Page 58 of Shadow Ticket
If what Hicks sees in Porfirio’s eyes isn’t exactly uneasiness, it’s at least some recognition that gunplay might not be the best option here.
“Apologizing for not shooting at me?”
“For not taking you seriously. It was the dancing that had me confused. She’s still too young for gigolos just yet, but somehow—”
“That’s what you had me figured for. Don’t worry, hey. The hand I kiss at the end of a number has often enough been known to have a double sawbuck wadded up in it, which she usually gets back in free drinks by the end of the evening anyway, so everybody ends up happy. Wish I could say the same for you.”
“Me?Felíz como lombriz, why, do I appear melancholy somehow?”
“Idiotic would be closer,” Glow sez.
“A matter between men,mi vida, you still have much to discover,” a rapid side-glance at Hicks, “about what atipo fácilI can be.”
—
First port of callis Tangier. Porfirio and Glow debark together, and sure enough, there waiting on the pier is the autogyro.
“Fresh from the assembly line, stock model Pitcairn, Wright engine, just out of final inspection. Can’t have been flown much more than 10 kilometers, all yours now, soul of my heart.”
Stolen from some scatterbrained millionaire, fallen off a truck, anybody’s guess.
“Lists for $6,750 new. Call it six even, we’ll throw in a two-year maintenance plan, parts and labor exclusive of rotor drive and transmission…”
There remains the question of how she’ll come up with the monthly payments in Swiss francs, which Porfirio insists on as part of the deal, foreseeing up to a year of dreary small-scale swindles in neighborhoods normally better avoided, sweet-talking after-hours working stiffs out of pocket money they’ll always have better uses for, pretending to herself it’s no worse than B-girl work, at least she’s not selling anybody rotgut, which possibly amounts in the long term to a net salvation of stomachs…
Yet it’s always a source of personal humiliation that from time to time she’s obliged to put in actual working time as the cut-rate adventuress she pretends to be in her magazine articles, running tabs in saloons everywhere from grand hotels to waterfront dives, not just ambi- but multidextrous, keeping three, sometimes four routines going at any given time, while softly—with luck, attractively—humming the divorcée blues.
Worse, she’s begun sometimes to find the humiliation not so bad, almost healthy, among the earliest signs of what’s already taking hold of her. People assume she’s a masochist of some kind.
“In the sense,” she supposes, “that Pollyanna is a masochist, along with racetrack touts, stock market analysts, from any of whom a happy attitude is required despite evidence otherwise.”
Presently here are the del Vastos, up in the autogyro, out for a test spin, breezing by, waving, bound for the Rock of Gibraltar, a brief though dramatic landing on top. Later the same evening, a quiet knock, TAPtaptap, on a window far above street level. Glow responds, of course, who would it be but Porfirio, anchored swaying against the night.
“Yes, once again it is I, the Saint Nicholas of love, gently landed on your unforgivingly angled rooftop…”
“Yes, Porfirio, and Feliz Navidad back to you of coursepero qué carajothis time of night…”
“Only,mi vida, that being together with you in the sky today it slippedmy mind to mention how critical is the ratio between engine speed and rotor tachometer reading, which must be held at 12 or 12 and a half to one—”
“And you wouldn’t have gotten to sleep all night and been too tired tomorrow to remember to tell me then, how thoughtful, Porfirio.”
“Many have been ejected from the Brotherhood of International Gyro Brokers And Dealers for infractions far less serious…”
“I suppose I should at least invite you in for mint tea. That machine is securely parked, I hope. Not about to slide off the roof or anything.”
21
The train stops at Belgrade for about an hour. Hicks, nodding in and out of slumber, is aware that at some point Alf and Pips, after an unexpected wire from London, “Uncle Bostwick having another episode. Please do try to pop round forthwith. Regards from all,” have taken their leave, promising to reconnect soon in Budapest, handing him a nickel-plated policeman’s whistle, “Just give us a blast on the old Acme Thunderer here, we’ll be with you straightaway.”
“If you’re close enough to hear it, you mean.”
“No matter how far apart we are.”
“A long-distance whistle? How’s that work? Radio?”
“Apports. Ask anyone when you get to Budapest, they’ll explain.”
Out the door, onto the platform, off into early Yugoslavian night, as a new and slippery customer arrives to replace them, introducing himself as Egon Praediger, International Criminal Police Commission, flipping open a leather ID holder, “We happen to be headquartered in Vienna, though our remit covers the Continent.”
