Page 40 of Shadow Ticket
“You’re shaking, what happened, you forgot your earmuffs again? We’re out of beer if you were planning to cry into some, but there could be a bottle of Mistletoe gin around someplace…”
“Wouldn’t mind.”
“Dig in.”
“Thanks,” going on to try and what the insurance forms like to call “explain.” She listens, eyes never leaving his face.
“Elves.” Putting on a tough-girl scowl, pretending to adjust the angle of Hicks’s head. “And you bought that.”
“Well, they were the right size, and they seemed pretty sure.”
A pause to consider a number of comebacks.
“We may have discussed this before, but at the risk of seeming to nag, did you ever think about some line of work maybe a little less, oh, unhealthy…”
“Sure, even thought about the Milwaukee PD for a while, till Uncle Lefty set me straight.”
“Not enough bad habits for them? Too un-stupid, what?”
“Too many Italians in my social life, I guess. Nothing personal. Ever since that spaghetti special went off in the station house even some harmless case like me swinging traffic at a bankruptcy sale is suddenly too dangerous for the likes of the MPD.”
“Don’t suppose a friendly heart-to-heart with the bomb squad—”
“Not when they’re about to run me in for Stuffy Keegan’s truck.”
Her eyelids narrowing that telltale 64th of an inch while her brain races on, “Maybe my Uncle Cici can talk to somebody,” this particular uncle being none other than Francesco “Finger of Death” Sfuzzino, locally year after year coming in at the top of everybody’s most-frightened-of list. “Anything for you, my lit-tle breath of spring, you only need to ask, each time it’s like ‘O mio babbino caro’ all over again, ain’t it, only different.”
While April is thinking of some other song, most likely Annette Hanshaw singing “Those Little White Lies.”
“Damn but you’re a sweetheart.” Hicks means it.
“Then again,” short nod, shorter smile, “gotta remember this’d be the Bay View or north Italian branch of the family. Bacciagaluppi, snooty bunch, little dim, detached. Sicilian side might be more accommodating.”
“Except that…”
“Exactly.”
Stories have begun to drift in of couples teaming up, jumping boxcars and thumbing rides together, even waiting faithful long weeks for eachother’s release from the county lockup. Working-stiff gear, hair cropped or bobbed, chain-smoking, tough yet elegant. Nobody wants to go through trouble alone, yet how can Hicks even ask, never mind expect, that much from any dame, even one he can see himself going sentimental, if not already borderline daffy about?
Jumping catfish. What kind of a mid-career outlook is this? Poverty and longing. Not that he’s any special fan of the single life, understand, and it isn’t their fault if women are as superficial, untrustworthy, and unwilling to stick around when the going gets the least bit tough as he has found them in general to be.
“OK,” April considering which of a number of blunt weapons in her handbag to bring out, “but aside from that?” The counterargument, obvious to anybody but a beefbrain like Hicks, being that in times like these to stay at anybody’s side for longer than five minutes could qualify as at least potential lifetime partner material.
Last thing Hicks would want to admit hoping for, that he and April could’ve been another one of these couples hitchhiking together through the Depression, teamed up against each day and its troubles, each dusk out on some country road, thumbs at the ready, heading for who knows what waiting deeper for them in the night. Some dame, someday. So far he hasn’t got around to sharing any of this with April, who could easily react along the lines of “Oh no, another one of these fragile types pussyfooting into my life, just when I have you figured for some lone warrior out on the edge of a cliff someplace, don’t need a thing from anybody, all the while turns out you’re just one more sentimental sap, well, unobservant me.”
—
Uncle Lefty noticesit’s been taking Hicks a while to hold flame and cigarette together long enough to light up.
“Heard about your surprise package.”
Regarding his hand thoughtfully. “Should’ve been over this a little quicker.”
“Try fifteen years. Maybe now you begin to understand a thing or two, maybe lay off of the bocce ball jokes.”
Shaky as Hicks may be feeling, a man still has to climb back aboard the critter that threw him. Investigate.
Before the echoes have died away, Lino Trapanese is on the phone. “Case you were wondering, it ain’t who you’re thinking.”
