Big Hungry: A Novel Read online

  “I don’t know,” Pooch Eye said. “He didn’t seem real interested…if you know what I mean. Asked me had I been drinking.”

  “Part of the job, Pooch. No telling what a cop runs across in a day of work. Anyway, good luck…I got to go get Jonas and head on home.” Charlie was halfway to the door when he turned around and looked at Pooch Eye. “Hey, Pooch, you aren’t the only one finding dead folks. They found old Furman Potter on his front porch, deader than a doornail. Just sitting there in his rocking chair.”

  “No shit. Well, hell, you get old and die…that’s the way it goes.”

  Chapter 11

  Gary Wong had come to Tulleyville from China via San Francisco and Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan.

  Physically, Gary was a study in circles…a short man with a small, round belly; skinny, bowed legs; and a pleasantly round face. He wore round, wire-rimmed spectacles of the sort once favored by the late John Lennon, and probably would have been considered nearly handsome in a country more accepting of Asian facial characteristics…in his native Hong Kong, for example. In the U.S., however, he was just another Chinese man and, hence, almost invisible to the average white American...especially in San Francisco. Above all, Gary was a pragmatic man who could analyze a situation, see his best interests, and seize his opportunities without a lot of dithering and second guessing. He was here in America to make his fortune, and the truth of the matter was that the Bay Area had not been particularly good to him.

  Shortly after his arrival, he had realized that he was a fairly good Chinese cook in a city overflowing with extremely good Chinese cooks. He found employment in San Francisco at a third-rate Cantonese restaurant chopping vegetables, doing kitchen work, and waiting tables under the direction of a sadist named Sammy Chin, for whom Chin’s Noodle Parlor was named. He was living on the barest minimum of food and drink, holed up in a grubby one-room, fifth-floor, walk-up apartment that he shared with two other Chinese gentlemen he’d met at the restaurant. He guarded each penny he made and, trusting no one, carried his stash with him everywhere. As soon as he had accumulated what he considered an adequate traveling budget, he stole a set of knives and some pans from his employer and quickly left town headed northeast for Moose Jaw. He had no particular attachment to the Canadian town. He had stumbled across the name in an old atlas and found it oddly appealing. Why not try Moose Jaw? After all, one small burg in the middle of the huge North American continent would probably be as good as another.

  He went to work in Lee’s Noodle House, which claimed to be the city’s only authentic Chinese restaurant, and soon became the toast of Moose Jaw’s dining scene. He was, without a doubt, the best Chinese chef in the city. He felt that he had at last found a place where he could work, find a wife, and make a good life for himself. Moose Jaw was home. He even tried to like hockey, a game that he found to be astonishingly rude and dangerous.

  Then one fall, Harlen Ackerman stopped at Lee’s on his way back from a fishing trip. At the end of his meal, he called the waitress over and demanded to see the chef. Gary Wong, properly humble and holding his chef hat in his hands, appeared at Ackerman’s table.

  “That was some good eating, son. Anybody cook like that ought to have his own place.”

  Gary smiled and nodded his head. A half hour later, he and his knives and pans were bouncing south toward Tulleyville in Harlen’s motor home. Harlen had told Gary about a restaurant he owned and made him an 80-20 deal. Gary would own the restaurant and Harlen would retain ownership of the building. Gary kept 80 percent of the net profits, while Harlen would collect 20 percent as rent on the building. They both thought they’d just made a hell of a deal. Gary would finally own his own joint and Harlen would finally have the Chinese cuisine, of which he was extremely fond, within easy driving distance of his empire.

  Neither one of them said much until they got to the Tulleyville city limits and stopped in the gravel parking lot of the long-vacant and considerably run-down Tulleyville Grill. They inspected the premises, with Harlen ready for his new associate to back out at any moment. Gary, however, thought the restaurant was perfect for him, a dream come true. He immediately arranged his pans and knives in the dusty kitchen and asked Harlen where he would be living. Harlen showed him a small one-bedroom apartment in the back of the restaurant and gave him a set of keys. The same ring held the keys to a beat-up, six-cylinder Ford pickup parked out back.

  “We’ll do the paperwork later,” he told Gary with no ceremony at all.

  Within two weeks, the Grill was transformed from an abandoned building into a thriving eatery. Tulleyville’s residents, once they became used to having the exotic and decidedly non-Scandinavian Mr. Wong in their midst, took to the reconstituted café like a Peking duck to water. The Grill, still sporting the original faded signage, also became Harlen’s unofficial office and conference center, a place where he could commandeer the back room for a private meeting or bring a business associate for a remarkably good meal made even more surprising by the low-toned ambiance. Gary, grateful for his opportunity and mindful that Harlen was the alpha dog in these parts, never charged his benefactor so much as a penny for his meals. Harlen always left a generous but not unseemly tip.

  Gary, used to working in the slave-galley-like conditions of Chinatown food service, did all the cooking and table waiting himself. He took orders from customers by shouting over the kitchen counter, waving a spoon or spatula at a handwritten menu on the wall and bellowing, “Check it out. Check it out.” Customers picked up their own plates at the kitchen counter and found their own seating. The only person whose order he took table-side was, of course, Harlen Ackerman.

  Gary had just put a steaming combination plate in front of Harlen when Odell Scrum pulled up a chair.

  “I’ll have some of that,” he said pushing his hat back on his head, “whatever it is.”

  Gary nodded and left them alone. Odell was nervous and reluctant to bring his client bad news during mealtime. Harlen looked up and glared at the attorney.

  “Spit it out, Odell.”

  “Guthrie’s meeting with Boyd.”

  “When?”

  “Right now…interview, photographer, the whole shitteree.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “Boyd’s scared.

  “Scared of what? He’s been interviewed a thousand times by now.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe…but he thinks Guthrie’s got something on him.”

  Harlen, knowing that nearly everybody in the state had at least “something” on Boyd Cameron, merely grunted and continued putting small spoonfuls of boneless chicken and broccoli into his mouth. He also knew that the senator was addicted to the large amounts of unreported income he had been receiving from the Ackerman empire ever since he first ran for state representative. This was a public official who could be counted on, as both Harlen and Odell knew, to protect his own selfish interests no matter what. His ethics could best be described as, “When I’m bought, I stay bought.” And he clung tenaciously to that code with no regard to what the consequences might be to his non-paying constituents. Harlen considered him disgusting and weak, less than a man…and quite possibly the biggest whore north of Kansas City. On the other hand, Cameron was obedient and predictable and usefully suggestible as a politician…qualities that Harlen valued. And he looked the part, standing six feet tall under what was invariably described in the press as a “shock of flowing white hair.” His matinee-idol face, with its exemplary chin and clear blue eyes and strong nose, was capable of registering a whole range of expedient faux emotions: grief for funerals, patriotism for Fourth of July speeches, outrage for political rallies, and so forth. He never missed a parade or festival or disaster, no matter where it occurred in the state, and he was impossible to insult.

  Once at a homecoming parade in the streets of Tioga, a small oil-patch town where residents tend to speak their minds rather bluntly, Cameron had sidled up to a likely looking constituent in the crowd and stuck out a hand. “Hi, I�
�m Boyd Cameron,”

  “I know who you are,” the man said, shifting his toddler son from one shoulder to the other. “Get the fuck away from me.”

  Boyd had merely smiled and stepped to the next citizen in the crowd. “Hi, I’m Cameron Boyd.”

  Harlen and Odell were silently considering the sliminess of their hired politician when the door to the café opened. They both glanced up and then turned back to their meals without completely registering who they’d seen in the door. Gary Wong, on the other hand, stood staring through his order window transfixed, perfectly still, eyes slightly bulging and his mouth half open in reverent wonder. He would remember the moment the rest of his astonishingly long life.

  Chapter 12

  Twenty-seven years before Gary Wong ever set foot in the Tulleyville Grill, a young man named Chris Norgard was living the good life in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. He was a 6’7”, 275-pound hunk of Norwegian farm-boy muscle whose remarkable exploits on the gridiron had gained him a full-ride scholarship to North Dakota State University. He could have gone almost anywhere, of course, but he loved his parents dearly and chose NDSU for its short trip home. No matter where he went, folks said, big things were in his future. Scouts from the Minnesota Vikings knew about Chris. The Sleepy Eye city fathers were poised to name streets and hold festivals in his honor. In fact, most of the town turned out in an impromptu parade the day he left to become a Bison star in Fargo. Once there, Chris did indeed live up to his billing, playing on the varsity as a freshman and concussing his teammates during practice and their opponents at the games. He immediately settled in as a big man on campus and a genuine football hero.

  Unfortunately, he also immediately ran afoul of academia. His room-temperature IQ and nearly phobic distaste for scholastic effort had never been a problem before. As long as he kept producing touchdowns and quarterback sacks, the schoolwork just seemed to slide by. He rose from one grade to the next unencumbered by significant knowledge and almost completely unable to read and write. College, he soon found out, was a different kettle of fish. There were books that required actual reading, concepts to be absorbed, tests to be passed. Of course, like most football-loving colleges, NDSU was willing to take a generous view of Chris’ intellectual facilities. Meet the bare minimum requirements and he could continue to play ball. The problem was, as his coaches found to their dismay, that he was almost completely unable to learn anything more complicated than a simple team playbook…and even that was challenging. Try as they may, his coaches and academic tutors had not been able to keep his grades above failing. Sincere talks with the English department chairperson failed. Thinly veiled threats to a stubborn history professor produced no measurable results. The athletic director was finally forced to go straight to the president of the college and boldly ask him to intercede on Chris’ behalf, which, naturally, he did.

  Chris’s career in college ball climbed like a homesick angel. Scouts from the Vikings and other NFL teams were calling him by his first name. Rich alumni inquired as to his taste in sports cars. Succulent co-eds wrote their phone numbers on the palms of his plate-sized hands…and in the event he failed to call them, they showed up at his apartment.

  Of course, the gods despise and conspire against this kind of happy arrangement, and so they smote him…or, rather, they arranged for the diminutive Tina Rhoades to smite him. Halfway through his extremely promising freshman year, Chris met Tina at a team party. She was a young, attractive Korean-American business major with short, black hair, snapping dark eyes, and a slender but enticing figure. She and Chris looked like they belonged to completely different species, but they were immediately attracted to each other.

  The couple kept company for several weeks, going to this party and that, driving the sleek Corvette Chris was “borrowing” from a local Chevy dealer, and making enthusiastic beauty-and-the-beast love in every room of Chris’ fashionably appointed apartment. At some point during this period of physically lopsided but mutual bliss, Chris’ muscular, over-achieving, never-say-die seed managed to penetrate Tina’s defensive line and carry its payload across the goal line.

  One might assume that, faced with such a dilemma, a rather dim and spoiled superstar college athlete would call upon his school’s considerable resources, dump the pregnant girlfriend, and go his merry way…perhaps repeating his mistake numerous times in the course of his career. This, however, was not the Norwegian farm-boy way. Chris, for all of his murderous skills on the playing field and unethical perks on campus, was essentially a nice man. Confronted with his impending fatherhood, he immediately dropped to his battle-scarred knees and proposed. Tina accepted and the couple was married back in Sleepy Eye at the very Methodist Church where Chris had spent tortuous Sunday mornings during his early years trying to fathom the workings of the Almighty. The entire town turned out for the nuptials, gawking shamelessly at the bride and the entourage of behemoths that accompanied their hero.

  In the ensuing years, Chris did manage to graduate from college (still quite unable to read past a fourth-grade level) and go on to wreak havoc as part of three different NFL teams. Along the way, he picked up two Super Bowl rings, a truly obscene amount of money (which, thanks to Tina’s management skills, the couple was able to hang on to), and a seriously blown-out knee that eventually took him out of the game that had been so good to him. The Norgards retired to the family farm near Sleepy Eye to raise their daughter Claire on the little town’s safe and wholesome streets, one of which had, indeed, been named for the girl’s famous father.

  Claire grew up to be a charming and beautiful girl, the happy recipient of both her parents’ best qualities. She was tall, but not freakishly huge like her father. Her eyes were blue, but with an exotic Asian cast. Her skin and hair were dark and her body was appealingly slender like her mother’s but astonishingly strong. She excelled at all sports, played varsity football with the boys (could they have refused a Norgard access to gridiron glory?) for one season, and made the winning basket in the girls’ district championship tournament during her sophomore year. Everyone in Sleepy Eye expected her to go far, perhaps even exceeding her famous father, whose IQ she had nearly doubled.

  When she left for college at NDSU (where else?) to get a degree in electronic journalism, her adoring father gave her a strange, if perhaps useful piece of advice. It was the same thing his father had told him when he left home, so he reasoned that it would work for his daughter just as well.

  “Never eat the special at a Chinese restaurant, sweetheart,” he told her as he wrapped her in his gargantuan arms.

  Those exact words were on her mind as she stood in the doorway of the Tulleyville Grill, exuding the awesome power of network news and searching for a man named Harlen Ackerman.

  Chapter 13

  Back in the early days of homesteading in the Dakotas, when immigrant trains arrived on a regular basis from the east, a whole new existence was evolving for people who had the courage and optimism to accept the risks of life on the frontier. Most of the new arrivals had little more than satchels of clothing and minds swimming with the idea of free land available in 160-acre chunks. Some of them had a little money to get outfitted with a horse and wagon and the tools they’d need to get a start on their new land. To most, though, the idea of extra money was nothing more than a fond fantasy…something they hoped would happen once they got their hands on some good land.

  The homestead laws required that they “prove up” their claim with buildings, crops, livestock, or some other tangible proof that they could be useful members of society. If they could do that simple thing, then the land – all 160 glorious acres of virgin prairie – would be theirs free. Free. Perhaps, in terms of hard cash anyway. However, there was a certain toll extracted by Mother Nature.

  Forty-below-zero weather thinned the ranks considerably, as did the proliferation of mosquitos and the relative joys of living in a house constructed basically of muddy sod. The ones who stayed, however, proved to be a resilient, inventive lot who t
hrived on their own homesteads and often found ways to buy up the ones left by their less hardy neighbors.

  One such pioneer was a Norwegian gentleman by the name of Lud Sorenson. From the very moment he stepped down from the immigrant train, Lud exibited the stuff it takes to succeed at an enterprise as demanding as homesteading in the Dakotas.

  Because he was one of the folks who arrived with a little bit of money, Lud could afford a second-rate horse and beat-up buckboard wagon. He also purchased a single-bit ax and some cheap sticks of lumber to use as his claim stakes.

  Lud chose as his future farm a piece of land in what would become Wallace County...a few miles from the little settlement that grew into a thriving Tulleyville and then once again sank into obscurity. He picked it out from the others because it was somewhat low lying and seemed to hold its moisture better than the surrounding plots, something he reasoned might make it valuable as farmland.

  He was pounding in his claim stakes when he heard a buckboard wagon approaching.

  The man driving it was an Irishman by the name of Tom Ramsbothum, a large, red-faced fellow who had the reputation of a man with a bad temper. Ramsbothum was a rancher and farmer himself, but he’d started a side business hauling wagonloads of horseless, would-be homesteaders out to the prairie in his buckboard to make their claims. When he came upon Lud, he had six customers and their claim stakes aboard.