Page 48 of Shadow Ticket
Horseshoe Curve, Gallitzin Tunnel, track unwinding back into the dark, sleep it seems nowhere in the cards. The rhythm of the rails does nothing for Hicks the rest of the night but repeatwottachump, wottachump, wottachumptill dawn, which arrives sometime between Harrisburg and Paoli.
18
Hicks figures he’d better do a courtesy drop-by at the New York branch of U-Ops, which he finds slightly west of Broadway beneath a neon sign featuring a pair of eyeballs electrically switching back and forth between bloodshot vein-crazed and lens-blank pop-bottle green.
“Boynt wired, said you’d be by.” Connie McSpool is a former city cop obliged to retire early after his enthusiasm with the dizzy-stick finally disheveled a hairdo too well-connected to be squared that easily.
“You just missed Judge Crater, he was in here looking for you.” Even if as a radio gag the Crater disappearance has pretty much had its day, people still can’t let go of it. Everybody knows the story, or thinks they do—after dinner in midtown Manhattan with a girlfriend and a lawyer he knows, the Judge, in cheerful enough spirits, gets into a taxi and rides away, never to be seen again by mortal eye.
“Still an active ticket around here, I see.”
“No kiddin, Crater was pals with Arnold Rothstein and Legs Diamond, both as you’ll recall recent recipients of the bump, and it’s not only the crime syndicates, not just Tammany Hall, but worst and least merciful…” lowering his voice. A moment’s respectful hush. “New York real estate.”
Going on to explain how Judge Crater, acting as receiver in a bankruptcy, acquires a piece of property for chicken feed, the city then pays millions to get it back, the Judge, having just shelled out 20 Gs for his judge appointment and maybe looking for a quick offset, thinks his piece of the profits should be more generous. “There’s a dispute, bang bang, decisionmade.Zzt, there and gone. All that cement you notice they been pouring up around 181st, anchoring for the new bridge over to Jersey? he’s more likely under that.”
Hicks’s eyes must’ve unnarrowed for a second.
“What—they never heard of that in Milwaukee?”
“Oh, well, sure, but usually we get into an argument about which brand to use, Portland sets faster, Rosendale lasts longer, on into the late-night hours, neighbors complain, by that point the stiff’s already been ditched in the Lake anyway…”
“Don’t fall for the rube act,” Connie advises, “this gent is straight out of Chicago, where he dodges more bullets per work shift than all the donuts the lot of ye’s eaten in yer careers.”
“Milwaukee, where is that again…”
“Just down the road from Racine, where Danish pastries were invented.”
“Known for beer, bowling, and Daphne Airmont. Oops—”
“Sorry, Hicks.”
“How’s that?”
“You just missed her, she’s off on that midnight liner for overseas. Maybe you’re getting a lucky break.”
“Some tickets are jinxed. Every time the name Daphne Airmont gets typed into one, somebody sooner or later has to go wake up a doctor.”
“By which point the paperwork mysteriously got lost someplace everybody forgot to look.”
“Which always turns out to connect back somehow to that Big Al of Cheese himself in exile, natch, keeping an eye on his li’l girl. Oh—sorry, Hicks. Not tryin to talk you outa nothin here.”
Overseas. That ought to be as far as it goes. The U-Ops wouldn’t be crazy enough to, or put it another way…
—
Not that Hickshas spent that much time in and out of banks, but there’s something weirdly off about Gould Fisk Fidelity and Trust. It doesn’t smell like a bank, for one thing. No clean paper and ink smell, but enough inexpensive cigar smoke. More like a speak with its own distillery locatedsomewhere on the premises. He is immediately escorted to a desk in back with a quick exit to the street, where a shifty junior officer avoiding eye contact slides over an envelope holding an advance on two weeks’ pay plus expenses, plus—
“Ohno, wait a minute—” There seems to be a steamer ticket and a brand-new passport too. “No, I wasn’t supposed to—”
“Not to worry, we do this all the time. Like they sing it on the radio, ‘At Gould Fisk, it’s worth the risk.’ ”
This shouldn’t be happening, but is. Out the back exit and into the street Hicks finds a phone booth, tries to call Boynt at the Milwaukee U-Ops.
“Didn’t expect to hear from you so soon, no difficulties with the boat ticket, I hope?”
“Now you mention it—boat ticket, yeah, feels like being under a sort of handicap here, not having the whole story, Boynt?”
“Only a harmless episode of international transnavigation…”
