Page 85 of Shadow Ticket
A broad sort of “Who, me?” shrug, a comical face he thinks is endearing. “Well yes I suppose I am, in a way. It’s time you grew up, and sometimes it’s a father’s job to speed things along. Just ’cause I call you Pumpkin doesn’t mean I want my li’l Cinderella turning into one.”
“Um, Pop, I don’t think it’s actually Cinderella who turns into a—”
“Whatever, maybe I wasn’t paying that close attention, mostly remember reading it all snuggled together when you were little…”
Probably not the best time to do a double take, and she tries not to, but…Creepy? Maybe a little.
“I need the money, Daph, I’m on the lam. Some very bad people are after your old Pop, itchin to take down the Al Capone of Cheese. Forces I once had no idea even existed.”
“Who’s chasing you, Pop, and why?”
“Somebody wants to run the Cheese Outfit, and frankly if they want it they can have it, fine with me, though it’ll take more to keep the sawed-off shotguns away. When did I ever ask to be the Al Capone of Cheese?”
“May or June of 1930—you forgot already?”
“Just never say I didn’t warn you. Here, here’s a ‘Kleenex,’ wipe your nose and try not to fall apart into too many pieces.” Reaching for a Unicum bottle that happens to be nearby, meantime wondering, What’s wrong with the kid? she used to have some sense once, there was even a time he’d expected to bring her into the Cheese racket someday, teach her everything he knows about the different cultures and processing, how to read the markets, buy and sell, options and futures…
Heck with it. Fatherly pipe-dreaming. By now she’s stepped out into a life of her own. Bruno may understand that this is something he needs to come to terms with. Then again, maybe not.
—
Of course ifanybody has the inside dope it’s Slide Gearheart. “One way to look at it,” Slide busily pretending to redefine his hat brim, “except maybeshe’s known everything about it all along. Word around is she’s been working her own counter-scheme, luring Bruno deeper into a sordid and forbidden sex affair while hired photo crews secretly record every last shameful detail—”
“Wait, wait. Daphne? A-and Bruno? come on, her own father, that’s illegal, ain’t it?”
“Not too much of that going on in Milwaukee, I bet. Here, catch up on the news of the world,” tossing over a back issue ofLowlife Gazette, in which Hicks finds snapshots of Daphne, early adolescence, posing ambiguously on Bruno’s lap, each with the same self-pleased expression on their kisser. Easy to mistake for the imperfectly contained smirking of a girl and a secret lover.
So of course next time he and Daphne cross paths, Hicks figures he ought to bring it up.
“And…what’s it to you again? One evening recently, you and I did some kidding around, with a lovely time appearing to’ve been had by all, but I’m not sure how much of the story of my life that entitles you to.”
Next thing he knows Daphne has gone AWOL. Looking for Hop, according to Slide’s sources, which include Heino Zäpfchen, a much sought-after Judenjäger, or Jew-tracker, familiar with ranges and habits, and secret migration patterns…“In for 10 percent. The rest goes to the client, all on spec,” Slide explains, “he sends them over, gets as much as he can, if they’re not for one customer they’ll be for another.”
“And when he brings in somebody who turns out to be not Jewish—”
“Never happens. Heino gets to make the final call. If he says they’re a Jew, whatever they were when he made the collar, by the time he brings them in, they’re a Jew. Leading to a lot of complaining because Jews don’t proselytize, plus it’s not uncommon for Heino to turn around and convey to safety a Jew he’s already shopped and collected bounty payment on—pursuit and rescue, playing both sides of the racket.”
“And we’re paying him…”
“All on contingency. Fact, I have him nearly convinced he should be paying us.”
Heino’s list of useful leads happens to include Nigel Trevelyan, and so a rough idea of Hop Wingdale’s whereabouts is not long in arriving.
“He’s booked onto a motorcycle circuit of some kind, which would be a breeze ordinarily, except that it’s heading him straight into Vladboys territory.”
Of the many paramilitary gangs that have been proliferating ever since the departure of Béla Kun’s Lenin Boys and the arrival of the White Terror with its open season on Jews, the Vladboys have come to be considered among the worst. Their hatred of Jews is pure, free of remorse, they aren’t in it for the ideology, they just want to damage as many Jews as they can, taking as their inspiration Béla Kun’s triggerman Tibor Szamuely, who cruised the Hungarian Soviet aboard his personal death train with a platoon of Lenin-fiúk, and wherever it stopped people were hanged.
“They’re merciless, this bunch, unbribable because nothing the law-abiding world knows how to offer them has ever been enough…We’ve got to go search and rescue,” Slide figures. “If the Vladboys get hold of Hop, they’re so desperate for Nazi approval that they’ll do some creative damage before handing over what’s left of him. And now he’s about to play a Vladboys rally. Wishing him a hatful of luck, I’m sure.” Slide up on his feet and down the street. “See if I can’t promote us some transportation, back in a flash.”
Which is more like a day and a half later, when Slide shows up out of nowhere, which turns out to’ve been Bratislava, in an Alfa Romeo 8C Touring Spider, accompanied by Zdenek, who claims to be an authentic Czechoslovakian golem, in a Bugatti Type 50 sedan, his face not easily read, something like a bowler on a bowling trophy just at that split second before the ball’s about to leave his hand, a face prepared to react as needed to whatever gutter balls, strikes, difficult-to-impossible splits may lie seconds away down the alley in an untranspired future.
“Nice buggies, boys, where’d you pick ’em up?”
Happened to run into a Concorso d’Eleganza translocated from somewhere, Lagondas and Delahayes and Hispano-Suizas, a parade of snazzy coachwork and chrome, drivers worried more about receiving so much as a scratch than getting hijacked, which being unthinkable was what Slide and Zdenek went ahead and did, and next thing anybody knew there they were, tooling on down the highway each in his own elegant ride.
—
For centuries, Zdenekexplains, ever since Judah Loew was Rabbi of Prague, a body of powerful golem lore has been passed down, rabbi to rabbi. At present, owing to a secret rider to the Treaty of Saint-Germain, written in invisible ink, no one in the newly patched-together Czecho-Slovak entity has been allowed to build any golem above a certain size. If a customer should, however, find they needed a smaller, single-purpose unit, making up in pugnacity for what it lacks in dimension, a sort of snub-nose golem, there does happen to be a clandestine works near Pardubice, of which Zdenek is a Versailles-compliant alumnus, up to modern spec.
