Deadlock
Page 17
The figure in the wet suit. That meant something. I forced myself to focus on it. That was the person who planted the charges. It was done yesterday. In Thunder Bay.
I opened my mouth to blurt it out, then swallowed the words. No one was in any state to deal with such news.
Keith Winstein made his way over to us. His face was streaked with tears and mud. “Karpansky and Bittenberg. They’re both-both dead, sir. They were down on the bank with the cables. They must’ve-must’ve been-smashed into the side.” He gulped and shuddered.
“Who else?” Bemis demanded.
“Anna. She fell over the side. She-she was crushed. She never had a chance. Vergil fell into the hold. Oh, Jesus! He fell into the hold and suffocated in the barley.” He started laughing and crying wildly. “Drowned in barley. Oh, Christ!” he screamed. “Drowned in barley.”
Focus and energy returned to the captain’s face. He straightened and took Winstein by the shoulders, shaking him hard. “Listen, Mate. The ones left are still your responsibility. Get them together. See who needs medical care. Radio the Coast Guard for a helicopter.”
The first mate nodded. He stopped sobbing, gave a few last shuddering breaths, and turned to the dazed crew.
“Martin needs some help, too,” I said. “Can you get him to sit down?” I needed to get away from the crowd on the deck. Somewhere, just out of reach in my mind, important information hovered. If I could just get away, stay awake, force myself into focus… I started back toward the pilothouse.
On my way I passed the chief engineer. He was covered with mud and oil. He looked like a miner emerging from three weeks in the pit. His blue eyes stared with horror through his mask of black.
“Where’s the captain?” he asked me hoarsely.
“On deck. How are things below?”
“We’ve got a man with a broken leg. That’s the only injury, thank God. But there’s water everywhere. Port engine is gone… It was a bomb, you know. Depth charges. Must have been planted right on the center beam. Set off by radio signal. But why?”
I shook my head, helplessly, but his words jarred my mind loose. If it was set off by remote signal, it was done by someone along the bank. In the observation deck. The man with bright red hair and a pair of binoculars. Howard Mattingly, the second-string hockey player had hair like that. Boom Boom saw him someplace he shouldn’t be three weeks ago. Now here he was at the observation deck with binoculars when the Lucella blew up.
I forgot the ache in my left shoulder. I needed to find Mattingly. Now. Before he got away. I turned abruptly in front of Sheridan and moved back out on deck. My gun. I wasn’t going to tackle Mattingly without the Smith & Wesson. I went back to where I’d left it, to where Bledsoe and the captain were standing.
The bag was gone. I hunted for a few minutes, but I knew it was useless. Two shirts, a sweater, a pair of jeans, and a three-hundred-dollar Smith & Wesson were all lying with Vergil in fifty thousand tons of barley.
“I’m going,” I said to the captain. “I’ve got an idea I need to follow up. Better get one of your junior cooks to get him some hot tea with lots of sugar. He’s not doing too well.” I cocked my thumb in Bledsoe’s direction. I didn’t wait for Bemis’s response but turned to go.
It wasn’t difficult getting off the Lucella. She was resting at the bottom of the lock, her deck even with the bank. Clinging to the cables around the side, I swung easily across the two feet between her upraised stern and the side of the lock. As I picked my way up the narrow strip of land separating me from the MacArthur Lock, I passed an emergency crew coming from the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers. Men in green fatigues, medics, a stretcher crew-a solemn procession befitting a major disaster. Bringing up the rear, of course, was a television news team. They were the only ones who took any notice of me. One of them stuck a microphone under my nose and asked whether I was coming from the ship and what I knew about it.
I shrugged my shoulders in embarrassment and said in Italian that I didn’t know any English. Disappointed, the cameramen continued in the wake of the Coast Guard.
The crossway stretched on in front of me, two concrete strips sandwiching a wedge of grass. The wind chilled my sore shoulder. I wanted to run but I couldn’t. My legs were leaden posts and would not race for me. I staggered up to the gates closed in front of the MacArthur Lock and made my way across the narrow path on top of them. Beyond me lay the rocks lining the channel into Lake Huron. We were lucky the gates had held.
A tremendous crowd had gathered at the observation deck. It took time and energy to force my way through the crush of people. Mattingly was no longer there.
Before elbowing my way out again, I looked for a minute at the Lucella. She was an appalling sight. Bow and stern both stuck up from the lock at jagged angles. A number of cables had snapped from the self-unloader and swung meaninglessly above the remains of the deck. Wet barley oozed from the open cargo holds into a yellow smear across the visible parts of the gaping decks. I strained my eyes at the figures on board and decided that Bledsoe must finally have gone inside. A helicopter had landed near the bow, deploying men with stretchers.
The crowd was enjoying the show. Live disasters are wonderful attractions when you’re safe on the other side of them. As we watched, the Coast Guard fished the dead bodies out of the water and a delighted shudder fluttered throughout the observation deck. I turned and shouldered my way down the stairs and across the street to a little coffee shop.
I ordered a cup of hot chocolate. Like Bledsoe and the crew, I’d had a shock and I needed hot liquid and sugar. The chocolate was pretty dismal, made from a powdered mix and water, but it was sweet and the warmth gradually made itself felt inside my numbed fingers and frozen toes.
I ordered another and a hamburger and french fries. Some instinct told me that calories under these circumstances would do me nothing but good. I pressed the plastic mug against my tired forehead. So Mattingly had left already. On his way back to Chicago by car, unless he’d had a private plane waiting for him at Sault Ste. Marie’s little airport.
I ate the hamburger, a greasy, hardened black slab, greedily in a few bites. The best thing for me to do was call Bobby and tell him to look out for Mattingly when he got back to Chicago. After all, I couldn’t chase him.
As soon as I finished the french fries, I went in search of a pay phone. There was one outside the observation booth, but eight people were lined up waiting to use it. I finally found another three blocks down, in front of a burnt-out motel. I called the Sault Ste. Marie airport. The one daily flight for Chicago left in two hours. I booked a seat and found a Sault Ste. Marie taxi company which sent a cab over to take me to the airport.
Sault Ste. Marie is even smaller than Thunder Bay. The airport was a hangar and a hut, both very weather-beaten. A few private planes, Cessnas and the like, stood at the edge of the field. I didn’t see anything that looked like a commercial plane. I didn’t even see any people. Finally, after ten minutes of walking around, peering in corners, I found a man lying on his back under a tiny plane.
He slid out reluctantly in response to my shouts.
“I’m looking for the plane to Chicago.”
He wiped a greasy hand across an already grimy face. “No planes to Chicago here. Just a few private planes use this place.”
“I just called. I just made a reservation.”
He shook his head. “Commercial airport’s twenty miles down the interstate. You’d better get down there.”
My shoulders sagged. I didn’t know where to find the energy to go another twenty miles. I sighed. “You have a phone I could use to call a cab?”
He gestured toward the far end of the dusty building and turned to crawl back under the plane.
A thought occurred to me. “Martin Bledsoe keep his plane here or down at the other place?”
The man glanced back up at me. “It was here. Cappy flew it out about twenty minutes ago.”
“Cappy?”
“His
pilot. Some guy came along, said Bledsoe wanted Cappy to fly him to Chicago.”
I was too tired to feel anything-surprise, shock, anger-my emotions were pushed somewhere far away. “Guy have bright red hair? Scar on the left side of his face?”
The mechanic shrugged. “Don’t know about the scar. He had red hair all right.” Cappy was expecting the guy-Bledsoe had phoned and told him the night before. All the mechanic knew was he’d given Cappy a course to Chicago. Weather still looked clear across Lake Michigan. They should make it in by six or so. He crawled back under the plane.
I staggered across the floor and found a phone, an old black clunker in the style GTE is ashamed to sell nowadays. The cab company agreed to send someone out to meet me.
I crouched on the sidewalk in front of the hanger while I waited, too weary to stand, fighting sleep. I wondered dreamily what I’d do if the taxi couldn’t get me to the other airport on time.
I had a long wait. The cab’s honking horn aroused me from a doze and I got stiffly to my feet. I fell asleep again on the drive south. We made it to the Chippewa County International Airport with ten minutes to spare. Another tiny terminal, where a friendly fat man sold me a ticket and helped me and two other passengers board the propeller plane.
I thought I would sleep out the flight, but I kept churning thoughts around uselessly during the interminable journey. The plane stopped at three little Michigan towns. I endured the flight with the passivity born of too much emotion. Why would Bledsoe have blown up his own ship? What else was Mattingly doing for him? Bledsoe had blandly offered to let me look at his financial papers. And that meant the real documents were hidden someplace else with fake books available for bankers and detectives. But he had really been in shock when the Lucella blew up. That gray face wasn’t faked. Well, maybe he just wanted to incapacitate her slightly, to collect enough insurance to meet his financial obligations. He didn’t want his pride and joy blown to bits, but Mattingly had gotten hold of the wrong kind of explosive. Or too powerful an explosive. Anyway, he’d way exceeded his instructions.
Why had Bledsoe offered me a ride in his plane if he was turning it over to Mattingly, anyway? Maybe he knew he wouldn’t have to make good on the offer. Or, if he expected the Lucella to be damaged only slightly, he could have taken off. But then how would he have explained Mattingly tome?
Round and round I went on these useless speculations, giving myself nothing but a headache. At the root of it all, I felt very bitter. It looked as though Bledsoe, who talked to me charmingly last night about Veter Grimes, had fooled me. Maybe he thought I’d be an impartial witness to his surprise at the wreck. I didn’t like the wound to my ego. At least I hadn’t gone to bed with him.
At O’Hare I looked Mattingly up in the phone book. He lived near Logan Square. Late as it was, exhausted, my head pounding and my clothes in ruins, I took a cab straight down there from the airport. It was nine-thirty when I rang the bell of a tidy bungalow in the 3600 North block of Pulaski.
It was opened almost immediately by Howard’s young, helpless wife, Elsie. She was struggling with the latter stages of pregnancy and she gasped when she saw me. I realized I must present a shocking sight.
“Hello, Elsie,” I said, walking past her into a tiny vestibule. “I’m V. I. Warshawski-Boom Boom’s cousin. We met a couple of times at hockey parties-remember? I need to talk to Howard.”
“I-Yes, I remember you. Howard-Howard’s not here.”
“No? You’re sure he’s not upstairs in bed asleep or something?”
Tears started rolling down her round, girlish cheeks. “He’s not here. He isn’t. Pierre-Pierre has called three times, and the last time he left a threat. But really, I don’t know where he is. I haven’t seen him for four days. I thought-I thought he was at-at the Coeur d’Argent with Pierre. But he wasn’t and I don’t know where he is and the baby may come any day and I’m so scared.” She was really sobbing now.
I coaxed her into the living room and sat her down on a bright blue sofa covered with plastic. A stack of knitting lay folded neatly on the veneer coffee table-she had obviously filled her lonely, frightened days making baby clothes. I rubbed her hands and talked soothingly to her. When she seemed a little calmer I made my way to the kitchen and fixed her a mug of steaming milk. Hunting around, I found some gin under the sink. I poured myself a healthy slug of that with a little orange juice and carried the two drinks back to the living room. My left arm protested even this insubstantial load.
“Here: drink this. It’ll make you feel a little better… Now. When was the last time you saw Howard?”
He had left Monday with a small overnight bag, saying he would be back on Wednesday. Here it was Friday and where was he? No, he hadn’t said where he was going. Did Thunder Bay sound familiar? She shrugged helplessly, tears swimming in her round blue eyes. Sault Ste. Marie? She just shook her head, crying gently, not saying anything.
“Has Howard said anything about the people he’s been running around with?”
“No,” she hiccoughed. “And when I told him you’d asked, he-he got really mad at me. He-he hit me and told me to keep our business to our-ourselves. And then he packed up and left and said he’d better not tell me where-where he was going, because I-I would just-just blab it around to people.”
I grimaced, silently thanking Boom Boom for the times he and Pierre had beaten up Howard.
“What about money? Howard had enough money lately?”
She brightened at that. Yes, he’d made a lot of money this spring and he’d given her two hundred dollars to buy a really nice crib and everything for the baby. She was quite proud of that and rambled on about it for a while-the only thing she could brag about.
I asked her if she had a mother or a sister or anyone she could stay with. She shrugged helplessly again and said all her family lived in Oklahoma. I looked at her impatiently. She wasn’t the kind of stray I wanted to befriend-if I did it once, she’d cling to me forever. Instead, I told her to call the fire department if she went into labor suddenly and didn’t know what to do about it-they’d send paramedics over to help her out.
As I got up to leave, I asked her to call me if Howard showed up. “And for goodness’ sake, don’t tell him you told me-he’ll only hit you again. Just go down to the corner grocery and use their pay phone. I really need to talk to him.”
She turned pathetically forlorn eyes to me. I doubted very much if I’d ever hear from her. It would be beyond her powers to deceive her domineering husband even over so simple a matter as a phone call. I felt a pang of guilt leaving her behind, but it was swallowed by fatigue as I got to the corner of Addison and Pulaski.
I hailed a Yellow Cab there to take me crosstown to Lotty’s. Five miles on city streets is a slow ride and I went to sleep in the lurching, elderly vehicle about the time we crossed Milwaukee Avenue. The movement of the taxi made me think I was back on board the Lucella. Bledsoe was standing next to me, holding onto the self-loader. He kept staring at me with his compelling gray eyes, repeating, “Vic: I wasn’t on the plane. I wasn’t on the plane.”
I woke up with a start as we turned onto Sheffield and the driver asked me for Lotty’s apartment number. As I paid him off and made my weary way up to the second floor, my dream remained very real to me. It contained an important message about Bledsoe but I just couldn’t figure out what it was.
19 Pavane for a Dead Hockey Player
Lotty greeted me with a most uncharacteristic gasp of relief. “My God, Vic, it’s really you! You made it back!” She hugged me fiercely.
“Lotty, what on earth is the matter? Didn’t you think you’d see me again?”
She put me at arm’s length, looked me up and down, kissed me again, and then gave a more Lotty-like grin. “The boat you were on, Vic. It was on the news. The explosion and so on. Four dead, they said, one of them a woman, but they wouldn’t give names until the families were notified. I was afraid, my dear, afraid you might be the only woman on board.”
She perched on a three-legged stool while I soaked my sore shoulder and related the highlights of my adventures.
“I can’t believe Bledsoe hired Mattingly,” I concluded. “I just don’t believe my judgment of character can be so wrong. Bledsoe and his captain roused my hackles. But I liked them.” I went on to tell her the same thoughts that had tormented my four-hour ride in from the Soo. “I guess I’ll have to put my prejudices aside and look into Pole Star’s insurance arrangements and their general financial health.”
“Sleep on it,” Lotty advised. “You have a lot of different avenues to explore. In the morning one of them will look the most promising. Maybe Phillips. He has the most definite tie to Boom Boom, after all.”
Wrapped in a large terry-cloth robe, I sat with her in the kitchen eating the chicken and feeling comfort seep into the worn spots of my mind. After dinner Lotty rubbed Myoflex into my back and arms. She gave me a muscle relaxant and I fell into a deep, peppermint-scented sleep.
The phone dragged me out of the depths some ten hours later. Lotty came in and gently touched my arm. I opened bleary eyes.
“Phone’s for you, my dear. Janet somebody-used to be Boom Boom’s secretary.”
I shook my head groggily and sat up to take the phone by the guest bed.
Janet’s homey, middle-aged voice woke me up more thoroughly. She was upset. “Miss Warshawski, I’ve been fired. Mr. Phillips told me it was because they didn’t have enough for me to do, with Mr. Warshawski gone and all. But I think it’s because I was going through those files for you. I don’t think they would have fired me if I hadn’t done that. I mean, there was always enough work before-”