Deadlock

by Sara Paretsky

  My shoulder had recovered in the night-most of the stiffness was gone. I dressed more easily than I had for days, only feeling a twinge when I pulled the heavy wool sweater over my head. Before going down to breakfast I reassembled the Smith & Wesson and loaded it. I didn’t expect Bledsoe to jump me in front of the entire crew of the Lucella Wieser, but if he did the gun wasn’t going to do me much good with the barrel unattached to the hammer.

  I hadn’t had much appetite while my shoulder was in pain and I’d dropped five or six pounds. This morning I felt better and sat down to pecan waffles, sausages, strawberries, and coffee.

  I was a latecomer in the little restaurant and the middle-aged waitress had time to talk. As she poured my second cup of coffee I asked her where I could rent a car. There was an Avis place in town, she said, but one of her sons had a couple of old cars he rented out if I didn’t need anything too fancy. I told her that would be fine as long as they had automatic transmissions, and she trotted off to call her son.

  Roland Graham his name was, and he spoke with a Canadian accent, a lilting drawl that sounds as if it has a trace of Scots buried in it. His car was a ’75 Ford Fairmont, old but perfectly clean and respectable. I told him I’d only need it until the next morning. The fee, payable in advance in cash, was thirty dollars.

  The Holiday Inn was in the heart of town. Across the street was the largest Presbyterian church I’ve ever seen. A modern city hall faced the motel, but the street behind us had a lot of run-down stores and premises to let. As I got down to the waterfront the stores gave way rapidly to bars and girlie joints. I’ve often wondered whether seamen really have the primitive appetites port towns attribute to them, or whether they go to sleazy joints because that’s the only thing the locals offer.

  Finding the Lucella turned out to be a larger problem than I’d anticipated. Thunder Bay is an enormous port, even though the town itself doesn’t have more than a hundred thousand people in it. But much of the grain shipped by water in North America passes through that port heading east and south, and the lakefront includes mile upon mile of towering elevators.

  My first thought had been to stop in at each elevator to see if the Lucella was docked there, but the miles of towers made that seem like a waste of time. I did go into the yard of the first one I came to. After bumping around the mud-filled ruts, I found a tiny, green-sided office. But a harassed man inside handling the phone assured me that he didn’t have the foggiest idea of where the Lucella was; he only knew she wasn’t there.

  I went back into the town and found the local newspaper. As I’d hoped, it listed the ships that were in port and where they were. The Lucella was docked at Elevator 67, the Manitoba Grain Co-op.

  There didn’t seem to be any logical order to the yard numbers. I was near number 11, but I went past yard 90 without seeing the Manitoba Grain Co-op and wasted time backtracking. I finally found it another two miles down the road, well past the town.

  I turned the Ford into the gravel yard, my heart pounding with nervous anticipation. The Manitoba elevator was enormous, some two hundred giant paper towel tubes banked together. Huge though it was, it didn’t dwarf the ship tied up on its eastern end. The Lucella’s red hulk gleamed sleekly in the late morning sun. Above her, like clouds covering and revealing Mount Everest, hovered a mass of white smoke. Grain dust. The Lucella was loading.

  The yard was a mess of gravelly mud. In the corners of the elevator, out of the sun’s reach, a gray-white residue of winter was still melting. I parked clear of the more obvious holes and picked my way through the mud, the metal shards, pasteboard, and grain clumps making up the now familiar elevator scene.

  The Smith & Wesson dug uncomfortably into my side as I climbed the Lucella’s ladder to the main deck. I stopped for a minute at the edge of the hardhat area to survey the busy scene and ran a surreptitious finger under the leather holster digging into my diaphragm. Squinting at the whitened figures, I couldn’t be sure if any of my quarry were present. I thought I might recognize Bledsoe’s stocky body, but it was hard to say.

  I went into the pilothouse and climbed the four flights to the mahogany-paneled bridge. Only the first mate, Keith Winstein, was there. He looked up in surprise when I came in. He recognized me at once.

  “Miss Warshawski! What-is Captain Bemis expecting you?”

  “I don’t think so. Is he around? And what about the chief engineer and Martin Bledsoe?” It would be really annoying if Bledsoe had returned to Chicago.

  “They’re all in Thunder Bay this morning. Going to the bank, doing that kind of business. They won’t be back until late afternoon. Not until right before we sail, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re sailing today?” I sat down on one of the mahogany stools. “Your office said you’d be here through tomorrow.”

  “No, we made good time up from Detroit. Got here a day early. Time is money in this business, so we started loading last night at midnight. We’ll finish around four and sail at five.”

  “Any idea where I can find Bledsoe or Sheridan?”

  He shook his head regretfully. “Everyone keeps bank accounts in Thunder Bay because we’re here so often. This is a good chance to catch up on personal affairs-I’ll be taking off myself for a few hours as soon as the second mate gets back.”

  I rubbed my forehead in exasperation. “Where do you go from here?”

  Winstein was getting a little irritated. “We take this load to St. Catharines, at the other side of the lakes. Why do you ask?”

  “What’s your route, I mean-do you stop anyplace along the way where I could get off?”

  The first mate looked at me strangely. “If you’re thinking of sailing with us, you’ll have to clear that with the captain, Miss Warshawski.”

  “Yes, well, let’s assume he’s going to give his permission. Where’s the nearest place I could get off?”

  He shook his head. “There isn’t anyplace on board for you to sleep-Mr. Bledsoe’s in the stateroom.”

  I started to feel my temper rising. “I’m not asking for a place to sleep. That’s why I want to get off at the nearest place possible.”

  “I guess that would be Sault Ste. Marie,” he said dubiously. “You could get off when we’re at the bottom of the lock. But we won’t reach there until three tomorrow afternoon, at the earliest. You’d still have to find someplace to spend the night.”

  “Oh, never mind that,” I said impatiently. “I’ll lie down on the couch here in the bridge if I need to. But I’ve got to talk to the captain and Bledsoe. To Sheridan, too. And I’m damned if I’m going to fly around the country on the off chance of meeting up with them someplace.”

  “It isn’t really my decision,” Winstein said pacifically.

  “You’ll have to talk to Captain Bemis.” He returned to his papers and I left the bridge.

  16 Stowaway

  I took the Fairmont back to the Holiday Inn, singing “A Capital Ship for an Ocean Trip” and “The Barbary Pirates.” I repacked the little canvas bag and checked out, leaving a note for Roland Graham with the Ford’s keys at the counter. It was one o’clock. If the Lucella wasn’t sailing until five, I might as well get some lunch.

  By the time I’d eaten and found a taxi to take me out to Elevator 67 it was after three-thirty. The midday sun made the air hot enough for me to take off my sweater and stuff it into my canvas bag before once more climbing the ladder to the Lucella’s main deck.

  They had just finished loading. The heavy grain chutes were being hauled into the elevator from above. Under the second mate’s direction, men began operating two little deck gantries to put the hatch covers back onto the hold openings. One man worked each crane, using controls in front of a small seat on the starboard side. He lifted the hatch cover while two seamen steadied it at either end-they were very large, unstable steel lids. Then he lowered the cover while the other two fitted it onto some twenty or thirty protruding bolts. The three would move along to the next cover while a fourth seaman followed behind
with an enormous wrench, screwing all the bolts into place.

  As I stood watching, I felt the ship begin to vibrate. The engines had been turned on. Soon the air was filled with their urgent racket. A trail of black diesel smoke drifted upward from the giant funnel. I had no idea how long the engines ran before the ship moved out, but I noticed a couple of seamen at the guy ropes on shore, ready to loose them as soon as the signal was given. I hadn’t come back a minute too early.

  I felt very keyed up. I knew I was wasting time on deck when I should have been on the bridge confronting anyone who had returned, but I was very nervous and didn’t know what to say once I got up there. In my heightened state I thought I saw someone swimming away from the port side of the ship. I moved as quickly as I could past the clutter around the self-unloader but didn’t see anything. I stood straining my eyes against the reflecting water and finally saw a figure break the surface twenty yards away, close to the shore.

  When I turned back, Bledsoe was just coming on board. He stopped to talk to the second mate, then headed for the bridge without seeing me. I was about to follow when it occurred to me I might be better off just stowing away and presenting myself after castoff. Accordingly, I moved to the back of the pilothouse where a stack of giant oil drums served as both garbage cans and an effective shield from the bridge. I sat down on a metal box, placed my bag against a coil of rope, and leaned back to enjoy the view.

  I had momentarily forgotten the figure I’d seen, but now I noticed him-or her-walk out of the water some fifty yards away, on the other side of the elevator yard. A clump of trees soon hid the person from my sight. After that nothing happened for about forty-five minutes. Then the Lucella gave two deep hoots and slowly pulled away from the wharf.

  Two gray-green troughs appeared at my feet, the wake of the giant screws, and the distance between the ship and the wharf widened quickly. Actually, the ship didn’t seem to move; rather, the shore appeared to back away from us. I waited another ten minutes, until we were a good mile or two from land and no one would be disposed to turn around to send me back.

  Leaving my bag amidst the coiled rope, I made my way up to the bridge. I loosened the gun in its holster and released the safety catch. For all I knew, I was going up to face one or more killers. A few crew members passed me on my way up. They gave me curious stares but didn’t question my right to be there. My heart pounding, I opened the door to the bridge.

  Up the flight of narrow wooden stairs. A murmur of voices at the top. I emerged into a busy scene-Winstein was going over charts at the drafting table. A burly, red-haired man with two inches of cigar in his mouth stood at the wheel taking direction from Captain Bemis. “Off the second port island,” Bemis said. “Off the second port island,” the helmsman repeated, turning the wheel slightly to his left.

  Bledsoe stood behind, looking on. Neither he nor the captain turned when I came in, but Winstein looked up from the charts and saw me. “There she is,” he said quietly.

  The captain turned at that. “Ah, Miss Warshawski. The first mate said you’d turn up.”

  “Technically you’re a stowaway, Vic.” Bledsoe gave the glimmer of a smile. “We could lock you in the holds until we get to Sault Ste. Marie.”

  I sat down at the round table. Now that I was here my nervous tension receded; I felt calm and in charge. “I only have a rudimentary knowledge of maritime law. I gather the captain is complete master of the ship-that he evaluates any crimes committed under his jurisdiction and dispenses judgment, if any?”

  Bemis looked at me seriously. “Technically, yes, as long as the ship is at sea. If some crime was committed on board, though, I’d probably just hang on to the person and turn him over to the regular judiciary at our next port of call.”

  He turned to Winstein and told him to take over the bridge for a few minutes. The first mate finished drawing a line on the chart and then got up to stand by the helmsman. We were going through a channel with a lot of little islands planted in it-humps of earth with one or two trees or a scraggly bush clinging to them. The sun glinted off the gray-green water. Behind us, Thunder Bay was still visible with its line of elevators.

  Bledsoe and Bemis joined me at the table. “You’re not supposed to come on board without the captain’s permission.” Bemis was serious but not angry. “You don’t strike me as a frivolous person and I doubt you did it frivolously, but it’s still a major breach of maritime custom. It’s not a crime, per se, but I don’t think that’s what you were referring to, was it?”

  “No. What I really wanted to know was this: suppose you have someone on board who committed a crime while he was on shore. You find out about it while you’re at sea. What do you do with that person?”

  “It would depend in part on what the crime was.”

  “Attempted murder.”

  Bledsoe’s eyes narrowed. “I assume this isn’t hypothetical, Vic. Do you think one of this crew tried killing someone? Who and why?”

  I looked at him steadily. “I was the intended victim. I’m trying to find out for sure that someone here wasn’t after me.”

  For a count of ten there was no sound in the small room but the faint throb of the engines. The helmsman kept his eyes in front of him, but his back twitched. Bemis’s jaw set in an angry line.

  “You’d better explain that one, Miss Warshawski.”

  “Gladly. Last Thursday night Martin Bledsoe here took me out for dinner. I left my car in the elevator yard. While we were gone someone cut through the steering controls with a cutting torch and emptied the brake fluid. It was a miracle that when my car crashed on the Dan Ryan I escaped with minor injuries. An innocent driver was killed, though, and one of his passengers is now paralyzed for life. That’s murder, assault, and a lot of other ugly stuff.”

  Bledsoe gave an exclamation. “My God, Vic!” He fished around for something else to say but made several false starts before he could get a coherent thought out. I watched him carefully. Surprise is such an easy feeling to counterfeit. It looked genuine, but…

  The captain looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You seem pretty cool about it.”

  “Would it be more believable if I lay down on the floor and screamed?”

  Bemis made a gesture of annoyance. “I assume I could radio the Chicago police and get some verification of this.”

  I pointed to the radio on the port wall. “By all means. A Lieutenant Robert Mallory can tell you anything you want to know.”

  “Can you give us some more detail on what happened?” That was Bledsoe, finding his voice and his authoritative manner.

  I obliged with as much of the accident as I could recall.

  “Now what makes you think someone on the Lucella might be involved?”

  “There’s a limited universe of who could have done it,” I explained. “Only a few people knew I was down there. Only a few could identify my car.”

  “How do you figure that?” That was the captain again. “There are a lot of vandals down at the Port and this frankly sounds like vandalism.”

  “Captain, I don’t know what your exposure to vandals is, but I see a lot of them. I don’t know of any vandal who goes around with a cutting torch and a ratchet wrench to disable cars. It’s a lengthy procedure with a very high risk of getting caught, and there’s no point to it. Especially in a place like a grain elevator, which is hard to get to.”

  Bemis’s brow creased. “You think just because the Lucella was tied up there we’re implicated somehow?”

  “You people and Clayton Phillips are the only ones who knew I was down there… Captain, I’m certain that my cousin was pushed overboard last month-or underboard, to be literal about it. And I know someone else was killed in connection with my cousin’s affairs. The way I see it, the killer is either connected with this ship or with Eudora Grain. Now you’ve got a big machine shop here. I’m sure you have a couple of cutting torches lying around-”

  “No!” Bemis exploded. “No way in hell is Mike Sheridan involved in thi
s.”

  “How long have you known him?”

  “Twenty years. At least twenty years. We’ve been sailing together a long time. I know that man better than I know-my wife. I see more of him.”

  “Besides,” Bledsoe put in, “there’s no reason for Mike-or any of us-to want to kill you.”

  I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Ah, yes. The reason. That’s the real stumper. If I knew what my cousin had found out I’d know who did the murders. I thought it had something to do with those grain shipment orders, Martin, but you assured me they were perfectly legitimate. But what if it had something to do with the vandalism to your cargo holds? You told me that was what Boom Boom called you about.”

  “Yes, but, Vic, we all need this ship operating to make a living. Why would we put it out of commission?”

  “Yes, well, something occurred to me about that, too.” I looked at my hands, then at Bledsoe. “What if someone were blackmailing you-something along the lines of ‘I’ll tell your secret history if you don’t give up that load.’ ”

  Bledsoe’s face turned white under his windburn. “How dare you!”

  “How dare I what? Suggest such a thing-or bring up your past?”

  “Either.” He smashed the table with his fist. “If I had such a past, such a secret, who told it to you?”

  Bemis turned to Bledsoe in surprise. “Martin-what are you talking about? Do you have a mad wife stashed away in Cleveland that I never heard of?”

  Bledsoe recovered himself. “You’ll have to ask Warshawski here. She’s telling the story.”

  Up to that point I hadn’t been sure whether Grafalk had told the truth. But he must have to get that reaction. I shook my head.

  “It’s just a hypothesis, Captain. And if there is something in Bledsoe’s past-why, he’s kept it to himself long enough. I don’t think it would be very interesting to anyone else these days.”