Shadow Ticket

The next day, Skeet appears at the U-Ops office with Fancy Vivid, a young lady who insists she was in love with Stuffy. She wants to hire the detective agency to track Stuffy down. She says that Stuffy talked often about submarines, but she mistook this for “some kind of sex talk” (60). Later, Hicks reads through old files and falls into a brief dream in which he nearly lets Stuffy die. Hicks wakes up and assures himself that it was “only a dream” (61).

Hicks visits his aunt and uncle for “another novelty casserole” (62). Uncle Lefty talks about the rise of fascism in Germany again, and when he hints that there is a burgeoning fascist movement in Milwaukee, he invites Hicks to accompany him to a bowling alley. At the Nuremberg Lanes, Hicks discovers an expensively-designed modern bowling facility. Feeling a sense of unease, however, he notices that many of the men are “only pretending to bowl” (64). This is, he realizes, a meeting place for American Nazis. Hicks recognizes an old associate named Ooly Schaufl, who is now going by the name Ulrich. They worked together, breaking strikes, and Ulrich invites Hicks to join the National Socialists as they socialize. Hicks declines. The alley is raided by the authorities, led by the Prohibition agent Vic Durbow. Hicks has a “chilly” (67) relationship with the stern Durbow, so he exits the venue. The next time he visits his uncle, Hicks raises the subject of the American Nazis. Uncle Lefty tells Hicks that there is a federal presence in Milwaukee; the FBI will open an office in the city soon and they want to speak to Hicks. Lefty warns that someone is “trying to hang the Stuffy Keegan bomb” (69) on Hicks.

Hicks goes to the federal courthouse, which is still under construction. He speaks with Assistant Special Agent in Charge T.P. O’Grizbee about “what part Nazis, foreign or domestic, might’ve played” (71) in Stuffy’s disappearance. From Skeet, the FBI have heard rumors of the U-13 submarine. Since Hicks speaks a bit of German, O’Grizbee wants to recruit him for some work which will be “quite far out of town” (73). O’Grizbee applies pressure on Hicks by reminding him that the FBI could “be running the country any day now” (74) and they can use legal means against him if he does not agree to work for them.

Hicks approaches Boynt for advice. Boynt is not surprised that the FBI want Hicks to be “what [he] never stopped being” (76). Boynt believes that the FBI are a front for a nationwide syndicate of financial tycoons who are organized against any sort of left-wing political movements. They are spooked by the prospect of a “Red apocalypse” (76) and will do anything to prevent the United States moving to the left. Boynt returns to the case of the missing cheese heiress, suggesting that Hicks could use the search for Daphne Airmont as an excuse to get out of town. The detective agency is changing, Boynt says, and Hicks may be due a promotion if he is cooperative. Since Hicks is still reluctant, they visit the offices of the Airmont lawyers to find out more about the case. The lawyers outline Mrs. Airmont’s desire to have her daughter return “without the clarinet player” (80). Hicks is reminded of the “the American Indian belief […] that once you save somebody’s life, you’re responsible for them in perpetuity” (80). Hicks claims that he did not save Daphne’s life, but the lawyers claim that his “crucially decisive intervention” (81) amounts to the same thing.

Hicks visits the Airmont home to find out more about Daphne. The mansion is filled with luxury goods and “a number of eccentric Airmont cousins” (82). Hicks talks to them about the metaphysical nature of cheese, which is almost a religion in Wisconsin. The Airmont cheese fortune was built in part on a product named Radio-Cheez, a brand of cheese designed to stay fresh due to the use of radioactive ingredients. Radium, at the time, was very popular, and the so-called Radium Girls of Ottawa, Illinois worked in factories where they painted radium on watch dials for a glow-in-the-dark effect. The initial success of Radio-Cheez, however, quickly unraveled when it was declared “harmful to human health” (84), just as the Radium Girls eventually experienced health issues caused by licking the radium-laced brushes. In the middle of his legal problems, Bruno Airmont “skedaddled off the civilized map for parts unknown” (85), leaving Daphne behind to deal with the paperwork and legal problems despite her youth. The cheese industry underwent a revolution in 1930, with some believing that Bruno Airmont’s complaints about the cheese industry masked a secret involvement in the sale of contraband cheese. At some point, Bruno met the gangster Al Capone, and the two seemed to become friends. At the Airmont house, Hicks meets G. Rodney Flaunch, a “onetime male flapper” (88) who has presented himself as Daphne’s fiancé while bragging about his intention to marry into the Airmont cheese fortune. He insists that he wants Daphne back, even though he would happily leave the family alone in exchange for $1.5 million. Daphne’s mother, Vivacia Airmont, reiterates the assignment: bring back Daphne from the clutches of jazz clarinetist Hop Wingdale, whose band the Klezmopolitans were last seen in Chicago.

Hicks recalls the night he met Daphne Airmont. That night, Daphne was running away from Dr. Swampscott Vobe, the operator of a rehabilitation facility, who is obsessed with testing his experimental ray-based ideas on his patients. Hicks was riding aboard a “high-performance smuggling craft” (92) with his friend, Dippy Chazz (also known as Giancarlo Foditto). Hicks was introduced to Daphne and offered to help her escape. They shared a moonlit speedboat chase across the lake until Hicks dropped Daphne off with friends at the nearby Ojibwe reservation. April, learning the story later, is unimpressed. Weeks later, while talking to his associate Vito Cubanelli, Hicks meets an Ojibwe man named Jimmy, who explains that Daphne met several members of the Ojibwe Dawn Society while in one of the “childhood loony bins” (100) in which she spent time as a child. The Ojibwe, Jimmy explains, were often consigned to such places due to “phony cannibal” (100) accusations based on the cultural story of the Windigo. Jimmy repeats the belief that saving someone’s life leads to a responsibility for that person.