Practical Demonkeeping

various stages of distress, mostly cupcakes covered with marshmallow and pink coconut. While Rivera watched, the Spider peeled the marshmallow cap off a cupcake and popped it in his mouth. He threw the chocolate-cake insides into a wastebasket atop a pile of crumpled tractor-feed paper.
    Because of the sedentary nature of the Spider’s job, the department had excused him from the minimum physical fitness standards set for field officers. The department had also created the position of chief technical sergeant in order to feed the Spider’s ego and keep him happily clicking away at the keyboards. The Spider had never gone on patrol, never arrested a suspect, never even qualified on the shooting range, yet after only four years with the department, Nailsworth effectively held the same rank that Rivera had attained in fifteen years on the street. It was criminal.
    The Spider looked up. His eyes were sunk so far into his fat face that Rivera could see only a beady green glow.
    “You smell of smoke,” the Spider said. “You can’t smoke in here.”
    “I’m not here to smoke, I need some help.”
    The Spider checked the data spooling across his screens, then turned his full attention to Rivera. Bits of pink coconut phosphoresced on the front of his uniform.
    “You’ve been working up in Pine Cove, haven’t you?”
    “A narcotics sting.” Rivera held up the suitcase. “We found this. It’s full of names and addresses, but I can’t make any connections. I thought you might…”
    “No problem,” the Spider said. “The Nailgun will find an opening where there was none.” The Spider had given himself the nickname “ Nailgun .” No one called him the Spider to his face, and no one called him Nailgun unless they needed something.
    “Yeah,” Rivera said, “I thought it needed some of the Nailgun’s wizardry.”
    The Spider swept the junk food from the top of the typing table into the wastebasket and patted the top of the table. “Let’s see what you have.”
    Rivera placed the suitcase on the table and opened it. The Spider immediately began to shuffle through the papers, picking up a piece here or there, reading it, and throwing it back into the pile.
    “This is a mess.”
    “That’s why I’m here.”
    “I’ll need to put this into the system to make any sense of it. I can’t use a scanner on handwritten material. You’ll have to read it to me while I input.”
    The Spider turned to one of his keyboards and began typing. “Give me a second to set up a data base format.”
    As far as Rivera was concerned, the Spider could be speaking Swahili. Despite himself, Rivera admired the man’s efficiency and expertise. His fat fingers were a blur on the keyboard.
    After thirty seconds of furious typing the Spider paused. “Okay, read me the names, addresses, and dates, in that order.”
    “So you need me to sort them out?”
    “No. The machine will do that.”
    Rivera began to read the names and addresses from each slip of paper, deliberately pausing so as not to get ahead of the Spider’s typing.
    “Faster, Rivera. You won’t get ahead of me.”
    Rivera read faster, throwing each paper on the floor as he finished with it.
    “Faster,” the Spider demanded.
    “I can’t go any faster. At this speed if I mispronounce a name, I could lose control and get a serious tongue injury.”
    For the first time since Rivera had known him the Spider laughed.
    “Take a break, Rivera. I get so used to working with machines that I forget people have limitations.”
    “What’s going on here?” Rivera said. “Is the Nailgun losing his sarcastic edge?”
    The Spider looked embarrassed. “No. I wanted to ask you about something.”
    Rivera was shocked. The Spider was almost omniscient, or so he pretended. This was a day for firsts. “What do you need?” he said.
    The Spider blushed. Rivera had never seen that much flaccid flesh change color. He imagined that it put an incredible strain on the Spider’s heart.
    “You’ve been working in Pine Cove, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “Have you ever run into a girl up there named Roxanne?”
    Rivera thought for a moment, then said no.
    “Are you sure?” The Spider’s voice had taken on a tone of desperation. “It’s probably a nickname. She works at the Rooms-R-Us Motel. I’ve run the name against Social Security records, credit reports, everything. I can’t seem to find her. There are over ten thousand women in
California
with the name Roxanne, but none of