Page 42 of Shadow Ticket
“Goon-squad work, stay in it long enough, you should know what happens.”
“I’m out of that now.”
“Yeah and once a torpedo, always a torpedo, ain’t it.”
“Just a hayseed flatfoot, Vuscenza.”
“Wouldn’t want to be sending you to your doom, see.”
“Appreciate that. But say you did…”
Afternoon has been steadily on the creep. “Dark already, time to go turn on the scungilli,” each of the conch shells decoratively lining the front path being illuminated from within by its own tiny electric lamp. Kelly flips one switch and it’s all lit up around here like Dearborn and Randolph. More dazzling as the night advances.
—
The Nazis areeven less easy to get a story out of. Too many of them would be happy to take credit for a bomb of any size, even those who wouldn’t know one end of a firecracker from the other.
Ooly Schaufl seems sympathetic enough but isn’t too forthcoming. “Nobody our side of the Alps. Don’t know, somehow it don’t feel local. Somethin’s on the way around here, bigger than a gang war.”
“OK, without putting my nose in too far, on the off chance these two whizbangs are related…any thoughts about Stuffy Keegan? Like where is he and so forth.”
“No.”
“Is that no you don’t know where he is, or no, Hicks, I’m keepin shtum?”
“If I told you where, you’d ask why. If I told you why, you’d say, I don’t know what that is, explain it to me. By then I couldn’t explain much of anything ’cause I’d be dead.”
“Helpful for sure. All I wanted to know was—”
“Hicksie, maybe everybody knows, maybe you’re the only dummkopffrom here to Peoria whodon’tknow. Maybe there’s things’t’ll never be spoken out loud. Maybe this is bigger than the Saint Valentine’s, bigger than the Lindbergh baby. You’re the one with the license, so go ahead—private investigate your keester off, good luck, maybe you’ll even find something, but leave me out, OK, I don’t see it’ll do me much good to know or not know.”
—
Lew Basnight isn’tmuch more help.
“I may not know exactly who it is, but maybe I have a number of ideas about who it isn’t, a list you’ve already been through as thoroughly as anybody. What we’re after is an Overlooked Negative, an all but forbidden topic anymore, a whole chapter about which, in fact, like certain books of the Bible, was deliberately left out when the Gumshoe’s Manual was put together.”
“Sure, Lew, you mind running me through that again?”
“I might if I could remember what it was I said, but I may in fact not be the wised-up old-timer you seem to be taking me for.”
“Lew, don’t disillusion me, you were always what I was hoping to be someday.”
“You don’t know how sad it makes me to hear that. Ain’t that easy for tough guys. I may not look like it, but I was a tough customer once. Civilized appearance was only one of my secret weapons. I can quote you a list of well-known hired artillery who underestimated me, much to their subsequent dismay.”
“Your name still strikes fear. I use it instead of flashing my license.”
“You don’t have to grovel.”
16
The day has darkened, the shop is quiet, the evening trimotor hop over to Grand Rapids will be taking off soon, everybody’s knocked off work except for Hicks and Boynt, Boynt’s shoes restless on the rug, last light of day severely raking over the prairie down across the town, bouncing off the Lake, rebouncing off the ceiling, desktop, Boynt’s eyeglasses.
“If it was me I’d’ve pulled you long ago, but it’s Home Office that have the say-so here, all you need to know is it’s a numbered account, one of the Loop banks that’s still solvent, checks all clearing just swell, thanks, and look for a letter of credit waiting for you in New York, at the Gould Fisk Fidelity Bank and Trust, not too far from Pennsylvania Station—”
“Boynt. Is that New York I just heard?”
“Let me guess, you’re wondering why are we sending you eight hundred miles out of town? go ahead and think what you like. None of my business anymore, maybe Don Peppino and that crowd down in Little Cosenza bought me off, maybe somebody believes you’re worth travel expenses, even if it’s only 50 smackers.”
