"You'd better blow it somewhere quick," Andy said as he worked out a plan. "Here they come."

Ten

The most malignant smoke in Virginia was not generated by Salem Lights but by a highway pirate named Smoke, who had been consummately evil from birth. His lengthy rap sheet of crimes as a juvenile ranged from truancy to setting cats on fire to malicious wounding and homicide. Although he had finally been brought to justice in Virginia several years earlier, he had managed to break out of a maximum-security prison by forming a noose of sheets and pretending to hang himself from his stainless steel bed.

When prison guard A. P. Pinn noticed Smoke slumped over on the floor, a noose around his neck, bug-eyed with his tongue protruding, Pinn threw open the cell door and rushed inside to see if the inmate might still be alive. Smoke was, and he jumped up and smashed a food tray against Pinn's head. Then Smoke quickly dressed in Pinn's uniform and sunglasses and walked out of the penitentiary without detection. Pinn had gone on to write a book about his ordeal and published it himself. Betrayed had not sold very well, and Pinn turned to hosting a local cable show called Head to Head with Pinn.

Smoke watched Pinn Head, as he called the show, every week to make sure there were no leads on his disappearance or any suspicion that he was the leader of a pack of road dogs. In a way, it disappointed him that Pinn had never so much as alluded to him except to mention that being trayed had traumatized Pinn and no one can relate to what it's like to be smacked in the head with meat loaf and instant potatoes until they have had it happen at least once.

Pinn's show had gotten under way and Smoke and his road dogs were gathered in their stolen Winnebago, which was parked behind pine trees on a vacant lot in the north side of the city. Smoke pointed the remote control and turned up the sound as Pinn smiled into the camera and talked with Reverend Pontius Justice about the Neighborhood Watch program the reverend had just kicked off in Shockhoe Bottom, near the Farmers' Market.

"Look at that motherfucker, " Smoke said as he gulped down an Old Milwaukee. "He thinks he's something. "

Pinn was dressed in a double-breasted shiny black suit, a black shirt and black tie and obviously had bleached his big teeth. When Smoke had known Pinn in the pen, the guard had worn thick tinted glasses. Now he must have contact lenses that caused him to squint a lot.

"What does he think this is? The Academy Awards? I can still see the knot on his head from where I hit him with the tray. " Smoke pointed.

"He always had that bump on the back of his head, " said Cat, the most senior road dog. "See, he didn't use to shave his head and put wax on it like he does now. So the bump shows up. Man, he got one shiny head. Need to wear sunglasses to even look at it. " Cat squinted through cigarette smoke and tapped an ash into a beer can.

"What kinda wax you think he use?" asked another road dog named Possum, who was puny and unhealthy-looking and tended to stay in his room during the day, watching TV with the lights out. "Bee wax, you think? Hey, maybe he use Bed Head. 'Member that dude I bought the gun from? I ask him how he got his head so shiny and he say he use Bed Head that he got in New York in one of them Cosmetic Centers, and it cost like twenty bucks. It's in a little stick you gotta push up from the bottom and then rub it on your hand like dod'rant… "

"That fucker putting dod'rant on his head?" said a third road dog, Cuda, which was short for Barracuda. He stared blearily at Pinn's polished scalp.

"Shut up!" Smoke turned up the volume again.

He was getting excited because Pinn was warming up to the very subject Smoke had been waiting to hear about.

"… In your book Betrayed, " Reverend Justice was saying from his overstuffed chair next to a plyboard wall painted to look like a bookcase next to a cheery fireplace, "you went on at great length about how neighbors got to be neighbors instead of just living in the neighborhood. I believe I'm quoting correctly. "

"Uh huh, I said that. "

"So if we love our brothers and sisters and keep an eye on them coming and going, the neighborhood will change. "

"Uh huh. Yeah, I might have said that. "

"Did you have this philosophy before you got banged in the head?"

"I don't recall. Might have. " Pinn sat straighter in his chair and stared into the camera as he fondled the satin tie he had bought at S amp;K for nine-ninety-five. "I do know I was being neighborly when I checked on that dead inmate, and next thing I know, I'm unconscience on that hard cement floor. He took my uniform and everything in it. " Pinn was getting riled by the memory and it was becoming difficult for him to look serene and wise. "You 'magine that? How would you"-he pointed his finger at his TV audience-"like it someone smack you aside the head and left you naked, implying to the prison population and other guards that maybe you had a male honey who done something to you, 'cause you was found face down with nothing on!"

The reverend was turning pale and beginning to sweat under the hot lights. "That's what forgiveness… " He tried to cut Pinn off.

"Forgiveness my ass! I ain't forgiving that punk. Hell, no. I find him one of these days and then we see who smacks who. " He glared into the camera, staring straight at Smoke. "And let me tell you, someone knows where that snake in the weed is. You seen him, you call this toll-free number at the bottom of the screen and we send you a reward. " He repeated the number several times. "He go by the street name of Smoke and is a plain-looking white boy with dreadlocks and what he calls a beard that got about as much hair as a possum tail. "

"Hey!" Possum objected, tossing an empty beer can at the TV.

Smoke pushed Possum off the ottoman and ordered

him to shut up. "You bust that TV and I'm going to bust your head!"

"Now I don't know what Smoke is wearing these days 'cause last time I seen him he was in an orange jumpsuit, but he's a young white male 'bout twenty-one or -two and mean as a snake, " Pinn went on. "I guarantee he ain't doing nothing to help the neighborhood. Not hardly no way! Now you listen up. " He searched the faceless audience behind the camera. "You want some snake in the weed slithering around your neighborhood?"

"We will absolutely keep an eye out in the neighborhood, " Reverend Justice promised with a nod as he mopped his face with a handkerchief. "Sure is a lot of meanness out there. Just look at this most recent awful case of Moses Custer getting beat on and his Peterbilt being hijacked right there next to the pumpkin stand. "

"He take the reefer or just the cab?" Pinn was momentarily distracted by the terrible story.

"I didn't take no reefer. " Smoke made a pun to the TV. "Wish it had been full of reefer, though, instead of fucking pumpkins. What you want to bet Pinn Head's this Trooper Truth dude? Maybe he's the idiot writing all that shit on the Internet. "

"Yeah, he did, " the reverend said, nodding. "A Great Dane reefer, " which was trade talk for the top-of-the-line freight van that had been filled with pumpkins and hitched to the Peterbilt eighteen-wheeler truck. "I visited Moses in the hospital. " The reverend shook his head sadly. "That poor man look like a pit bull got hold of him. "

"What he say they did to him?" Pinn was getting edgy. He didn't like it when a guest was better informed than he was.

"What make you think he Trooper Truth?" asked Possum, who was computer literate and responsible for checking out the Trooper Truth website every morning to see if there was anything on it that Smoke ought to know about.

Possum also handled all Internet transactions, which included searches for eighteen-wheelers that might be parked somewhere with a FOR SALE sign, and news stories about truck shows, truck rodeos, truck accessories and parts, farmers' markets, piracy, smuggling, Canada, and a few of Possum's own special interests such as the Bonanza Fan Club and any related conventions that he would, undoubtedly, never get to attend. There was a large volume of e-mail, too, of course, from Smoke's criminal contacts, most of whom remained anonymous.