Page 2 of Shadow Ticket
“To locate Miss Airmont wherever she’s off to, smooth-talk her out of her involvement with this clarinet player, bring her back. Simple pickup and delivery.”
“Lot of fun for somebody, too bad that matrimonials, as you’ll recall, were never my line—”
Back when he was getting into the business, one of the first things Hicks noticed was how many pre-divorcées just in Milwaukee and Waukesha counties alone seemed disposed to linger over forbidden liquids, going into all the intimate details as if mistaking him for a lawyer that doesn’t charge much, with muscle thrown in for free, leading to romantic outcomes easy to imagine, except for the ones Hicks never saw coming, after enough of which he found himself more than ready to hand matrimonials off to energetic junior hires like Zbig Dubinsky, who regards the invention of the trouser-front zipper as a major advance in civilization and can put up with any long sad story that promises the least possibility of domestic cinder disposal.
Ignoring which as usual, Boynt continues.
“Except for your personal connection with the lady, of course—excuse me, what’s this expression on your face?”
“This? Close attention, I think.”
“No, if it’s anything it’s ‘poor old Boynt,’ and insincere at that. Who are you to act so virtuous? You’re the one with the glamorous, some might even say lurid, past here.”
“Making me even less qualified—”
Sudden commotion in the outer office now, as in through the door without an appointment comes running Skeet Wheeler, a flyweight juvenile ina porkpie hat, with Thessalie close behind attempting grabs which Skeet doesn’t seem all that eager to avoid.
“Hicksie! Ya gotta do somethin! You heard it, right?”
“Sure, everybody in town must’ve heard it, but what was it?” Anybody has the straight dope it’ll be Skeet.
“Stuffy Keegan’s hooch wagon—somebody rolled a bomb, blew it all to hell.”
“Language,” Boynt murmurs.
“Stuffy’s all right?”
“Nobody’s sayin nothin, the hush is on. If he hasn’t skipped town, if he’s still alive, he ain’t advertising.”
Hicks has known, at least kept a mental file on, Stuffy Keegan since his early career as a petty offender and eventually MPD snitch who can be bought for a song, which is seldom “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” By the standards of these times and this neck of the woods, Stuffy’s rap sheet, while technically criminal, is nothing special except for the number of paranoid lapses of judgment including the one that landed him here to begin with. Out on some otherwise routine run, possibly owing to lack of sleep, he began to observe in the rearview mirror growing numbers of law enforcement which, even if that’s what it really was, might not really’ve been planning to pull Stuffy over, or even notice him at all, but by the time he got to Waukesha it was too much for his nerves, so he found a telephone and called the police and asked them to just please come and get it over with.
“It was highway coppers, I tell ya, a whole armored division, lights ’n’ sirens ’n’—”
“Sure, Mr. Keegan, we understand, now don’t worry, we’ll take steps.”
Convinced there was something screwy about his rearview mirror, every time he looked into which now he had started seeing something he didn’t want to see, Stuffy traded in the rig he was driving for a REO Speed Wagon with a normal rearview mirror, soon familiar among the tattered convoys out in the wind between here, Detroit, and Toledo carrying a load typically of pint bottles, whose rectangular cross-section allowed more to fit into the limited cargo space, bought for $2 in Canada, sold on this side for $7 to retailers who then diluted the contents two, sometimes three to one.Return trips from Toledo often brought a wagonload of Lake Erie perch under ice, to be listed on local fish-joint menus as “Lake Michigan perch,” the real critter having in recent years been pretty much fished out.
“That rig,” Skeet looking forlorn, “got him out of so many bad situations…Called it his li’l tramp freighter of the streets and in the end a blown-up wreck with zero resale value.”
“Getting sentimental, kid, better watch ’at, once.”
Boynt meanwhile, having run his usual unsociable O-O of Skeet, “Recall there’s a Depression on, we can only afford so much pro bono work anymore, there was a memo, I handed you it myself.” Taking the runaway cheez heiress file, tapping Hicks gently on the head with it, handing it over and stepping back into his office. “Soon as you’ve had a look through this, Hicks, let me know what you think.” Doesn’t quite slam the door, but there is some emphasis to the way it shuts.
“Was that steam comin out his ears? Did I barge in on somethin again?”
“Nothin that can’t wait. New watch, I see.”
“Hamilton, glows in the dark too.”
“Pretty classy there, Skeet.”
“Can’t help it, she just thinks I’m cute. Her way of showing it.”
“Uh-huh.” As likely lifted off somebody staggering out of a speak, but with Skeet you never know, so Hicks only makes with the avuncular beaming. Skeet is one of the modern young breed of dip, no longer interested in the pocket watches of the old and inattentive, finding more challenge in lifting a watch right off of a wrist in broad daylight, where any trick buckle or extra keeper can slow you down by some fatal splinter of a second.
Skeet lights up a cigar stub that never seems to change length much, the very blackest of Italo fumigators, dense as a rock, goes out if you don’t keep puffing on it so after a while you let it go out, but keep it in your kisser anyway.
“OK, how do we approach this?” coming out of somewhere with a snub nose service .32, and pretending to check to see if it’s loaded.
