Mr. Clarinet

Max realized Huxley had been leading up to this moment, feeding him bigger and bigger scraps of information, getting him hungrier and hungrier before closing the kitchen and rewriting the rules his way. He'd been played.

"What's in it for you?" Max asked.

"My Pulitzer." Huxley smiled. "I'm writing a book about the invasion and its aftermath—you know, the bullshit you'll never read about in the papers. You wouldn't believe what's been going on here, what people have been getting away with."

"Like what?"

Just then, Buzz-cut walked in. He looked over at Max and Huxley and smiled snidely, showing wolfish canine teeth.

"Hello ladies," he sneered.

He tossed Max a disgusted look. His gray-green eyes might have been attractive had they not been so small and cold, icy-bright pinpricks in a face that breathed meanness.

He walked into the room between the cubicles. They heard him draining his bladder all over the bed and the box and the floor. They looked at each other. Max saw contempt in Huxley's eyes—but it ran deep, all through him, from the very bottom of his heart.

The soldier finished and came out of the room, zipping himself up. He shot them another look and belched long and loud in their direction.

Max looked at him, gave him the right amount of attention, but was careful not to lock eyes with him. Most people you could stare down if you let them think you had nothing to lose; others you had to let stare you down, no matter how much you knew you could fuck them up. It was all about choosing your moment and reading your people. And this was all wrong.

Buzz-cut walked out of the corridor and back to the bar.

Huxley took out another cigarette. He tried to light it but his hands were shaking worse than a detoxing wino's. Max took the lighter from him and worked the flame.

"It's shit like that—shit like him—I'm writing about," Huxley spat through his first cloud of smoke, his voice quivering with anger. "Fucking Americans should be ashamed of themselves having a scumbag like that fighting in their name."

Max agreed with him but didn't say so.

"So you are Haitian, Shawn?"

Huxley was taken aback.

"You see a lot, don't you, Max?"

"Only what's there," Max said, but he'd only just guessed.

"You're right: I was born here. I was adopted by a Canadian couple when I was four, after my parents died. They told me about my heritage a few years back, before I went to college," Huxley explained.

"So this is like a Roots-type thing for you?"

"More a fruit-from-the-tree-type thing. I know where I came from," said Huxley. "Call this—what I'm doing—giving a little something back."

Max warmed to him. It wasn't just the rum or their shared loathing of Buzz-cut. There was a sincerity about Huxley you didn't find in the media: maybe he was new to the game and still had most of his cherry or maybe he hadn't wised up that it was a game at all, thought he was on a mission, chasing "the truth." Max had had ideals once, when he'd started out as a cop, young enough to believe in bullshit like people's inherent good and that things could improve and change for the better; he'd fancied himself some kind of superhero. It had taken him less than a week on the streets to turn into an extreme cynic.

"Where can I reach you?" Max asked.

"I'm at the Hotel Olffson. Most famous hotel in Haiti."

"Is that saying anything?"

"Graham Greene stayed there."

"Who?"

"Mick Jagger too. In fact I'm in the same room he stayed in when he wrote 'Emotional Rescue.' You don't look too impressed, Max. Not a Stones fan?"

"Anyone important been a guest of the place?" Max smirked.

"None you'd know." Huxley laughed and handed him his business card. It gave his name and profession, and the hotel's address and phone number.

Max palmed the card and slipped it in his jacket pocket, next to the signed Sinatra CD Carver had given him.

"I'll be in touch as soon as I've found my bearings," Max promised.

"Please do that," Huxley said.

Chapter 13

MAX LEFT LA COUPOLE at around two a.m. The Barbancourt rum was making his head reel, but not in an unpleasant way. Booze had always promised to take him up someplace good only to fuck with his controls and leave him stranded midway, tasting the inevitable crash. This was a different kind of drunk, closer to an opiate float. He had a smile on his face and that good feeling in his heart that everything would be all right and the world wasn't such a bad place really. The booze was that good.