Mr. Clarinet

Max was drunker than he thought. He'd mistaken the point of stopping and turning back for the point of no return. It had been a very long while. When he spit in people's faces he'd already lost control.

"I can help you out," said Huxley, dragging on his cigarette.

"Don't need you," Max replied, looking Huxley over. The journalist was even slighter in bright light, as if he lived on a diet of celery, cigarettes, and water.

"I've been here close to three years. Arrived a few months before the invasion. I know my way around. I know the people—how to work their combinations, make them open up."

"I've got one better." Max smiled, thinking of Chantale.

"That could be the case, but I think I'm onto something that could be tied in with the kidnapping."

"Yeah? What's that? And how come you haven't followed it through, all the way to the reward money?" Max asked.

"It's not something you can do alone," Huxley said, dropping the cigarette he'd smoked to the filter on the floor and grinding it out under his heel.

Max couldn't be sure Huxley was for real. That was the trouble with journalists. You couldn't trust them, not ever. Most of them were born backstabbers with more faces than diamonds.

What's more, why was Huxley offering to help him? Journalists never helped anyone but themselves. What was Huxley's angle? Probably financial, Max guessed. The Charlie Carver case wasn't exactly going to make the front pages in North America.

Max decided to go along with Huxley—albeit guardedly. He was in a foreign country that seemed to be losing its grip on the twentieth century and falling backwards through time. Huxley could be useful to him.

"You meet any of my predecessors?" Max asked.

"The short guy—sleazy-looking dude."

"Clyde Beeson?"

"That's him. I saw him around my hotel a lot—"

"Hotel?"

"The Hotel Olffson—where I'm staying."

"What was he doing there?"

"Hanging around the journalists, picking up scraps."

"Sounds about right," Max muttered. "So how did you know where he was headed?"

"I heard him asking someone at the bar for directions to the waterfalls one night."

"Waterfalls?" Max stopped him, remembering where Medd had gone. "The voodoo place?"

"Yeah. Said he was following up a lead. Last time I ever saw him," Huxley said. "Did you know him?"

"Florida PI, what do you expect?" Max replied.

Beeson went to the waterfalls too. What kind of lead were they chasing?

"Were you friends?" Huxley asked.

"No, the opposite," Max said. "I went to see him before I came out here. He was pretty fucked up, to say the least."

"What happened to him?"

"Don't ask."

Huxley looked Max right in the eye and pulled an ambiguous smile—part knowing, part amused—the sort that people used when they wanted you to think they knew more than they did. Max wasn't going to fall for that shit. He'd used it himself.

"Did Beeson mention Vincent Paul to you?"

"Yeah he did," Max said.

"Vincent Paul, Le Roi de Cité Soleil. That's what they call him, the scared rich folk—after Louis XIV, the glamorous French king. It's meant as an insult."

"How so?"

"Vincent lives in or around Cité Soleil—Shit City, as I call it. It's this gigantic slum outside of Port-au-Prince, by the coast. Makes your 'hoods back home look like Park Avenue. In fact, there's nothing like Cité Soleil anywhere in the world. I've been to slums in Bombay, Rio, Mexico City—paradise in comparison. Here you're talking close to half a million people—that's near ten percent of the population—living on six square miles of shit and disease. Literally. Place even has its own canal. 'The Boston Canal,' they call it. It's filled with old oil from the power plant."

Max had taken everything in. Concentrating on the inflowing information had sobered him, helped clear his mind.

"And you say that's where I can find Vincent Paul?"

"Yeah. They say he who runs Cité Soleil runs Haiti. The people there are so poor, if you promise them food, clean water, and clothes they'll throw bricks at whoever you point to. Some say Paul's paid by the CIA. Whenever they want a president ousted they get him to stir up Cité Soleil."

"Do you think that's true?"

"The only way to find out would be to ask the man himself, and you don't do that. He talks to you, not the other way around."

"Has he talked to you?"

"Had an appointment a while back, but he changed his mind."

"Why?"

"Didn't say," Huxley chuckled.

"Do you know anything about this town he's meant to have built?" Max asked.

"Only that no one knows where it is. No one's ever been there."

"Do you think it exists?"

"Maybe, maybe not. You never can tell very much about anything in Haiti. This country runs on myths, rumors, hearsay, gossip. The truth has a way of getting lost and disbelieved."

"Do you think Vincent Paul's got anything to do with Charlie Carver's disappearance?" Max asked.

"Why don't we meet up tomorrow or the day after and have a long talk, see what we can see, maybe work out a way of helping each other," Huxley said, smiling. He crushed his new cigarette out.