Page 31 of Shadow Ticket

The train stops at Belgrade for about an hour.

Hicks, nodding in and out of slumber, is aware that at some point Alf and Pips, after an unexpected wire from London, “Uncle Bostwick having another episode. Please do try to pop round forthwith. Regards from all,” have taken their leave, promising to reconnect soon in Budapest, handing him a nickel-plated policeman’s whistle, “Just give us a blast on the old Acme Thunderer here, we’ll be with you straightaway. ”

“If you’re close enough to hear it, you mean.”

“No matter how far apart we are.”

“A long-distance whistle? How’s that work? Radio?”

“Apports. Ask anyone when you get to Budapest, they’ll explain.”

Out the door, onto the platform, off into early Yugoslavian night, as a new and slippery customer arrives to replace them, introducing himself as Egon Praediger, International Criminal Police Commission, flipping open a leather ID holder, “We happen to be headquartered in Vienna, though our remit covers the Continent.”

“Those Interpol guys.” A European inter-cop concept Hicks now dimly recalls Boynt Crosstown being a big admirer of. There may have been a memo way back when, maybe even two.

Hicks figures this Viennese flatfoot for around inspector level—a shade too nervous for the suave cop-about-town impression he’s trying for, haircut marcelled to an eight-ball shine, bespoke suit, three buttons, side vents, soft shoulder, lowered lapel notch, lapels visibly spangled in white which doesn’t seem to be dandruff.

“Knize, the single oasis in the sartorial wasteland between Naples and London, unless you count the newer German military uniforms which begin to show some glimmerings of promise.” Out with a jarful of cocaine crystals, producing a miniature hand-cranked grinder and sifting a cone of white powder which he then carefully formats into a number of nose-appropriate lines, a routine known around Chicago as “hitching up the reindeer.” “Sometimes about now, a schnupf at the right moment can help us to refocus and not go wandering off down the dead ends of the afternoon…”

“Ask you something there, Egon—does U-Ops know about me getting shanghaied and so forth?”

“They’re the ones who set it up.”

Oh, boy. “And it’s jake with them you tellin me about it?”

“Can’t see much harm.” Meaning what are you going to do about it, chump?

“Wait a minute,” sometimes with unfamiliar coppers, a gumshoe needs to carefully review who expects what in the way of coordination, “nothin personal, just like to know how it all shakes out, who’s workin for who again here exactly and so forth?”

One of those mid-European eyebrow gestures. “Actually, ICPC have a reciprocity arrangement with your U-Ops, free access to the services of any field operative anywhere in the world. And to be honest, just at the moment we could use some of that famous American ‘moxie’—”

“Who, me? I’m already over here on another ticket, what happens with that?”

“A runaway cheese heiress you have been assigned to locate and return to the U.S. whose father”—ominous pause—“Bruno…Air-mont,” the way Dracula pronounces the name Van Helsing, “happens at the moment to be our most sought-after public enemy.”

“Sure, big around Milwaukee once upon a time, Al Capone of Cheese, dropped out of sight a while back, foreign jail, some say a remote tropical island?”

“He’s out and about and quite among us I fear. His dossier has continued to thicken, criminal activities including murder, tax evasion in a number of countries, Cheese Fraud routinely committed by a counterfeit cheese operation Continent-wide, plus any number of offshore affiliates—”

“Egon. Wait. C’mon…counterfeit cheese?”

“Oh ja, far worse than most civilians realize. Half the time don’t know what they’re eating anyway.

Nor have the least idea how difficult the International Cheese Syndicate can become.

The Roquefort police, the Gorgonzola squadri, even Switzerland—harmless by comparison.

InChSyn are the mad dog of Cheese Enforcement, authorized to conduct special operations, come in through windows, breach walls, deploy explosives…

“Cheese Fraud being a metaphor of course, a screen, a front for something more geopolitical, some grand face-off between the cheese-based or colonialist powers, basically northwest Europe, and the vast teeming cheeselessness of Asia, their widely known reluctance to have much to do with cheese, given a long history of keeping cattle more for farmwork than for dairy products, millions of Orientals over the generations have grown unfamiliar with cheese, what little they do run across giving them indigestion, putting Asia out of the picture as a major cheese market…”

Praediger’s upper lip by now is shining from a nasal flow more or less constant. Trying to ignore crazed eyeballs, too much white showing compared to iris, sure signs of either a hophead or a candidate for Winnebago, Hicks pretends they’re having a reasonable discussion.

“See, there’s nothing on my work order,” he tries to point out, “says anything about no Bruno or nothin, we’d have to start a new ticket for that, which would need Home Office approval, which somebody could put in a request chit for, back to Chicago, if they don’t mind springing for overseas cable rates—”

Laughing dismissively, a reckless glaze creeping over his eyeballs, Praediger hands over a weighty file. “Just a summary, understand, full documentation would require an extra railway carriage at least.”

—

Turns out Bruno has been over here in Central Europe for some time now, headquartered in Geneva, where as the Al Capone of Cheese he swiftly reached an arrangement with the InChSyn about the time the Swiss Cheese Union took its fateful step of declaring fondue the national dish.

Dispatching international flying squads, said to be packing automatic snub-nose crossbows, to implement and if necessary enforce rind inspections, requiring that the word “Switzerland” appear repeatedly at a frequency and in a typeface and shade of red which had to be exactly right, or risk consequences grim indeed…

though undeterred as always, counterfeiters, Bruno among them, nevertheless abounded.

It was like Prohibition all over again, only different.

“Meanwhile, as you pursue the elusive Miss Airmont, we keep the shadow on you day and night, hoping that Bruno at a moment of diminished attention will make some fateful lunge and be drawn out of his safe perimeter, even for a fraction of a second, whereupon we are prepared to step in and apprehend.”

“And maybe you can tell me, is Daphne in on this too?”

“Is it of some concern to you?”

“If she’s helping to bring down the law on her own father—”

“In your investigations you cannot have failed to notice how often fathers and daughters are run by strange emotions, which, although occasionally dangerous, do continue to guarantee job security for us all.”

“OK, just gonna look in the Manual here for a minute…right, the next question I’m spoze to ask is, is who are you reporting to, who is it that’s sending me off onto one more miserable damn hopeless ticket I never heard of, here?”

Praediger doesn’t answer, his eyes are open but his attention seems to be elsewhere. Just about the time Hicks has decided to give him a poke he begins to speak.

“This is the ball bearing on which everything since 1919 has gone pivoting, this year is when it all begins to come apart. Europe trembles, not only with fear but with desire. Desire for what has almost arrived, deepening over us, a long erotic buildup before the shuddering instant of clarity, a violent collapse of civil order which will spread from a radiant point in or near Vienna, rapidly and without limit in every direction, and so across the continents, trackless forests and unvisited lakes, plaintext suburbs and cryptic native quarters, battlefields historic and potential, prairie drifted over the horizon with enough edible prey to solve the Meat Question forever…” by now having lapsed into some prophetic trance, at which the best Hicks can do is stare politely and wait for it to all go away, wondering how he’s supposed to deal with this—pretend to understand what the bughouse Austrian is talking about.

Humor him? Do a sociable noseful just to keep the conversation going?

Hmm. Well, maybe…

—

“So…you’re bringing me in to Vienna?”

“We are continuing on to Budapest.”

“I thought Vienna was you folks’ version of downtown.”

“Another ‘tale of two cities,’ Vienna solemn and psychoanalytic, while just down the river in Budapest carouses a psychical Mardi Gras in every shade of the supernatural no matter how lurid. Dieser Stadt,” a shiver perhaps not altogether unconnected with sleigh-riding activities, “ist mir sehr unheimlich.

You would say, it gives me the creeps. Vienna is perhaps not for everyone, but Budapest—iih!

Budapest just at the moment is the metropolis and beating heart of asport/apport activities, where objects precious and ordinary, exquisite and kitsch, big and small, have been mysteriously vanishing on the order of dozens per day, creating hours of overtime not only for the Budapest police but for us at the Inter-police Commission in Vienna as well.

“The chief beneficiaries according to the Evidenzbüro are a syndicate of fences closely associated with Bruno Airmont.” Handing over a folder with a couple of mug shots.

“Who’s this?”

“Bruno’s deputy, Ace Lomax, wants and warrants out on him internationally for years now, a miracle of lubrication, no matter how tightly we think we’ve got hold of him, somehow he always slips away.

We have found it necessary to seek help in Budapest, and come to arrangements with the noted apportist Dr. Zoltán von Kiss.

Obviously the Directorate cannot officially admit any connection with apports and the paranormal, preferring in fact to deny all acquaintance with Dr. von Kiss, despite his reputation throughout Central Europe. ”

“Hep to that, Milwaukee PD has the same problem, psychics make ’em all jumpy.”

“Dr. von Kiss will be meeting us at the East Station. He is actively engaged on a daily basis with criminal elements in Budapest, especially receivers of stolen goods, and through them, from time to time, with Mr. Lomax. Which should allow you to keep a close eye without raising too much suspicion.”

“That’s not what I’m supposed to be doing over here, you can check with U-Ops—”

“We did. Ace Lomax is your new assignment. The paperwork will arrive in a few days.”

“If somebody’s dog don’t eat it first. And if I decide to skip on you? That could happen too.”

“Where would you go? We would arrest you before you could get anywhere. Here’s the warrant, all filled in, approved, signed and stamped, Unlawful Flight to Avoid Employment.” Out with another mug shot, which he attaches to the warrant.

“Wait. That’s me?”

“Belinograph, all the way from Chicago. Pretty close likeness, isn’t it, allowing maybe for some facial wear and tear since the long-ago day it first went into your file.”

“I look like such a kid, what happened?”

“Something about this troubles you, I can tell.”

“Well, there used to be more time to make a getaway. Now they’re flashing everybody’s mug shot all around the world in the blink of an eye, pretty soon there’s no place to run to anymore. Aside from that, no, nothin too bothersome.”

“Meanwhile please accept this gift from the ICPC—”

Setting it carefully in easy reach. Well. What’s this then. Black, quietly gleaming, shape like a 1911 Colt automatic but smaller, lighter, the little guy in a saloon fight who eventually mops up the floor with everybody.

“Mr. McTaggart, may we introduce the Walther PPK. Newest model, fits unobtrusively in the pocket of the most respectable civilian suit, even what you have on. As popular on this side of the law as the Mauser Bolo is on the other. Already billed to U-Ops corporate overhead and registered in your name. Legally yours, take it away.”

“Quick work.”

“All done before you even left the States.”

Takes a minute for this to register. By the time it does, Praediger, nose merrily aglow, is on about the PPK vis-à-vis the Versailles-compliant Mauser C96, known as the Bolo because it’s said to be a big favorite with Bolsheviks, “providing a fine example of the LOUIE, or Law of Unintended Effects, five and a half inches having been too long a barrel for the victorious Entente, who decreed that the C96 must have an inch and a half of its barrel chopped off before they’d feel safe in their peacetime beds, but then ha-HA!

in kicks the LOUIE, as criminals everywhere begin to realize owing to the shorter barrel how concealable under any number of getups the Bolo has turned out to be, finding its way into places where its earlier full length never would have allowed it…

” another jingle-bells excursion out onto the ski slopes of commentary.

Hicks chisels a Régie from a passing train attendant, lights up, and pretends to be listening. But his mood is troubled.