Chapter 2

Martin’s assignment as a weekly columnist as well as a by-lined writer two years after being hired brought about several positive changes in his life. First and foremost, he was making a little more money, so he could afford to move into his own apartment. Martin found the perfect, and cheap, place over a tavern called Risky Dick’s, a watering hole halfway between Webster and Siren, and about 20 miles away from his mother. While Martin appreciated Jean Lundeen’s taking him in after college, her constant meddling in his life drove him crazy and he needed to get a place of his own.
When the bartender and building owner at Risky Dick’s showed him the apartment, it was at dusk and the room with a microwave and mini fridge on one end, a sink, toilet and shower stall behind a partition in the corner, and a ratty looking twin mattress on metal springs in the middle didn’t look all that bad. But when Martin moved in, it was at 8:00 a.m. in the morning and what sunshine came through the grimy windows showed every stain on the carpet and watermark on the wallpaper. But he moved in anyway. The location above Risky Dick’s was perfect – Martin’s mother would never set foot anywhere near the dingy, rundown bar/restaurant on State Highway 35. Probably never.
Moving into the bleak little apartment over the less than respectable bar wouldn’t be half as difficult for Martin as telling Jean he was leaving the nest for good. Martin took his mother to the Chattering Squirrel for breakfast, hoping to soften the blow with “piping hot coffee and the best cinnamon rolls in Burnett County!”
It didn’t work.
“Martin, how can you move out on your own?” Jean demanded, her mouth filled with half chewed cinnamon dough. “You’re just a boy. Whatever you can afford on your salary can’t be anyplace safe or comfortable. Why are you doing this? What have I done?” And she broke down into loud, theatrical sobs, nearly choking on her food.
Martin focused his attention on the half eaten cinnamon roll in front of his mother, conscious of the fact that the 8 other customers in the Chattering Squirrel were all looking at their table, waiting for Martin’s answers to his mother’s questions. “Mother,” he said calmly and quietly, “I am 25 years old. I’m an adult. I should have my own apartment.”
Jean stopped crying, dabbed her eyes with her napkin and, in a stage whisper, replied, “But what about your…problem? What if you have another breakdown? You need me to take care of you.”
Martin lifted his head, looked up at the ceiling for a moment and returned his gaze to the face of his 55 year old mother. He squinted as he tried to remember her when she was 15 years younger, not so haggard looking, not so needy. Before his father just disappeared into the north woods one night, “off to bag a buck”, never to return. He took a deep breath, opened his mouth to respond, stopped to think for a moment, and then said, “Mom, I’ll never forget how much you helped me after I came back from Marquette. But I didn’t have a breakdown. I don’t have a problem. I just decided I couldn’t live in a big city. But that doesn’t mean that I want to live with my mommy forever.” He smiled at her and looked at her sideways. “Come on, Mother, I’ll only be just outside of Siren. You can come and visit me any time you want.”
Jean looked back at him and took a sip of her coffee. “So where did you find an apartment? The Yellow River Apartments? Mrs. Larson’s boarding house?”
This was the question Martin was dreading, and he phrased his answer carefully. “It’s one of two apartments above a restaurant between Siren and Webster. It will be great, Mom. I can grab my meals downstairs if I don’t feel like cooking or if I’m working on a deadline.”
“A restaurant?” she asked. “What restaurant is between Webster and Siren?”
Martin thought for one moment about playing dumb, but thought better of it. After 25 years, his mother could read him like a book. “Risky Dick’s.” And he waited for the explosion he was sure was coming.
“Hmmm…Risky Dick’s? Never heard of it.” And she dug back into the rest of her cinnamon roll.
Martin was confused for a minute, but then embraced his luck and thought to himself, “Why would she know about a dark, ugly rat trap of a bar, patronized by toothless backwoods hunters and couples engaged in illicit affairs?” And he happily, and with a great sense of momentary relief, went back to enjoying his own cinnamon roll.
“You can take me there for dinner after I see your new apartment…”

Jean’s anticipated reaction aside, Martin’s choice for an apartment couldn’t have been better. The room itself wasn’t the draw. There was barely 400 square feet of space, and everything in the apartment was produced sometime in the 1970s. Which is not to say Martin wouldn’t try to make it comfortable. He was, after all, a man of somewhat refined tastes.
The evening after he moved in his belongings, Martin went down to the bar for a beer and a bite to eat. Don Wardle, the bartender and owner of building, greeted him from behind the kitchen pass-through with what would become his trademark welcome: “Hey, Jimmy Olson, what breaking story have you uncovered for the good citizens of Burnett County?”
Had Hollywood been looking for the perfect person to play the tough talking bartender in a movie about a seedy bar, Don would have come straight out of central casting. Short and squat, barely 5’6” tall, 250 pounds, forearms like tree trunks, stubby little fingers, thin gray wisps of hair combed over a massive shiny dome, Don didn’t so much walk behind the bar as waddle. His face was perpetually dewy, and the sweat marks under his gray Risky Dick’s t-shirt were ever present. The bar cloth he tucked into the front of his Wrangler blue jeans served as an apron. No regular apron would have fit around his girth. As usual, Don’s breathing was labored and raspy as he came behind the bar from the kitchen and asked Martin, “What’ll ya’ have, kid?”
“Just a bottle of Heineken and a burger, Mr. Wardle,” answered Martin. Don looked at Martin and said with an exasperated tone, “We don’t have Heineken, kid. None of that fancy, European shit, just good old American beer on tap – Bud, Grain Belt and Miller. And you can call me Don.”
Martin was going to chide the proprietor for his limited choices, but thought better of it. “Okay, give me a Grain Belt. Say, um Don, can I ask you a few things about the apartment?”
Don gave him a sideways glance as he pulled the beer. “What kind of things?”
“Well, first of all, the carpet is filthy and the walls need painting badly,” answered Martin. “And the sink in the bathroom leaks. And the apartment door lock is broken.”
There was a 30-second silence before Don answered. “What the hell do you think $75 a week buys, my friend? A designer condo in downtown Milwaukee? Feel free to seek out other living arrangements, Jimmy Olson. I don’t need your constant complaining about that apartment.”
The look of panic on Martin’s face made Don give a loud, raspy laugh. “Martin, relax. I’m kidding…sort of. I’ll fix the sink and the lock. But the carpet, paint? Don’t think so. Feel free to do whatever you’d like to the place. At your own expense, of course. “
Martin thought a minute, nodded and said, “Thanks, Don. I’ll run color by you if you want.” Don shook his head. “No need. Just make sure you use a drop cloth.” And he laughed as he went to the other end of the bar to take another order.

It took Don about 20 minutes to make his way back to Martin. “So, Jimmy Olson, how are things going for you over at the Sentinel?”
Martin looked into Don’s face and saw a genuine interest he hadn’t seen before. It made him want to trust the man. And it was the first time anyone had really asked. “Well, to be honest, I’m frustrated. Clark Grayson’s philosophy is to keep the news light. Don’t dig too deep, don’t offend anyone, keep the advertisers happy. And if I find out anything that is controversial or explosive, I should just…ignore it.”
Don closed his eyes and shook his head. “Grayson is an idiot, a money-grubbing idiot. I’m sure he’d say there is nothing controversial or explosive going on in Burnett County, so it’s no big deal. We’re just a serene, peaceful vacationland.”
Martin sat up on his stool. “That’s exactly what he said.”
“Well, Clark Grayson is wrong,” Don responded. “If there was nothing going on in this sleepy little county, why would there be a need for a Risky Dick’s?”
Martin leaned his body over the bar, and pushed his empty beer mug into Don’s hand. “What are you saying?” Martin asked. As Don refilled the mug from the beer tap, he replied, “What I’m saying is that things aren’t quite as serene and peaceful around Burnett County as Clark would like us all to believe. A lot happens that nobody sees, and when people need to talk about their business, they usually come here because, well, it’s a place where private, underground things can be discussed…privately.”
Martin looked skeptical. “Oh come on, you’re kidding me. What are you talking about, illicit affairs? Extortion? Murder plots? Conspiracies? Drug deals? If that’s the case, all this activity is being done by toothless backwoodsmen or unhappy husbands getting away from their wives for a couple of hours in the evening.”
“You think so, Martin?” asked Don with one eyebrow raised. “Then why were Dayton Daniels and Jeff Howe in here just last week Tuesday, sitting in the back corner booth, sucking back brew and looking all agitated and, well…pissed off? Things got pretty heated, and it didn’t sound like they were talking about the latest school board meeting.”