S. A. Gorden Read online

  “Thank you, Jim. I would like that. How have you been?”

  Gallea nearly didn’t make it through the door before it closed.

  Jim’s “fine, thank you” barely made it out of his mouth when Henry interrupted him with, “This is Al Gallea. He’s new. He’s riding with me tonight.”

  “Come in. Sit there.” James pointed to two mismatched chairs leaning against the walls of the trailer. James went behind a counter and started to make coffee. The TV set blasted a late night news show from its location between their seats and the kitchen. Al started to get up but Henry touched his shoulder and shook his head.

  Soon the smell of fresh coffee drifted in from the kitchen. James came out and handed each a chipped coffee cup on a saucer. He left and came back with his own. He leaned against the wall a few feet away. Sipping the scalding hot coffee he said, “Okay, Henry. What’s up? You’ve never stopped by my place before on your own.”

  Henry had poured some coffee from his cup and into the saucer. He slurped a sip of the now bearable hot coffee from the rim of the saucer before he answered, “Well, Jim, we got a complaint. I’ve got to ask you some questions.”

  “You know better.”

  “It’s my job.”

  To Gallea’s amazement, nothing else was said. The men just sipped their coffee. Henry refilled his saucer from the cup he now had resting on the floor by his chair. Gallea’s impatience grew, as the two men seem to only contemplate the slowly cooling coffee they were drinking.

  Gallea interrupted the drinking. “We would like to know where you were and what you were doing at 4:30 on Tuesday?” Nobody said anything. “You can answer these questions here or at the station.”

  Henry said, “Sorry, Jim, but this is his first time on an investigation.”

  “It’s all right, Henry. We all have our crosses to bear.” Makinen and Henry then got up and went to the door. James opened the door and they both stared at Gallea until he got up and left.

  After the door closed, Al yelled, “What the hell was that all about?

  Aren’t we going to do anything?”

  “I told you not to say anything. Now we won’t get anything out of him.”

  “What are you talking about? You didn’t even try.”

  “Sorry, son. I guess I should’ve explained. James Makinen is an old school Finlander. You’re new here, so you don’t know what that means. Finns don’t give a damn about the government’s authority and people from the government, even if they are very active in politics. They’re not intimidated.

  A Finn was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, thumbing his nose at the King of England. Through the years, they have played the Swedes and Germans against the Russians, the Russians against the Swedes, and the world against them all. They didn’t stop with using governments against other governments. As individuals, they would take on a government. All through the Cold War and the McCarthy Era, the center of the U.S. Communist party was a few miles from here in a small Finnish farming community. Nothing J. Edgar Hoover, Senator McCarthy, or any other anticommunist group tried even slowed them down. They just quietly voted communist while sending some of their sons to Korea and Vietnam. I remember my father’s story about one of Hoover’s G-men’s surprise when a Korean Vet with more decorations on his shirt than there was room for walked up to him after a Party meeting and tried to talk him into coming inside the Co-op for the next meeting.

  “I’ve seen Makinen’s father go up to the Governor of the State and lecture him like he was a little boy misbehaving at a picnic. And the Governor took it! After James’ divorce, he has even less respect for the police and the courts. His father is a Democrat, but I think that James has been lately doing some work for the Civil Libertarians. After you put those questions to him officially, he probably won’t give us the time of day. Now we will have to do it the hard way, by finding people who might have seen him or the girl when she says it happened.”

  “But can’t we just bring him to the station?”

  “Son, weren’t you listening? We bring him in, he will have a lawyer.

  The lawyer won’t let him say anything to begin with. But Jim is old-time stubborn Finn. He won’t give us the satisfaction of answering our questions, even if it clears him!

  “There’s an old Finn that lives a couple of miles up the road from here. Ano is his name. Nobody ever found out what happened, but he had an argument with his wife twenty years ago. They didn’t talk to each other for fifteen years. She still cooked the meals. He still drove her to town. They still slept together. For those fifteen years, they never, ever spoke to each other, just their kids. He cried like a baby when she died five years ago, but he buried her in a cemetery two counties away and bought a plot for himself just down the road from here.

  “You challenged Jim directly when you asked him those questions as a cop.”

  Confused Gallea left with Henry. The next day he figured Hakanen had to be pulling his leg. He asked Nancy in dispatch if she had ever heard of anyone not speaking to his wife for twenty years or so. When she replied, “Oh, you mean Ano?” he felt he had suddenly been dropped into a foreign land. Al decided to call Chris, his best friend since his move north from the Twin Cities, maybe he could help him figure out what was going on. But maybe he wouldn’t be of any help. After all, his first indication that things were different up here was when he had first met Chris.

  Every year the county sheriff, Jacob McKinsie, would hold a law enforcement picnic. The official reason for the picnic was for all the police departments in the area to get together socially. The idea being that since all the different departments worked as a group many times each year, the better you knew each other the easier it is to work together. The unofficial reason was a kick off for the fall political season for the local politicians.

  Food was supplied by McKinsie’s brother, Junior.

  Jr.’s Bar-B-Q-to-Go was Al’s first sight of a homemade grill and smoker on wheels. Jr.’s source of mobility was a one-ton Chevy pickup polished so bright you could barely look at it. Behind the truck was a large trailer built on the axles of a wrecked car. The trailer looked like a cross between a small boiler, a cement mixer, and a steel conveyer belt. The color of the trailer was the nondescript red-brown of steel that had all its paint worn off but not yet rusted through. Two small pipes vented the smoke from the grill right above the cooker’s head. The smoke blew downwind across the park engulfing half the picnickers in a gray mist. Al would alternately get the smells of grilling chicken and ribs with burnt grease and diesel fumes.

  Al never understood how the food from that homebuilt monster could be so tasty. After his first bite, he stuffed himself till he became drowsy. The polka bands woke him up after the huge meal. There is nothing worse musically than a couple polka bands warming up to different tunes. Dusk had come and the mosquitoes had put in their first appearance so Al decided to leave. He was just walking past the fumes from the grills when a voice stopped him. “Would you like a beer?”

  Sitting in a lawn chair just at the edge of the smoke fumes was Chris.

  There was a small cooler next to him and an empty lawn chair.

  Al thanked him for the beer and sat in the empty chair. A thick tendril of smoke made him gag. “It takes awhile to get used to the smoke but it does keep the mosquitoes away!” was Chris’s comment. They soon discovered that they were both rookies. Chris was new to the town police and Al was new to the sheriff’s department.

  After a quiet hour of talk, Al got up to leave. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee in town.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve got to stay.”

  “You mean you like polka music?”

  “I don’t, but my wife does. She’s over by the bands now.”

  When Al finally did talk to Chris about Makinen and Finns in general that night, he got the cryptic remarks, “I kind’a understand the Red Necks around here. They like Country Music. The punks like Rap. Most kids like Rock.

  A lot of
people like Polka. But I don’t understand the Finns. Do you know they like the Tango? Talk to Henry. He’s Finn.”

  Al was completely lost. Maybe he would eventually understand something tomorrow.

  It was three in the morning when James woke to the phone ringing. The voice on the line claimed to be Kawalski. The voice said he was fired and not to report to the school. James just hung up and went back to sleep. Kids! When would they stop making crank calls.

  A creaking of a door … hasty steps … a click and then light

  … The figure shrouded in darkness quickly turns a card over.

  A man with a crown holding a small sceptre in one hand and a cup in the other appears on the card. His throne seems to be floating on water with a fish and ship in the background. The card is upside down.

  The figure switches off the light and bolts to the door. The darkened room settles to silence.

  ––—

  CHAPTER 4: The King of Cups reversed

  Joseph Kawalski grew up on the family farm on the North Dakota bank of the Red River. His mother died at his birth. His father, Big Joe, tried to raise him, but he never could understand his son. Big Joe, at times, seemed to understand that his son needed more help to grow up but … He just couldn’t quite figure out the whys and wherefores of raising a child. Little Joe didn’t take care of himself after weaning! The orphaned calves and pigs were fine after being weaned off the bottle and to solid food. Why couldn’t his son handle his own raising?

  Joe inherited his father’s size and just enough brains from his mother to make it in school. In grade school, he was at least fifty pounds heavier and a foot taller than his classmates were. Unlike the gentle giants everyone hears about, Joe discovered that he could get anything he wanted from his classmates just by towering over them. He stuffed himself on the best lunches of his classmates. Relaxed in the best seats in the back of the room. His first few weeks in college were a shock to him. There were dozens of bigger and, in some cases, meaner students in the school. He floundered until the fall of his junior year in college. He got a freshman girl drunk and date raped her. His power back was back! That quarter his grade point average went from a 1.9 to a 2.8, after he started to use his size to intimidate selected undergrads to do his homework. His favorite technique was to date rape a girl in a class he was taking and rough her up until she helped him with his homework. In his senior year, he refined his scheme. He would get a girl who had a steady boyfriend to go with him to a quiet corner of the student union to study. There he would drug a can of pop he would buy her with an animal tranquilizer he got from his father’s farm. He would then time his rape to correspond to when she started to come out from under the tranquilizer so she would remember the sex act. After showing her Polaroids he had taken of her while she was unconscious, she would be willing to do his class work. He never got caught in either his blackmail or his rapes. After each success, his confidence grew. By the time he graduated, he had raped two dozen young girls and had a grade point average of 3.0.

  His skill in intimidation grew when he graduated. Somehow he knew he was small time. He always seemed to know whom he could push and whom to avoid.

  That was until he met Jefferson William Shermon. He became Shermon’s sycophant. He now lived on the scraps that Jefferson gave him and he lived well. At eighty thousand dollars per year, he earned more than ninety percent of the local rural population. He loved lording his wealth over the neighbors with a facade of leased cars, boats and ATV’s. He also controlled the lives of hundreds of people, either through their finances or their children. It was a rare month that he didn’t collect something for his due.

  Joseph sat in his office for a few minutes with a cup of coffee before he had to walk the rounds of the hallways for the mandatory morning appearance. There was a timid knock on the door that he knew had to be Amy, his secretary. She was old, ugly, and fat. She had come with the job. Shermon refused to let him fire her. Besides, she was so old you could get her to sign any document you needed and she would never know what she had signed. It was a perfect way to protect themselves if there ever was an audit of the school’s books.

  “Mr. Kawalski, John Penington is in the office. He says that Mr.

  Makinen is here. He wants to know who is he suppose to be substituting for?”

  “Makinen here?” Anger burned in Kawalski. The little prick showed up, did he? Well, he will regret it! “Amy, you tell Mr. Penington that Makinen will be leaving. I’ll take care of Makinen.”

  Kawalski boiled down the hallway to Makinen’s room. Staff and students parted before him, recognizing the foul mood. But the curiosity seekers, the ones who stop at an accident hoping to see the blood, were pulled along in his wake.

  Bursting through Makinen’s door, he growled, “I fired you last night!

  What are you doing here?”

  James, surprised, tried to figure out what Kawalski was talking about.

  As Kawalski continued to yell at him, James slowly unraveled the events.

  Instead of anger, James felt a weariness, but something else burned behind a thin boundary in his mind.

  In a soft voice, James said, “Joe, Joe, Joe … I know this is hard for you to understand, but you can’t fire me. I have something called a contract.

  You’re just a building principal. My contract is with the school district, just like your contract is. I’ll do my job and you do whatever it is you do.”

  “You God Damn Little Prick! You get out of this school now! I don’t give a fuck about your contract! You get your ass out of this building. Now!”

  “If that is how you want to play the game, I will leave but with everything I own.”

  “You’re leaving now!”

  But James had already turned his back on Kawalski and started to take down the posters decorating the walls. Screaming, Kawalski reached down.

  Grabbing James’ shoulder, he rolled him around pushing him into the wall.

  Kawalski’s fingers gouged into James’ shoulders as he glared into Makinen’s face. Something happened! Kawalski didn’t see fear in those eyes. The eyes had turned flat, emotionless. James’ hands came up through the hold that Kawalski had on him. They pushed against the inside of Kawalski’s elbows and circled around the arms. Kawalski’s grip on James was gone. His thumbs were bent back.

  His arms twisted and locked fully extended. Pressure was applied straight up, tendons stretched joints creaked and Kawalski went up on his toes unable to move. The pain was excruciating.

  James, his emotionless eyes penetrating Kawalski’s mind, whispered, “I am going to get all my things. You are going to leave.”

  James released his hold on Kawalski. Joe collapsed down from his tiptoes, his knees wobbling as the pain subsided. Kawalski stumbled away, rubbing the feeling back into his sore arms. He saw the crowd at the doorway.

  He hesitated. He wanted to turn around, but he remembered the eyes with no fear and the ease in which his hold was broken. The pain still throbbed though his arms. When he looked up again, the crowd was gone and he lurched through the door.

  After Kawalski left, the strength went out of James’ legs. On his own wobbly knees, he staggered to his desk. He sat heavily on the old rickety swivel chair with a bad spring and tried to understand what had happened to him. His mind drifted from the amazement of the karate move-that he had only practiced alone-actually working, to the real possibility of losing his job.

  He sat in dumb bewilderment until he heard over the loud speakers the voice of Joe Kawalski, “James Makinen has been suspended from his duties. If any staff or students have had problems with Mr. Makinen, please come to the high school office during first or second periods this morning. Mr. Makinen’s classes will meet in the library this morning. Bring study materials.”

  Henry Hakanen and Al Gallea had been sitting in the district office waiting to discuss a schedule for interviews with the staff and students about the sexual-assault complaint with Shermon when they heard the announcem
ent echo in from the hallway. They stared at each other in astonishment and said in unison, “Damn!” Together they got up and walked down the hall to the high school office. There they found a red-faced Kawalski standing in his doorway.

  Henry was the first to speak. “Mr. Kawalski, this is a police investigation. We cannot have you talking to any potential witnesses before we interview them. I am going to have to ask you not to talk to anybody about Mr.

  Makinen and to give me a list of names of all the people you have already spoken to.”

  Kawalski erupted, “I don’t give a damn about your investigation! I fired that little prick last night and he still showed up for work today. He won’t leave and I ordered him to.” His eruption sputtered to a stop as he finally realized who he was talking to and what he was saying.

  Henry and Al glanced at each other, an opportunity! “We’ll talk to Mr.

  Makinen. Just remember, don’t speak to anyone about him.” Henry took a step closer to Kawalski, making sure he was focused on what he was about to say. “I will be stopping by after I talk to Makinen. I expect to have that list from you made out by then. Okay?” He waited until he got a nod.

  Henry and Al left the office. “Do you know which room Makinen is in?”

  “Yes. My grandson had him a year ago. I picked my grandson up after school a couple of times from Makinen’s room.”

  “Do you think Kawalski blew our case?”

  “We never had one. After this little escapade of his, we’ve got even less. We still have to go through an investigation, but we’ll have nothing when we’re finished.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know the girl, Makinen, Kawalski and Shermon. The only one who hasn’t lied so far is Makinen and he hasn’t said anything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jenny Rossetti is a ‘good time’ girl. She never would have met Makinen after school to get help for her schoolwork. I asked my grandson. He doesn’t think she is passing a single class. If she met Makinen after school, it was for something totally different. They still could have had sex, which is statutory rape because she is seventeen, but the whole first part of her story is wrong. Kawalski and Shermon are troublemakers. I don’t know how they got the jobs they have but they are real bastards. Watch them carefully and you will see what I mean.”