GUSTAV CARVER SMILED warmly when he saw Max walk into the living room, his great gargoyle face turning into something straight out of a horror cartoon as it registered, processed, and displayed his pleasure: his eyebrows creased into upward arrowheads, his brow furrowed disjointedly like the spring bands on a collapsed chest expander, and his lips thinned to pale pink rubber bands as they stretched and curved toward his earlobes.
“Max! Welcome!” Gustav shouted to Max across the empty space.
They shook hands when they met. Carver overapplied his grip and accidentally pulled Max forward into him. They bumped shoulders, awkwardly, jock-style by default, neither knowing the drill. Carver, who had been using his other hand to balance himself on his silver-topped black cane, staggered back and threatened to keel over on his back but Max grabbed hold and steadied him. Gustav righted himself with Max’s help, took in the remains of the minor panic in Max’s expression, and giggled almost coquettishly. He smelled strongly of booze, cigarettes, and musky cologne.
Max noticed a tall Christmas tree in the corner of the room, not too far from Judith Carver’s portrait. It had fiberoptic lights hidden among the branches, which morphed continuously into shades of red, purple, and blue before stopping at a steady all-white and then repeating the color changes. The rest of the tree was decorated with twinkling gold and silver streamers, hanging baubles, and a golden star at the top. It was surprising to find something so tacky in Carver’s tasteful surroundings.
Gustav seemed to read Max’s thoughts.
“That’s for the servants. Those damn lights fascinate them, simpletons that they are. One night of the year I let them use the room. I buy presents for them and their children and they go and find them. Do you like Christmas, Max?”
“I’m not sure anymore, Mr. Carver,” Max said quietly.
“I hate it. It’s when I lost Judith.”
Max stayed silent—not out of awkwardness but because nothing in him was moving in the old man’s favor.
Gustav looked at him curiously, brow tensing, eyes narrowing and crinkling at the corners, a hostile wariness about his expression. Max met his gaze with a blank look, giving nothing away except his indifference.
“How’s about a drink?” Carver insisted rather than offered. He wafted his cane over the armchairs and sofas. “Let’s sit.”
He sunk into the armchair one haunch at a time, his bones creaking and popping with the strain. Max didn’t offer to help him.
Gustav clapped his hands and barked for a servant. A black-and-white-uniformed maid stepped out from the darkness surrounding the doorway, where she had probably been standing the entire time. Max had neither seen nor sensed her until she appeared. Carver asked for a whiskey.
Max sat close to the armchair.
Carver leaned across to the coffee table and picked up a silver box filled with unfiltered cigarettes. He took one out, put the box back, and picked up a smoked-glass ashtray with a silver lighter inside it. He lit up, took a deep drag, and held on to the smoke for a few seconds before letting it out slowly.
“From the Dominican Republic, these,” Carver said, holding up the cigarette. “They used to make them here. Hand-rolled. There was a shop in Port-au-Prince run by two women—ex-nuns. Tiny place called Le Tabac. All they did all day was sit in the window and roll cigarettes. I watched them once for about an hour. I just sat in the back of my car and observed them at it. Pure concentration, pure dedication. Such craft, such skill. Customers would come in all the time and interrupt them to buy a couple of cigarettes. One would serve while the other carried on. Me? I’d buy two hundred. The amazing thing is that all of those cigarettes were identical. You couldn’t tell them apart. Amazing. Such precision, dedication. You know, I used to make all my employees sit outside the shop to watch those ladies work—to teach them to adopt virtues like diligence and attention to detail in their work for me.
“Those cigarettes were wonderful. A deep, rich, and very satisfying smoke. The best I’ve ever had, I think. These aren’t too bad, but there’s nothing like the original.”
“What happened to the shop?” Max asked out of politeness rather than interest. He had to cough and clear his throat to make his voice heard—not that there was a blockage. He was getting nervous, dark energy coursing through him, muscles tightening, his heart pumping ever harder and louder.
“Oh, one of them got Parkinson’s disease and couldn’t work anymore, and the other closed up the shop to look after her. Or so I heard.”
“At least it wasn’t cancer.”
“They didn’t smoke.” Carver laughed as the maid reappeared with a bottle of whiskey, water, ice, and two glasses on a tray. “I always drink and smoke at this time of year. Damn the doctors! What about you? Care to indulge?”
Max said no with a shake of his head.
“But you will join me for a drink?”
An order, not an offer: Max nodded and tried a smile, but the insincerity made his lips coagulate into a crumpled pout. Carver shot him another curious look, this one laced with suspicion.
The maid deflected attention off him by pouring the drinks. Carver took his whiskey neat. Max took it with ice and water almost to the brim. When she was gone, they clinked glasses and toasted each other’s health, the coming year, and a happy conclusion to Max’s investigation. Max pretended to take a sip.
He’d sat at home trying to work out the best way to tell Carver that he was taking him in. He’d contemplated just walking in and confronting him with what he knew and then marching him out to his car. But he’d nixed that, because he wasn’t a cop.
He’d decided to get Carver to confess to what he’d done, own up to having masterminded the sex ring, and even explain his actions and justify them. He’d spent the entire day planning it, how he’d lure Carver further and further into implicating himself, all the while shutting off every escape route until the old man’s admission of guilt became a formality, the symbolic toppling of the chessboard king.
All day in the house, he’d worked up his strategy, anticipating the many possible turns the confrontation would take and preparing the response he’d have waiting at every corner. He rehearsed his questions and worked on his voice until he reached the light, conversational, friendly, open, seemingly unguarded tone he was looking for: all bait and no hook.
Paul had called in the afternoon, told him to go get the old man after they’d taken the house in La Gonâve. He’d arranged for Allain to phone him on the pretext of inviting him up to the house for an update. Paul said that Allain was pretty broken up at having to make the call. To him, it was his father he was betraying, not a criminal he was setting up for the fall.
By nightfall, everything was straight in his head. He’d showered, shaved, and changed into a loose shirt and pants. At around nine Allain had called. Max guessed Paul’s operation had been a success.
As he was driving out of the house, he’d been stopped by some of Paul’s men in a jeep. They’d handed him an unsealed envelope and told him he was to give it to Gustav when the time was right.
Then they told him he’d have to wear a wire when he saw Gustav.
That had upset everything—at least in his head.
He’d never worn a snitch socket in his life. He’d been on the other end, listening in. They were leads you put on vermin to take you to bigger vermin.
He was told it was for his own protection, that he couldn’t go in there carrying a walkie-talkie.
Yes, sure, that made perfect sense, but it was the rest he objected to—being Paul’s stoolie, getting Gustav Carver to incriminate himself on tape, to confess and sign his death warrant.
He’d thought about it—not long, because he didn’t have much time and he really didn’t have any option but to accept what he couldn’t refuse.
They’d all gone back to the house. He’d shaved his chest and they’d taped the mic just above the nipple, the wire running down his torso and curling around his back like an elongated leech, stopping at a receiver and battery clipped to his trousers.
They ran a test. He heard his voice loud and clear.
They walked back to their cars. He asked how things had gone in La Gonâve. He was told they’d gone very well.
On his way driving up to the Carver estate, he decided that the thing he wanted most of all for Christmas was to be done with this, with Haiti, with Carver, with this case.
He accepted that his case was over: Charlie Carver was dead and his body would most likely never be recovered. The mob that had killed Eddie Faustin had trampled him to death.
That fit, that made sense, and added up quite tidily, at least on paper.
It would do, but it wasn’t really enough. Not for him, not if he wanted to sleep easy for the rest of his life.
He needed more proof that the boy was dead.
But how would he get it? And why?
Then again, whom was he kidding with that bullshit now? He wasn’t a private detective anymore, remember? That was all over. He was finished. Hell, he’d been finished from the moment he’d shot those kids in New York. He’d crossed a line you didn’t come back from. He was a convicted murderer; he’d taken three young lives in cold blood. That canceled out everything he’d once been and much of what he’d stood for.
And now he was setting up his former client. He’d never ratted out a client before and he’d never known an investigator who had—not even Beeson. It was something you didn’t ever do, part of a long code of inviolable ethics, all of it unwritten, all of it handed down in whispers and winks.
Carver was, not surprisingly, drinking a very good scotch. Max could smell the quality coming out of his glass, even under all the water it had been doused with.
“Allain and Francesca will be down shortly,” Gustav said.
No they won’t, thought Max. Max had passed them both on his way up, being driven away by Paul’s men.
“So? How’s the investigation going?” Gustav asked.
“Not too well, Mr. Carver. I think I’ve hit a dead end.”
“It happens in your profession, I’m sure, as it happens in most professions that require brains and drive, no? Go down a road and hit a block, what do you do? You go back to the start and find another way around.”
Carver drilled Max with a fierce look from his practically black eyes. The old man was dressed as Max remembered him from the last time they’d met—beige suit, white shirt, black shoes buffed to a dazzle.
“Is this constipation of yours a very recent thing? Allain told me, not a few days ago, that you were onto something—close to a breakthrough?” Carver’s voice had an undertow of contempt about it now. He crushed out his cigarette and put the ashtray on the table. A maid came almost immediately and replaced the ashtray with an identical, clean one.
“I was onto something,” Max confirmed.
“And?”
“It wasn’t what I was expecting.”
Gustav studied Max’s face, looked it over as though he’d seen something about it he hadn’t seen before; then he smiled very slightly.
“You will find my grandson. I know you will.” He slung back his drink.
Max thought of three possible responses to that—witty, sarcastic, and bubble-bursting confrontational. He used none; merely smiled and lowered his eyes to make Carver think he was flattered.
“Are you all right?” Carver asked, scrutinizing him. “You don’t seem yourself.”
“What self would that be?” Max asked, only it wasn’t a question, it was a statement.
“The man who was here last. The one I admired—the gung-ho shitkicker, John Wayne–Mingus. Sure you’re not coming down with something? You haven’t been with one of the local whores, have you? Open those legs and you’ll find an encyclopedia of venereal disease.” Carver chuckled, missing what was happening right next to him. Max had taken his gloves off. The interrogation was about to start.
Max shook his head.
“So what’s the matter with you, eh?” Carver swiftly leaned over, clapped Max hard on the back, and laughed. “You haven’t even touched your damn drink!”
Max stared hard at Carver, who stopped laughing. He was still smiling but it was only wrinkles and teeth; all merriment had fled his face.
“It’s Vincent Paul, isn’t it?” Gustav sat back. “You’ve spoken to him. He told you things about me, didn’t he?”
Max didn’t reply, didn’t let it rattle him. He just carried on giving Gustav his spotlight beams, his face a mask of indifference.
“I’m sure he told you some terrible things about me. Terrible things. The sort that would make you question what you’re doing working for me—‘monster’ that I am. But you have to bear in mind that Vincent Paul hates me—and a man who hates that hard is always going to work overtime to justify that hatred and—especially—to convert others to his way of thinking.” Carver chuckled but he didn’t meet Max’s eye. He leaned over the table and took another cigarette out of the box. He tapped either end on his palm before putting it in his mouth and lighting it. “You, of all people, I’m sure don’t need that pointed out to him.”
“He didn’t take Charlie,” Max said.
“Oh what utter blasted rubbish!” Carver thundered, making a fist of his cigarette hand.
“He was there the day Charlie was kidnapped, but he wasn’t the kidnapper,” Max insisted, raising his voice but staying calm.
“What is the matter with you, Mingus?” Carver said, wheezing a little. “I tell you it’s him.”
“And I tell you, quite clearly, it isn’t him. He didn’t do it. Kidnapping children isn’t his style, Mr. Carver,” Max said pointedly.
“But he’s a drug dealer.”
“Drug baron, actually,” Max corrected.
“What’s the difference—do they live a year longer?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
“So what did he say to you, Vincent Paul?”
“Many things, Mr. Carver. Many many things.”
“Such as…?” Carver threw his arms open in mock invitation. “Did he tell you what I did to his father?”
“Yeah. You ruined his career, and—”
“I didn’t ‘ruin his career.’ The poor sap was going out of business anyway. I just put him out of his misery.”
“You destroyed their estate. You didn’t have to do that.”
“They owed me money. I collected. All’s fair in love and war, Mr. Mingus. And business is war—and I love it.”
Carver laughed acidly. He poured himself more whiskey.
“How did you feel, after the Paul sob story?”
“I could understand why he would hate you, Mr. Carver,” Max answered. “I could even sympathize with someone like him, in a place like this, where you’re only as powerful as you make yourself, and that old-school eye-for-eye-and-tooth-for-tooth revenge is the only way you get even.
“And I understand how someone like you, who knows the true meaning of hatred and hating, would see the point of view of someone like Vincent Paul—a man who hates another man because of some bad stuff one did to the other. You wouldn’t have it any other way, Mr. Carver. Because for you, there is no other way. Hatred begets hatred and you’re all right with that. Suits you fine.”
“So you think I’m a ‘monster’? Join the club!”
“I wouldn’t call you a monster, Mr. Carver. You’re just a man. Most men are good, some are bad—and then some are real bad, Mr. Carver,” Max said, keeping his voice low but clear, his eyes two blade points.
Carver sighed, downed his whiskey, and dropped his cigarette in the glass, where it fizzled out in the residue.
“I know what you do,” Max said quietly.
“I don’t follow,” Carver responded, puzzled.
“Well. At this very moment your property in La Gonav is under new ownership. Your business there has been closed down.”
That hit Carver so quick and hard he had no time to cover up his shock. For a fraction of a second, Max saw him exposed and looking as close to scared as he imagined a man ever could be without screaming.
Carver reached slowly for his cigarette box. As a precaution, Max unclipped the trigger guard on his gun holster, even though he doubted the old man was packing or anywhere near a firearm.
The maid appeared silently out of the shadows, replaced the whiskey glass and ashtray with clean ones, and hurried out, head bowed.
Max wasn’t going to force anything out of the old man, because he didn’t think he’d have to. Carver would talk when he was good and ready.
The old man poured himself another whiskey, this one almost to the brim. Then he fired up another cigarette and settled back in his chair.
“I assume you already know what Paul’s men will find there in La Gonâve?” Carver asked, a little wearily.
“Children?”
“Twenty or so,” Carver confirmed with a calm and openness that disconcerted Max.
“You’ve got records there too, right? Details of each and every sale—who, what, where.”
“Yes.” Carver nodded. “Filmed and photographic evidence too. But those aren’t the crown jewels. By going into that house, the way you people have…Do you have the slightest idea what you’re opening up?”
“Tell me.”
“This will make Pandora’s Box look like a tin of peanuts.”
“I understand you’re well connected, Mr. Carver,” Max dead-panned.
“Well connected!” He laughed. “Well connected? I’m plugged into the fucking grid, Mingus! Do you know I am one phone call from having you killed and two calls from making you disappear without a trace, make it like you never existed. Do you know that? That’s the kind of power I wield—THAT is how ‘well connected’ I am.”
“I don’t doubt that, Mr. Carver. But those one or two phone calls aren’t gonna help you now.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“The phone lines have been cut. Try it,” Max pointed to a telephone he spied on the other side of the room.
When he’d driven up the mountain road, he’d seen people working on the telegraph poles.
Carver snorted contemptuously and pulled hard on his cigarette.
“What do you want from me, Mingus? Money?”
“No.” Max shook his head. “I have questions I need answers to.”
“Let me guess: Why did I do this?”
“That’s a good enough place to start.”
“Do you know that in Greek and Roman times it was common for adults to have sex with children? It was commonplace. It was accepted. Today, in the non-Western world, girls are married off to grown men at the age of twelve, sometimes. And in your country, teenage pregnancies are legion! Underage sex, Mr. Mingus, is everywhere—always was, always will be.”
“Those were no teenagers.”
“Oh damn you and your stupid morality, Mingus!” Carver spluttered, stabbing out his cigarette and swallowing a good gulp of whiskey. “People like you with your self-righteous codes of conduct and ethics, with your secular notions of right and wrong, you always end up working for people like me—people unencumbered by things like ‘feelings’ and ‘consideration for others’—the very things that hold you back. I do things you wouldn’t even think about doing. You think you’re tough, Mingus? You’ve got nothing on me.”
“Some of those kids looked no more than six years old,” Max said.
“Yeah? You know what? I’ve had a freshly born baby stolen from right under its mother’s nose, because that was what one of my clients desired. It cost him two million dollars and bought me a lifetime’s influence. It was worth it.”
Carver was raging on whiskey fumes, but this wasn’t the drunk bragging of a man who didn’t give a fuck until the hangover kicked in. He would have said the same thing and had the same attitude in identical circumstances if he’d been sober. He meant every word he said.
The maid reappeared, replaced the whiskey tumbler and ashtray, and quickly left with the used ones.
“What’s the matter, Mingus? You look ill. This too much for you to handle?” Carver sneered, slapping the armrest. “What were you expecting—a mea culpa? FROM ME?!!? FUCK THAT!”
Max doubted the old man really understood his predicament. Decades of having everything his own way had blinded him to the obvious and the certain. He’d never faced someone he couldn’t bribe, corrupt, or destroy. Nothing had stood in his way that he hadn’t bulldozed or bought out. Right now, he was probably thinking that all of his pedophile clients would come to his aid, that the pervert cavalry would come riding over the hill to rescue him. Maybe he was thinking of bribing Max out of taking him in. Or maybe he had something else up his sleeve, some trapdoor that would suddenly open beneath his feet and drop him to freedom.
From outside the room Max heard a short cry and the sound of breaking glass. He looked at the doorway and saw nothing.
“But you’re a father yourself…” Max began.
“That never stopped anyone and you know it!” Carver snapped. “What do you take me for? I’m a professional: I keep an emotional distance from everything I do. It allows me to perform unpleasant tasks with impunity.”
“So you admit that what you’ve been doing is—”
“Unpleasant? Of course it is! I hate the people I deal with. I despise them.”
“But you’ve done business with them for—”
“Close to forty years, yes. You know why? I have no conscience. I eradicated that from my way of thinking a long time ago. Having a conscience is an overrated pastime.” Carver edged closer to him. “I may hate them, but I understand pedophiles. Not what they do—that’s not for me. But who they are, where they’re coming from. They’re all the same. They never change: they’re all ashamed of what they do, of what they like, of what they are. And most of all they’re all terrified of being found out.”
“And you exploited that?”
“Absolutely!” Carver exclaimed, clapping his big hands together for emphasis. “I’m a businessman, Mingus, an entrepreneur. I saw a market with a potentially loyal customer base and plenty of repeat trade.”
“You also saw people you could blackmail…”
“I never ‘blackmailed’ anyone, as you put it. I’ve never had to threaten a single one of my clients into opening doors for me.”
“Because they already know the score?”
“Exactly. These are people who move in higher planes. People whose reputations are everything. I’ve never abused our relationship, never asked for more than, maybe, two favors from any one person in all the time I’ve known them.”
“And these ‘favors’?” Max asked. “What did they give you? Trade monopolies? Access to confidential U.S. government files?”
Carver shook his head, smirking.
“Contacts.”
“More pedophiles? Ones on even higher planes?”
“Absolutely! You know the theory that you’re only six people away from any one person? When you have the esoteric interests my clients do, Mr. Mingus, you’re more like two people away.”
“Everybody knows everybody else?”
“Yes. To a degree. I don’t deal with any everybody.”
“Only the ones you can get something out of?”
“I’m a businessman, not a charity worker. There has to be something in it for me. Risk versus reward.” Carver reached for another cigarette. “How do you think we got to you, in prison? All those calls? Did you ever think of that?”
“I guessed you had juice.”
“Joose!” Carver erupted in laughter, mimicking Max’s accent. “Joose, you call it? Ha, ha! You damn Yankee Doodlers and your slang! Sure I’ve got joose, Mingus! I’ve got the whole fucking orchard—and the pickers and the pressers and the damn packagers! How about a prominent East Coast senator who’s very good friends with someone on the damn Attica board? How’s that for joose?”
Carver lit his cigarette.
“Why me?” Max asked.
“You were—in your prime—one of the best private detectives in the country, if not the best, if your ratio of solved-to-unsolved cases was anything to go by. Friends of mine sung your praises till they were blue in the face. You even came damn close to uncovering us once or twice in your earlier career. Damn close. Do you know that? I was suitably impressed.”
“When?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out.” Carver smiled as he blew pale-blue tusks of smoke through his nose. “How did you find out about me? Who broke? Who cracked? Who betrayed me?”
Max didn’t reply.
“Oh come on Mingus! Tell me! What does it fucking matter?”
Max shook his head.
Carver’s face dropped to an ungainly angry heap somewhere past his nose. His eyes narrowed to slits and blazed behind them.
“I order you to tell me the name!” he yelled, grabbing his cane from the back of the chair and pushing himself up.
“Sit down, Carver!” Max shot up from his chair, snatched the cane, and pushed the old man roughly back on his seat. Carver looked at him, surprised and afraid. Then he glanced at the cigarette burning in his ashtray and crushed it out.
“You’re outnumbered here.” He leered up at Max. “You could beat me to death with that”—he nodded at the cane—“but you wouldn’t get out of here alive.”
“I’m not here to kill you,” Max said, glancing over his shoulder, expecting to see the maid coming for the ashtray and maybe others with her, rushing to their master’s defense. There was no one there.
He dropped the cane on the couch and sat down.
Then heavy footsteps entered the room. Max turned around and saw two of Paul’s men standing near the entrance. He held his hand up for them to stay put.
Carver saw them and snorted contemptuously.
“Looks like the odds just changed,” Max said.
“Not really,” Carver said.
“Your servants? You got them from Noah’s Ark, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“They weren’t good enough for your ‘clients’?”
“That’s right.”
“They were lucky.”
“Really? You call their life ‘lucky’?”
“Yeah. They didn’t spend their childhood getting raped.”
Carver gave him a long look, scrutiny that gradually turned to amusement.
“How long have you been here, Mingus, in this country? Three, four weeks? Do you know why people have children here? The poor, the masses? It’s not for the same cutesy reasons you have them back in America: you know, because you want to—most of the time.
“The poor don’t plan to start families here. It just happens. They just breed. That’s all there is to it. They fuck, they multiply. They’re human amoebas. And when the babies are old enough to walk their parents put them to work, doing what they do. Most of the people in this country are born on their knees—born slaves, born to serve, no better off than their pathetic ancestors.”
Carver paused for breath and another cigarette.
“You see—what I do, what I’ve done—I’ve given these kids a life they couldn’t possibly hope to have, a life that their dumb, illiterate, no-hoper parents couldn’t even have dreamed about because they weren’t born with the brains big enough. Not all of them suffer. I’ve educated almost all the ones I couldn’t sell, and all those who made the grade I’ve given jobs to. A lot of them have gone on to do very well for themselves. Do you know what I’ve helped create here? Something we didn’t have before—a middle class. Not rich, not poor, but in the middle, with aspirations to do better. I’ve helped this country become that little bit more normal, that little bit more Western, in line with other places.
“And as for those I sold. Well, do you know how some of them end up, Mingus? The clever ones, the tough ones, the survivors? When they get old enough, they wise up and they play their sugar daddies like big fat pianos. They end up wealthy, set for life. Most of them go on to lead perfectly normal lives in civilized countries—new names, new identities—the past just a bad blurry memory—if that.
“You think of me as evil, I know, but I have given thousands of people honor, dignity, money, and a home. I’ve given them someone they can respect when they look in the mirror. Hell—I gave them the damn mirror too. In short, Mr. Mingus, I’ve given them life!”
“You’re not God, Carver.”
“Oh no? Well then, I’m the next best thing in a place like this—a white man with money!” he thundered. “Servitude and kowtowing to the white man is in this country’s DNA.”
“I beg to differ, Mr. Carver,” Max said. “I don’t know too much about this place, true. But from what I can see, it’s been royally fucked over by people like you—you rich folk with your big houses and servants to wipe your asses. Take, take, take—never give a damn thing back. You’re not helping anyone but yourself, Mr. Carver. Your charity’s just a lie you tell people like me to make us look the other way.”
“You’re sounding just like Vincent Paul. How much is he paying you?”
“He’s not paying me anything,” Max said.
Carver held his eyes for a short moment and looked away, tightening his paw into a fist.
Max looked at the open cigarette box, and a mad craving suddenly leaped out of nowhere and jumped on his shoulders. He suddenly wanted a smoke, something to do with his hands, something to take the edge off what he was sitting through. Then he spied his glass of diluted whiskey and considered for a while downing that, but he shook off the temptation.
“I knew about little Charlie, you know,” Carver said without turning to Max, addressing the bookshelves instead. “I knew the first time I saw him. I knew that he wasn’t mine. She tried to keep it from me. But I knew. I knew he wasn’t mine.”
“How?” Max asked. He hadn’t expected this.
“Not completely mine,” Carver continued in the same tone, as if he hadn’t heard Max’s question. “Autism. It’s a possessive illness. It keeps a little of the person for itself and never ever relinquishes what it has.”
“How did you know?”
“Oh, different things,” Carver said. “Behavioral patterns not quite right. I know about children, remember?”
Max reached into his pocket and took out the envelope Paul’s men had given him. He slipped out the two photocopied sheets of paper that were inside and handed it to the old man.
Then he stood up and stepped away.
Gustav opened the sheets of paper and looked at the first. He blinked and snuffled. He looked a little closer, his mouth half-opening in a bemused grin, but still heavy with sadness. He shuffled the pages—first, second, second, first—scrutinizing each. Then he held a page in each hand and looked from one to the other, back and forth, his eyes growing tinier and tinier as they disappeared behind ever more finely slitted lids. The loose folds of drooping flesh on his face began to shake, going bright red at the edges, starting around his jaw, moving up to under his eyes. He stiffened and took a deep breath.
And then he looked right at Max and screwed up the pages in his hands, chewing down the paper with his fingers. When he dropped them on the floor, they were crushed and compressed into tiny pellets.
When Max had opened the envelope, he’d found copies of the results of the paternity test proving Vincent Paul was Charlie Carver’s father.
Carver slumped back in his chair, his complexion ashen, his eyes vacant, the fight gone out of him, a monument brought crashing down to earth. If he hadn’t heard what he had from the old man’s lips, Max might have felt sorry for him.
They remained there in silence, one in front of the other, for a very long and slow-moving moment. Gustav Carver’s eyes were pointed right at him, but their stare weightless and empty, like a dead man’s.
“What do you mean to do with me, Mingus?” Carver asked, his voice sucked clean of its authority and thunder, little more than a rattle in his throat.
“Take you in.”
“Take me in?” Carver frowned. “Take me in where? There are no jails here.”
“Vincent Paul wants to talk to you.”
“Talk to me!” Carver laughed. “He wants to kill me, Mingus! Besides, I won’t say a word to that…that peasant!”
“Suit yourself Mr. Carver.” Max took the cuffs off his belt.
“Wait a moment.” He raised his voice. “Can I have one last drink and cigarette before you do that?”
“Go ahead,” Max said.
Carver poured out another large whiskey and lit one of his unfiltered cigarettes.
Max sat back down in his place.
“Mr. Carver? One thing I can’t understand is, with all your contacts, how come you never took Vincent Paul out?”
“Because I’m the only person who could. Everyone would have known it was me. There would have been a civil war,” he explained.
He drew on his cigarette and sipped his drink.
“I never did like filters. Killed the taste.” Carver blew on the orange tip and laughed. “Do you think they’ve got cigarettes in hell, Mingus?”
“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Carver. I don’t smoke.”
“Think you can do a little something for me?” Carver asked.
“What?”
“Let me walk out of my house? On my own? Not between those…goons.” He flicked his eyes at the men by the doorway.
“Yeah, but I’ll have to cuff you. Precaution.”
Carver finished smoking and drinking and offered Max his wrists for the cuffs. Max made him stand up, turn around, and put his hands behind his back. He groaned as the cuffs locked on tight.
“Let’s go.” Max started leading him out toward the door, holding him tight because Carver was staggering and limping heavily.
They hadn’t gone five paces before Carver stopped.
“Max, please, not like this,” he slurred, gasping booze and stale tobacco in Max’s face. “I have a pistol in my office. A revolver. Let me finish it myself. You can empty the chamber, leave me the one bullet. I’m an old man. I don’t have long.”
“Mr. Carver. You stole hundreds of children and ruined not just their lives, but their families’ lives too. Most of all, you stole their souls. You destroyed them. You took their futures. There isn’t a punishment enough for you.”
“You self-righteous little prick,” Carver spat at him. “A cold-blooded killer lecturing me on morality, you—”
“You done now?” Max interrupted him.
Carver dropped his gaze. Max started dragging him toward the door. Paul’s men came forward. Carver stumbled along for a few steps and then stopped again.
“I want to say good-bye to Judith.”
“Who?”
“Judith—my wife. Let me look at her painting just one more time. It was such a good painting, so lifelike, so much like her,” Carver said, his voice breaking.
“It’s not her. She’s dead. And you’re sure to see her soon.”
“What if I don’t? What if there’s nothing? Just one more look, please, Mingus.”
Max thought of Sandra and relented. He waved the men back and took him to the portrait.
He propped the old man up as Carver gazed up at the picture of his wife and mumbled to her in a mix of French and English.
Max looked at the Hall of Fame—the mantelpiece and all the framed photographs of the Carvers pressing flesh with the great and the good. He wondered if he’d find any of those famous names in the records.
Carver stopped his babbling and leered at Max.
“None of them are clients, don’t worry,” he slurred. “But they’re no more than two people away. Remember that. Two people.”
“OK, let’s go.” Max took Gustav’s arm.
“Get your hands off me!” Carver jerked himself roughly out of Max’s grip and tried to step back, but he lost his already precarious balance and fell heavily to the floor, landing on his back, his cuffed wrists taking the brunt of his weight.
Max didn’t move to help him.
“Get up, Carver.”
The old man rolled over on his side, painfully, gasping and groaning. Then he was on his front. He tilted to his right side, pulled up his left leg, and tried to push himself up, but it was his bad side, the one he needed the cane to support, and his leg only executed a quarter-move before it froze up and he rolled back onto his chest. Carver caught his breath and blinked. Then he scraped and wriggled and budged forward along the floor toward Max, wincing and snorting in agony.
When his face was at Max’s toes, the old man looked up as far as he could.
“Shoot me, Max,” he pleaded. “I don’t mind dying. Shoot me here, in front of my Judith. Please!”
“You’re getting up, Carver,” Max said impassively, stepping behind the old man and grabbing him roughly up by the cuff chains. He pulled him back to his feet.
“Don’t hand me over to Vincent Paul, please, Max, please. He’ll do unspeakable things to me. Please shoot me, please. I can accept it from you.”
“You make a lousy beggar, Carver,” Max said into his ear.
“Shoot me, Max.”
“Carver, at least try and have some dignity. See this?” Max unbuttoned three buttons on his shirt and showed Carver the microphone taped to his chest. “You don’t want Vincent Paul’s people coming and carrying you out of here, do you?”
“Isn’t that called entrapment?”
“Not here.”
With an expression halfway defeated and all the way disgusted, Carver nodded solemnly to the door.
“Let’s go.”
Max led him out of the house.
There were three jeeploads of Paul’s men outside.
All the servants and security had been rounded up and stood in the middle of the grass, guarded by four people with rifles.
“In America I’d get a fair trial,” Carver said as he eyed the scene.
“In America you’d get the best defense lawyer your money could buy. Justice may be blind, but it sure ain’t deaf and you know same as me—ain’t nothin’ talks louder than cold hard cash.”
A few of the servants called out to Carver, their voices plaintive and confused, sounding like they were asking what was wrong, what was going on.
“You know what he’s going to do to me, Max? That animal will rip me up and throw me to the savages. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you?”
Max gave the cuff keys to one of Paul’s men, as another took hold of Carver.
“Maybe I’ll be like you then,” Max said.
“How so?” Carver asked.
“Bypass my conscience.”
“Bastard!” Carver spat.
“Me?” Max almost laughed. “What does that make you?”
“A man at peace with himself,” Carver sneered.
Max signaled to the men to take Carver.
That was when the old man erupted:
“DAMN YOU, Max Mingus!—DAMN YOU! And DAMN Vincent Paul! And DAMN each and every one of you gun-toting monkeys! DAMN YOU! And…and DAMN that little BASTARD runt and the TREACHEROUS BITCH that hatched him! I hope you NEVER find him! I hope he’s DEAD!”
He glared at Max with intense loathing, his breath heavy and tired, a wounded dying bull contemplating one last angry charge.
A total silence hung over the front of the house, as if Carver’s roar had sucked in every immediate noise in its wake.
All eyes were on Max, waiting on his riposte.
A short time later it came:
“Adiós motherfucker.”
Then, looking at the men whose hands were clamped on Carver’s arms and shoulders:
“Get this sack of shit out of here and bury him deep.”