Page 62 of Shadow Ticket
Requiring another get-together with Praediger, who happens to be in Budapest consulting with a flying squad out of Unit IV downtown who work nothing but apport fraud. Turns out that in response to the local ass/app situation, a trade has sprung up incounterfeitapports, passing for merchandise just in from the other side of whatever this is that’s going on. Returns. Fake returns.
“Important therefore that you become acquainted with La Lampo Plej Malbongusto, for even the most hopelessly ill-imagined lamp deserves to belong somewhere, to havebeenawaited, to enact some return, to stand watch on some table, in some corner, as a place-keeper, a marker, a promise of redemption.”
“Sure Egon, but this lamp—it could be a fake?”
“Childish, mean-spirited, exactly up Bruno’s alley…An astounding percent of asported merchandise turns out to be lamps at least as tasteless as this one. We send our operatives out through the shopping districts, wegather data on every tasteless lamp currently for sale, we follow the weekly announcements in the trade papers…”
“What about lamps that aren’t tasteless?”
“No such thing. Most lamps are inherently in bad taste because the design constraints are so few—when all you need is a socket, a cord, a switch, and some way of carrying off the heat of the bulb, the field is left wide-open to any ungifted amateur who wants to try his hand and get away with something on the cheap.”
“This one Bruno is after—”
“Don’t expect him to show up in person. He’ll likely delegate one of his deputies like Ace Lomax. So keep your eyes open and do give Dr. von Kiss our best.”
Suddenly La Lampo Plej Malbongusto is the topic of the moment…the Zoltán von Kiss shop reporting suspect faces on streetcars, in cafés, phone threats in the middle of the night—
“There is interest in La Lampo from powerful elements for whom you can never amount to more than a bothersome detail. For your personal safety, please, have nothing more to do with it,” and so forth, eventually a postal delivery with an additional apportation stamp, depicting the Holy Right Hand of St. Stephen, hacked off at the wrist, dripping blood, flying through the air across Hungary holding a sealed envelope. Below stand a country woman carrying a sheaf of wheat, a soldier in full Hussar uniform, and a factory worker holding a monkey wrench, all gazing skyward in open-mouthed wonder at the flying Hand, beneath the radiant sloganSürgos, urgent, filling the sky behind it.
ZvK reads the note enclosed, nods. “All right, that’s us. Let’s get moving.”
Rainy city pavement, fog, everything in a low-intensity blur. Hicks has no idea of where they may be headed.
First ZvK stops off at a church for a quick novena to St. Anthony of Padua, patron saint of the lost and found. “Can’t hurt, kind of preventive maintenance. Lost people, lost hope, by extension patron saint of apportists.”
Shaking his head briefly as if something unpleasant just alighted there, “Me, I feel like the village matchmaker. This isn’t the usual collector’s mania. It’s desire.” Explaining that his client the Count belongs to a secretcommunity of lampadophiles, or persons sexually attracted to lamps. “You may not have run across it that much in the States.”
“Spend enough time around emergency rooms, you’re apt to see anything. Light sockets, vacuum cleaners, that general diameter, the minute it gets invented, some genius finds a way to put their johnson into it.”
They arrive at a neighborhood of warehouses, corner taverns, cafés and hashish bars, metallic shadows, sounds of mostly invisible train traffic, train smoke in the air, uneven cobblestone pavement which demands close attention when running from or after anybody, where according to Zoltán apport-asport activities may be carried on in safety, cop-free.
A back alleyway, itself a honkytonk district in miniature, entrances and exits both alleyside and out onto the grand boulevard adjoining. The day begins at sundown, and everybody seems to be working at least one extra hustle on the side.
Csopi, who looks after the door, lounging like a shop salesman on the lookout for walk-in business, tips ZvK a friendly nod.
“Saluto,” ZvK getting into a complicated handshake, “agrabla revidi vin!”
The room is turbulent with kleptos conferring in Esperanto, featuring a lot of words ending inu(“Volitive mood,” comments Zoltán, “used for yearnings, regrets, if-onlys…”), hurried exchanges of goods for cash, contraband of all kinds just in from across various borders, loupes flourished like daggers, with a lot of peering up and down through eyeglasses, an unslackening interplay of hands from time-battered to just-manicured, among pockets, sleeves, lapels—traffic, scaled to the human palm and the briefness of time allotted, in antique watches, knickknacks, earrings, finger rings, cigar clippers, lenses, knives, and banknotes of several nations for making change.
ZvK smoothly adjusting a fedora of a pale off-mango shade, an Abdulla in a cigarette holder between his teeth at a jaunty angle, tossing semi-salutes left and right, now and then a gloved kiss, “Yes yes, charmed, I’m sure…” making his way to a table in back where three cigars seem to’ve been left unlit, unclipped, just sitting. Hicks goes to pick one up andzzt, like that they all vanish, leaving a fading iridescent halo inches above the tabletop and at Hicks’s fingertips a sensation of cold, reappearing one by one across theroom, clipped, lit, and smoldering in the kissers of three genial types lined up in a row, who now lift the hijacked smokes the way somebody you’ve bought a drink for might lift a glass, then proceed to puff on and blow smoke rings togetherinrhythmas they now approach.
“Pals of yours.”
“Call themselves Drei im Weggla, which in Nuremberg is a local snack, three bratwursts on a roll. We’ve done some business. Here, meet the boys. Schnucki, Dieter, Heinz.”
“We all used to be part of the same act,” explains Schnucki. “Until it became evident that Zoltán really was apporting objects in and out. Which was getting in the way of everybody’s timing—”
“Ruining the gags,” recalls Dieter.
“Plus Zoli couldn’t stay on the beat or in tune,” adds Heinz.
“So everybody agreed that Zoli should go on with a solo career and we’d stay together as a trio.”
“And less obviously as a freelance bodyguard unit.”
“Because,” Dieter a little reluctant, “there were also some Russians, who still keep showing up now and then…”
“Russians,” Hicks nodding, “I guess you forgot to mention them, huh, Zoli.”
