Voodoo River

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?'

'It is not just the poor who wish to come here, Mr. Cole. The poor crawl under the fence at Brownsville and work as day laborers picking vegetables. The upper classes and the educated wish to come here, also, and they wish to bring their lives and professions with them. That is much more difficult than crawling under a fence.'

'They want to buy an identity.'

'Si. Yes. The coyote, he tells them that they are buying citizenship, you see? They will be given birth certificates, a driver's license, the social security card, all in their own names and usually with their actual birth dates. This is what they pay for, and they pay a very great deal. With these things they can bring the medical degree, the engineering degree, like that.'

'And do they get what they pay for?'

'Almost never.' We walked to the edge of the promenade. The river was below us, cutting a great brown swath through the city, flat and wide and somehow alive. The river's edge was prickly with loading cranes and wharfs and warehouses. He glanced at the Haitian and lowered his voice. 'Four months after he came, seven members of his family also bought passage through Frank Escobar. They were put in a barge out in the Gulf, fifty- four people put into a little space ten feet by eight feet, with no food and water, and the barge was set adrift. It was an old barge, and Escobar never intended to bring them ashore. He already have his money, you see, paid in full? A tanker reported the abandoned barge, and the Coast Guard investigated. All fifty-four men, women, and children had died. It got very hot in the hold of the barge with no openings for the ventilation and no water to drink. The hatch had been dogged shut, you see?' The Haitian's skin was a deep coal black, greasy with sweat. 'His rather was a dentist. He wishes to be a dentist, also, but we see.' He let the thought trail away and looked back at me. 'That is the way it is with men like Escobar and Prima, you see? They get the money, then fft. Life means nothing. This is why I have so much protection, you see? I try to stop these men. I try to stop their murder.'

Neither of us spoke for a time. 'So what about Prima?'

'I hear that he has gone into business for himself, undercutting Escobar's price.'

I said, 'Ah.'

Del Reyo nodded.

I said, 'If Prima has set up a competing business, Escobar can't like it.'

He sucked on the cigarette. 'Si. There is trouble between them. There is always trouble between men like this.' The smoke drifted up over his eyes, making him squint. 'You say you know nothing about the coyotes, yet you ask about Donaldo Prima. You say you know that he is a bad man. How do you know these things?'

'I saw his people bring a dead child off a barge sometime around eleven-thirty last night. There were other people, but only the child was dead. An old man was making a deal about it, and I saw Prima shoot the old man in the head.'

Ramon del Reyo did not move. 'You saw this thing?'

I nodded.

'You have proof?'

'May I reach into my pocket?'

'Yes.'

I showed him the old man's picture. He held it carefully, then took a deep breath, dropped the cigarette, and stepped on it. 'May I keep this?'

'The cops might need it for the identification.'

He stared at it another moment, then slipped the picture into his pocket. 'I will return it to you, Mr. Cole. You have my word.'

I didn't say anything.

'I tell you something, and if you are smart you will listen. These men come from places of war where life has no value. They have executed hundreds, perhaps thousands. This man Frank Escobar, he has murdered many and he murders more every day. Prima himself is such a man.' He seemed to have to think about how to say it. 'There is so much murder in the air it is what we breathe. The taking of life has lost all meaning.' He shook his head. 'The gun.' He shook his head again, as if in saying those two words he had summed up all he was about, or ever could be about.

I said, 'What about the feds?'

Ramon del Reyo rubbed his thumb across his fingertips and said nothing.

I said, 'If I wanted to take down Donaldo Prima, how could I do it?'

He looked at me with steady, soft brown eyes, then made a little shrug. 'I think that by asking these things, you are looking to do good, but you will not find good here, Mr. Cole. This is a Godless place.'

'I don't think you are without God, Mr. Del Reyo.'

'I am afraid I will not know that until the afterlife, no?' We reached the little bench by the azaleas. Ramon del Reyo sat, and I sat with him. 'We have talked enough, now. I will leave, and you will sit here for exacdy ten minutes. If you leave before then, it will be taken the wrong way and you will be killed. I am sorry to be rude in this way, but there we are.'

'Of course.' I imagined the man with the rifle. I imagined him watching for the sign, and I wondered what the sign might've been. A yawn, perhaps. Perhaps wiping the brow. The sign, the trigger, history.

Ramon del Reyo said, 'If the man who is with you approaches, have him sit beside you and he will not be harmed.'

I said, 'What man?'

Ramon del Reyo laughed, then patted my leg and moved away, del Reyo and the guy with the Ray-Bans, then the others, and finally the Haitian. The Haitian made a pistol of his right hand, pointed it at me, and dropped the hammer. Then he smiled and disappeared into the crowd. What a way to live.

I sat on the lip of the bench in the damp heat and waited. My shirt was wet and clinging, and my skin felt hot and beginning to burn. Joe Pike came through the crowd and sat beside me. He said, 'Look across the square, corner building, third floor, third window in.'

I didn't bother looking. 'Guy widi a rifle.'

'Not now, but was. Did you make him?'