WHEN THEY WERE gone, he stumbled around the now-empty streets, looking for the elusive road home. The drunkenness came and went in waves, dumb dizziness tripping over moments of lucidity.
Eventually, by a process of elimination, which involved retracing his steps to the bar and then going down each of the four right-hand turn-offs between the bar and the center of town, he found the Impasse Carver.
It was the road he'd been closest to when he was surrounded by the kids.
Back at the house, Max went to his room, took out his wallet, unclipped his holster and gun, and dropped them on the bed. He peeled off his suit, turned beige to brown, sweat-soaked all the way through to his back and underarms and butt. It was ruined. The trousers stank. The left leg was black and stiff and sticky up to the knee.
It was hot and humid inside. He turned on the fan to stir up the dead air and blow up some cool breeze. His hands were shaking, currents of fear and rage passing back and forth through his veins and arteries, making his heart pound fast, pumping adrenaline into his bloodstream. He was thinking back to those kids. Part of him wanted to go back outside and kick their raggedy, Live Aid-handout asses to voodoo heaven. Another part of him wanted out of this godforsaken country on the next boat-people armada. And yet another part of him was curled up and made small and hiding its humbled head in shame.
He remembered Huxley's card and the Sinatra CD in his pocket. The card was still there but the CD was gone. He realized that it had been knocked out of his pocket when he'd fallen down the crater. He bundled the suit up and tossed it into a corner of the room. He undid his shirt and wiped himself down, then he took off his underwear, balled them all together, and walked to the bathroom, where he tossed them into the laundry basket before getting into the shower.
He turned on the water, and a freezing-cold white streak tore out of the showerhead and blasted his skin. He gasped in shock and went to turn down the jet, but he sensed all the pent-up rage and fear and frustration churning inside him, unspent and untapped, the kind of thing that would bug him every time he stepped out of the house if he didn't release it, vent it. He turned the faucet up full, making the pipes shake and rattle and threaten to pop the brackets that held them against the wall. He let the icy water bash and pound into his flesh until it started to hurt. He held on to the pain as he focused on the humiliation he'd just had to crawl his way out of.
He'd been shamed, shamed by a bunch of little kids. They'd have killed him if it hadn't been for that guy in the jeep. What could you do when it was kids who were threatening to take your life? If you killed them, you burned in hell. If you didn't, they burned you.
No solution, no release. His anger crawled away until it found a hole big enough to hide in and wait for the poor unsuspecting bastard who provoked it.
He dried off and went back to his room. He was too damn hopped up to sleep. He wanted more rum. He knew he shouldn't, that it was the wrong way to drink, that if he did he'd be taking familiar steps back to alcoholism, but right now, at this moment, he didn't give a good fuck about any of that.
He changed into khakis and a white T-shirt and padded to the kitchen.
He opened the door and switched on the light.
Francesca Carver sat at the table.
"The fuck are you doing here?" Max snapped, taking a step back in shock.
"I've come to talk to you."
"How did you get in?"
"We own this house, remember?" she answered with haughty impatience.
"What do you want to talk about?"
"It's about Charlie-things you need to know before you go any further."
Max went off and got his notebook and tape recorder, while Francesca sat at the table, drinking a glass of bottled water she'd found in the fridge and smoking a French Gitanes cigarette that came in a fancy-looking blue-and-white pack. They stank like hell but they suited her-the sort of thick, all-white cigarettes classic-movie heroines from the forties and fifties were always puffing on at the end of holders.
Max guessed he hadn't smelled her cigarettes when he'd walked into the house because the stench coming off him had been far worse.
"Before I start, you've got to promise me one thing," she said, when Max returned.
"That depends," Max said. She looked very different, much prettier, more relaxed, less ravaged. She'd changed into a pale blue blouse, long denim skirt, and sneakers. She wore her hair down and a little makeup, much of it concentrated around her eyes.
"You can't repeat any of this to Gustav."
"Why not?"
"Because it'd break his heart if he knew-and with his heart already hanging by a thread. Can you promise me this?"
Bullshit, Max thought. She had no love for Gustav Carver. Besides, what kind of fool did she take him for, packaging it all in soft, plaintive tones, reaching for his nearest, fattest heartstring? She must have been to acting school, to do that with her voice, change pitch, wrap each word in a tear before uttering it.
"What's the real reason?" Max asked, looking her straight in the eyes, finding the pupils, holding them.
She didn't flinch. Her eyes met his and held them back. Her stare was cold and hard and remorseless; it said: seen the very worst, seen it all, seen too much of it, still standing-fuck you.
"If Gustav knew what I'm about to tell you, he'd be absolutely livid."
"You mean Charlie's not his grandson?"
"No!-and how dare you!" she snapped. She looked disgusted. Her face flushed light purple, stare-stabbing him. She took a short drag on her cigarette and dumped it in a cup half-filled with water she'd taken to using as an ashtray. The butt hissed as it went out.
"Sorry." Max smiled at her. "Just checking."
She'd walked right into it. Good-a weakness. He didn't know if he'd hit a raw nerve buried under a truth or upset an applecart of prudishness. He was stabbing in the dark, testing the depth of her sincerity. So far, she was holding up.
"Tell me what you want to tell me, Mrs. Carver."
"I want your word."
"Are you sure?" Max asked.
"You haven't much else to offer me, have you?"
He laughed. Stuck-up bitch. She wanted his word? Sure, why not? What was the big deal? He could always break it. It wouldn't be the first time. Words, promises, handshakes, and vows meant nothing to him outside friendship.
"I give you my word, Mrs. Carver," Max said, sounding sincere and reflecting it in the steady eyes he fixed on Francesca. She appraised him and seemed satisfied.
The cassette recorder was on and picking up everything she was saying.
"You were on the right track, back there in the house, about Eddie Faustin," she began. "He was involved in the kidnapping. He was the inside man."
"You came here to tell me that?"
"I wanted to speak to you freely. I couldn't talk to you in front of Gustav. He won't hear a bad word about Faustin. The man took a bullet for him and that makes him a saint in Gustav's book," Francesca said, pulling hard on her cigarette. "He's so stubborn. No matter what I told him happened during the kidnapping, he just dismissed it completely-said I couldn't possibly remember anything because I'd been knocked out. And even afterwards, when we went through Faustin's quarters and found what he had in there-"
She broke off and held her forehead in her fingertips, rubbing circles around her skin. It looked more dramatic than therapeutic.
"What did you find?"
"Faustin used to live in the old stables, behind the main plantation house. They were converted into small apartments for the family's most trusted restavecs. After the kidnapping his apartment was emptied and they found a doll-a voodoo doll-in a box under his bed. The doll was of me."
"Did he hate you?"
"No. This was a love-or lust-charm. It was made with my real hair, and the wax was embedded with my fingernail and toenail clippings. He'd collected them, or paid one of the maids to collect them."
"Did you ever suspect he was doing that?"
"Not at all. Faustin was a trusted employee. Always polite, very professional."
"You didn't feel that he had any desires for you-ever catch him looking at you-er-inappropriately?"
"No. Servants know their place here."
"Sure they do, Mrs. Carver. That's why Faustin helped kidnap your son," Max slipped in sarcastically.
Francesca flushed angrily.
Max didn't want to piss her off too much, in case she clammed up. He moved it along:
"What happened on the day of the kidnapping?"
She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another almost immediately.
"It was on the morning of Charlie's third birthday. You could see the American warships that were bringing the invading troops, right there on the horizon, opposite Port-au-Prince harbor. Everyone was saying the Americans were going to bomb the National Palace. There was rioting and looting going on in Port-au-Prince. People would leave their homes in the mountains and walk down to the city with carts and wheelbarrows to carry the stuff they were looting from shops and houses in the capital. It was anarchy.
"You'd know how bad it was by smelling the air. If you picked up the smell of burning rubber, it meant looting and rioting was going on. Protesters closed off roads with barricades of burning tires. Sometimes you could look out and see these two or three columns of thick black smoke stretching all the way from Port-au-Prince up to the sky. That would mean it was really bad.
"And it was really bad when we drove into town in the bulletproof SUV that morning. Rose was sitting in the front with Eddie Faustin. I was sitting in the back with Charlie. He was happy. He let me play with his hair. I was running it in and out of my fingers. We were going to the Rue du Champs de Mars, not too far from the National Palace.
"It was very very dangerous in town that day. Constant gunfire. I lost count of the bodies we passed in the streets. Faustin said we needed to stop somewhere secluded and wait for the shooting to stop, so we parked in the Boulevard des Veuves. It's usually packed, but that day it was deserted. I knew something was very wrong with Faustin. He was sweating a lot and he'd been looking at me in the rearview mirror the whole drive down.
"All our cars are meant to have loaded guns under the seats. I checked under mine. Nothing. Faustin saw me looking and when I caught his eye again he smiled as if to say 'They're not there, are they?' He'd locked the doors. I tried not to show how scared I was getting.
"The gunfire died down. Rose asked Faustin why we weren't moving. Faustin told her to mind her own business-really rudely. I shouted at him to watch his mouth. He told me to shut up. That's when I knew something was really really wrong. I got hysterical. I screamed at him to let us out of the car. He didn't reply. Then some kids turned up outside. Just street kids. They saw our car and came over. They looked inside. One of them said Faustin's name and started shouting and pointing at us.
"More people started coming over-adults now, with machetes and clubs and tires and cans of gasoline. They were chanting 'Faustin-assassin, Faustin-assassin' over and over. Faustin used to be a feared Tonton Macoute. He'd made a lot of enemies, a lot of people wanted him dead.
"The crowd massed up around the car. Someone threw a rock at the back window. It bounced off without damaging the car, but it was some kind of signal because they stormed us. Faustin drove out of there, but he didn't get far because people had put up a barricade at the end of the road. He started reversing but the mob had caught up with us. We were trapped."
Francesca stopped there and took a deep breath. She'd turned pale, her stare cowering.
"Take your time," Max said.
"People came out from behind the barricades and rushed the car," she continued. "Pretty soon it was surrounded. People were chanting 'Faustin-assassin' and then they were hitting the car with clubs and rocks, kicking it and rocking it. They smashed the windows. And then they started stabbing at the corners of the roof with something. Faustin got a machine gun out from under his seat. Rose was screaming. So was I, I suppose. Charlie was calm through it all, just looking out at everything like it was so much scenery. The last thing I remember is running my hand through his hair, hugging him, telling him everything would be OK. After that…The next thing I remember was coming to in the road.
"I was lying in the same street, but hundreds of yards away from the car. I don't know how I got that far. There was this old woman in a pink dress, sitting on the other side of the road, in front of a shoemaker's, looking straight at me."
"What did you do next?"
"I went back to the car. It was overturned. The street was empty. There was blood everywhere."
"How badly were you hurt?"
"Just concussed. A few bruises, a couple of cuts. Rose was dead. Faustin was gone. And so was my little boy," she said, lowering her head.
She started crying. Silent, rolling tears first, then sniffles, and finally the deluge.
Max paused the tape and went to the bathroom and fetched some toilet tissue. He gave it to her and sat and watched as she cried herself dry. He held her and it helped her get through the worst. He didn't mind her so much now, and he was sure she wouldn't mind him much now either. She had no choice.
"Let me fix us some coffee," Francesca offered, standing up.
He sat back and watched as she took a steel percolator and a round metal tin from one of the row of glass-fronted cupboards running along the wall over the sink. The kitchen was painted a glossy cream-yellow, easy to wipe clean.
Francesca added bottled water and coffee to the pot and put it on the stove. She went to another cupboard and pulled down two cups and saucers. She wiped the insides of the cups with a dishcloth she found on top of the fridge. She seemed to be enjoying herself, as a tiny smile made its way to her lips and lit up parts of her eyes while she busied herself. Max supposed she missed a life without servants.
He looked at his watch. It was now four-fifteen. It was still dark outside but he could hear the first birds of morning chirruping in the garden, competing with the insects. Chantale was due at the house at eight. Too late to go bed. He'd have to skip sleep.
The coffee brewed with a low whistle. Francesca decanted it into a thermos pot and brought it over to the table with the cups, saucers, spoons, a jug of cream, and a bowl of sugar all on a tray. Max tasted the coffee. It was the same stuff he'd had at Carver's club. Probably the family's homegrown brand.
They sat in near silence. Max complimented her on the coffee. She smoked first one then another cigarette.
"Mrs. Carver-?"
"Why don't you call me Francesca?"
"Francesca-what were you and your son doing going to Port-au-Prince that day?"
Max lifted the pause button on his tape recorder.
"We had an appointment."
"Who with?"
"A man called Filius Dufour. Well, no ordinary man, a houngan-a voodoo priest."
"You were taking Charlie to see a voodoo priest on his birthday?" Max said, sounding more surprised than he actually was. The local religion was well entrenched in the Carver household. He remembered how defensive of it Allain had been.
"I'd been taking him to see Filius once a week every week for six months."
"Why?"
"Filius was helping us-Charlie and me."
"How?"
"How long have you got?"
"As long as you need," Max said.
Francesca checked Max's watch. Max inspected the amount of tape in his machine. It was a two-hour cassette, almost through on the first side. He fast-forwarded it and turned it over. He hit RECORD as soon as she started speaking.
"Charlie was born in Miami on September 4, 1991. One of the nurses screamed when she saw his face. It looked like he'd been born with a pitch-black caul, but it was only his hair. He was born with it all, you see. It sometimes happens.
"We came back to Haiti three weeks later. The country was then run by Aristide-a kind of mob rule masquerading as a government. A lot of people were leaving. Not just the boat people, but the rich, all the business brains. Gustav insisted on staying put, even though Aristide had twice singled us out in public speeches as white people who'd 'stolen' everything from the poor black Haitians. Gustav knew Aristide was going to get overthrown. He was friendly with some of the military and he was just as friendly with some of Aristide's key people."
"He gets around," Max said.
"Gustav subscribes to the 'Keep your friends close, your enemies closer' maxim," Francesca said and then met his eyes and held them for a moment. Max sensed her probing him.
"Aristide was overthrown on September 30," she continued. "Gustav threw a party that night. Aristide was meant to have been assassinated, but there was a change of plan. It was a happy party, nonetheless.
"Charlie was christened a month later. I knew something wasn't right with him from the very beginning. When I was a teenager I babysat my nephews and niece when they were babies and they were very different from Charlie. They were responsive. They recognized me. Charlie wasn't like that. He never looked at me directly. He never seemed particularly interested. He never reached out to me; he never smiled. Nothing. And-here's the odd thing-he didn't cry."
"Not at all?"
"Not ever. He made sounds-baby sounds-but I never heard him cry. Babies cry all the time. They cry if they wet themselves or poo themselves. They cry when they're hungry. They cry when they want your attention. Not Charlie. He was very very quiet. Sometimes it was like he wasn't there.
"We had a doctor checking up on him every week or so. I mentioned it to him, the boy's silence. He joked and told me to make the most of it, that it wouldn't last.
"But, of course, it did. Allain told me not to worry, that Gustav himself didn't start talking before he was almost four."
Francesca stopped and lit another cigarette. Max was getting used to the smell.
"Actually, I say Charlie wasn't responsive, but he always smiled at Gustav. And I heard him laugh too whenever the old man pulled faces at him or tickled him. They had a real bond. Gustav was really really proud of Charlie. He always made time for him. Took him with him to the bank a few times. Sat with him at night, fed him, changed him. It was very touching, seeing them together. I'd never seen Gustav happier. He isn't too good with his other grandchildren. Not as attentive. Charlie's his only grandson. I think he wants to die safe in the knowledge that the family name will be preserved, live on. He's old-fashioned, but this whole country isn't much more advanced than him."
Max poured himself another cup of coffee. The first had chased the tiredness out of his bones and out from behind his eyes.
"So, this-Charlie's condition-was playing on your mind when you went to see the voodoo priest? It wasn't about you at all, was it? It was about your son. You thought something was wrong with him, so you took him to the priest for an opinion?"
"Yes and no. It's not quite like that. Charlie had a thing about his hair…"
"I saw the picture," Max said shortly. "Him in that dress."
"He wouldn't let anybody cut it…"
"So your husband explained," Max said disgustedly.
"We really had no choice. People were making Charlie's life a misery."
"Was this before or after you put him in a dress?" Max said sarcastically.
"That was for his own good," Francesca insisted testily. "You know that Charlie screamed anytime someone went near him with a pair of scissors?"
"Yes, Allain told me."
"Did he tell you how he screamed? It wasn't a baby's scream, or even a little boy's scream. It was pure pain-this blood-curdling, earsplitting screech. Imagine a cave of screeching bats. People said they could hear it two miles away."
Max paused the tape. Francesca had upset herself with the recollection. She was biting her lip and trying hard not to cry. He wanted to hold her and let her loose the grief on his shoulder, but it didn't feel appropriate. He was interviewing her, gathering evidence, not acting as her counselor or confessor.
"Explain the dress," he said after she'd blinked away the tears. He already knew the answer but was easing her back into the Q amp; A.
"Charlie's hair was never cut. It got unwieldy. We tied it in bunches and bows, and finally we braided it. It was easier to put him in a dress and present him to the outside world as a girl than to explain why his hair was that way. It worked, you know. He wore a dress the whole time," Francesca said.
"How did you find out about the voodoo priest?"
"One day, out of the blue, Rose brought me a handwritten message from him. It mentioned things about me and Charlie that no one-and I mean no one-could have known."
"Care to elaborate?"
"No," she said bluntly. "But if you're as good as Allain says you are, you'll surely find out."
Max continued with his questions.
"How did Rose know the priest?"
"Her mother, Eliane, works for him."
"I see," Max said, already lining up potential suspects. "Could Rose have known about these 'things' you won't tell me about?"
"No."
"Not even in a place as small as this?"
"No."
"OK. So you and Charlie went along to see the priest? What happened there?"
"He talked to me, and then he talked to Charlie, separately, in private."
"How old was Charlie then, two?"
"Two and a half."
"Had he started talking by then?"
"No. Not a word."
"Then how did they communicate?"
"I don't know because I wasn't there, but whatever it was, it worked, because Charlie changed toward me. He opened up. He looked at me. He even started smiling-and he had such a lovely smile, the sort that really made your day when you saw it."
Francesca's voice had gone down to a whisper, all her words dwarfed by a mounting grief.
She blew her nose loudly, honking like a seal, and then she lit another cigarette, the last one she had. She crushed the packet in her fist.
"How often did you and Charlie see the priest?"
"Once a week."
"Same day and time?"
"No, it always varied. Rose would tell me when."
"I'll have to see this guy."
Francesca took a folded piece of paper out of her breast pocket and slid it across to him.
"Filius's address and directions. He's expecting you at around two this afternoon."
"He's expecting me?"
"He saw you coming. He told me two months ago."
"What do you mean he 'saw me coming' two months ago? I didn't know I was coming two months ago."
"He sees things."
"Like a fortune-teller?"
"Something like that, but what he does isn't the same."
"How come you acted that way at dinner?"
"I didn't realize it was you."
"So you've talked to Doofoor since?"
"Yes."
"Which is why you came down here?"
She nodded.
"He must have some hold on you."
"It's not like that."
"Did you tell my predecessors any of this?"
"No. I only told them about the kidnapping."
"Why?"
"Emmanuel was a nice guy, but he was indiscreet, a gossip. I hated Clyde Beeson and I didn't care too much for Medd either. They were only here for the money."
"It's what they do for a living, Mrs. Carver," Max said. "Same as anybody else doing a job. Could be in an office, could be pumping gas, could be a cop, could be a fireman-most people do what they do for money. Those that don't are either lucky or stupid."
"Then you must be stupid, Max." She smiled, looking him straight in the eye. "Because you're not lucky."
She had little else to tell him after that.
Max walked her to the gate. She shook his hand and apologized for her outburst at dinner. She begged him to find Charlie. He said he'd do his best and watched her head up the path at the end of which, she'd told him, a car was waiting for her.
Dawn had broken and a grayish blue light hung about the courtyard and garden, which was noisy with birds no doubt breakfasting on sluggish insects. Beyond him, the street was starting to come alive.
As he went back to the house, he heard a car start up in the driveway. A door opened and closed and the car drove away.