Mr. Clarinet

"Sorry," Allain said sheepishly. "I forgot."

He wasn't drunk.

Allain had Max's plane ticket waiting for him on the table. He'd be leaving on the eleven-thirty flight back to Miami the following day.

"Chantale'll take you," Allain said.

"Where is she?"

"Her mother died on Tuesday. She took her ashes back to her hometown."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Max said. "Does she know what happened?"

"Yes. Some," Allain said. "I haven't told her the full details. I'd appreciate it if you kept those to yourself."

"Sure."

Max turned the subject to the raid in La Gonâve. Allain told Max what they'd found, looking absolutely horrified as he reeled off the details. When he'd said as much as he could, he broke down and wept.

After he'd recovered, Max resumed his questioning. Had his father never mentioned La Gonâve to him? No, never. Had his father ever played him the clarinet? No, but Allain knew he played. His father was also a fairly gifted trumpeter. Had he ever been suspicious of why his father had such a vast array of business contacts? No. Why should he? The Carvers were important people in Haiti. He remembered meeting Jimmy Carter before he'd run for president. In Haiti? No, Georgia. His father had done a deal to import Carter's peanuts after the Haitian crop had failed. Carter had even come by to say hello when he was in the country negotiating for the junta's peaceful surrender.

Max went back and forth like this, and the more he asked and the more Allain answered, looking Max in the eye with sad, bloodshot eyes, vision slowly steaming up with alcohol and heartbreak, the more he convinced Max that he really didn't have a clue about what had been going on around him.

"He hated me, you know," Allain blurted out. "He hated me for what I was and he hated me for what I wasn't."

He ran his hands back over his hair to smooth it down. He wasn't wearing his watch. Max noticed a thick, pink scar over his left wrist.

"What about you, Allain? Did you hate him?"

"No," Allain replied tearfully. "I would have forgiven him if he'd asked me."

"Even now? With all you know?"

"He's my father," Allain replied. "It doesn't excuse what he's done. That still stands. But he's my father all the same. All we have here is ourselves and our families."

"Did he ever use any of those psychological techniques on you?"

"What? Hypnosis? No. He wanted to get a shrink to straighten me out, but Mother wouldn't let him. She always stuck up for me." Allain looked at his blurred reflection on the table. He finished his glass and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Then he suddenly clicked his fingers and patted at his jacket.

"This is for you." He pulled out a crumpled but sealed envelope, which he held out to Max between his fingers.

Max opened it. Inside was a receipt for a money transfer into his account in Miami:

$5,000,000.

Five million dollars.

Max was speechless.

A big pile of money on a plate.

Tomorrow he was going back to Miami. He had his life to restart. The money in his hand would be a great big help, maybe all the help he'd ever need.

Then a shadow stole up and chilled the vision.

"But…" Max started, looking up from the zeros.

He remembered Claudette Thodore, sold for the money that went into the Carver empire, an empire made out of the flesh of children. Some of that money was in his hands, and that money was his future.

"Isn't it enough?" Allain looked suddenly frightened. "I'll gladly pay you more. Name it."

Max shook his head.

"I've never been paid for a job I didn't finish," he said finally. "I can't even tell you for sure what happened to Charlie."

"Vincent's back on the case again," Allain said. "He liked you, you know, my father. He said you were an honorable man."

"Yeah? Well, I don't like him," Max answered. "And I can't accept this money."

He put the receipt on the table.

"But it's in your account. It's yours." Allain shrugged. "Besides, the money doesn't know where it's come from."

"But I do. And that's a big problem," Max said. "I'll wire it back to you as soon as I get the chance. So long, Allain."

They shook hands, then Max walked out of the boardroom and headed for the elevator.

* * *

He parked his car near the pastel pink Roman Catholic cathedral and walked off into downtown Port-au-Prince.

Close to the Iron Market, he stopped by a building that claimed it was a church, despite looking like a warehouse from the outside.

He pushed the door open and went into what was, quite simply, the most extraordinary, beautiful chapel he'd ever seen.

At the end of the aisle, behind the altar, covering the entire wall from the ground up to three shuttered windows under the vault, was a mural, some twenty-one feet tall. He walked down between the plain-looking wooden pews and took a seat in the second row from the front. A dozen or more people—mostly women—were sitting or kneeling in various places.