Page 23 of Shadow Ticket

Kelly directs a glance you could call discouraging.

“Ten Our Fathers, ten Hail Marys, and a good Act of Contrition. Fumes are givin me a headache here, reach me that Alka-Seltzer bottle, could you, and was there anything else today,” slowly rocking the hand he doesn’t shoot with, meaning please don’t waste his time.

“What’d I do now?”

“You’re not supposed to know this address.”

“I wouldn’t risk offending you today if it wasn’t serious.”

“Downtown bomb squad’s already been by, case you were wondering. Italophobic, you people, ain’tchyiz?”

They exchange a look. Hicks tries to be nonchalant. “Usual MPD bomb equals Italian malarkey.”

“In the business, we understand that an explosion, not always but sometimes, is actually somebody with something to say. Like, a voice, with a message we aren’t receiving so much as overhearing.”

“This pair of elves who delivered it might’ve thought I was somebody else.”

“Even if it wasn’t meant for you personally that don’t mean you ain’t in some trouble, which if you’re not too big of a minghiun you can see how much you’re in right now?”

Well, here it is again, sure took his time about it.

“You know who’s pickin up her IOUs, Hicksie. You’ve had a look at the rundown on his career, maybe you’re overdue for a vacation, and I don’t mean no weekend down to Edgewater Beach.”

“Quit fooling.” Somehow Hicks knows where he’s talking about.

“Give it some thought, it’s paradise over there, of course anything after Milwaukee would be—we get you plenty-a nice discounts—dames, coke fa you nose, bowlin alley, whatever you American boys go for, make you feel right at home.”

“It’s a Fascist dictatorship, Professore.”

“Don’t tell them around Palermo. What makes you private dicks any different?”

“Oh, swell, P.I.s are Fascists now?”

“Study your history, gabadost, you started off, mosta yiz, breakin up strikes, didn’t ya, same as Mussolini’s boys.”

“That don’t…” then stopping to think about it.

“Goon-squad work, stay in it long enough, you should know what happens.”

“I’m out of that now.”

“Yeah and once a torpedo, always a torpedo, ain’t it.”

“Just a hayseed flatfoot, Vuscenza.”

“Wouldn’t want to be sending you to your doom, see.”

“Appreciate that. But say you did…”

Afternoon has been steadily on the creep.

“Dark already, time to go turn on the scungilli,” each of the conch shells decoratively lining the front path being illuminated from within by its own tiny electric lamp.

Kelly flips one switch and it’s all lit up around here like Dearborn and Randolph. More dazzling as the night advances.

—

The Nazis are even less easy to get a story out of. Too many of them would be happy to take credit for a bomb of any size, even those who wouldn’t know one end of a firecracker from the other.

Ooly Schaufl seems sympathetic enough but isn’t too forthcoming. “Nobody our side of the Alps. Don’t know, somehow it don’t feel local. Somethin’s on the way around here, bigger than a gang war.”

“OK, without putting my nose in too far, on the off chance these two whizbangs are related…any thoughts about Stuffy Keegan? Like where is he and so forth.”

“No.”

“Is that no you don’t know where he is, or no, Hicks, I’m keepin shtum?”

“If I told you where, you’d ask why. If I told you why, you’d say, I don’t know what that is, explain it to me. By then I couldn’t explain much of anything ’cause I’d be dead.”

“Helpful for sure. All I wanted to know was—”

“Hicksie, maybe everybody knows, maybe you’re the only dummkopf from here to Peoria who don’t know.

Maybe there’s things’t’ll never be spoken out loud.

Maybe this is bigger than the Saint Valentine’s, bigger than the Lindbergh baby.

You’re the one with the license, so go ahead—private investigate your keester off, good luck, maybe you’ll even find something, but leave me out, OK, I don’t see it’ll do me much good to know or not know. ”

—

Lew Basnight isn’t much more help.

“I may not know exactly who it is, but maybe I have a number of ideas about who it isn’t, a list you’ve already been through as thoroughly as anybody.

What we’re after is an Overlooked Negative, an all but forbidden topic anymore, a whole chapter about which, in fact, like certain books of the Bible, was deliberately left out when the Gumshoe’s Manual was put together. ”

“Sure, Lew, you mind running me through that again?”

“I might if I could remember what it was I said, but I may in fact not be the wised-up old-timer you seem to be taking me for.”

“Lew, don’t disillusion me, you were always what I was hoping to be someday.”

“You don’t know how sad it makes me to hear that.

Ain’t that easy for tough guys. I may not look like it, but I was a tough customer once.

Civilized appearance was only one of my secret weapons.

I can quote you a list of well-known hired artillery who underestimated me, much to their subsequent dismay. ”

“Your name still strikes fear. I use it instead of flashing my license.”

“You don’t have to grovel.”