Ten million dollars if he performed a miracle and brought the boy back alive, five million dollars if he came back with just the body, and another five million if he dragged the killers in with it - their dead-or-alive status was immaterial, as long as they had the kid’s blood on their hands.
Those were the terms, and, if he chose to accept them, that was the deal.
Max Mingus was an ex-cop turned private investigator. Missing persons were his specialty, finding them his talent. Most people said he was the best in the business - or at least they had until 17th April 1989, the day he’d started a seven-year sentence for manslaughter on Rikers Island and had his licence permanently revoked.
The client’s name was Allain Carver. His son’s name was Charlie. Charlie was missing, presumed kidnapped.
Optimistically, with things going to plan and ending happily for all concerned, Max was looking at riding out into the sunset a millionaire ten to fifteen times over. There were a lot of things he wouldn’t have to worry about again, and he’d been doing a lot of worrying lately, nothing but worrying.
So far, so good, but now for the rest:
The case was based in Haiti.
‘Haytee?’ Max said as if he’d heard wrong.
‘Yes,’ Carver replied.
Shit.
He knew this about Haiti: voodoo, AIDS, Papa Doc, Baby Doc, boat people and, recently, an American military invasion called Operation Restore Democracy he’d seen on TV.
He knew - or had known - quite a few Haitians, ex-pats he’d had regular dealings with back when he’d been a cop and worked a case in Little Haiti, Miami. They hadn’t had a decent thing to say about their homeland, ‘bad place’ being the most common and kindest.
Nevertheless, he had fond memories of most of the Haitians he’d met. In fact, he’d admired them. They were honest, honourable, hard-working people who’d found themselves in the most unenviable place in America - bottom of the food chain, south of the poverty line, a lot of ground to make up.
That went for most of the Haitians he’d met. When it came to people there were always plenty of exceptions to every generalization, and he’d come face to face with those. They hadn’t left him with bad memories so much as the kind of wounds that never really heal, that open up at the slightest nudge or touch.
The whole thing was already sounding like a bad idea. He’d just come out of one tough spot. Why go to another?
Money. That was why.
Charlie had disappeared on 4 September 1994, his third birthday. Nothing had been heard or seen of him since. There had been no ransom demands and there were no witnesses. The Carver family had had to call off its search for the boy after two weeks because the US army had invaded the country and put it on lockdown, imposing curfews and travel restrictions on the whole population. The search hadn’t resumed until late October, by which time the trail, already born cold, had frozen over.
'There’s one other thing,’ Carver said when he’d finished talking. ‘If you take the job, it’s going to be dangerous... Make that very dangerous.’
‘How so?’ Max asked.
‘Your predecessors, they... Things didn’t turn out too right for them.’
‘They dead?’
There was a pause. Carver's face turned grim and his skin lost a little of its colour.
‘No... not dead,’ he said, finally. Worse. Much worse.’