"They're here. If you'l just shut the fuck up and let me get my bearings."

Rinaldi got out and looked around. Quickwater gave me another of his stony stares as our informant did a visual sweep of the area. I ignored him and did my own inspection.

The spot had once been used as a dump. I could see cans and plastic containers, beer and wine bottles, an old mattress, and a rusted set of box springs. The ground was marked with the delicate tracks of deer, circling, crossing, and disappearing into the surrounding trees.

"I'm getting impatient, Frog," Claudel urged. "I'd count to three, as I do with children, but I'm sure I'd lose you with the higher math."

"Wil you just shut the fuck -- "

"Easy," Claudel warned.

"I haven't been out here in years. There was a shed, man. If I can spot the fucking shed I can walk you to them."

Frog starting making sorties into the woods, probing like a hound scenting a hare. He looked less confident with each passing moment, and I was beginning to share his doubt.

I've been on many informant-led expeditions, and in a lot of cases the trip is a waste of time. Jailhouse tips are notoriously unreliable, either because the herald is lying, or because his memory has simply failed him. LaManche and I went twice in search of a septic tank reported to be the tomb of a murder victim. Two safaris, no tank. The snitch went back to jail, and the taxpayers picked up the bil .

Final y, Rinaldi returned to the Jeep.

"It's farther up."

"How much farther?"

"What am I, a geographer? Look, I'l know the spot when I see it. There was a wooden shed."

"You're repeating yourself, Frog." Claudel looked pointedly at his watch.

"Sacre bleu! If you'l quit riding my ass and drive a bit farther you'l get your stiffs."

"You'd better be right, Frog. Or you wil be at the center of the biggest cluster fuck of the mil ennium."

The men climbed back into the Jeep and the procession crept slowly forward. Within twenty yards Rinaldi held up his hands. Then he gripped the seat behind my shoulders and strained forward to peer through the windshield.

"Hold it."

Quickwater braked.

"There. That's it."

Rinaldi pointed to the roofless wal s of a smal wooden structure. Most of the shed had fal en in on itself, and fragments of roofing and rotten wood lay strewn around the ground.

Everyone got out. Rinaldi did a three-sixty, hesitated briefly, then set off into the woods at a forty-degree angle from the shed.

Claudel and I fol owed, picking our way through last year's vines and creepers, and slapping back branches stil weeks from budding. The sun was wel above the horizon now, and the trees threw long, spiderweb shadows across the soggy ground.