Page 6 of Shadow Ticket
“Maybe just pull me a phosphate, now I’m suddenly on a budget.”
“Good call ’cause there’s nothin much to tell, heard it when it went off but down here couldn’t even say what direction. You know the usual racial categories as well as me, but in this case that truck wasn’t hit with no goombah grenade. Maybe you want to look closer to your own all-American type of neighborhood.”
“Howzat?”
“Spend your whole day around ice cream, you can begin to grow philosophical. You figure a state with two million dairy cows, a certain percent of that milk will be going into ice cream, nickel a cone, been that way forever. But it turns out there’s milk and then there’s milk. The kind you drink from a bottle is more expensive than the kind they use to make butter and cheese and ice cream out of. A two-price system is what they call it. Now we got syndicates of Bolshevik farmers looking to make it all one price, meaning the cost per scoop of ice cream goes up 70, 80 percent, next thing we’re looking at a dime cone, the banana split you thought you wanted goes up to 30, 40, 50 cents, no end in sight. Who’s got money like that to spend?”
“Sounds serious, Hoagie.”
“It’s civil war.”
“Over ice-cream cones?”
“Could be the one spark that sets it all off. Won’t take much. Milk is the universal American drink, ain’t it, bigger than beer, even in Milwaukee. Don’t believe me, talk to your pals up on Yankee Hill. Track down Bruno Airmont wherever he’s got to.”
Bruno. “Seriously?”
“Why do you think he skipped when he did? Maybe he heard somethin rollin down the tracks we can’t yet. You’re the private investigator, laughing boy. Go investigate.”
3
After drifting around the Near North Side, putting his head in Smoky Gooden’s policy joint, passing some genial semiprofessional chitchat with elements of the MPD Morals Squad on their way in and out, listening in on a Bronzeville establishment or two, the Flame, the Polka Dot, the Moonglow, Hicks rolls into Arleen’s Orchid Lounge a little before midnight. As jake with the world as it ever gets, extra pack of Spuds in his pocket, truck just in from Canada, rain whispering on the sheet metal out back, and April Randazzo about to begin a set, sporting an indigo number from some rag joint in Chicago that isn’t Goldblatt’s. Doesn’t look bad on her.
Over the last year or so Hicks and April have become a recognized couple on assorted dance floors around Milwaukee and further down the Lake. Sometimes a camera girl will tiptoe up and snap them together dancing, and when the prints come back he’s amazed at how often the shot has caught April not quite smiling, that’d be too much to ask, but at least visibly relaxed, as if thinking the hard part of her day is over, one of those good-as-sincere surrenders to the swing ’n’ sway, the night out, the time she’s having so far.
They met at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, near the el, half a clam to get in, cork, felt, and spring-cushioned floor, palm trees, archways, tile, the Spanish palace courtyard treatment, secret tunnel to nearby Capone hangout The Green Mill, only white people allowed in.
First thing Hicks runs into is a floor patrolman in a tuxedo who’s justbeen prying apart a couple he thinks have been dancing “too close,” the male half of which has promptly disappeared, leaving a presentable young woman who turns out to be April. “All’s I’m saying,” gripping her sleeveless arm in a less than hospitable way, it seems to Hicks, “is you and your boyfriend wherever he’s got to might find it more comfortable at the Arcadia, Dreamland, the Savoy. Places like that don’t mind Lindy-hopping or the more experimental types of jazz band, but we have this sort of house policy, you see…”
“Problem here?” Hicks’s hands, ordinarily sedate, beginning to tighten into fists.
“Thanks, but I wasn’t looking for police activities tonight,” April in a whisper over her shoulder, “if that’s OK?”
“See what I can do. First of all, pal, you can leave go of the lady, and get back to your junior prom out there.”
“Excuse me—”
“You’re excused.”
Apparently having taken a good look at Hicks for the first time, the floor man nods and withdraws.
“Well,” remarks April.
“Yeah. Care to cut a rug?”
“Not here. Somehow this joint has lost its charm.”
They end up eventually at a black-and-tan ballroom somewhat south of here where the music is closer to jazz and the dancing experimental as anything in town.
The band at some point decide it’ll be fun to play in 5/4. “Hey, it’s the Half and Half. You know it?” April turns out to be the first he’s met who ever heard of the step, let alone actually dances it, which according to Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle calls for a 1-2-3, 1-2 beat. The rest of the floor is suddenly unoccupied. Hicks and April remain, looking at each other, not for the first time but seems like it.
“Come on,” giving her a spin and there they are alone in a follow spot, April content to be led for a change, though she can count 1-2-3, 1-2 as well as this customer here who’s started putting in all these dips and hesitations, nodoubt to keep her awake. Well. A break at least from the cement mixers she usually finds herself out tripping with.
At the end of the number there’s even a little applause. April smiles back and nods. “For years that was my dream—to be one of those girls in a nightclub scene, all dolled up, out on a date, across a table from some dreamboat, just a little out of focus, having the best time in the world.”
“Me, a dreamboat, really?”
“Or to put it another way…”
