Nothing was taken for granted any more. There were no windows and the door was metal.

Near the entrance to the lot I saw a hulking bubba type slouched in a battered pickup with the door open. He had a square face and had gone days without shaving. His plaid shirt had the sleeves cut off, showing hard and tattooed arms. He shot me a look, flicked the cigarette to the pavement. I checked my rear-view and saw him pull a cellphone.

“You see that guy, Cars? Mean-looking piece of work.”

“Probably just sitting and eating,” I said. “But around here’s where you should let your natural paranoia shine.”

“Cuz it ain’t paranoia if they’re really following you, right?”

“Bingo.”

I parked at the far end of the building. There was no name on the metal door, just a number. But I knew the name: Southern Legal Defense Program. Though the name suggested a program to help indigent defendants, the SLDP was a monitoring organization that kept close tabs on hate groups. The organization had contacts ranging from law enforcement to prison leadership to informants inside the groups. In a recent case information supplied by the SLDP and a couple of similar watchdog groups helped convict two former Klan members of a series of lynchings that had occurred in the early sixties. The Kluxers were now in their late seventies, and I was delighted they got their earthly retributions in before whatever lays in the distance exacted the Universe’s toll.

Much harsher, I hoped.

There had, predictably, been the usual cracker chorus bemoaning the perps’ current ages and calling the investigation a vendetta against a few old men, as though time had washed their crimes away. I recalled video footage of their lawyer, a beady-eyed guy in a loud suit, standing at the courthouse mics after the guilty verdicts, yodeling about injustice to a crowd with few but vocal sympathizers.

Thus the bomb, one of several revenge schemes aimed at the group in its forty-year existence.

I’d known the SLDP’s director since my first year on the force, back when I was in uniform. A murder had occurred on my beat, horrific, a fifty-year-old black man beaten to death with ball bats.

I’d been asking around on the street about the unsolved murder – it couldn’t even have been called a case because I was in uniform – for a couple months when I got a call out of the blue from a guy named Ben Belker. It was curious that he’d heard about my interest, because I was just a beat cop. Belker said I should talk to a guy named Hawley Cage.

Long story short: Cage turned out to be a member of a group called Aryan America Only. Except he was also an informer for the SLDP. Cage told me of interesting boozy conversations he’d overheard at a meeting. Long story shorter: I vetted the info, passed it to the dicks on the case, and a month later they arrested two psychopathic Klanners who’d killed the old guy after he’d yelled at them to slow down in the street because kids lived in the neighborhood.

It turned out Ben Belker had worked for the SLDP for years as a field operative and was now its “survey director”, meaning he assimilated and analyzed data on hate groups to make sense of their comings and goings. If anyone was anyone in the various movements, Ben kept tabs on them.

Ben was at the door as I entered, as skinny as a sapling, brown hair looking like it was combed with a wolverine, big eyes widened by nerdish black-frame glasses. A pen stain soaked the pocket of his work shirt. His shoes were gray Hush Puppies, one untied. He clasped me in a hug as tight as an auto compactor. When we released he slapped the side of my head. Harry seemed content to stand back and watch the drama.

“Jeez, what was that about?” I asked, rubbing my head.

“When was the last time you were here?”

Time has never been exact to me. I tried to recall my last visit.

“Has it been a year, Ben? Year-and-a-half?”

“Three. After promising we’d get together at least twice a year.”

“My bad.”

“OK,” Ben grinned, “I’ve hugged you ’cus I love you, smacked you because you’re a prick, now introduce me to Harry Nautilus and let’s get down to business.”

Harry frowned at the mention of his name.

“Have we met before?”

Ben held his finger up in the hang on motion, went to a computer, tapped a few keys. He waved us over to look at the screen. I saw Harry and me in a crowd in Mobile’s Bienville Square, a prominent civil rights leader at a podium a dozen feet beyond. The event had been two years ago.

“Here’s another,” Ben said, pulling up a second photo from the same day. Both shots were slightly unfocused. “And I think there’s one more…”

Harry didn’t look happy, but kept his counsel and watched Ben select from a sheet of tiny photos, making an enlargement that fit the screen.

“Voila!” Ben said. Harry and I leaned forward to see a shot of the two of us standing outside the front door of a local hotel. I was on the radio, Harry looking to his side at a crowd of sign-holding protestors. I remembered the day: a liberal Massachusetts senator had been visiting Mobile and Harry and I were put on guard duty along with half the force.

“I know there’s an explanation I’m going to accept.” Harry’s tone said it would be a challenge. Harry wasn’t big on unauthorized surveillance of himself.

“We weren’t specifically taking surreptitious photos of you, Detective,” Ben explained. “This guy here, ten feet away, is who we were tracking. Arnold Meltzer. He’s the head honcho of the Aryan Revolutionary Army, a pivotal white power splinter group attractive to a lot of biker gangs. You just happened to be there.”

Harry took a second to let it sink in, nodded acceptance. He studied the photo of a wisp of a man in his fifties, dressed in a light seersucker suit, his face almost totally hidden behind sunglasses. His mouth was a tight pucker, like he was about to lift a clarinet to his lips. He looked as threatening as a canary.

“This guy’s a Klan type, you mean? A real baddie?”

“These days, the danger is a lot bigger than the Klan. Thanks to the internet, white supremacist types are more organized than ever.”

“Obama’s presidency doesn’t change things?”

“People this broken just feel more threatened. It’s made them even crazier, full-blown paranoiac. The movement used to weed out the worst psychotics, but now it gives them leadership positions.”

Harry re-studied the photo of Arnold Meltzer. “And this little fella’s a leader?” He sounded dubious.

“Don’t be fooled by Meltzer’s stature. His ideas make him dangerous. As well as his influence and money.”

“Where’s the money come from?”

“Outlaw bikers are big in the drug-running biz. Mules. It’s whispered Meltzer’s into that big-time, like a contractor. He’s also the figurehead for the White Power movement in the South, revered by supremacists.”

Harry scowled at the photo. “I was nearly rubbing shoulders with the scumbucket and didn’t know.”

Ben said, “He’s not in any police files. I was scanning through the photos when I saw Carson. From his descriptions, I figured that was you next to him. I blew the photos up and saved them.” Ben grinned at me, a loopy Cheshire cat. “Something to remember Carson by since he never writes, never calls, never…”

I put my hand on Ben’s shoulder. “I’m here now, Ben. With another photo for you to consider.” I pulled three death photos of our baby abductor, handed them over. He stared, shook his head.

“Never seen him before. What’d he do?”

“Tried to steal a kid from a hospital.”

“I saw that bit of weirdness on the news,” Ben said. “I should have figured you’d be in the middle of it.”

He picked up a magnifying glass from his desk and studied closer. “I know that tat on his shoulder: WR. It shows sympathy with a specific biker gang.” Ben turned to the open door to the back offices, yelled, “Wanda!”