Page 30 of Shadow Ticket

“News to me.” Which it isn’t. Suspicions beginning to creep.

“You seem to have friends aboard.” Handing Hicks a pair of earphones, “OK if we listen too?”

“Hicksie, that you? It’s me, Stuffy. Stuffy Keegan.”

“Long time, Stuffy. Don’t sound like you.”

“You neither, come to think of it. Case you’re wondering, that’s me, I should say us, in the U-13, off your starboard quarter. Funny running into each other again out on the high seas like this, ain’t it.”

“You hear somebody laughin it must be we’re all in the loony bin. First I get railroaded back to New York, next thing somebody slips me a mickey, and I wake up on this tub. Sooner or later they’re gonna offload me in Europe someplace and that’s all I can find out.”

“We’re headed in to home port in the Adriatic Sea, if that helps any.”

“You guys wouldn’t be planning to…”

“Not us, nothin on board to do it with anymore.” Explaining that around the time the War ended, the Skipper got, maybe not religion, but something along those lines.

“Some Allied commission ordered him to bring the boat in to be scrapped and he decided not to. Went on the run, got her refitted for peacetime instead, deep-sixed all the torpedoes, torpedo tubes, guns, ammo, leavin plenty of room inside, free to start a new career running only nonbelligerent chores.”

“Meaning, remind me again…”

“Well, most of it, coppers like yourself would call us smugglers, though we like to say ‘outlaws of the Deep.’ ”

“There you go.”

“Free trade—see, back in Milwaukee, freedom, nobody thought much about it, we just figured hey, a free country ain’t it and left it at that.

But—” this being about the point Hicks begins to feel warning signs from his feet—“the real thing, what if that’s only when they’re comin after you for somethin?

But they haven’t caught you yet. So for a while, as long as you can stay on the run, that’s the only time you’re really free? ”

“Uh-huh well Stuffy like they say there in the submarine racket, too deep for me.”

A stretch of atmospheric crackling easy to confuse with loss of signal. From the dining saloon across the way, sounds of crockery, glassware, festivity.

“Let’s talk it over sometime,” Stuffy suggests. “Better if there’s beer on the table. You ever get to Fiume, that’s our home port these days, there’s some swell beer joints, it’s the Milwaukee of the Adriatic.”

“Sure, fair enough. Lookin forward, Stuffy.”

—

Meantime there remain the more immediate and less certain emotions of Porfirio del Vasto to worry about.

“Look, Clifton, you’ve dealt with him before.”

“Off and on since the War.”

“And how many admirers of his ex- or do I mean current missus has he given the bump to?”

“How many in person?…not counting all the duels, hmm…a dozen?”

“Duels.”

“Pistols. Antique set of Wogdons. Perfect record, goes without saying, though Don Porfirio prefers to think of himself as a lucky amateur. The simple appearance of his name on a passenger list is enough to transform the most cheerful vessel afloat into a Liner of Doom…alcohol consumption rises drastically, stylish black frocks come out of steamer trunks to be ironed and ready, given the high expectation of more than one burial at sea.”

“I think he might have me on one of his lists. He’s got an idea somehow that me and that Glow’ve been kidding around.”

“With you, not likely. Dancing all night in public? How would you have found the time?”

“There you go. Do me a favor and mention that to him next time you get a chance.”

“Soupe de canard, as they say on the ?le-de-France.”

Hicks signals for another Jack Rose, drinkers of which seem to make up a good percentage of the passenger list. Part of the appeal is watching a steward try to bring one across a deck forever in motion without spilling any from the glass it comes in, a shallow cone set on a long stem and filled to the brim.

Instead of Stateside applejack they’re using calvados, and making the cocktail in bulk early each morning so that it can be delivered out of a convenient spigot arrangement.

At this rate Hicks will be a screaming dipso before he ever sets foot on land again.

—

After lurking in doorways in Milwaukee observing pickpockets at all levels of skill, Hicks figures he has a pretty good eye for the profession by now, but this Porfirio is something to watch.

First time Hicks tries to chisel a smoke, “Cómo no, mi amigo, allow me a moment,” scanning the deck traffic for a likely target, eventually lifting from a passing inner pocket a cigarette case, taking out a cigarette for Hicks and another for himself, substituting two different and cheaper brands, returning the case, meanwhile lighting up, and nobody the wiser.

“Oh, who doesn’t love a jewel thief, good-hearted outlaw preying only on greedy plutes who can afford to lose a sparkler or two. Hardly ever collared for it, filed under Annoyance more than Threat.”

“Harsh words, though deserved. It’s why I should really quit the game—too safe, too low-energy, I need a more elevated level of risk.”

“Uh, huh. And how’s that going for you?”

“Hmm?”

“World Depression, so forth?”

“Could not be more lively. We are currently in a golden age of jewel theft. Theatrical skills, physical timing, stage magic, acting, improvisation, all the tool kit of gemstone redistribution, called upon as never before. I can’t complain, although I imagine I do, perhaps more than I’m aware.”

A little disingenuous. In fact he hasn’t quit at all, and uses the revenue from his light-fingered activities to finance a diverse portfolio of projects, among them currently the used autogyro business.

Amateurs who thought they’d be up flying everywhere on the cheap are discovering it requires more from them in the way of dedication than they can provide.

Not to mention the infernal noise. Hence suddenly a sizable inventory of pre-owned autogyros there to be picked up for eight bars of “I Got Rhythm” with or without ukelele accompaniment.

—

By the time Hicks and Glow might’ve been ready to rendezvous under a suitable phase of the moon with a studio orchestra somewhere in the background, the weather has in fact turned from unpleasant to quite unpleasant indeed, not exactly Oconomowoc Lake in the summertime, the ship beginning tonight in fact to take some 20- to 30-degree rolls, waves rearing up and crashing all over the weather decks, which not unexpectedly are now forbidden to passengers.

Glow, tonight sporting a metal-gray Fortuny Delphos gown, a glamorous finely pleated hand-me-down that more than once has been pulled whispering through the circumference of a wedding ring, her own or somebody’s, seems strangely energized by all this.

“And isn’t that just the appeal, tough guy? Somebody doesn’t want us to be somewhere. So we sneak out together to a forbidden liaison, helpless before the towering waves of our passion.”

“Jake with me,” though it’s setups like this, actually, that the Gumshoe’s Manual tends most earnestly to caution against, often adding, more than once in fact, that the generally accepted procedure here is to just breeze, with no second thoughts.

Then again, alone out here on the ocean with tomato quality like this and so forth…c’mon.

Of course into the churning seascape of possibilities, as if on cue, comes striding who but Porfirio, with a betrayed pout on his face.

“After I bared my soul to you, after you gave me your word you’d stay away from her…”

“It isn’t what it looks like—”

…whereupon Porfirio hauls out a high-caliber cannon and blasts Hicks backwards over the lifelines and into the sea, and forgets to call “Man overboard.”

Well, no, actually Porfirio now seems to be pushing a wad of cash into Hicks’s pocket. “By way of apology. Far below the customary rate, if that helps any.”

If what Hicks sees in Porfirio’s eyes isn’t exactly uneasiness, it’s at least some recognition that gunplay might not be the best option here.

“Apologizing for not shooting at me?”

“For not taking you seriously. It was the dancing that had me confused. She’s still too young for gigolos just yet, but somehow—”

“That’s what you had me figured for. Don’t worry, hey.

The hand I kiss at the end of a number has often enough been known to have a double sawbuck wadded up in it, which she usually gets back in free drinks by the end of the evening anyway, so everybody ends up happy. Wish I could say the same for you.”

“Me? Felíz como lombriz, why, do I appear melancholy somehow?”

“Idiotic would be closer,” Glow sez.

“A matter between men, mi vida, you still have much to discover,” a rapid side-glance at Hicks, “about what a tipo fácil I can be.”

—

First port of call is Tangier. Porfirio and Glow debark together, and sure enough, there waiting on the pier is the autogyro.

“Fresh from the assembly line, stock model Pitcairn, Wright engine, just out of final inspection. Can’t have been flown much more than 10 kilometers, all yours now, soul of my heart.”

Stolen from some scatterbrained millionaire, fallen off a truck, anybody’s guess.

“Lists for $6,750 new. Call it six even, we’ll throw in a two-year maintenance plan, parts and labor exclusive of rotor drive and transmission…”

There remains the question of how she’ll come up with the monthly payments in Swiss francs, which Porfirio insists on as part of the deal, foreseeing up to a year of dreary small-scale swindles in neighborhoods normally better avoided, sweet-talking after-hours working stiffs out of pocket money they’ll always have better uses for, pretending to herself it’s no worse than B-girl work, at least she’s not selling anybody rotgut, which possibly amounts in the long term to a net salvation of stomachs…

Yet it’s always a source of personal humiliation that from time to time she’s obliged to put in actual working time as the cut-rate adventuress she pretends to be in her magazine articles, running tabs in saloons everywhere from grand hotels to waterfront dives, not just ambi- but multidextrous, keeping three, sometimes four routines going at any given time, while softly—with luck, attractively—humming the divorcée blues.

Worse, she’s begun sometimes to find the humiliation not so bad, almost healthy, among the earliest signs of what’s already taking hold of her. People assume she’s a masochist of some kind.

“In the sense,” she supposes, “that Pollyanna is a masochist, along with racetrack touts, stock market analysts, from any of whom a happy attitude is required despite evidence otherwise.”

Presently here are the del Vastos, up in the autogyro, out for a test spin, breezing by, waving, bound for the Rock of Gibraltar, a brief though dramatic landing on top.

Later the same evening, a quiet knock, TAPtaptap, on a window far above street level.

Glow responds, of course, who would it be but Porfirio, anchored swaying against the night.

“Yes, once again it is I, the Saint Nicholas of love, gently landed on your unforgivingly angled rooftop…”

“Yes, Porfirio, and Feliz Navidad back to you of course pero qué carajo this time of night…”

“Only, mi vida, that being together with you in the sky today it slipped my mind to mention how critical is the ratio between engine speed and rotor tachometer reading, which must be held at 12 or 12 and a half to one—”

“And you wouldn’t have gotten to sleep all night and been too tired tomorrow to remember to tell me then, how thoughtful, Porfirio.”

“Many have been ejected from the Brotherhood of International Gyro Brokers And Dealers for infractions far less serious…”

“I suppose I should at least invite you in for mint tea. That machine is securely parked, I hope. Not about to slide off the roof or anything.”