Sigurd Olavson, Boy Toy – The First Day

                     Sigurd Olavson stood at the back entrance to Ingrid Magnusson’s warehouse-studio. He was smoking and watching the rain fall in the dark alley.

            It was hot and humid, and the downpour was heavy. It had been raining for hours and he was in poor spirits.

            There was no gig tonight, and no Ingrid; the rain had shut him in, leaving Sig by himself in the cavernous warehouse waiting for her to return from wherever it is that she went.

The note she left at the hotel said she would be back by 5:00 pm, that was hours ago.

            Sig was worried about her, not because he loved her, he didn’t, but he needed her, when she was gone and he couldn’t see her or hear her voice, Sig felt like a dope-fiend jonesing for a fix.

He had no idea who he was without her, he would begin to go blind,

Ever since he had joined her entourage in Stockholm she was all he thought about. When she wasn’t near him he felt thirsty…and right now he was parched.

Sig blew a long cloud of smoke through his pursed lips, when he was at the end of his breath a powerful bolt of lightning struck somewhere nearby, it’s flash sent shadows dancing down the alley and across the loading dock, its thunder shook the ground beneath his feet and sent a jolt up his spine.

He flicked the butt of his square into the dark and listened to the rain as he concentrated on an image of Ingrid he held in his mind.

It was like clinging to a lifeline, which did nothing to settle his nerves.

A mere ninety seconds later Sig heard the sound of heavy feet running toward the loading dock from further down the alley, and there was shouting the runner that sounded like police.

Sig stepped inside the building, shut the door and locked it.

He ducked into the small office to the right of the door and peered out the small window just in time to see Karl Thorrson running up the ramp.

Sig froze; he was terrified.

He could hear the giant gangster fumbling with a set of keys, trying to get through the door, so he bolted from the office, ran up the iron stairs onto the catwalk suspended above the studio space and crossed its full length. He ran into place where the shadows would be deepest, even if the lights were on.

Ingrid kept him there secretly, she told him that Karl Thorrson might just kill him with a swat of his hand if he discovered him in the sanctum, she told Sig that it had happened before.

He found his spot just as he heard the door open, and Karl Thorrson walking below him, coming down the hall.

He sat in the dark as quietly as he could and trembled with a sick mixture of fear and withdrawal.

He could see Thorrson below him, pacing about the room.

He was sweating profusely and clearly unnerved, Sig had been in his company many times and had never seen the gangster in the state he was in.

Sig would not have believed it was possible and he could not help but wonder what could have caused his distress. Thorrson was the man with lightning in his eye, it is believed that he communed with the dead.

He watched the giant fumble about with a number of vials and decanters on top of Ingrid’s worktable, he moved as if he was a mad bartender mixing a cocktail, then suddenly there was the sound of car outside.

Thorrson straightened and quaffed whatever it was that he had prepared and then went back down the hall to greet whoever had just pulled in.

Sig prayed that it was Ingrid. 

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Alvin Penn, Park Police Investigator – The First Day

        Detective Alvin Penn sat in his office at Park Police headquarters reading the newspaper and talking to the boys on duty.

It had been a long night with nothing much happening. It had been raining for hours, leaving the streets, parks and waterfronts quiet.

Penn figured that St. Anthony would not stay this way for long.

There had been some action earlier in the evening in the Red-Light district on Lake Street; a bar-boy who worked at the Round-up had been struck by lightning and died.

Lake Street was not under the authority of the Commissioner of Parks, not officially, so the city police had been tasked with handling the investigation, which had not been ruled a homicide, but the incident did involve Karl Thorrson whose criminal enterprise was a protected racket, so a couple of rangers had been dispatched to make sure that Thorrson didn’t get harassed by anyone who might have the wrong idea about what was happening on the streets.

Thorrson and his crew had taken over St. Anthony, it had been a long bloody summer and the Park Commissioner was behind it. Through Karl Thorrson the Commissioner now owned all the gambling, prostitution and other vice on the west side of the river, all the way down Lake Street from Pig’s Eys to Excelsior, and the Big Island with it’s amusement park and casino.

There wasn’t any trouble regarding the dead-boy, a Kid by the name of Tom Kaplan; there were plenty of eyewitnesses who saw it happen and there was nothing to cover-up.

What Penn was having trouble understanding, was why Thorrson had been on the street by himself, and for some inexplicable reason had gotten into a physical altercation with a group of ROTC candidates from the University of St. Thomas at the bar.

Penn had been surprised to learn that the young men had managed to push the giant out of the door, they even knocked him off his feet…a feat Penn thought would be impossible.

The dead-boy was struck down as he was bringing the gigantic Thorrson his hat, and his bill. Then, for yet another inexplicable reason, Thorrson ran from the scene, causing a foot chase with some Fifth Precinct beat police to ensue.

The beat cops did not know, or hadn’t taken the time to figure out who Thorrson was, as far as they were concerned they were just chasing a man who had run from the scene of a killing, but one of them had a heart attack, and the rangers who had been tasked to monitor the scene did not stop to render aid; the older cop, a veteran, died on the street.

Now the tension between the rangers and the city police, which had already been fraught, was becoming more volatile by the hour. It felt like there were battle lines forming and something ugly was about to happen.

Penn wondered if the Commissioner hadn’t overplayed his hand by backing the one-eyed Swedish gangster against the old power, Colonel Forrester, whose grip on St. Anthony had always felt as if it would never break.

Penn had learned that there was another incident with Thorrson following the chase, but the bosses had not made him privy to it; he heard about it anyway; there were whispers that a starlet had been killed at a property that Thorrson owned, the place to which he ran when he fled the Round-Up.

The woman, whose name was Ingrid Magnusson, was a popular singer and socialite, and she happened to be the gangster’s sister-in-law.

There was a cover-up there for sure...and it was well under way.

Detective Penn concluded that it didn’t matter whether the Commissioner had or had not overplayed his hand; the Colonel probably had all the bets covered, and if Thorrson ended up running the streets of St. Anthony, it was probably because the Colonel wanted it that way.

Penn might have come up through the Park Police, but he was from St. Anthony and for his entire life Colonel Forrester had been the boss. 

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