Deadlock (7 page)

“Sorry about the
Ericsson
, Niels. Hell of a mess out there. You figure out what happened?”

“Looked to me like she ran into the dock, Martin. But we’ll know for sure after we’ve made a complete investigation.”

I suddenly wondered what Grafalk was doing eating a leisurely lunch when he had several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage sitting outside.

“What happens in a case like this?” I asked. “Do you have insurance to cover your hull damage?”

“Yes.” Grafalk grimaced. “We have coverage for everything. But it’ll boost my premium by a good deal.… I’d rather not think about it right now, if you don’t mind.”

I changed the subject by asking him some general questions about shipping. His family owned the oldest company still operating on the Great Lakes. It was also the biggest. An early ancestor from Norway had started it in 1838 with a clipper that carried fur and ore from Chicago to Buffalo. Grafalk became quite enthusiastic, recounting some of the great ships and shipwrecks of the family fleet, then caught himself up apologetically. “Sorry—I’m a fanatic on shipping history … My family’s been involved in it for so long … Anyway, my private yacht is called the
Brynulf Nordemark
in memory of the captain who went down so gallantly in the disaster of 1857.”

“Grafalk’s a fantastic sailor in his own right,” Phillips put in. “He keeps two sailboats—his grandfather’s old yacht and a racing boat. You sail in the Mackinac race every year, don’t you, Niels?”

“I’ve only missed two since graduating from college—that probably happened before you were born, Miss Warshawski.”

He’d been to Northwestern, another family tradition. I vaguely remembered a Grafalk Hall on the Northwestern campus and the Grafalk Maritime Museum next to Shedd Aquarium.

“What about the Pole Star Line?” I asked Bledsoe. “That an old family company?”

“Martin’s a Johnny-come-lately,” Grafalk said lightly. “How old’s PSL now? Eight years?”

“I used to have Percy MacKelvy’s job,” Bledsoe said. “So Niels remembers every day since my desertion.”

“Well, Martin, you were the best dispatcher in the industry. Of course I felt deserted when you wanted to go into competition against me … By the way, I heard about the sabotage on the
Lucella
. That sounded like an ugly incident. It was one of your crewmembers?”

Waiters were bringing our entrees. Even though they slid the plates in front of us, barely moving the airwaves, it was enough of a distraction that I missed Bledsoe’s facial reaction.

“Well, the damage was minor, after all,” he said. “I was furious at the time, but at least the ship is intact: it’d be a pain in the ass to have to spend the main part of the season patching the
Lucella
’s hull.”

“True enough,” Grafalk agreed. “You do have two smaller ships, though, don’t you?” He smiled at me blandly. “We have sixty-three other vessels to pick up any slack the
Ericsson
’s incapacitation has caused.”

I wondered what the hell was going on here. Phillips was sitting stiffly, not making any pretense of eating, while Sheridan seemed to be casting about for something to say. Grafalk ate some minced vegetables and Bledsoe attacked his broiled swordfish with gusto.

“And even though my engineer really screwed up down there, I’m convinced that the guy just got overexcited and made a mistake. It’s not like having deliberate vandalism among the crew.”

“You’re right,” Bledsoe said. “I did wonder if this was part of your program to junk your 360-footers.”

Grafalk dropped his fork. A waiter moved forward and wafted a new one to the table. “We’re satisfied with what we’ve got out there,” Grafalk said. “I do hope you’ve isolated
your
trouble, though, Martin.”

“I hope so too,” Bledsoe said politely, picking up his wineglass.

“It’s so distressing when someone in your organization turns out to be unreliable,” Grafalk persisted.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Bledsoe responded, “but then I’ve never shared the Hobbesian view of the social contract with you.”

Grafalk smiled. “You’ll have to explain that one to me, Martin.” He turned to me again. “At Martin’s school they went in for a lot of memorizing. I had an easier time, being a gentleman: we weren’t expected to know anything.”

I was starting to laugh when I heard glass shatter. I turned with the rest to stare at Bledsoe. He had crushed his wineglass in his hand and the clear shards sticking out of his palm were rapidly engulfed in red. As I leaped to my feet to send for a doctor I wondered what all that had been about. Of all the remarks exchanged, Grafalk’s last one had been the least offensive. Why had it produced such an extraordinary reaction?

I sent a very concerned maître d’hôtel to call an ambulance. He confided in a moment of unprofessional panic
that he knew he should never have allowed Mr. Bledsoe to join Mr. Grafalk. But then—Mr. Bledsoe was not a gentleman, he had no sensitivity, one could not keep him from barging in where he did not belong.

Quiet panic prevailed at our table. The men stared helplessly at the pool of red growing on the tablecloth, on Bledsoe’s cuff, on his lap. I told them an ambulance was coming and meanwhile we should probably try to get as much glass as possible out of his hand. I sent the waiters for another ice bucket and began packing Bledsoe’s hand with ice and some extra napkins.

Bledsoe was in pain but not in danger of fainting. Instead he was cursing himself steadily for his stupidity.

“You’re right,” I said. “It was damned stupid. In fact I don’t know when I’ve ever seen anything to compare with it. But fretting over it won’t alter the past, so why don’t you concentrate on the present instead?” He smiled a bit at that and thanked me for my help.

I glanced briefly at Grafalk. He was watching us with a strange expression. It wasn’t pity and it wasn’t satisfaction. Speculative. But what about?

After the ambulance carted Bledsoe away, everyone returned to lunch a little furtively, as though eating were in bad taste. The headwaiter cleared Bledsoe’s place with palpable relief and brought Grafalk a fresh bottle of Niersteiner gutes Domthal—“with our compliments, sir.”

“They don’t like your boss here,” I said to Sheridan.

The chief engineer shrugged. “The maître d’ is a snob. Martin’s a self-made man and that offends him. Niels here brings class to his joint. Martin slashes his hand open and Niels gets a free bottle of wine so he won’t be offended and drop his membership.”

Grafalk laughed. “You’re right. The most insufferable snobs are the hangers-on to the rich. If we lose our glamour, they lose the basis for their existence.”

While we talked Phillips kept darting glances at his watch and muttering, “Uh, Niels,” in his tight voice. He reminded me of a child tugging at its mother’s skirts while she’s absorbed in conversation—Grafalk gave him about the same amount of attention. Finally Phillips stood up. “Uh, Niels, I’d better leave now. I have a meeting with, uh, Rodriguez.”

Grafalk looked at his watch. “We’d all better be going, I guess. Miss Warshawski, let me take you over to Percy
MacKelvy and get the
Bertha Krupnik
’s location for you.” He got a bill from the waiter and signed it without looking at the amount, politely waiting for me to finish. I dug the heart out of my artichoke and cut it into four pieces, savoring each one, before putting my napkin to one side and getting up.

Phillips lingered with us in the doorway, despite his meeting. He seemed to be waiting for some sign from Grafalk, a recognition of who he was, perhaps, that would enable him to leave in peace. The power of the rich to bestow meaning on people seemed as though it might work with Phillips.

“Don’t you have a meeting, Clayton?” Grafalk asked.

“Uh, yes. Yes.” Phillips turned at that and walked back across the tarmac to his Alfa.

Sheridan accompanied me over to Grafalk’s office. “I want you to come back to the
Lucella
and talk to Captain Bemis when you’re finished here,” he said. “We need to know if you can tell us anything about what your cousin wanted to say.”

I couldn’t, of course, but I wanted to know what they could tell me about Boom Boom, so I agreed.

Our visit to Grafalk’s office was interrupted by reporters, a television crew, and an anxious phone call from the chairman of Ajax Insurance, which covered Grafalk Steamship.

Grafalk handled all of these with genial urbanity. Treating me like a treasured guest, he asked the NBC television crew to wait while he answered a question for me. He took the call from Ajax chairman Gordon Firth in MacKelvy’s office.

“Just a minute, Gordon. I have an attractive young lady here who needs some information.” He put Firth on hold and asked MacKelvy to dig up the
Bertha
’s location. She was making a tour of the Great Lakes, picking up coal in Cleveland to drop in Detroit, then steaming up to
Thunder Bay. She’d be back in Chicago in two weeks. MacKelvy was to instruct the captain to place himself and the crew at my disposal. Grafalk brushed my thanks aside: Boom Boom had been an impressive young man, just the kind of person the shipping industry needed to attract. Whatever they could do to help, just let him know. He returned to Firth and I found my way out alone.

Sheridan had waited for me outside, away from the reporters and television crews. As I came out a cameraman thrust a microphone under my nose. Had I seen the disaster, what did I think of it—all the inane questions television reporters ask in the wake of a disaster. “Unparalleled tragedy,” I said. “Mr. Grafalk will give you the details.”

Sheridan grinned as I ducked away from the mike. “You’re quicker on your feet than I am—I couldn’t think of a snappy remark on the spur of the moment.”

We walked down the pier to the parking lot where his Capri sat. As he backed it out of the lot he asked if Grafalk had told me what I wanted to know.

“Yeah. He was pretty gracious about it.” Overwhelmingly gracious. I wondered if he were bent on erasing any unfavorable ideas I might have picked up as a result of his interchange with Bledsoe. “Why did Grafalk’s remark about where Bledsoe went to school upset him so much?” I asked abruptly.

“Was that what set him off? I couldn’t remember.”

“Grafalk said: ‘At Martin’s school they went in for a lot of memorizing.’ Then something about
his
being a gentleman and not needing to know anything. Even if Bledsoe went to some tacky place like West Schaumburg Tech, that’s scarcely a reason to shatter a wineglass in your fist.”

Sheridan braked at a light at 103rd and Torrence. A Howard Johnson’s on our left struggled ineffectually with prairie grass and a junkyard. Sheridan turned right. “I
don’t think Martin went to school at all. He grew up in Cleveland and started sailing when he was sixteen by lying about his age. Maybe he doesn’t like a Northwestern man reminding him he’s self-educated.”

That didn’t make sense—self-educated people are usually proud of the fact. “Well, why is there so much animosity between him and Grafalk?”

“Oh, that’s easy to explain. Niels looks on Grafalk Steamship as a fiefdom. He’s filthy rich, has lots of other holdings, but the shipping company’s the only thing he cares about. If you work for him, he thinks it’s a lifelong contract, just like a baron swearing loyalty to William the Conqueror or something.

“I know: I started my career at Grafalk. He was sore as hell when I left. John Bemis too—the captain of the
Lucella
. But our going never bugged him when we left the way it did with Martin. He regarded that as the ultimate betrayal, maybe because Martin was the best dispatcher on the lakes. Which is why Pole Star’s done as well as it has. Martin has that sixth sense that tells him what fraction of a dollar he can offer to be the low bidder and still make a profit.”

We were pulling into the yard of another elevator. Sheridan bumped the car across the ruts and parked behind a weather-beaten shed. Four hopper cars were being maneuvered on the tracks in front of us onto the elevator hoist. We picked our way around them, through the ground floor of the giant building, and out to the wharf.

The
Lucella
loomed high above us. Her red paint was smooth and unchipped. She made the other ships I’d seen that day look like puny tubs. A thousand feet long, her giant hull filled the near horizon. I felt the familiar churning in my stomach and shut my eyes briefly before following Sheridan up a steel ladder attached to her side.

He climbed briskly. I followed quickly, putting from
my mind the thought of the black depths below, of the hull thrusting invisibly into murky water, of the sea, alive and menacing.

We met Captain Bemis in the mahogany-paneled bridge perched on top of the pilothouse. Through glass windows encircling the bridge we could see the deck stretching away beneath us. Men in yellow slickers were washing out the holds with high-pressure hoses.

Captain Bemis was a sturdy, short man, barely my height. He had steady gray eyes and a calm manner—useful, no doubt, in a high sea. He called down to the deck on a walkie-talkie to his first mate, asking him to join us. A yellow-slickered figure detached itself from the group on deck and disappeared into the pilothouse.