Deadlock (20 page)

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 this.”

“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.”

“You don’t?” Bledsoe pounced on that. “Then why would anyone blackmail me to keep it quiet?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s very interesting. But
you
clearly do. Your reaction just now clinches it. What set me wondering was why you smashed a wineglass just because Grafalk made a crack that day about where you went to school.”

“I see.” Bledsoe gave a short laugh. “You’re not so dumb, are you?”

“I get by … I’d like to ask you one question in private, however.”

Bemis stood up politely. “I ought to look at the course, anyway.… By the way, Martin’s occupying our only guest room. We’ll put a cot up for you in my dining room.”

I thanked him. Bledsoe looked at me speculatively. I leaned forward and said in a low voice, “I want to know that you didn’t get Sheridan to doctor my car while we were at dinner that night.” I saw a pulse start to move in his jaw. “Believe me, I hate to ask it. I hate even to think it. But that was a pretty horrifying experience—it shook my trust in human nature.”

Bledsoe pushed back his chair with enough force to knock it over. “Go ask him yourself! I’m fucked if I’ll put up with any more of this.”

He stormed down the stairs and the bridge echoed with the vibration of the slammed door. Bemis looked at me coldly, “I’m running a ship, Miss Warshawski, not a soap opera.”

I felt a violent surge of anger. “Are you, now? I’ve had a cousin killed and someone’s tried to kill me. Until I’m sure your ship and crew didn’t do it, you’ll damned well live in my soap opera and like it.”

Bemis left the helm and came over to lean across the table into my face. “I don’t blame you for being upset. You lost a cousin. You’ve been badly hurt. But I think you’re blowing up a couple of very sad accidents into a conspiracy and I won’t have you disrupting my ship while you do it.”

My temples pounded. I kept just enough control not to offer any grandiose threats. “Very well,” I said tightly, my vocal cords straining, “I won’t disrupt your ship. I would like to talk to the chief engineer while I am on board, however.”

Bemis jerked his head at Winstein. “Get the lady a hard hat, Mate.” He turned back to me. “You may question the
chief. However, I don’t want you talking to the crew unless either the first mate or I am present. He’ll instruct the second mate to make sure that happens.”

“Thanks,” I said stiffly. While I waited for Winstein to bring me a hard hat, I stared moodily out the rear of the bridge. The sun was setting now and the shoreline showed as a distant wedge of purple in front of it. To the port side I could see a few chunks of ice. Winter lasted a long time in these parts.

I was doing a really swell job. So far I didn’t know a damned thing I hadn’t known three weeks ago, except how to load a Great Lakes freighter full of grain. In my mind’s ear I could hear my mother chewing me out for self-pity. “Anything but that, Victoria. Better for you to break the dishes than lie about feeling sorry for yourself.” She was right. I was just worn out from the aftermath of my accident. But that, in Gabriella’s eyes, was the reason, not the excuse—there was no excuse for sitting around sulking.

I pulled myself together. The first mate was waiting to escort me from the bridge. We walked down the narrow staircase, me following on his heels. He gave me a hard hat with his name on the front in faded black type; he explained that it was his spare and I was welcomed to it as long as I was on board.

“If you’re thinking of going down to talk to the chief now, why not wait until dinner? The chief eats dinner in the captain’s dining room and you can talk to him there. You won’t be able to hear each other over the engines, anyway.”

I looked at him grudgingly, wondering if he was deflecting me from Sheridan long enough to let Bledsoe tell him his version of the story.

“Where’s the captain’s dining room?” I asked.

Winstein took me there, a small, formal room on the starboard side of the main deck. Flowered curtains hung
at the portholes and an enormous photo of the
Lucella
’s launching decorated the forward wall. The crew’s mess was next door to it. The same galley served both, but the captain was waited on at table by the cooks whereas the crew served themselves cafeteria style. The cooks would serve dinner between five-thirty and seven-thirty, Winstein told me. I could get breakfast there between six and eight in the morning.

Winstein left me to go back to the bridge. I waited until he was out of sight and then descended into the engine room. I vaguely remembered my way from the previous visit, going through a utility room with a washer and dryer in it, then climbing down a flight of linoleum-covered stairs to the engine-room entrance.

Winstein was right about the noise. It was appalling. It filled every inch of my body and left my teeth shaking. A young man in greasy overalls was in the control booth that made up the entrance to the engines. I roared at him over the noise; after several tries he understood my query and told me I would find the chief engineer on level two inspecting the port journal bearings. Apparently only an idiot would not know about port journal bearings. Declining further assistance, I swung myself down a metal ladder to the level below.

The engines take up a good amount of space and I wandered around quite a bit before I saw anyone. I finally spotted a couple of hard-hatted figures behind a mass of pipes and made my way over to them. One was the chief engineer, Sheridan. The other was a young fellow whom I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed not to find Bledsoe with Sheridan—it would have given a more solid direction to my inchoate searching to see them in cahoots.

The chief and the other man were totally absorbed in their inspection of a valve in a pipe running at eye level in
front of them. They didn’t turn when I came up but continued their work.