Deadlock

The sedan’s driver had been thrown into the windshield and killed. Two passengers were on the critical list, one with spinal cord injuries. I must have looked as horrified and guilty as I felt, for he tried to reassure me.

“They weren’t wearing seat belts. I’m not saying it would have saved them, but it might have helped. It certainly saved your life when your car went over on its side. We arrested the truck driver-not a scratch on him, of course-reckless driving and involuntary manslaughter.”

“Did you inspect my car?”

He looked at me curiously. “Someone had emptied all the brake fluid for you. And cut through the power steering cables. You had enough left to get you going, but moving the wheel would have worked through the last bit of the cables for you.”

“How come I could stop at the lights down on 130th?” fluid left in the lines to hold you. But if you slammed on the brakes you wouldn’t get anything… Now who would do a thing like that? Where had you parked your car?”

I told him. He shook his head. “Lot of vandals down in the Port. You’re lucky you got out of this alive.”

“There’s a feeble excuse for a guard down at the Tri-State yard. You might have somebody talk to him and see if he noticed anything.”

McCormick said he’d think about it. He asked a few more questions and took off.

Someone brought in an enormous bouquet of spring flowers. The note read:

Vic:

So sorry to read about your accident. Speedy recovery.

Paige

That was kind. Bobby Mallory’s wife sent a plant. Murray Ryerson came in person, carrying a cactus. His idea of a joke. “Vic! You must have cat blood. Nobody ever gets hit by a semi and lives to tell it.”

Murray is a big guy with curly reddish hair. He looks sort of like a Swedish Elliott Gould. His hearty voice and forty-six-inch shoulders contracted the hospital room into half its size.

“Hi, Murray. You read too many sensational newspapers. I wasn’t hit by a semi-it got off my tail and ran into some other poor bastard.”

He pulled a vinyl-coated chair over to the bedside and straddled it backward. “What happened?”

“Is this an interview or a sick visit?” I asked crossly.

“How about an interview in exchange for the story on Paige? Or are you up to that sort of thing?”

I brightened up considerably. “What’d you find out?”

“Ms. Carrington’s a hardworking girl-excuse me, young woman. She has one older sister, no brothers. She had a scholarship at the American Ballet Theater when she was fifteen but wasn’t good enough for them in the long haul. She lives in a condo on Astor Place. Father’s dead. Mother lives in Park Forest South. Her family doesn’t have a lot of money. She may have a rich friend helping her out, or the ballet people may pay her a lot-you’d have to sic a detective on her to find out for sure. Anyway, she’s lived at the same place for several years now.”

I wrinkled my face. “Park Forest South? She told me she grew up in Lake Bluff.”

“Maybe she did. That’s just where her mother lives… Anyway, about her and your cousin. There was some talk about her and Boom Boom the last month or so before he died. They didn’t go to any of the celebrity hot spots, so it took Greta a while to catch on-someone spotted her with him at the Stadium back in March. If it was serious they kept it mighty quiet. We talked to some of the other hockey players. They seemed to think she was pursuing him-he wasn’t so involved.”

I felt an ignoble twitch of pleasure at that.

“Your turn.” Murray’s blue eyes were bright with amusement. I told him everything I knew about the accident.

“Who emptied your brake fluid?”

“Police say it’s vandals down at the Port.”

“And you say?”

“I say it was whoever pushed my cousin under the Bertha Krupnik.” But that I said to myself. “Not a glimmer, Murray. I can’t figure it out.”

“Vic, with anyone else I’d believe it. But not with you. You got someone mad and they cut your power steering. Now, who?”

I shut my eyes. “Could have been Lieutenant Mallory-he wants me to keep my nose out of the Kelvin case.”

“Someone at the Port.”

“I’m an invalid, Murray.”

“Someone connected with Kelvin.”

“No comment.”

“I’m going to follow you around, Vic. I want to see this thing happening before it happens.”

“Murray, if you don’t get out of here I’m going to sic the nurses on you. They’re a very mean lot in this hospital.”

He laughed and ruffled my hair. “Get well soon, Vic. I’d miss you if you got to your ninth life… Just for laughs, I’m going to talk to your red-faced guard over at Tri-State Grain.”

I opened my eyes. “If you find anything, you’d better let me know.”

“Read about it in the Star, Vic.” He laughed and was gone before I could think of a snappy comeback.

After he left, quiet descended for a while. I raised the head of the bed and struggled to fix up the side table so that I could write. I’d never mangled an arm before and hadn’t realized how hard it is to do things with one hand. Thank goodness for power steering, I thought, then remembered I didn’t have a car, either. I called my insurance agent to report the loss. I hoped my policy covered vandalism.

I doodled around on a sheet of cheap hospital paper-a freighter bouncing through a high sea, a few crocodiles. Anyone down at the Port could have sabotaged my car. Phillips knew I was there-he’d seen me outside the Pole Star offices. He could have told Grafalk or anyone at Grafalk’s-the dispatcher, for example.

I added a shark with rows of wild teeth, jaws big enough to swallow the freighter, and a few panicky fishes. Everyone at the Lucella knew I was there. That included Bledsoe. Trouble was, Bledsoe kissed well. Could anyone who kissed that well be evil enough to put my car out of commission? Still, the Lucella had a complete machine shop in the engine room. Sheridan or Winstein-even Bemis-could have taken care of my car while Bledsoe fed me dinner.

Then, take Phillips. He acted strange whenever I talked to him. Maybe he had fallen in love with me and couldn’t articulate it, but I didn’t think so. Also, Boom Boom and he argued over the contracts the day before my cousin’s accident.

I drew a round ball and added a thatch of hair. That was supposed to be Phillips. I labeled it in case one of the nurses wanted to save the picture for her grandchildren. I should really talk to all of them-Grafalk, Phillips, Bemis, Sheridan, Bledsoe-and soon.

I looked balefully at my left shoulder. I couldn’t do much while I lay here attached to my pulley. Still, what about those Eudora shipping contracts? Someone had rescued my canvas bag from the wreckage of the Lynx. It lay now on the lower shelf of the bedside table.

I lowered the bed, stuck my head over the side to fish the diary out of the bag, raised the bed again, and stared fixedly at that dates circled in the front of the book. I keep track of my period by circling the dates when I get it in my desk calendar, but that wouldn’t be true in my cousin’s case. I grinned to myself, picturing Boom Boom’s reaction if I’d suggested that to him.

The dates might not track Boom Boom’s menstrual cycle, but maybe they indicated some other periodic occurrence. I copied all of them down on a single sheet of paper. Some were two days apart, some seventeen, eleven, five-all prime numbers-nope, six, three, four, two again. They started at the end of March and ended in November, then started in April again.

That meant the Great Lakes shipping season. Elementary, my dear Warshawski. It began in late March or early April and ended around New Year’s when ice built up too heavily on the upper lakes for anyone to want to go crashing around in them.

Eudora Grain operated all year-round, of course, but they could only ship by water nine months of the year. So the case against Phillips had something to do with his shipping contracts. But what?