“Yeah,” I grumbled, lying back in bed. “Americans are afraid that if they unplug themselves from their electronic toys for five minutes, they’ll miss out on-everything. Life. Imagine no TV, no telephones, no beepers, no computers for three minutes. You’d die. You’d be like a beached whale-”
I was working myself into a frenzy over our appalling dependency on gadgets when Murray dropped a pillow over my face. “You talk too much, Vic.”
“This is what happened to the girl in
After Murray left I couldn’t get back to sleep. We’d gone to bed early, around seven-thirty, and slept for a couple of hours. Now I felt all the loose ends of the case whirling around in my head like trails of fettucine. I didn’t know where to find Bledsoe. It was too late to try the Phillipses again. Too late to call Grafalk, to find out if he had gone to that Christmas party alone. I’d already burgled the Eudora Grain offices. I’d even cleaned my apartment earlier in the day. Unless I wanted to wash dishes twice in twenty-four hours, there wasn’t anything for me to do except pace.
About one-thirty the walls started to close in on me. I got dressed and took one of my mother’s diamond earrings from the locked cupboard built into my closet. I went out onto Halsted, deserted in the early morning except for a few drunks, got into the Omega, and headed out to Lake Shore Drive. I rode south for several miles, past the Loop, and pulled off at Meigs Field, the small airport on Chicago’s lakefront.
The blue landing lights cast no illumination in the thick dark. They seemed like meaningless dots, not part of a human network. Behind the tiny runway lapped Lake Michigan, a dark shape. I felt desolate. Not even a beeper linked me with the rest of the world.
I skirted the runway and stumbled through the weed-grown rocks down to the water’s edge, shivering at the nameless menace in the black water. The water slapping at my feet seemed to call me to itself. Let me enfold you in the mysteries of my depths. All the dark things you fear will become your delight. Don’t think of drowning, of Boom Boom choking and fighting for air. Think of infinite rest, no responsibilities, no need for control. Just perfect rest.
The roar of an engine brought me back to myself. A two-seater plane was landing. It looked like a living creature, its lights flashing busily, wings flopping for the descent, like a noisy insect settling down for a short rest.
I stumbled back across the rocks to the little terminal. No one was in the waiting room. I went back outside and followed the two men who had just landed into an office. There a thin young man with straw-colored hair and a very pointed nose went over their flight charts with them. They were talking about some wind pattern which had caught them up around Galena and the three had an animated discussion on what might have caused it. This went on for a good ten minutes while I wandered around the room looking at different aerial photos of the city and surrounding countryside.
At last the thin young man pulled himself reluctantly from the weather map and asked if he could help me in some way.
I gave my most ingratiating smile-Lauren Bacall trying to get Sam Spade to do her dirty work for her. “I came in on Mr. Bledsoe’s plane Friday night and I think I might have lost an earring.” I pulled my mother’s diamond drop from my jacket pocket. “It looks like this. The post must have come out.”
The young man frowned. “When did you come in?”
“Friday. It would have been around five, I guess.”
“What kind of plane does Bledsoe fly?”
I gave a helpless, feminine shrug. “I don’t know. It seats about six people, I think. It’s new,” I added helpfully. “The paint’s fresh and shiny-”
The young men exchanged a masculine smirk with the other two. Women are so stupid. He pulled a logbook out of a drawer and ran his finger down the entries. “Bledsoe. Oh yes. A Piper Cub. Came in at five-twenty on Friday. There was only one passenger, though. The pilot didn’t say anything about a woman.”
“Well, I did ask him specially not to. I didn’t want a record that I’d been on the plane. But now I’ve lost this earring and all, I don’t know what I’ll do… Will Cappy be in this morning? Could you ask him to look for me?”
“He only comes in when Mr. Bledsoe needs him to fly.”
“Well, maybe you have a number where I could reach him?”
After a certain amount of hemming and hawing, during which the other two were winking surreptitiously at each other, the young man gave me Cappy’s phone number. I thanked him profusely and took off. Whatever gets the job done.
Back home I remembered the memorabilia I’d picked up at Boom Boom’s apartment and took them out of the trunk. My left arm continued to heal, despite constant abuse, and the load brought on only minor twinges. With the pile of stuff balanced on my right arm, I fumbled at the door locks left-handed. The New Guinea totem started to wobble. I struggled to save it, and the pictures crashed to the floor. I swore under my breath, put everything down, unlocked the door with both hands, propped it open with my foot, and carried the things properly into the building.
I’d saved the totem, but the glass over the pictures had cracked. I put them on the coffee table and took the frames apart gingerly, knocking the glass into a waste can.
The photo of me in my graduation robes was wedged extremely tightly into the frame. Boom Boom must have put too many sheets of cardboard in to allow the back to fit properly. “You shouldn’t have bought such a cheap frame for me, Boom Boom,” I muttered to myself. I finally went into the kitchen for a couple of oven mitts. With those on, I forced the frame away from the backing, spilling glass everywhere.
Between the picture and the backing was a thickly folded stack of white paper. No wonder the photo was wedged in so tightly.
I unfolded the stack. It turned out to be two sheets of paper. One was an invoice from the Grafalk Steamship Line to the Eudora Grain Company. Terms: 10 days, 2 percent, 30 days net, 60 days, 18 percent interest. It showed loads by vessel, date of shipment, and date of arrival. The second, written in Boom Boom’s meticulous hand, listed six dates when Pole Star had lost shipments to Grafalk.
Boom Boom had also listed the bids. In four lots, Pole Star was the low bidder. I started hunting through the apartment for my bag with the contract copies in it, then remembered I had left it at Lotty’s. Not even Lotty could I rouse at three in the morning just to get some papers.
I fixed myself a large scotch and stood at the living room window drinking it. I stared down at the late-night traffic on Halsted. Boom Boom had tried to call me to tell me what he’d found out. When he couldn’t get hold of me, he stuffed the papers behind my picture-not for me to find, but to keep anyone else from finding them. He’d thought he’d get back to them, and to me, so he didn’t leave a message for me. A spasm of pain contracted my chest. I missed Boom Boom terribly. I wanted to cry, but no tears would come.
I finally left the window and went to bed. I didn’t sleep much and what sleep I had was tormented by dreams of Boom Boom stretching his arms out from a cold, black lake while I stood helplessly by. At seven I gave up trying to rest and took a bath. I waited until eight o’clock, then called Bledsoe’s pilot, Cappy. His wife answered and called him in from the backyard where he was planting petunias.
“Mr. Cappy?” I said.
“Capstone. People call me Cappy.”
“I see… Mr. Capstone, my name is Warshawski. I’m a detective and I’m looking into Howard Mattingly’s death.”
“Never heard of the guy.”
“Wasn’t he your passenger back from Sault Ste. Marie on Friday night?”
“Nope. Not that guy.”
“Bright red hair? Scar on the left side of his face? Stocky build?”
He guessed that sounded like the same person.
“Well, we believe he was traveling under an assumed name. He turned up dead later that night. What I’m trying to find out is where he went when he left the airport.”
“Couldn’t tell you that. All I know, there was a car waiting for him at Meigs. He got in it and they took off. I was filling out my log forms, didn’t really notice.”
He hadn’t been able to see the driver. No, he couldn’t say what kind of car. It was big, not a limo, but it might
