Page 38 of Shadow Ticket
For a while Daphne, flown into a dither, was chasing all over the map, trying to be there waiting wherever the puck might be on its way to but not always guessing right, along with wires going astray, trains running late, street-fighting and barricades to detour around and so forth, sleeping and eating when she can, usually within earshot of railway stations, steered along by tattered notices stuck onto public surfaces, helpful Swing Kids, Eukodal addicts with their own notions about the sequence and speed of passing events, Daphne continuing to run a train and a half, a day or a night or a street address behind, till eventually the charm wore off and she wound down to this pause in Budapest, where she figures to take a rest and wait to see if the band or any of its unknown fragments might find their way to her.
“…but perhaps I’m telling you more than I should…”
“I’m interested, really.”
Hicks could point out that keeping still and listening to a story isn’t always the same thing as falling for it, but sees no reason to start an argument, being no stranger to the time-honored routine men have had to sit through since the world has been the world, listening to desirable women banging on about their love-life history in hopes however remote of some payoff in the cheerfully jangling currency of present-tense whoopee.
Talk about meeting cute. You’d think she’d have known better by then.
It was in Chicago a few years back, still deep in her teen playgirl phase, Hop remembers some block-long Chicago speak while Daphne remembers someplace more intimate…
getting set to move along, when shots ring out.
A cocktail she has been looking forward to making the acquaintance of goes flying one direction, and the person bringing it another, ending up under the nearest table.
Hop touching his hat brim, “That may’ve been meant for me, Miss, awful sorry.”
“Well, you should be. You owe me a double Aviation…and for dry-cleaning this dress,” realizing, in one of those thunderclaps that can roll in sometimes and last for more than the average length of a jukebox number, that this is the goods, the one she’s been looking for forever.
What am I thinking? she then proceeds to spend a good deal of time asking herself.
Forever? Who am I kidding? Long before taking her first gowned step into the Grand Ballroom at the Pfister Hotel, she’s been aware of men hanging around who thought of themselves as prime domestic material, showing up with diamond charm bracelets, wristwatches, cigarette cases, often overpriced, always annoying.
None until Hop had ever considered a serenade.
Daphne could just sit and listen to Hop on that licorice stick all day and night, especially classical stuff like the solo from Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No.
2, swinging it with a respectful jazz-band approach.
Gets her every time. “I mean he’s not that bad on ‘Embraceable You,’ and ‘Siboney’ can always get my ticker to doing the rumba, but when he starts in on that Rachmaninoff, a girl’s no longer legally responsible. ”
“For…?”
“Anything.”
After listening politely to this sort of thing for as long as he figures he has to, “Truth is,” Hicks confesses, “as I move into mid-career and begin to specialize, I’ve been trying not to work any more of these romantic scenarios than I have to.”
“Maybe you just don’t like women much. Afraid of us or something.”
“Who isn’t? Even women are afraid of women. Scientific fact, so I hear.”
“Nothing to get defensive about, is it.” Along with a look implying “You big gorilla.”
“You’ll want to keep watching my left, sometimes I let it drop.”
Taking a long backbeat, “You don’t think much of us.”
“Which ‘us’ would that be again?”
“Whoever sent you over here after me.”
“All being handled out of a law office up on North Wabash—your mother who misses you, family, relatives, all chipping in on the fee and let’s not forget that Rodney, your, which he keeps reminding everybody about, fiancé?”
At the mention of whom she maybe doesn’t wince but does blink expressively once or twice.
“Well. It’s not like he’s hopping the next liner over here, is it.
No, instead Li’l Million-and-a-Half hires a goon to come and do it for him.
Can’t trust men? Jury’s still out, a girl lives in hope—but damn sure there’s not one woman I’d ever trust for as long as it takes to blink a set of fake eyelashes, and especially not Mrs. Vivacia Airmont, my own mother.
” A pause, as if for thought. “Of course she’s been busy with pals at the State Department, making a nuisance of herself, desperate to have me back, maternal as it gets, gosh yes, can’t wait, deported back to the mother country, how humiliating is that? ”
“About as much as being played for a sucker once again, after all these promises of advance money and per diem hard to pass up, now it’s lookin like the only way I’ll ever see a payday out of this ticket is if I can get you back Stateside.”
“How inconvenient for you, to come all this way for so much less than nothing, and in the middle of a world Depression too,” shaking her head slowly. “You seriously believed everything they told you? For a beat-up old-timer you’re pretty naive.”
“And you’re way more fly than the junior party regular the papers still like to write you up as, too young to know any better, uh huh, instead here’s Greta Garbo, all gussied up and out on the prowl and looking for trouble.”
“And thinking to herself, Oh jumping catfish, once isn’t enough, here comes another rescue job, big sentimental sap, lumbering on in, all reflexes, never asking if anybody even wants to be rescued.”
“Except for right now, o’ course.”
“Oh, you’ve got a nerve.”
“Fact it looks like I come rollin into town just in time, ain’t it.”
“And me wondering when some hired bloodhound will show up, never dreaming it’d be you— Ahh! how down in the world I’ve sunk—this is all I’m worth anymore, look what they’re sending over here to put the snatch on me, shanghai me back in a drugged stupor—”
“Don’t know that I’d put it that way,” Hicks trying to keep hold of his amiability, “for one thing, no snatch job was ever mentioned in the ticket, maybe something about tactfully passing along an offer to reconcile with folks who care enough about you to be paying Unamalgamated’s ‘Top Insider’ rate to see you back with them safe and sound, what’s wrong with that? ”
“All just one more pickup and delivery for you, isn’t it, well, go on ahead, tough guy, what’re you waiting for? Slap on those cuffs and bring me on back to the U.S.A.”
“OK, maybe not ‘bring,’ bring is how they put it, what they thought they were hiring me for. Which always turns out to be a mug who won’t mind getting beat up.”
“Maybe you’re one of those Krafft-Ebing cases who enjoys it.”
“Just another kind of hard labor’s all, part of the paycheck, still better than diggin ditches.
Where it gets real uncomfortable is the time you lose when somethin gets fractured.
Putting in for the insurance. Cheapskate adjusters always trying to blame it on you.
‘What were you doing in that neighborhood, that time of night?’ all that malarkey. ”
“Tough guy. Cement block all the way through. And still can’t keep yourself away from any woman even looks like she’s in trouble.”
“What other kind of dame is there?”
“Hope you’re listening, here, Repossess Man, ’cause nothing’s going to change. I won’t go back to the States without Hop.”
“Whereabouts,” Hicks giving her his quit-fooling squint, “unknown right now. Swell. Does this— I hope this doesn’t mean you want to hire me, locate him for you, nothing like ’at ’cause see, that’d have to be written up as a whole new ticket? New case number, forms to fill out?”
As the Gumshoe’s Manual advises, always be watching for the next ticket to be sprung on you with no advance word, no front money, plus that all but certain promise of uncompensated overtime.
Someday you may be lucky enough to avoid it, but for now get used to making out the forms in your head anyway.
“Hadn’t occurred to me till you brought it up, but it’s beginning to sound like an idea. Maybe you’re brighter than you look.”
“And all I’ll have to do, let’s see, is track down Hop for you, and you’ll pack right on up and head for home?”
“The minute I see his smiling face.”
How many times has he sworn the same New Year’s resolution, nights posted outside somebody else’s love nest, shivering in freezing rain or Lake-effect snowfall, chances for personal whoopee remote at best—No More Matrimonials! Ever!
“I need a ticket OK’d by the Home Office, if I step into this without one it’ll have to be for free and out of my own pocket, which maybe I already mentioned is empty.
Not to mention overtime, carfare, travel and entertainment, extra ammo, each with its own set of forms to be filled out sooner or later, at length and often in triplicate. ”
“Suppose I pick up the tab and we do it all in cash?”
“Wouldn’t happen to have a typewriter around?”
“I used to always bring one along in a hatbox, I think this time I left it back in M’waukee, but don’t worry, just a detail. Does this mean that you might help me find Hop and get him out of any trouble he may’ve gotten himself into? Oh, how can I ever…”
Prolonged exhalation. “Let’s go over the rates. Just for the heck of it, understand.”