by Glenn Ickler
I hollered at Lorrie to call 911, and she said she’d already done so. Al was clicking off pictures and the Channel 4 cameraman had moved to the edge of the stage to film the action close up.
The doctor rose to her feet and turned to Scott Hall, who still held the microphone. When she spoke softly to Hall, her voice was carried by the sound system. “This man is dead,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
With that, all hell broke loose in the crowd as some people pushed their way closer to see the body and others pushed away in fear and revulsion. The onlookers onstage began leaping off the edge and the musicians grabbed their instruments and bailed out over the side. I heard a siren in the distance heralding the approach of an ambulance. It would be King Vinnie Luciano’s transportation to the morgue.
Chapter 2: Quizzed by the KGB
I got pix of everything,” Al said. “From Scott Hall’s introduction all the way to the priest from the audience giving Vinnie his last rites.”
“Just what I’ve always wanted to see in the paper,” Lorrie Gardner said. “It’s a PR person’s dream to have a celebrity die in a spectacular manner on camera in the middle of your event.”
“It won’t hurt the fair attendance,” I said. “It might even bring in a few more people. You know—the ghouls who want to see the spot where the body fell.”
“Yuk,” said Lorrie. “Don’t need them.”
The three of us were sitting on a park bench not far from the Heritage Square stage. We’d been instructed to wait there until one of the officers investigating Vinnie’s sensational demise could question us. Trish Valentine and her cameraman had managed to fade away after shooting the arrival of the police.
Although most Minnesotans think of the State Fairgrounds as being located in St. Paul, it actually lies in the adjoining suburb of Falcon Heights. This meant that the investigation was being led by a Falcon Heights detective, not any of the people I had worked with for years in the St. Paul Police Department. I was wondering if information about this investigation would be more difficult to extricate from a stranger.
Al had e-mailed his pix to the photo editor, but I needed to get to the office and get started writing the story. I was considering making an end run to the car when a tall, straight-backed young woman wearing a dark blue pantsuit jumped off the stage and strode toward us. We all rose and went to meet her.
“Good morning,” the woman said. “I’m Detective Barnes of the Falcon Heights PD. I’m leading the investigation of what took place here.” I guessed her age at thirty-five and her height at close to six feet. Her steely cold eyes were matched by her military stance as we took turns shaking her hand. We each gave our quick version of Vinnie’s final moments and Al showed the detective some photos of the dying man.
“Jesus,” Detective Barnes said when she saw the picture of Vinnie’s body arched on the floor with only the head and heels touching. “Looks like classic strychnine poisoning to me.”
“Those are the classic symptoms of strychnine?” I asked.
“Oh, shit, you’re a reporter aren’t you?” she said. “Forget it. Nothing I’ve said here is official.”
“I can look up the classic symptoms,” I said.
“You’re free to do that. I’m not saying another word except that I need to talk to all of you one at a time at the station.”
“Can it wait until after I’ve written my story?” I asked.
“Assuming you can write it in less than four hours,” Barnes said. “I want to see you by three o’clock.”
“Can do,” I said. “Oh, by the way, do you have a first name?”
“I go by my initials,” she said. “K.G. Barnes.”
I wrote that down. “Nice initials for an investigator,” I said. “KGB.”
“And don’t you forget it,” said Detective K.G. Barnes. “Three o’clock. My office. Is there anybody else from the media that I should talk to?”
I tattled on Trish Valentine. KGB wrote down the name, thanked me and went back to the stage where EMTs were, with some difficulty, stuffing Vinnie Luciano’s bulky body into a black plastic bag. Al took some shots of the bundle being loaded into the ambulance and we were about to leave when I thought of something important.
“Wait here a minute,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” As I started walking toward my target, a yellow-and-brown booth with a sign that said Pronto Pups, I heard Al shout, “Get me one, too.”
I had been going to the Minnesota State Fair since I was ten years old and I had never left the fairgrounds without at least one Pronto Pup in my belly. This was the one food on a stick that was special to me. It’s a hotdog dipped in a tasty cornmeal batter, deep fried to the precise second of golden perfection in hot fat seasoned by time, and brushed with a golden splash of mustard. It was, for want of a better cliché under the current circumstances, a treat to die for.
My fiancée, Martha Todd, said it’s “just a damn corn dog,” but she was wrong. A Pronto Pup had a special panache, a flavor and texture all its own, thanks to the consistency of the coating and the experience of the cooking oil. Your bland, every day corn dog was like a sleeping dachshund compared with the wide awake pit-bull taste of a Pronto Pup.
“I couldn’t leave the fairgrounds without my Pronto Pup,” I said to Lorrie as I returned with a mustard-coated treat in each hand. “I’m just glad they’re open for business already.”
“How can you eat those after watching a man die right there in front of you?” Lorrie asked.
“It’s a religion with him,” Al said as he took the Pronto Pup from my left hand. “I just go along with him because I belong to the same church.”
“As the fair’s PR flack, I’m sure you’re aware that Pronto Pups were the first food on a stick ever sold at the Minnesota State Fair,” I said to Lorrie. “They opened in 1947, and their signs said ‘A Banquet on a Stick.’”
“You’ve been looking at what I put on our website,” she said.
“You’re right. I wanted to have some background to use as filler in case today’s story was a snoozer.”
“I don’t think you’ll need any padding for this one,” Lorrie said. She rose and walked slowly away, head down and shoulders slumping.
“Your turn to buy next time,” I said to Al as we started toward the car.
“Have I ever failed to return your generosity?”
“Yes, you’ve dogged it several times.”
“Doggone. I was hoping you weren’t such a good watchdog.”
* * *
I finished my story with time to spare, and was daydreaming about a side trip to the fairgrounds for another Pronto Pup on the way to meeting Detective KGB, when Don O’Rourke appeared beside my desk.
“Great story,” he said. “Spectacular pix. And the only people who have them are us and Channel Four.”
“Nobody else showed up for the great unveiling of the new delight on a stick,” I said.
“Now you know why we cover everything, no matter how meaningless it sounds.” He turned and walked back to his desk.
I resumed my Pronto Pup daydreaming. I had just decided to go back to the fairgrounds and make the dream real when my phone rang. “Daily Dispatch, Mitchell,” I said.
“Homicidebrown,” said the familiar voice of Detective Lieutenant Curtis Brown, the St. Paul Police Department’s chief homicide investigator. He always blurred his name and identification into a single word.
What the hell? I thought. I’ve called Brownie a million times but he never calls me. “What can I do for you?” I asked.
“You can tell me what the hell went on at the fairgrounds this morning,” he said. “Channel Four has breaking news about Vinnie Luciano choking on one of those goddamn meals on a stick that he supposedly invented, but I can’t get any details out of the Falcon Heights PD.”
<
br /> I resisted the temptation to say, “Now you know how I feel when you won’t talk.” Instead I gave Brownie a quick rundown of the morning’s calamity. “And Vinnie didn’t choke,” I said. “The Falcon Heights investigator blurted out that it was a classic case of strychnine poisoning before she thought about me being a reporter. I looked it up online and she was right. Vinnie’s actions—the arched back and all—do fit the classic description of a death by strychnine.”
“No wonder they won’t talk,” Brownie said. “It’s a homicide, not an accident. But who the hell would want to poison poor Vinnie?”
“That’s what I’m going to be asking,” I said. “Do you have any suspects?”
“I’ve never in my life heard a bad word said about Vinnie. I can’t imagine who’d want to kill him.”
“Me neither. Any recommendations on who to talk to at the Falcon Heights PD?”
“I don’t know,” Brownie said. “I talked to a hard-ass detective named Barnes and got a shitload of ‘no comment.’ I wanted to talk to the chief, a woman named Victoria Tubb, but she wasn’t available. I’ve dealt with her a couple of times, and she’s pretty hard-ass, too.”
“Great,” I said. “So do you have any advice for me?”
“Don’t call the chief Vicky. She doesn’t like informality.”
“In that case it’s probably better not to call her Tubby, either.”
“I’d stick to ‘Chief’ if I were you.”
“Good advice. Let me know if you hear anything about a suspect.”
“You do the same. Have a good day, Mitch.” And the line went dead.
* * *
Al and I met Trish Valentine at the Falcon Heights police station as we were going in and she was coming out. “Have a good time with the KGB woman,” Trish said. “She is one tight-assed broad.”
“All work and no play is she?” Al asked.
“No sense of humor,” Trish said. “What she needs is a night in the sack with some hottie like that square dance caller at Heritage Square.”
“Scott Hall?” I said. “You think a roll in the hay with that grinning goombah would loosen up Ms. KGB?”
“Like I said, that grinning goombah is hot,” Trish said. “I’ll bet he gets plenty of action from the women in his club.”
“No way,” Al said. “Square dancers don’t do the bedroom do-si-do with anybody but their own partners. That’s part of being square.”
“Boy, have you got a lot to learn,” Trish said. “Like I said, have fun with the KGB. And thanks a whole hell of a lot for giving her my name.”
“All in the name of good government,” I said. “You were reporting live even closer than I was when Vinnie bit the dust. I thought maybe you saw something I didn’t.”
“Not likely. I closed my eyes when he hit the floor and started to twitch.”
Al and I went in and were told to wait in the small lobby while the desk sergeant contacted Detective Barnes. Soon she appeared, pointed at Al and said, “You’re first.” I was relegated to a hard wooden chair near the door.
A half hour later we swapped seats. My new one was at a battle-scarred wooden table in a very small interrogation room. This chair was also hard and KGB was harder. She sat across from me and snapped off questions like a sniper firing at a moving target. Her gray eyes never left mine and her spine and shoulders never relaxed as a tape recorder on the table preserved our words.
I tried to lighten the mood a couple of times but I couldn’t coax a smile or a soft word from her lips. When she indicated that the session was over, I rose and was starting toward the door when KGB’s phone rang. I stopped and went back, pretending to be looking for something on the floor, while she took the call.
“What?” she said. “Are you shittin’ me? Where? I’ll be right there.” She snapped off the phone and looked at me with the same grim expression she’d used all during the interrogation. “Drop something did you?”
“Not really,” I said. “Just snoopy. Was that something about Vinnie?”
“You might say that,” she said. “They just found the kid who plays Fairchild, wearing nothing but undershorts, bound and gagged in a tool shed. He said somebody hit him from behind and tied him up and stole his costume while he was out.”
“So the Fairchild who delivered the poisoned square meal was a phony?” I said.
“A phony with a mission,” Barnes said. “Whoever was wearing Fairchild’s costume is our killer.”
“Okay if we follow you to the fairgrounds?”
“It’s a free country.” She actually smiled when she added, “Just stay one car length back for every ten miles per hour or I’ll tag you for following too close.”
Chapter 3: Not So Fair
The teenager who played Fairchild looked too frail for the job. He also looked too tired and too scared to talk about being sapped, stripped and strapped. I could picture Lorrie Gardner smothering him with hugs and worse. Apparently he could, too, because he sat with the back of his chair against a wooden wall with only his face, from the nose up, showing above a gray army blanket held at port arms. Al got a great photo, which we used big on page one.
Detective Barnes asked his name and he said, “Tommy.” She inquired as to a last name and he said, “Grayson.” She asked his age and he said “eighteen.” He didn’t look that old to me but she didn’t press the issue.
Slowly and painfully Barnes dragged out the details. Tommy was whacked on the head from behind by an unseen and unheard assailant. He awoke in the tool shed with a headache and a lump. His hands and feet were bound and his mouth was stuffed with a bandanna wrapped around a stick. A killer with a dark sense of humor no less.
“What time would you say you were attacked?” Barnes asked.
“I’d just got into my costume, except for putting on my head piece, when I stepped out the door,” he said. “Must have been a few minutes after eight.”
“Is eight o’clock your starting time?”
“Yes, ma’am. I work from eight to four. Derek Sloane takes over then and works till closing time. He’s older and can deal with the drunks . . .”
“Thank you, Tommy,” Barnes said. “Did you see your attacker at all?”
“No. He snuck up behind me and hit me before I could move.”
“You’re sure it was a he?”
“Well, I . . . I guess so. He had to be pretty strong to hit me that hard.”
“But you didn’t see the person or hear the person speak?”
“No. I suppose it could have been a girl . . . a woman. Like I said, she’d have to be pretty strong.”
“Do you think I look strong enough to knock you out and drag you away?”
“You look pretty strong, ma’am,” Tommy said.
“Is that a yes?” Barnes asked.
“Uh, I guess so.” She glared at him and got an instantaneous, rapid-fire response. “Yes, ma’am. That’s definitely a yes.”
“Thank you, Tommy. And I take it you saw no one until someone came to the shed looking for equipment this afternoon.”
“That’s right. I was really glad to see Tiger.”
“Who?”
“Tiger. Tiger Wyberelli. From the maintenance crew. We call him Tiger because—
“Thank you, Tommy. I take it Tiger was the person who opened the door at . . . what time?” she asked.
“Must have been almost four. That’s when Tiger starts, four.”
“And he always starts by opening the tool shed?”
“Oh, no, ma’am,” said Tommy. “He just happened to need some cutters. Normally he might not open the door for a week.” He paused for a second and said, “Oh, shit.” His complexion, already pale, turned piecrust pasty white. “I could have been here for days before . . .” His voice trailed off as he thought abou
t the possibility.
“Before anybody looked in?” I asked.
“Yeah. Holy shit, I could have—”
Barnes cut him off. “No, you couldn’t have. Somebody would have come looking for you when you didn’t get home overnight.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I’m sure somebody would have. Still—”
“Forget it,” Barnes said. “Go home and get some rest. I’ll talk to you some more tomorrow.”
Tommy didn’t need a second invitation. He tossed off the blanket, revealing a Hardrock Café T-shirt and baggy khaki shorts, and ran out the door. When he was gone, Barnes turned to me. “Get enough for a story?”
“I’ve got everything but a comment from the lead investigator,” I said.
Barnes frowned. “The lead investigator has no comment beyond the obvious ‘we’re investigating this vicious attack.’” She whirled and followed Tommy out the door.
“That is one up-tight broad,” Al said as he put his camera away.
“If she was strung any tighter she’d hum in the wind,” I said. “But that’s her problem, not ours.”
“I have a feeling it’ll be your problem every time you try to get a statement for a story,” Al said.
I groaned and turned to Lorrie. “How did Fairchild, or rather the fake Fairchild, get hold of the Square Meal on a Stick?”
“It was delivered by a man from the sales booth. It wasn’t open for business yet, but they were supposed to pass out free samples right after the ceremony,” she said. “At least I thought he was from the booth.”
“Was the square meal made at the booth?”
“Yes. Vinnie had it made up this morning by a cook in the booth. He put it in an insulated container to keep it fresh.”
“Did the delivery man hand the container directly to Fairchild?”
“No, he handed it to me,” Lorrie said. “I gave it to Fairchild. The fake Fairchild.”
“Was there a time when Fairchild was out of sight between you handing the container to Fairchild and Fairchild handing it to Scott Hall?”