Page 100 of Shadow Ticket
At night the lights of the villa shine far out over the sea, all night long, behind each window, someone is always awake late and up to something—night owls, freeloaders, accidental walk-ins, practitioners of esoteric arts, fearers of the dark, compulsive socializers, secret police, jewel thieves, firefly girls, drug dealers, cigarette-factory workers, tobacco smugglers, a dependable number each evening lately of Trans-Trianon bikers, though it hasn’t taken local authorities long to outlaw group motor sorties after dark. Not that anybody complies or that there are enough personnel on hand to do anything about it.
One afternoon out on the Korzo, Hicks runs into Terike, who’s in town looking to head off Ace “before he gets into something he can’t handle,” is how she puts it.
“Riding point again.”
“Not exactly. There’s more to this.”
“Always is, and someday if anybody’s still alive you’ll tell me all about it. Meantime, if I knew you were this cold I’d’ve asked you to keep a bottle of beer for me close to your heart.”
Seems Ace has blown into Fiume aboard a 976 cc Royal Enfield plussidecar, forced after a good deal of sentimental bikerly brooding to admit that this current ride is no substitute for his old Harley Flathead, which, though less of a coherent machine than a history of maintenance melodramas each waiting its turn to be enacted, he now misses heartbroken as a cowboy in a song, convinced by now that it is Bruno Airmont who’s responsible for its loss, seeing how it was Bruno who chased them into Vladboys territory to begin with, and thus obvious to anybody that Bruno must also bear the cost of its replacement, estimated at 200 quid, which Ace will accept in dollars, dinars, Reichsmarks, or if necessary—such is the state he’s worked himself up into—blood. “Actually I can do without the blood, too much cleanup, just the sucker’s head would be enough.”
“We don’t do heads ordinarily, but there are people we could put you in touch with. Do you speak Albanian?”
“Then again maybe I’d settle for his last known address, how’d that be?”
Accordingly, one otherwise tranquil evening, down out of the hailstorms and lightning of the Karst, surrounded by a blinding halo of disgruntlement, Ace arrives at Bruno’s villa with no clear plan in mind.
In one of several loosely defined Grand Salons, the nightly spirited uproar has continued to pick up speed. As if somebody has found the ignition key to a time machine, the secret equations of social turbulence are once again in effect as in the days of D’Annunzio. People are keeping company here who, if history had a shred of decency, would never be allowed within miles of each other. Rogue nuns in civilian gear are two-stepping with bomb-rolling Marxist guerrillas. Fascist daredevil aviators are playing poker with Yangtze Patrol veterans who believe all that airplanes are good for is to be shot down. Wagnerian sopranos are learning the hillbilly guitar chords to “Wabash Cannonball.” Pirates are getting soused with peddlers of marine insurance. And Porfirio del Vasto, having tracked Glow here in her autogyro after she dropped off Daphne, loitering wistfully, looking for some excuse to get into a duel with somebody, though lately nothing’s been going right. Torrential rainfalls at dawn that the gunpowder always manages to get left out in, blanks swapped for live ammo. Last-minute apologies, sometimes accompanied by cash. “It’s like the material world telling me this is the wrong path to take…” He sells his perfectly matched Wogdon duelingpistols to an indecently eager collector in Chipping Sodbury, Gloucestershire, briefly considers switching to sabers, which may account for why he’s been in and out of Hungary lately. Taking saber lessons. He’s gotten pretty good on the backs of horses accustomed to this sort of thing, carried at a gallop down rows of champagne bottles and whacking the tops off.
At the moment Porfirio is deep in earnest dialogue with former Berlin chorus girl Lady Forsythia Bladesmith, who’s trying to remember if they’ve met.
“Buenos Aires, perhaps, around the time of the coup? Teatro Colón, performance ofTosca, Apollo Granforte sang Scarpia. You were busy down in the stalls among the marriage brokers, though pursuing business less respectable—”
Through some deep unacknowledged Freudian means, Porfirio’s old jewel thief reflexes crank up again, but just as he’s reaching, zap! they asport away, diamonds of just under two carats each plus palladium findings, vanishing off of her earlobes clean as a whistle. Feeling the sudden release, she gives Porfirio a long, funny look.
“Not me.” Hands spread in puzzled innocence.
“Mind turning out your pockets?”
“Cómo no,” revealing a silver and enamel case full of stolen smokes, a flash roll diverse as the League of Nations, a fob shaped like an Alp holding a couple of keys for car, house, autogyro. “This has happened to you before,¿verdad?”
“Never perhaps with so light a touch, or without some kind of romantic business to divert my attention. One reason I prefer a screw-back style, they take so long to undo before anyone can slide them off. Necklaces are what you people tend to go for, the clasps are far easier. All common knowledge among your sort, I expect.”
“Allow me to point out that I’m only a used-autogyro salesman.”
“Of course, and who’s been using you? And—aaggh!” at which point her earlobes are suddenly milligrams heavier again as the missing earrings apport back into place, and across the room there’s Zoltán von Kiss winking and beaming, lifting another glass of Pommery from a passing tray and angling it amiably their way.
Ace Lomax wanders by, spots Hicks and Zoltán von Kiss. “Sorry about those Cubs, four straight in the Series like that, damn.”
“Murderers’ Row,” Hicks shrugs, “what did anybody expect?”
“And Babe Ruth calling that shot, huh?”
“Never heard the details.”
“Top of the fifth, count is 0 and 2, after each strike the Babe steps out, points toward center field—next pitch looks like it’ll be strike three, instead wham, he sends it out to deep center, past the flagpole into the stands exactly where he was pointing at.”
Zoltán is intrigued. “Such precision is common in baseball?” with a mischievous look Hicks recognizes.
“Not very.”
“Then…”
“Don’t say it,” sez Hicks, “it’s ’em apports again, what else, it’s how Zoli explains everything, ain’t it.”
“That lamp back in Budapest,” Ace recalls, “that same mental whammy, you’re saying that’s how Babe Ruth—”
“Puts a homer where he says he will,” Hicks nodding. “We know all it is is a perfect eye, perfect timing. But—”
