Deadlock

“We’ve got a man with a broken leg. That’s the only injury, thank God. But there’s water everywhere. Port engine is gone… It was a bomb, you know. Depth charges. Must have been planted right on the center beam. Set off by radio signal. But why?”

I shook my head, helplessly, but his words jarred my mind loose. If it was set off by remote signal, it was done by someone along the bank. In the observation deck. The man with bright red hair and a pair of binoculars. Howard Mattingly, the second-string hockey player had hair like that. Boom Boom saw him someplace he shouldn’t be three weeks ago. Now here he was at the observation deck with binoculars when the Lucella blew up.

I forgot the ache in my left shoulder. I needed to find Mattingly. Now. Before he got away. I turned abruptly in front of Sheridan and moved back out on deck. My gun. I wasn’t going to tackle Mattingly without the Smith & Wesson. I went back to where I’d left it, to where Bledsoe and the captain were standing.

The bag was gone. I hunted for a few minutes, but I knew it was useless. Two shirts, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and a three-hundred-dollar Smith & Wesson were all lying with Vergil in fifty thousand tons of barley.

“I’m going,” I said to the captain. “I’ve got an idea I need to follow up. Better get one of your junior cooks to get him some hot tea with lots of sugar. He’s not doing too well.” I cocked my thumb in Bledsoe’s direction. I didn’t wait for Bemis’s response but turned to go.

It wasn’t difficult getting off the Lucella. She was resting at the bottom of the lock, her deck even with the bank. Clinging to the cables around the side, I swung easily across the two feet between her upraised stern and the side of the lock. As I picked my way up the narrow strip of land separating me from the MacArthur Lock, I passed an emergency crew coming from the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. Men in green fatigues, medics, a stretcher crew-a solemn procession befitting a major disaster. Bringing up the rear, of course, was a television news team. They were the only ones who took any notice of me. One of them stuck a microphone under my nose and asked whether I was coming from the ship and what I knew about it.

I shrugged my shoulders in embarrassment and said in Italian that I didn’t know any English. Disappointed, the cameramen continued in the wake of the Coast Guard.

The crossway stretched on in front of me, two concrete strips sandwiching a wedge of grass. The wind chilled my sore shoulder. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. My legs were leaden posts and would not race for me. I staggered up to the gates closed in front of the MacArthur Lock and made my way across the narrow path on top of them. Beyond me lay the rocks lining the channel into Lake Huron. We were lucky the gates had held.

A tremendous crowd had gathered at the observation deck. It took time and energy to force my way through the crush of people. Mattingly was no longer there.

Before elbowing my way out again, I looked for a minute at the Lucella. She was an appalling sight. Bow and stern both stuck up from the lock at jagged angles. A number of cables had snapped from the self-unloader and swung meaninglessly above the remains of the deck. Wet barley oozed from the open cargo holds into a yellow smear across the visible parts of the gaping decks. I strained my eyes at the figures on board and decided that Bledsoe must finally have gone inside. A helicopter had landed near the bow, deploying men with stretchers.

The crowd was enjoying the show. Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you’re safe on the other side of them. As we watched, the Coast Guard fished the dead bodies out of the water and a delighted shudder fluttered throughout the observation deck. I turned and shouldered my way down the stairs and across the street to a little coffee shop.

I ordered a cup of hot chocolate. Like Bledsoe and the crew, I’d had a shock and I needed hot liquid and sugar. The chocolate was pretty dismal, made from a powdered mix and water, but it was sweet and the warmth gradually made itself felt inside my numbed fingers and frozen toes.

I ordered another and a hamburger and french fries. Some instinct told me that calories under these circumstances would do me nothing but good. I pressed the plastic mug against my tired forehead. So Mattingly had left already. On his way back to Chicago by car, unless he’d had a private plane waiting for him at Sault Ste. Marie’s little airport.

I ate the hamburger, a greasy, hardened black slab, greedily in a few bites. The best thing for me to do was call Bobby and tell him to look out for Mattingly when he got back to Chicago. After all, I couldn’t chase him.

As soon as I finished the french fries, I went in search of a pay phone. There was one outside the observation booth, but eight people were lined up waiting to use it. I finally found another three blocks down, in front of a burnt-out motel. I called the Sault Ste. Marie airport. The one daily flight for Chicago left in two hours. I booked a seat and found a Sault Ste. Marie taxi company which sent a cab over to take me to the airport.

Sault Ste. Marie is even smaller than Thunder Bay. The airport was a hangar and a hut, both very weather- beaten. A few private planes, Cessnas and the like, stood at the edge of the field. I didn’t see anything that looked like a commercial plane. I didn’t even see any people. Finally, after ten minutes of walking around, peering in corners, I found a man lying on his back under a tiny plane.

He slid out reluctantly in response to my shouts.

“I’m looking for the plane to Chicago.”

He wiped a greasy hand across an already grimy face. “No planes to Chicago here. Just a few private planes use this place.”

“I just called. I just made a reservation.”

He shook his head. “Commercial airport’s twenty miles down the interstate. You’d better get down there.”

My shoulders sagged. I didn’t know where to find the energy to go another twenty miles. I sighed. “You have a phone I could use to call a cab?”

He gestured toward the far end of the dusty building and turned to crawl back under the plane.

A thought occurred to me. “Martin Bledsoe keep his plane here or down at the other place?”

The man glanced back up at me. “It was here. Cappy flew it out about twenty minutes ago.”

“Cappy?”

“His pilot. Some guy came along, said Bledsoe wanted Cappy to fly him to Chicago.”

I was too tired to feel anything-surprise, shock, anger-my emotions were pushed somewhere far away. “Guy have bright red hair? Scar on the left side of his face?”

The mechanic shrugged. “Don’t know about the scar. He had red hair all right.” Cappy was expecting the guy- Bledsoe had phoned and told him the night before. All the mechanic knew was he’d given Cappy a course to Chicago. Weather still looked clear across Lake Michigan. They should make it in by six or so. He crawled back under the plane.

I staggered across the floor and found a phone, an old black clunker in the style GTE is ashamed to sell nowadays. The cab company agreed to send someone out to meet me.

I crouched on the sidewalk in front of the hanger while I waited, too weary to stand, fighting sleep. I wondered dreamily what I’d do if the taxi couldn’t get me to the other airport on time.

I had a long wait. The cab’s honking horn aroused me from a doze and I got stiffly to my feet. I fell asleep again on the drive south. We made it to the Chippewa County International Airport with ten minutes to spare. Another tiny terminal, where a friendly fat man sold me a ticket and helped me and two other passengers board the propeller plane.

I thought I would sleep out the flight, but I kept churning thoughts around uselessly during the interminable journey. The plane stopped at three little Michigan towns. I endured the flight with the passivity born of too much emotion. Why would Bledsoe have blown up his own ship? What else was Mattingly doing for him? Bledsoe had blandly offered to let me look at his financial papers. And that meant the real documents were hidden someplace else with fake books available for bankers and detectives. But he had really been in shock when the Lucella blew up. That gray face wasn’t faked. Well, maybe he just wanted to incapacitate her slightly, to collect enough insurance to meet his financial obligations. He didn’t want his pride and joy blown to bits, but Mattingly had gotten hold of the wrong kind of explosive. Or too powerful an explosive. Anyway, he’d way exceeded his instructions.

Why had Bledsoe offered me a ride in his plane if he was turning it over to Mattingly, anyway? Maybe he knew he wouldn’t have to make good on the offer. Or, if he expected the Lucella to be damaged only slightly, he could have taken off. But then how would he have explained Mattingly tome?

Round and round I went on these useless speculations, giving myself nothing but a headache. At the root of it