Hoa got serious for once, lost that fake pixie smile, and bent forward just a hair. "Very sick."

"Had a rash on his body and so on," Boone suggested, rubbing his hand around on his chest.

"We took him to the hospital and now they giving him medicine for it."

"Good, Hoa, they know exactly how to make it better." Which probably sounded kind of patronizing. But the Vietnamese got a little weird about their medicine sometimes, tried to cure themselves by putting containers of boiling hot water on their backs and so on. Which might work with evil spirits but not with the particular type of possession that bus boy had.

"What, did he collapse at work, or something?" Boone said.

Hoa didn't understand.

"You said, you took him to the hospital."

"My wife took him. That boy is Tim. Our son."

At which point Boone and I both felt like assholes, apologized and said all the things one says, wishing Tim well and so on. Hoa was unruffled. "He going to get better soon, then I bring him back here and work him nice and hard."

We hung out there, leafing through papers and planning our reentry into impolite society. Things had to be done in the right order. We had to get drunk, I had to get in touch with Debbie, we had to tie up some loose ends on this whole PCB business and then we could make some noise.

Comics were entertainment and so what I had was the Entertainment section of the paper. They had a little advance-press article about a heavy-metal group that was playing a concert down at the Garden tonight: Poyzen Boyzen. Unfortunately for Boone and me it was sold out. No Satanic rock for us tonight, but Bart and Amy were certainly in that number.

Boone was sitting there, going through the fine-print pages. "Hey," he said, "remember the Basco Explorer?" "Never had the pleasure. But I know about it." "Big old freighter of theirs," he said, wistfully. "They use it for ocean dumping, you know." "Yeah, I know."

"Once we were harassing it out off the Grand Banks, and it dropped a big old drum full of black shit right into my Zode. A direct hit-snapped my keel. That was back before everything kind of turned sour."

"Back in your salad days. Boone, what is the reason for this misty-eyed crap about the Basco Explorer?"

He showed me the back page of the Business section, the one with the bankruptcy notices and exchange rates. They run a column back there listing what ships are in port now, what's coming in and going out. The Basco Explorer was going to be arriving in Everett tonight, coming in from the Basco plant in Jersey and probably going to their main Everett plant.

"That's pretty routine," I said. "It's almost like the Eastern Shuttle. It's always transferring crap back and forth."

"You don't think this might have anything to do with the bug?"

"Unless it's full of trimethoprim, no. I mean, what good would it do them to have the ship there? Use it for Pleshy's escape vessel?"

He shrugged. "I just thought it was an interesting coincidence."

Hoa brought our food, and we hovered, moaning with delight and breathing through our noses. Once Hoa saw the way we were chowing on this stuff, he turned away and didn't show up again until we were picking through the steamed rice.

"You talking about Basco?" he said.

"Yeah, Hoa, you familiar with them?"

"This is the company that poison Harbor?"

"We think so. Hell, we know so."

Hoa took the unheard-of liberty of pulling up a chair. He looked around the room kind of melodramatically. It would be melodramatic for an American, anyway. Hoa had spent six years in a reeducation camp in Vietnam and had led three escape attempts. This wasn't melodramatic for him.

"What you going to do?" he said.

"Go to the Harbor; get evidence against Laughlin. I mean Fleshy. Fleshy and the, uh, man who works for him."

"You think Basco-Fleshy-going to be punished? He should go to jail for long time, man!"

It was a little odd to hear this from Hoa. Hoa was a right-winger and I couldn't blame him. He had no respect at all for antiwar types. He thought the U.S. should have stayed in his country.

I was remembering an old black-and-white photo of Fleshy, in Vietnam, back when he was the world's leading exponent of chemical warfare, before the Sovs and the Iraqis took over the business. In my patronizing way, I hadn't imagined that Hoa was much into politics, or that he'd be aware of who the hell Alvin Fleshy was. That idea was dispelled by the way he pronounced Pleshy's name, the look in his eyes when he asked.

"What's your problem with Fleshy? He was on your side."

If it hadn't been his own restaurant, he would have spat on the floor. "Gutless," he said. "Didn't know how to fight. Thought he could win war with chemicals. All it did was make him rich. He make those chemicals in his own company, you know."

"Yeah. Well, we think it's pretty likely that Fleshy will get in a lot of trouble for this."

"You have to make him pay!" Hoa said.

It reminded me of Hoa's brother, a couple of months ago, when he'd gotten upset about people who came into the Pearl and wasted food. Serene and cheery on the surface, but when they got pissed about something, they really got pissed. They let you know about it. They had long memories.

"We think we can trace this bad stuff through the sewers, back to a plant that's owned by Basco," I said, "and the guy who shot at Fleshy today also has evidence. I would say that Pleshy's in deep shit." But I didn't believe it for a minute. The man was a vampire. Only the light of a minicam could hurt him. Boone had winged him earlier today.

Tonight we had to drive a stake through his chest, or he'd recover. He'd appoint Laughlin his interior secretary, and use Laughlin's magic bug to bring more covalent chlorine into all of our bodies.

"I can help in any way, you will tell me," Hoa ordered. "This meal is for free. On the house."

"That's okay, Hoa, I've actually got cash tonight."

"No. Free." And he got up and went away, soundlessly as always, without displacing any air. For some reason it came into my head to wonder how many people Hoa had killed.

"Some of these immigrants were actually big honchos in South Vietnam, you know," Boone said. "I wonder if he knew Fleshy personally?"

"I don't think Pleshy's that hateful in person," I said. "To really dislike the man you have to be standing under an Agent Orange drop."

"That's right," Boone mused. "He's kind of a wimp in person."

"What did he say to you, anyway? I never got a chance to hear your conversation. I was too scared of Dolmacher."

"Well, he came right out and challenged me. He said, there's no bacteria like you describe. Go ahead and test the Harbor. Try me."

"So what do you conclude from that?"

"I conclude he was kept in the dark by his underlings. Like Reagan back during the contra thing. He didn't know what was going on."

"How charitable you are."

"Otherwise, why would he say something like that?"

I didn't figure Bart would be using his van while he was watching the concert, so we took a cab out to Boston Garden and cruised the local parking areas until we found it. I slid underneath and got his spare key. We got in and did some nitrous. Then we drove out to Debbie's place in Cambridge, a nice rent-controlled complex between Harvard and MIT. She wasn't there, so I left a note in her mailbox telling her we were going out on the water, and if she wanted to get together she should go out to Castle Island Park and build a fire or something and we'd circle back and pick her up.

We cut across Cambridge to the GEE office, where they hadn't bothered to change the locks. We loaded up on any kind of equipment that might come in handy-scuba gear, sampling jars, giant magnets, strobe lights, distress flares, radios-and threw it into the van and cruised back to the Garden. We got there just as the doors were opening up to spill a plume of black-clad Poyzen Boyzen fans onto the streets of the North End. Dustheads galore.