like journalists, never had, not even when they'd technically been friends, on the same side. When his trial had gone nationwide, the press had dug up every single piece of dirt they could find on him, enough to bury him twenty times over. It played so well—one of the most decorated and respected detectives in Florida, a hero cop, had really built his glittering career on brutalizing suspects into confessions and allegedly planting evidence. They'd camped outside his house, dozens of them. They couldn't get enough of the fact that he was in an interracial marriage. White journalists had asked Sandra if she was his cleaning lady; black journalists had called her a sellout, an Aunt Jemima, and condemned him for having a plantation mentality.