He looked at the card and stood. "I'll go see. You want some coffee or something?"

"No. Thanks."

He disappeared into a little hall, then came back a couple of minutes later with a tall woman who didn't look thrilled to see me. She said, "You're the guy Lucy called about?"

I said, "Is it that disappointing?"

She frowned when I said it, then went to the windows and peered out at the street, like maybe there would be a horde of FBI agents in my wake. "Lucy said there were two of you."

"He's waiting in the car."

She looked back at me, and her eyes narrowed as if it were somehow suspicious that Pike would wait in the car. "Well. Okay. Come back to my office."

Sela Henried had a long face and short blond hair that had been bleached white and cut into spikes, and a row of nine piercings running up along the edge of her left ear. A small blue cross had been tattooed on the back of her right hand between the thumb and forefinger, and she was wearing cheap silver rings on most of her fingers. I made her for her mid-thirties, but she could have been older. Her office had once been a bedroom at the front of the house. She went to the windows, looked out at Joe Pike again, then put her hands on her hips. "I don't like him sitting out there."

"Why not?"

"He looks like a cop. So do you." She turned back to me and crossed her arms. "Perhaps you are." Suspicious, all right.

I said, "Ms. Henried, did Lucy explain to you what this is about?" Maybe I should turn on the old charm. The old charm might be just the ticket.

"Yes, or I wouldn't be seeing you. I've known Lucy Chenier for a very long time, Mr. Cole. We played tennis together at LSU, but this is a very controversial newspaper. Our phones have been tapped, our offices have been searched, and there is a d.a.m.n long list of agencies that would like to see us out of business." She sat and stared at me. "This interview will not take place unless you agree to be searched."

"Searched?" Maybe the old charm wasn't going to do much good, after all.

"I trust Lucy, but for all I know you've duped her to take advantage of me."

I spread my hands. "Are we talking a strip search or just your basic frisk job?"

She yelled, "Tommy!" The red-haired guy came in. "Would you see if he's wearing a wire, please?"

Tommy smiled shyly at me. "Sorry."

"No problem."

Tommy patted me down, moving his hands up under my arms and down the hollow of my back and around my waist. Professional. Like he'd done it before, and like he'd had it done to him. When he reached the Dan Wesson he looked up, surprised. "Hey, he's got a gun."

She frowned at me. One of the posters over her desk showed a pistol with a big red slash across it and the words STOP THE HANDGUN MADNESS. She said, "May we see your wallet?"

"Sure." I took out my wallet and gave it to Tommy. He looked through everything the way a kid might, sort of curious but without any real involvement. "It says he's a private investigator from California. There's a license for the gun."

"All right, Tommy. Thanks."

Tommy handed my wallet back and left. Polite. Another day at the truth factory.

Sela Henried went around behind her desk, and sat. She leaned back and put a foot up on the edge of her desk. Doc Martens. "Lucy says you have questions about the immigration scene in Louisiana."

"That's right. We're trying to find out about a guy named Donaldo Prima. We think he's running illegal aliens, but there's no record of it."

"She mentioned Prima." Sela Henried picked up a plastic pencil and tapped it against her knee. "I looked through my notes and I can't find Prima mentioned, but that doesn't mean anything. We have what the mainstream press likes to call an 'immigration problem' down here. New Orleans is a main entry port for people entering the country through the Gulf, and dozens of coyotes work the coast."

"If you can't help us, maybe you know someone who can."

She shook her head. "I'm sorry." She knew something, she just didn't want to talk about it.

"It's important, Ms. Henried."

She jabbed the pencil at me. "I've covered the victimization of those trying to enter our country for years. The Sentinel supports the concept of open borders and the activities of those who circ.u.mvent our country's racist and exclusionary immigration policies."

"Ms. Henried, I work for some people who are being victimized in a pretty big way themselves. If I can find out about Donaldo Prima, I may be able to stop their own little slice of the victimization. It ain't saving the world, but it's what I can do."

She said nothing.

"At a little bit after midnight last night, I saw Donaldo Prima shoot an old man in the head with a thirty-two caliber revolver. I think he shot the old man because the old man was making a stink about a. little girl who died in the hold of the barge bringing them into this country. I saw both bodies. I touched them. Is that the kind of activity you support?"

She hissed out a little breath, then dropped her foot from the desk and leaned forward. "Is that bulls.h.i.t?"

"It's the truth."

"Will you show me the bodies?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because to do so might compromise my clients."

"Maybe this issue is larger than your clients."

"Then I'll have to live with it."

She frowned at me some more, then got up, and went to the window to see if Pike was still there. She came back to her desk. "Maybe I know someone. His name is Ramon del Reyo, and he could probably help you out. He wouldn't speak over the phone, though. He's helped a lot of people into the country and the feds just about live up his a.s.s."

"Okay."

She let out another long breath. "I want you to know how much I'm putting at risk, here. I believe in what Ramon's doing. He's a tough little sonofab.i.t.c.h, and everybody's after him, all the way from the feds to the G.o.dd.a.m.ned hoods down in Nicaragua, and I'd hate like h.e.l.l for anything to happen to him. Do you understand that?"

"I just want Prima, Ms. Henried. Will your guy speak with me?"

She said, "I have to make a call, and I won't do it from here. You can wait, or you can come along." She stood again. "Which is it?"

We walked up the street to a pay phone outside of a Subway Sandwich shop, and Sela Henried placed one call, using her body to block the phone so that I could not see the number she dialed. She spoke for maybe two minutes, then she hung up, keeping her hand on the receiver. "Someone will call back."

I nodded.

Nine minutes later the pay phone rang, and Sela Henried picked up before the first ring had finished. She spoke for a few minutes, this time writing something in a small reporter's notepad. When she hung up she gave me what she had written. "This is in New Orleans, okay? It's a storefront. You have to be there at one o'clock, but you've got plenty of time."

"Thanks, Sela. I appreciate it."

She put the pad in her pocket, then looked at Pike. You could see him sitting in the car down the block, but you couldn't tell where he was looking or what he was thinking. She said, "Ramon will be there, and he'll be with people who can protect him. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"Sure. Don't do anything stupid."

She nodded. "I wouldn't bring the gun. It will only make them nervous, and they will probably take it away from you, anyway."

"Okay."

She nodded again, then looked in my eyes the way you do when you want to make sure the person you're talking to doesn't just understand you, but actually gets it. She said, "I'm trusting you with a very great deal, Mr. Cole. Ramon is a good man, but these are dangerous people with a very great deal to lose. If they think you pose a threat to them, they will kill you. If they think that I set them up, they very well might kill me. I hope that matters to you."

I looked at the pay phone, and then I looked back at the offices of the Bayou State Sentinel. "If the feds want you enough to tap the phones in your office, they'll tap all of the nearby pay phones, too."

She nodded, and now she looked tired, as if all the years of paranoia and fear were getting to be a little too heavy to bear. "Like you, we do the best we can. I hope this helps, Mr. Cole."

Sela Henried walked back to the Sentinel, and Joe Pike and I drove to New Orleans. The drive took a little less than an hour and a half, through forests and swamps so thick they looked like jungle. As we drove I told Pike what Sela Henried had said about Ramon del Reyo and the people around him. Pike listened quietly, then said, "I know guys from down south. They're dangerous people, Elvis. They've grown up with war. To them, war is a way of life."

"Maybe we should split up. Maybe I should meet Ramon, and you should hang back and walk slack for me." Slack was having someone there to pull your a.s.s out of the fire if things went bad. Joe Pike was the best slack man in the business.

Pike nodded. "Sounds good."

The freeway rose the last twenty miles or so, elevated above swamp and cypress knees and hunched men in flat-bottomed boats. Lake Pontchartrain appeared on our left like a great inland sea, and then the swamps fell behind us and we were driving through a dense collar of bedroom communities, and then we were in New Orleans. We took the I-10 through the heart of the city past the Louisiana Superdome, which looked, from the freeway, like some kind of Michael Rennie The Day the Earth Stood Still s.p.a.ceship plunked down amid the high-rises. We exited at Ca.n.a.l Street and drove south toward the river and the Vieux Carr+!.

At twenty minutes before one, we parked the car in a public garage on Chartres Street and split up, Pike leaving first. I put the Dan Wesson under the front seat, waited ten minutes, and then I followed.

I walked west on Magazine into an area of seedy, rundown storefronts well away from Bourbon Street ,and Jackson Square and the tour buses. The buildings were crummy and old, with cheesy shops and Nearly-Nu stores and the kinds of things that tourists chose to avoid. I found the address I'd been given, but it was empty and locked. A For Lease sign was in the door, and the door was streaked with grime as if n.o.body had been in the place for the past couple of centuries. I said, "Well, well."

I knocked and waited, but no one answered. I looked both ways along the street, but I couldn't see Joe Pike. I was knocking for the second time when a pale gray Acura pulled to the curb and a thin Hispanic guy wearing Ray-Bans stared out at me. A black guy was sitting in the pa.s.senger seat beside him. The black guy looked Haitian. I said, "Ramon?"

The Hispanic guy made a little head move indicating the backseat. "Get in."

I looked up and down the street again, and again I saw no one. I took a step back from the Acura. "Sorry, guys. I'm waiting for someone else."

The Haitian pointed a fully automatic Tec-9 machine pistol at me across the driver. "Get in, mon, or I'll st.i.tch you up good."

I got in, and we drove away. Maybe splitting up hadn't been so smart, after all.

Chapter 28.

W e drove four blocks to the big World Trade Center at the levee, then swung around to Decatur and the southern edge of the French Quarter. We parked across from the old Jackson Brewing Company, then walked east toward Jackson Square past souvenir shops and restaurants and a street musician working his way through "St. Vitus Day March." He was wearing a top hat, and I pretended to look at him to try to find Joe Pike. Pike might have seen our turn; he might have cut the short blocks over and seen us creeping through the French Quarter traffic as we looked for a place to park. The Haitian pulled my arm, "Le's go, mon."The air was hot and salty with the smell of oysters on half sh.e.l.l and Zatarain's Crab Boil. We walked beneath the covered banquette of a three-story building ringed with lacy ironwork, pa.s.sing souvenir shops and seafood restaurants with huge outdoor boilers, wire nets of bright red crawfish draining for the tourists. Midday during the week, and people jammed the walk and the streets and the great square around the statue of Andrew Jackson. Sketch artists worked in the lazy shade of magnolia trees and mules pulled old-fashioned carriages along narrow streets. It looked like Disneyland on a Sunday afternoon, but hotter, and more than a few of the tourists looked flushed from the heat and shot glances at the bars and restaurants, working up fantasies about escaping into the AC to sip cold Dixie.

I followed the guy with the Ray-Bans and the Haitian across the Washington Artillery Park to a long cement promenade overlooking the river, and then to a wide circular fountain where another Hispanic guy waited by a Popsicle cart. He had a rugged bantamweight's face, and he was slurping at a grape Popsicle. I said, "You Ramon?"

He shook his head once, smiling. "Not yet, podnuh." No accent. "You carrying anything?"

"Nope."

"We gonna have to check." First the red-haired guy, now this.

"Sure."

"Just do what I tell you, and everything'll be fine. Ramon's nearby."

"I'm Mr. Cooperation."

"Piece a' cake, then." He sounded like he was from Brooklyn.

He told me to stand there like we were having a grand little time, and I did. Ray-Ban and the Haitian laughed it up and patted me on the shoulders like we were sharing a laugh, their fingers dancing lightly beneath my arms and down along my ribs. The new guy yukked it up, too, but while he was yukking he dropped his Popsicle, then felt my calves and ankles as he picked it up. Like the red-haired guy, they had done it before. He tossed the Popsicle away and smiled. "Okay. We're fine. Let's see the man."

We walked to the other side of the fountain where Ramon del Reyo sat on a little bench beside a couple of sculpted azalea, bushes. The azaleas were in profuse bloom, their hot pink flowers so dense and pure that they glowed in the blinding sun and cast a pink light. Ramon stood as we approached and offered his hand. He was about my height, but thin and scholarly, with little round spectacles and neat hair. Academic. He was smoking, and his thin cotton shirt was damp with sweat. He said, "My name is Ramon del Reyo, Mr. Cole. Let's walk along, shall we?"

He started off and I went with him, the others following alongside, some closer, some farther, and everybody keeping an eye out. I had seen presidential Secret Service bodyguards work public places, but I'd never seen anyone work a place better than these guys. You'd think we were in the middle of the cold war someplace, but then, maybe we were. Del Reyo said, "Sela Henried is my friend and so I will speak with you, but I want you to know that there is a man near here with a rifle in the seven millimeter Magnum. He is very good with this thing, you see? He can hit the running deer cleanly at five hundred meters." I nodded. "How far away is he now?" "Less than two hundred." Del Reyo looked at me with a studied air. "If anything happens to me, you will be dead in that instant."

"Nothing's going to happen, Mr. del Reyo." He nodded. "Please look here. On your chest." He gestured to the center of my chest, and I looked. A red dot floated there, hard and brilliant even in the bright sun. It flickered, then was gone. I looked up, but could not find the rifleman. I said, "Laser sight." "Just so you know." He made a dismissive wave. "Please call me Ramon." A guy tells you you're a trigger pull from dead, then says please call me Ramon. "Who is Donaldo Prima?"

Ramon took a deep pull on the cigarette, then let the smoke curl out of his mouth and nostrils. "He is dog s.h.i.t."

"Seriously, Ramon. Tell me what you really think." Ramon del Reyo smiled gently and ticked ash from the cigarette with his thumb. A couple of beat cops strolled by, grinning at some college girls from Ole Miss. The cops were wearing shorts like the tourists, and short-sleeved shirts with epaulets and knee socks like they were on safari. Del Reyo said, "He is trying to be the big gangster, you see? El coyote. Someone to whom people go when they wish to enter our country." "Like you."

Ramon del Reyo stopped smiling and looked at me the way he'd look at a disappointing student.

"Donaldo Prima is a smuggler. Automobiles, cocaine, farm equipment, people is all the same, to be bought and sold, you see? To be taken advantage of if possible. I am a political activist. What I do I do for free, because I care about these immigrants and their struggle to reach our country."

"Sorry."

He shrugged, letting it go. "It is a nasty business. He is having problems."

"What kind of problems?"

"He used to work for a man named Frank Escobar. You know Escobar?"

I shook my head. "I don't know any of this, Ramon. That's why I'm talking to you."

"Escobar is the big criminal, the one who controls most of what is smuggled into and out of the port of New Orleans. El coyote grande. He, too, is very bad. From the military in El Salvador. The truth squads." Great.

"A nut."

Del Reyo smiled slightly. "Yes. A killer, you see? He make much money sending stolen American automobiles to Central America when the boat go south, then bringing drugs and refugees here for even more money when the boat comes north. You see?"

"How much profit can there be in smuggling poor people across the border?"

"It is not just the poor who wish to come here, Mr. Cole. The poor crawl under the fence at Brownsville and work as day laborers picking vegetables. The upper cla.s.ses and the educated wish to come here, also, and they wish to bring their lives and professions with them. That is much more difficult than crawling under a fence."

"They want to buy an ident.i.ty."