Mischief

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The City in these pages is imaginary. The people, the places are all fictitious. Only the police routine is based on established investigatory technique.

THE LUMINOUS DIAL of his watch showed ten minutes past two in the morning. The rain had tapered off at about midnight. He would not have come out if it’d still been raining. These writers didn’t work in the rain. Didn’t want to get their spray cans all wet. Some writers.Scribblers was more like it. Each one scribbling right over the one before him. Kept on scribbling and scribbling till all there was left of a clean white wall was a barbed-wire tangle of words and names you couldn’t even read.

The wall he’d chosen tonight was a new one.

You could almost smell the fresh cement.

New walls attracted these writers the way honey did bears. Put up a new wall or a new fence, wouldn’t be ten minutes before they were out spraying it. Gave them some kind of thrill, he supposed. He’d once read something about burglars defecating in people’s shoes while they were in an apartment stealing things. Added insult to injury. Wasn’t enough they were in there taking a man’s possessions, they had to go and soil his belongings besides, let him know what contempt they had for him. This was the same thing. Person sprayed his paint scribbles on a wall or a fence, he was telling the citizens of this city he was shitting on them.

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