Mr. Clarinet

BACK IN MIAMI, Max took a cab from the airport to his house. He asked the driver to take the longer way around, down Le Jeune Road, so he could check out Little Havana and Coral Gables to get a feel for how far his hometown had come in seven years, check the pulse beating between the poles, from barrio to billionaires' row.

Max's father-in-law had been looking after the house. He'd picked up the bills. Max owed him $3,000, but that wasn't a problem, because Carver had given him a $25,000 cash advance in New York when he'd signed the contract. He'd played dumb and brought Dave Torres with him to read through it and witness it. It had been funny watching Torres and Carver pretend they'd never met. Lawyers are great actors, second only in talent to their guilty clients.

Max stared out of the passenger window but not much was getting through. Miami: Seven Years Later was passing him by in a glistening blur of cars, more cars, palm trees, and blue sky. It had been raining when the plane touched down, one of those almighty Sunshine State soakings where the raindrops hit the ground so hard they bounce. The downpour had stopped a few minutes before he'd walked out of the airport. He couldn't focus on the outside when there was so much going on within. He was thinking about returning to his old home. He hoped his in-laws hadn't decided to spring a surprise welcome-back party on him. They were good-hearted, always well-intentioned people, and it was just the sort of good-hearted, well-intentioned shit they'd pull.

They'd passed Little Havana and Coral Gables and he hadn't even noticed. Now they were on Vizcaya's main highway and heading for the Rickenbacker Causeway.

Sandra had always met him at the airport when he'd been away on a case, or out of town to meet a potential client. She'd ask him how it had gone, although she could always tell, she said, by looking at him. They'd walk out of the Arrivals section and she'd leave him waiting outside the terminal while she went and got the car. If things had gone well, he'd do the driving. On the way home, he'd tell her what had happened and what he'd done to make it so. By the time they'd reached the front door, he'd have talked the case dry and the subject would be closed, never to be mentioned again. Sometimes he'd come out into Arrivals beaming, triumphant, vindicated, having flown out someplace on a wild hunch that had turned up one of those golden leads that bring a case to a swift and happy conclusion. Those occasions were few and far between, but they were always Occasions. They'd go out dancing, or to dinner, or down The L Bar if there were other people to thank. But two times out of three Sandra did the driving, because she'd have read failure in Max's body language, resigned despair in his face. She'd make light small talk while he sat and brooded in silence, staring out at the sky through the windscreen. She'd sprinkle domestic trivialities in his thought stream, stuff about mended curtains and cleaned carpets and new household appliances, stuff to let him know that their life went on despite the deaths he'd uncovered and had to report back to a hoping-against-hope spouse or relative or friend.

She'd always been there, waiting at the barrier, the face for him.

He'd looked for her, of course, when he'd come through Arrivals. He'd looked for her in the faces of women who might have been waiting for men, but none of them looked as she always had.

He couldn't go back to the house. Not now. He wasn't ready for that museum of happy memories.

"Driver? Keep driving, don't take the turn," Max said as he heard the indicator lights go on.

"Where we goin'?"

"The Radisson Hotel, North Kendall Drive."

* * *

"Hey Max Mingus! Wassappenin' wit'chu?" Joe Liston's voice boomed down the phone when Max called him from his hotel room.

"Good to hear your voice, Joe. How you been?"

"Good, Max, good. You home now?"

"No. I'm staying at the Radisson in Kendall for a few days."

"What's wrong wit' your house, man?"

"Sandra's cousins are there," Max lied. "I thought I'd give them the run of the place a while longer."

"Yeah?" Joe said, chuckling. "They got ID?"

"ID?"

"You're a big fuckin' hero 'round here, Mingus, don't you go spoilin' it," Joe said, losing the chuckle. "Ain't no one at your house, man. I've been sendin' a patrol car up and down your street on the hour every hour since Sandra passed."

Max should have known better. He felt embarrassed.

"I ain't gonna be thinkin' more or less of you 'cause you're hurtin'. I will think less of you if you start playin' me for some fool that just got off the bus from Retard City, Ohio," Joe said, admonishing him as he probably did his children, cutting the reproach with a guilt-inducer.