Roy Decker ate his dinner at the Saint Anthony Club.
He
poured whiskey into his coffee at breakfast and drank ale with his lunch. He
had two Manhattans before dinner and now he was on his second bottle of
Bordeaux.
There
was a bloody steak on his plate, half eaten. There were the obligatory potatoes
and a platter of sliced tomatoes, lightly dressed with salt and pepper. He ate
slowly while he talked with his guest, the Commissioner of Parks, Mr. Ermes
Batelier.
The
Commissioner was one of the most powerful men in the city, and Roy had
significant gambling debts to a man who reported directly to him, the notorious
gangster, Karl Thorrson.
Roy
was not from Saint Anthony, but had been living there for several years while
he oversaw his father’s shipping interests between the Port of Saint Anthony on
the Mississippi River and Duluth Harbor on Lake Superior.
Shipping
and rail were the family business, shipping and rail and iron ore.
The
Decker Company was millions of dollars in debt, which it had acquired while
financing a canal project between Lake Superior and the mighty river. It was a
project that did not make sense to Roy because the harsh winters in Minnesota,
while posing no impediment to locomotives, would only allow the canal to be
used six or seven months out of the year, if it was ever completed.
The
Commissioner was a big proponent of the canal, and for some reason Roy did not
understand, his father was beholden to him. Roy would have liked to know why,
but at the same time he did not really care; he found the massive project was
an easy vehicle for him to hide his losses at the casino, while only requiring
him to visit his office for 1 – 2 hours a day.
Tonight
the Commissioner was in an excitable mood.
Roy
sensed that something transformative was afoot, and the commissioner wanted to
discuss a new project along the Minnesota River, the scale of which made Roy’s
head spin.
It
would be subject to the same problems the current project had, only this project
would extend farther north, into Canada, to Winnipeg and Hudson Bay.
It would be practically useless as a transit
route, and it would be exposed along its length to the dangers of the Dakota
frontier, where there were occasional incidents of hostility between the United
States and the Lakota confederacy.
Roy did not care how his father spent his
fortune, so long as the old man didn’t ask too much of him on the day to day.
However, it seemed to Roy that a project like this might threaten his own
inheritance, and that made Roy uneasy.
The thought of being poor terrified him, and being
afraid was something he could not abide.
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