Mr. Clarinet

The Virgin Mary, in a yellow dress and blue cape, dominated the Nativity panel. She came toward the viewer with her hands clasped over her heart, two angels behind her, holding up the ends of her cape. Beyond was an open, thatched structure, like a hut with a roof but no walls, very similar to ones he remembered seeing from his car window on rides in and out of Pétionville.

The mural panels were capped and linked by angels, playing music or bringing down garlands to the scenes below, suggesting that Jesus's life, from beginning to rebirth, was one act.

He'd sometimes cracked cases after a solo brainstorm in a church; an hour or so sitting contemplating eyeless icons and stained-glass windows, breathing in stale candle fumes and feeling the weight of all that humbled silence around him. That had helped him get his head straight and his thoughts in line.

What now? Where was he going after this?

In the immediate future, there were the same old problems he was facing before he went away: he'd have to go back to the house and face all its happy memories massed behind the door, ready to engulf him the minute he walked in, a welcoming party of ghosts. He thought of Sandra again and sorrow mounted up in hot, damp pressure behind his eyes and his nose.

When he got back to Miami, his career as a private detective would be over; the end of everything he knew how to do and still, somehow, wanted to do—despite the things he'd seen, all the danger he'd been in; despite fearing that he wasn't that good anymore, that there were things here he might have missed.

What was he going to take away from Haiti? What was he going to gain? Not money, not the satisfaction of a job well done because—and for the very first time in his career—he hadn't solved the case. He was leaving unfinished business behind. The little boy's face would haunt him for the rest of his life. He was still really none the wiser about what had happened to him. It was all speculation, conjecture, rumor. Poor kid. A double innocent.

He'd helped bring down an international pedophile ring—or at least started the process of its collapse. He'd saved the lives of countless children and spared their parents a taste of death in life, of having to carry on with a loved one gone. But what of the children they'd find and free? Could they be healed? Could the process be reversed, could they put back what had been taken away? He'd have to wait and see.

Wait and see: that was the best and worst he could expect from his life now. The thought spooked and then depressed him.

He left the church an hour later, stopping a woman coming through the front door to ask her the name of the place.

"La Cathédrale Sainte-Trinité," came the reply.

Outside, the sun dazzled him and the heat and noise disoriented him for a while, as he walked through the streets, farther and farther from the cool, quiet, innate somberness of the church.

He got his bearings again and walked back to where he'd parked the car. It was gone. Shards of broken glass on the sidewalk told him what had happened.

He didn't mind. In fact, he really didn't care.

He retraced his steps and found the Iron Market. Opposite was a long row of parked tap-taps waiting for custom—1960s hearses, coupes, and sedans, and the voodoo-psychedelia of their painted exteriors. He asked the driver at the head of the queue if he was going to Pétionville. The driver nodded and told him to get in.

They waited for a full forty minutes for the car to fill up with people coming in off the streets with baskets of vegetables, rice, and beans, live chickens, and dead wet fish. Max found himself wedged tightly in the corner, almost buried beneath the half a dozen bodies crammed in the back, a large woman sitting on his lap.

When the driver was good and ready, they left. He took the back streets out of the capital, where the only competing traffic were people and livestock. Inside the car it was lively, everyone seeming to know everyone else, everyone talking to one another—everyone, that is, except Max, who couldn't understand a damn word.

* * *

He packed his case and had dinner at a restaurant near La Coupole.

He ate rice, fish, and fried plantain, and left a good tip before walking out of the door with a wave and a smile to the pretty young girl who'd served him.

As he walked back home, he watched the children—bedraggled, skinny, bloated bellies, filthy, dressed in rags, many in tight packs, scavenging through rubbish heaps, some playing games, some hanging around on street corners, a few stumbling barefoot behind their parents. He wondered what he'd saved them from.

Chapter 58

"I'M SORRY ABOUT your mother, Chantale," Max said as they drove to the airport. They were halfway there and they'd barely spoken.