Page 18 of Shadow Ticket
“Say, I can handle this big creampuff.” Dominic goes rushing in at Hicks. It doesn’t last long. Presently, Dominic is lying inert though breathing next to a beaverboard partition wall, which now has a dent from where he’s just been slammed into it.
“Seemed in pretty good shape,” Hicks pretending to flick blood from hissleeve, “you might want them to have a look at him down at County General, just to be sure.”
“You mind signing this release form for Don Peppino, he likes to see some proof we didn’t just go off someplace and roll a couple of frames.”
—
In Hicks’s experience,wide but not always educational, of a cross-section of womanhood in our time, most of them, he’s noticed, haven’t had much, if any, idea of how to fight. Not in the grimly verbal married way, but more like physically grabassing, throwing real punches and kicks. April has been a welcome exception, making Vumvum’s news especially saddening because no such amorous round-and-round is likely to be in the cards anytime soon for her with Don Peppino, who’s been known to take back-talk, even unwelcome gestures, very much amiss.
He’ll carry her off down the MKR Corridor to Little Cosenza, some lovecasinettodown there stupendous in its level of tastelessness, into a horrible domesticity that Hicks gets nauseous even thinking he might begin to think about. Tongue-biting and gaze-lowering. Weekend after weekend, giant, labor-intensive social-hall lasagnas—Wisconsin lasagnas, with dead raccoon somewhere in the recipe, like the Delafield American Legion only more garlic and oregano possibly…
Happy Valentine’s Day. Vumvum is eager to add details a few days later when he and Hicks run into each other at Fahrflung’s Sporting Goods, down an alleyway from the interurban station at 6th and Michigan, Canoes, Tents, Camping Supplies, and in Vumvum’s case today, Submachine Gun Accessories. Vumvum has just purchased a Cutts compensator or muzzle brake to keep his aim from drifting upward during lengthier bursts, “25 clams, but Don Peppino is off on one of his cost-cutting routines trying to save money on ammo. Thousand rounds a minute, nickel per round, it adds up, see.”
“From the presence or absence of a Cutts compensator,” as the Gumshoe’s Manual points out, “the alert operative can often gain valuable insight into the character of a Thompson user, though here, time being understandably of the essence, speed is recommended.”
Once a few years back in Waukesha County, Hicks, observing Vumvum chased by rival gang elements and headed his way like a runaway express train, stepped in pretending to be lost and looking for directions, allowing Vumvum to highball on into the custody of the sheriff’s department and only a little less leisure-time whoopee in his life, instead of becoming the next notch on the butt of somebody’slupara. For which Vumvum if not eternally grateful found himself from then on strangely unhomicidal when in Hicks’s company.
“He’s a lord of the underworld,” Hicks points out now, “you can’t tell me she’s with him of her own free will.”
“I just did,” Vumvum replies. “Could have somethin to do with Don Peppino’s got the biggestminghiuzzain the criminal trades, major league fungo stick, always in use and not just for practice pop-ups neither, you capeesh?”
Taking a few seconds to light up, “Useful information, Vumvum, to be sure, why hasn’t somebody mentioned this sooner?”
“Never know how dimensions that personal will go over with people. Reactions vary.” A strange capacity for sentiment has somehow found its way into Vumvum’s face, which Hicks up till now, being reluctant to look that close, has failed to notice. “Goomaramentality,” angling his head before shaking it, “not for me to speculate. Been keeping a close eye but it don’t look like she’s tryin too hard to get away, even if Don Peppino deliberately lets her misbehave, so he can scold her for it later. Not that she ain’t caught on to that, not much gets past her.”
An uncomfortably throbbing patch of silence, which Hicks takes to be Vumvum’s unwillingness to discuss how much April might be enjoying herself with the ‘Ndrangheta heavyweight, who has considered often enough getting athletic with Hicks about it, though preferably not in person. “Vumvum, seriously, how worried should I be about Twinkletoes?”
“Well, dancing is vertical whoopee, Boss, everybody knows that.”
“Education,” smacking Vumvum amiably upside the head, “ain’t it grand. Vumvum, now, total honesty, do I seem to you the violently jealous type?”
“Padrino, this far down the chain nobody givesungazzabout that emotional stuff.”
8
Hicks gets a note from Skeet. “Come on down the Viaduct, somebody there you might want to talk to.”
He finds Skeet and some fellow gang members waiting under the Holton Street Viaduct for the fog to lift, along with a few girls grown wary of the evening shift looking for some daylight trade. Streetcars go banging overhead. “C’mon.” Skeet leads him into an abandoned lot surrounded by darkened walls, paint of old advertising weathered away, windows that could have anything just behind them. Or nothing for years. Civilians drift to and fro mostly idle, a few collecting lookout fees.
“Welcome to the clubhouse.”
Cobwebs of purple light from radio tubes with imperfect vacuums inside. A dozen speakers going at once, cop traffic and shipping transmissions from out on the Lake, foreign voices from even further away crackling in and out. Pieces of electrical gear blinking and chirping at each other, like a lab in a movie belonging to a scientist not entirely in his right mind—Type 19 dual triodes from incompletely assembled Doerle Twinplex kits lying around everyplace, including where they’re likely to be sat on. Radio equipment, some of it bright and new as if just boosted, “Top-notch and 1929-compliant,” according to Skeet, “we steal only from the best.” All clear as daylight to an eye electrically fly, leaving the rest of us to squint, frown, try to make some sense out of it while not looking too lost, for among this pack of juvenile offenders, street-corner musicians, and policy runners can also be found a number of “hams” or amateur radio operators, either licensedor hoping to be, including a couple of young ladies just graduated from Mary Texanna Loomis’s Radio College in Washington, D.C., in touch with other enthusiasts around the world, via waves the average civilian still has little idea of, waves they have learned, sometimes at a certain cost, to ride and respect. They lurk at the fringes of frequency bands public and private, listen in on and try to decipher secret messages, sell some of what they learn, use some of it themselves for purposes of mischief, or, as the Hellraisers think of it, “practical joking.”
Not surprisingly, interested parties can be found, usually after dark, prowling around in little panel trucks with rotating loop antennas on top trying to get a fix on sources of transmission, obsessed by what these kids might find out, who they might be talking to about it…bootleggers, lately more and more making use of encrypted radio traffic, being of particular federal concern.
Everybody is smoking Camels and Luckies, Dutch Masters and El Productos stolen off the Milwaukee Road freights that come rolling through town. The joint is wallpapered with publicity stills of Goldwyn Girls in their unmentionables, prominent among them the platinum trick or, as Skeet prefers, desperately adorable goddess Toby Wing. “This here is the all-time definition of cute with a capitalQ!”
A back room with its own back room, “First workspace in my life thathasa toilet,” sez Skeet, “instead of is one. The mad scientist’s lab I always dreamed about.”
“Mad scientist like—angry? Or—” crossing his eyes and putting out his tongue at an angle.
“Both.” Helpfully.
Around midday Hughes, one of the Negro policy runners, shows up, taking a breather before the next round of betting resumes, sporting a hand-me-down drape suit retailored at the waist and ankles from one of his father’s. Accompanied by Bensonhurst, a small, shaggy mutt, mostly Norwich terrier, that Hughes was supposed to drown as a puppy but couldn’t bring himself to. “White gentleman pays me four bits to do the job. Face to face, couldn’t do it and Benny knew I couldn’t, ain’t that right, Benny, hay-ull no.Thought about giving the money back, but we blew it all on Ken-L Ration instead.”
A furious torrent of dots and dashes from a shortwave set back in a corner. “German naval code again,” explains a kid named Drover in a set of earphones who’s been monitoring, a very bright young science whiz who had to lie about his age to get into Shorewood High School and is currently sitting in on physics classes at Marquette, now and then getting in a round of speed chess with the professor, Árpád Élo, the top player in Milwaukee. “Family are happier when I’m out of the house, any trouble I’m headed for I ought to be able to avoid if I’m as bright as everybody keeps telling me, don’t you think?”
“Uh-huh, what’s with all these wires comin out of this ukulele here?”
