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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 Russianswho 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 samestolen 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