Page 13 of Shadow Ticket

Next time Hicks is over to the Flaschners for what turns out to be another novelty casserole, he finds Uncle Lefty in a reminiscent yet strangely gemütlich state of mind.

“…poised to overthrow the U.S. government? Itself? Ja? one word from the Kaiser, no questions asked—straight into action, half a million nationwide.”

“Don’t think I ever heard this one before.”

“Oh ja, twenty years ago. Old news. History. Loyal German youth, waiting for the order to rise up. Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing? pushovers, kid, scared to death. Us, we kept the U.S. out of that War for three years.”

“And now, you’re telling me, there’s ’ese old-time Kaiser Bill guerrilla units, which never…officially—”

Nod, finger to lips. “Some got demobilized, of course, older cadres, but…well, maybe not all.” With his well-known mischievous smile that you wouldn’t necessarily want to smile back at. “Come on out with me tonight and see. You’re gatted up? That little snub-nose they let you carry?”

“And the reason you’re asking…?”

“Somebody may want to frisk you. Procedure, nothing personal.”

Uncle Lefty has tactfully avoided mentioning that the streetcar route takes them across the Menomonee Valley via the Wells Street Viaduct, 90 feet up, iron, black, rickety in the wind, not for nervous passengers or even those with their wits about them who’d prefer to get across in one piece.

“Hope you’re not too uncomfortable up here, Hicks?”

“Who, me? Nerves of steel.”

“Not even half a mile. Over before you know it.”

“That’s what I’m worried about.”

“Took your aunt Peony up here on our first date. Proposed to her in fact.”

“She went for it?”

“Well, she said let’s see when we get to the other end.”

“Yeah? And…”

“Says she’s still waiting.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

Before Hicks knows it they’re out in the far northwest somewhere, a bleak stretch not yet assigned a district number, an all-night beat out of a sergeant’s most ill-tempered threat, out in onshore winds not expected to get much above freezing, straw boxes few and far between, apt around any corner to find yourself up the wrong end of a roscoe from somebody you knew in sixth grade.

“There, look,” nodding out the window, “there it is, kid.” Visible for miles across the bleak night prairie, the neon announcement New Nuremberg Lanes, not the traditional German typeface you see so much of around town but modern sans serif, straight from the soon to be new and improved Old Country, four or five different colors from deep violet to blood orange, bowling balls flickering left to right, pins scattering, reassembling, again and again, silently except for an electrical drone fading up slowly louder the closer to it you get.

The streetcar lets them off right in front.

Inside it’s expensively designed as a movie set.

Shoe-check girls in matching outfits, working in pairs, one for the rubber-sole side, one for leather.

A different pair of girls available for southpaws.

A custom ball-laundering station. Lounge areas saturated in blue twilight, smelling like beer fumes, tobacco smoke, and hot griddle grease, a constant wood percussion from lanes near and far, echoes receding into the blur.

All normal as club soda, yet somehow…too normal, yes something is making a chill creep across Hicks’s scalp, the Sombrero of Uneasiness, as it’s known in the racket.

Something here is off. A bowling alley is supposed to be an oasis of beer and sociability, busy with cheerful keglers, popcorn by the bucketful, crosscurrents of flirtation, now and then somebody actually doing some bowling.

But this crowd here, no, these customers are only pretending to bowl.

Stepping through spare-conversion systems the way movie actors pretend to dance.

Busy lighting each other’s cigarettes, writing down phone numbers—huh, who, me?

oh just a carefree hour or two at the lanes, officer, surely you don’t think we’re up to any monkey business…

“Wait. We’re not gonna roll a couple frames at least? Why am I carrying this ball? Where are we going?”

“You’ll see.”

On into a dimmer region of pool tables, pinball machines, and Skee-Ball setups, where it’s currently semifinals week for the Northwest Milwaukee Skee-Ball League, defending champs of the Ladies’ division, which dates from 1929, when the regulation lane was shortened to fourteen feet to accommodate the ever-growing number of talented and serious gal devotees of the hardwood sphere, as they’re known in the sports pages.

It also doesn’t hurt that the local league has chosen an alluring uniform including two-color box-pleat skirts, magenta and green, so that any motion beyond a simple shimmy produces a color spectacle not easy to ignore.

Down some stairs, arriving presently at a jukebox going full blast and a dance floor full of Lindy-hopping youth. Hicks slowly recognizes an American swingtime version, at the moment getting some attention in Milwaukee, of the German street anthem known overseas as the “Horst Wessel Song,”

Hold-yer flag up high, yeahh,

Let’s swing it, for the Naah-zis—

Tight’n-up those ranks,

You troopers out tonite—some

lid-dle

Com-mie rats! won’t

Feel so, hotsy tot-sy—

Cause Brownshi-irts don’t,

Go down, with-

-out—a fight! Some

lid-dle

Com-mie rats—

and so forth, as meantime a gent with a swastika armband moves in on Hicks for a swift-finger once-over—finds the little snub-nose, lifts it smoothly away. “Hey,” Hicks points out.

“Only temporary— Oh, izzat you? Hicksie?”

“Ooly Schaufl, holy smokes, how long’s it been.”

“Going by Ulrich these days. Heard about your P.I. license, Steamy Detective himself here, salary, commission, unlimited ammunition. Whoo-ee!”

“Looks better in the movies, less fun than you’d think.”

“Don’t start tellin me how you miss all that headbustin, I sure’s heck don’t.”

“Good old days.” They eyeball each other.

“Well, old, anyway.”

“Not that I’m headed for some retired torpedoes’ home in Oshkosh, um, Ulrich, I’m as bad as I ever was, you need anybody leaned on, you know you can always—”

“I’m not sure…maybe it’s only since the private dick license, you seem more respectable somehow.”

“Ouch. Call me anything but that.”

His old mentor. Whaddaya know. They were briefly at North Division High together, Ooly was the older kid, too old in fact for high school anymore, too smart to be taking years over again, so it must’ve been something else.

“Somethin about violent criminals in the family, hope that’s OK with you.”

“Welcome to the delinquent bin, stranger. You ought to fit in fine.”

Ooly went on to a brief yard apprenticeship up at Waupun before finding himself launched bang into the Roaring Twenties, the appeal of pure action never more keenly felt, the newly rich everywhere, young, beautiful, Republican, throwing parties in lakeside houses which in more tropical surroundings you could’ve mistaken for hotels all jittery with cocaine, whoopee and swing that went on for days, except possibly at Marquette during Lent.

“Kids, all of ’em, dimwits in plus fours, flappers of both sexes, no idea of what was lying in wait, empty-headed and innocent and about to be jumped by the forces of Red revolution—wasn’t it a man’s duty to resist? Ain’t it why we were all out there on the fence line?”

“C’mon, it was only plant owners nervous about their property, working stiffs looking for better pay, and hell, who ain’t?”

Look of concern, “You didn’t go Bolshevik on us, I hope, a Commie flatfoot?”

“How about your pal Hitler, you’re handing your life over to this li’l comedian now?”

“Hey, just a friendly brat-and-beer get-together—we’re National Socialists, ain’t it? So—we’re socializing. Try it, you might have fun.”

“The Nazz-eyes? Sure, I’ll be in touch with ya about that one…”

“Enjoy it while you can, pal. Don’t wait too long. Leavin th’ station, now’s the time to climb on board, later maybe it won’t be so easy…”

He is interrupted by a party of wholesome types in suits just off the rack.

“Hold it, boys and girls, pursuant to federal law we have confirmed the presence of alcohol in the building, soon as local police arrive you’ll all be under arrest, sorry about that, till then behave yourselves, don’t go anywhere, and remember, compliance is the price of liberty.”

“Heiliger Bimbam,” exclaims Ulrich. “Federals been in every night this week.”

“Sure tops off the evening, don’t it.”

“Looks like ’at li’l Vic Durbow and his posse of Dry irregulars again, oh and Hicks, now that I recall, you and him have some history, don’t you—” Ulrich now considerately tossing Hicks’s heater back to him.

Catching it, “Thanks. They would’ve took that out of my paycheck,” as house flappers and lounge lizards and Skee-Ball leaguers of both sexes make anxiously for the Ausgang, hired urchins meanwhile filtering everywhere handing out business cards with phone numbers of twenty-four-hour bail bondsmen.

“If dog pounds had psycho wards, that’s where most of these jokers would be recruited out of.”

The Dry agent in charge, Vic Durbow, hat brim too wide for his head keeping his eyes in shadow, leaving exposed an upper lip set in a permanent sneer, is known far and wide to be on the take from bootleggers he then turns around and collars anyway, which some call betrayal, though Vic prefers “moral integrity.” When he runs out of beer barrels to smash, Vic will settle for busting up anything he can find, leaving raid sites around town littered with free-lunch debris, petals fallen from corsages, fragments of glassware and plates, pieces of furniture.

Vic’s trademark routine is to throw pool balls at speakeasy mirrors, not off-axis or anything, but straight at his own image.