Deadlock

letters near the back.

“Your cousin was probably standing here.” The concrete had ended, replaced by faded wood planks. “It was a sloppy day. We had to stop loading every few hours, cover the hatches, and wait for the rain to end. Very long job. Anyway, wood like this-real old, you know-gets very slippery when it’s wet. If Boom Boom-your cousin, I mean-was leaning over to see something, he might’ve just slipped and fallen right in. He did have that bad leg.”

“What would he be leaning over to look at, though?”

“Anything. He was an inquisitive guy. Very interested in everything and anything about the ships and the business. Between you and me, he got on Phillips’s nerves a bit.” He spat expertly into the water. “But, what I hear, Argus got him this job and Phillips didn’t like to stand up to him.”

David Argus was chairman of Eudora Grain. He’d flown in from Eudora, Kansas, to attend Boom Boom’s funeral and had made a hundred-dollar donation to a children’s home in Boom Boom’s name. He hadn’t gone to the post- funeral party, lucky devil, but he’d shaken my hand briefly after the ceremony, a short, stocky guy in his sixties who exuded a blast-furnace personality. If he had been my cousin’s patron, Boom Boom was well protected in the organization. But I couldn’t believe Boom Boom would abuse the relationship, and said so.

“Naw, nothing like that. But Phillips didn’t like having a young guy around that he had to look after. Nope, Boom Boom worked real hard, didn’t ask for any special favors the way he might’ve, being a star and all. I’d say the fellows liked him pretty well.”

“Someone was telling me there was a lot of talk down here about my cousin-that he might have committed suicide.” I looked at the foreman steadily.

He gave a surprised grimace. “Not so far as I know. I haven’t heard anything. You could talk to the men. But, like I say, I haven’t heard anything.”

Phillips walked toward us dusting his hands. Margolis jerked his head toward Phillips. “You going with him? Want to come back later to talk to the men?”

We settled on ten the next morning, break time for the morning shift. Margolis said he would talk to them in the meantime, but he really thought if anyone had seen anything he would have volunteered it. “An accident always gets a lot of talk. And Warshawski, being a celebrity and all, everyone who knew anything was mouthing off. I don’t think you’ll find out anything.”

Phillips came up to us. “Are you ready? I’ve talked to the dispatcher at Grafalk’s. They’re very reluctant to let you know where the Bertha Krupnik is, but they’ll talk to you if I bring you over.” He looked self-consciously at his watch.

I shook hands with Margolis, told him I’d see him in the morning, and followed Phillips on down the pier and around the back of the elevator. We picked our way across the deeply pocked yard, stepping over strips of rusted metal, to where Phillips’s green Alfa sat, sleek and incongruous between an old Impala and a rusty pickup. He put his hard hat carefully on the back seat and made a great show of starting the car, reversing it between ruts and sliding to the yard entrance. Once we’d turned onto 130th Street and were moving with the traffic I said, “You’re clearly annoyed about chauffeuring me around the Port. It doesn’t bother me to barge in on people without an escort-just as I did on you this morning. Why do you feel you have to come with me?”

He shot a quick glance at me. I noticed his hands gripping the wheel so tightly that the knuckles showed white. He didn’t say anything for a few minutes and I thought perhaps he was going to ignore me altogether. Finally he said in his deep, tight voice, “Who asked you to come down to the Port?”

“No one: I came on my own. Boom Boom Warshawski was my cousin and I feel an obligation to find out the circumstances surrounding his death.”

“Argus came to the funeral. Did he suggest there was anything wrong?”

“What are you trying to tell me, Phillips? Is there some reason to think that my cousin’s death was not an accident?”

“No. No,” he repeated quickly. He smiled and suddenly looked more human. “He came down here on Tuesday- Argus did-and put us through the wringer on safety at the elevators. He took a personal interest in your cousin and he was very upset when he died. I just wondered if he’d asked you to investigate this as part of your professional function rather than as Warshawski’s cousin.”

“I see… Well, Mr. Argus didn’t hire me. I guess I hired myself.” I thought about explaining my personal concern but my detective training made me cautious. Rule number something or other-never tell anybody anything unless you’re going to get something better in return. Maybe someday I’d write up a Manual for the Neophyte Detective.

We were driving past the elevators lining the Calumet River and the entrance to the main Port. Large ships loomed everywhere, poking black smokestacks between gray columns of grain and cement elevators. Little trees struggled for life in patches of earth between railroad tracks, slag heaps, and pitted roadbeds. We passed a dead steel mill, a massive complex of rust-red buildings and railway junctions. The cyclone fence was padlocked shut at the entrance: the recession having its impact-the plant was closed.

The headquarters for the Port of Chicago were completely rebuilt a few years ago. With new buildings, modern docks, and a well-paved road the place looked modern and efficient. Phillips stopped at a guard station where a city cop looked up from his paper and nodded him in. The Alfa purred across smooth tarmac and we stopped in a slot labeled EUDORA GRAIN. We locked the doors and I followed Phillips toward a row of modern buildings.

Everything here was built on a giant scale. A series of cranes towered over the slips for the ships. Giant teeth hovered over one huge vessel and easily lifted the back of a fifty-ton semi from a stack and lowered it onto a waiting truck bed. Some ten ships were docked here at the main facility, flying the flag of many nations.

All the Port buildings are constructed from the same tan brick, two stories high. The Grafalk Steamship Line offices occupied all of one of the larger blocks halfway along the wharf. A receptionist, middle-aged and pleasant, recognized Phillips by sight and sent us on back to see Percy MacKelvy, the dispatcher.

Phillips was clearly a frequent visitor. Greeting various people by name, he led me through a narrow hall which crossed a couple of small rooms. We found the dispatcher in an office crammed with paper. Charts covered every wall and stacks of paper hid the desk, three chairs, and a good deal of the floor. A rumpled man in his mid-forties, wearing a white shirt long since wrinkled for the day, MacKelvy was on the phone when we came in. He took a cigar out of his mouth long enough to say hello.

He grunted into the phone, moved a red tack on a chart of the lakes at his right hand, punched a query into a computer terminal next to the phone, and grunted again. Finally he said, “Six eighty-three a ton. Take it or leave it… Pick up on the fourth, six eighty-two… Can’t bring it any lower than that… No deal? Maybe next time.” He hung up, added a few numbers to the terminal, and snatched up a second phone which had started to ring. “This is a zoo,” he said to me, loosening his tie further. “MacKelvy… Yeah, yeah.” I watched as he followed a similar sequence with chart, tacks, and computer.

When he hung up he said, “Hi, Clayton. This the lady you mentioned?”

“Hi,” I said. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. My cousin Bernard Warshawski was killed last Monday when he fell under the Bertha Krupnik’s propeller.”

The phone was ringing again. “Yeah? MacKelvy here. Yeah, hold on just a second… You figuring the Bertha was at fault somehow?”

“No. I have some personal concerns as my cousin’s executor. I’d like to know if anyone saw the accident. Phillips here says you can tell me when the Bertha might be expected, either back here, or at some port where I could go talk to the crew.”

“Hi, Duff,” he spoke into the phone. “Sulphur from Buffalo? Three eighty-eight a ton, pick up on the sixth, deliver to Chicago on the eighth. You got it.” He hung up. “What’s the scoop, Clayton? She likely to sue?”

Phillips was standing as far from the desk as possible in the crowded room. He stood very still as it make himself psychologically as well as physically remote. He shrugged. “David has expressed some interest.”

“What about Niels?”

“I haven’t discussed it with him.”

I put my hands on the mass of papers and leaned across the desk as the phone rang again.

“MacKelvy here… Hi, Gumboldt. Hold on a sec, will you?”

“Mr. MacKelvy, I’m not a hysterical widow trying to get financial restitution from the easiest possible source. I’m trying to find anyone who might have seen my cousin in the last minutes of his life. We’re talking about an open dock at ten in the morning. I can’t believe not a living soul saw him. I want to talk with the crew on the Bertha just to make sure.”