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.