'I remember when something's in bold!' Weed raised his voice, as if he were suddenly talking in bold.
'No you don't!'
'Yes I do!'
Mr. Pretty angrily grabbed a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket. He began scribbling words on the Hall Duty passes and no passes sheet.
'All right, smarty pants,' said Mr. Pretty as self-control slipped further out of reach. 'I've written down ten words, some in bold, some not. You get one minute to look them over.'
He handed the list to Weed: for/end, effigy, pogrom, Versailles, mead, Faberge, Fabian, Waterloo, edict, pact. Not one word was familiar. Mr. Pretty snatched back the list.
'Which words were in bold?' Mr. Pretty demanded.
'I can't pronunciate them.'
'Versailles,' Mr. Pretty prodded him.
Weed looked at the list in his head and located the only word that began with a V.
'Fourth one, not in bold,' he said.
'Pogrom!'
'Third, not in bold.'
'Fabian!' Mr. Pretty fired back.
'He's four before last. Not in bold, either.'
'Effigy!' Mr. Pretty blurted out, his attractive face distorted by anger.
'It's in bold,' Weed said. 'Just like five and ten are.'
'Oh really?' Mr. Pretty was beside himself. 'And just what are five and ten since you think you know so much?'
Weed saw mead and pact in his head and pronounced them his own special way. 'Med and paced.'
'What do they mean!'
Mr. Pretty was talking loudly and Mrs. Fan cracked open her door, out of concern, to check on things.
'Shhhhhhhhh!' she said.
'What do they mean, Weed?' Mr. Pretty lowered his scornful voice.
Weed did the best he could.
'Med is what you feel when someone disses you. And paced is what we use in art class,' he guessed.
Officer Fling was guessing, too. He had gone to the next layer control, then hit function 3 for thematic display, and selected remove to get rid of the latest pie, and brought up priority one, two and three calls for fourth precinct, which was not what anyone was interested in at the moment.
Hammer flipped on the overhead lights. The presentation was never supposed to run over an hour and it was well past the limit. She was discouraged and frustrated and determined not to let it show.
'I realize we're all new at this,' she said reasonably. 'I understand that things don't happen overnight. We're going to leave computer mapping until Friday morning at seven hundred hours, by which time I'm sure we will be well versed in it?'
No one responded.
'Officer Fling?' she said.
His hands were lifeless on the keyboard. He looked dejected and defeated.
'Do you think you will be able to make this work by Friday's COMSTAT presentation?" Hammer persisted.
'No, ma'am.' Fling was honest about it.
The door opened and West returned to the room and took her seat.
'Okay, Officer Fling, that's fair enough,' Hammer said in a positive tone. 'Is there anybody else who might want to learn how to work this program? It's really very user-friendly. The point was not to design it for programmers and engineers, but for police.'
No one spoke.
'Officer Brazil, help me out here,' Hammer said.
'Sure,' he said dubiously.
'Maybe for now you'd better pitch in,' Hammer said. 'Deputy Chief West? You're also very familiar with the software. See if the two of you can't work to get this thing up and running. I expect smooth sailing by our next COMSTAT presentation.'
'Who's willing to learn?' West asked, looking around the table. 'Come on guys, show some guts.'
Lieutenant Audrey Ponzi raised her hand. Captain Cloud's hand went up next, and Officer Fling decided to give it another try.
'Excellent,' Hammer said. 'Major Hanger? If you'll resume with your presentation. We'll proceed without the computer. And we really need to wind this up.'
Hanger hastily looked through his notes and took a nervous sip of coffee.
'Nothing much has changed since our last meeting,' he began. 'We got the same rash of petit larcenies from autos, mostly Jeeps, broken into for their airbags.'
'CABBAGES,' Fling interjected.
All eyes turned toward Captain Cloud, who had come up with Car Air Bag Breaking And Enterings and its acronym CABBAE, which the media had immediately mistaken for CABBAGE, or CABBAGES, and continued to do so, despite the police department's numerous corrections.
'Anyway,' Hanger resumed, 'we suspect most of the stolen airbags are ending up at two body shops recently opened by Russians. Possibly the same clan of Russians who opened the kiosk at the farmer's market last summer, on Seventeenth Street directly across from Havana '59. Selling cabbages, the kind you make slaw with, which has done nothing but add to the confusion.' He glared at Cloud.
'But the CABBAGES might be related because the Russians possibly are,' Fling figured.
'We're thinking that,' Hanger said.
'Let's get back to the airbags,' Hammer said.
'Well, the MO remains the same in these most recent petit larcenies.' Hanger avoided using the term CABBAGE. 'Owner returns to his vehicle, finds a window smashed, the airbags gone. These same cars go in to one of the Russian body shops to get the airbags replaced and ironically the stolen airbags installed to replace the ones stolen could be the very ones stolen out of the vehicle in question. So you're really paying for the same airbags twice, thinking you're getting new ones for three hundred bucks apiece, when in fact you're getting stolen ones. It's gotten to be a pretty big racket all over the world.'
'But if you're getting your same airbags back, they're really not secondhand because they were never owned by a second person,' said Fling. 'Does that…?'
'What are we doing about this situation?' Hammer raised her voice.
'We're coordinating with investigations to get an undercover guy in at least one of the body shops,' Hanger replied.
'Are the airbags traceable?' Hammer asked.
'Not unless they start putting VINs on them,' Hanger said, referring to the Vehicle Identification Numbers that were etched on the edge of all driver's doors. 'I was thinking maybe we could get some kind of grant to help out. Maybe NIJ would be interested.'
To help out in what way?' Hammer frowned.
To do a study on the usefulness of ABINs.'
'ABINs?'
That's what we could call them,' Hanger explained. 'Air Bag Identification Numbers. Thing is, if your same stolen airbags are put back in your vehicle, then for sure the ABINs are going to match.'
True.'
That would make it pretty easy.'
Hanger nodded. 'Not only could we start making cases here, but I'm pretty sure a lot of these stolen airbags are going overseas. So if we developed a system of ABINs, we could get Interpol involved, too. It might bring us some recognition.'
'I see.' Hammer fought a growing sense of hopelessness. 'Anything else?'
'Two more stolen Saturns. We got a pattern going on.'
'How many so far?'
'Twelve General Motors cars stolen in the past month.'
'Any breaks?' Hammer asked.
'It appears several kids are involved. We think they bought master keys for Saturns from some kid named Beeper, supposedly in the area of Swansboro Elementary School on Midlothian Turnpike.'
'Gang-related?' Hammer asked.
'Can't say for sure,' Hanger answered.
'What does that mean?'
'Well, all we got to go on is this one snitch who's lied to us before.'
Hammer jumped ahead. 'We just had another ATM robbery, I'm sorry to say. I'm going to let Deputy Chief West give the details.'
'Victim is an Asian male, age twenty-two.' West looked at her notes. 'Pulled up to the Crestar ATM at 5802 Patterson. Nobody else was there. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, says duct tape was suddenly slapped over his eyes, a gun jammed into his back. A male, he couldn't tell race, demanded money. By the time the victim removed the tape, the perp was long gone.'