By ten o’clock I was surrounded by stacks of papers-a pile for Fackley, the agent. One for the attorney, Simonds. Quite a few for the garbage. A few things of sentimental value to me. One or two that might interest Paige. Some memorabilia for the Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota, and some other items for the Black Hawks.
I was tired. My olive silk blouse had a smear of greasy dust across the front. My nylons were full of runs. I was hungry. I hadn’t found Paige’s letters. Maybe I’d feel better after some food. At any rate, I’d been through all the drawers, including the ones in the desk. What had I really expected to find?
Abruptly I stood and skirted the mounds of paper to get to the telephone. I dialed a number I knew by heart and was relieved to hear it answered on the third ring.
“This is Dr. Herschel.”
“Lotty: it’s Vic. I’ve been sorting through my cousin’s papers and gotten myself thoroughly depressed. Have you eaten?”
She had had dinner several hours ago but agreed to meet me at the Chesterton Hotel for coffee while I got something to eat.
I washed up in the master bedroom, looking enviously at the sunken tub with its whirlpool attachment. Relief for my cousin’s shattered ankle. I wondered if he’d bought the condo for the whirlpool. It would be like Boom Boom, tidy in details but not very practical.
On my way out I stopped to talk to the doorman, Hinckley. He was long gone for the day. The man on duty now was more of a security guard. He sat behind a desk with TV consoles on it-he could see the street or the garage or look at any of the thirty floors. A tired old black man with tiny wrinkles that showed only when I got close to him, he looked at me impassively as I explained who I was. I showed him my power of attorney from Simonds and told him I would be coming around until my cousin’s affairs were straightened out and the unit was sold.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t blink or move his head, just looked at me through expressionless brown eyes whose irises were stained yellow with age.
I could feel my voice rising and checked it. “The man on duty this afternoon let someone into the apartment. Can you please see that no one goes in unless I accompany him or her?”
He continued to stare at me with unblinking eyes. I felt anger flush my face. I turned and left him sitting under the mustard-colored weaving.
3 Reflections
“What were you looking for?” Lotty sat drinking coffee, her sharp black eyes probing me, but with affection.
I took a bite of my sandwich. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been a detective too long-I keep expecting to find secrets in people’s desks.”
We were sitting in the Dortmunder Restaurant in the basement of the Chesterton Hotel. I had picked a half bottle of Pomerol from the wine bins that lined the walls and was drinking it with a sandwich-Emmenthaler on thin, homemade rye bread. Service is slow at Dortmunder’s-they’re used to the old ladies who live in the hotel whiling away an afternoon over a cup of coffee and a single pastry.
“My dear, I don’t want to press you if you don’t want to think about it. But you never sort papers. Even for your cousin you would give them to the attorney unless you were looking for something. So what you were looking for was very important to you, right?”
Lotty is Austrian. She learned English in London where she spent her adolescence, and a trace of a Viennese accent underlies the English inflection of her sharp, crisp words. We’ve been friends for a long time.
I finished my sandwich and drank some more wine, then held the glass, turning it to catch the light. I stared into the ruby glow and thought. Finally I put the glass down.
“Boom Boom left an urgent message with my answering service. I don’t know if he was just terribly depressed or in some trouble at Eudora Grain, but he never left that kind of message for me before.” I stared again at the wine. “Lotty, I was looking for a letter that said, ‘Dear Vic, I’ve been accused of stealing some papers. Between that and losing my ankle I’m so blue I can’t take it anymore.’ Or ‘Dear Vic-I’m in love with Paige Carrington and life is great.’ She says he was and maybe so-but she’s so-so, oh, sophisticated, maybe. Or perfect-it’s hard for me to picture him in love with her. He liked women who were more human.”
Lotty set down her coffee cup and put her square, strong fingers over mine. “Could you be jealous?”
“Oh, a little. But not so much that it would distort my judgment. Maybe it’s egocentrism, though. I hadn’t called him for two months. I keep going over it in my head-we’d often let months go by without being in touch. But I can’t help feeling I let him down.”
The hold on my fingers tightened. “Boom Boom knew he could count on you, Vic. You have too many times to remember when that was so. He called you. And he knew you’d come through, even if he had to wait a few days.”
I disengaged my left hand and picked up my wineglass. I swallowed and the tightness in my throat eased. I looked at Lotty. She gave an impish smile.
“You are a detective, Vic. If you really want to be totally sure about Boom Boom, you could try investigating what happened.”
4 On the Waterfront
The Eudora Grain Company elevator lay in the labyrinth that makes up the Port of Chicago. The Port lines six miles of the Calumet River as it snakes south and west from its mouth near 95th Street. Each elevator or plant along the river has its own access road, and none of them is clearly marked.
I covered the twenty miles from my North Side apartment to 130th Street in good time, reaching the exit by eight o’clock. After that I got lost trying to make my way past the Calumet River, some steel mills, and a Ford assembly plant. It was nine-thirty before I found Eudora Grain’s regional office.
Their regional headquarters, a modern, single-story block, lay next to a giant elevator on the river. The elevator loomed behind the building at right angles, two sections of massive tubes, each containing perhaps a hundred ten- story-high cylinders. The sections were split by a slip where a boat could tie up. On the right side, railway tracks ran into a shed. A few hopper cars were there now and and a small group of hard-hatted men were fixing one onto a hoist. I watched, fascinated: the car disappeared up inside the elevator. On the far left side I could see the tip of a ship poking out-someone was apparently taking on a load of grain.
The building had a modern lobby with wide windows opening onto the river. Pictures of grain harvests- combines sweeping through thousands of acres of golden wheat, smaller versions of the mammoth elevator outside, trains taking on their golden hoard, boats unloading-covered the walls. I took a quick glance around, then approached a receptionist behind a marble counter set in the middle of the room. She was young and eager to help. After a spirited interchange with his secretary, she located the regional vice-president, Clayton Phillips. He came out to the foyer to meet me.
Phillips was a wooden man, perhaps in his early forties, with straw-colored hair and pale brown eyes. I took an immediate dislike to him, perhaps because he failed to offer me any condolences for Boom Boom, even when I introduced myself as his closest relative.
Phillips dithered around at the thought of my asking questions at the elevator. He couldn’t bring himself to say no, however, and I didn’t give him any help. He had an irritating habit of darting his eyes around the room when I asked him a question, instead of looking at me. I wondered if he found inspiration from the photographs lining the foyer.
“I don’t need to take any more of your time, Mr. Phillips,” I finally said. “I can find my own way around the elevator and ask the questions I want on my own.”
