I had to trek back upstairs to find out what a blue form was while she was riding the high Jamaican seas with a ne’er-do-well named Osvaldo or in the embrace of a sad but mysterious English lieutenant.

“Give me the A number,” she said as I pushed the representation-of-attorney form across the desk to her.

“I don’t know any numbers. I know the person’s name, country of origin and date I think she was crossing the border. I don’t know anything else.”

With her lips moving, the woman read another page before she slid off the stool to copy down the information I had. She was back almost immediately, seating herself and turning to the page she had marked in the book.

“She’s not here. Check El Centro.”

El Centro is about five miles from the Mexican border. It’s a big detention center. I’ve seen pictures of it on television. They try to make it look good, like a junior high school, but it has guards and very high walls. El Centro is also where they hold people waiting to come up for hearings on requests for political asylum. Carmen Luzano was, from what Monica Fulbright had told me, a woman my age, ordinary in appearance. A simple woman. I imagined she had been terrified when detained, that she had cried out for her parents and worried about losing her job. As much as I disliked Monica Fullbright, Carmen Luzano stirred all the cockles of my liberal heart. It was a major effort to get the INS woman to give me the El Centro phone number. Newton’s fifth law of physics. A body at rest tends to stay at rest. And ends up a federal employee.