The Tales of Saint Anthony, The First Day

Alvin Penn, Park Police Investigator

Detective Alvin Penn sat in his office at Park Police headquarters reading the newspaper and talking to the boys on duty.

It had been a long night with nothing much happening. It had been raining for hours, leaving the streets, parks and waterfronts quiet.

Penn figured that St. Anthony would not stay this way for long.

There had been some action earlier in the evening in the Red-Light district on Lake Street; a bar-boy who worked at the Round-up had been struck by lightning and died.

Lake Street was not under the authority of the Commissioner of Parks, not officially, so the city police had been tasked with handling the investigation, which had not been ruled a homicide, but the incident did involve Karl Thorrson whose criminal enterprise was a protected racket, so a couple of rangers had been dispatched to make sure that Thorrson didn't get harassed by anyone who might have the wrong idea about what was happening on the streets.

Thorrson and his crew had taken over St. Anthony, it had been a long bloody summer and the Park Commissioner was behind it. Through Karl Thorrson the Commissioner now owned all the gambling, prostitution and other vice on the west side of the river, all the way down Lake Street from Pig's Eys to Excelsior, and the Big Island with it's amusement park and casino.

There wasn't any trouble regarding the dead-boy, a Kid by the name of Tom Kaplan; there were plenty of eyewitnesses who saw it happen and there was nothing to cover-up.

What Penn was having trouble understanding, was why Thorrson had been on the street by himself, and for some inexplicable reason had gotten into a physical altercation with a group of ROTC candidates from the University of St. Thomas at the bar.

Penn had been surprised to learn that the young men had managed to push the giant out of the door, they even knocked him off his feet...a feat Penn thought would be impossible.

The dead-boy was struck down as he was bringing the gigantic Thorrson his hat, and his bill. Then, for yet another inexplicable reason, Thorrson ran from the scene, causing a foot chase with some Fifth Precinct beat police to ensue.

The beat cops did not know, or hadn't taken the time to figure out who Thorrson was, as far as they were concerned they were just chasing a man who had run from the scene of a killing, but one of them had a heart attack, and the rangers who had been tasked to monitor the scene did not stop to render aid; the older cop, a veteran, died on the street.

Now the tension between the rangers and the city police, which had already been fraught, was becoming more volatile by the hour. It felt like there were battle lines forming and something ugly was about to happen.

Penn wondered if the Commissioner hadn't overplayed his hand by backing the one-eyed Swedish gangster against the old power, Colonel Forrester, whose grip on St. Anthony had always felt as if it would never break.

Penn had learned that there was another incident with Thorrson following the chase, but the bosses had not made him privy to it; he heard about it anyway; there were whispers that a starlet had been killed at a property that Thorrson owned, the place to which he ran when he fled the Round-Up.

The woman, whose name was Ingrid Magnusson, was a popular singer and socialite, and she happened to be the gangster's sister-in-law.

There was a cover-up there for sure...and it was well under way.

Detective Penn concluded that it didn't matter whether the Commissioner had or had not overplayed his hand; the Colonel probably had all the bets covered, and if Thorrson ended up running the streets of St. Anthony, it was probably because the Colonel wanted it that way.

Penn might have come up through the Park Police, but he was from St. Anthony and for his entire life Colonel Forrester had been the boss.