The Cobweb

by Neal Stephenson; J. Frederick George

  “It’d kill me if there was some weed in the bottom of that box,” Morris said ruefully.

  “Yeah!” said Ditzel, who had almost given up until Morris had mentioned the drugs. “We gotta get to the bottom of that.”

  “There ain’t nothing but meat in there,” Clyde said, and told them briefly of what he had seen at Lukas Meats.

  “So that’s a Jew?” Ditzel said, astonished and scandalized.

  “I would guess Muslim. But I think they follow the same rules as far as meat,” Clyde said, “so they all buy their meat on the same day, when the Jewish butcher comes to town. That’s where all that meat came from, and if the Lukases have been hiding dope in their meat, then I reckon it’s the Lukases we ought to be checking out with the K-9 unit.”

  Providentially, Maggie started to cry at this moment. Clyde brought her round to the front seat of the pickup and snapped her in, then climbed in and watched through the dirty windshield as Morris put the box of meat in the back of the Toyota and helped the woman into the passenger seat. Ditzel removed the man’s handcuffs, hauled him to his feet, and shoved him toward the Toyota. Clyde started the truck, backed up, and swung it out into the left lane, idling forward very slowly as he drove past the scene. The man had a big laceration across his forehead, the kind of thing that always bled like crazy, but by now it had clotted up enough that he could drive the car safely. He seemed absurdly calm as he climbed back into the car, as if he had just stopped in at a rest area to take a leak.

  Then Clyde’s view of the scene was eclipsed by the broad body of Lee Harms, still directing traffic, who leaned down and looked into the window above Maggie’s car seat as Clyde went by. “Nice going, Clyde,” he said. “Looks like you got the Muslim vote all sewed up.”

  “Vote Banks,” Clyde said weakly, and hung a big U-turn on River Street, headed home to Desiree. He did not feel like getting cinnamon rolls.

  nineteen

  JULY

  THE CURVY drive leading up to the Wapsipinicon Golf and Country Club had been lined with small plastic American flags thrust into the ground, many of which were already listing badly before the wind that was howling across the prairie. The plastic flags made a brittle rattling sound as they were strafed by the wind. Clyde came around the last one of those curves and saw three men wearing fancy black outfits with bow ties. The sight made him falter; he lifted his foot from the gas, and the wagon’s transmission made hissing and sighing noises as a few bucketloads of hydraulic fluid looked for someplace to go.

  “What’s wrong, honey?” Desiree said. Her face was burnished and lovely; she’d spent the last weekend with the National Guard running around in the sun treating fake chemical-warfare casualties. Her arms, back, and the ravishing Dhont deltoids had been concealed by the Army uniform, and she had fretted about their incongruous pallor when she had put on her sundress; but Clyde thought she looked wonderful. He would never dare tell her, though, that she looked even cuter in her combat fatigues. There was something about Desiree’s body rattling around in yards and yards of scrunchy camouflage fabric that sent him over the edge; the green and brown brought out the highlights in her hazel eyes.

  “Let’s say Maggie’s sick,” Clyde said, looking into the backseat hopefully. Maggie had vomited on the epaulet of Clyde’s best sheriff uniform not thirty seconds before they had left the house, and even though they had wiped most of it off, the mysterious proteins had congealed to a hard shine. But Desiree had pronounced this a normal vomiting episode, a sign of robust good health; and, indeed, Maggie was, unfortunately, pink-faced and happy.

  “It’s just a cookout.”

  Clyde looked in the rearview mirror. The view in that direction was nearly filled by a navy-blue Lincoln Town Car, navigated and piloted by Bob Jenkins of Bob Jenkins Lincoln Mercury, who came to a stop behind them. He recognized the Murder Car and turned to his wife animatedly. His wife had got a new hairdo; Clyde could tell because she moved stiffly, as if a mad bomber had wired tubes of nitroglycerin into her permanent wave.

  “They had these a lot in California,” Desiree said. “It’s valet parking. All we have to do is get out and they’ll park it.”

  “I know what it is,” Clyde said darkly.

  “Then why are you holding up the Jenkinses? You don’t want Rick Morgan to drive the wagon?”

  “Nah.”

  “You forgot something at home?”

  Rick Morgan, straightening his bow tie, made eye contact with him; he was trapped now.

  “Howdy, Clyde. So you’re the one that bought the Murder Car!”

  “I guess so,” Clyde said, clambering out. Desiree was already at work in the backseat, disengaging the baby pod from its docking unit.

  “Well, we’ll take real good care of it,” Rick Morgan said, sliding into the driver’s seat as if he owned the vehicle.

  “It takes off pretty good in first because that big old four-sixty has good low-end torque, so it’ll surge when you give it the gas,” Clyde said, “then level off pretty quick.”

  “Okay, Clyde,” Rick Morgan said. He seemed startled and dismayed.

  Clyde shut the door on Rick Morgan. “You’ll notice that I didn’t slam the door,” Clyde said. “That’s for a reason. It is because the door is so heavy that it has a tremendous momentum of its own.”

  “I read you loud and clear, Clyde,” Rick Morgan said, and gunned the engine too hard. The wagon reared up and bolted. Clyde imagined he could hear the transmission fluid flashing into live steam and bursting valves. But it was too late now. Desiree was standing there holding the baby on one hip, waiting (as Clyde eventually realized) for him to offer his arm. He did so and led Desiree up to the door.

  “Vote Banks,” Clyde muttered to another bow-tie wearer as he went inside, putting one hand on the door himself even though it was being held for him. The notion of able-bodied men requiring servants to open doors for them was not one that Clyde would ever come to grips with.

  The country club had been built during a phase of architectural history that Clyde vaguely remembered as the Flagstone Period. As he walked across the clubhouse floor, the theme music from The Flintstones came into his head and he had to consciously force himself not to start humming it.

  This area was all low tables and sofas. A few people were there, mostly older folks and women with conspicuous hairdos, or possibly wigs, that could not be taken into the windy conditions outside. The back wall of the room was all picture windows and led to a very large flagstone patio with a pool to one side and a view over the golf course. A cylindrical pig roaster was smoking away, tended by a youth brought in on loan from the Hickory Pit restaurant, and a few dozen Republicans were milling around drinking what Clyde assumed to be cocktails and trying to dodge the long, ropy plume of smoke that shot out of the roaster and veered this way and that as the wind shifted—like escaping prisoners trying to stay out of the beam of the prison searchlight. A wall of beautiful thunderheads rose many miles to the west, violet below, their tops incandescent peach and magenta. The sun was going to sink behind those clouds soon, bringing a premature end to the day.

  Clyde saw the next hour of his life plotted out as if on the whiteboard in the roll-call room down at the sheriff’s department. He would go out and mingle uncomfortably. Everyone would stare at Desiree and the baby. The baby would begin to get hungry in approximately forty-five minutes. Desiree would take her inside, plop herself down on a couch directly across from an old Republican lady in a blue wig, and, just like that, whip out a tit and start feeding the kid. The old Republican lady wouldn’t say a word, but the repercussions would come anyway, and pretty soon Clyde would be called in for a friendly man-to-man with Terry Stonefield and be informed that so-and-so was waiting for an apology. Desiree would refuse to apologize, and so Clyde would do it on her behalf and then so-and-so would not be satisfied—she would still be angry, but now she would be angry at Clyde—and Desiree would be angry at him for having apologized, and Terry Stonefield would be angry with
Clyde, also, for not having handled it better.

  This being the case, it seemed fitting and proper for him to have a drink. So he ambled to the bar in the corner.

  From that location he was able to see a nook where John Stonefield and Ebenezer were wordlessly ramming great unruly tangles of tobacco into the bowls of their pipes. Standing near them, a mixed drink in his hand, talking at some length but getting no response, was John Stonefield’s son Terry, chairman of the Forks County Republican Committee, chairman of the board of several venerable Forks-area businesses, sometime state senator, gubernatorial candidate, and two-term U.S. congressman. He was dumpy yet delicate, wearing a navy blazer and khaki trousers and a striped tie with a stars-and-stripes pattern.

  By the time Clyde had got his drink—a bottle of Steinhoffer Pilsner—Terry had turned around, noticed him, and beckoned him over. Hands were shaken all around. Neither John Stonefield nor Ebenezer had said anything yet, or all day, so far as Clyde could tell.

  Clyde was not sure when John and Ebenezer had started golfing together, but he did not put much effort into trying to figure it out. He had noticed that old people were much more interesting and complex than he had ever suspected as a young man and that there was no telling what secret connections and machinations they might be up to. Ebenezer had lost a son-in-law (Clyde’s father) and John had lost a son: his oldest, his fair-haired boy and heir apparent, had been shot down in Korea and never found. But Clyde knew, from tiny droplets of information leaked out here and there, that John had filled Ebenezer with a great deal of secret knowledge about the Stonefield family, the quirks and personal failings of its members, and the inner workings of its business empire.

  None of it was likely to impress Ebenezer. Ebenezer was a plain-dealing and -speaking sort. In his mind all transactions more complex than, say, buying a plate of scrambled eggs at the Hy-Vee breakfast counter, and all relationships more complex than a lifelong, purely monogamous marriage between two virgins, belonged to a vast but vaguely defined category called “shenanigans.” He had let it be known, once or twice over the years, that the Stonefield family, in the decadent years since Terry’s older brother had gone down in flames, and John had turned matters over to Terry and gone into retirement and seclusion, had become tangled up in any number of different types of shenanigans. He always said this regretfully, as if he did not mean to seem judgmental. But Clyde had been judged by Ebenezer many times over the years, usually with the end result of getting walloped by a belt or stick, and so he knew that Ebenezer must have strong opinions hidden somewhere.

  John Stonefield now spent most of his time in his farmhouse above the river outside of Wapsipinicon, reading outlandish newspapers mailed in from places like London and emerging only to play golf with Ebenezer. But he got together with Terry and the rest of his family from time to time and must have mentioned the Banks family during his conversations. Clyde knew as much, because one day late in 1989 Terry Stonefield, who had never known him from Adam, had suddenly invited him out to lunch and had made it clear that he knew a great deal about Clyde Banks and his domestic and career situations. The full majesty and power of the Forks County Republican party would be behind Clyde Banks should he choose to run.

  So when Clyde stepped into the little nook where Ebenezer and the elder and younger Stonefields were, he felt like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle that these men had been putting together over the last several months or even years. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why; incumbent Mullowney was a bad man and a bad sheriff. On the other side of the equation, the sheriff’s job was prestigious and carried with it a great deal of power, most of which was of an unofficial and unwritten nature. It would be a good thing for anyone to have a relative, or a friend of a friend, who was the sheriff of Forks County.

  “Look at those anvils,” Clyde said, shaking his head. All four men stared out the window, sizing up the approaching storm front.

  “Must be topping fifty-five thousand feet,” Ebenezer said.

  “How’s the campaign going, Clyde?” Terry said brightly.

  Clyde said nothing for a moment, reckoning that his true answer should not be spoken in the presence of John and Ebenezer.

  “Saw some of the stickers around town. Guess that means you hooked up with Razorback Media okay.”

  “Hooked up with ’em, all right,” Clyde said.

  “I keep looking out my window waiting for you to come up my road, Clyde,” John Stonefield said.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Ebenezer said.

  “Well, he said he’d knock on every door in Forks County. Hasn’t knocked on mine yet, ’less I was out when he did.”

  “I figured I’d catch you on Sunday, sir,” Clyde said.

  “How’s that?”

  “Thought I’d join you and Grandpa for golf, if you wouldn’t object,” Clyde said.

  “You got your swing straightened out?” John Stonefield said darkly.

  “Haven’t made it out to the course since last Father’s Day. But I’ve been visualizing a good stroke. They say that works.”

  John and Ebenezer exchanged a brief poker-faced look and concentrated for a moment on their pipe-stoking and -lighting efforts. This was to say that they both understood Clyde had paid them the compliment of starting to bullshit them.

  “Does it work to get you elected?” Ebenezer said.

  After this John and Ebenezer became even more reticent than usual, apparently on the theory that, whatever they had to say to Clyde, they could say on Sunday when they weren’t berating him over his poor golf game. Sensing the shift in mood, Terry and Clyde drew away from them, moving back toward the center of things.

  Clyde sensed that there were a great many people who were eager to step forward and shake Terry’s hand, but who were restraining themselves forcibly lest they interrupt some high-level impromptu strategy session involving the inner workings of the sheriff campaign. Clyde, never the sort to inconvenience any such people, decided he would get to his point as quickly as he knew how.

  “I was down at the jail yesterday,” Clyde said.

  “The jail? What were you doing there?” Terry said sharply.

  “Working,” Clyde said.

  Terry looked mildly irritated. “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

  Clyde hated working at the jail and knew that Sheriff Mullowney had been giving him lots of jail duty just to harass him, but Ebenezer had taught him not to whine. So he skipped over that part. “I was talking to Mark Becker.”

  “Who’s Mark Becker?” Terry said, suddenly intrigued at the prospect of adding a new name to his mental Rolodex of behind-the-scenes movers and shakers.

  “One of the prisoners,” Clyde said.

  Terry screwed up his face with disgust and looked away. When he turned back, he was wearing an expression of patient, fatherly disappointment. “Now, why are you talking to people like that?”

  “When I’m on jail duty,” Clyde said defensively, “I can’t help but talk to ’em. Mostly they talk to me, though.” Jail talk made high-school locker-room talk sound like an episode of Firing Line. “Anyway, Mark said he was on West Lincoln Way picking up litter as part of his community service—”

  “Wait a minute, Clyde. Get the story straight. Why was he in jail if he’d already been sentenced to community service?”

  “Community service was last week. For a previous infraction. Then I arrested him for disorderly a couple of nights ago. He’ll probably get jail time for that.”

  “Oh, I see. So Mark Becker is a career criminal!” Terry said, outraged.

  “That’s giving him too much credit,” Clyde said. “If I told Mark Becker he had a career, he’d probably stop being a criminal and do something else.”

  “So what did Mark Becker have to say to you, Clyde?” Terry said, looking around significantly at all the people who wanted to bust in on the conversation, somehow giving each one of them a warm smile and a bit of eye contact. This unnerved Clyde, and so he let it all ou
t in a rush.

  “He was saying that fifty percent of the litter he picked up on Lincoln Way was ‘Vote Banks’ bumper stickers. He said he picked up bags of ’em.’’

  “Sounds like a box fell off a truck somewheres,” Terry Stonefield said.

  “No, these were used. The backing had been peeled off. These were stickers I had handed out at church, around the neighborhood and so on, and people had put them on their cars and they fell off when it rained last week.”

  Terry Stonefield considered this for a moment, then laughed nervously. He got an amused look on his face, and Clyde could sense that he was about to make light of the situation. Clyde realized it was time to pull out his ace in the hole, let go with his cri de coeur.

  “Mark Becker told me,” Clyde said, “that he saw a dust devil moving down the median strip of Lincoln Way made up of Clyde Banks bumper stickers.”

  Terry suddenly turned on his Serious Look. He stepped closer to Clyde. “Clyde, did you just try giving Razorback Media a call?”

  “Their phone’s disconnected,” Clyde said. “Little Rock Triple-B says they skipped out on their lease.”

  Terry mulled this one over and pulled at his face. “How’d you pay for those darn stickers?”

  “Desiree’s credit card.”

  Terry brightened. “That a First National Bank of NishWap credit card by any chance?”

  “Sure is.”

  “Well, there you go. They got a policy.”

  “Policy?”

  “You buy anything with that card that’s defective, stolen, dropped off a truck by the UPS man, shattered by lightning or any other act of God—they’ll refund you in full. Good talking to you, Clyde,” Terry Stonefield said, and shook Clyde’s hand with his left while reaching out to another supporter with his right.