Page 21 of Shadow Ticket

For days now Hicks has been noticing, even in the daylight and out on the street, the return, from somewhere back in deeper Prohibition times, all across his body and over his face, light as delusional bugs, the ghostly crawl of professional finger-eye coordination, somewhere above and in the distance, tightening in on whatever is centered in its crosshairs, which at the moment happens to be Hicks’s head.

To a concertina rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” half a block away, Hicks is handed a parcel wrapped in festive red-and-green paper whose design features Xmas trees, reindeer, candy canes, so forth. Ribbon tied in a big bow. Something to do with Christmas.

“This is for you.”

“Not me.”

Shrug. “We’re only the delivery guys.”

Hicks takes a close, doubtful look. “Which would be…”

“We’re Santa’s elves.”

“Uh huh, but…”

“You know Billie the Brownie down at Schuster’s, right? OK, we’re relatives.”

“Cousins.”

“They made him up, he’s a make-believe department store critter—”

“Skeptical, ain’t you?”

“Billie the Brownie is real, you never heard him on the radio?”

“WTMJ, weekdays at five.”

“Sure, the person who plays Billie on the radio is real but…maybe not Billie himself, not in…the same way that, oh, Walter Winchell is, for example.”

“Walter Winchell is real?”

It isn’t that Hicks enjoys mutually blank staring, though now and then he’ll find himself provoking some, like calling a time-out in a game, hoping to pick up a few meaningful seconds. Which doesn’t seem to be happening here.

“And…now we suppose you’ll tell us Amos ’n’ Andy aren’t really Negroes either.”

“Both white guys, sorry, didn’t you see the movie?”

“Check and Double Check, sure, two white guys in blackface.”

“Well, that was them. Can’t believe I’m the one you heard it from first.”

“And, and…Heinie und His Grenadiers, how about them, they’re not really Germans?”

“Standard-issue Americans, the whole gang, sorry.”

Here they are standing in the middle of downtown Milwaukee, holiday shoppers hurrying to and fro, having this discussion.

“Sorry, but somehow you boys don’t look like elves.”

“We’re not short enough?”

“Ears, he probably wants pointed ears.”

“That’d help, yeah, and aren’t you supposed to be in some kind of elf outfits or somethin too, you know, those hats you guys wear…”

“Only during working hours, at the moment we’re still off the clock, this isn’t official elf business.”

“Not like he needs to know, Sven.”

“Oops.”

“Could you give me some idea who this is from, at least?”

“Not unless you’re authorized to see the work order, which could put the Saint in something of a mood, just when he needs his wits about him, big delivery schedule coming up and so forth…”

“Wait, the name here, this isn’t me, this is for somebody else, you got the wrong—”

“Got to breeze, children all over the world to deal with, you understand.”

“You have a real Merry Xmas now, Mister Schultz.”

And like that, considering the tool kit of tricks available to elves, both of them have vanished.

Hicks has begun to get funny looks from passersby.

The package, however, is still there in his hands.

Seems heavy for its size, which could always mean something interesting, maybe even a gold ingot or something.

’Course there’s interesting and there’s—

“Well, howdy there, Capitalist Scum, funny running into you again.”

Damn if it ain’t the same sawed-off Bolshevik striker Hicks didn’t manage to kill that fateful night not so long ago—

“Sure…been a while, never did catch your name…”

“Four-Eyes is good enough, don’t mean we’re part of each other’s social life now.”

As things fall out it only looks like Hicks saved Four-Eyes’s life back then—in fact now it’s Four-Eyes who’s about to save his.

“None of my business what’s in that package they just handed you there, but over on my side of the Beerline those two guys are well-known as the worst kind of bad news, and the sooner you deep-six that thing the better for everybody.”

“Really, you think?”

“Chump, everybody can hear it ticking from down the block. Happiest holiday wishes, if you should live so long.”

“Sure, and a Merry Christmas right back atcha.”

Carrying the package like he would any normal object, Hicks heads for Wisebroad’s Shoes, a short walk away, through iced-in weekday gloom, dodging streetcars with snowplows bolted onto their front ends and window-shoppers throwing him troubled gazes, past Depression-Christmas vaudeville houses less brightly lit, reduced prices matinee and evening, according to industry folklore this being among the worst weeks in show business, and since it’s a week in Milwaukee besides, twice as bad as that, maybe more.

Whenever he’s out in the street and not sure what to do, being superstitious as anybody, Hicks has fallen into the habit of stepping over and onto the nearest penny scale and reading his fortune.

Today he gets the traditional ticket, weight on one side and fortune on the other—“Need to lose some extra weight, pal, and sooner’d be better than later. Good luck.”

By now Hicks is used to this sort of thing, a network of penny scales all over town plus Chicago that can recognize him personally even blocks away. Must be done with radio waves somehow. He keeps meaning to ask Skeet and his pals…

Let’s see, it said extra weight…hmm…could that mean…He finds and fishes out another penny and drops it. The ticket reads “What’d I just say? You’re carrying TOO MUCH EXTRA WEIGHT, Einstein, get me? Think about it and don’t take too long.”

A wave of leather and shoe-polish aroma billows out to greet him as he comes through the door of Wisebroad’s.

Everybody’s in their socks, as if business is so slow they’re reduced to measuring each other’s feet.

Al, Benny, Chuck, DeQuincy, and Edgeworth aren’t their real names but actually code words based on shoe widths—with a Depression on, salesman-to-salesman talk tends to be guarded, like “Anybody seen Benny?” can mean “We don’t have this in a B width, what can we switch it for? ”

“Season’s greetings, Zoomer,” Hicks’s handle around here, short for Halls of Montezuma, a way of saying “Shoe’s a triple-E.”

“How’s ’em wingtips workin out?”

“Big hit at the country club. Mind if I give somethin a quick once-over on your X-ray machine there?”

“Long as somebody remembers to call the bomb squad.”

“Thanks.” Hicks bringing out a fin as several hands reach simultaneously. “Wait, let me look and see if I’ve got it in singles.”

One of many interesting facts about Milwaukee is that along with the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the QWERTY typewriter keyboard layout, it’s also the birthplace of the shoe-store X-ray machine.

“Not only hometown as they come,” Benny sweeping a gesture of respect, “but still under warranty too.”

“More of a Brannock Device fella myself,” remarks Edgeworth, “X-rays being fine, far as they go, except they don’t pick up fat, and fat’s the key, see, true fit is always a function of how fat the foot,” and so forth.

They gather around to eyeball the ghostly image.

“Any idea what that is?”

“Don’t look like much of anything, you ask me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s ticking, I can tell you that.”

“Just your imagination.”

“I think it could be a clock…maybe a pocket watch. Aren’t those numbers there, look.”

“Could almost be somebody’s face, see, that’s the nose there and—”

Despite a certain blurriness, Hicks realizes it is inescapably a face, not unchanging and lifeless, like you’d get from a severed head for example, but instead gazing back with its eyes wide open and holding a gleam of recognition, a face he’s supposed to know but doesn’t, or at least can’t name.

Mouth about to open and tell him something he should’ve known before this.

The window he never wanted to have to look through, the bar he used to know enough not to set foot inside of.

“Um, and how long do we plan to keep pumping X-ray energy through this object of unknown design?” inquires DeQuincy.

Edgeworth gives it a squint. “I’d call it in to the MPD, if you haven’t already.” They all exchange looks back and forth for what seems a while.

The Milwaukee PD bomb squad, given the history here, is possibly not the unit to be expecting much help from, even with boilerplated trucks these days, plenty of mattresses and so forth.

Sometimes they don’t even return phone calls.

“And heaven help you if it’s a false alarm, then they send you a bill, then bill collectors packing service .

38s, everybody meantime pissing and moaning about taxpayer money. ”

“Here, now put it up alongside your head, get your ear right down next to it, and—”

“Aghh!” DeQuincy recoiling in terror. “Not just ticking, now it’s playing…tunes, some…horrible Christmas medley. Just get it out of here once, if you wouldn’t mind?”

“Traditionally,” Edgeworth can’t help pointing out, “time bombs get set to some exact hour, right now it’s about a quarter to, gives you enough time if you care to to go deep-six this down in the Lake, which you recall is only a block or two out the door and to your right.”

“If you hear anything really loud out here…”

DeQuincy smiles briefly, narrowing his eyes, “Sure thing, Zoomer. Next of kin still at the same phone number?”

Dum dee um dum, tickticktick…Threading through the midday traffic, pedestrians in the classic Milwaukee stupor, Hicks, trying not to show too much of a problem with his nonchalance, makes it down to the Lake and not a minute too soon.