Roy Decker was having his dinner at the Saint Anthony Club as he did on most nights.
There was a bloody steak on his plate, half
eaten, with the obligatory potatoes and a platter of sliced tomatoes, lightly
dressed with salt and pepper.
Roy ate slowly while he talked with his guest,
the Commissioner of Parks, Ermes Batelier, who hadn’t even touched his soup,
and had only taken one sip of wine at which he wrinkled his nose.
The commissioner’s reaction caused him to
become self-conscious, he wondered if the wine was corked, and he was not able
to tell,
Roy drank throughout the day, 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, and
he would continue to drink until he passed out.
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 hoping that there was some service he could
perform for the man in order to satisfy the sum.
Roy
was not from Saint Anthony, but he had been living in the city for several
years, having been charged with overseeing 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, debt which it had acquired while
financing a canal project between Lake Superior and the Mississippi north of
Saint Cloud. 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 however, was a big proponent of the canal, and for some reason that
Roy did not properly understand, his father was beholden to him.
Roy would have liked to know that reason, he
was curious, but at the same time he did not really care, and 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.
He let the project run itself.
Tonight,
the commissioner’s mood seemed excitable.
Roy
sensed that something transformative was afoot here in the city, and perhaps
for the nation; 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.
Roy
thought it was crazy; unless the weather changed dramatically and Minnesota
winters became as mild as Missouri, 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 Federation.
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 because the thought of being poor terrified him, and being afraid was something Roy felt he could not abide.
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