From the Tales of Saint Anthony, the Johnny Holiday Mysteries
These short stories follow the lives of people who populate the fictional city of Saint Anthony (Minneapolis, Minnesota), and make their appearance in the first Johnny Holiday novel, The...
Willie Longfellow sat in the boathouse at the Excelsior pier listening to the rain pound the tin roof of his little shack.
The wind was ferocious and Willie wouldn't go out until the storm had abated. There were plenty of people waiting, wanting to take a ride to the casino on Big Island, but he knew the wind was too strong and the chop too high for the paddlewheel he drove to make it safely across the water.
He had to ignore them, for their own sake.
Willie might have been a drunk but he was a competent sailor, and he wasn't going to risk his life or the lives of his passengers, he had too much respect for the forces of nature to play with her that way.
The boathouse was cramped.
There was a small desk with a kerosene lamp and a phone, a wood burning stove that was cold at the moment, but there was a small gas-burner on top of it that he used to boil water for coffee. In the space between those fixtures there was barely enough room for Willie to turn around.
He leaned against the door jamb of the little shack smoking a Navy Cut, drinking coffee and brandy (mostly brandy) from the tin cup hooked around his fingers, blowing smoke through a the narrow crack he held in the doorway.
Willie tolerated the weather coming into the shack because it would be too hot inside and he knew that if he didn't have a little ventilation he would not be able to breath inside his chamber. He also knew that if he went to the boat, where it would be more comfortable to sit the people gathered at the dock would expect him to make way for the island; they would pester him until he did something stupid like acquiesce to their demands.
He didn't want the pressure, and for that same reason he had taken the phone off the hook. One of the fellows at the Casino had been calling again and again, demanding that he bring people over...and to do it now.
Willie Longfellow had his own agenda, and he was too salty to care what anyone else had to say about the matter. He had been a boatswain in the Navy for twenty five years, and he had dealt with much tougher men than the Norwegian gang that had recently taken over the operation on the island...that's what Willie believed, though he frequently had to remind himself of it.
He was in the process of doing just that when he watched a small boat pull up to the pier with its running lights on, and watched the slender silver-haired man people called The Wolf, get out of the boat and approach his little shack. He made eye contact with him as he toward the boathouse and a chill went up his spine.
Willie wasn't afraid of anyone or anything, but he knew enough to see this man for what he was...a killer, a guy who walked through the storm as if the rain couldn't touch him.
He took the last swallow of his coffee, flicked the butt end of his cigarette out the door, pulled on his raincoat and hat, turned on his flashlight and went out into the storm, and he decided it might be best to make a run with the ferry.
Willie tried to ignore the Wolf's approach and kept his eyes on the people waiting beneath the shelter, he waved to them to let them know that it was time to board, then he rang the bell for anyone else who might be nearby, and when he did people began to file out of the tavern on the corner of Water Street.
The Wolf stopped him as they passed each other, he held his arm in a grip that felt like ice, and said, "You're an hour late."
"Better late than dead," Willie mumbled.
Lightning struck the water with a long flash and rolling thunder.
"You know...the weather," Willie said as he shook himself loose and moved on.
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