Mr. Clarinet

"I could tell Eddie had a serious thing for Josie. He'd be round there every day, bringing her something, always when I was out getting supplies. She always refused to take it, but in the nicest way, so as not to offend him."

"What did you do about it?"

"What could I do? He was a Macoute—and one of the most feared ones in the country."

"Must have pissed you off, being that weak?"

"Of course it did." Vincent looked at him quizzically, trying to determine his angle.

Max didn't have one. He'd wanted to get a rise out of Paul, deliberately unsettle him.

"Go on."

"Business was good. Two years after we'd arrived, we moved out of La Saline and bought a small house in town. I thought we were pretty much safe. No one had come after us. We could relax a little. Josie had taken well to life in Haiti. She really took to the people and they to her. She never really got homesick, but obviously she missed her parents. She couldn't even send them a postcard to let them know she was OK, but she accepted that that was the price to pay for her freedom.

"Things went wrong the morning Gustav Carver stopped for petrol. I refused to serve him. His driver got out, pulled a gun on me, and ordered me to pump gas. Of course, the minute he did that he and his car were suddenly surrounded by anybody who was around—some twenty people, some of them had guns, others machetes and knives. They would have killed him and old man Carver if I'd given the word, but what better punishment than to humiliate a proud man in front of the son of the man whose life he'd destroyed? I tell you it was sweet.

"I took the gun off the driver and told him and his boss to clear off my property. The driver had to push the car three miles in the hot sun to the next petrol station—because there were no cell phones then, car phones didn't work out here, and we don't exactly have emergency breakdown services to come and bail you out if you break down.

"Carver was looking at me through the back window like he wanted to kill me. Then he saw Josie and his expression changed. He smiled, at her, but—mostly—at me.

"I'm not sure if things would have been different if I'd let Carver fill his car up and drive away. It's not the way I really live my life. I can't imagine a situation where I'd ever kowtow to that evil bastard. If I did that, I might as well have driven those bulldozers through my family estate myself.

"But, all that day and the next, I kept expecting the worst, that a couple of carloads of Macoutes would come for me."

Vincent broke off and looked away at the photograph of him and his father. His face was rigid, his lips pinched tight, his jaw clamped shut. He was trying hard not to explode—whether in anger or sadness, Max couldn't tell. He doubted Paul had opened up to anyone in many, many years, so that all the emotions he'd felt at the time had been bottled up, sealed away and never given the space to dissipate.

"It's all right, Vincent," Max said quietly.

Paul took a few deep breaths, regained his composure, and continued.

"A few weeks later Josie went missing. Someone told me she'd gone off in a car with Eddie Faustin. I sent people out looking for her, but they couldn't find her. I went to Faustin's house. They weren't there. I carried on looking. I combed the city, I went to all the spots Faustin hung out. She was nowhere to be found.

"When I got back home there was Gustav Carver, waiting for me indoors. After the petrol incident, Carver had done some digging. He had two Scotland Yard detectives with him, as well as a copy of Josie's police record, and a whole bunch of English newspapers with headlines about her case and how she'd skipped the country. Some papers even claimed I'd kidnapped her, and had cartoons showing me as King Kong. Carver said it was a good likeness.

"He told me he'd had a long chat with Josie and that she'd understood her predicament and agreed to his terms. But it all hinged on me saying yes—or so he said. If I said no, the detectives would take Josie and me back to England. If I gave my consent they'd go away and say we weren't in Haiti."

"What did he want you to agree to—giving up Josie?"

"Yes. He wanted her for his son, Allain. She was to remain with him for the rest of her life, bear him children, and have absolutely no contact with me whatsoever. That was it. As for me, well, I was free, as long as I never made any attempt to see her or contact her ever again. Oh, and I had to personally pump Carver's gas whenever he stopped by."

"And you agreed?"

"I had no choice. I reckoned he would have sent me back to England and kept Josie in Haiti. At least, me staying in the country meant that I was close to her."

"I don't get it," Max said. "Carver destroyed your father and everything your family had built up. Why not go the whole way and get rid of you too?"