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 nobody 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 passenger 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 stitch 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 shell and Zatarain's Crab Boil. We walked beneath the covered banquette of a three-story building ringed with lacy ironwork, passing 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 shit."

"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?"