Ivan “The Wolf” Wolvenson - The First Day

Ivan Wolvenson sat in the back parlor of Karl Thorrson’s home, waiting for his patron to return, sipping from a glass of water.

He had spent much of the evening waiting:

Waiting at the casino for the storm to pass, waiting for the ferry driver at Big Island, who did not have the courage to brave the rough waters.

It had been an exceedingly slow drive through the downpour from Excelsior to Saint Anthony.

Now he was waiting again…and the evening was getting late.

Ivan, who people called “The Wolf,” was pensive.

He didn’t like waiting. He was a man of action, but he never questioned the boss’s orders; whatever else he was, The Wolf was a good dog. He was obedient to his master.

Karl Thorrson had told him to retire to the house in Tangletown, a sleepy neighborhood with lovely cottages on the southside of St. Anthony. The home was on the banks of the narrow rivulet named for the maiden Minnehaha, made famous by the poet Longfellow in his epic The Song of Hiawatha.

The Wolf was fond of reciting it.

His Norwegian grandfather had taken an Ojibwe bride when he came to Minnesota, and he believed the blood of hero’s flowed through his veins.

The Wolf was a killer; he inspired fear in others, but there were few people who would have called him heroic…none in fact, but a wolf did not concern himself with the opinion of sheep, he told himself when the disparity came to mind.

The Wolf sat in the parlor peering into the dark, watching the deluge drench the city.

            The storm was chaotic, and he didn’t like it. Weather like this was not good for business, it gave the pimps and hustlers who worked under him an excuse to cheat, he knew that business would be down, but revenue would be down even more.

Tonight his patron had sidelined him, telling him that he would go alone to the Round-Up to conclude his business with the owner. The one-eyed giant told him that he wanted to take care of the matter himself, that he would not even bring his ordinary muscle, the Ingelson brothers with him.

The Wolf never questioned Karl Thorrson, and he knew that his patron did not require anyone’s protection, it was the appearance that mattered. Even a man like Karl Thorrson benefitted from the projection of force. Both he and the Ingleson brothers represented that force, along with the dozens of other gunmen that did their bidding throughout the city, and they all benefitted from appearing with their patron in public, it bolstered their authority as well. But there was nothing to be done about that now, so he sat in the parlor watching for a break in the clouds or some hint of the moon...waiting for the rain to stop.

The Wolf was pensive; he didn’t like waiting, he was a man of action.

He looked out of the windows, out toward the creek; he could not see it through the rain, but he focused on his breathing and allowed his mind to hover over the flowing water, to enter the stream and flow with it: from Tangletown up-to its headwaters at Lake Minnetonka, then down-stream over the great waterfall, to the Mississippi river, to New Orleans, to the Gulf of Mexico and the wider world beyond.

He found a place of stillness in the current, and quietly recited Longfellow’s poem. 

By the shores of Gitche Gumee

By the shining big-sea water

Stood Nokomis, the old woman,

Pointing with her finger westward,

O'er the water pointing westward,

To the purple clouds of sunset…

          The Wolf waited for his patron’s call. 

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Marie Beguine, A Forrester Maid - The First Day

Marie Beguine returned to the maid’s chamber, attached to Amelie’s suite of rooms in the wing of the Forrester Mansion that was reserved for her and her guests, leaving her mistress alone with the young man her father, the Colonel had brought into the house.

She wasn’t sure if she liked this Johnny Holiday, though she had to admit that he was a handsome fellow, tall and strong with a smooth complexion and a generous smile. He was just the sort of young-man that Amelie was fond of, and because of this old-maid thought it was dangerous to have him living in the house, even if he was downstairs in the Colonel’s guest quarters.

Amelie had already asked Marie for the key to his room, and she planned on giving it to her as soon as she could, even though Nils, the head butler, would be upset with her if he found out. She would much rather face a reprimand from Nils than Amelie’s anger.

The old maid was worried for the Colonel’s older daughter; she had not been herself for months, neither she nor her sister Celene had been behaving properly in her estimation, but Amelie seemed particularly unpredictable, surprising even herself.

Amelie had been drinking heavily, throughout the day and into the evenings. There were several times in recent weeks when she had come to Marie to ask her what time she had come home, or with whom she had been out, what if anything had she might have said about the things she was doing.

Her blackouts were contributing to a deepening sense of paranoia, especially concerning her father and her missing husband, Bjorn Elmquist, who had disappeared around the time that she had begun to spiral out of control.

The other servants in the Forrester mansion had noticed Amelie’s behavior as well, but none of them were as close to her as Marie was. They enjoyed their gossip, but Marie thought of the girl as a daughter, and she wanted her to be happy.

The other ladies in the household said that Amelie had driven her husband away, but Marie believed that something terrible had happened to him, though she did not know what it might be, and she was quietly concerned that Amelie had something to do with it.

Bjorn was her second husband, her first marriage ended in scandal and had been annulled on account of adultery, his not hers, but Marie knew that she had been unfaithful as well.

Amelie had met Bjorn a short time later and after a brief engagement the two of them were married. The old-maid believed she had noticed a change in her mood and behaviors then.

Her husband was a gregarious and fascinating man; Marie loved to eavesdrop when he was telling one of his stories to Amelie’s father.

This new young man, this Johnny-boy, had been hard on Amelie and Marie did not like that. He had excited her nerves causing Amelie to spill her drink. Marie was happy to come in and clean things up, but she could tell that her mistress was deeply embarrassed by the mishap, and it would not have happened at all if Johnny Holiday had simply been more polite with her during their conversation..

He must be something extra special to the Colonel to think that he could get away with that kind of behavior in the Forrester mansion, Marie thought, and if that were the case all of the staff should know to let the boy have plenty of space.

 It would be best if Nils handled his needs directly while he was a guest at the mansion, Marie said to herself.

It would be best.

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Karl Thorrson, Crime Boss - The First Day

Karl Thorrson was a giant, nearly seven-feet tall, with bones as dense as granite.

His hands were as big as a polars bear’s paws and his shoulders as broad as a draft horse, and yet despite his size he was graceful, as light of foot like a dancer, as nimble fingered as a seamstress…and he only had one eye.

There was a large black stone in his otherwise empty socket. It was studded with diamonds set in jagged line…like a lightning bolt; when they caught the light just right rainbow flares leapt from his gaze…he worked that flash to great effect.

The word on the street was that the giant could see with that rock in his head, it allowed him a different kind of vision, better than any eye. People said he could see into the world beyond; they said that he had gouged his own eye out with a red-hot iron to make room in his skull arcane-stone and gain the power that it possessed.

People said he could see and talk to spirits. They said he was haunted by all the men he had killed and that ghosts that were drawn to him like moths to a flame. They said he could command the lightning, and that he was cursed by it, that the rain followed him relentlessly and animals shunned him.

Thorrson liked to believe the things people said about him; he encouraged such stories, embellishing them whenever he could, adding luster to their grandiosity.

The giant was not motivated by vanity, it was just that he led a public life and felt more secure wrapped in an aura of danger and mystery…it was good for business, he thought.

His legend was partially true.

Slow-heavy drops of rain were falling when he left the reading room on Lake Street.

His partner and sister in law, Ingrid Magnusson, had gone north unexpectedly to see her twin, Helga…his wife.

The giant wasn’t happy about that, but he couldn’t stop her.

He was angry and impatient while he was at the reading room. He had been obligated to keep an appointment on Ingrid’s behalf. He had to wait for a professor, Dr. Peirce Johnson of Augsburg, a scholar of antiquities; who was coming for a very precious book.

Ingrid had promised him a look at the Albigensian Grimoire, and Thorrson was loathe to lend it out, but there were some passages in it that neither he nor Ingrid had been able to translate, and the professor promised to be of help.

With his help we might raise the dead; Ingrid had suggested, and the giant thought that such a promise was worth the risk.

Thorrson didn’t like the tall-skinny man when he met him. The he heard his own name spoken out loud by a total stranger, a young man who had been waiting in the parlor who had not come with the professor, but left at the same time as him.

Thorrson did not bother himself with making an introduction, though he wished he had. There was something about the young man’s voice that gave him an uncomfortable feeling, it was almost as if he had heard it before.

There was a resonance in his tone that felt familiar to the giant, as if he had been listening to it for years.

Ms. Angela Guthrie, Ingrid’s assistant, was dismissive of the boy, which might explain why he left, but he went out the door right on Dr. Johnson’s heels as if he were a highway man stalking his mark, Thorrson didn’t like that either.

He didn’t like anything about the day, especially the heat and the oncoming storm that he was powerless to stop; he knew that people were fond of believing that the rain followed him.

In actuality, the giant had discovered that the mystical orb in his skull gave him a limited ability to control the weather, by sheer force of will, but there was something in today’s storm that he knew was beyond him.

At the end of the day Thorrson had business down Lake Street at a tavern called the Round-Up, a small place that refused to pay him for the protection he offered, one of the last hold outs on the St. Anthony strip.

The giant gangster wanted to get the matter settled with the proprietor personally, rather than send his men a third time, only to see them get nowhere with the owner and his wife.

He wanted to get on with it, to finish consolidating his control of the city, despite the feeling of nausea that had taken a hold of him ever since he heard the stranger in the bookstore say his name.

Something he had not foreseen lay in front of him, Thorrson surmised. 

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