Twin Cities Noir

by Julie Schaper

  The Investigation

  In the next three weeks God in a blue shirt interrupted two Twins game and the Viking’s home opener. All on KDUL-TV. “Hi, I’m God.” He held up his little nameplate: I’ M G OD . “Relax, the Vikings tie it up in the fourth quarter…but I won’t tell you how it ends.” Sports fans cried foul. Church groups cried blasphemy. In one of the broadcasts he asked, “Where in God’s name are you people getting these Presidents from?” The FCC was not amused. FBI agents were dispatched from St. Paul. A media frenzy followed. The federal task force investigating the case set up operation on the top floor of a downtown office building, with a spectacular view of the lake.

  In the reception area, Jack Start stared out the window at the harbor. The sky over the water was still a rich summer blue, but summer was over. The leaves had begun to change and more often than not the morning breeze was out of the north.

  “Mr. Start, Inspector Whitehurst will see you now.”

  Jack Start took a seat in front of Inspector Whitehurst’s desk. He placed his walking cane across his lap. Special Agents Black and Flannery stood behind him, guarding the door, but the two never spoke.

  The inspector remained standing, shuffling files on his desk before finally breaking the tension. “Thank you for coming in, Mr. Start.” He held up a pack of cigarettes. Marlboro in a box. “Smoke?”

  “No thanks,” said Jack. “I quit.”

  “Recently, I’m guessing. Maybe about the time God showed up on television?”

  “So this is about God?”

  “No, Mr. Start, he’s all too human. And he’s in a lot of trouble. So is anybody who is helping him. Hijacking a television signal is a serious crime. It hasn’t been done successfully in over twenty years…and that was just a few seconds on a cable channel. This clown is hijacking signals from a network affiliate…and he seems to be doing it at will. Now, he’d have to have an uplink—”

  Jack Start couldn’t help but laugh.

  Inspector Whitehurst glared down at him. The FBI man was a big man, and an older man, with thin, dark hair combed straight back. He may have been sent up from St. Paul, but the trace of a New York accent still punctuated his lawyerly speech. “Is something funny, Mr. Start?”

  The Duluth reporter tried to wipe the smile from his face. “I’m sorry, it was just the thought of God needing an uplink.”

  The inspector picked up a file from his desk. Opened it and read, “Lawrence Alden Abercrombie. Also known as Pudge Abercrombie. Do you know him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Actually, his body was never found. He was classified as missing.”

  “And seven years later he was declared dead.”

  “Then why are you running around town telling people the part of God is being played by Pudge Abercrombie?”

  Jack Start explained, carefully enunciating each and every word: “What I’ve said is, he looks like what Pudge might have looked like had Pudge lived.”

  The FBI inspector held up a sketch. A computerized sketch. “Our people in Washington put Abercrombie’s high school yearbook picture on their computers and did an age-imaging analysis…what he would look like today. We know that Abercrombie is God.”

  “You believe what you want to believe, inspector. Pudge has been dead for years. I saw him die.”

  “That’s right, you were his best friend, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What would you say if I told you we traced Abercrombie to a house in Minneapolis, where he’d been living for the past twenty years? Not far from your old place.”

  “With all due respect, inspector, I’d say you’re full of shit.”

  “Did you two cook this up while you were living down there in Minneapolis?”

  “No.”

  “So it’s a coincidence that Abercrombie shows up on television just weeks before his high school’s twenty-five year reunion?”

  “I don’t know who that is on television, and neither do you.”

  “Did Abercrombie have a girlfriend in high school?”

  “No.”

  “Did you?”

  Jack Start thought about it. “No.”

  “Are you going to attend this reunion?”

  “I hadn’t planned on it, no.”

  “Why not?”

  The old high school quarterback didn’t answer the question. He stared out the window at Lake Superior. Seemed the great lake was the one constant in his life.

  The inspector lifted a transcript from the file. “When God signed off last night, he went off the air singing a World War Two hit.” Now the FBI man began singing, his fingers setting the tempo. “‘I’ll be seeing you in all the old familiar places… that this heart of mine embraces…all day through…’ Did Abercrombie like that kind of music?”

  Jack Start sat listening to the inspector warble, more amazed than amused. He scratched his head. “Actually, Pudge was more into the Beatles.” Suddenly, he put his finger to his lips, as if something had just occurred to him. “There was one thing…”

  “What?”

  “Pudge liked the Partridge Family. I always thought that was spooky.”

  The FBI inspector was losing his patience. “Was there anything else…back in high school?”

  Jack gave the question serious consideration. “Once, during our junior year, somebody commandeered the intercom system. Nobody was ever caught, but Pudge was the main suspect. It was pretty harmless stuff. He came on at 1 o’clock and dismissed school for the day. Before the vice-principal got back on the microphone, we were all heading down the hill into town.”

  Inspector Whitehurst dropped into his chair, seemingly exasperated. “We’re going to find him…and we’d be surprised if you’re not in cahoots with him.”

  “Well, that would surprise me.”

  “C’mon, Jack…a drunken, washed up newspaperman with a degenerative disease suddenly finds himself with the big scoop. An exclusive interview with God. You’d be back in the game, wouldn’t you?”

  Jack had to chuckle, more to himself than the FBI man. “You’re not really from Minnesota, are you?”

  The inspector smiled, an evil little smile. “Let’s talk about that night on the canal…the night he disappeared. Do you think he was suicidal?”

  Jack Start took a moment before answering. He was startled, as if some revelation had just come to him. For the first time in years a twinkle appeared in his eyes. “You know, maybe that’s how he gets back and forth.”

  “Who?”

  “God. He comes down here to live for a while, and then to get back, he stages some spectacular accident.”

  “So now you’re saying you went to high school with God?”

  Jack Start, one-time star quarterback for Duluth High, raised an eyebrow in delight. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “I never thought of it like that before. And we were in the same backfield.”

  The Reunion

  Under the suspicion that God might be there, so many people signed up to attend the twenty-five-year reunion that it was moved from a private room at Grandma’s Saloon to the ballroom at the Convention Center, overlooking Canal Park. By the time the reunion was in full swing, non-class members outnumbered the real class members by ten to one. FBI agents were planted at the entrance and the exits. Satellite trucks ringed the parking lot. Reporters were interviewing anybody they could find.

  Old Coach Young was popular. “Pudge was a great athlete,” he said into a battery of microphones. “But he lacked discipline. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Are you saying God was lazy?”

  “No, no. I’m saying the God I knew was something of a screw-off.”

  Television sets were scattered around the ballroom in case God made his seventh appearance over the airwaves. Only the night before, in his sixth appearance, God had entertained the Iron Range by popping a beer and choking on a pretzel.

  “Hi, I’m God,” he said, coughing up the gooey mess and spitting it into a paper towel. He held up his na
meplate: I’ M G OD . “I have some really bad news for you people. I’ve thought about it, and I’ve thought about it…and I’m moving to Wisconsin.” His belly laughs filled the television screen. “You know I’m joking you. If it’s the end of the world…I’ll let you know.” He held out his hands, as if baffled. “And what is with all you people falling in love with the wrong person? Open your eyes, for God’s sake.”

  The reunion continued. A local band was playing Beatles songs. Badly. More and more drinks were poured. The room grew increasingly louder. And hotter.

  “Get you a beer, Jack?”

  “No thanks, I’ll stick with the ginger ale.”

  “Ginger ale. What’s wrong with him, Coach?”

  Old Coach Young raised his hands in surrender. “I can’t figure it out. He quit smoking, he’s not drinking. I swear the devil has gotten ahold of him.”

  There was another round of laughter as Jack Start made his way through the crowd. He was actually enjoying himself. In fact, it was almost overwhelming. He set his ginger ale down on a table and walked to the end of the ballroom, where the bay windows over the lake were twenty feet high. Glass from the floor to the ceiling. The old high school quarterback stood there alone looking down at Canal Park. Beyond that was the utter blackness of Lake Superior.

  “That’s quite a view. I miss it.”

  He turned when she said that. Turned too fast and almost lost his balance. She met his eyes with a smile, and twenty-five years melted away in an instant.

  “Hello, Jack,” she added.

  He smiled, a genuine smile he hadn’t felt in years. “Hello, Mary.” She was taller than he remembered. Her hair was longer and a bit lighter. And those eyes, the eyes that had crushed little boys’ hearts, were still as bright as any star that hung over the North Shore. In short, she was even more strikingly beautiful than he’d tried to forget.

  She gave him a hug, and he embraced her in an awkward manner, not knowing what to do with his cane. When he’d steadied himself, he said, “You’re supposed to be dumpy and all wrinkled up.”

  “They told me you weren’t coming.”

  “I wasn’t, but then…”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. Might have been something I saw on television.”

  She glanced at his cane. “Can you walk?”

  “Oh, yeah. The cane is mostly for insurance. It’s my left leg,” he explained, a touch too excited. “Sometimes it just goes to sleep, and then I fall down. It’s kind of embarrassing to be falling down at my age.”

  “I meant…would you like to go for a walk?”

  The sea breeze in his face felt good. The woman beside him felt heaven sent. Jack Start stared at the long walkway leading out to the lighthouse. Where Canal Park had once been the purlieu of prostitutes and sailors, a multimillion-dollar renaissance had brought restaurants, shops, and hotels, not to mention a million tourists every summer. But on this night the park was quiet. In fact, the great lake itself was as calm as he’d ever seen it. The waves were small, and they lapped against the shore in perfect harmony. It was early October now. There remained only two weeks of decent weather. Then the cold would set in. And the storms would follow.

  Jack Start found himself doing something he thought he would never ever do. Never in a lifetime. “I’ve walked past it,” he said. “I’ve stared down at it. But I haven’t set foot on this walkway in twenty-five years.”

  “How does it feel?”

  “With you, it feels good.”

  “Should we walk out to the lighthouse?”

  It was a remarkably clear night. Every now and then the revolving beam of light sailed over their heads. Jack and Mary stopped halfway down the walkway. The shadow of a man could be discerned standing at the top of the stairs, at the foot of the lighthouse. They wanted to be alone. So they stood where they were and stared at the galaxy of lights that ran up and down the steep hills. Illuminated hills that rolled up and away from the lake. And at the foot of those hills, throwing an eerie, translucent glow, were the klieg lights from the television crews that surrounded the Convention Center.

  With his back to the lake, Jack Start shook his head in amazement. “What a circus,” he said. “You know, excuse the pun, but he really hasn’t said a goddamn thing.”

  “It’s those three little words that are driving people crazy.”

  Jack had to laugh. “Hi, I’m God.”

  She laughed too, but it was a laugh tinged with regret. “Do you think he’s out there somewhere?”

  “Who, Pudge?”

  “No…God?”

  The cynical reporter turned back to the lake. “Me and him have had our differences over the years. I can’t really answer that one.”

  She joined him at the wall, staring out at the endless water. “Well then, how about Pudge?”

  “You know, Mary, I’ve thought about it, and I’ve thought about it, and it certainly sounds like something Pudge would do.”

  “Do you remember when he took over the intercom system?”

  “Remember? Hell, I told the FBI about it.”

  “But, Jack, would he really hide out for twenty-five years?”

  Jack Start shook his head in wonder. “Had to be one hell of a broken heart.”

  She thought about that. “He really did love me, didn’t he?”

  “Oh yeah. He was crazy in love with you.”

  It is said that a friend is someone you can stand in silence with and not be embarrassed by the silence. The two high school friends stood shoulder-to-shoulder facing the great lake—gazing far out into the past, where the water meets the stars. The only sound was the wind whistling over the shore, and the waves washing over the rocks. Time drifted by. At last she took a deep breath and sighed. “Well, I suppose.”

  He looked over at her and smiled. “Yeah, I suppose.”

  She slipped her arm through his and they walked away from the lighthouse, back up the hill toward their reunion.

  God never showed his face again. Never made a seventh appearance. The FCC stiffened the fines for anybody interfering with the airwaves. And Congress passed a bill approving longer prison sentences for any person caught hijacking a television signal. But nobody was ever arrested. The case remains open.

  EMINENT DOMAIN

  BY JUDITH GUEST

  Edina (Minneapolis)

  Eminent Domain: In law, the right of a government to take or authorize the taking of private property for public use, just compensation being given to the owner.

  —Webster’s New World Dictionary

  They were to meet at Beaujo’s on France. Kendra wore dark glasses and a black silk scarf tied over her red hair, even though she was certain no one would recognize her; she seldom frequented these chic, upscale wine bars sprouting up like wild mushrooms in her neighborhood. One of them even bore the name Wild Mushroom.

  She sat at the L-shaped bar, trying not to fidget or look like she was on the prowl. Even though she was. It’s just an experiment. Research. Investigating the possibilities.

  She glanced around the room: no curtains on the windows and no rugs on the floor made it a bit noisy, but for her this was perfect. They wouldn’t be overheard; that was essential. And the lighting was dim, so that no one could say for sure that it was the famous Kendra Schilling they saw that night, dressed all in black, black high heels hooked over the rung of the bar stool.

  No, not dim; that wasn’t precise. She prided herself on the accuracy of her descriptions. She was a writer, after all. Soft, murky lighting. Yes, that was better. Making everyone look a little more chic, a little less desperate. Were they desperate? She wasn’t sure. She only knew that she was. She tapped one perfectly manicured nail against the rim of her wine glass containing Trentadue Petite Syrah…inky, big, and powerful with intense blackberry syrup and ripe plums, leather-like aroma. She had ordered it purely for the fancy lingo.

  Glancing at her watch she took in the cast of characters, wondering if she might have overlooked
her fellow assignee. Was that the right word? Perhaps accomplice would be more accurate. For surely that’s what they were: accomplices. Partners in crime. For a moment she thought of quitting while she was still ahead. She’d wrestled with her conscience all day, balancing need against self-respect. No, she’d come this far; she wouldn’t wimp out now.

  I’m tall, he had told her over the telephone. Blond hair and brown eyes. I’ll be wearing a brown leather jacket with a red carnation in the buttonhole. Nobody in the bar fit that description. But she knew he’d come. It was still early; the salesclerks from Chico’s and Anthropologie had already quaffed their beers and left; the après-movie set had yet to arrive.

  At the end of the bar sat a pale girl wearing a paisley dress two sizes too small for her. She was hunched over a plate of fried calamari. Hunching and munching. Could be a useful phrase in the short story she was working on. In fact, she might just lift the whole scene, excising the rather plain-looking old man sipping a glass of oily clear liquid (Absinthe? No, that was illegal, wasn’t it?) and reading the Edina Sun.

  “This seat taken?” a voice asked at her elbow.

  Tall. Blond. And yes, the red carnation in the buttonhole. “It is now,” she said, taking the hand extended toward her.

  “I’m Hiram.”

  “You’re younger than I expected.”

  “Did you specify an age?” His smile was friendly, curious. “Because you could have. Not that it makes any difference. We all do pretty much the same thing.”

  “Do you?” She looked him up and down thoroughly. “How many of you are there?”

  “Lots.” He slid onto the bar stool. “More every day.” The bartender glanced down the length of the bar, and Hiram raised one finger. “Wine cooler, please.”