Most nights the wall was untouched, but then others brought multiple visitors. They quickly learned that leaving a tag up a while got them more results, perhaps lulling the spray-can assassins into a false sense of security. There were several repeat offenders, and on one or two occasions Jim turned over their tracking codes to appease the local police chief. But any tagger that even suggested the influence of Alfred in their strokes was filed away for later.

Late one afternoon a man in a hard hat approached the wall with a bucket and a ladder. He got out a paint roller and began to cover a tag which had been left up for several days.

“Didn’t we tell the removal crew not to take that one down?”

“Maybe it’s the transportation authority crew. They’ve already painted over several of our RFID dispensers. Idiots don’t know how to leave things to the professionals”

The worker began to unfurl a piece of paper and tape it to the wall.

“What’s he doing now?”

A spray can was produced.

“A stencil!? Call Jim”