Voodoo River

by Robert Crais

  When the trucks were full, the guys in the parkas pulled down canvas flaps to hide their cargo, climbed back into the cabs, pulled out of the building, and drove away into the rain. When the trucks were gone, a couple of hard-looking guys came up out of the barge dragging a skinny old man and carrying something that looked like a rag doll. The old man was crying and pulling at the hard guys, but they didn’t pay a lot of attention to him. The old guy went over to the guy from the Eldorado with a lot of hand-waving, and then fell to the ground, pulling at the Eldorado’s legs. The guy from the Eldorado kicked at the old man, then pulled out a small revolver, put it to the old man’s head, and we heard a single, small pop.

  My breath caught and I felt Pike tense.

  The guy from the Eldo kicked the old man’s body away, then said something to LeRoy Bennett, and Bennett nodded. The guys from the towboat climbed back aboard, and LeRoy and the guy with the gun walked out to the Eldo. The shooter opened the Eldo’s trunk, took out a small handbag, and gave it to LeRoy. LeRoy brought it to his Polara. The towboat’s engines revved, it backed from the shed, spun slowly into the canal, then eased back the way it had come, still without lights, the low gurgle of its engines fading into the mist. The shooter got into his Eldo and followed after the trucks. Now there were only four of us. Pike said, “Too late for the old man. What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s see what happens.”

  LeRoy took a shovel from the Polara, then he and René dragged the old man and the rag doll along a little trail into the weeds. Pike and I crept after them, moving closer. René dug a small depression in the wet earth, dumped in the bodies, covered them, then went back to their car. LeRoy turned off the generator, and the swamp was suddenly dark. He and René got into their car, and then they, too, were gone.

  I said, “Okay.”

  Pike and I moved to the shallow grave and pushed the mud away with our hands and found the old man and a little girl. The girl was maybe five. She was small and thin, and perhaps she might have been ill, but maybe not. Her face was dark with the rich earth, but as the rain kissed her skin the dirt washed away. I stroked her hair and felt my breath slow and the muscles along my neck and back and across my ribs tighten. She might have been the old man’s granddaughter, but maybe not. Maybe she was alone, and he had befriended her. Maybe he just cared, and in the caring expressed his outrage at her death, and for his outrage he’d been killed. We went through his pockets hoping for some sort of identification, but there was none. There was only a small photograph, bent and water-stained, of the man and a group of people who may have been his family. The man was smiling. I put the photograph in my pocket. I said, “Let’s get them out of here.”

  Pike touched my arm. “We can’t, Elvis.”

  I looked at him.

  “If we move them, Rossier will know. We have to wait. We have to know more before we help them.”

  I breathed deep in the wet air, and then I nodded. I didn’t like it, but there you are.

  We sat in the rain with the old man and the little girl, and after a while we left.

  27

  We returned to the motel at a little before two the next morning, driving slowly along roads that were glassy with rain, through a town so still that it seemed as lifeless and empty as the bodies we’d left in the mud and the sawgrass. We were all that moved in Ville Platte, Joe and I, neither of us speaking, lit only by flashing yellow signal lights that whispered caution.

  We showered and changed, Joe going first, and when we were done and the lights were out, I said, “Joe?”

  I heard him move on the floor, but it took him several seconds to answer. “Yes.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Joe.”

  Pike might have slept, but I did not. I was in the dry room, yet not. I was with the old man and the girl, yet not. I crouched in the sawgrass beside them, the night air dank and muggy, the rain running out of my hair and down my back, the great fat drops falling on the faces below me, washing circles of perfect clarity on the muddy skin, but a clarity that did not maintain and soon faded, obscured by more drops, as if every new truth clouded an old.

  The rain stopped falling a few minutes after four, and at 7:05 we called Lucy at her home and told her what we had seen. She said, “Do you think these people were illegal 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 firearms 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 mâché 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 we
nt 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 thumb and forefinger, and she was wearing cheap silver rings on most of her fingers. I made her for her mid-thirties, but she could have been older. Her office had once been a bedroom at the front of the house. She went to the windows, looked out at Joe Pike again, then put her hands on her hips. “I don’t like him sitting out there.”

  “Why not?”

  “He looks like a cop. So do you.” She turned back to me and crossed her arms. “Perhaps you are.” Suspicious, all right.

  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.