"Listen, man, honest to God, I was hired," Henrey said earnestly.

"We understand that, and we'll take into account any help you give us. Give me just one thing that'll help."

"I gotta talk to a lawyer."

"One thing, buddy," Lucas said. "Just give me one thing. We might not need you an hour from now."

The guy looked around and said, "You better not be lying. Give me a note or something."

"We don't really have a lot of time to fool around."

"I'm not a bad guy, I'm just trying to make a living taking a few pictures. I usually do wildlife and nature."

"Yeah, well, that's cool."

Henrey sat head-down for a moment, and Rie looked at Lucas and winked. Then Henrey said, "I don't know about the child-porn thing. I heard that he does it, but it'd be stupid. It's death. There're plenty of places outside the States where you can do it all you want, and nobody cares."

"Ware is sort of a hands-on kinda guy," Lucas said.

The photographer winced and said, "Just one thing?"

"Just one."

He nodded. "But you gotta help me… The thing is, sometimes when I've been here shooting, the actors-"

From Rie: "Actors?"

"Models, whatever. They sort of like to get their noses into it, and Morrie usually has a little coke around. I've seen him get it a couple times… go for it. It's not like I could go over and see what he's doing, but I think one of the power outlets behind his desk is a fake. I think he keeps a little stash in there."

Lucas slapped him on the back. "See? That was no problem. And if you're like an up-and-up nature guy, like you say… maybe we can deal. Okay? Now, I'm gonna put you back on the couch with Ware. Don't say anything to him."

Lucas brought Del out to the front, told him about the power outlets, then sent Henrey back to the couch and brought Carr into the outer room. Lucas sat him down where Henrey had been, and made the same pitch.

"Look, all I do is maintain his website," Carr said. "He's never bothered to learn how to do that. He puts his pictures on disks, gives me the index number, and I move them over to the Web and set up thumbnails. ErosFineArtPhotos. com."

"Any children on the site?" Lucas asked.

"No. Of course not," Carr said.

"Does he do kids?"

Carr looked uncomfortable. "I don't know. I don't see everything. I just move megabytes. I'm a moving guy."

Lucas nodded and said, "Listen, pal-you better get an attorney. If we find pictures of kids around here, you're gonna go down as an accomplice, and that means a couple of years in prison. You better think of ways to help us, and get your lawyer to cut a deal… I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm threatening you, but this is serious shit."

Carr puffed up his cheeks and audibly exhaled. "If I don't have the money for a lawyer…"

"We'll get one appointed," Lucas said.

"Listen, I can probably tell you a couple of things. I never got involved in the photography at all, but Morrie once told me that sometimes he had 'special stuff.' "

"Special stuff."

"That's what he called it. He was, like, being important. He said he'd transfer it directly to a guy in Europe who puts it up on a website there." He twisted his hands around, as though he were playing cat's cradle. "I think… Morrie's a content provider. We got eight zillion websites without content, and Morrie provides it."

"There's not enough porno out there?" Rie asked.

"Yeah, there's a lot of stuff, but people are always looking for fresh stuff."

"Young stuff," Rie said.

"Yeah. Teenagers, anyway."

"I'll make you a deal right now," Lucas said. "Give me something, give me anything, and I'll help you out. I won't help you if I find out you've been dealing kid stuff, but if you're just getting paid by Ware to run his website… we can help."

Carr puffed his cheeks again, rubbed his hair, said, "Maybe I ought to see a lawyer."

Lucas shrugged. "That's absolutely up to you. But I'll tell you what, this offer may expire. If we find a bunch of stuff…"

"Aw, man…" He looked at Rie, then said, "I'm not a freak."

"Nobody said you were," she said.

To Lucas, mumbling, Carr said, "There's a possibility… that he ships stuff to an underground website in Europe-Holland, I think-called donnerblitzen451." He spelled it, then said, "You need some kind of code to get in. Putting in the wrong code too many times may wipe the site. Maybe your guys can do something with it."

"Donnerblitzen like the reindeer," Lucas said.

"Yeah. Four fifty-one like the Ray Bradbury book, Fahrenheit 451," Carr said. "Four fifty-one is supposed to be the burning point of paper, so I think that's Morrie's little joke. If you put the wrong number into the website-more than a couple of times, anyway-it burns."

"Why would he do that?" Lucas asked. "If somebody found it by mistake…"

"How are you gonna find donnerblitzen451 by mistake? It's not a public facility-it's his. It's his warehouse, I think. You put a high-res photo file in there, somebody wants something special, you go to your warehouse, you order it sent, the site sends out the file, the recipient prints it… There's no way to get back to Morrie. He has a photo negative for ten minutes. After he develops it, he scans it, he burns the neg, and the picture is nothing but a bunch of numbers somewhere in Europe."

"That's interesting," Lucas said. "But you don't know the code to get in."

"No, but I've seen the setup before, and I think it's booby-trapped. If you try to get in, you better know what you're doing, or the place is gonna burn." He nodded, as if turning over the problem in his mind. "I've given the whole thing some thought. Tried to figure out what the code was-tried to catch him going out to the site. I even thought about installing a keystroke recorder in his computer, but… I never did."

"All right, this helps," Lucas said. "If you let on to Ware for one minute what you told us, our deal is off. And you still better get a lawyer."

WHEN LUCAS WAS done with Carr, he sent him back to the couch and said to Rie, "We need to get the code for that website before we turn Ware loose. If he gets five minutes with a computer, he can kill the site."

"How're we gonna do that?" she asked.

"Call the feds, I guess. They're supposed to have some big-deal computer forensics operation going on. Maybe they can help."

"You want to do that?"

"Yeah, I'll take care of it," he said. "And…" He turned his head at movement outside. "Hey-I think we've got customers."

A man and a woman had gotten out of an old Chevy and were walking toward the door.

"They'll see the broken door," Rie said.

"I'll get it." Lucas hurried over to the door and pulled it open, as though he were leaving.

The man was just stepping up onto the sidewalk, and stopped when he saw Lucas. "Hey. Is Morrie around?"

"Yeah. He's in the back," Lucas said. "Who're you?"

"We're the talent," the woman said. She was young, but her face was tough, touched with worry lines-a street kid. She looked straight at Lucas, challenging him. Maybe eighteen, Lucas thought. Maybe not.

"Come on in, talk to Carolyn," Lucas said.

The two stepped past Lucas, crowding into the small reception room. Rie, behind the desk, stood up as Lucas stepped back inside and pulled the door shut. The woman said to Rie, "We're the talent. Morrie said we're supposed to meet him here. We're a couple of minutes early."

"That's all right," Rie said. She held up her badge. "We're the police. Morrie's being raided."

The woman said, "Oh, shit," and pivoted, looking at the door.

"I'd just run you down if you got past me," Lucas said, leaning back against it.

"Fuckin'…" The word came out as a harsh grate, then swung up to a whine. "We haven't done anything."

"No, but we're asking people to cooperate. I'd like to see a little ID, a driver's license."