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 damn 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 circumvent 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 bullshit?"

"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 ass."

"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 sonofabitch, and everybody's after him, all the way from the feds to the goddamned hoods down in Nicaragua, and I'd hate like hell 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 ass 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 spaceship plunked down amid the high-rises. We exited at Canal Street and drove south toward the river and the Vieux Carré.