The country would revert to the days of stills, or smokes, as Roop called the imagined contraption necessary to make bootleg tobacco products. He further theorized that in Virginia, especially, people would get away with operating smokes, since not a day went by when there wasn’t controlled burning, a forest fire, a fire in a landfill or on a hearth somewhere. Smoke drifting from acres of trees or refuse or out of the chimneys of historic homes would not necessarily raise suspicions.
Roop was smart enough to know that if he was one of the twenty or thirty aggressive members of the media perched outside the restaurant door, he would not get special treatment. He had wisely chosen to sit in his car, monitoring the scanner as usual. He had been perplexed and excited when he picked up something about a fish spill in second precinct’s beat 219. Roop was a streetwise investigator. He was certain fish spill was a code for big trouble, and he would get the scoop as soon as he finished with the governor.
even as he was thinking Shit, and staring at the computer screen, it suddenly came to Brazil that what he was seeing was not COMSTAT computer mapping at all, but a clever, creative screen saver that someone had downloaded into the police department’s new website.
‘I’ll be damned.’ He was incredulous.
He noticed the light flashing on his answering machine. He played his messages. There were three. The first was from his mother, who was almost too drunk to talk and demanding to know why he never called. The second was Miss Sink making sure he had gotten the sweet potato pie she’d delivered, and the third was from West, wanting him to call right away.
Brazil knew her number, even though he never dialed it. He switched to speakerphone, his pulse running harder, hands busy on the keyboard to no avail. He could not get rid of the screen saver or alter it in any way.
‘Virginia?’ He ran his fingers through his hair and strangled his nervousness before it could speak. Tm returning your call,’ he said easily.
‘There’s something bizarre going on with the computer.’ She was all business.
‘Yours too?’ He couldn’t believe it. ‘Fish?’
‘Yes! And get this. I leave home this morning and my computer’s off, right. Then I come home and not only is it on now, but there’s this map of 219 with all these little blue fish swimming around in it.’
‘Has anyone been inside your house today?’
‘No.’
‘Your alarm was set?’
‘Always.’
‘You sure you didn’t just think you turned your computer off?’
‘Well, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. What are all these fucking fish? Maybe you should come over.’
‘I guess you’re right,’ Brazil hesitated to say as his heart beat harder to make itself heard.
‘We’ve got to get to the bottom of this,’ West said.
Chief Hammer had been fighting with her computer for the past hour, trying to figure out how the city crime map had gotten on her screen and why there were fish in it. She tapped keys and rebooted twice while Popeye restlessly paced about, in and out of her toybox, scratching, standing on her hind legs, and jumping on furniture and finally into Hammer’s lap.
‘How am I supposed to concentrate?’ Hammer asked for the tenth time.
Popeye stared up at Hammer as she pointed the mouse at an X and tried again to exit the map on her screen. This was crazy. The computer was locked. Maybe Fling had screwed up the software. That was the risk when all PCs had to log into the microprocessor downtown. If Fling put a bug in the system, everybody on the Richmond network was infected. Popeye stared at the screen and touched it with her paw.
‘Stop it!’ Hammer said.
Popeye stepped on several keys that somehow jumped Hammer off the map and landed her on an unfamiliar screen with the heading RPD PIKE PUNT. Under it were strings of programming that made no sense: IM to
$im””on and available and AOL% findwindow(‘A.OL
Frame2.5’, 0&), and so on.
‘Popeye! Now look what you’ve done. I’m in the operating system where I absolutely don’t belong. Let me tell you something, I’m not a neurosurgeon. I don’t belong here. I touch one thing and I could braindamage the entire network. What the hell did you hit and how am I supposed to get out?’