Practical Demonkeeping

Slush-Puppies. It was obvious that the suspect, Robert Masterson, was telling the truth. What was worse was that he not only didn’t have any connection with the marijuana Rivera’s men had found in the trailer, but he didn’t have the slightest idea where The Breeze had gone.
    The deputy district attorney, an officious little weasel who was only putting time in at the D.A.’s office until his fangs were sharp enough for private practice, had made the state’s position on the case clear and simple: “You’re fucked, Rivera. Cut him loose.”
    Rivera was clinging to a single, micro-thin strand of hope: the second suitcase, the one that Masterson had made such a big deal about back at the trailer. It lay open on Rivera’s desk. A jumble of notebook paper, cocktail napkins, matchbook covers, old business cards, and candy wrappers stared out of the suitcase at him. On each one was written a name, an address, and a date. The dates were obviously bogus, as they went back to the 1920s. Rivera had riffled through the mess a dozen times without making any sort of connection.
    Deputy Perez approached Rivera’s desk. He was doing his best to affect an attitude of sympathy, without much success. Everything he had said that morning had carried with it a sideways smirk. Twain had put it succinctly: “Never underestimate the number of people who would love to see you fail.”
    “Find anything yet?” Perez asked. The smirk was there.
    Rivera looked up from the papers, took out a cigarette, and lit it. A long stream of smoke came out with his sigh.
    “I can’t see how any of this connects with The Breeze. The addresses are spread all over the country. The dates run too far back to be real.”
    “Maybe it’s a list of connections The Breeze was planning to dump the pot on,” Perez suggested. “You know the Feds estimate that more than ten percent of the drugs in this country move through the postal system.”
    “What about the dates?”
    “Some kind of code, maybe. Did the handwriting check out?”
    Rivera had sent Perez back to the trailer to find a sample of The Breeze’s handwriting. He had returned with a list of engine parts for a Ford truck.
    “No match,” Rivera said.
    “Maybe the list was written by his connection.”
    Rivera blew a blast of smoke in Perez’s face. “Think about it, dipshit . I was his connection.”
    “Well, someone blew your cover, and The Breeze ran.”
    “Why didn’t he take the pot?”
    “I don’t know, Sergeant. I’m just a uniformed deputy. This sounds like detective work to me.” Perez had stopped trying to hide his smirk. “I’d take it to the Spider if I were you.”
    That made a consensus. Everyone who had seen or heard about the suitcase had suggested that Rivera take it to the Spider. He sat back in his chair and finished his cigarette, enjoying his last few moments of peace before the inevitable confrontation with the Spider. After a few long drags he stubbed the cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, gathered the papers into the suitcase, closed it, and started down the steps into the bowels of the station and the Spider’s lair.
     
    Throughout his life Rivera had known half a dozen men nicknamed Spider. Most were tall men with angular features and the wiry agility that one associates with a wolf spider. Chief Technical Sergeant Irving Nailsworth was the exception.
    Nailsworth stood five feet nine inches tall and weighed over three hundred pounds. When he sat before his consoles in the main computer room of the San Junipero Sheriff Department, he was locked into a matrix that extended not only throughout the county but to every state capital in the nation, as well as to the main computer banks at the FBI and the Justice Department in
Washington
. The matrix was the Spider’s web and he lorded over it like a fat black widow.
    As Rivera opened the steel door that led into the computer room, he was hit with a blast of cold, dry air. Nailsworth insisted the computers functioned better in this environment, so the department had installed a special climate control and filtration system to accommodate him.
    Rivera entered and, suppressing a shudder, closed the door behind him. The computer room was dark except for the soft green glow of a dozen computer screens. The Spider sat in the middle of a horseshoe of keyboards and screens, his huge buttocks spilling over the sides of a tiny typist’s chair. Beside him a steel typing table was covered with junk food in