IT WAS STILL dark when he got back, but the insects had gone to ground and the birds had started singing in the courtyard. Daylight was on its way.
There was a message on the answering machine from Joe. It was too early to call him back.
Inside the box Dreadlocks had given him, Max found a croc-hide billfold containing numerous cards—ATM, AmEx, VISA, MasterCard, library, blood donor, Gold’s Gym. They all belonged to Darwen Medd.
Max also found half a dozen black-on-white business cards held together by a paper clip. If he was still alive, Medd worked out of Tallahassee, where he specialized in missing persons and corporate affairs. The latter was probably a recent diversification, something he was gradually setting himself up in so that he’d still be working when he got too old and too slow to look for runaways and abductees. Working in the business sector was safer and paid a lot better. You sat at a desk and followed paper trails by phone, fax, and computer. The only fieldwork involved was meeting your client for lunch, dinner, or drinks. If you were good, you never stopped working. Some companies kept you on a retainer. The better you were the more you were retained. It was a nice life. Boring as hell, but something Max had once been planning to move into himself.
There was no money in the wallet but, tucked in a corner of the change pocket, he found a single folded piece of paper.
It was a page torn from a Haitian phone book dated 1990. Letters I–F, one section circled in blue ballpoint: all the Faustins in Port-au-Prince—thirteen of them.
Medd had been on the same track.
Who was Dreadlocks? Why did he give Max the box?
Was he Medd? No. Dreadlocks was a black man. He was crazy, and quite possibly mute. He hadn’t made a sound near the falls, nor in the temple.
Perhaps Dreadlocks had seen Medd at the waterfalls when he’d visited Mercedes Leballec. Maybe Medd had befriended him. Or maybe he’d just found Medd’s body and taken his wallet. Or maybe he’d just found the wallet. He’d sealed it in a box and given it to the first white man he saw at Saut d’Eau.
It occurred to Max that the best way of finding out was to go back to Saut d’Eau and ask him, but he wasn’t going to go back there again, not if he could help it.
At six-thirty he called Joe. His friend answered on the second ring. Joe was in the kitchen with the TV news on low. Max could hear his two girls in the background.
They talked and joked, Joe doing most of it. He had a three-dimensional life. Max only had what he was looking for.
“That guy you asked me to check out—Vincent Paul?”
“Yeah?”
“You know, I told you the Brit police wanted to question him.”
“Yeah?”
“It was in connection with a missing-persons case.”
Max’s grip tightened on the receiver.
“Who?”
“A woman,” Joe explained. “Back in the early seventies, Vincent Paul was a student at Cambridge University in England. He was datin’ this local girl called—” Max heard him thumbing through a notebook. “Josephine…Josephine Latimer. The girl was an artist. She also liked to drink. A lot. One night she ran over this kid in her car and drove off. A witness made the car and her license plate. She gets arrested and stuck in prison until the bail hearin’.
“Now, her parents are big shots in this small town. Everyone knows who they are, so their daughter bein’ involved in a hit-and-run is big local news. The police want to make an example of her, show the people that everyone is equal before the law. They delay the bail hearin’ for two weeks. The girl stays in jail and gets beaten up and raped. When she gets out she’s a mess, tries to kill herself.
“The trial happens a year later. Nineteen-seventy-three. She’s found guilty of manslaughter. She’s due to be sentenced in two days. They’re sayin’ five years jail time minimum. She knows she can’t do no time. She knows she isn’t gonna make it in there.
“The day she’s due in court she disappears. There’s this manhunt—local at first, then it goes nationwide. Her boyfriend—Vincent—he’s gone too. Now Vincent is this giant—six-eight, six-nine—so he’s not exactly gonna be difficult to spot, knowwhumsayin’?—but, somehow, it takes a whole two months after her disappearance before someone comes forward and says they saw them on a boat goin’ to the…the—the Hook of Holland.”
“So that time on the boat? Was that the last sighting?” asked Max.
“Yeah. Him and his girl. She’s still wanted in England for manslaughter and skippin’ the country. But this is all kinda low priority now. Bonnie and Clyde they ain’t.”
“Not over there, maybe.”
“You see this Vincent Paul in Haiti?”
“Yeah.”
“You talk to him?”
“Not yet—you don’t talk to him, he talks to you,” Max quipped.
“What? Like God in the burnin’ bush?”
“Somethin’ like that.” Max laughed.
“What about the woman? Josephine? You see her?”
“Not that I know of. What she look like?”
“I ain’t got a picture for her. But you see this Vincent Paul you ask him where she’s at or where she went to.”
“I’ll do that, if I get a chance.”
“You know the Brits sent two police officers out to Haiti to look for ’em. Scotland Yard guys.”
“Don’t tell me—they found nothin’?” Max said.
“Exactly. You think Vincent or his family might’ve paid ’em off?”
“Maybe, but his family went bankrupt when he was in England. Besides, from what I know so far, payin’ people off isn’t Vincent Paul’s style. He’d sooner kill ’em.”
They both laughed.
“You know a cop called Ray Hernandez—one of yours?” Max asked.
“Yeah, sure, I know him.” Joe lowered his voice so his kids wouldn’t hear. “If it’s the same guy, we call him Ray Headuphisassez.”
“Sounds right.”
“How you know him?”
“His name came up in the joint,” Max lied.
“Used to be a narc,” Joe murmured. “Was bangin’ his partner’s wife. Then he found out his partner was dirty so he snitched him out to IA. They rewarded him with a desk and made him lieutenant. He’s a full-on asshole. Time I met him he talked to me like I was a piece of ess-aitch-eye-tut, knowhumsayin’? Thing I didn’t get ’bout him? His wife was a hottie. Man must be blind and dumb to cheat on that.”
Max guessed Joe’s wife wasn’t within earshot. He’d never known a woman so jealous. If she caught Joe so much as looking at a woman on a billboard she’d throw a fit.
“I need you to do a couple of other things for me, Joe, please.”
“Name it.”
“I need you to look up the following people, see what you can get: first up—Darwen Medd. He’s a PI out of Tallahassee.”
“No problem, but no guarantees on when neither,” Joe said. “Say, Max?”
“Yeah?”
“Know what I’m hearin’?”
“What?”
“The sound of you enjoyin’ yo’self.”
“I wouldn’t quite put it that way, Joe.”
“I don’t mean ‘enjoyin’ yourself like you gettin’ off—enjoyin’ yo’self, but you enjoyin’ the idea of maybe nailin’ these sonsobitches. There’s this spring in your voice. The old Mingus, no-bullshit steel.”
“You think so?”
“I know so. I know you, Mingus. You’re back, Max.”
“If you say so, Joe.” Max chuckled. He didn’t feel back at all. He didn’t want to be anywhere near this.
Afterwards he went to bed and fell asleep as the sun started streaming through his window.
He dreamed he was back in the voodoo temple, caked in gray mud, fucking Chantale on the ground with the drums going crazy. Joe, Allain, Velasquez, and Eldon were dancing all around them. Then he saw Charlie sitting on Dufour’s lap, staring at him. They were by the pond. He couldn’t see Dufour’s face, only his seated silhouette. He tried to stand but Chantale was holding him down, her arms and legs wrapped around him tight. He finally managed to get up and began walking toward Charlie, but he and Dufour were gone. In their place were the three kids he’d killed. They all had his gun in their hands. They aimed and fired at him. He went down. He was still alive, looking up at the cross through the hole in the roof. Sandra came and stood over him, smiling. She was holding a little girl by the hand. The girl was pretty but looked immensely sad. Max recognized Claudette Thodore—the missing niece of the priest from Little Haiti—and remembered that he’d forgotten to visit her parents.
He told the girl he’d go see them first thing in the morning, before he went looking for Faustin’s house.
Sandra bent down to kiss him.
He reached up to touch her face and woke up with his hand in the air, fingers caressing nothing.
It was night again. He checked the clock. Seven p.m. He’d slept for a full twelve hours. His mouth was dry, his throat tight, the sides of his eyes wet. He guessed he’d cried in his sleep. Outside the crickets were chirruping and the mountain drums were telegraphing their beats straight to his stomach, dancing with his hunger, telling him he should eat.