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still 450 million kilometers away, is having no more effect on cellphone service than on the weather. Officer Wilentz, our tech guy, he explained it to me once: cellular service is chopped up into sectors—cells—and basically the sectors are dropping out, the cells are dying, one by one. The telecom companies are losing service people because they can’t pay them, because no one is paying their bill; they’re losing their executives to the Bucket List; they’re losing telephone poles to unrepaired storm damage, and they’re losing long stretches of wire to vandals and thieves. So the cells are dying. As for all the other stuff, the smartphone stuff, the apps and the gizmos, forget it.
    One of the five major carriers announced last week that it’s begun winding down its business, describing this fact in a newspaper advertisement as an act of generosity, a “gift of time” to the company’s 355,000 employees and their families, and warning customers to expect total suspension of service within the next two months. Three days ago, Culverson’s
New York Times
had the Department of Commerce predicting total collapse of telephony by late spring, with the administration supposedly crafting a plan to nationalize the industry.
    “Meaning,” McGully noted, chortling, “total collapse by early spring.”
    Sometimes, when I notice that I have a strong signal, I’ll makea call real quick, so as not to waste it.
    “Oh, man. Man oh man, what in hell do
you
want?”
    “Good afternoon, Mr. France. This is Detective Henry Palace, from the Concord Police Department.”
    “I know who it is, okay? I know who it is.”
    Victor France sounds riled, agitated; he always sounds like that. I’m sitting in the Impala outside Rollins Park now, a couple blocks from where Peter Zell used to live.
    “Come on, Mr. France. Take it easy, now.”
    “I don’t want to take it easy, okay? I hate your guts. I hate it when you call me, okay?” I hold the phone an inch or two away from my ear as France’s scattershot snarl pours from the earpiece. “I’m trying to live my life here, man. Is that such an awful and terrible thing, just to live my life?”
    I can picture him, the thug resplendent: loops of chain drooping from black jeans, skull-and-crossbones pinky ring, scrawny wrists and forearms crawling with several species of tattoo snakes. The rat-eyed face twisted with melodramatic outrage, having to answer the phone, take orders from a stuck-up egghead policeman like myself. But look, I mean, that’s what you get for being a drug dealer, and moreover for getting caught, at this juncture in American history. Victor may not know by heart the full text of the Impact Preparation Security and Stabilization Act, but he’s got the gist.
    “I don’t need much help today, Mr. France. A little research project, is all.”
    France blows out one last exasperated “oh man oh man,” and then he comes around, just like I knew he would. “All right, okay. All right, what is it?”
    “You know a little bit about cars, don’t you?”
    “Yeah. Sure. I mean, what, Detective, what, you calling me to fill your tires?”
    “No, thank you. The last few weeks, people have started converting their cars to vegetable-oil engines.”
    “No shit. You seen gas prices lately?” He clears his throat noisily, spits.
    “I’m trying to find out who did one such conversion. It’s a midsize red pickup, a Ford. American flag painted on the side. You think you can handle that?”
    “Maybe. And what if I can’t?”
    I don’t answer. I don’t have to. France knows the answer.
    One of the most striking effects of the asteroid, from a law-enforcement perspective, has been the resulting spike in drug use and drug-related crime, with skyrocketing demand for every category of narcotic, for opiates, for Ecstasy, for methamphetamine, for cocaine in all its varieties. In small towns, in docile suburbs, farming communities, everywhere—even midsize cities like