aliens?"
"We counted thirty-five people climbing onto the trucks, but there could've been more. A few Asians, a few whites and blacks, but the majority were Hispanics." I told her about the old man and the girl.
Lucy said, "Oh, my God."
"We left them in place. Rossier wasn't at the scene, and I'm not certain we can tie this to him. We'd get Bennett and LaBorde for sure, but maybe not Rossier."
She said, "Did you get the Cadillac's license number?"
I gave it to her.
Lucy said, "Stay where you are. I'll call you as soon as I have something."
"Thanks, Luce."
She said, "I miss you, Studly."
"I miss you, too, Luce."
One hour and thirteen minutes later Lucy called back. "The Eldorado is registered to someone named Donaldo Prima from New Orleans. He's thirty-four years old, originally from Nicaragua, with three felony convictions, two for dealing stolen goods and one fire-arms violation. There's nothing in his record to link him to illegal immigration, but the feds are out of the loop on most of this stuff. I've got a friend here in Baton Rouge you can talk to. She works for an alternative weekly called the Bayou State Sentinel, and she's done some pretty good work covering the immigration scene. She might be willing to help."
"Might."
"You'll see." Lucy gave me directions, hung up, then Pike and I drove to Baton Rouge.
The Sentinel had their offices in a little clapboard house on a street just off the LSU campus that was mostly rental houses for students and people who enjoyed the student lifestyle. Some of the houses had been converted to businesses, but the businesses were all places like used-CD stores and grunge shops and a place that sold joss sticks and papier maché alligators. Alternative. A couple of mountain bikes and a Triumph motorcycle were chained to a bikestand in front of a house with a little sign that said BAYOU STATE SENTINEL – THE LAST BASTION OF TRUTH IN AMERICA. I guess being a bastion of truth didn't prevent people from stealing your bicycles.
Pike and I parked at a meter, and Pike said, "I'll wait in the car." Pike's not big on alternative.
I went up a little cement walk and in through the front door to what had probably been the living room when people were living here instead of working here. Now, five desks were wedged into the place, along with a coffee machine and a water cooler and a lot of posters of Kurt Cobain and Hillary Clinton and framed Sentinel covers. The covers had headlines like LIFE SUX and FIVE REASONS TO KILL YOURSELF NOW. Alternative. A couple of African-American women in their late twenties were working at Macintosh computers farther back in the room, one of them on the phone as she typed, and an athletic white guy with short red hair was at a desk just inside the door. A parrot sat on a perch in the waiting area, copies of the New York Times and the New Orleans Times-Picayune spread on the floor beneath it. The parrot flapped its wings when it saw me, then lifted its tail feathers and squirted a load of parrot shit onto the New York Times. I said, "Man, this parrot is something."
The red-haired guy smiled over at me. "That's Bubba, and that's what we think of the mainstream press. What can I do for you?"
I gave him one of my cards. "Elvis Cole to see Sela Henried. Lucille Chenier called her about me."
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