Deadlock

prairie grass and a junkyard. Sheridan turned right. “I don’t think Martin went to school at all. He grew up in Cleveland and started sailing when he was sixteen by lying about his age. Maybe he doesn’t like a Northwestern man reminding him he’s self-educated.”

That didn’t make sense-self-educated people are usually proud of the fact. “Well, why is there so much animosity between him and Grafalk?”

“Oh, that’s easy to explain. Niels looks on Grafalk Steamship as a fiefdom. He’s filthy rich, has lots of other holdings, but the shipping company’s the only thing he cares about. If you work for him, he thinks it’s a lifelong contract, just like a baron swearing loyalty to William the Conqueror or something.

“I know: I started my career at Grafalk. He was sore as hell when I left. John Bemis too-the captain of the Lucella. But our going never bugged him when we left the way it did with Martin. He regarded that as the ultimate betrayal, maybe because Martin was the best dispatcher on the lakes. Which is why Pole Star’s done as well as it has. Martin has that sixth sense that tells him what fraction of a dollar he can offer to be the low bidder and still make a profit.”

We were pulling into the yard of another elevator. Sheridan bumped the car across the ruts and parked behind a weather-beaten shed. Four hopper cars were being maneuvered on the tracks in front of us onto the elevator hoist. We picked our way around them, through the ground floor of the giant building, and out to the wharf.

The Lucella loomed high above us. Her red paint was smooth and unchipped. She made the other ships I’d seen that day look like puny tubs. A thousand feet long, her giant hull filled the near horizon. I felt the familiar churning in my stomach and shut my eyes briefly before following Sheridan up a steel ladder attached to her side.

He climbed briskly. I followed quickly, putting from my mind the thought of the black depths below, of the hull thrusting invisibly into murky water, of the sea, alive and menacing.

We met Captain Bemis in the mahogany-paneled bridge perched on top of the pilothouse. Through glass windows encircling the bridge we could see the deck stretching away beneath us. Men in yellow slickers were washing out the holds with high-pressure hoses.

Captain Bemis was a sturdy, short man, barely my height. He had steady gray eyes and a calm manner-useful, no doubt, in a high sea. He called down to the deck on a walkie-talkie to his first mate, asking him to join us. A yellow-slickered figure detached itself from the group on deck and disappeared into the pilothouse.

“We’re very concerned about this vandalism to the Lucella,” Bemis told me. “We were sorry when young Warshawski died. But we’d also like to know what it was he had to say.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I hadn’t talked to Boom Boom for several months… I was hoping he might have said something to you that would give me a clue about his state of mind.”

Bemis gave a frustrated sign. “He wanted to talk to us about this business with the holds. Sheridan told you about that? Well, Warshawski asked if we’d found the culprit. I told him yes. He said he thought there might be more to it than just a dissatisfied seaman. He had some additional checking to do, but he wanted to talk to me the next day.”

The first mate came onto the bridge and Bemis stopped talking to introduce me. The mate’s name was Keith Winstein. He was a wiry young man, perhaps thirty years old, with a shock of curly black hair.

“I’m telling her about the business with young Warshawski,” Bemis explained to the mate. “Anyway, Keith here and I waited on the bridge until five on Tuesday, hoping to talk to him. Then we got the news that he’d died.”

“So no one here saw him fall!” I exclaimed.

The first mate shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry, but we didn’t even realize there’d been an accident. We were tied up across the way, but none of our men was on deck when the ambulance came.”

I felt a sharp twist of disappointment. It seemed so-so unfair that Boom Boom could slide out of life without one person to see him do it. I tried to concentrate on the captain and his problem, but none of it seemed important to me. I felt stupid, as though I’d wasted a day. What had I expected to find out, anyway? Rushing around the wharf, playing detective, just to avoid admitting that my cousin was dead.

I suggested to Bemis and Winstein that they find the man they’d fired and question him more thoroughly, then pleaded a meeting in the Loop and asked the chief engineer to drive me back to the Eudora Grain parking lot. I picked up my Lynx there and headed north.

7 Watchman, Tell Us of the Night

My apartment is the large, inexpensive top of a three-flat on Halsted, north of Belmont. Every year the hip young professionals in Lincoln Park move a little closer, threatening to chase me farther north with their condominium conversions, their wine bars, and their designer running clothes. So far Diversey, two blocks south, has held firm as the dividing line, but it could go any day.

I got home around seven, exhausted and confused. On the long drive back, snarled in commuter traffic for two hours, I’d wrestled with my depression. By the time I parked in front of my gray stone building the gloom had lifted a bit. I began wondering about some of the strange behavior down at the Port.

I poured myself a solid two fingers of Black Label and ran a bath. When you thought about it, it was very odd that Boom Boom had called the captain, made an appointment to discuss vandalism, and then died. It hadn’t even occurred to me to ask Bemis or Winstein about the papers Boom Boom might have stolen.

It sounded as though Boom Boom might have been playing detective. Maybe that was why he was calling me- not out of despair but for a professional consultation. What had he discovered? Something worth my finding out too? Was I still looking for some deeper importance to his death than an accident, or was there something to know?

I sipped my whiskey. I couldn’t sort my feelings out enough to tell. It was incredible to me that someone might kill Boom Boom to keep him from talking to Bemis. Still. What about the tension between Grafalk and Bledsoe? Boom Boom’s death following so quickly after his phone call to Bemis? The accident today at the wharf?

I got out of the tub and wrapped myself in a red bath sheet and poured another slug of scotch. There were enough odd actions down at the Port that it would be worth my asking a few more questions. Anyway, I thought, tossing off the whiskey, so what if I work out my grief by carrying out an investigation? Is that any stupider than getting drunk or whatever else people do when someone they love dies?

I put on a pair of clean jeans and a T-shirt and wandered out to the kitchen. A depressing sight-pans stacked around the sink, crumbs on the table, an old piece of aluminum foil, cheese congealed on the stove from a pasta primavera I’d made a few nights ago. I set about washing up-there are days when the mess hits you so squarely that you can’t add to it.

The refrigerator didn’t have much of interest in it. The wooden clock by the back door said nine-too late to go out for dinner, as tired as I was, so I settled for a bowl of canned pea soup and some toast.

Over another scotch I watched the tail end of a depressing Cubs defeat in New York-their eighth in a row. The New Tradition takes hold, I thought gloomily, and went to bed.

I woke up around six to another cold cloudy day. The first week in May and the weather was like November. I put on my long running pants and conscientiously did five miles around Belmont Harbor and back. I’d been using Boom Boom’s death as an excuse for indolence and the run left me panting more than it should have.

I drank orange juice, showered, and had some fresh-ground coffee with a hard roll and cheese. It was seven- thirty. I was due at Eudora Grain in three hours to talk to the men. In the interim I could go back for a quick scan of Boom Boom’s belongings. I’d been looking for something personal on my previous visit, something that might indicate his state of mind. This time I’d concentrate on something that indicated a crime.

A small trickle of beautifully suited lawyers and doctors oozed from the 210 East Chestnut building. They had the unhealthy faces of people who eat and drink too much most of the time but keep their weight down through strenuous diets and racquetball in between. One of them held the door without really noticing me.

Up in Boom Boom’s condo I stopped again for a few minutes to look at the lake. The wind whipped whitecaps up on the green water. A tiny red sliver moved on the horizon, a freighter on its journey to the other side of the lakes. I stared for a long time before bracing my shoulders and heading to the study.

An appalling sight met me. The papers I had left in eight discrete piles were thrown pell-mell around the room.