her something was amiss. Up across the news set the weather center appeared to be bathing in the dancing brilliance of the northern lights. Again she saw a shadow breeze across the wall. It wouldn’t hurt to check on the storm before she ventured home.
But Andrea Labore found Weather Center 7 abandoned. Ghostly. There was no weatherman to explain the thunderstorms moving across the bright green radar screens, no meteorologist to interpret the red fluorescent numbers emanating from the chrome instruments. The glowing computers had only each other to converse with. The overnight man wouldn’t arrive until midnight-another twenty minutes. A printer sprang to life. Andrea jumped.
She grabbed her heart. Strange, she thought, that Dixon Bell would leave his station in the middle of a storm. A bathroom break, perhaps; or maybe he had gone to the roof to measure the storm in his own special way. He was like that.
The new political reporter for Channel 7 filed her suspicions in the back of her mind. She noted the time. Then she started for the Sky High parking ramp, grateful she was parked in out of the weather.
“Three-ten Able. Metrodome Municipal Ramp. On the roof. Report of one down. We ‘ll start ambulance.”
It was just past midnight and raining so hard headlights couldn’t cut it. Cloud-to-cloud lightning illuminated the tempest. Thunder was a bass-drum rumble. Lieutenant Donnell Redmond brought the unmarked squad car to a halt in a bumper-to-bumper crop of downtown traffic at the foot of the IDS Tower. The Twins had beaten the White Sox in extra innings. Fans fresh from the game sprinted from bar to bar. Cars snaked slowly through the flooding streets. The lights of Minneapolis blurred in the storm. The lieutenant had his window cracked open, allowing the weather to slip in and Captain Les Angelbeck’s cigarette smoke to slip out. Redmond put up with it. They inched through traffic, talked, and listened to police calls in the rain.
“Car four, make twenty-one-seventeen Lyndale on a domestic assault. Husband, wife. He’s beating her with something.”
Like the windshield wipers, the two cops were working overtime. “When I made lieutenant I thought I finally had a nine-to-five job.”
“Sorry, Donny. I was sure our boy would be there tonight.” Angelbeck brushed ashes from his raincoat.
The street corner was turning swampy. Redmond, a tall, imposing man, arrested a mosquito and smashed it against his window. ‘That man we’re after tonight ain’t nothing but a glorified bookie anyway. Don’t hardly seem worth the effort.”
“Gambling here used to be restricted to sleazy kitchens off back alleys,” said Angelbeck, reminiscing. “Now it’s a two-billion-dollar concern and a whole new criminal division. Minnesota has more casinos than Atlantic City. We’ve had horse racing and dog racing. We’ve got pull tabs and lotteries. We’ve got riverboat gambling paddling up the Mississippi. We lead the nation in the number of dollars spent per person on gambling. What other scheme could politicians possibly devise to take from the poor and give to the rich, and tell them they’re having fun while it’s being done?”
“Cock fighting and pit bulls.”
The old captain laughed. “That’s what it’s coming to.” The rain intensified, pounding the car. Straight-line winds sent waves of water racing down the busy street. “Don’t you own a raincoat?”
“All squads. Report any closed streets due to flooding. City works will be notified. All squads at O-fourteen.”
They were moving again, slowly parting the waters. They rolled by Solid Gold, a high-priced strip joint. The doorman, torn umbrella in hand, was opening the door to a limousine.
“Yeah, I own a raincoat.”
“And how long have you been living here now?”
“Almost twenty years.” Donnell Redmond had come to Minnesota from Florida to play basketball. The university boasted it didn’t recruit for four years, it recruited for forty.
But Andrea Labore found Weather Center 7 abandoned. Ghostly. There was no weatherman to explain the thunderstorms moving across the bright green radar screens, no meteorologist to interpret the red fluorescent numbers emanating from the chrome instruments. The glowing computers had only each other to converse with. The overnight man wouldn’t arrive until midnight-another twenty minutes. A printer sprang to life. Andrea jumped.
She grabbed her heart. Strange, she thought, that Dixon Bell would leave his station in the middle of a storm. A bathroom break, perhaps; or maybe he had gone to the roof to measure the storm in his own special way. He was like that.
The new political reporter for Channel 7 filed her suspicions in the back of her mind. She noted the time. Then she started for the Sky High parking ramp, grateful she was parked in out of the weather.
“Three-ten Able. Metrodome Municipal Ramp. On the roof. Report of one down. We ‘ll start ambulance.”
It was just past midnight and raining so hard headlights couldn’t cut it. Cloud-to-cloud lightning illuminated the tempest. Thunder was a bass-drum rumble. Lieutenant Donnell Redmond brought the unmarked squad car to a halt in a bumper-to-bumper crop of downtown traffic at the foot of the IDS Tower. The Twins had beaten the White Sox in extra innings. Fans fresh from the game sprinted from bar to bar. Cars snaked slowly through the flooding streets. The lights of Minneapolis blurred in the storm. The lieutenant had his window cracked open, allowing the weather to slip in and Captain Les Angelbeck’s cigarette smoke to slip out. Redmond put up with it. They inched through traffic, talked, and listened to police calls in the rain.
“Car four, make twenty-one-seventeen Lyndale on a domestic assault. Husband, wife. He’s beating her with something.”
Like the windshield wipers, the two cops were working overtime. “When I made lieutenant I thought I finally had a nine-to-five job.”
“Sorry, Donny. I was sure our boy would be there tonight.” Angelbeck brushed ashes from his raincoat.
The street corner was turning swampy. Redmond, a tall, imposing man, arrested a mosquito and smashed it against his window. ‘That man we’re after tonight ain’t nothing but a glorified bookie anyway. Don’t hardly seem worth the effort.”
“Gambling here used to be restricted to sleazy kitchens off back alleys,” said Angelbeck, reminiscing. “Now it’s a two-billion-dollar concern and a whole new criminal division. Minnesota has more casinos than Atlantic City. We’ve had horse racing and dog racing. We’ve got pull tabs and lotteries. We’ve got riverboat gambling paddling up the Mississippi. We lead the nation in the number of dollars spent per person on gambling. What other scheme could politicians possibly devise to take from the poor and give to the rich, and tell them they’re having fun while it’s being done?”
“Cock fighting and pit bulls.”
The old captain laughed. “That’s what it’s coming to.” The rain intensified, pounding the car. Straight-line winds sent waves of water racing down the busy street. “Don’t you own a raincoat?”
“All squads. Report any closed streets due to flooding. City works will be notified. All squads at O-fourteen.”
They were moving again, slowly parting the waters. They rolled by Solid Gold, a high-priced strip joint. The doorman, torn umbrella in hand, was opening the door to a limousine.
“Yeah, I own a raincoat.”
“And how long have you been living here now?”
“Almost twenty years.” Donnell Redmond had come to Minnesota from Florida to play basketball. The university boasted it didn’t recruit for four years, it recruited for forty.
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