Wolf Hour

18 Milkman, October 2016

Olav Hanson pulled his fishing rod sideways, against the current. Stared out into the night-time darkness that descended over the Mississippi before it took the rest of the city. Sometimes it even felt as though the darkness rose up from the Mississippi and not the other way round. Because it was a river with a lot of darkness in it. A lot of dirt and devilment people dumped there in hopes the river would take it all away, far from where they were. And if it surfaced again it would be someone else’s problem. Hanson shifted the weight from his bad knee. Listened to the reassuring hiss from the cars on the freeway on the other side of the river. He came down here more and more often in the evenings now, went on fishing long after the others had gone. The bass bit well after dark, and of course he did sometimes come home with a couple of small fish; but that was mostly to show Violet he really had been fishing and not in some bar with Joe Kjos. He could think while he stood here. Get some respite from all her moaning about how ‘the kid’, the twenty-seven-year-old son from his previous marriage, still had the keys to the house, and came and went as he pleased, often in the middle of the night, usually high on something or other. She complained that the Ford Mustang was almost as old as she was, that the kitchen and bathroom needed decorating, that she had hoped to see things in general improving a bit, not sliding backward. Either he’d got miserly with age, or else he was worse off now than when she’d met him in the nineties. And it was true, she just didn’t know the reason.

Olav Hanson thought about a lot of things as he stood there by the river. There were just a few thoughts it was important to avoid. Things from the past. So he thought about the future. About how he would be able to retire in a couple of years. Be a free man again. Go fishing. Get Sean back on track. He would—

He heard a scraping sound from the fine river-sand behind and instinctively whirled round. Stood there staring into the trees on the steep incline.

‘Who’s there?’ he shouted.

He’d been on the alert for something like half his life and could never completely let it go. All that wasted energy, and still his hand instinctively went for the shoulder holster with the SIG Sauer which he always carried. Just then the moon slipped free of the clouds, illuminating the riverbank, and he caught sight of a black dog standing there. Olav picked up a stone and threw it in the dog’s direction. It disappeared soundlessly between the trees. Hanson cursed quietly.

He reeled in.

His phone rang.

He’d told Violet not to call him when he was out, but she was as unpredictable as Sean. This, however, was a caller unknown.

‘Yes?’

The voice at the other end breathed in before speaking in a low voice: ‘Milkman?’

Olav Hanson felt his heart stop beating in his chest.

Thirty years.

And it took him only a second and two syllables to recognise the voice.

He had to moisten his mouth before he could answer:

‘Who is this?’

‘I can hear that you know who this is, Milkman. And that you’re afraid. That’s good. It means you’ll listen extra close. One of my guys tells me you’re looking for Lobo.’

Wha? It came out as an a? as Hanson tried to speak at the same time as swallowing. ‘Lobo? But Lobo is... gone.’

‘Evidently not,’ said the voice. ‘MPD are looking for him. Suspicion of attempted murder. Which can only mean he’s got a bit rusty. Anyway, if Lobo really has shown up again then neither you nor I want the MPD to find him. We don’t want him sitting in some interrogation where they suggest a deal that involves him telling them everything he knows. About me. And about you, Milkman. Do you get my drift?’

Olav got it. He understood the nightmare was back. The man at the top, the one they called Die Man, and not just because of the diamonds in his teeth. ‘You want me to...?’

‘Yes, Milkman, I want you to make sure Lobo never gets as far as that interrogation.’

Olav Hanson closed his eyes. He heard something in the background. A woman, no, several women, groaning with exaggerated ecstasy and gasping ‘Oh, fuck, yeah!’ He had never asked Die why he called him Milkman. It could of course be because Olav was pale and blond or because people like him were typical of the Scandinavian farmer class. Or because he milked the gang for money. But it might also have been ironically meant, giving a milk-white name to a dirty cop who had done what was necessary each time investigations of some gangland killing made things hot for Die Man and his people. It hadn’t taken much. He might neglect to pass on information a witness had given him. Or invent something that suggested other perpetrators. Maybe technical evidence was destroyed by something that looked like an unlucky accident. So no, it hadn’t taken much. And they’d paid him well. Very well. All the same he’d quit. Why? It started with the triple homicide that evening thirty years ago. The girl in the wheelchair, the little boy and the mother. It hadn’t been one of Olav’s cases, but he’d managed to send it off in the wrong direction, and yes, he’d had trouble sleeping after that. But not so much that he hadn’t carried on helping Die Man for a while after. But then he’d become a father himself. And Die Man’s security boss Lobo had started massacring gangbangers, and Olav started getting scared of being pulled under himself. He had to get out, wake up from his nightmare. And he’d done it, managed to put it behind him.

Until now.

Because when Olav opened his eyes again the nightmare hadn’t ended.

‘You still there, Milkman?’

‘Yeah yeah,’ said Olav.

‘You know what you have to do?’

Olav thought. Pulled back thirty years in time he began thinking the way he used to think back then, and when he opened his mouth again it was like some familiar and fond old refrain: ‘Sure, but we have to talk about the price.’

For a moment the only sound was the monotonous groaning of those women. Then he heard Die burst out laughing. He laughed long and loud.

‘Nice try, Milkman. But this time let’s say you’re doing it for yourself. Because you don’t want to end up in jail. Especially not somewhere with my boys on the inside.’

‘Listen—’ Hanson began, but the connection went dead.

He stared out across the Mississippi. The river rose here in Minnesota, and the shit floated downriver. With every state it ran through the body count rose, until the bloodwater reached the sea and the chance of ending your life with a bullet was three times what it was here. That must have been why the chance of getting away with murder was higher down there. A cloud passed in front of the moon, the blackness returned and for an instant he felt an almost irresistible urge to throw himself into the water and just drift away. But he didn’t want that. He wanted to survive. That damned survival instinct would be the death of him one day — but not yet. He straightened out his bad knee. He’d worked, and he’d worn himself out, and mostly it had been honest work. He’d been robbed of opportunities before, been overlooked before, life wasn’t fair, death wasn’t either.

Sure, but we have to talk about the price.

Word for word that was what he had said the first time, when he made his choice and let the genie out of the bottle. He spat in the direction of the river and saw the foamy white ball carried off into the darkness. All right then. But this time, he wouldn’t be the one going under.