Page 23 of Shadow Ticket
“…poised tooverthrowtheU.S.government? Itself?Ja?one word from the Kaiser, no questions asked—straight into action, half a million nationwide.”
“Don’t think I ever heard this one before.”
“Ohja, twenty years ago. Old news. History. Loyal German youth, waiting for the order to rise up. Woodrow Wilson, General Pershing? pushovers, kid, scared to death. Us, we kept the U.S. out of that War for three years.”
“And now, you’re telling me, there’s ’ese old-time Kaiser Bill guerrilla units, which never…officially—”
Nod, finger to lips. “Some got demobilized, of course, older cadres, but…well, maybe not all.” With his well-known mischievous smile that you wouldn’t necessarily want to smile back at. “Come on out with me tonight and see. You’re gatted up? That little snub-nose they let you carry?”
“And the reason you’re asking…?”
“Somebody may want to frisk you. Procedure, nothing personal.”
Uncle Lefty has tactfully avoided mentioning that the streetcar route takes them across the Menomonee Valley via the Wells Street Viaduct, 90 feet up, iron, black, rickety in the wind, not for nervous passengers or even those with their wits about them who’d prefer to get across in one piece.
“Hope you’re not too uncomfortable up here, Hicks?”
“Who, me? Nerves of steel.”
“Not even half a mile. Over before you know it.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
“Took your aunt Peony up here on our first date. Proposed to her in fact.”
“She went for it?”
“Well, she said let’s see when we get to the other end.”
“Yeah? And…”
“Says she’s still waiting.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Before Hicks knows it they’re out in the far northwest somewhere, a bleak stretch not yet assigned a district number, an all-night beat out of a sergeant’s most ill-tempered threat, out in onshore winds not expected to get much above freezing, straw boxes few and far between, apt around any corner to find yourself up the wrong end of a roscoe from somebody you knew in sixth grade.
“There, look,” nodding out the window, “there it is, kid.” Visible for miles across the bleak night prairie, the neon announcementNew Nuremberg Lanes, not the traditional German typeface you see so much of around town but modern sans serif, straight from the soon to be new and improved Old Country, four or five different colors from deep violet to blood orange, bowling balls flickering left to right, pins scattering, reassembling, again and again, silently except for an electrical drone fading up slowly louder the closer to it you get.
The streetcar lets them off right in front. Inside it’s expensively designed as a movie set. Shoe-check girls in matching outfits, working in pairs, one for the rubber-sole side, one for leather. A different pair of girls available for southpaws. A custom ball-laundering station. Lounge areas saturated in blue twilight, smelling like beer fumes, tobacco smoke, and hot griddle grease, a constant wood percussion from lanes near and far, echoes receding into the blur. All normal as club soda, yet somehow…toonormal, yes something is making a chill creep across Hicks’s scalp, the Sombrero ofUneasiness, as it’s known in the racket. Something here is off. A bowling alley is supposed to be an oasis of beer and sociability, busy with cheerful keglers, popcorn by the bucketful, crosscurrents of flirtation, now and then somebody actually doing some bowling. But this crowd here, no, these customers are onlypretendingtobowl. Stepping through spare-conversion systems the way movie actors pretend to dance. Busy lighting each other’s cigarettes, writing down phone numbers—huh, who, me? oh just a carefree hour or two at the lanes, officer, surely you don’t think we’re up to any monkey business…
“Wait. We’re not gonna roll a couple frames at least? Why am I carrying this ball? Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
On into a dimmer region of pool tables, pinball machines, and Skee-Ball setups, where it’s currently semifinals week for the Northwest Milwaukee Skee-Ball League, defending champs of the Ladies’ division, which dates from 1929, when the regulation lane was shortened to fourteen feet to accommodate the ever-growing number of talented and seriousgaldevoteesofthehardwoodsphere, as they’re known in the sports pages. It also doesn’t hurt that the local league has chosen an alluring uniform including two-color box-pleat skirts, magenta and green, so that any motion beyond a simple shimmy produces a color spectacle not easy to ignore.
Down some stairs, arriving presently at a jukebox going full blast and a dance floor full of Lindy-hopping youth. Hicks slowly recognizes an American swingtime version, at the moment getting some attention in Milwaukee, of the German street anthem known overseas as the “Horst Wessel Song,”
Hold-yer flag up high, yeahh,
Let’s swing it, for the Naah-zis—
Tight’n-up those ranks,
You troopers out tonite—some
