Shadow Ticket

by Thomas Pynchon

“Supernatural, perhaps. Baloney…perhaps not.” —Bela Lugosi, in The Black Cat (1934)

When trouble comes to town, it usually takes the North Shore Line.

The crime scene, turns out, is in District 2, down the south side. You can still smell it.

“IMOPIO job, no question.” Rhymes with Pinocchio.

“Howzat?” “Infernal Machine Of Presumed Italian Origin.”

“There’s the problem,” a bomb squad old-timer nods, “mode of delivery. Typical Italo whizbang tends to be absentee, time-delayed, slow-dripping acid, two-dollar Ingersoll slow-dripping acid, wired into the ignition, but seldom if ever rolled down the street

“Or else precision-engineered, custom-built, self-correcting, maybe a li’l gyroscope inside.”

“You got it. Which is why this caper’s got German storm kiddies written all over it.” “Or how about, somebody’s going to some trouble to make it look Italian.”

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.

Next evening, halfway up the porch steps, here comes Uncle Lefty, fixing his nephew with a bright and wary look, as if beaming a professional high sign between criminals.

Since they got married, Peony’s conversation has steadily been taking on an edge, her natural nerve coming out to shine, as if

some maidenly spirit, searching and pious, has set out on a trip Peony has no plans herself to make, toward a destiny quietly lifted away from her when she wasn’t looking…

Hicks and Thessalie meet one day at Velocity Lunch, a quiet joint with an upstairs you can loiter in and not be bothered, meet briefly for a handoff, or for hours of matrimonial business, even to eat at.

‘It withdrew into its own space, it asported to safety.’ ”

“Asported. When something disappears suddenly off to someplace else, in the business that’s called an asport. Coming in at you the other way, appearing out of nowhere, that’s an ‘apport.’ Happens in séances a lot, kind of side effect. Ass and app, as we say.”

temporary amnesia, or ass and app. Less likely,

maybe something out there didn’t want you to commit the assault, some unnamed force. Grace of God, another technical term we use.”

if a human soul can be defined as a structure of memories, if to ‘read’ an object is somehow to gain access to what it remembers, then how can we begrudge it a soul?”

Approaching the critical hour when many a private op would prefer, after more than enough little homeopathic snorts of gunsmoke, to head indoors to a safe desk in some upstairs office, Lew Basnight on the other hand continues to think of office work as early retirement, and intends to die

on the job, out in the field.

Otto’s Oasis, the only place in town willing to assemble for him a Doc Holliday—Old Overholt, Doc’s preferred brand, plus Nehi peach soda, in recognition of his

native Georgia, plus maybe a half jigger of absinthe if available, to put an edge on it, over ice.

so long as you ain’t another one of these metaphysical detectives, out looking for Revelation. Get to reading too much crime fiction in the magazines, start thinking it’s all about who done it. What really happened.

The Hollywood talkie Dracula opened last year in Chicago on Valentine’s Day, which happened to fall on a Saturday. April’s idea of a romantic date.

promise if you get scared you’ll come sit on my lap.”

Count Dracula, big as a movie screen, once or twice during whose activities it was Hicks who considered jumping into April’s lap.

“you can’t tell me she’s with him of her own free will.” “I just did,” Vumvum replies. “Could have somethin to do with Don Peppino’s got the biggest minghiuzza in the criminal trades, major league fungo stick, always in use and not just for practice pop-ups neither, you capeesh?”

Hicks gets a note from Skeet. “Come on down the Viaduct, somebody there you might want to talk to.”

“Welcome to the clubhouse.” Cobwebs of purple light from radio tubes with imperfect vacuums inside.

among this pack of juvenile offenders, street-corner musicians, and policy runners can also be found a number of “hams” or amateur radio operators, either licensed or hoping to be, including a couple of young ladies just graduated from Mary Texanna Loomis’s Radio College in Washington, D.C., in touch with other enthusiasts around the world, via waves the average civilian still has little idea of, waves they have learned, sometimes at a certain cost,

lurk at the fringes of frequency bands public and private, listen in on and try to decipher secret messages, sell some of what they learn, use some of it themselves for purposes of mischief, or, as the Hellraisers think of it, “practical joking.”

back room with its own back room, “First workspace in my life that has a toilet,” sez Skeet, “instead of is one. The mad scientist’s lab I always dreamed about.”

“German naval code again,” explains a kid named Drover in a set of earphones who’s been monitoring, a very bright young science whiz who had to lie about his age to get into Shorewood High School and is currently sitting in on physics classes at Marquette, now and then getting in a round of speed chess with the professor, Árpád Élő, the top player in Milwaukee.

“White kid named Red on Bluemound Road, check and triple check, pretty patriotic, ain’t it.” “Also known as the Wizard of Waukesha.

this kid’s the goods, I tell ya.”

Drover back at the shortwave equipment. “Your sub just showed up again.”

“The U-13,” Drover explains. “An unsurrendered Austro-Hungarian submarine. Supposed to be broken up by terms of the Versailles Treaty, but somehow they dodged it.” “Where are they?” “Out in the Lake someplace. Closer to the other side where there’s less ice.” “A submarine in Lake Michigan. Come on, kid.”

“Each episode,” Stuffy explains later, “the U-13 visits a different port of call. A different chore. Pickup and

delivery, tobacco, dope, guns, hooch, live passengers with their papers not always in order who need to be here or there in a hurry and don’t mind being stashed with the cargo.”

“Yeah, well, they’re picking me up tonight.”

“Where they takin you, Stuffy?” Hicks tries but it still comes out like you talk to crazy people.

“To where it’s safe.” “Mind if me and Drover tag along?” sez Skeet.

Far as the Lake’s OK if you want, but any further forget it, they tell me no witnesses allowed.”

penciled note, “If you’re here and I’m not, means I’m on my way and time you were on yours. Head toward the city lights, brighter the better, keep going, try not to look back.”

saw then there’d be a coroner’s verdict someplace, likely Chicago, hit-and-run victim not used to big-city traffic, Milwaukee being notorious for its inattentive pedestrians, ‘Jaywalkee,’ as it’s known to the wisemouths of the County of Cook…”

Skeet shows up at the office next day with an out-of-town tomato who causes a certain commotion. Thessalie asks her where she buys her shoes.

Next time Hicks is over to the Flaschners for what turns out to be another novelty casserole, he finds Uncle Lefty in a reminiscent yet strangely gemütlich state of mind. “…poised to overthrow the U.S. government? Itself? Ja?

“there it is, kid.” Visible for miles across the bleak night prairie, the neon announcement New Nuremberg Lanes, not the traditional German typeface you see so much of around town but modern sans serif,

All normal as club soda, yet somehow…too normal, yes something is making a chill creep across Hicks’s scalp, the Sombrero of Uneasiness, as it’s known in the racket. Something here is off.

just a friendly brat-and-beer get-together—we’re National Socialists, ain’t it? So—we’re socializing. Try it, you might have fun.” “The Nazz-eyes? Sure, I’ll be in touch with ya about that one…” “Enjoy it while you can, pal. Don’t wait too long. Leavin th’ station, now’s the time to climb on board, later maybe it won’t be so easy…”