Deadlock (13 page)

Bledsoe looked at the documents again. “Not especially. Either they underbid us or they were promising an earlier delivery date.”

“The other question I had was why Boom Boom was interested in certain dates this spring.”

“What dates this spring?” Bledsoe asked.

“One was the twenty-third of April. I don’t remember the others offhand.” I had the diary in my canvas bag but I didn’t want to show it to them.

Bledsoe and Sheridan looked at each other thoughtfully. Finally Bledsoe said, “The twenty-third was the date we were supposed to load up the
Lucella
.”

“You mean the day you found water in the holds?”

Sheridan nodded.

“Maybe the other dates also were connected with shipping accidents. Is there a record of such things?”

Bledsoe’s face twisted in thought. He shook his head. “That’s a pretty tall order. There are so many steamship lines and so many ports. The
Great Lakes Underwriter
discusses them if they’ve got anything to do with hull or cargo damage. That’d be the best place to start. Recent dates, one of us might be able to help you out.”

I was getting tired of all the legwork that didn’t lead in any real direction. I supposed I could track down the
Great Lakes Underwriter
and look for accidents to ships,
but what would that tell me? Had Boom Boom uncovered some criminal ring vandalizing freighters? Just knowing that accidents had occurred wouldn’t tell me that.

Winstein had gone back down to the deck and Captain Bemis wandered over to join our group. “No further accidents are going to strike this ship. I’ve arranged for a security patrol on deck when they finish loading for the day.”

Bledsoe nodded. “I’ve been thinking maybe I’ll sail out with you.” He grinned. “No aspersion on your management of the ship, John, but the
Lucella
’s precious to all of us. I want to see her get this load to St. Catharines.”

“No problem, Martin. I’ll have the head cook get the stateroom ready.”

“We don’t run to people like stewards on freighters,” Bledsoe explained to me. “The head cook takes responsibility for the captain’s and the guest quarters. Everyone else fends for himself … What time do you figure to sail, John?”

The captain looked at his watch. “We’ve got about eleven more hours of loading, and Tri-State doesn’t want to pay overtime unless it’s just an hour or two. So anytime after nineteen hundred hours tomorrow.”

Bledsoe offered to give me a tour of the ship, if Bemis didn’t object. The captain gave his permission with a tolerant smile. Sheridan followed us down the narrow wooden stairs. “I get to show off the engine room,” he explained.

The bridge was perched on top of the pilothouse. There were four levels above deck, each smaller than the one below it. The captain and the chief engineer had their quarters on the third story, directly below the bridge. Sheridan opened his door so I could take a quick look inside.

I was surprised. “I thought everyone slept in narrow bunk beds with a tiny sink.” The chief engineer had a
three-room suite, with an outsize bed in the bedroom, and an office cluttered with paper and tools.

Bledsoe laughed. “That was true in Dana’s day, but times have changed. The crew sleep six to a room but they have a big recreational lounge. They even have a Ping-Pong table, which provides its amusing moments in a high sea.”

The other officers and the head cook shared the second floor with the stateroom. The galley and the dining rooms—the captain’s dining room and crew’s mess—were on the deck floor and the crew’s quarters on the first floor below deck.

“We should have put the officers’ quarters over the stern,” Sheridan told Bledsoe as we went down below the water level to the engine room. “Even up where John and I are the engines throb horribly all night long. I can’t think why we let them build the whole caboodle into the pilothouse.”

We climbed narrow steel rungs set into the wall down to the belly of the ship where the engines lay. Bledsoe disappeared for this part of the tour. “Once the chief gets started on engines he keeps going for a month or two. I’ll see you on deck before you leave.”

“Engine room” was really a misnomer. The engines themselves were in the bottom of the ship, each the size of a small building, say a garage. Moving parts were installed around them on three floors—drive shafts two feet in diameter, foot-wide piston heads, giant valves. Everything was controlled from a small room at the entrance to the holds. A panel some six feet wide and three feet deep was covered with switches and buttons. Transformers, sewage disposal, ballast, as well as the engines themselves, were all operated from there.

Sheridan showed me the controls that could be used for moving the ship. “Remember when the
Leif Ericsson
ran
into the dock the other day? I was telling you about the controls in the engine room. This one is for the port engine, this for the starboard.” They were large metal sticks, easy to move, with clearly marked grooves—“Full ahead, Half ahead, Half astern, Full astern.”

He looked at his watch and laughed. It was after five. “Martin’s right—I’d stay down here all day. I keep forgetting not everyone shares my love of moving parts.”

I assured him I’d found it fascinating. It was hard to figure out on one visit, but interesting. The engines were laid out sort of like a giant car engine, with every piece exposed so it could be cared for quickly. If you were a Lilliputian you would climb up and down a car engine just this way. Every piece would be laid out neatly, easy to get at, just impossible to move.

I went back up to the bridge to pick up my papers. While we’d been down with the engines, the loading had stopped for the day. I watched while a couple of small deck cranes lifted covers over the hatches.

“We won’t bolt ’em down,” Bemis said. “It’s supposed to be clear tonight, for a miracle. I just don’t want to take any chances with four million dollars’ worth of barley.”

Bledsoe came up to us. “Oh, there you are.… Look—I feel I owe you an apology for running lunch the other day. I wondered if I could persuade you to eat dinner with me. There’s a good French restaurant about twenty minutes from here in Crown Point, Indiana.”

I’d worn a black corduroy pantsuit that day and it was covered with fine particles of barley. Bledsoe saw me eye it doubtfully.

“It’s not that formal a place—and there’s some kind of clothesbrush in the stateroom, if you want to brush your suit. You look great, though.”

Dinner at Louis Retaillou’s Bon Appetit was delightful. The restaurant took up the ground floor of an old Victorian house. The family, who all played a role in preparing and presenting the meal, lived upstairs. It was Thursday, a quiet night with only a few of the inlaid wooden tables filled, and Louis came out to talk to Bledsoe, who was a frequent guest. I had the best duckling I’ve ever eaten and we shared a respectable St. Estephe.

Bledsoe turned out to be an entertaining companion. Over champagne cocktails we became “Martin” and “Vic.” He regaled me with shipping stories, while I tried to pry discreetly into his past. I told him a bit about my childhood on Chicago’s South Side and some of Boom Boom’s and my adventures. He countered with stories of life on Cleveland’s waterfront. I talked about being an undergraduate during the turbulent Vietnam years and asked him about his education. He’d gone straight to work out of high school. With Grafalk Steamship? Yes, with Grafalk Steamship—which reminded him of the first time he’d been on a laker when a big storm came up. And so on.

It was ten-thirty when Bledsoe dropped me back at the
Lucella
to pick up my car. The guard nodded to Bledsoe
without taking his eyes from a television set perched on a shelf above him.

“Good thing you have a patrol on the boat—anyone could get past this fellow,” I commented.

Bledsoe nodded in agreement, his square face in shadow. “Ship,” he said absently. “A boat is something you haul aboard a ship.”

He walked over with me to my car—he was going back on board the
Lucella
for one last look around. The elevator and the boat—ship—beyond loomed as giant shapes in the dimly lit yard. I shivered a bit in my corduroy jacket.

“Thanks for introducing me to a great new restaurant, Martin. I enjoyed it. Next time I’ll take you to an out-of-the-way Italian place on the West Side.”

“Thanks, Vic. I’d like to do that.” He squeezed my hand in the dark, started toward the ship, then leaned back into the car and kissed me. It was a good kiss, firm and not sloppy, and I gave it the attention it deserved. He mumbled something about calling when he got back to town and left.

I backed the Lynx out of the yard and onto 130th Street. Few cars were out and I had an easy time back to I-94. The traffic there was heavier but flowing smoothly—trailer trucks moving their loads at seventy miles an hour under cover of darkness, and the restless flow of people always out on nameless errands in a great city.

The night was clear, as the forecast had promised Bemis, but the air was unseasonably cool. I kept the car windows rolled up as I drove north, passing slag heaps and mobile homes huddled together under the shadow of expressway and steel mills. At 103rd Street the highway merged with the Dan Ryan. I was back in the city now, the Dan Ryan el on my left and a steep grassy bank on my right. Perched on top were tiny bungalows and liquor stores. A peaceful urban sight, but not a place to stop in
the middle of the night. A lot of unwary tourists have been mugged close to the Dan Ryan.

I was nearing the University of Chicago exit when I heard a tearing in the engine, a noise like a giant can opener peeling a strip off the engine block. I slammed on the brakes. The car didn’t slow. The brakes didn’t respond. I pushed again. Still nothing. The brakes had failed. I turned the wheel to move toward the exit. It spun loose in my hand. No steering. No brakes. In the rearview mirror I could see the lights of a semi bearing down on me. Another truck was boxing me in on the right.

Sweat came out on my forehead and the bottom fell out of my stomach. I pumped gently on the brakes and felt a little response. Gently, gently. Switched on the hazard indicator, put the car in neutral, leaned on the horn. The Lynx was veering to the right and I couldn’t stop it. I held my breath. The truck to my right pulled out of my way but the one behind me was moving fast and blaring on his horn.

“Goddamn you, move!” I screamed at him. My speedometer needle had inched down to thirty; he was going at least seventy. I was still sliding toward the right lane.

At the last second the semi behind me swerved to the left. I heard a horrible shattering of glass and metal on metal. A car spun into the lane in front of me.

I pumped the brakes but there was nothing left in them. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t do anything. In the last seconds as the car in front of me flipped over I hunched down and crossed my hands in front of my face.

Metal on metal. Wrenching jolts. Glass shattering on the street. A violent blow on my shoulder, a pool of wet warmth on my arm. Light and noise shattered inside my head and then quiet.

My head ached. My eyes would hurt terribly if I opened them. I had the measles. That was what Mama said. I
would be well soon. I tried calling her name; a gurgling sound came out and her hand was on my wrist, dry and cool.

“She’s stirring.”

Not Gabriella’s voice. Of course, she was dead. If she was dead I couldn’t be eight and sick with the measles. It hurt my head to think.

“The steering,” I croaked, and forced my eyes open.

A blur of white figures hovered over me. The light stabbed my eyes. I shut them.

“Turn off the overhead lights.” That was a woman’s voice. I knew it and struggled to open my eyes again.

“Lotty?”

She leaned over me. “So,
Liebchen
. You gave us a few bad hours but you’re all right now.”

“What happened?” I could hardly talk; the words choked in my throat.

“Soon I’ll tell you. Now I want you to sleep. You are in Billings Hospital.

The University of Chicago. I felt a small sting in my side and slept.

When I woke up again the room was empty. The pain in my head was still there but small and manageable. I tried to sit up. As I moved, the pain swept over me full force. I felt vilely ill and lay back down, panting. After an interval I opened my eyes again. My left arm was attached to the ceiling by a pulley. I stared at it dreamily. I moved my right fingers up the arm, encountering thick tape, then a cast. I poked the shoulder around the edges of the cast and gave a cry of unanticipated pain. My shoulder was either dislocated or broken.

What had I done to my shoulder? I frowned in concentration, making my headache worse. But I remembered. My car. The brakes failing. A sedan turning over in front of me? Yes. I couldn’t remember the rest. I must have plowed
right into it, though. Lucky to have my shoulder belt on. Could anyone in the sedan have lived through that?

I started feeling very angry. I needed to see the police. I needed to talk to everyone. Phillips, Bledsoe, Bemis, the guard at the Tri-State elevator.