Page 19 of Shadow Ticket

No Man’s Land lies between Wilmette and Kenilworth, right up against the Lake.

There were grand plans once upon a time.

They were going to call it Plaza del Lago, and “Spanish Court” would be one of the first drive-in “shopping plazas” in the U.S.A…

. But the timing was terrible, before anybody knew it the Depression had come swooping in to claim one more hopeful project, and the Plaza slid into an underlit honkytonk with its archways in permanent shadow.

Nowadays among the derelict Spanish-style architecture there’s still a movie house, and Dopplinger’s Chinese Amusements, a Keno salon whose bar Hicks at the time was a semiregular at, just across the shore road from the Lake, close enough that you could hear waves coming in, with permanently flickering electric light owing to a tangled history with Commonwealth Edison plus the fiercely independent power plant in Winnetka, and of course the Outfit, who were tapping off a percentage of everything that went in and out of No Man’s Land, every glass of beer, sack of movie popcorn, tip given, tip taken, not to mention the Chinese machines, the horse games, the slots, working ladies full- or part-time or semipro, including adventurous local housewives, and of course every tiny fraction of an amp of electric current, which kept sending foolhardy amateurs up the power poles trying to bootleg more juice in off of the ComEd line along Sheridan Road, too often ending in ambulance sirens and sorrowful headlines.

“This Lois the usherette you’re inquiring after?

” Sheldon the apron on duty tonight sliding an Old Log Cabin Presbyterian in front of Hicks, “since when, mind me asking, did you start chasin jailbait, Hicks, that ol’ middle-age hankering creepin up on you, pal?

Not too happy a prognosis for none of you degenerates, better you nix that jive while you still can. ”

“Lucky for us both, Sheldon, my interest right now ain’t so much in Lois herself as her circle of friends, including the customer who just walked in.”

“And a pleasant good evening to you, Hicksie, what’s up, you’re supposed to be dead.”

Giancarlo Foditto, or Dippy Chazz, as he’s known in the lounges of the underworld, has made no secret of his deep yen for Lois, which he can’t explain, much less control.

Chazz is a gangland kiddy of the more amiable sort who all his life has wanted to be taken for menacing, trying to wear the snappiest cut and shade of suit, the most sinister model of snap-brim, yet always coming across harmless and vulnerable as a fairground balloon, having somehow hypnotized the whole International Brotherhood of Tough Guys into respecting his need to stay unpopped as long as possible.

Anybody so much as lays a finger invites correction.

“I’ll take your word for it, Dipster. Haven’t seen you around much either, come to think of it.”

“Business activities, tryin to stay low.”

“How much you owe them this time?”

“Ain’t money.” A tremulous silence. “If it was money—”

“—you’d already be out with the tambourine and I’d be out the door.”

Dippy Chazz’s usual Wisconsin Old Fashioned shows up, Korbel brandy, 7UP lithiated lemon soda, and, sharing the toothpick with a cherry, a pickled Brussels sprout.

“Ciao, Caramello.” It’s Lois, the usherette of interest, blonde, curvaceous, without flaw, precisely fine-tuned as to the exact makeup that goes with the undependable light in here.

As if aware of its effect on Chazz, she hasn’t changed out of her usherette outfit either—that, that green stripe down the trouser leg—mm, hmm!

Accompanied by a redhead tonight just as attention-getting.

“Amore mio,” helplessly murmurs Dippy Chazz.

“Ooh yes, just a li’l sip, puh-leeze?” from a narrow velvet case producing a custom gold-plated soda straw with a noticeable L engraved on it.

Snuggling in, she gets to work on the Wisconsin favorite, unlipping her straw long enough to remember, “Oh, Giancarlo? some funny men came around this morning, to our li’l playroom? ”

“Porca miseria,” turning his head so fast his hat slides off of it, “and they followed you here, right?”

“Hm? Oh, no forget it, not my type, I like ’em suave and Continental and— Chazzy? Sugarcube? Where the hell’d he go?”

“Seven-teen’ll getcha twen-ty, yes,” Sheldon murmuring to the tune of “Shadow Waltz,” “it will…”

Lois fishing around for her car keys. “See if I can catch up with him, you mind, Daphne?”

“Oh no, not at all,” her friend smiling and glaring at the same time. “Thought we were going on down to Chicago tonight.”

“You’ll be OK here.”

“Till I’m not OK, Lo-life.”

“Giancarlo’s friend here, what was your name again, he’ll keep an eye on you I’m sure. Hicks? Meet Daphne. Back in a breeze, children.”

Hicks and Daphne have a quick look at each other.

She’s not exactly screaming “Help me!” but then she doesn’t have to. Natural redhead, captivating set of pins, a way of letting you know you’re getting the O-O but gO-Od. Hicks doesn’t devote much thought, he just steps in.

“OK, um, Daphne, anything here I should know about?”

“Sure. Those two gorillas that just came in the door?”

So there are, sporting vaguely medical whites, looking a bit cross, as if they were expecting a quieter evening.

“They’re after you? Better come on, then.”

“Oh, brother!” comments April when she hears the story later. “Just like that, natch, ‘Better come on, then.’ Leave the thinking to Officer Johnson, as always.”

“Two on one, come on, Angel, fair’s fair, ain’t it.”

“Maybe you also recognized her from the society section, thought you’d promote a quick fetch-and-return fee.”

Out the back way, full speed. “Abyssinia, Sheldon.”

“OK and whose tab? Yours or Miss Airmont’s?”

“Miss who?”

“Madcap Subdeb Cheese Heiress all over the papers for years now? how jay it’s getting around this joint anymore.”

At the moment Daphne happens to be on the run from Winnetka Shores Psychopathic, a ritzy banana plantation in the neighborhood, overseen by a Dr. Swampscott Vobe, M.D.

Known for a susceptibility to anything newfangled, Dr. Vobe has somehow gotten it into his head that the patients at WSP are all available to him as lab material to try out his therapy ideas on, free of charge.

Drugs, electricity, rays. Dr. Vobe is specially interested in rays.

“Come on in and have a look, just looking can’t hurt, can it?

” There’s a chemical hospital smell, lights blinking across the panels of mysterious electrical equipment, an oppressive throb of insincerity.

“You’ll like it here, nothing unpleasant, brief sessions under the rays, a few injections…

Oh and we’ll need a quick signature and a set of fingerprints—”

“You bet, only be a minute,” Daphne amiably, head-feinting one way then taking off in another, pursued, after a moment to confer, by the two heavies in loony-bin garb who by luck both turn out to be slower than Daphne by the step-and-a-half she needs, so that by the time they’re up to speed, she’s already on the running board of Lois’s snappy yellow Kissel Speedster and accelerating away.

“Sure, it could’ve been more romantic,” Hicks admits later to April, “but there was this crosswind situation, a sky nobody could see let alone read, kind of night when gales come down out of nowhere.”

They proceed at a brisk pace past the shadowed Spanish melancholy of the abandoned Plaza del Lago, maintaining in the dark its vigil for the return of Prosperity. Down to lakeside. Hicks hands Daphne aboard the speedboat he came in on, and off they go.

Later, out on the Lake, rooster tail luminous behind them, “I like this mahogany detailing. Honduran, isn’t it, not the cheap African stuff you find in Chris-Crafts.”

“Don’t tell Al Capone, he has a whole fleet.”

“Not that I’d dream of calling the Big Fellow a cheapskate, understand.”

Breezy chitchat. Hicks wonders how she knows so much about rumrunner design.

“You know, Miss Airmont, you could’ve said something. Snazzy redhead, how’s anybody supposed to react?”

“Thanks. Maybe just once I’d like to be rescued for myself, not for my hair.”

“This is what we’re doing? I’m rescuing you?”

“The Indians have a belief…”

“Sure, just gimme a second here,” Hicks sashaying them around a buoy rearing up out of the fog.

“You can’t go rescuing somebody and then just forget it—Ojibwe belief is, interfere with somebody’s life and you’re responsible for them forever—”

Opportunities for light conversation after that deteriorated along with the weather.

“See if I have all this straight,” April with an unnatural calm he recognizes, “you’re barrel-assing up the Lake with this very underage baby vamp, invisible state lines everyplace, cross any of which and it’s a federal rap, white slave laws and worse, when did you get so adventurous?”

“Last thing on my mind.”

“That I can believe.”

“All over with long before I met you, Angel.”

“How long?”

“Oh, long…long.”

“Happy we cleared that one up, Lunchmeat, and I’ll sure do the same for you sometime.”

“You have this confused with one of those type of movies you dames go to.”

“Lowlife and high-society party girl, is it so improbable?”

“Just a lift for a lady on the run, quick trip, no romance. Sorry.” Aware as he says it of how often he’s likely to have to again.

November gales out here being respected for their violence and deadliness, having over the years carried off Lake navigation of all tonnages, sending to the bottom lumber schooners and daysailers, working steamers and pleasure yachts, sparing nobody, arriving without warning, proceeding without mercy, not leaving till they decide to.

Tonight’s is turning out to be one of those.

“Trouble, captain?”

“With this on-and-off fog situation I’m not sure exactly where we are anymore.”

Daphne thinks they’re pretty close to an Ojibwe reservation, maybe not exactly one on the map, “Where I know some people.”