Mr. Clarinet

Neither said a word. They studied each other, Paul leaning right back in his chair so even the reflection vanished from his eyes and left Max looking deep into two barrels.

The silence widened and then congealed around them. Max couldn't hear anything going on outside. The room was probably soundproofed. There was a long couch with cushions piled up on one side, a book beside it on the floor, open, facedown. The couch was as wide as a single bed. He imagined Paul lying there and reading, engrossed in one of the many bound volumes on his shelf.

The room was closer to a museum than an office or a study. A framed Haitian flag hung on one of the walls—tattered and dirty, with a burn hole in the white center. Facing it was a blown-up black-and-white photograph of a tall, bald man in a dark pinstriped suit holding a young child's hand. They were looking at the world with level, questioning stares—especially the child. Behind them, blurred, was the Presidential Palace.

"Your father?" Max motioned to the picture. He'd guessed from the eyes that they were related, although he was a lot lighter than his son. He could have passed for Mediterranean.

"Yes. A great man. He had a vision for this country," Paul said, fixing Max with a stare he could feel but barely see.

Max got out of his chair and went over to the photograph for a closer look. There was something very, very familiar in the father's face. Vincent was wearing the same clothes as his father. Neither was smiling. They looked as though they'd been stopped hurrying somewhere important, and had posed out of politeness.

Max was sure he'd seen Perry Paul before—no, certain of it. But where?

He returned to his seat. A thought began to form in his mind. He dismissed it as impossible but it came right back at him.

Vincent Paul sat forward, smiling as if he'd read Max's mind. The light finally reached his eyes and revealed them to be a pale hazel color with a hint of orange about them—surprisingly delicate, pretty eyes.

"I'm going to tell you something I never told the other two," Vincent said quietly.

"What?" Max asked, as a cold wave of anticipation began to build up around his shoulders.

"I'm Charlie Carver's father."

Chapter 45

"THE WOMAN YOU know as Francesca Carver was once called Josephine Latimer," Vincent began. "Francesca is her middle name. The rest of it came later."

"I first met her in Cambridge, England, in the very early seventies. I was a student at the university there. Josie lived there with her parents. I met her in a pub one night. I heard her before I saw her—laughing, filling the place with laughter. I looked for her across the room and found her, staring right at me. She was stupendously good-looking."

Vincent smiled warmly as he spoke through his memory, his head leaning back a little, staring more toward the ceiling than at Max.

"And you helped her skip the country so she didn't have to go to jail for killing someone in a hit-and-run. I know," Max broke in. "Question is: where'd he go? That damsel-in-distress-rescuing guy? The one who threw his life away for love?"

The question caught Paul off-guard.

"I didn't throw my life away," he countered.

"So you'd've done the same thing all over?"

"Wouldn't you?" Paul smiled.

"A little regret's always healthy," Max said. "Why do you hate the Carvers?"

"Only Gustav."

"What's Allain doing right?"

"He's not his father," Paul answered. "When Josie and I arrived in Haiti, we went to my family home in Pétionville. My family lived on a large estate on top of a hill. I hadn't told anyone I was coming, just to be on the safe side.

"When we got there we found that the whole place—that's five big houses, one of which I remember my father building practically with his bare hands—the whole lot had been bulldozed by order of Gustav Carver. My father owed him money. He collected—and how."

"That's pretty extreme," Max said.

"Carver has an extreme dislike of competition. If it had been a straight business debt, I could just about have accepted it as 'fair.' That kind of thing happens in business all the time. But this wasn't business, this was personal. And when it's personal Carver always plays to the absolute finish."

"So what happened?"

"The short version: my family had two very successful businesses—import-export and construction. We were undercutting Carver on certain products, sometimes by up to fifty percent, sometimes more. People stopped buying from him and came to us. We also had a project to build a hotel for pilgrims going to Saut d'Eau, the sacred waterfalls. It was going to be low budget, but with the volume of business it was going to attract, we would have made a fortune. Gustav Carver was furious. He was losing face and a lot of money—and the only thing that man hates more than losing money is the people he's losing it to.