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RV, and she thought they’d been hassled by the South Dakota highway patrol at some point, because Henry, before he disappeared, but after he spotted Pilot at the rally, said they never stopped talking about it. “They had all kind of drugs in their cars, and they almost got busted by a South Dakota highway patrolman, but they didn’t because the cop was on his way home for dinner.”
    “That sounds real enough,” Letty said, glancing at Lucas.
    In the end, Lucas said, “All right. You’ve got me interested. Let me take a look at the guy. I need to know Henry’s full name, and it would be good if we could get the license plate numbers on Pilot’s vehicles.”
    “It’s Henry Mark Fuller and he’s from Johnson City, Texas. He went to Lyndon B. Johnson High School, but I think he dropped out in eleventh grade. I don’t know any license plate numbers.”
    Lucas wrote Henry’s name in his notebook, and then said, “If you ever see any of Pilot’s people, take down the license plate numbers, if you have a chance. That can get us a lot of information. If you run into friends you trust, ask them to keep an eye out.”
    “I will.”
    “If Pilot was ever in serious trouble, where would I most likely find a police report?” Lucas asked.
    Skye considered that for a moment, then said, “I heard that he was originally from Louisiana, somewhere, but he claimed that he was an actor in Los Angeles for a long time. I think Los Angeles. I don’t know where in Louisiana.”
    Letty asked, “Will you see any more travelers here?”
    “I think so. The St. Paul cops are mellower than the Minneapolis cops, so people come here and hang out in Swede Hollow. I’ve been there a couple times.”
    “You can walk there from the hotel,” Lucas said. He said, “Check around, but don’t be too obvious about it. Don’t ask about Pilot, ask about Henry. Mostly just listen.”
    “I can do that,” Skye said. “I’ve been asking about Henry everywhere.”
    •   •   •
    LETTY DIDN’T WANT to end the interview there, so they all drove back to the house, where Letty borrowed the SUV to take Skye to a laundromat.
    “I’ll drop her at the Holiday Inn after we finish with her clothes,” Letty told Lucas. “Meet you back here.”
    •   •   •
    LUCAS WENT ON DOWNTOWN in his Porsche, made calls to friends in Los Angeles, and talked to one of his agents, Virgil Flowers, who had good connections in South Dakota, and then ran a database search on “Pilot” as a known alias.
    Oddly enough, nothing came up. Lucas had been under the impression that almost any noun in the dictionary had been, at one time or another, given to the cops as a fake name.
    Flowers called back with the name of a South Dakota highway patrol officer working out of Pierre, and when Lucas called him, he said he’d put out a statewide request for information based on Lucas’s description of the caravan. Lucas especially wanted license plate numbers. “Won’t take long,” the cop said, “unless whoever saw them is off-duty and off-line. I’ll call you, one way or another.”
    Lucas also asked him to put out a stop-and-hold on a Henry Mark Fuller of Johnson City, Texas.
    Late in the day, he got a call from a lieutenant in the L.A. Special Operations Bureau, who said he should call an intelligence cop named Lewis Hall in Santa Monica. Lucas did, and Hall said, “You’re looking for a guy named Pilate?”
    “We’re interested in him. Don’t know where to look. He apparently travels with a band of followers in a bunch of beat-up old cars and an RV. Some of the women with him may be turning tricks.”
    “Yeah, I know about that guy. I’ve seen him a couple of times,” Hall said. “Never talked to him. Somebody would come in and say that he’d heard that Pilate had a satanic ritual somewhere. I’m not real big on tracking down satanic rituals, since they usually involve people who know the governor.”
    “I hear you,” Lucas said. “Any