MAX CALLED ALLAIN Carver the next morning and told him he wanted to interview all the servants who'd been working for them at the time of Charlie's kidnapping.
Allain said he'd fix it up for the following day.
Max interviewed fifteen servants in a small room on the first floor of the main house, overlooking the lawn and the thick perimeter of trees surrounding it. Other than a table and the chairs he and Chantale sat in, there was no furniture in the room. It quickly dawned on Max that the setup was a deliberate way of reinforcing the household's social code-servants always stood when spoken to. Max made a point of offering his seat to everyone he talked to. He was politely turned down and thanked for his kindness at every occasion by both the very old and the very young, all of them casting a quick, fearful look up at the only painting in the room-a large oil canvas of the present-day Gustav, dressed in his beige suit and black tie, glowering down on them above their interrogators. At his side, on a thick leather leash, sat a bulldog the same color as Gustav's suit, its head and expression bearing more than a passing resemblance to its master's gargoylic mien.
The Carver domestic staff were broadly divided into culinary, cleaning, mechanical, gardening, and security. Most of them worked directly for Gustav. Allain and Francesca employed their own retinue.
The interviews followed the same pattern. Max started with the old man's staff. He asked them their names, what they did, whom they worked with, how long they'd been there, where they were on the day of the kidnapping, and if they'd seen or heard anything suspicious in the weeks leading up to it. Other than their names, responsibilities, and length of service, their answers were very similar. On September 4, 1994, they'd been working in or around the house either with or in plain sight of several other people.
When he asked them about Eddie Faustin, he found that the bodyguard had seemingly passed through their lives like a perfect stranger. They all remembered him well enough but none had much else to say about him. They'd only known him by sight. Gustav Carver forbade the household staff from having any personal contact with his security, and vice versa. Even if they'd wanted to get acquainted with Faustin, it would have been next to impossible because he'd spent all day out of the house. They didn't see him when he finished his shifts either, because he didn't live in the servants' quarters with the rest of them, but in the main house, in one of the basement rooms reserved for key personnel.
The servants themselves were so alike in their smiling, benign deference, Max had a lot of trouble remembering any of them after one'd left the room and the next one came in.
They took a break for lunch, which was brought up to them-grilled fish so fresh they could still taste the sea in the meat, and a salad of tomatoes, kidney beans, and red and green peppers.
When they'd finished, Chantale rang the bell that had come with their food. The servants came into the room and cleared the plates.
"I meant to ask you about Noah's Ark?" Max said to Chantale, spotting the words as he rifled through his notebook for a clean page.
"Ask the next person who walks in," she said curtly. "They'll know more about it than me. They all come from there."
He did just that. The next interviews were with Allain and Francesca's retinue. Noah's Ark, he learned, was an orphanage school in Port-au-Prince, owned and run by the Carvers. The family recruited not just their domestic staff from there but virtually everyone who worked for them.
The new interviewees were different from Gustav's servants: they had clearly discernible personalities.
They opened up about Faustin. They described how they used to see him going through Francesca's rubbish, stealing things from the bins and taking them back to his room. When they'd cleaned out his room after his disappearance, they'd found a voodoo doll he'd made out of her hair, fingernail clippings, tissues, old lipstick tubes, and tampons. Some told Max they'd heard rumors that the bodyguard picked up light-skinned Dominican whores in Pйtionville and paid them extra to wear long, blond wigs while he fucked them. Many said they'd often seen Faustin entering or leaving a bar called Nwoi et Rouge, run by his ex-Macoute friends. One or two muttered that they'd seen him taking Charlie's soiled nappies out of the rubbish, while the last person they interviewed claimed he'd overheard Faustin talking about a house he owned in Port-au-Prince.
They finished the interviews in the late afternoon. As they drove down the mountain toward Pйtionville, Max opened the windows and let the air in. Chantale looked exhausted.
"Thanks for your help-again," he said, and then added, awkwardly, "I don't know what I'd do without you."
"Feel like getting a drink?" she offered, with a hint of a smile.
"Sure. Where do you suggest?"
"I'm sure you've got just the place in mind." She smiled.
"How about Eddie Faustin's old hangout?"
"You take me to the classiest joints," she said and laughed her lusty laugh.