Shadow Ticket

Boynt warns Hicks that the Home Office of U-Ops wants him sent out of town. Hicks is being sent to New York with a decidedly one-way ticket, which Boynt describes as “an act of uncompensated kindness” (116) since someone saw Hicks meeting with the FBI. Next, Hicks says goodbye to Skeet, who tries to give Hicks his lucky half-dollar. Skeet plans to look into Stuffy’s disappearance himself. Lino Trapanese, Don Peppino’s henchman, congratulates Hicks on his decision to leave town. At the station the following day, Hicks says farewell to April. They part ways with “no choice but to kiss goodbye” (122) as the train prepares to depart.

Hicks the train across the United States toward New York. In the observation car, he is approached by McKinley Gibbs, who shows him a collection of records. They discuss politics and music. When McKinley plays a record, Hicks slips into a “romantic nostalgia episode” (124) as he recognizes April’s song. Hicks listens to the song several times, then falls asleep. When he wakes, the record and McKinley are gone.

In New York, Hicks makes a “courtesy drop-by” (126) at the local U-Ops branch. At the front desk, Connie McSpool jokingly compares Hicks to Judge Crater, a New York Supreme Court justice who vanished in a famous case. Daphne Airmont, he is told, just set off “on that midnight liner for overseas” (127). Hicks assures himself that U-Ops will not send him overseas in pursuit. In Gould Fisk Fidelity and Trust, Hicks goes to collect his pay but instead finds himself issued with “a steamer ticket and a brand-new passport too” (128). He tries to call Boynt and then to send a telegram, but he cannot reach his office. That night, he visits a club in Harlem with Connie and “a few of the boys” (129). He complains to her that someone seems intent on sending him “clear out of the U.S.A.” (130). No one else will take the assignment from him.

Hicks wakes on an ocean liner with no memory of how he got there. He suspects that he was surreptitiously injected with “a needle full of something in the chloral hydrate family” (132). He is aboard the Stupendica, where he meets a journalist named Glow Tripforth del Vasto. She is researching an article about being a Jazz Age adventurer on Depression budget. The passengers of the ship include American sorority girls, exiled royalty, grinning stewards, and corrupted juveniles. In his cabin, Hicks finds a new suit: the “Midnight aubergine and electric kumquat” (133) suit seems to be impossible to wrinkle. The passengers aboard the ship seem to be locked into a drunken party that brings together the various social groups. Among them, Hicks meets Alf and Philippa “Pip” Quarrender, a pair of married spies who claim to be on “an extended world tour” (135). Alf jokes about the rise of fascist tendencies in America, feigning surprise that “Republicans and gangsters” (135) might be in business together. Hicks also learns about Glow’s “ex- or possibly current husband” (138), Porfirio del Vasto, an unscrupulous dealer of used autogyros (a flying machine similar to a small helicopter). Porfirio, Hicks learns, may be a notorious jewel thief and murderer; he is determined to sell an autogyro to his wife, Glow, at what he claims to be a very reasonable price. Over a drink, Porfirio reveals to Hicks that many of the passengers believe Hicks to be “an American gangster, being deported to somewhere in Eastern Europe” (141). Porfirio claims that it is an open secret that the Quarrenders are transporting Hicks across the Atlantic.

Hicks asks the Quarrenders about Porfirio’s claim. The Quarrenders, he learns, have “been out on a worldwide scouting expedition to find recruits for the Secret Intelligence” (142), a division of MI6 known as MI3b. Like many nations, Britain is trawling the world for operatives and many code breakers are being escorted back to Britain by the married couple. They ask Hicks whether he would be interested in joining them. Hicks insists that he is on a normal assignment as a private detective; Pip pities Hicks, noting that “things will never go back to the way they were” (143). Instead, he says, everything will become more “interesting” (143). Alf hints that war is imminent. Alf and Pip agree between themselves to keep an eye on Porfirio. The ship seems haunted by unseen forces, reminding Hicks of his family history in proximity to seances and mediums. His Cousin Begonia, he says, claimed to be a spiritualist but Pip dismisses such acts as “parlor tricks” (146). Alf comments on the strangeness of the times in which they are living, “where popes make arrangements with Fascists and the needs of cold capitalist reality and those of adjoining ghost worlds come into rude contact” (146).

Several passengers reportedly feel as though the Stupendica is being tracked by a strange submarine. Like the supposed ghostly inhabitants of the ship, “some see it, some don’t” (146). Though Hicks does not see the submarine, he hears a radio message from Stuffy Keegan (though his voice sounds different), who confirms that the U-13 is following the Stupendica. The submarine is operated by smugglers and operates out of the port city of Fiume (in present-day Croatia), currently under the control of fascist Italy. Stuffy invites Hicks to visit him in the “Milwaukee of the Adriatic” (148). Hicks also learns about the duels that Porfirio is fond of fighting; he observes Porfirio closely to confirm that he is a light-fingered jewel thief. Thievery is just one part of Porfirio’s “diverse portfolio of projects” (150). Porfirio confronts Hicks in a dramatic showdown, accusing him of being romantically interested in Glow. Hicks resolves the situation amicably, and the del Vastos disembark the ship in Tangiers, where Porfirio presents Glow with a likely-stolen autogyro.

After crossing the Atlantic, Hicks is in Central Europe. He slumbers on the train as it passes through Belgrade; Pip and Alf promise to reconnect with him in Budapest. They are replaced in Hicks’s life by Egon Praediger, an International Criminal Police Commission agent with a cocaine habit. Egon reveals that, as Hicks searches for Daphne, he is being watched “day and night” (157) as part of an investigation into the ongoing cheese fraud committed by her father. The ICPC and InChSyn (the International Cheese Syndicate) have been pursuing Bruno Airmont for the crime of counterfeiting cheese. Fueled by cocaine, Egon explains that cheese fraud is also a metaphor for more geopolitical crimes, a showdown between cheese-based colonial powers in Northwest Europe and Asia, which does not consume as much cheese as InChSyn would like. Egon believes that a new war is inevitable; they are living through the “long erotic buildup before the shuddering instant of clarity” (157), followed by a collapse of the civil order. Hicks is being sent to Budapest, “the metropolis and beating heart of asport/apport activities” (158), where he may be able to find Ace Lomax, Bruno Airmont’s former right-hand man. Egon tells Hicks to find the noted apportist Dr. Zoltán von Kiss, who will help him to find Ace, who should now be considered Hicks’s “new assignment” (159). As part of this new assignment, Egon hands Hicks a gun, a brand-new Walther PPK.