Slowly driving back to Chicago, I thought about Mrs. Grafalk’s remarks. The business deal must have been connected with the Eudora shipping invoices. What if Phillips had split the difference in the bills with Grafalk? Say he got ninety thousand dollars extra over the price registered on the computer for the shipment and gave forty-five thousand to Grafalk. That didn’t make sense, though. Grafalk was the biggest carrier on the lakes. What did he need with penny-ante stuff like that? If Grafalk were involved, the payoff had to be more impressive. Of course, Grafalk operated all those older ships. It cost him more to carry cargo. The amount in the invoices was probably the true price of what it cost Grafalk to carry the stuff. If that was the case, Phillips was really stealing from Eudora Grain- not just pocketing the difference between how much he logged into the contract and the ultimate invoice, but losing money for Eudora on every shipment he recorded when Grafalk was the carrier. What Grafalk got out of it was more shipments in a depressed market in which he had a hard time competing because of his older, inefficient fleet.
Suddenly I saw the whole thing. Or most of it, anyway. I felt as though the truth had been hammered in at me from the day I walked into Percy MacKelvy’s office at Grafalk Steamship down at the Port. I remembered listening to him trying to place orders on the phone, and my frustration while we were talking. Grafalk’s reaction to Bledsoe at lunch. The times in the last two weeks I’d heard how much more efficient the thousand-footers were to operate. I even had an idea where Clayton Phillips had been murdered and how his body had been carried onto the
A seventy-ton semi blared its horn behind me. I jumped in my seat and realized I had brought the Omega almost to a standstill in the second lane of the Kennedy. No need for anyone to arrange subtle accidents for me-I could kill myself without help. I accelerated quickly and drove on into the Loop. I needed to talk to the Lloyds man.
It was three in the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten. After leaving the car in the Grant Park underground garage, I went into the Spot, a little bar and grill behind Ajax, for a turkey sandwich. In honor of the occasion I also had a plate of french fries and a Coke. My favorite soft drink, but I usually avoid it because of the calories.
I marched across Adams to the Ajax Building, singing, “ ‘Things go better with Coca-Cola,’ ” under my breath. I told the guard I wanted to see Roger Ferrant-the Lloyds man-up in the Special Risks office. After some delay-they couldn’t figure out the Special Risk phone number-they got through to Ferrant. He would be happy to see me.
With my visitor’s ID clipped to my lapel, I rode to the fifty-third floor. Ferrant came out of the walnut office to meet me. A shock of lanky brown hair flopped in his eyes and he was straightening his tie as he came.
“You’ve got some news for us, have you?” he asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid not yet. I have some more questions I didn’t think to ask yesterday.”
His face fell, but he said cheerfully, “Shouldn’t expect miracles, I guess. And why should you succeed where the FBI, the U. S. Coast Guard, and the Army Corps of Engineers have failed?” He ushered me courteously back into the office, which was more cluttered than it had been the night before. “I’m staying in town through the formal inquiry at the Soo next Monday, then back to London. Think you’ll crack the problem by then?”
He was speaking facetiously, but I said, “I should have the answer in another twenty-four hours. I don’t think you’re going to like it, though.”
He saw the seriousness in my face. Whether he believed me or not, he stopped laughing and asked what he could do to help.
“Hogarth said yesterday you were the most knowledgeable person in the world on Great Lakes shipping. I want to know what’s happening to it with this lock blown up.”
“Could you explain what you mean, please?”
“The accident to the lock must be having quite an impact, right? Or can ships still get through?”
“Oh-well, shipping hasn’t come to a complete standstill. They closed the MacArthur and the Davis locks for several days while they cleaned debris out of them and tested them, but they can still use the Sabin Lock-that’s the one in Canadian waters. Of course, the biggest ships are shut off from the upper lakes for a year-or however long it takes them to fix the Poe-the Poe was the only lock that could handle the thousand-footers.”
“And how serious is that? Does it have much of a financial impact?”
He pushed the hair out of his eyes and loosened his tie again. “Most of the shipping is between Duluth and Thunder Bay and ports lower down. Sixty percent of the grain in North America goes out of those two ports on freighters. That’s a hell of a lot of grain, you know, when you think of everything that’s produced in Manitoba as well as the upper Midwest-maybe eighteen billion bushels. Then there’s all that taconite in Duluth.” He pursed his lips in thought. “The Soo locks handle more cargo every year than Panama and Suez combined, and they’re only open for nine months instead of year-round like those two. So there is some financial impact.”
“The cargoes will still come out, but the smaller ships will have an advantage?” I persisted.
He smiled. “Just until they get the Poe Lock back under operation. Actually, there’s been a lot of disarray, both in the grain markets and among the Great Lakes shippers since the lock blew up. They’ll settle down in a few weeks when they realize that most traffic won’t be impaired.”
“Except for the carriers who’ve converted primarily to thousand-foot ships.”
“Yes, but there aren’t too many of those. Of course, grain concerns like Eudora are scrambling to get all their cargoes onto the smaller fleets, even bypassing the 740-foot ships. Grafalk’s is picking up a number of orders. They aren’t jacking up their rates, though, the way some of their less scrupulous brethren are.”
“How profitable is Grafalk’s, in general?”
He looked at me in surprise. “They are the biggest carrier on the lakes.”
I smiled. “I know-I keep being told that. But do they make money? I understand that these smaller ships are unprofitable and they make up his whole fleet.”
Ferrant shrugged. “All we do is insure the hulls. I can’t tell you how much freight they’re carrying. Remember, though, profitability is relative. Grafalk may not make as much as a firm like American Marine, but that doesn’t mean they’re unprofitable.”
Hogarth had come in while we were talking. “Why do you want to know, Miss Warshawski?”
“It’s not just idle curiosity. You know, no one’s come forward claiming responsibility for the bombing-the PLO or the FALN or the Armenians. If it wasn’t a random act of terrorism, there had to be a reason for it. I’m trying to find out if that reason included switching cargo from the big freighters to small vessels like the ones in Grafalk’s fleet.”
Hogarth looked annoyed. “Not Grafalk, I assure you, Miss Warshawski. Niels Grafalk comes from a very old shipping family. He’s devoted to his fleet, to his business-and he’s a gentleman.”
“That’s a fine testimonial,” I said. “It does a lot of credit to your heart. But a fifty-million-dollar ship has been blown up, the North American shipping industry has been thrown into disarray, however temporary, and a lot of business interrupted. I don’t know how the courts interpret such a thing, but someone is gong to have to pay for that business interruption. Grafalk stands to gain a lot by this accident. I want to know what shape his business is in. If it’s doing well, there’s less of a motive.”
Ferrant looked amused. “You certainly look for the less pleasant side of human nature… Jack, you have some idea of the state of the business, don’t you? Just look at your records, see how much cargo coverage he’s got and what his workers compensation insurance is like.”
Hogarth said mulishly that he had a meeting to get to and he thought it was a waste of time.
“Then I’ll do it,” Ferrant said. “You just show me where the files are, Jack, and I’ll have a look-through for Miss Warshawski here… No, really, I think she’s got a good point. We ought to follow up on it.”
Hogarth finally called his secretary on the intercom and asked her to bring him five years of Grafalk Steamship files. “Just don’t ever let the old boy know you did this. He’s very touchy where his family name is concerned.”
Hogarth left for his next meeting and Ferrant made some phone calls while I watched the boats out on Lake Michigan. Monroe Harbor was filling up rapidly with its summer fleet of sailboats. A lot of people were taking advantage of the beautiful weather; the near horizon was filled with white sails.
After some twenty minutes a middle-aged woman in a severely tailored suit came into the office pushing a large wire cart full of files. “These are the Grafalk Steamship files Mr. Hogarth asked for,” she said, leaving the cart in the middle of the room.
Ferrant was enthusiastic. “Now we’ll see what shape the business is in. You can’t tell that just from the hull insurance, which is all I do for Grafalk.”
Five years of Grafalk history was a substantial amount of paper. We had workers’ compensation policies, which went on for about a hundred pages a year, showing classes of employees, states covered, Longshoremen’s Act exclusions, and premium audits. There was a business interruption policy for each year, cargo coverage, which was
