“Oh great,” West said. “So Fling has people going to fifty different airports just to get from one end of the city to the other. He has the post office routing a letter through twenty different states just to travel two blocks.”

“To give Fling a little credit, the more gateways, the more secure your system is,” Brazil said objectively.

“Ha!” West really snorted this time. “We’re safe, all right! The damn website’s been up and running for a few days and we have fucking fish all over the place and are locked out of COMSTAT!”

“It would also seem to me,” Hammer followed the bread crumbs of what little logic there seemed to be in this dark forest, “that the security situation is rather much the opposite of what you said, Andy. It would seem to me that the more gateways, the more possibility of outsiders getting in. Like doors in your house. The fewer the better.”

“There’s that side of it, too,” Brazil agreed. “Look, to be honest, I had no idea Fling put together an address like that until it was too late.”

Hammer peered at the screen some more. Her disgust grew.

“Let me make sure I’ve got this straight,” she said. “The first gateway to our small Richmond website is Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the judiciary committee, the patron of Senate Bill 10?”

“Yes,” Brazil calmly replied as he imagined pepper-spraying Fling and throwing him off an overpass.

“What does the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Act of 1997 have to do with our website, Andy?” Hammer demanded.

Brazil didn’t have a clue.

“And from that we go through Interpol and Scotland Yard? And FBI, ATF, DEA, Secret Service and CIA gateways?”

Hammer abruptly got up and began pacing.

“And NYPD at One Police Plaza? And the Virginia governor’s office? And goddamn city hall, yada, yada, yada?”

She threw up her hands in despair.

“Is there any fucking place on the earth where inquiries from the Richmond public won’t land before they get to our website?” Hammer’s voice rose dangerously.

Niles fled out from under the table, where he had been asleep on top of West’s foot.

“Look!” Brazil could take no more. “I had nothing to do with the Internet address, okay? All the important programming was done by NIJ’s Computer Mapping Center. Fling was just supposed to come up with a very simple address.”

“And now we have fish!” Hammer exclaimed.

“We don’t know that the address has anything to do with the fish getting in.” Brazil didn’t believe what he was saying. “They might have gotten in anyway, no matter how short the address.”

West got up for another Miller.

“Let’s forget the address shit for a minute,” she called out from the kitchen. “This web thing is new.”

“As new as slick-soled shoes,” Brazil said to Hammer instead of answering West.

West glared at him as she returned to the table. She hated it when he made analogies. She hated it more when he pretended she was a lamp, a chair, some mundane object he didn’t notice.