MAX OPENED HIS notebook and pressed RECORD.
“When did you first meet Charlie Carver?”
“His mother brought him to me a few months before his disappearance. I don’t remember the exact date,” Dufour said.
“How did you meet her?”
“She found me. She was very troubled.”
“How so?”
“If she hasn’t told you, neither can I.”
His response to the latter had been polite but firm. There wasn’t much life left in Dufour but Max could detect an iron will propping up his crumbling body. Max was playing the interview like a conversation, keeping his tone neutral and his body language relaxed and friendly—no arms on the table, no leaning forward, sitting back in the couch: tell me everything, send it my way.
Chantale was the opposite, virtually coming off her seat, as she strained to hear the old man, because the little that remained of his voice faded in and out, rising, when it did, to no louder than the hoarse hiss of hot grit hitting a snowbound road.
“What did you make of Charlie?”
“A very clever and happy boy.”
“How often did you see him?”
“Once a week.”
“The same day and time every week?”
“No, they changed from week to week.”
“Every week?”
“Every week.”
The sound of a lid being unscrewed came from Dufour’s direction, then a smell of kerosene and rotting vegetables overtook and flattened the pleasant scent of fresh lime that had been the room’s only perfume. Chantale screwed up her face and moved her head out of the way of the worst of the stench. Max paused the tape recorder.
Dufour said nothing by way of explanation. He rubbed his palms, then his wrists and forearms, and then he did his fingers one by one, popping their respective knuckles when he was finished. The smell went from bad to nasty to nearly unbearable, forming an acrid rubbery taste in the back of Max’s throat.
He looked away from the old man’s direction and glanced around the room. His eyes had acclimated to the quarter-light and he could see more now. All about him surfaces gave off the tiniest reflections of lamplight, reminding Max of photographs of crowds holding their lighters aloft during rock concerts, a butane Milky Way. To his left, were the shuttered windows, the fierce sun penetrating through the smallest fissures in the wood, beaming in from the outside in phosphorescent dots and dashes, a blinding Morse code.
Dufour closed the container and said something to Chantale.
“He says he’s ready to continue,” she said to Max.
“OK.” Max switched the recorder back on and stared straight ahead of him, where he could vaguely make out his host’s head and a pallid blur where his face was. “Who made the appointments? You or Mrs. Carver?”
“Me.”
“How did you notify them?”
“By telephone. Eliane—my maid—she called Rose, Charlie’s nanny.”
“How much notice did you give them?”
“Four, five hours.”
Max scribbled this down in his notebook.
“Was there anyone else with you at the time?”
“Only Eliane.”
“No one came to the house while you were with him? No visits?”
“No.”
“Did you tell anyone Charlie was coming to see you?”
“No.”
“Did anyone see Charlie coming here?”
“Everyone in the street.”
Dufour laughed as soon as Chantale had finished translating, to confirm that he was joking.
“Did you notice anyone suspicious watching your house? Anyone you hadn’t seen before?”
“No.”
“No one hanging around?”
“I would have seen.”
“I thought you didn’t like daylight?”
“There is more than one way to see,” Chantale translated.
Fasten your seatbelts, hold on tight—mystic mumbo-jumbo Disneyland here we come, Max felt like saying, but didn’t. He’d been here before, in a similar situation, talking to a voodoo priest who was rumored to have supernatural powers. That was back when he was looking for Boukman. The most powerful thing about that guy had been his smell—bathtubs of rum and months of skipped showers. He’d humored the priest, cut him slack, and come away from their encounter with a working understanding of Haiti’s national religion. Sometimes—though not often—it paid to tolerate and indulge.
“You’re not asking me the right questions,” Dufour said through Chantale.
“Yeah? What should I be asking?”
“I’m not the detective.”
“Do you know who kidnapped Charlie?”
“No.”
“I thought you could see into the future?”
“Not everything.”
How convenient. I guess that’s what you tell people when their relatives suddenly die.
“For example,” Dufour continued, “I can’t tell people when their loved ones are going to die.”
Max’s heart skipped a beat. He swallowed dry.
Coincidence: no such thing as mind reading.
Something—or someone—stirred behind him. He heard a floor-board subtly creak, as though it was being stepped on firmly but slowly. He glanced over his shoulder but couldn’t see anything. He looked at Chantale. It seemed she hadn’t heard anything.
Max turned back to Dufour.
“Tell me about Charlie. About when he came to see you? What did you do when he came?”
“We talked.”
“You talked?”
“Yes. We talked without speaking.”
“I see,” Max said. “So you—what? Used telepathy—ESP, ET—what?”
“Our spirits talked.”
“Your spirits talked?” he asked, as neutrally as possible. He desperately wanted to laugh.
They had officially entered the realm of bullshit, where everything happened and the far-fetched was never far enough. He’d play along, he told himself, until the rules got too fucked-up and the situation threatened to change owners. Then he’d weigh in and turn the tables.
“Our spirits. Who we are inside. You have one too. Don’t confuse your body with your soul. Your body is simply the house you live in while you’re here on earth.”
And don’t confuse me with a dickhead.
“So, how did you do that—talk to his spirit?”
“It’s what I do, although…it’s not something I’ve ever done with a living person before. Charlie was unique.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Him.”
“What did he tell you?”
“You were told why he came to see me?”
“Because he wasn’t talking, yeah—and?”
“He told me the reason why that was.”
Max saw something cross his peripheral vision to his right and quickly turned to catch it, but there was nothing to see.
“So, let me get this right—Charlie told you—or his ‘spirit’ told you—what was wrong with him? Why he wasn’t talking?”
“Yes.”
“And…?”
“And what?”
“What was wrong with him?”
“I told his mother. As she hasn’t told you, neither will I.”
“It could help my investigation,” Max said.
“It won’t.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“It won’t,” Dufour repeated firmly.
“And his mother took your word for it? Whatever it was you claim Charlie told you?”
“No, like you she was skeptical. Actually she didn’t believe me,” Chantale said hesitantly now, her tone questioning and confused. What she was hearing made no sense to her.
“What changed her mind?”
“If she wants to tell you, she will. I’m saying nothing.”
And Max knew he’d get nothing out of him, not this way. Whatever it was, Francesca or Allain Carver would have to tell him. He moved on.
“You said your ‘spirits talked’? Yours and Charlie’s? Do you still talk? Are you in touch with Charlie now?”
Chantale translated. Dufour didn’t answer.
Max realized that he hadn’t seen the maid leave the room. Was she in there with them? He searched the area in the direction of the door, but the surrounding darkness was too finite, too determined to yield no more than it had to.
“Oui,” Dufour said finally, shifting in his seat.
“Yes? Have you talked recently?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
Max’s mouth went dry. His excitement briefly dispelled all his doubts and disbelief.
“Where is he?”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Can he describe anything to you?”
“No—only that a man and a woman are caring for him. They’re like his parents.”
Max scribbled this down, even though he was recording their exchange.
“Does he say anything about where he’s at?”
“No.”
“Is he hurt?”
“He says he is being well looked after.”
“Has he told you who took him?”
“You have to find out yourself. That’s why you’re here. That is your purpose,” Dufour said, raising his voice, a hint of anger there.
“My purpose?” Max put down his notebook. He didn’t like what he’d just heard, the arrogance of it, the presumption.
“Everyone is put on earth for a purpose, Max. Every life has a reason,” Dufour continued calmly.
“And…so?”
“This—here and now—is your purpose. How things take their course is up to you, not me.”
“Are you saying I was born to find Charlie?”
“I never said you were going to find him. That hasn’t been decided yet.”
“Oh? And who decides that?”
“We don’t yet know why you’re here.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“We don’t know what’s keeping you here. With the others it was easy to see. They were here for the money. Mercenaries. Not right. But that’s not what brought you here.”
“Well, I ain’t here for the climate,” Max quipped, and then almost immediately remembered the dream he’d had in his hotel room in New York, where Sandra had told him to take the case because he had “no choice.” He remembered how he’d weighed up what remained of his options, how he’d glimpsed his future, how bleak it had all seemed. The old man was right—he was here to rescue his life as well as Charlie’s.
How much had Dufour already known about him? Before he could ask him, the old man started talking.
“God gives us free will and insight. To a few He gives a lot of both, to many He gives more of one than the other, and to most He limits what He gives. Those with both are aware of where their futures lie. Politicians see themselves as presidents, employees as managers, soldiers as generals, actors as superstars, and so forth. You can usually tell these people at the starting gate. They know what they want to do with their lives before they turn twenty. Now, how and when we fulfill our purpose—our ‘destiny’—is a lot up to us and also a little out of our hands. If God has a higher purpose in mind for us and sees us wasting time with a lowly one, He will intervene and set us back on the right path. Sometimes it’s a painful intervention, sometimes a seemingly ‘accidental’ or ‘coincidental’ one. The more insightful recognize His hand shaping their lives and follow the path they were meant to. Max, you were meant to come here.”
Max breathed in deeply. The stench had gone and the sweet tang of lime was back. He didn’t know what to think.
Stick to what you know, not what you’d like to know. You’re investigating a missing person, a young boy. That’s all that matters—what you’re going after. As Eldon Burns used to say: Do what you do and fuck the rest.
Max took Charlie’s poster out of his pocket and unfolded it on the table. He pointed out the cross scored in the poster’s margins.
“Can you see this?” he asked Dufour, pointing to the marks.
“Yes. Tonton Clarinette. That’s his mark,” Dufour replied.
“I thought Ton Ton Clarinet was a myth.”
“In Haiti all facts are based on myths.”
“So you’re saying that he’s for real?”
“It is all for you to discover.” Dufour smiled. “Go to the source of the myth. Find out how it started and why, and who started it.”
Max thought of Beeson and Medd and where Huxley had told him they’d gone: the waterfalls. He made a note to talk to Huxley again.
“Back to Charlie,” Max said. “Did he see Ton Ton Clarinet?”
“Yes.”
Max glanced at Chantale. She caught his stare. Max saw fear in her eyes.
“When?”
“The last time he came here, he told me he’d seen Tonton Clarinette.”
“Where?” Max leaned in closer.
“He didn’t say. He just told me he’d seen him.”
Max scribbled “interview Carver servants” in his notebook.
“People steal children here, don’t they?” Max asked.
“It happens a lot, yes.”
“Why do they steal them?”
“Why do they steal them in your country?”
“Sex—mostly. Ninety-nine percent of the time. Then it’s for money, or it’s childless couples who want to cut out adoption agencies, lonely women with a mothering fetish, that kind of thing.”
“Here we have other uses for children.”
Max thought back for a second and quickly got to Boukman.
“Voodoo?”
Dufour chuckled mockingly.
“No, not vodou. Vodou is not evil. It’s like Hinduism, with different gods for different things, and one great big God for all things. No children are ever sacrificed in vodou. Try again.”
“Devil worship? Black magic?”
“Black magic. Correct.”
“Why do they sacrifice children in black magic?”
“Various reasons, most of them insane. Most black magic is the preserve of deluded idiots, people who think if they do something shocking enough the devil will ride out of hell to shake their hands and grant them three wishes. But here it’s different. Here people know exactly what they’re doing. You see, you, me—all of us—we are all watched over, guarded by spirits—”
“Guardian angels?”
“Yes—whatever you want to call it. Now, almost the strongest protection anyone can have is a child’s protection. Children are innocent. Pure. Very little lasting harm comes to you when one is watching over you—and that which does is the sort of harm you learn and grow from.”
Max thought things through for a moment. This was the Boukman case all over. Boukman had sacrificed children to feed some demon he’d supposedly conjured up.
“You say children make the most powerful guardian angels because they’re innocent and pure?” Max asked. “What about Charlie? What would they want with him—apart from his being a child?”
“Charlie is very special,” Dufour said. “The protection he offers is greater, because he is among the purer spirits—those sometimes known as the Perpetually Pure, those who will never know evil. Other spirits trust them. They can open many doors. Not many people have them as guardians. Those who do are usually people like me, those who can see beyond the present.”
“So is it possible to…‘steal a spirit’?”
“Yes, of course. But it’s not a simple procedure and not everyone can do it. It’s very specialized.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you done it?”
“To do good you have to know bad—you, Max, more than most, know what I mean. There is a bad side to what I do—a reversal of my process, a sort of black magic, which involves enslaving souls, forcing them to become the protectors of evil. Children are a major element of that. They’re a premium here in Haiti, a currency.”
Just as Chantale finished translating, the maid came into the room and walked over to them.
“It’s time,” Dufour said.
They said their good-byes. The maid took Chantale’s hand and Chantale took Max’s and they filed out of the room. In the doorway, Max looked back at where they’d been sitting. He thought he saw a faint outline of not one but two people standing where Dufour had been. He couldn’t be sure.