Page 38 of Shadow Ticket
“Four-Eyes is good enough, don’t mean we’re part of each other’s social life now.”
As things fall out it only looks like Hicks saved Four-Eyes’s life back then—in fact now it’s Four-Eyes who’s about to save his.
“None of my business what’s in that package they just handed you there, but over on my side of the Beerline those two guys are well-known as the worst kind of bad news, and the sooner you deep-six that thing the better for everybody.”
“Really, you think?”
“Chump, everybody can hear it ticking from down the block. Happiest holiday wishes, if you should live so long.”
“Sure, and a Merry Christmas right back atcha.”
Carrying the package like he would any normal object, Hicks heads for Wisebroad’s Shoes, a short walk away, through iced-in weekday gloom, dodging streetcars with snowplows bolted onto their front ends and window-shoppers throwing him troubled gazes, past Depression-Christmas vaudeville houses less brightly lit, reduced prices matinee and evening, according to industry folklore this being among the worst weeks in show business, and since it’s a week in Milwaukee besides, twice as bad as that, maybe more.
Whenever he’s out in the street and not sure what to do, being superstitious as anybody, Hicks has fallen into the habit of stepping over and onto the nearest penny scale and reading his fortune.
Today he gets the traditional ticket, weight on one side and fortune on the other—“Need to lose some extra weight, pal, and sooner’d be better than later. Good luck.”
By now Hicks is used to this sort of thing, a network of penny scales all over town plus Chicago that can recognize him personally even blocks away. Must be done with radio waves somehow. He keeps meaning to ask Skeet and his pals…
Let’s see, it said extra weight…hmm…could that mean…He finds and fishes out another penny and drops it. The ticket reads “What’d I just say? You’re carrying TOO MUCH EXTRA WEIGHT, Einstein, get me? Think about it and don’t take too long.”
A wave of leather and shoe-polish aroma billows out to greet him as he comes through the door of Wisebroad’s. Everybody’s in their socks, as if business is so slow they’re reduced to measuring each other’s feet. Al, Benny, Chuck, DeQuincy, and Edgeworth aren’t their real names but actually code words based on shoe widths—with a Depression on, salesman-to-salesman talk tends to be guarded, like “Anybody seen Benny?” can mean “We don’t have this in a B width, what can we switch it for?”
“Season’s greetings, Zoomer,” Hicks’s handle around here, short for Halls of Montezuma, a way of saying “Shoe’s a triple-E.”
“How’s ’em wingtips workin out?”
“Big hit at the country club. Mind if I give somethin a quick once-over on your X-ray machine there?”
“Long as somebody remembers to call the bomb squad.”
“Thanks.” Hicks bringing out a fin as several hands reach simultaneously. “Wait, let me look and see if I’ve got it in singles.”
One of many interesting facts about Milwaukee is that along with the Harley-Davidson motorcycle and the QWERTY typewriter keyboard layout, it’s also the birthplace of the shoe-store X-ray machine.
“Not only hometown as they come,” Benny sweeping a gesture of respect, “but still under warranty too.”
“More of a Brannock Device fella myself,” remarks Edgeworth, “X-rays being fine, far as they go, except they don’t pick up fat, and fat’s the key, see, true fit is always a function of how fat the foot,” and so forth.
They gather around to eyeball the ghostly image.
“Any idea what that is?”
“Don’t look like much of anything, you ask me.”
“Yeah, well, it’s ticking, I can tell you that.”
“Just your imagination.”
“I think it could be a clock…maybe a pocket watch. Aren’t those numbers there, look.”
“Could almost be somebody’s face, see, that’s the nose there and—”
Despite a certain blurriness, Hicks realizes it is inescapably a face, not unchanging and lifeless, like you’d get from a severed head for example, but insteadgazingbackwith its eyes wide open and holding a gleam of recognition, a face he’s supposed to know but doesn’t, or at least can’t name. Mouth about to open and tell him something he should’ve known before this. The window he never wanted to have to look through, the bar he used to know enough not to set foot inside of.
“Um, and how long do we plan to keep pumping X-ray energy through this object of unknown design?” inquires DeQuincy.
Edgeworth gives it a squint. “I’d call it in to the MPD, if you haven’t already.” They all exchange looks back and forth for what seems a while.
