Mr. Clarinet

"It's your gig." Chantale sighed. She hadn't mentioned the temple and she didn't seem to be mad at him either. She was behaving normally, flashing her easy smile and occasionally laughing her lusty laugh, all affectionate professionalism. She was a tough one to read, a consummate politician, mistress of on-tap pleasantness.

"Did your husband discuss his cases with you?"

"No. We had a rule about not bringing our work home with us. You?"

"I wasn't married when I was a cop. But yeah, me and Sandra used to talk about what I was workin' on."

"She ever crack a case for you?"

"Yeah, a couple of times."

"Didn't that piss you off? Make you doubt your abilities?"

"No." Max laughed and smiled at the memory. "Never. I was proud of her—real proud. I was always proud of her."

They stopped in traffic. Chantale studied him as they waited. Max caught her at it and tried to read what conclusions she was coming to. She gave nothing away.

* * *

All of the first five Faustin houses on Max's list had been destroyed by fire, mobs, the army, a hurricane, and a UN helicopter crash. No one nearby knew who Eddie Faustin was.

The sixth house they went to was at the edge of the Carrefour slum. It was the only intact structure on a road otherwise made up of ruins converted into hovels. The house was set a little away from the street, with steps leading up to the front door. All the windows were bare. Max noted that the panes, while filthy, were all intact. No one answered the door when they knocked. They checked the windows but the place appeared deserted, despite the furniture in the front rooms and the white sheets Chantale reported hanging on the clothesline in the backyard, when Max had given her a boost so she could see over the wall.

They asked a couple of passersby about who lived in the house. They said they didn't know, that the house had been that way for a long time. No one entering, no one leaving.

"How come no one's moved in—from off the street?" Max asked.

They couldn't say.

Max decided he'd come back at night to take a closer look. He didn't want Chantale there when he broke in. He'd put her through enough.

Traveling down the rest of the list took them to houses whose owners were long gone, leaving their shells to the poor. The former home of Jerome Faustin was overflowing with famine kids with bellies so bloated they had to walk with their legs wide apart to keep their balance. It was a variation on the same picture in the next house, only these children were sitting down to eat with their parents—dried leaves, mud cakes, and a bucket of greenish water. Max didn't believe they were going to put any of it in their mouths until he saw a little girl of about five bite off a piece of the baked dirt. He felt ready to gag, but he held it in—partly out of respect for these poor souls, who hadn't eaten what he could easily lose and not miss, and partly out of fear that his vomit would make it into their food chain. He wanted to give their parents all the money in his pocket but Chantale advised him against it, telling him to buy them food instead.

They found a store and bought a few sacks of maize, rice, beans, and plantain. They came back and left it in the front yard. The children and adults looked at them curiously and carried on eating their meal.

Max and Chantale moved on. By late afternoon, they'd finished. They'd talked to two old ladies, who'd offered them lemonade and stale cookies, a man on his porch looking at a year-old newspaper, a mechanic and his son, a woman who asked them to read to her from a German Bible, another who thought Max was a priest. Max was now sure the house in Carrefour belonged—or had belonged—to Eddie Faustin.

After he'd taken Chantale home, he drove back there.

Chapter 42

MAX WAITED UNTIL nightfall; then he went around to the back of the house, climbed over the wall, and dropped down into a garden of dead grass and withered bushes.

He picked the two back-door locks and let himself in.

He turned on his flashlight. Inside, the dust lay so thick and soft it looked like Christmas-card snow. No one had been here in a long while.

There were two floors and a basement.

He went upstairs. Large rooms with plenty of good-quality furniture—cupboards, closets, chest of drawers, tables, and chairs, all in mahogany, clawed brass-feet on everything. Marble or glass coffee tables. Brass beds with still-hard mattresses, well-upholstered armchairs and sofas.

The place had barely been lived in, but whoever had owned the house must have felt safe enough here, at the edge of the slum, a few feet away from a cauldron of poverty, desperation, and violence. There were no bars on any of the windows. Max guessed the owners were locals, well known in the slum; fuck-with-us-at-your-peril feared—Eddie Faustin, ex-Macoute? Maybe? No way to confirm it yet.