Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 30, No. 13, Mid-December 1985

The Scales of Justice by Al and Mary Kuhfeld

There was a knock on the door. George Grimby put his cards face down and went upstairs to answer it while the other four players waited.

“I’m not sure about this, an outsider at our game...” Pederson said, taking the opportunity to rearrange his hand.

“C’mon, poker isn’t poker without five players,” said Nygaard. “Thorpe couldn’t make it, and with due respect to our host, Grimby ain’t but half a player at best, even when he does take a hand.” Nygaard noted Pederson’s rearranging and looked complacently at his own hand.

Balstad was at the small refrigerator, getting a beer. “We can use some fresh blood at the table. We’ve been playing together so long I think we’re getting stale.”

The door slammed upstairs, and a gust of arctic air came down and wrapped itself around the ankles of the poker players. Boots clumped and feet clattered on the stairs; Grimby was back, bringing with him a broad bulldog of a man. The man’s eyes swept the room, and Nygaard was suddenly aware that while Grimby’s basement rec room was warm and clean, its decor could best be described as Early Suburban Bad Taste. Plaster plaques featuring bathroom humor and mother-in-law cracks were hung on the imitation wood paneling, and the acetate curtains featured pink and black poodles. The object that came closest to good taste was a bad reproduction of a classic painting of five poker-playing dogs. Grimby had tacked it to the wall behind his tiny bar.

The newcomer’s face fell subtly as he looked about. A high roller, I bet, thought Nygaard, who thinks he’s fallen among yokels.

But the man made a quick recovery and flashed a grin as brilliant as the diamond in his pinky ring. “Hi, I’m Larry Fields. Sports equipment is my game, and I wish I’d brought my snowshoes with me.” He gestured at his snow-covered shoes and laughed. “I’m from Chicago, the windy city. But it usually blows wet this time of year, not white.” He took off a pinch-brim hat and shook snow off it.

“We’re enough farther north to make a difference, all right,” said Pederson. “Coat rack is back in the hall.”

“Thanks.”

The men returned to their hand. It was a friendly poker game, and they played with a minimum of words and gestures, the way people do who have spent many hours in each other’s company. Strangers were rarely invited to sit in, but as Nygaard had pointed out, Grimby preferred the role of host and poker isn’t poker without five players. And as Balstad had noted, play was slow as much because the players were stale as because the cards were cold. Anyway, Ken Olson, desk clerk at the Valhalla Inn, had vouched for Fields, and he was a fair judge of character.

Draxten folded, Pederson and Nygaard called, and Grimby won with a pair of jacks.

“Rats.” Pederson dropped his cards in front of him and began to nudge them away with a forefinger. Nygaard was reminded of a terrier. “A lousy pair of jacks,” Pederson said, and scratched restlessly behind an ear. “There hasn’t been a decent hand yet.”

“Give it time, the cards haven’t warmed up yet,” said Nygaard. “We’ve only been playing an hour.”

“They may have been a lousy pair of jacks,” said Grimby as he raked in the chips. “But they were my jacks, and they were good enough to beat you. And on that note, Larry, here, take the luckiest seat in the house.”

Fields came back from hanging up his coat and took the chair Grimby had vacated, between Pederson and Draxten. “What’s a buy-in gonna cost me?” he asked.

“Fifty dollars cash,” said Pederson.

“Fifty?” Fields, wallet in hand, looked disappointed.

“We prefer a friendly game to mayhem-on-the-halfshell, Mr. Fields,” said Draxten with finality. Steady, sober, tenacious, Draxten spoke like the Saint Bernard nanny in Peter Pan.

Fields pulled two twenties and a ten out of a fat wallet and handed them over with a shrug. “Yeah, well, fifty bucks ain’t patty-cake, either.”

Why am I all of a sudden seeing everyone as a dog? thought Nygaard. Pederson’s a terrier, Fields is a bulldog, Draxten is a Saint Bernard — and, by God, Balstad would make a good poodle with that bright red sweater and his curly blond hair. Interesting. Amused at this flight of fancy, but not wishing to be asked about it, he covered a grin with a massive hand — and his eye was caught by the print behind the bar. There they were, the poodle, terrier, bulldog, and Saint Bernard — and a Great Dane. I’ll have to be the Great Dane, I guess. Pity it isn’t a Norwegian elkhound. Nygaard, like any Son of Norway, knew the difference between Danes and Norwegians.

Pederson took Fields’s money and gave him a handful of chips and a rundown on the house rules. “Whites are one, reds five, and blues ten dollars. There’s a ten dollar limit on raises. Hands are dealer’s choice. No sandbagging, and any faced card is dead unless the dealer is giving it to himself. A dollar comes out of every pot to help our host meet expenses.”

Fields played conservatively the first several hands, taking the measure of his fellow players and learning the rest of the house rules. He was a restless man, considering his bulk. “I’m a smoker,” he confessed halfway through his fourth hand, when he saw Nygaard’s awareness of his fidgets, “but none of you seems to smoke, and I’m willing to fight the habit for a few hours if that’s the only way I get to play. Will we break for dinner?”

“Huh-uh, game’s over at six today,” said Balstad. “Big lodge doings this evening.”

Fields again looked disappointed, but said, “Fine.”

It was Balstad’s deal. “Seven card stud, gentlemen,” he announced. “Ante up.” There was a gentle clattering of white chips into the ante. Fields snatched up his hole cards, fondled them lovingly, glanced at Nygaard, put them down, knocked over his chips, and began a careless restacking of them. But his eyes wandered around the table, watching the players.

Nygaard glanced at his own hole cards: king of clubs and seven of hearts; then looked up to see the king of spades land face up in front of him. Nobody else showed anything higher than a ten. His attention was so distracted by Fields, he forgot he preferred not to scare off the other players. He tossed in three white chips: “Open for three.”

“I quit,” said Balstad. “When Thor bets three this early, he’s got at least another king in the hole.” Balstad, like most poodles, was easily intimidated.

Draxten, who had the ten of hearts, maintained a saintly silence as he met the bet.

“I’m in,” said Fields. He had been holding his hole cards again, playing with them. He picked up three white chips and tossed them in.

Which brought it to Pederson. He had a four and five of clubs showing. “You’re bluffing, Thor, I can tell,” he said.

Nygaard shrugged indifferently.

“I can beat whatever you’ve got, I guess,” said Pederson. He picked up a red chip and tossed it into the center with terrier bravado.

Fields “milked” the two cards in his hand, pulling the top one off and sliding it under the other, over and over. He looked at them as if worried they’d changed color in the last minute, pulled his nose, sniffed hard, and put them face down on the table. But Nygaard, a keen people-watcher, noticed that Fields’s eyes kept glancing around the table as well.

“You gonna sit there all afternoon?” demanded Pederson.

“Huh? Oh.” Nygaard had gotten so interested in trying to figure Fields out that he’d failed to notice it was his turn again. He consulted his cards and, with a show of reluctance, put another two dollars into the pot to call the bet. Fields and Draxten also called. Balstad dealt each of the remaining players another card.

Nygaard won the hand with three kings, being distracted enough by Fields not to overplay his nonchalance, his usual giveaway to a good hand.

Later, when Pederson was dealing seven card stud, he remarked as he began the last round of cards, “Down and dirty.”

“I love it when you talk poker to us,” leered Balstad, and Fields’s rich chortle contrasted pleasantly with Pederson’s high yelp of laughter.

But Fields’s play remained erratic, and Nygaard, while chuckling at Balstad’s comeback, could not have told anyone who challenged him what it had been, so interested was he in watching Fields. He wondered what Fields was up to; the man was slipping red chips through his heavy fingers — his second buy-in of the afternoon. He’d been losing steadily, and making some novicelike plays. But he knew the jargon of the regular poker player, and he was good at bluffing.

Nygaard consulted his hole cards. He’d managed to weave his covert study of the newcomer into his game now. He had four kings, two of the wild cards — Pederson liked the excitement of wild cards — but still, a very good hand. Shaking his head as if in serious doubt, he shoved a blue chip and a red chip towards the middle, raising five. He wanted badly to raise ten, but if he did, he might scare Pederson off.

Fields had had to buy more chips again. But if he was hanging in there, so were his fidgets. When he wasn’t fooling with his cards, he was messing with his chips. He was full of “tells,” licking his lips and shifting in his chair as if anticipating a big win, or wiping an eye as if concerned about the poverty of his cards. Yet these motions rarely connected with how he played a hand, or its results. Nygaard had about given up, deciding that so long as Fields was losing, he was easy to put up with.

About four thirty, Fields asked, “How about we bring it up to pot limit on raises? I mean, I don’t want to quack, but I’d like to get well before we go home — I’ve had to buy back in twice already.”

He sure knows a lot of poker terms for a man who plays that poorly, thought Nygaard. But Fields was grinning with just that hint of embarrassment that meant sincerity, and Nygaard shrugged. “Dealer’s choice.”

Draxten glanced down at the stacks of chips in front of him — he’d been playing stolid, consistent, winning poker all afternoon — and said, “Fine.”

“That can get a little rich for my blood,” said Balstad uncomfortably.

“I’m for it,” said Pederson — boldly, considering how far behind he was. “If you’re scared, Balstad, you can change it back when it’s your deal.”

“Well—” said Balstad.

“Oh-kay,” said Fields, with an air of rubbing his hands together. “Five card draw, gentlemen, nothing wild.”

He took that pot, which amounted to nearly a hundred dollars, folded when Pederson dealt, lost a small amount on the hand Nygaard dealt, folded after the draw on Balstad’s deal, and won handily from Draxten.

He called for pot limit again on his deal. After the draw, Nygaard, who failed to improve a pair of queens, summoned his considerable acting ability and bluffed so well everyone but Fields folded. Fields just grinned and kept raising back, and won with three fives. Nygaard frowned; three fives was a poor hand to back that heavily. Why had he been so damn sure he had Nygaard beat? He thought that over as the deal moved around the table twice. Fields was playing very well indeed right now, winning when he stayed, folding when he should. He again folded promptly when it was Pederson’s deal. Nygaard’s frown deepened: Fields seemed to fold every time Pederson dealt. And Pederson always announced that deuces or one-eyed jacks or even deuces and treys were wild. What did Fields have against wild cards?

“Grimby, bring us another deck, will you?” asked Nygaard when the deck came to him. “I’ve been drawing too many runts with this deck.”

“Sure.”

Nygaard opened the box, removed the jokers, and shuffled thoroughly. Pederson cut and Nygaard announced, “Five card draw, five dollar limit on raises—” he was approaching the sum he would allow himself to lose and did not want to be forced out of the game just yet — “nothing wild. Ante up.”

Fields’s mannerisms seemed to gain new vigor with this game. He fiddled incessantly with his cards, rearranging their order again and again. He pursed his lips and whistled softly, glanced at the other players frequently, and when he caught Nygaard’s eye on him, he began to break down and restack his chips with an air of impatience. Not impatience to bet; he stayed with apparent reluctance, not raising. When Nygaard called for discards, Fields pulled three random cards from his hand. “Three, please,” he said, tossing them down.

“Give me two good ones,” begged Balstad.

“One,” said Draxten.

“I’ll take three,” said Pederson.

“And dealer takes two,” said Nygaard, handing around replacements. “What do you bet, Larry?”

Fields picked up some chips without looking, counting them as he dropped them into the middle. “One, two, three, four dollars,” he said, and began again to rearrange his cards.

“Possible straight, possible flush: Nothing,” muttered Balstad, putting his cards down. “I’ll fold.”

“I’m in,” said Pederson, adding his four chips to the pot.

Draxten said, “Eight,” raising the bet four dollars.

Nygaard saw the eight and raised five. He had barely any idea of what was in his hand; he was too busy keeping covert eyes on Fields’s every fidget. “Up to you, Larry,” he said.

Fields glanced at Nygaard, then at Draxten. “Oh, I think I’ll fold.” He closed his cards like a fan and dropped them.

“I’ll see Thor’s five and—” began Pederson.

“Hold it,” said Nygaard. He reached out and picked up Fields’s cards, including his previous discards. “I want to take a look at something.”

“Hey, you can’t do that; the hand isn’t over!” said Pederson.

“Anyhow it’s against the rules to look at a folded hand,” chimed in Balstad.

“Which rules? Ours, or the ones this joker’s been playing by?” The atmosphere in the room abruptly altered.

“Careful, Thor,” cautioned Draxten.

“You’d better not be saying what I think you’re saying,” blustered Fields.

Nygaard called across the room, “Grimby, where’s our old deck?”

Grimby, looking scared, went behind the bar and produced it.

Nygaard took the old deck and went quickly through it, pulling out the aces and face cards. He handed them to Balstad. “Mark, shuffle these and lay them out face down on the table for me.”

“Sure, all right. But I hope to God you know what you’re doing.” Balstad riffled them a couple of times and laid them out on Nygaard’s side of the pot.

Meanwhile, Nygaard examined the cards Fields had handled in this last hand. “You threw away an ace, jack, queen, I see,” he said. “That wasn’t very bright.”

“So?” said Fields, but he sounded wary.

“And you drew another queen. And a ten and a trey.”

“Yeah, I kept my two hearts; I was after a flush, see?”

The players frowned; that was so stupid even a beginner wouldn’t do it.

Nygaard turned the ace, jack, and queens over and got very interested in their backs, and then in the long edges of the cards from the old deck. After a while he straightened and smiled. “Want to see a magic trick?” he asked. He reached out and touched the backs of four cards in the set Balstad had laid out.

“Those are the queens,” he said, and turned them over to prove himself correct.

“Jesus sufferin’ Christ!” exclaimed Balstad.

Nygaard said to Fields, “All those wriggles and fussing were to cover your marking of the cards, right? And you switched from fooling with your cards to fooling with your chips whenever you saw me paying attention to you.”

“You’re a goddam liar!” said Fields.

“Am I? I noticed you started folding whenever the dealer called some cards wild — you couldn’t read a fistful of wild cards, could you? There wasn’t going to be time to mark all the cards, so you marked only the face cards — and the aces,” said Nygaard, and he turned over four more cards from the old deck, all aces.

Pederson yapped, “Cheat! You lousy cheater!”

“Don’t say cheat to me!” said Fields. “He’s the one who can read the cards from the back!”

“No, sir,” said Nygaard, “that dog won’t bark. This is a new deck, and I learned how to read the marks from the cards you were holding, cards I held only long enough to put in front of you and never saw the faces of.”

“How do you read them, Thor?” asked Balstad.

“Look here, see these little notches on the edges of the cards? Aces notched near the top, kings down a way, queens farther down, and jacks near the bottom. I think we should take a look at his fingernails to see if one is filed sharp, or maybe at that big ring he’s wearing, to see if it’s got a raised edge on its underside.”

Fields stood, his face a deep red. “Don’t you touch my ring! This is some kind of stickup, isn’t it? You’ll pretend to find a rough spot and keep the ring. Well, you won’t get away with it! This is a nine hundred dollar ring, and if you take it away from me, I’ll have the law on you, see if I don’t!”

For some reason, this made everyone in the room laugh. “What’s so stinkin’ funny?” demanded Fields.

Nygaard, grinning fiercely, said, “Maybe we should introduce ourselves again. I’m Detective Sergeant Thor Nygaard, Hedeby police. The man with the furry sweater is Mark Balstad, our county prosecutor. Nils Pederson, the yappy one there, is about as good a criminal defense lawyer as Hedeby has. And the big, sad-eyed cuss, the man with the second-highest pile of chips, is Tillman Draxten, judge of District Court.”

Fields’s deep color faded to a pasty white. “This is crazy,” he whispered. Then, louder, “What kind of crazy town is this? This is an illegal game!”

“Yeah, we know,” said Nygaard. “That’s why we have to hide out in old Grimby’s basement whenever we want to play it.”

“Well, then, you know you can’t arrest a man for cheating in an illegal game of chance.”

“He’s right, you know,” Prosecutor Balstad said. “I would never take him into court.”

“And if he did, I could defend him with one hand tied behind my back,” added Attorney Pederson.

“And I’d dismiss the charges,” said Judge Draxten.

“There, see?” said Fields. “So you caught me, so what? Take my winnings, give me the hundred and fifty I came in with, and I’ll be on my way.” He began to reach for his chips.

But a large hand seized his wrist in a mighty grip. Fields dropped the blue chips he had picked up, twisted around, and saw the largest man in the room looming over him.

“Keep your fat hands off the table!” Nygaard said.

“Haul him out in back and rough him up some, Thor,” suggested Grimby, who had gone behind his bar for a child’s baseball bat. He let it smack into the palm of one hand. “I’ll help, if you want me to.”

Fields snarled, “All right, all right; keep all the money! It’s highway robbery, but keep the money! Now let go!”

“No,” said Nygaard. He was very angry, his clenched face threateningly close to Fields’s.

“Settle down, Thor,” said Balstad nervously.

“Why should he settle down?” asked Pederson, who had been the big loser that afternoon.

“Hold it,” growled Draxten, with his judge’s authority. The others looked at him. “Let’s not be hasty, or do something illegal. The man is a cheat, obviously. However, he’s been caught before he made away with our money. I think we should separate him from that amount he won from us by cheating and ship him off. What do you think, Mr. Balstad?”

“Sounds fair to me.”

“I think we should sit him down and make him eat those marked cards!” said Pederson.

Draxten consulted his watch. “We haven’t got time for that. It’s after six and we have to be at the lodge by seven thirty in good bib and tucker.”

Balstad stood. “Is it as late as that?” He lived well outside of town, and the snowy roads would slow travel. He began to gather his chips. “Cash me in, Nils. You guys will have to decide what to do with our friend here without my help. Fine him everything he’s got on the table and let him go; that’s my advice.” He changed his chips into forty-seven dollars in cash and left.

“I still think we should rough him up some,” said Grimby hopefully. He had moved to guard the door, baseball bat in hand.

“Don’t do anything to him that will leave a mark,” advised Pederson, the lawyer. “Or he might sue.”

“That money on the table,” said Fields, “is all the money I’ve got.”

“Crap!” barked Pederson. “There’s more cash in your wallet; I saw it when you bought in the second time. And you’ve got more credit cards than the rest of us put together.”

“Just once,” said Grimby. “Hit him just one time. Or let me hit him.”

“Shut up, Grimby,” said Nygaard.

“Let him go, Thor,” said Draxten.

“Think of something mean, legal, and appropriate to do to him and I will.”

“I don’t think there is such an action,” said Draxten. “If you can think of something yourself, be my guest. And on that note, I take my leave. Cash me in, Nils. And if you want a ride home, you’ll have to leave with me now.”

Pederson hesitated, tom. “Oh, all right,” he said. “Give me your chips. Thor, let me know what you decide, okay?”

“Sure.”

Pederson cashed all the chips, and left with Draxten. Then, except for Grimby, Nygaard was alone in the basement room with his captive.

“Grimby, can I use your phone?” Nygaard asked.

“Sure. Are you going to hit him or not?”

“Naw, I’m so mad I might accidentally kill him. Then there’d be a stink.”

“Hide him outdoors, and he won’t stink until next spring,” said Grimby, grinning. But he decided Nygaard wasn’t going to do anything worth watching, at least right then, so he said, “I got to go shower and change for the dinner. See you there?”

“Yeah,” said Nygaard absently, hanging on to Fields with one hand and dialing with the other. “Hello, Jack? It’s me, Thor.”

Jack Hafner was Nygaard’s partner in the squad room, and a cool head. However, when he heard Nygaard’s complaint, he only laughed. “I’m with the judge on this one, Thor,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do but turn him loose.”

Nygaard said something rude about Jack’s lack of imagination and hung up. He said to Fields, “Maybe I should put you outside in your stocking feet. And drop your car keys down a storm drain, if I could find one under the snow.”

“You do that, or leave any kind of mark of violence on me,” threatened Fields, “and by God, I’ll go to your newspaper with the story of this poker setup you’ve got here, and everyone will suffer.”

“Those would be serious charges,” agreed Nygaard, considering the threat. “And there’d be an investigation. We’d have to hold you as a material witness. And who knows how long it would take to bring in an outside judge?”

Fields grinned. “Yeah, but in the end you’d lose your badge. I think we got us a Mexican standoff here.” Fields offered a carrot. “Look, keep the money. In fact, let me add fifty dollars to it. You don’t have to share it; you can always say you gave it back to me. I’ll leave town tonight, I promise, and no one will ever know.”

“An offer of bribery is even stupider than trying to cheat us,” Nygaard said, his fjord-blue eyes taking on a frosty paleness. He picked up the money and put it in his pocket for later distribution. “You’re leaving all right,” he added, “and I want to make sure you never come back.” The ambiguity of this statement reduced Fields to a frightened silence.

“Thor, for Pete’s sake, you can’t bring him in here!” hissed Balstad. “For one things he hasn’t got a ticket! And for another, he isn’t Norwegian!”

“Hush up, Mark, okay? He’s my guest. We’re allowed to bring a guest to a lodge dinner, aren’t we? And since Judy’s working in the kitchen tonight, I’m bringing my buddy Mr. Fields along.” He grinned down at the man, large teeth shining, “It’ll give me more time to think of something mean, appropriate, and maybe even legal.”

Fields had given up arguing. He looked tired and a little depressed; even the diamond in his ring seemed dim. Nygaard had taken him to his home and handcuffed him to the refrigerator while showering and changing, and driven him to the lodge hall at a rate of speed Fields had privately considered far too fast for road conditions. Nygaard was now acting more out of stubbornness than anger, Fields knew. But Fields recalled the look in the big man’s eye when he offered the bribe, and did not care to inadvertently rekindle that look.

The elevator door slid open, and the smell of something warm and damp rolled in.

“What the hell is that?” said Fields, hanging back.

“What?” asked Nygaard, pulling him out of the elevator.

“That smell.”

“What smell?”

“It’s lutefisk,” said Balstad, uncovering his curls as if in a gesture of respect. He inhaled greedily. “Torsk.”

“Torsk?”

“That’s Norwegian for cod.”

“Come on, this way,” said Nygaard impatiently. He led them down a hallway to a door guarded by a pleasant-faced woman counting dollar bills and putting rubber bands around little stacks of them.

“Well, hello, Thor Nygaard,” she said. “I was wondering if you’d get here on time.” There was an odd lilt in her voice, as if it were carried on little waves.

“Inga, how could I not be here, knowing you’d be at the door to greet me?” He showed her a yellow pasteboard ticket.

She blushed and waved dismissively at him. “Go on with you,” she said. “And save that for the drawing next week.”

“Any tickets left?”

She looked in her metal box. “Yes, three or four.”

“Good, my friend wants some real old fashioned Norwegian food.”

Nygaard nudged Fields, who reached for his wallet. “How much?” he asked.

“Seven dollars and fifty cents,” she said. He paid her, and was rewarded with a yellow ticket. “What’s your last name?” she asked curiously.

“Fields.”

“Oh, then it’s your mother who’s from Norway?”

“No — uh, yes,” he amended, as he felt another massive nudge. “Uh — Johannsen was her name.”

She frowned. “Johannsen is Swedish, isn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah, but they moved to Norway before she was born.”

“Ah, then welcome to Tofte Lodge,” she smiled, and handed him his change.

“Thank you,” said Fields.

The room was crowded with people, many of them tall, most of them fair, quite a few carrying frosty glasses that tinkled refreshingly. Fields noticed a bar in the corner. “I could use a drink,” he hinted, but Nygaard was looking for familiar faces, and greeting them with waves and grins.

A big man with a huge red mustache confronted Nygaard and said belligerently through a haze of whisky fumes, “I hear we’re gonna have to discontinue our 911 emergency phone number.”

“Why’s that, Sven?” asked Nygaard.

“ ’Cause none of us Norwegians can find eleven on the dial!”

Fields braced himself for an explosion, but when it came, it was laughter. Thor slapped the man on his shoulder and shouted, “Haw, haw, haw! I’ll have to remember that one!” He nudged Fields, who gave an obliging and puzzled chuckle.

A very proper looking young woman came by and told a surprisingly raunchy joke involving Ole and Lena, which again insulted Norwegians. And again Nygaard laughed his big laugh.

Fields waited until the young woman went away, and asked, “If you’re all Norwegians, how come you’re not telling German jokes? Or whatever.”

“Danish jokes,” said Nygaard. “Sometimes we tell Danish jokes. But mostly we tell jokes on ourselves.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Well, we’d tell Polish jokes,” said Nygaard, “except we don’t understand them.” And he laughed his great haw, haw, haw. Still grinning, Nygaard looked down at Fields. “You know, you look sorta like a guy the police in International Falls are looking for. Maybe I should keep you down at the jail until they can come check it out, which could take four or five days if the snow keeps up like the weatherman says it might. That would be legal.”

Fields ventured a suggestion that that might constitute false arrest.

“Naw, more like mistaken identity, I think. Of course, on the other hand, if Tommy Olson has to come all the way down here on a false alarm, he’s gonna be mad at me. And if he stays mad, he might not let me use his cabin in the Boundary Waters next summer. And what would I do if I couldn’t fish for walleyes in the Boundary Waters?” With a massive, regretful sigh, Nygaard dropped that idea. He renewed his grip on the unfortunate gambler’s arm, and they worked their way slowly toward the double doors at the back of the reception area. The smell of something that had been forcibly removed from the sea, and cruelly treated besides, grew stronger.

Fields murmured apologetically, “I really don’t much care for fish.” As if in sympathy, a low moaning sound filled the room and stilled all conversation.

“There goes the lur-horn,” said Nygaard happily. “Let’s eat!”

The dining hall was very large, and its two longer walls were lined with thin horizontal slats of wood that curved upwards at one end, giving the impression the room was inside an enormous longboat. Several dozen tables covered with white paper tablecloths filled the floor. On an unslatted wall straight ahead was a big American flag flanked by two Norwegian flags, which in turn were flanked by murderous-looking battle-axes crossed behind brass-knobbed shields.

“Everybody in town must be Norwegian, to support a place this big,” said Fields.

“Yeah, there’s a lot of us all right,” said Nygaard, leading Fields to a table near the front. “Say, do you sell snowmobile suits?”

“No, of course not!”

“Then what are you doing in Minnesota? Snowmobile suits are practically a winter uniform up here. What kind of a sporting goods company do you work for, anyhow?”

“A very good sporting goods company.” Fields smelled — in addition to the fish — another of Nygaard’s screwball plans in the making. “Are you in the market for a snowmobile suit?”

“No, I got one. But you spoiled my next plan. I was thinking, suppose your luggage accidentally got mixed up with someone else’s? And it got put on the bus Valhalla runs up to the Twin Cities international airport. And ended up in, say, Cancun, Mexico? You might be grateful for a snowmobile suit to wear until the airline got your luggage back.”

“How would you get hold of my luggage without breaking into my hotel room? The management might not think much of that. They might put a lot of pressure on the police department to solve the burglary.”

“Yeah, they might at that,” said Nygaard, and Fields offered an inaudible sigh of relief.

They took seats at a table set for six with white china plates and thick coffee mugs. The smell of fish was now very strong indeed. Nygaard waved an arm over his head, and they were joined by Judge Draxten and his wife, a tiny lady with grey eyes and hair.

“I would have thought you’d have gotten rid of Mr. Fields by now,” said Draxten, as they sat down.

“Tillman, what a rude thing to say!” said Mrs. Draxten. “I think it was very kind of Sergeant Nygaard to bring him along for a taste of old-country cooking.”

“Hamburgers would’ve been fine,” muttered Fields, not quietly enough. A massive elbow nudged his ribs and he added hastily, “But I’m looking forward to an interesting meal.”

There was an electronic shriek, and all eyes turned to the front of the room, where a podium stood in a spotlight under the American flag. A tall man with golden hair was adjusting the microphone. Beside him stood a tiny girl in a pink dress.

“Hello!” he said, and his voice was broadcast with ear-shattering faithfulness to the farthest reaches of the room. Hands flew to ears. He frowned, and when he spoke again, his voice had been reduced to a scant whisper. His lips moved, and they heard, at a near-proper volume, “... two, three, testing, one, two. There, that’s better. Welcome to the Tofte Lodge Lutefisk Dinner. The cooks inform me all is in readiness, so without further ado, I will present little Astrid, who will recite for us.” He bent and lifted the child, whose hair was so fair it glowed almost white under the spotlight. She clutched the microphone, pulling herself horizontal, then saw how many eyes were on her and lost her nerve.

“Go on, honey,” called someone from a table near her, and she rewarded him with a shy smile.

“Okay,” she said, took a deep breath, and recited all in a rush, “I Jesus’ Navn gar gi til bords, Spider, drikker pa dit ord, Dig til aere, od til gavn, Sa far vi mat i Jesus’ Navn.”

Fields suddenly saw that he was the only one in the room whose head was not bowed. They were saying grace, he realized, and when Nygaard nudged him, he said “Amen,” loudly.

Their waiter came by and put two platters on the table, one stacked with whitish squares, thin and limp; the other piled with pale freckled rectangles the size of graham crackers.

“Flatbread,” said Nygaard, picking up one of the crackerlike rectangles. “Made of oatmeal. Try one.”

Fields tasted a piece. Its texture was rather like cardboard found under a bush after a long winter, but it didn’t taste bad.

The limp things didn’t taste bad either, nor good; they had virtually no taste at all. “Lefse, potato bread,” Mrs. Draxten said as she showed him how to fold it into a triangle and spread butter on it. “A little sugar is good, too,” she counseled, sprinkling some on hers.

Fields copied her, and agreed it improved the flavor. His spirits rose a little. This might not be such a bad meal after all.

“Obviously your mother didn’t do much Norwegian cooking at your house,” Mrs. Draxten said.

“No, ma’am.”

“Too bad,” said Nygaard. “No one prepares fish like the Scandinavians do.”

“Which is probably why bur ancestors went a-viking,” said a voice behind them.

“Jack!” said Nygaard, turning in his chair.

Hafner, a trimly built man with dark hair and gray eyes, stood smiling down at them. “May I have this empty chair, or are you saving it for someone?” he asked.

“Sit, sit down!” said Nygaard.

Hafner sat and grinned. “And you would be Mr. Fields? I thought Thor would have sent you on your way by now.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Nygaard. “Not yet. Maybe I should take him to a tattoo parlor to get a shark tattooed on to the back of each of his hands. Or would that be leaving a mark?”

Hafner laughed and Mrs. Draxten asked, “Why a shark?”

Judge Draxten said, “He’s a cardshark; we caught him cheating at poker this afternoon.”

Mrs. Draxten fixed Fields with an eye turned the color of a winter sea. “I hope you are ashamed of yourself, sir.”

“Well, I suppose I am,” said Fields, glancing in Nygaard’s direction.

A waiter in a dark suit carefully lowered an enormous platter piled high with slabs of something that smelled of old fishing nets onto the place of honor at the center of the table. The lutefisk had arrived. Nygaard deftly captured the biggest piece for himself, and courteously insisted that Fields take the second biggest.

Hafner asked, “What do you know about lutefisk, Mr. Fields?”

Fields, frowning at the quivering whiteness on his plate, replied, “Not a thing.”

“It’s an interesting food, made from ocean cod. Goes back at least to medieval times, before refrigeration. After the fish is caught, it’s salted down, then dried. It can last for months that way. When you get a yen for fish and it’s too cold to go fishing, you bring out the lutefisk. But it’s stiff as a board, so you soak it in a lye bath to soften it up. That breaks down the tissue and melts the bones right into jelly. When you can feel your fingers with your thumb right through a slab of fish, it’s almost ready. Then put it in fresh water for a day or two to get rid of the lye, boil it a few hours just to make sure it’s really soft, and serve it up just like you see it here. Nice, huh? That piece of fish on your plate there was caught last summer and never saw a refrigerator in its life.”

“No kidding,” said Fields, looking at the very large chunk of lutefisk Nygaard had given him. Beside him, Nygaard was pouring melted butter over his portion. Nygaard was not denying the description, not breaking into his big haw, haw, haw to show this was a joke.

“Delicious!” said Thor, forking away a huge mouthful. “Eat up, Larry!” Fields felt a big elbow land in his ribs.

He took a small bite and discovered the questionable pleasures of fish-flavored jelly. “Pass the butter, please,” he said miserably.

“Here come the potatoes!” said Nygaard. Norwegian-style potatoes are boiled until they begin to break apart, then shaken in a colander until they are dry and mealy. But they are not treated with lye and don’t taste of fish. Fields took two, anxious to clear his palate.

Another bowl arrived. “Ah, the mashed rutabagas,” said Hafner, “cooked in pork-flavored milk.”

Before Fields could say, “None for me, please,” Nygaard had put a large dollop on his plate.

“You get your money’s worth at Tofte Lodge!” Nygaard said cheerfully, taking an enormous serving for himself. “Eat, Larry; you may never get a meal like this again.”

Fields, with a staggering effort, ate most of his fish and half his rutabagas. “I–I guess I’m not very hungry,” he said when he saw Nygaard’s censuring eye.

“I’m not surprised,” said Mrs. Draxten. “Sitting here among all these nice people. You belong in jail.”

“Sergeant Nygaard suggested that, but I’m afraid I talked him out of it,” sighed Fields.

Nygaard glanced over and said, “I knew you’d like it once you tried it; here, have some more lutefisk.” He put another piece on Fields’s plate with the careless largess of a man who has already paid for all he can get. He added a slab to his own plate and reached for the little pitcher of melted butter. It was a fresh pitcher, and hot, and he dropped it hard enough to spill a molten puddle onto the paper tablecloth. “Uff da!” he said.

“Uff da?” said Fields.

Hafner explained, “If a Norwegian were taking out the garbage and the bottom fell out of the bag onto his good shoes, he’d say ‘uff da.’ If he came home to find his wife had run off with the milkman, he’d say ‘uff da.’ If he heard on the radio that an armed nuclear warhead had been accidentally launched and would land in his back yard in thirty seconds, he’d say ‘uff da.’ ”

Everyone laughed, and Nygaard said, “I’d run for the hills, but you’re right; I’d mutter ‘uff da’ all the way. C’mon, Larry, you’re falling behind! Eat, eat!”

Buying time, Fields pointed at a series of wooden roundels on the wall. “What do the words on the blue one mean?” He wished Nygaard would leave him alone; he felt one more bite would make him break out in soft, white scales. If only the man weren’t so big. The worst part was that Nygaard thought he was being nice. If this was nice, God save him from whatever Nygaard considered justice — much less the vengeance he was so hopped up on.

Mrs. Draxten looked at the roundels on the wall. “ ‘Smuler er ogsaa brod,’ ” she said, and paused to translate in her head. “That means, ‘Crumbs are also bread.’ ”

Fields frowned at her. “Does it have some other kind of meaning?”

She turned back to him. “It means what it says, Mr. Fields.”

“Well, it seems a trifle obvi—” He broke off and rolled a nervous eye at Nygaard. “I mean, that doesn’t seem to be, er, very significant, considering all the work someone did to hang it up there.” The lettering was fancy, and the roundel was decorated with white and yellow flowers.

She was looking puzzled at his obtuseness. “It means, when we pray for our daily bread, we should be thankful even if all we get is crumbs, Mr. Fields.”

“Yeah, like I may have to settle for just punching you in the nose one time,” said Nygaard, and he laughed his big laugh. Fields looked at Nygaard’s hands and winced. Maybe if he stood and very quickly smashed his chair over the big cop’s thick, stupid, blond head— No, that was his partner sitting right there. Cops tended to carry their guns all the time, and God knew what kind of a shot these two were. Nygaard cast a glance at him, and he took a large bite of lutefisk. Bad as it was, the rutabagas were worse.

“Ah, dessert!” said Nygaard at last, and Fields gratefully put down his fork. Even Norwegians couldn’t come up with something truly awful for dessert, could they?

“Prune compote!” said the irrepressible Hafner.

“Uh—” said Fields, but Nygaard was too quick for him.

“You’ll want a lot of this,” said Nygaard. “Seeing how little of everything else you ate.”

“No, really; just a bit!” pleaded Fields, but Nygaard loaded his plate with a second large spoonful.

Hafner began to laugh. When Nygaard turned a bewildered face to him, he laughed harder. “Too much, too much!” he choked, between spasms, tapping his enormous friend on the shoulder.

Nygaard handed him the bowl of compote and asked, “Are you all right, Jack?”

“I’m fine!” said Hafner, handing on the bowl and going into fresh peals.

“All right, pal, what’s the joke?” asked Nygaard impatiently.

Surprised but still laughing, Hafner asked, “You mean you honestly don’t know?”

“Know what?”

“Your punishment for your cheatin’ buddy over there,” said Hafner. “I never would’ve thought you’d come up with something as sneaky as that.”

“What, sneaky?” demanded Nygaard, beginning to sound annoyed.

“Come on, you seriously think all an outsider has to do is taste lutefisk to be converted to the Norwegian way of taste? You’ve been tearing down this poor geek shingle by shingle all evening! Bringing him to the dinner and filling him up with lutefisk, rutabagas, and prune compote, ha, ha, ha! Mean and legal and doesn’t leave a mark, just like you wanted!” He saw the honest bewilderment on his partner’s face and laughed even harder. “Oh, God, you thought you were doing him a favor, didn’t you?”

“What favor?” asked Nygaard angrily. “I made him pay for his ticket!” This set everyone at the table off.

Nygaard turned to look at Fields, and saw, for the first time, the greenish pallor and glazed eyes. “Well, double my IQ and call me a halfwit!” he said, beginning to laugh himself.

When Hafner got himself a little under control, he gasped, “And the best part is, even if he complained, the grand jury would return a no-bill. Every member would be a lutefisk eater and unable to understand what the problem was!” He leaned back and said to Fields, “What about it? Next time you come to town, we’ll treat you to an even better dinner. Have you ever tasted mutton with cabbage?”

“Or gammelost?” added Draxten.

“Gammelost,” breathed Nygaard reverently. “Boy, I wish we had some gammelost.”

Hafner said to Fields, “Gammelost means cottage cheese, old, old, old cottage cheese. You keep it in a jar until it turns grey, and serve it up on bread and butter.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Nygaard, who didn’t disagree with Hafner’s recipe for this treat, either. He caught the look on Fields’s face and grinned. In a mock Norwegian accent he said, “Py Gott, Larry!” He nudged him, nearly knocking him off his chair. “Ve giff you some gammelost next time we see you, yah, shure!”

But in his eye was the savage anticipatory glint of a Viking whose hospitality had been insulted, and Fields, who had been savoring thoughts of a vengeful return match sometime down the road, decided maybe he’d give Minnesota a complete miss next time. He looked down at the remains of his prune compote, nestled against a lump of lutefisk. “Uff da,” he said sadly.