The big question was whether Weed should use oils or acrylics. He rummaged through shelves of his precious art supplies, lovingly looking through the Bob Ross master paint set his mother had worked overtime to buy for him last Christmas. It had cost almost eighty dollars, and included eight tubes of oil paint, four brushes and a Getting Started videotape which Mrs. Grannis had let Weed watch at school since he didn't have a VCR.

Weed opened the caps of sap green, cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson. He looked through his Demco Collegiate set and thought about how long it took oil paints to dry and how much cleaning up he'd have to do. He didn't want to smell like turpentine.

He studied his tubes of Apple Barrel acrylic gloss enamel paints. He had forty-six colors to choose from, but to really get a good effect he needed to sand the statue first and apply two coats. That would take forever, and in truth, the last thing Weed wanted was to do something to a statue. If nothing else, God would do something to Weed. Messing with the statue of someone famous would be as bad as painting graffiti on a church or putting a mustache on Jesus.

Weed came up with a daring plan. Maybe he could use poster paints. He had bags full of them. They were inexpensive and didn't make a mess. In fact, they could be washed off with soap and water, but there was no way Smoke could know that when Weed was painting away.

Weed had never used water-based tempera on metal, and tried a little green on the metal trash basket in his room. He was thrilled and a little surprised when the paint went on smooth and stuck. He gathered every jar he had and stuffed them inside his knapsack and a grocery bag. He dug through his box of perfectly clean paintbrushes and decided on two aquarelle for thin lines and two wash/mops for broad washes. He threw in one Academy size 14 round style just in case.

Chapter Fifteen

The New York City Police Department was beyond Artis Roop's usual scope of things. He had started with directory assistance and been bounced from Midtown North Precinct to the Rape Hotline to the Crack Hotline to the College Point Auto Pound and finally to a property clerk in Queens who gave him a number for the radio room. From there, Roop was able, by lying, to get Sergeant Mazzonelli to talk to him.

'Yeah, I know what COMSTAT is. Who you think started it?' Mazzonelli was saying.

'Of course, I know you guys did,' said Roop from his cluttered desk inside the Richmond Times-Dispatch newsroom.

'You're damn right we did.'

'We're having a problem in the mapping center,' Roop said.

'What mapping center? I ain't heard nothing about no mapping center.'

'At NIJ.'

'In New Jersey?'

'NIJ. Not NJ,' Roop corrected Mazzonelli.

'So where the hell are you calling from?' Mazzonelli asked. He put his hand over the phone. 'Yo! Landsberger! You going out to Hop Shing's?'

'Who wants to know?'

'Your mother.'

'Yeah? What's she want? Fish?'

Roop got excited.

'Hey! That ain't even funny,' another cop said.

'Stromboli. Provolone, extra onions. The usual,' Mazzonelli said.

He took his hand off the mouthpiece and was back. 'So you was saying?' he said to Roop.

'We're showing a problem with the COMSTAT computer network.'

'Who's we?'

'Look, this is Washington, we've got a problem.' Roop said it the way he'd heard it in the movies. 'A possible virus has infected the network and we want to know how extensive it is.'

Silence.

'It may show up as fish,' Roop added.

'Shit,' Mazzonelli barely said. 'So youze guys got it in D.C., too, the same thing? All these goddamn little blue fish swimming around in 219, wherever the hell that is?'

'Richmond, Virginia,' Roop informed him. 'We believe that's the wormhole the virus entered through. The carrier, in other words.'

'Richmond is?'

'We think so, sergeant. This is worse than I feared. If your COMSTAT telecommunications system is locked out as well,' Roop went on, writing furiously, 'then everybody's down." 'Shit. It's the weirdest friggin' thing I ever seen. We got three experts up here right now trying to get the damn thing off the screen, but we're totally down. Now, I don't do the computer shit myself, you know? But I got eyes and ears and know when something's real bad. From what they're saying, we can't find hot spots or patterns at all.'

'Exactly.' Roop flipped a page. 'Apparently no one can.'

Roop's editor Clara Outlaw stopped by his desk to see what was going on and if he planned on making the last edition deadline. He gave her a big thumbs-up. She started to say something. He scowled and put his finger to his lips. She tapped her watch. He nodded and gave her an okay sign. She didn't believe him. She tapped her watch again. He shook his head and motioned her to hold on a minute.

'It was early afternoon, so I hear, and all a sudden this fish map flashed on the screen and we can't get it off. It just came outta friggin' nowhere,' Mazzonelli went on and on.

Roop scrawled Fishsteria on a piece of notepaper. He ripped it off and handed it to Outlaw. She frowned and wrote Pfiesteria? Roop shook his head. This was not to be confused with the microbe responsible for massive fish kills on the East Coast, or was it? What did anybody know right now? Roop grabbed the piece of paper back from her and underlined Fishsteria four times.

At ten minutes to three in the morning, Weed crept out of his bedroom, pausing before his mother's shut door, hoping she was snoring. She was, as loud as ever. Weed left the house and waited on the street corner where Smoke had told him to be.

Minutes later, the Lemans sounded in the distance and Weed was reminded of his nightmare about the garbage truck. His hands started shaking so badly he worried he wouldn't be able to paint. He started feeling sick again, and he was tempted to run back inside the house and call the police or at least grab his acrylics, just in case Smoke figured he'd been tricked.

The back door of the Lemans was pushed open. Weed climbed in and protectively set the knapsack and bag of paints in his lap as he stared at the back of Smoke's head. Divinity was in the front seat, against Smoke's shoulder.

'I guess the others aren't coming,' Weed said, doing his best to keep his voice steady.

'Don't need 'em,' Smoke said.

'How come you're not driving your own car?' Weed asked as his terror swelled like a wave about to crash.

'Because I don't want my own car parked out where someone might find it,' Smoke said.

'Dog don't care if someone sees his car?" Weed asked.

'Don't matter if he cares,' Smoke said coldly. 'And you can shut the fuck up, retard. When it comes to questions, I do the asking. You got that straight?'

Divinity laughed and stuck her tongue in Smoke's ear.

'Yes,' Weed barely said as tears flooded his eyes and he wiped them away so fast they didn't have time to go anywhere.

He said not another word as Smoke headed downtown and through the row houses of Oregon Hills where they left the car in a small park on the river. The cemetery fence was thick with ivy and about ten feet high. Weed saw no easy way to climb it, but Smoke did. Weed had never heard of a business advertising on a cemetery fence, but apparently Victory Rug Cleaning thought the idea was a good one. Its large metal sign was fastened to the fence at the intersection of South Cherry and Spring Street.

Smoke showed Weed and Divinity how simple it was to grip the edges of the sign and boost themselves up far enough to grab the thick overhanging branch of an ancient oak tree on the other side of the fence. In no time, the three of them had dropped to the ground and were inside the dark, silent cemetery. To Weed it was a ghost city with narrow lanes winding everywhere and headstones and spooky monuments as far as he could see. It suddenly occurred to him that Smoke and Divinity might think it was funny to leave him here.