Nick Stone - Mr. Clarinet

Max got the chills, a sinking feeling in his stomach, as if the ground had opened up right there in that fucked-up trailer and he was falling into an endless abyss.

Of course, it wasn't Boukman's handiwork, but it all looked so familiar, so like those poor children's bodies.

"They did this to me," he said, as Max looked on, horrified. "The mother-fuckers."

He dropped his tank top and fell back on the chair. Then he buried his head in his hands and started crying, his fat body shaking like Jell-O. Max reached into his pockets for his handkerchief but he didn't want Beeson getting his pestilential hands on it.

Max hated seeing men cry. He never knew what to say or do. Comforting them as he might a woman seemed to violate their masculinity. He stood there, feeling awkward and idiotic, letting Beeson weep himself out, hoping he'd finish up quick because there was a lot he needed to know.

Beeson's sobbing gradually broke up into diminishing puddles and sniffs and snorts. He scraped the tears off his face with his hands and wiped the damp off on the hairy back of his head.

"I checked myself straight into a hospital," he continued, once he'd gained control of his voice. "There was nothing missing, but-" he pointed two fingers down at the diaper "-I noticed after I ate my first meal. Went straight through. Them Haitians fucked up my sewage works full-time. No one could fix 'em here. I can't hold nothin' in too long. Permanent dysentery."

Max felt a twinge of pity. Beeson reminded him of those cellblock bitches he'd seen in the exercise yard, waddling around in diapers because their sphincter muscles had been permanently loosened by multiple gang-rapes.

"You think it was this Vincent Paul who did it?"

"I know it was him. To warn me off."

Max shook his head.

"That's a hell of a lotta trouble to go through just to warn someone off. What they did to you takes time. Besides, I know you, Beeson. You scare easy. If they'd burst into your room and stuck a gun down your throat you would have been outta there like a fart on a match."

"You say the sweetest things," Beeson said, sparking up another cigarette.

"What were you close to?"

"Whaddayamean?"

"Had you turned up something on the kid? A lead? A suspect?"

"Nothin'."

"Are you sure?" Max asked, searching Beeson's eyes for signs of lying.

"Nothin', I'm tellin' ya."

Max didn't believe him, but Beeson wouldn't give it up.

"So why d'you think they fucked with me like this? Send a message to Carver?"

"Could be. I'll need to know more," Max said. "So what happened afterwards? With you?"

"I fell apart. Up here," he said matter-of-factly, tapping the side of his head. "I had this collapse, this breakdown. I couldn't work no more. I quit. Gave it up. I owed clients for jobs I didn't finish. I had to pay 'em all back, so I don't have that much left, but what the fuck? At least I'm still alive."

Max nodded. He knew all about the place Beeson was in now. Going to Haiti was pretty much the only thing that was stopping him from finding his own shit-covered trailer to live in.

"Don't go to Haiti, Mingus. There is some bad shit out there in that place," Beeson said, his voice a steady, even whine of cold wind passing by a warm house, whistling through the cracks, trying to get in.

"Even if I didn't want to, I haven't got much choice," Max said. He took a last look around the trailer. "You know, Clyde, I never liked you. I still don't. You were a two-bit shamus, a greedy, double-dealing traitor scumbag with a morals bypass. But you know what? Even you don't deserve this."

"Take it you don't wanna stay for dinner?" Beeson said.

Max turned and made for the door. Beeson picked up his Magnum and stood up. He padded over to Max, squishing a fresh turd on his way.

Outside the trailer, Max stood in the clean air and sunlight, breathing deeply through his nose. He hoped the stench hadn't stuck to his clothes and hair.

"Hey! Mingus!" Beeson shouted from the door.

Max turned around.

"They fuck you in jail?"

"What?"

"Was you some nigger's bitch? Some nigger call you 'Mary'? You get some o' that ole jailhouse lurve from the booty bandits, Mingus?"

"No."

"Then what the fuck special happened to you, make you come over all sympathetic? Old-school Max Mingus woulda said I got what I deserved, woulda kicked me in the teeth and wiped his foot on my face."

"Take care of yourself, Clyde," Max said. "No one else will."

Then he got in his car and drove away, feeling numb.

MAX DROVE BACK to Miami and headed for Little Haiti.

When he was a kid in the 1960s, he'd had a girlfriend called Justine who lived in the area. It was called Lemon City back then, and was mostly white, middle-class, and great for shopping. His mother would often go there for Christmas and birthday presents.

By the time Max had become a cop a decade later, all but the poorest whites had moved out, the shops had closed or relocated, and the once-prosperous neighborhood had gone to seed. First the Cuban refugees had moved in, and then the more prosperous African-Americans from Liberty City had bought up the cheap houses. The Haitians started arriving in significant numbers in the 1970s, refugees from Baby Doc's increasingly murderous regime.

There was a lot of tension between African-Americans and Haitians, often spilling into bloodshed-most of it the latter's-until the newly arrived immigrants began to organize themselves into gangs and look out for one another. The most notorious of these was The SNBC, aka The Saturday Night Barons Club, led by Solomon Boukman.

Max had last come to the neighborhood when he was investigating Boukman and his gang in 1981. He'd driven through street after trash-choked street, past boarded-up stores and derelict or tumble-down houses, without seeing a soul. Then there'd been the riot he and Joe got caught up in.

Fifteen years later, Max was expecting more of the same, only worse than before, but when he got onto Northeast 54th Street, he thought he'd come to the wrong place. The area was clean and full of people walking streets lined with shops painted in bright, vivid pinks, blues, oranges, yellows, and greens. There were small restaurants, bars, outdoor cafйs, and stores selling everything from clothes and food to wood sculptures, books, music, and paintings.

Max parked, got out of his car, and started walking. He was the only white face on the block but he had none of the anticipatory edge he would have had in a black ghetto.

It was late afternoon and the sun had started to set, giving the sky its first tinge of purple. Max walked down to a place his mother and father had taken him to in his teens, a furniture store on 60th Street they'd bought their kitchen table from. The store was long gone, but in its place stood the imposing Caribbean Marketplace, built as an exact replica of the old Iron Market in Port-au-Prince.

He went inside and walked past small stalls selling more food, CDs, and clothes, as well as Catholic ornaments. Everyone spoke Kreyol, the Haitian dialect composed of part-French and part-West African tribal tongues. The speech patterns sounded confrontational, as if its two composite parts were on the verge of full-scale argument with each other. Kreyol wasn't spoken; it was half-shouted, the pitch edgy and intense, everyone sounding like they were getting the last word in before the fists started flying. Yet when Max checked the speakers' body language, he realized they were probably doing nothing more threatening than gossiping or bartering.

Max walked out of the marketplace and crossed the road to the Church of Notre Dame d'Haпti and the neighboring Pierre Toussaint Haitian Catholic Center. The center was closed, so he went into the church. He might not have had much time for any notion of God in his life, but he loved churches. He always ended up going into them whenever he needed to think. They were the quietest, emptiest places he knew. It was a habit he'd picked up as a beat cop. He'd cracked many a case sitting in a pew with just the sound of his thoughts and a notebook for company. Churches had helped him focus. He'd never told anyone about this-including his wife-in case they'd thought he was a secret Jesus freak with a messianic-identity complex, or in case they turned out to be Jesus freaks themselves.