Read Practical Demonkeeping for Free Online

you?”
    “I’m The Breeze’s decorator. We’re redoing the whole place in an abstract expressionist motif.” Robert wondered if he wasn’t really trying to get shot.
    “Well, smart ass, when The Breeze shows up, you tell him to call Rivera. And you tell him that when the business is done, his decorator is mine. You understand?”
    Robert nodded weakly.
    “ Adios , dogmeat .” Rivera turned and walked toward the BMW.
    Robert closed the door and leaned against it, trying to catch his breath. The Breeze was going to be pissed when he heard about this. Robert’s fear was replaced by self-loathing. Maybe Jenny was right. Maybe he had no idea how to maintain a relationship with anybody. He was worthless and weak—and dehydrated.
    He looked around for something to drink and vaguely remembered having done this before. Déjà vu?
    “Nobody lives like this.” It was going to change, goddammit . As soon as he found his clothes, he was going to change it.
    RIVERA
    Detective Sergeant Alphonso Rivera of the San Junipero County Sheriff’s Department sat in the rented BMW and cursed. “Fuck, fuck, and double fuck.” Then he remembered the transmitter taped to his chest. “Okay, cowboys, he’s not here. I should have known. The van’s been gone for a week. Call it off.”
    In the distance he could hear cars starting. Two beige Plymouths drove by a few seconds later, the drivers conspicuously not looking at the BMW as they passed.
    What could have gone wrong? Three months setting it all up. He’d gone out on a limb with the captain to convince him that Charles L. Belew , a.k.a. The Breeze, was their ticket into the Big Sur growers’ business.
    “He’s gone down twice for cocaine. If we pop him for dealing, he’ll give us everything but his favorite recipe to stay out of Soledad.”
    “He’s small time,” the captain had said.
    “Yeah, but he knows everybody, and he’s hungry. Best of all, he knows he’s small time, so he thinks we wouldn’t bother with him.”
    Finally the captain had relented and it had been set up. Rivera could hear him now. “Rivera, if you got made by a drugged-out loser like Belew , maybe we should put you back in uniform, where your high visibility will be an asset. Maybe we can put you in P.R. or recruitment.”
    Rivera’s ass was hanging out worse than that drunken jerk in the trailer. Who was he, anyway? As far as anyone knew, The Breeze lived alone. But this guy seemed to know something. Why else would he give Rivera such a hard time? Maybe he could pull this off with the drunk. Desperate thinking. A long shot.
    Rivera memorized the license number of the old Ford truck parked outside The Breeze’s trailer. He would run it through the computer when he got back to the station. Maybe he could convince the captain that he still had something. Maybe he did. And then again, maybe he could just climb a stream of angel piss to heaven.
     
    Rivera sat in the file room of the sheriff’s office drinking coffee and watching a videotape. After running the license number through the computer, Rivera found that the pickup belonged to a Robert Masterson, age twenty-nine. Born in
Ohio
, married to Jennifer Masterson, also twenty-nine. His only prior was a drunk-driving conviction two years ago.
    The video was a record of Masterson’s breathalyzer test. Several years ago the department had begun taping all breathalyzer tests to avoid legal-defense strategies based on procedural mistakes made by arresting officers during testing.
    On the television screen a very drunk Robert W. Masterson (6 ft., 180 lbs., eyes green, hair brown) was spouting nonsense to two uniformed deputies.
    “We work for a common purpose. You serve the state with your minds and bodies. I serve the state by opposing it. Drinking is an act of civil disobedience. I drink to end world hunger. I drink to protest the United States’ involvement in Central America. I drink to protest nuclear power. I drink…”
    A sense of doom