Page 59 of Shadow Ticket
“Those Interpol guys.” A European inter-cop concept Hicks now dimly recalls Boynt Crosstown being a big admirer of. There may have been a memo way back when, maybe even two.
Hicks figures this Viennese flatfoot for around inspector level—a shade too nervous for the suave cop-about-town impression he’s trying for, haircut marcelled to an eight-ball shine, bespoke suit, three buttons, side vents, softshoulder, lowered lapel notch, lapels visibly spangled in white which doesn’t seem to be dandruff.
“Knize, the single oasis in the sartorial wasteland between Naples and London, unless you count the newer German military uniforms which begin to show some glimmerings of promise.” Out with a jarful of cocaine crystals, producing a miniature hand-cranked grinder and sifting a cone of white powder which he then carefully formats into a number of nose-appropriate lines, a routine known around Chicago as “hitching up the reindeer.” “Sometimes about now, aschnupfat the right moment can help us to refocus and not go wandering off down the dead ends of the afternoon…”
“Ask you something there, Egon—does U-Ops know about me getting shanghaied and so forth?”
“They’re the ones who set it up.”
Oh, boy. “And it’s jake with them you tellin me about it?”
“Can’t see much harm.” Meaning what are you going to do about it, chump?
“Wait a minute,” sometimes with unfamiliar coppers, a gumshoe needs to carefully review who expects what in the way of coordination, “nothin personal, just like to know how it all shakes out, who’s workin for who again here exactly and so forth?”
One of those mid-European eyebrow gestures. “Actually, ICPC have a reciprocity arrangement with your U-Ops, free access to the services of any field operative anywhere in the world. And to be honest, just at the moment we could use some of that famous American ‘moxie’—”
“Who, me? I’m already over here on another ticket, what happens with that?”
“A runaway cheese heiress you have been assigned to locate and return to the U.S. whose father”—ominous pause—“Bruno…Air-mont,” the way Dracula pronounces the name Van Helsing, “happens at the moment to be our most sought-after public enemy.”
“Sure, big around Milwaukee once upon a time, Al Capone of Cheese, dropped out of sight a while back, foreign jail, some say a remote tropical island?”
“He’s out and about and quite among us I fear. His dossier has continuedto thicken, criminal activities including murder, tax evasion in a number of countries, Cheese Fraud routinely committed by a counterfeit cheese operation Continent-wide, plus any number of offshore affiliates—”
“Egon. Wait. C’mon…counterfeit cheese?”
“Ohja, far worse than most civilians realize. Half the time don’t know what they’re eating anyway. Nor have the least idea how difficult the International Cheese Syndicate can become. The Roquefort police, the Gorgonzolasquadri, even Switzerland—harmless by comparison. InChSyn are the mad dog of Cheese Enforcement, authorized to conduct special operations, come in through windows, breach walls, deploy explosives…
“Cheese Fraud being a metaphor of course, a screen, a front for something more geopolitical, some grand face-off between the cheese-based or colonialist powers, basically northwest Europe, and the vast teeming cheeselessness of Asia, their widely known reluctance to have much to do with cheese, given a long history of keeping cattle more for farmwork than for dairy products, millions of Orientals over the generations have grown unfamiliar with cheese, what little they do run across giving them indigestion, putting Asia out of the picture as a major cheese market…”
Praediger’s upper lip by now is shining from a nasal flow more or less constant. Trying to ignore crazed eyeballs, too much white showing compared to iris, sure signs of either a hophead or a candidate for Winnebago, Hicks pretends they’re having a reasonable discussion.
“See, there’s nothing on my work order,” he tries to point out, “says anything about no Bruno or nothin, we’d have to start a new ticket for that, which would need Home Office approval, which somebody could put in a request chit for, back to Chicago, if they don’t mind springing for overseas cable rates—”
Laughing dismissively, a reckless glaze creeping over his eyeballs, Praediger hands over a weighty file. “Just a summary, understand, full documentation would require an extra railway carriage at least.”
—
Turns out Brunohas been over here in Central Europe for some time now, headquartered in Geneva, where as the Al Capone of Cheese he swiftlyreached an arrangement with the InChSyn about the time the Swiss Cheese Union took its fateful step of declaring fondue the national dish. Dispatching international flying squads, said to be packing automaticsnub-nosecrossbows, to implement and if necessary enforce rind inspections, requiring that the word “Switzerland” appear repeatedly at a frequency and in a typeface and shade of red which had to be exactly right, or risk consequences grim indeed…though undeterred as always, counterfeiters, Bruno among them, nevertheless abounded. It was like Prohibition all over again, only different.
“Meanwhile, as you pursue the elusive Miss Airmont, we keep the shadow on you day and night, hoping that Bruno at a moment of diminished attention will make some fateful lunge and be drawn out of his safe perimeter, even for a fraction of a second, whereupon we are prepared to step in and apprehend.”
“And maybe you can tell me, is Daphne in on this too?”
“Is it of some concern to you?”
“If she’s helping to bring down the law on her own father—”
“In your investigations you cannot have failed to notice how often fathers and daughters are run by strange emotions, which, although occasionally dangerous, do continue to guarantee job security for us all.”
“OK, just gonna look in the Manual here for a minute…right, the next question I’m spoze to ask is, is who areyoureporting to, who is it that’s sending me off onto one more miserable damn hopeless ticket I never heard of, here?”
Praediger doesn’t answer, his eyes are open but his attention seems to be elsewhere. Just about the time Hicks has decided to give him a poke he begins to speak.
“This is the ball bearing on which everything since 1919 has gone pivoting, this year is when it all begins to come apart. Europe trembles, not only with fear but with desire. Desire for what has almost arrived, deepening over us, a long erotic buildup before the shuddering instant of clarity, a violent collapse of civil order which will spread from a radiant point in or near Vienna, rapidly and without limit in every direction, and so across the continents, trackless forests and unvisited lakes, plaintext suburbs and cryptic native quarters, battlefields historic and potential, prairie drifted over thehorizon with enough edible prey to solve the Meat Question forever…” by now having lapsed into some prophetic trance, at which the best Hicks can do is stare politely and wait for it to all go away, wondering how he’s supposed to deal with this—pretend to understand what the bughouse Austrian is talking about. Humor him? Do a sociable noseful just to keep the conversation going?
Hmm. Well, maybe…
