‘I want to know what the police are doing,’ Miss Sink demanded.
‘Have we been called?’ Hammer asked.
Miss Sink thought for a moment.
‘This is the first I’ve heard of it,’ Hammer went on as Popeye got interested in Miss Sink’s ankles.
‘I don’t know if anyone called,’ Miss Sink said. ‘That’s not my responsibility. I just assumed whoever happened upon the crime would have called the police. Of course, I just got the call myself a few minutes ago. They think some U of R basketball player did it.’
‘Who’s they?’
‘You can ask Lelia Ehrhart that. She’s the one who called me.’
Hammer’s resentment blossomed and flourished.
‘And how did Lelia find out?’ Hammer asked.
‘She’s the president of Hollywood,’ Miss Sink replied as if there was only one Hollywood. ‘The city’s being ruined. And if we had more police out doing their jobs, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. Not to mention the continuing deterioration of this neighborhood. Here of all places.’
Hammer feared that one of these days she was going to tell the nagging, horse-faced woman to go to hell.
‘The people coming in here,’ Miss Sink railed on. ‘As if this is some sort of subdivision with McDonald’s and aluminum siding!’
Miss Sink used to feel perfectly safe and sequestered on her famous tree-lined street, where in 1775 Patrick Henry had stood inside St. John’s Episcopal
Church, in the third pew from the left, and declared ‘… Give me liberty or give me death!’ It was here, just several houses down, that Elmira Royster Shelton and Edgar Allan Poe had been reunited and began a second courtship not long before he died.
Although Miss Sink was not Episcopalian and had never been engaged and did not read frightening stories, she revered history and the famous people in it. More to the point, Miss Sink had an inspired indignation when any outsider violated the sanctity of her restored neighborhood, and that included Judy Hammer, who was not from Richmond, but from Arkansas, which as far as Miss Sink was concerned was not the true South.
Popeye emptied her bladder on a blooming yellow forsythia bush. She began sniffing tulips and the lamppost, ready to claim other territory.
‘Actually, crime is down six percent in our neighborhood, Miss Sink,’ Hammer reminded her without adding that it was soaring everywhere else. ‘Thanks in part to the community effort here, thanks to our crimewatch people like you, the eyes and ears of the street.’
‘Six percent my foot.’ Miss Sink stamped her pink slipper and yanked the plastic wrapper off the newspaper. ‘Tell me why someone stole the fountain from Libby Hill Park?’
‘It was recovered and is back right where it always was, Miss Sink.’
‘Doesn’t matter. It was stolen. Right out from under us like a rug. An entire iron fountain, and nobody saw a thing. So much for eyes and ears.’ She dug in a pocket and pulled out a tissue. ‘Not to mention rocks thrown at gas lamps and cars. Most of my friends and family are in Hollywood Cemetery.’
Miss Sink dabbed her nose and gave Hammer’s ugly little dog the fish eye. She opened the newspaper to see what else was going on in the city. The headline above the fold stood up in huge black type:
FISHSTERIA HYSTERIA!
MYSTERIOUS VIRUS CRASHES POLICE COMPUTER NETWORK
Hammer snatched the paper out of Miss Sink’s hands.
‘Excuse me,” Miss Sink said indignantly. ‘That was rude.’
Hammer didn’t give a shit. She read the story, incredulous. It even included an artist’s rendition of the little blue fish that were suspected, according to the article, to be the carrier of the virus.
‘Oh God. So it’s hit New York, too,’ Hammer said as she read. ‘It’s everywhere. That goddamn Roop. The media doesn’t care. This is only going to make matters worse, rewarding some hacker with front-page news. Oh great, great, great. Whatever happened to people trying to work together? When I was getting started, you could plant a story with the local media and they would run things that would actually help the police.
‘But can you imagine such a thing happening now?’ Hammer- went on. ‘Does it ever occur to self-serving people like Roop that when we can’t do our jobs, he suffers too? What happens when his airbag is stolen?’