Page 41 of Shadow Ticket
Sometimes all Hicks wants is to be back in Milwaukee, restored to normal life, to a country not yet gone Fascist, a place of clarity and safety, still snoozy and safe, brat smoke from a lunch wagon grill, some kid practicing accordion through an open window, first snow coming into town off the prairie, barrooms where the smell of beer is generations deep, women in round little hats.
Penny scales, newsstands run by war veterans named Sarge, everyday street doors that lead to nothing deeper than friendly speakeasies, El Productos in glass tubes, fried perch and coleslaw on Friday nights.
Buttermilk crullers, goes without saying.
A fantasy of old-time Milwaukee, dairy-colored surfaces through the leisurely days imperceptibly continuing to darken behind a bituminous haze safe to breathe, never as bad as Chicago…
Back when you spent more time on the interurban than in a car, work just unexciting enough to keep a gumshoe happy, matrimonials with little to worry about except now and then some dainty pearl-handled Housewife’s Special in a kitchen cabinet someplace…
“Well-known condition,” nods Slide, “you might call it post-American, some choose it deliberately, some not, but whatever it is you’re headed for it, and on the express track too, allow me to point out.”
“Maybe someday I’ll get tired enough of all this to just turn around and go back to M’waukee. No reason not to, is there?”
“None at all. Ticket offices’ll be open bright and early tomorrow morning, anybody’s free to walk in—first, however, allow me to point out, seems to be, why look, it’s another Central European night to be got through, in the course of which anything might happen, even giving you a reason not to turn around but to continue ahead, the way you’ve been going, into winds of the sort that tend to pick up east of midnight. ”
It doesn’t improve the situation to learn that Terike will soon be off on a 2,000-kilometer scramble, maybe farther, in mostly, call it 90 percent, male company.
Hicks isn’t sure how comfortable he feels about that.
Allowing for rare examples of fidelity to absent wives or girlfriends, time taken up by field repairs and improvised parts redesign, men with little to no interest in women, that still leaves a hell of a lot of bikers at loose ends for Hicks to worry about, though Terike doesn’t seem to, especially.
“You and Daphne won’t mind.”
“Terike—”
“Excuse me, are you confusing this with an emotional exit? Do you see anybody storming out of here? What do you know about it anyway? This is the Trans-Trianon, Haver, not some local hill climb.”
“Leaving me to deal with the bughouse cheez heiress, plus a skip ticket I never asked for…”
“Cheer up, it’ll give you two a chance to recover that long-ago speedboat magic.”
“Yeah, a-and what about you and that Ace Lomax? Maybe I should install a lens in my belly button, so I can see where I’m going with my head up my ass.”
“Don’t take it personally,” she recommends. “I’m not what Ace is looking for.”
“Thought you two go way back.”
“That’s just it. I know him better than he thinks anybody can, and that’s the last thing he wants.”
“To the world,” as Ace likes to put it, “I’m the notorious V-twin Valentino, bike-happy cuties topplin over like bowling pins, too many to know what to do with.
But in sad truth the real-life Ace Lomax you see just goes grimly rolling on, older every day, out on constant patrol searching for that one-in-a-million road mate of his dreams.”
“You really think that sounds romantic, Ace? It doesn’t, it’s pure resentment’s what it is, you’re just a big soup kettle bubbling over with sex prejudice.”
“C’mon, no—me? I’m a li’l more sociable than that, ain’t I?”
“Don’t see too many ladies looking to ride pillion.”
“I need the space. Oil if you want to know. This machine is known far and wide for losing oil in its sleep.”
Then there’s Praediger, in whom Hicks has begun to feel a certain wavering of trust.
“Only a cordial suggestion,” the inspectorly smile making up in curvature what it lacks in sincerity, “if you should happen to run across our dear friend and conditions allow, why, perhaps, in some way to be determined—”
“Here it comes, it took you long enough. Would I mind putting the bump on Bruno for you. Your tough luck, Egon, I’ve been off the torpedo crew for a while now.”
“Most of you’d be flattered.”
“Not that kind of publicity, sorry, no, draws too much kiddie outlaw attention, and the history to follow don’t ever turn out too happy.”
“Yet I notice you’re still alive.”
“Sure but have I earned it? There’s enough of us hard cases who’ll kill for pay, dangerous-looking but inside quivering like a plate of Jell-O in a dining car from too much thinking, too many thoughts running wild, prices that are never right, deals that fall apart…
somebody in your shop must keep a list of bad actors who’ll work cheaper, why bring me into it? ”
“Have you ever really looked at your employment history? One high-risk orangutan job after another, always in the service of someone else’s greed or fear?”
Imagining that Slide Gearheart might at least be halfway willing to incline an ear to the subject, “Slide, is it really that bad? I thought I was past all that. Will they always be throwing that once-a-torpedo routine at me?”
“You think you’ve found redemption via Cheez Princess?
That anybody owes you forgiveness, that you won’t surrender to the old torpedical impulses the minute somebody makes it worth your while?
I’ve seen it happen, sure, that and stranger than that, once or twice out in the long and slowly deepening twilight of our nation’s history, but if you’re looking for guarantees, them I don’t do, find a used car dealer or something. ”
What was Hicks expecting? “It’s all OK, Slide, no more of that riding to the rescue for me, rather be out all night in the M’waukee weather, watching nothing happen behind some bedroom window. No more runaway rich dame tickets for li’l old H. McT., thanks, this one so help me’ll be my last.”
“Ah yes,” Slide out the side of his mouth, “and how familiar the refrain.”
“You say somethin?”
“When—that’s not if, but when—you sign on to your next Dame in Distress ticket, and you suddenly realize, here it is all over again, try not to spare a thought for the old embittered newshound who predicted it, in as much detail as you could stand for.”
“I keep thinking Praediger might be some help at least.”
“Are you kidding? All he’s after is a coke dealer who won’t charge him a month’s wages for what’ll turn out to be half a pound of Alka-Seltzer.
Don’t expect a philosophical cop. Drug habits are no guarantee of advanced thought, some of the least educational people around here are devotees of the nasal bobsled run.
Don’t imagine that when the moment comes Praediger will choose anything but peace and quiet, whatever he has to go along with to get it… ”
“Except for goin screaming bughouse whenever the topic of Bruno Airmont comes up, o’course.”
“Well, Bruno…you ever meet Bruno in person?”
“Not yet.”
“Take it from a longtime veteran of copydesks throughout the land,” advises Slide, “seen so many tough customers I could write you a bird book identifying all the different types, ain’t often comes along as deep of a desperado as Bruno Airmont.
Maybe your grandma told you there’s some good in everybody?
Well, Bruno in the neighborhood’ll even send Granny reachin for the squirrel rifle… ”
And why should Hicks be all that surprised, recalling how often a stray tip or even bum steer has converged to the same list of bad actors, however feeble the memory or elaborate the lie, Bruno keeps showing up, the same low point everything nearby seems fated to go draining into, as if there’s some powerful whirlpool of modern crime invisibly at work that gumshoes have been known to go mystical about, sloping off into long speakeasy monologues, fate versus free will and so forth, sometimes getting so cranked up on the subject that they forget to buy the round when it’s their turn, and nobody takes the trouble to remind them.
—
Among many private matters Daphne hasn’t mentioned to Hicks is a recurring dream about Bruno, on some faraway island, stepping outdoors every day at noon to shoot the sun with a ship’s sextant, just to make sure the island isn’t somehow, day to day, changing position in the sea, off on a voyage by itself to an enchanted landfall…
Of course it’s an island, complete with hula-hula girls, a sleeping volcano, a leaf-thatched saloon that’s become a local favorite for dodging into each midday as the clouds rise over the vast ocean, backlit some till-now-unimagined shade of red, rushing in at express speed, the skies letting loose…
which is usually about when she wakes up.
Till one night with sleep out of the question, in a turbulence and drift of multiple unlikelihoods, she and Bruno meet up.
At Night of the World, inspired by the multi-floor cabarets of Berlin, what circles of depravity may be found do not rise from street level but instead go corkscrewing down beneath it, ten floors down it’s said, ten known of and more rumored, down through boiling mineral springs, toward ancient depths few have been willing to dare, each with its own bar and dance band and clientele.