Chapter 12

Page 76

inner torpedo
I.e., inner hitman

Page 77

"Sure there isn't some way we could just do this all out of the office? Shortwave radio or something?"
Foreshadows the modern era of working from home, a practice which went widespread following the worldwide 2020-2022 Covid pandemic.

some frail little tubercular seamstress
Reference to Giacomo Puccini's opera La bohème. Mimi is a seamstress. She is ill and dies of a cause never stated in the opera, but is widely understood to be tuberculosis.

picking up an easy spare
bowling terminology... knocking down a pin left standing

make with the clodhoppers
Start dancing?

Page 78

Canadian IPA
India Pale Ale beer, which by 2025 had been established as almost a default 'strain' in many Canadian and American craft bars and breweries.

Page 79

takes a penny
The U.S. Mint, incidentally, ceased manufacture of the penny coin on Friday, November 14th, 2025, roughly a month after the publication of Shadow Ticket.

Page 80

"to what she's willing to pay him to dump Daphne?"
This recalls the plot of James L. Cain's 1941 novel Mildred Pierce, made into a film in 1945 by Casablanca director Michael Curtiz, starring Joan Crawford in one of her most popular performances.

the American Indian belief [...] that once you save somebody's life, you're responsible for them in perpetuity
This feels like it ought to belong to some Native North American ethic of reciprocity or spiritual obligation, but it’s actually a pan-cultural motif, not a single, codified "American Indian belief" or "an old Indian saying."

Page 81

A dame with some moxie

Meaning a woman with some gumption and wherewithal and spunk. The word would lend itself to the American soft drink beverage introduced in Maine, created in 1876 as a patent medicine. Moxie (the beverage) still exists to this day in 2026, and is currently produced by The Coca-Cola Company.