Page 15 of Shadow Ticket

On days of low winter light the federal courthouse can take on a sinister look, a setting for a story best not told at bedtime, the jagged profile of an evil castle against pale light reflected off the Lake, bell tower, archways, gargoyles, haunted shadows, Halloween all year long.

Or as some like to think of it, Richardsonian Romanesque.

Heavy icicles all along the overhangs, waiting to let loose and pierce your skull, with no safety hat on the market known to be of any help.

Inside, today, the place is a wreck. Smells like sizing and paint not yet dry, sawdust, solvents, joint compound, soldering smoke, sanding, ozone from arc welding.

Riveting, hammering, hollering in German and Polish as well as less familiar tongues.

A maze of interior renovation, with not always helpful signs tacked up on the new partition walls.

Hicks is never too comfortable talking directly to any level of cop, even what starts out as a friendly chat having a way no more than a couple smokes later of him ending up inside looking out.

Though he wouldn’t call it a full-scale attack of the Fee Bee jeebies, what gets him especially nervous about this newer type of federals is that nobody knows yet exactly how bad they can be.

Today’s unknown quantity, Assistant Special Agent in Charge T.

P. O’Grizbee, occupies a desk in a surprisingly tidy office suite, given the chaotic surroundings.

Everybody pretending all this is is just another workday office, except for whatever else it is that’s really going on.

All the correct elements are in place, steno girls carrying steno pads, gossiping around the bubbler, bells and clatter from the typing pool, updates thumping in and whizzing out by pneumatic tube, middle management yelling into at least two telephones at once, office aromas of coffee percolating, hair pomade, and typewriter-ribbon ink blended with a perfume-maker’s care, everybody looking like actors in a show that’s run long enough by now for each to be comfortable in their roles.

Plus, as any P.I. might add, that feeling that close by, just outside of sight, hearing, and the bounds of etiquette, at least one supply-room quickie is in progress.

“They tell me you gents are opening up shop again in M’waukee. Nice to be back in the big time, we were startin to feel neglected.”

“Milwaukee’s always on our map, Mr. McTaggart, more Germans than you can wave a knockwurst at, and Germans, especially of the Nazi persuasion, will bring our fellows to town sure as beer’ll bring the prohis.”

“In the present matter,” adds a sidekick, “if it wasn’t for this Nazi angle we’d’ve been happier leaving it to your local MPD. But as you seem to be one of the last to have spoken with Mr. Keegan—”

“This is about Stuffy?”

“His disappearance. In particular what part Nazis, foreign and domestic, might’ve played.”

“He was pretty desperate to skip town. Seemed like somebody could’ve been after him. What for, he didn’t say.”

“Maybe he saw something, maybe he doesn’t know what he saw. Knows enough not to talk but not exactly what he shouldn’t be talking about. Or who to. Which makes him dangerous, putting forces he never knew existed to the trouble of setting things right again.”

“And it’s big enough you think that somebody might want to shut him up about it permanently?”

“There’s also the matter of something that showed up out in the harbor that same night, believed to be a rogue Austro-Hungarian U-boat that refused to surrender, making it more than just a submarine but also an outward and visible expression of paths not taken, personal and historical—would that about sum it up? ”

“Sure, if I knew what that’s supposed to mean.”

“Just as well you don’t. Espionage Act and all…

What I can tell you is that deep in our archives, in a highly secret vault whose location I can’t divulge, are several combination safes’ worth of Anecdotal Field Reports, sightings of unconventional vehicles undersea and airborne as well, witnesses ranging from the usual barking and drooling to senior officers who wouldn’t care to jeopardize their pensions by testifying to anything that isn’t there, including it seems this same Austro-Hungarian submarine…

” pretending to consult a file, “U-13. Built in sections at Budapest, assembled at Fiume and the Imperial naval arsenal at Pola, making it both Hungarian and Austrian. Regardless of which, supposed to’ve been scuttled, scrapped, or handed over after the War, in accordance with the treaties of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Articles 136 and 138, and Trianon, Article 122. ”

“But…”

“It wasn’t. Officially there never even was a U-l3, skips directly from 12 to 14, like the thirteenth floor in a skyscraper. Our information is that you actually witnessed its arrival in Milwaukee.”

“Don’t know. Saw something. Lights under the ice. Could’ve been a sub, I guess.”

“We have a statement from a minor, one Floyd Francis Wheeler, known informally as Skeet.”

“Oh come on, I hope you birds ain’t after Skeet, he’s just a kid.”

“Cigarette taxes, assorted U.S. code violations plus Federal Radio Commission General Order 84, if you’re familiar—”

“Keep a copy handy at all times, right next to the fan magazines.”

“Your young friends have been conspiring to operate a shortwave transmitter, possibly dangerous, certainly illegal.”

“Kids with a radio hobby, so what?”

“An alarmingly high percentage of the traffic is encrypted, with a potential for altering events far removed in time and space from the likes of—” gesturing around the beaverboard interior.

“Uh, huh, just a couple of working stiffs, you and me, ain’t it.”

A passing smile, in which any note of cordiality would be hard to locate.

“And should you be telling me stuff like this?”

“Falls within your need to know, if you’re going to be working on the case.”

“Who said I was—”

“You speak the German tongue, we’re told.”

“Picked up a word or two, who don’t, beer-barrelin around M’waukee?”

“Anything else? Polish, Italian, Hungarian?”

“Only enough to get into a fight. Why? Sounds like out-of-town work, which I don’t—”

“Oh, quite far out of town in fact.”

Now, most of the time gastric distress and Hicks are strangers.

Alka-Seltzer is not about to name him Customer of the Year.

But there are exceptions, brought about by even the hint of an out-of-town ticket, when the best he can manage is to sit very still with a deaf-n-dumb expression on his kisser.

“Boynton Crosstown at the U-Ops has every confidence.”

“Uh-oh, now I am worried. Appreciate the job offer if that’s what this is, but maybe somebody missed the patch of troublesome history between me and you folks’s shop—”

“We’re not the prohis. All that foolishness we’re ready to overlook. You’ll find we’re easygoing, bighearted ‘mugs,’ in a funny kind of way. All warrants will be suspended, all charges dropped, you’ll be as pure as Ivory soap.”

“Let’s see, that’s ninety-nine and 44 one-hundredths percent, so a hundred take away 44, that still leaves…wait…”

“They don’t have Original Sin in Milwaukee?”

“South side, maybe…”

“Truth is,” the federal as if sharing a confidence, “it’s your job history. All those labor radicals you sent to the accident ward. Somebody who’s anti-Red but not a Nazi either.”

“Plenty of them to pick and choose from, I’d of thought, and anyhow I’m semiretired these days, haven’t busted a Bolshevik head in can’t remember how long but thanks anyhow, nothin personal,” heading amiably for the door, “just a working flatfoot, see, makin this a definite Pasadena—”

“We’d much prefer that you cooperate, though you’re always welcome down at our little country jailhouse in Atlanta G-A, plenty of southern hospitality to enjoy, why, who knows, you could end up cellmates with the Big Fellow himself.”

“And you’d be runnin me in for what again?”

“Too technical to explain, think of it as Aggravated Mopery.”

“Wrong tough guy. Try Primo Carnera.”

“Your country calls.”

“Line’s busy.”

“I’m afraid it isn’t optional,” explains T.

P. O’Grizbee. “Like it says on the subpoena we haven’t served you yet, laying aside all and singular your business and excuses.

A federal rap, not to be shrugged off. Potential wrongdoers might keep in mind as yet little-known lockups such as Alcatraz Island, always looming out there, fogbound and sinister, and the unwelcome fates which might transpire therewithin.

The Drys can seem like the violent ward at Winnebago sometimes, but this is the next wave of Feds you’re talking to.

We haven’t even begun to show how dangerous we can be, and the funny thing?

Is, is we could be running the country any day now and you’ll all have to swear loyalty to us because by then we’ll be in the next war fighting for our lives, and maybe that’ll be all you’ve got.

” Taking off his horn-rim specs briefly to drill Hicks with a rhetorical eye-to-eye. “It’s your wife and kids too.”

“Single. Too young for the last one, always felt lousy about that, next one I’ll join up and get killed in it, promise.”

“A bonus marcher in our midst,” mutters the G-man, “how entertaining…Oh and before you go—please. Compliments of the Bureau.”

Since about 1930, immigrants arriving at Ellis Island have been receiving boxes of Jell-O plus a Jell-O mold in the shape of some famous U.S.

landmark as part of their welcome-to-the-U.S.

package. This one they’re handing Hicks happens to be the Statue of Liberty.

Plus a handy kitchen-size pamphlet full of creative Jell-O recipes.

“So I’m an immigrant now?”

“Maybe not to the U.S. as you know it. Maybe to the future U.S. we in the Bureau expect to see before long.”

“And you’re going to explain the difference to me.”

“No. Maybe if you ever decided to hire on with us, your own free will, general makeover, new name, new identity papers, oath of loyalty, so forth. Enough idea of who you’re working for as we think it’s safe for you to have.”

A Statue of Liberty made of Jell-O. Where do you start eating it? The head? The torch?