Mr. Clarinet

"After we'd searched as much we could we asked the marines for help," said Mathilde. "I mean, we're both American citizens, so's Claudette, but you know what happened? We saw a captain and all he wanted to know was why we'd left the U.S. for a 'shithole like this'—that's what he called it. Then he told us the soldiers 'were too busy to help,' that they had 'democracy to restore.' On our way back to our car we walked by a bar and there was a whole bunch of marines in there, busy 'restoring democracy' by getting loaded on beer and dope."

"What happened with Vincent Paul?"

"We went to him after the U.S. Army turned us down."

"Why didn't you go to him first?"

"I—" Mathilde began, but Caspar cut her off.

"How much do you know about him?"

"I've heard good and bad, mostly bad," Max answered.

"Same as Mathilde. She didn't want us going to him."

"It wasn't that—" Mathilde began, but caught the don't-try-and-deny-it-again look her husband was giving her. "OK. With the troops here and everything, I didn't want it known that someone like him was out looking for our daughter. I didn't want us getting arrested as accessories or sympathizers."

"Sympathizers?"

"Vincent was tight with Raoul Cedras—the head of the junta the invasion overthrew. They were good buddies," Caspar explained.

"I thought Aristide would be more Paul's type?" Max said.

"It started out that way, for sure. Aristide was a good guy once, when he was a priest, helping the poor in the slums. He did a lot for them. But the day he got elected president was the day he started turning into Papa Doc. Corrupt too. Pocketed millions in foreign aid. Two weeks into his term Vincent wanted to cap his ass."

"I never thought people like Paul had principles."

"He's a compassionate man," Mathilde said.

"So he helped you?"

"A lot," she said. "He spent a month searching the whole island for her. He had people looking for her in New York, Miami, the Dominican Republic, the other islands. He even got the UN to help."

"Everything but hire a private investigator," Max said.

"He said if he couldn't find her nobody could."

"And you believed him?"

"We would if he'd found her," Mathilde said.

"Anyone else get in touch with you? The Carvers had other guys looking for their son before me. Any of them talk to you?"

"No," Caspar said.

Max jotted down a few more notes. There was one more thing he needed to know from the Thodores. "From what I've heard, loads of kids go missing here every day. Vincent Paul must have a lot of people coming to him for help. Why did he help you?"

The couple looked at each other, unsure of what to say next.

Max made it easy on them:

"Look. I know what Vincent Paul's up to, and I truly do not give a flying fuck. I'm here to find Charlie Carver and Claudette too, if I can. So, please, level with me. Why did Vincent help you out?"

"He's a friend of the family—my family," Caspar said. "My brother and him go back a ways."

"Paul gives your brother's church in Little Haiti money, right?"

"Not just that," said Caspar. "My brother runs this shelter for Haitian boat people in Miami. Vincent pays for it. He's invested a lot of money in Little Haiti, helped a lot of people get on their feet. He's a good man."

"Some people might beg to differ," Max pointed out and left it hanging right there. He stopped himself from saying that down the road from Little Haiti, in Liberty City, there were ten-year-old kids selling Vincent Paul's dope while one or more of their parents were probably smoking their lives to hell with the same shit. The Thodores wouldn't give a good damn about any of that right now, and why should they?

"Some people could beg to differ about you too, Mr. Mingus," Mathilde retorted gently, making a point as distinct from driving one home.

"They usually do," Max said. He smiled at them both. They were decent people: honest, hardworking, and basically good; the very same kind of people he'd sworn to protect. "Thanks for all your help. Please don't blame yourselves for what happened to Claudette. There's nothing you could've done. Nothing at all. You can stop burglars and murderers and rapists, but people like The Orange Man, they're invisible. They're like you and me on the outside, usually the last people you'd suspect."

"Find her for us, please," Mathilde said. "I don't care about the people who took her. I just want our daughter back."

Chapter 41

"DO YOU STILL think Vincent Paul took Charlie?" Chantale asked in the car. They were driving to the first of the Faustin addresses on the page from the phone book.

"I'm not rulin' nothin' out. Fact he helped look for Claudette doesn't mean a damn thing. I'll know when I talk to him," Max said, putting two of the wire figurines he'd taken away with him under the dashboard with a couple of pictures of The Orange Man. He was going to send the figurines to Joe for fingerprinting.

"Do you know how to reach him?"

"I've a feeling he'll find me," Max said.