Page 3 of Shadow Ticket
“Gosh sakes, Skeet.”
“Kids’ Special.”
“You’ve been firing this thing much?”
“Only out at the dump so far. But keep your shirt on, one of these days you’ll be readin all about it on the front page of theJournal.”
Hicks used to talk like this back in high school. For a minute and a half he’s taking a bounce back in time, and looking at himself as a kid.
“OK, OK now, Skeet, now about this bomb, what’d be your guess?”
“There was some talk of a Third Ward type of person.”
“Uh-uh.” Out with the cautionary finger. “Still want to be a detective when you grow up, first thing to learn is keep an open mind. Maybe for the MPD and them, bomb always equals Italian no matter what, but in real life there’s bomb rollers in all parts of town, even among the German and Polish races. Now what about money, social life, how much does Stuffy owe and who to and is he carryin on with some big shot’s sweetie.”
“Love life among the grown-ups, better ask a newsie, you really want to know. Those guys are the ones that get around.”
Though Skeet doesn’t read the papers much, he manages to follow gang wars like some kids follow pennant races, carrying in his wallet a photo of Al Capone, clipped from theJournal, across which Skeet, or somebody, has inscribed, “To my old goombah Skeet, who taught me everything I know, regards and tanti auguri, always, Al.”
Mostly his news of current events comes from keeping an ear aimed at the radio and staying in everyday touch with the kid underworld—drifters, truants, and guttersnipes, newsboys at every corner and streetcar stop—who in turn have antennas of their own out. “It’s like Mussolini,” Skeet explains, “the little ones report to bigger kids, who report to me, then I report to you, then on up the pyramid.”
“And…the Mussolini here again being who, Pete Guardalabene?”
“You know better. Pete is no more’n mid-level, same for Joe Vallone—both bein run like everybody else in this burg by remote control from Chicago.”
Hicks and Skeet go back a couple years, to one of those spells of bank robberies and pineapple detonations that now and then would sweep through town, leaving civilian nervous wreckage in its wake. Hicks had put his nose into a recently stuck up bank on Wisconsin Avenue on behalf of a clientwhose bank account had just disappeared, either in the robbery or into some soon to be ex-spousal pocketbook.
Before he can find somebody to talk to there’s a sudden loud bang and people are running in all directions, screaming “They’re here again” and “Run for your life” and so forth. Hicks moves into a corner of the floor plan not likely to be run around in much and waits. No Sicilians waving sawed-offs, no smell of burned powder, no fire brigades or bloody casualties in the picture. Check and double check…he waits. Soon from behind an artificial palm tree emerges a small though energetic urchin with a pocketful of rubber balloons and a supply of pins. As Hicks watches, he stealthily blows up a balloon, ties the neck off, scans around for likely targets, notices Hicks has been watching him.
“Uh-oh.”
“Things in this town not jittery enough for you?”
“Don’t turn me in, mister, I’m only a kid.”
“Sure you are, you’re kiddin me right now, go on, get outa here.”
“You just saved me,” adds the kid, “from industrial school, Green Bay, maybe worse.”
“You still here? Go on, vamoose.”
“You may not pay everything you owe, but some of us do.”
Since then Skeet has just kept showing up out of the city mobility, quiet, unannounced, slowly to be revealed as a would-be apprentice with all the desire, maybe even some of the chops already, but still no idea what could be waiting just over the next doorsill, who thinks he wants, heaven help him, to be a detective someday. Not, he’s quick to point out, a common field op like Hicks, “More of a class act, like Sherlock Holmes and them.”
“There you go.”
“If it’s not professional,” Skeet figures now, “this truck bomb, it must be amateur?”
“Amateur, frankly,” Hicks shrugging, “ain’t nearly as much fun, short money, doubtful tomato quality, too much work, too little of a return—”
“Yeah, but aside from that…”
“You always need to go for the big time, kid, every time—ya listenin to me? Glamour! high rolling, high explosives, high danger level—”
“You’re some hell of a guide through the minefields of youth, Hicksie.”
Far as he knows, Skeet was one of those Christmas babies left in a straw box for the MPD to find. There were a number of these cop shelters all over Milwaukee where a beat-pounder could step in out of the cold weather for a minute or two—any longer than that, you were apt to be jolted awake by some phone dispatcher whose idea of fun is sneaking upside your head in the middle of the night and banging on a gong. The little shacks had hay all over the floor to keep those flat feet warm and door-kicking-ready, reminding people so much of the manger in Bethlehem that when the Depression struck in earnest it became a practice at Christmas for desperate parents to leave babies not only at church doorsteps but also in these MPD straw boxes, with hay all piled around. A Christmas crèche with beat coppers standing in for the animals.
