Deadlock

on me after the Lucella had gone sky-high… You may recall that you were in shock. You weren’t in any position to listen to anyone say anything. I thought I’d better leave and see if I could track him down.”

“But later. Why didn’t you talk to the police later?”

“Ah. That was because, when I got to the airport at Sault Ste. Marie, I found Mattingly had gone back to Chicago on your airplane, presumably under your orders. That really upset me-it made a mockery out of my judgment of your character. I wanted to talk to you about it first, before I told the police.”

The dog came bounding up to us, water spraying from its red-gold hair. It was an older dog-she sniffed at Martin with a white muzzle. The woman called to her and the dog bounded off again.

“And now?” he demanded.

“And now I’d like to know how Clayton Phillips came to be on the self-unloader of a ship you were leasing.”

He pounded the beach beside him. “You tell me, Vic. You’re the smart detective. You’re always turning up whenever there’s a crime about to be committed on my fleet… Unless you’ve decided that a man with my record is capable of anything-capable of destroying his own dreams, capable of murder?”

I ignored his last statement.

“Phillips has been missing since yesterday morning. Where were you yesterday morning?”

His eyes were dark spots of anger in his face. “How dare you?” he yelled.

“Martin: listen to me. The police are going to ask that and you’re going to have to answer.”

He pressed his lips together and debated within himself. Finally he decided to master his temper. “I was closeted with my Lloyds representative up at the Soo until late yesterday. Gordon Firth-the Ajax chairman-flew up with him in Ajax’s jet and they brought me back down to Chicago about ten last night.”

“Where was the Gertrude Ruttan?”

“She was tied up at the Port. She steamed in Saturday afternoon and had to tie up for the weekend until they were ready to unload her. Some damned union regulation.”

So anyone who could get into the Port and get onto the ship could have put a hole in the side of Phillips’s head and shoved him into a cargo hold. He’d just fall down into the load and show up with the rest of the cargo when it came out on the conveyor belt. Very neat. “Who knew the Gertrude Ruttan would be there over the weekend?”

He shrugged. “Anyone who knows anything about the ships in and out of the Port.”

“That narrows it down a lot,” I said sarcastically. “Same thing for who fixed my car, for who killed Boom Boom. I was figuring Phillips for that job, but now he’s dead, too. So that leaves the other people who were around at the time. Grafalk. Bemis. Sheridan. You.”

“I was up in the Soo all day yesterday.”

“Yeah, but you could hire someone.”

“So could Niels,” he pointed out. “You’re not working for him, are you? Did he hire you to set me up?”

I shook my head.

“Who’re you working for then, Warshawski?”

“My cousin.”

“Boom Boom? He’s dead.”

“I know. That’s why I’m working for him. We had a pact, Boom Boom and I. We took care of each other. Someone shoved him under the Bertha Krupnik. He left me evidence of the reason why which I found last night. Part of that evidence implicates you, Martin. I want to know why you were letting so many of your contracts with Eudora go to Grafalk.”

He shook his head. “I looked at those contracts. There was nothing wrong with them.”

“There was nothing wrong with them, except that you were letting Grafalk pick up a number of orders when you were the low bidder. Now are you going to tell me why or am I going to have to go to Pole Star and interrogate your staff and go through your books and repeat that boring routine?”

He sighed. “I didn’t kill your cousin, Warshawski. If anyone did, it was Grafalk. Why don’t you focus on him and find out how he blew up my ship and forget these contracts?”

“Martin, you’re not a dummy. Think it through. It looks like you and Grafalk were in collusion on those shipping orders. Mattingly flew back to Chicago in your plane and Phillips’s body was found on your ship. If I was a cop, I wouldn’t look too much further-if I had all that information.”

He made a wrenching gesture with his right arm. Frustration.

“All right. It’s true,” he shouted. “I did let Niels have some of my orders. Are you going to put me in jail for it?”

I didn’t say anything.

After a brief pause he continued more calmly. “I was trying to put financing together for the Lucella. Niels was getting desperate for orders. The steel slump was hurting everyone, but Grafalk was really taking it on the chin because of all those damned small ships of his. He told me he would let the story of my evil past out to the financial community if I didn’t give him some of my orders.”

“Could that really have hurt you?”

He gave a wry smile. “I didn’t want to find out. I was trying to raise fifty million dollars. I couldn’t see the Fort Dearborn Trust giving me a nickel if they knew I’d served two years for embezzling.”

“I see. And then what?”

“Oh, as soon as the Lucella was launched I told Niels to publish and be damned. As long as I’m making money no one is going to care a tinker’s dam about my record. When you need money, they make you sign an acolyte’s pledge before they give it to you. When you’ve got it-they don’t care where it came from. But Niels was furious.”

“It’s a might big jump from pressuring you over a few grain orders to blowing up your ship, though.”

He insisted stubbornly that no one else cared enough. We talked about it for half an hour or more, but he wouldn’t budge. I told him finally that I’d investigate Niels as well.

The golden retriever had departed with her people by the time we got to our feet and climbed back over the sand hills to the parking lot. A few children stared at us incuriously, waiting for the grown-ups to disappear before launching their own reckless deeds.

I drove Bledsoe back to the steel mill, now heavily thronged with Indiana and Chicago police. The four o’clock shift was arriving and I dropped him at the gates. The cops might want to talk to me later, as a witness, but they’d have to find me-I had other things to do.

21 Fishing Trip

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a private investigator in blue jeans to see the chairman of a major U.S. corporation. I reached Ajax Insurance headquarters in the south Loop a little after five- traffic had been heavy all the way into the city. I was figuring on it being late enough for me to avoid the phalanx of secretaries who pave the entrance to a CEO’s office, but I’d forgotten Ajax’s security system.

Guards in the marble lobby of the sixty-story skyscraper demanded an employee identification card from me. I obviously didn’t have one. They wanted to know whom I was visiting-they would issue me a visitor’s pass if the person I wanted to see approved my visit.

When I told them Gordon Firth, they were appalled. They had a list of the chairman’s visitors. I wasn’t on it, and they suspected me of being an assassin from Aetna, hired to bump off the competition.

“I’m a private investigator,” I explained, pulling the photostat of my license from my wallet to show them. “I’m looking into a fifty-million-dollar loss Ajax sustained last week. It’s true I don’t have an appointment with Gordon Firth, but it’s important I see him or whomever he’s designating to handle this loss. It may affect Ajax’s ultimate liability.”

I argued with them some more and finally persuaded them if Ajax had to pay for the