Deadlock

by Sara Paretsky

  “Thanks. You’re sweet… Do you mind if I call you Vic? Boom Boom talked about you so much I feel as though I know you.”

  We were going under the post office, where six lanes had been carved out the building’s foundations, Paige gave a satisfied nod. “And you must call me Paige.” She changed lanes, nosed the Audi around a garbage truck, and turned left on Wabash. She dropped me at my office-the Pulteney Building on the corner of Wabash and Monroe.

  Overhead an el train thundered. “Good-bye,” I yelled above the din. “See you tomorrow at two.”

  2 Love’s Labors Lost

  The Hawks had paid Boom Boom a lot of money to play hockey. He’d spent a fair amount of it on a condo in a slick glass building on Lake Shore Drive north of Chestnut Street. Since he bought it five years ago I’d been there a number of times, often with a crowd of drunken friendly hockey players.

  Gerald Simonds, Boom Boom’s lawyer, gave me the building keys, along with those to my cousin’s Jaguar. We spent the morning going over Boom Boom’s will, a document likely to raise more uproar with the aunts-my cousin left the bulk of his estate to various charities and to the Hockey Widows Pension Fund; no aunts were mentioned. He left me some money with a request not to spend it all on Black Label. Simonds frowned disapprovingly as I laughed. He explained that he had tried to keep his client from inserting that particular clause, but Mr. Warshawski had been adamant.

  It was about noon when we finished. There were a couple of things I could have done in the financial district for one of my clients but I just didn’t feel like working. I didn’t have any interesting cases going at the moment-just a couple of processes to serve. I was also trying to track down a man who had disappeared with half the assets in a partnership, including a forty-foot cabin cruiser. They could all wait. I retrieved my car, a green Mercury Lynx, from the Fort Dearborn Trust’s parking lot and headed over to the Gold Coast.

  Like most posh places, Boom Boom’s building had a doorman. A pudgy, middle-aged white man, he was helping an old lady out of her Seville when I got there, and didn’t pay much attention to me. I fumbled with the keys, trying to find the one that opened the inner door.

  Inside the lobby, a woman got off the elevator with a tiny poodle, its fluffy white hair tied in blue ribbons. She opened the outer door, and I went inside, giving the dog a commiserating look. The dog lurched at its rhinestone-studded leash to smell my leg. “Now, Fifi,” the woman said, pulling the poodle back to her side. Dogs like that aren’t supposed to sniff at things or do anything else to remind their owners they’re animals.

  The inner lobby wasn’t big. It held a few potted trees, two off-white couches where residents could chat, and a large hanging. You see these hangings all over the place, at least in this kind of building: they’re woven, usually with large knots of wool sticking out here and there and a few long strands trailing down the middle. While I waited for an elevator I studied this one without enthusiasm. It covered the west wall and was made from different shades of green and mustard. I was just as glad I lived in a tired three-flat with no neighbors like Fifi’s owner to decide what should hang in the lobby.

  The elevator opened quietly behind me. A woman my age came out dressed for running, followed by two older women on their way to Saks, debating whether to eat lunch at Water Tower on the way over. I looked at my watch: twelve forty-five. Why weren’t they at work on a Tuesday? Perhaps like me they were all private investigators taking time off to handle a relative’s estate. I pressed 22 and the elevator carried me up swiftly and noiselessly.

  Each floor of the thirty-story condo had four units. Boom Boom had paid over a quarter of a million to get one in the northeast corner. It contained just about fifteen hundred square feet-three bedrooms, three baths, including one with a sunken tub off the master bedroom-and a magnificent view of the lake from the north and east sides.

  I opened the door to 22C and went through the hallway to the living room, my feet soundless in the deep pile of the wall-to-wall carpeting. Blue print drapes were pulled away from the glass forming the room’s east wall. The panoramic view drew me-lake and sky forming one giant gray-green ball. I let the vastness absorb me until I felt a sense of peace. I stood so a long moment, then realized with a start of resentment that I wasn’t alone in the apartment. I wasn’t sure what alerted me; I concentrated hard for several minutes, then heard a slight rasping noise. Paper rustling.

  I moved back to the entryway. This led to a hall on the right where the three bedrooms and the master bath were. The dining room and kitchen were off a second, smaller hallway to the left. The rustling had come from the right, the bedroom side.

  I’d worn a suit and heels to see Simonds, clothing totally unsuitable for handling an intruder. I quietly opened the outside door to provide an escape route, slipped off my shoes, and left the handbag next to a magazine rack in the entryway.

  I went back into the living room, listening hard, looking for a potential weapon. A bronze trophy on the mantelpiece, a tribute to Boom Boom as most valuable player in a Stanley Cup victory. I picked it up quietly and moved cautiously down the hallway toward the bedrooms.

  All the doors were open. I tiptoed to the nearest room, which Boom Boom had used as a study. Flattening myself against the wall, bracing my right arm with the heavy trophy, I stuck my head slowly into the open doorway.

  Her back to me, Paige Carrington sat at Boom Boom’s desk sorting through some papers. I felt both foolish and angry. I retreated up the hall, put the trophy down on the magazine table, and slipped into my shoes. I walked to the study.

  “Early, aren’t you? How did you get in?”

  She jumped in the chair and dropped the papers she was holding. Crimson suffused her face from the neck of her open shirt to the roots of her dark hair. “Oh! I wasn’t expecting you until two.”

  “Me either. I thought you didn’t have a key.”

  “Please don’t get so angry, Vic. We had an extra rehearsal called for two o’clock, and I really wanted to find my letters. So I persuaded Hinckley-he’s the doorman-I persuaded him to come up and let me in.” For a minute I thought I saw tears in the honey-colored eyes, but she flicked the back of her hand across them and smiled guiltily. “I hoped I’d be gone before you showed up. These letters are terribly, terribly personal and I couldn’t bear for anyone, even you, to see them.” She held out her right hand beseechingly.

  I narrowed my eyes at her. “Find anything?”

  She shrugged. “He may just not have kept them.” She bent over to pick up the papers she’d scattered at my entrance. I knelt to help her. It looked like a stack of business letters-I caught Myron Fackley’s name a couple of times. He’d been Boom Boom’s agent.

  “I’ve only been through two drawers, and there are six others with papers in them. He saved everything, I think-one drawer is stuffed full of fan letters.”

  I looked at the room with jaundiced eyes. Eight drawers full of papers. Sorting and cleaning have always been my worst skills on aptitude tests.

  I sat on the desk and patted Paige’s shoulder. “Look. This is going to be totally boring to sort through. I’m going to have to examine even the stuff you’ve looked at because I have to see anything that might affect the estate. So why don’t you leave me to it? I promise you if I see any personal letters to Boom Boom I won’t read them-I’ll put them in an envelope for you.”

  She smiled up at me, but the smile wobbled. “Maybe I’m just being vain, but if he saved a bunch of letters from kids he never met I thought he’d keep what I wrote him.” She looked away.

  I gripped her shoulder for a minute. “Don’t worry, Paige. I’m sure they’ll turn up.”

  She sniffed a tiny, elegant sniff. “I think I’m just fixating on them because they keep me from thinking, ‘Yes, he’s really… gone.’ ”

  “Yeah. That’s why I’m cursing him for being such a damned pack rat. And I can’t even get back at him by making him my executor.”

  She laughed a little
at that. “I brought a suitcase with me. I might as well pack up the clothes and makeup I left over here and get going.”

  She went to the master bedroom to pull out her things. I puttered around aimlessly, trying to take stock of my task. Paige was right: Boom Boom had saved everything. Every inch of wall space was covered with hockey photographs, starting with the peewee team my cousin belonged to in second grade. There were group photos of him with the Black Hawks, locker-room pictures filled with champagne after Stanley Cup triumphs, solo shots of Boom Boom making difficult plays, signed pictures from Esposito, Howe, Hull-even one from Boom-Boom Geoffrion inscribed, “To the little cannon.”

  In the middle of the collection, incongruous, was a picture of me in my maroon robes getting my law degree from the University of Chicago. The sun was shining behind me and I was grinning at the camera. My cousin had never gone to college and he set inordinate store by my education. I frowned at this younger, happy V. I. Warshawski and went into the master bedroom to see if Paige needed any help.

  The case sat open on the bed, clothes folded neatly. As I came in she was rummaging through a dresser drawer, pulling out a bright red pullover.

  “Are you going through all his clothes and everything? I think I’ve got all my stuff, but let me know if you find anything-size sixes are probably mine, not his.” She went into the bathroom where I heard her opening cabinets.

  The bedroom was masculine but homey. A king-size bed dominated the middle of the floor, covered with a black and white quilt. Floor-length drapes in a heavy off-white cloth were pulled back, showing the lake. Boom Boom’s hockey stick was mounted over the severe walnut bureau. A purple and red painting provided a splash of color and a couple of rugs picked it up again in the same red. He’d avoided the mirrors that so many bachelors think make the complete singles apartment.

  A bedside table held a few magazines. I sat on the bed to see what my cousin had read before going to sleep-Sports Illustrated, Hockey World, and a densely printed paper called Grain News. I looked at this with interest. Published in Kansas City, it was filled with information about grain-the size of various crops, prices on different options exchanges, rates for shipping by rail and boat, contracts awarded to different transporters. It was pretty interesting if grain was important to you.

  “Is that something special?”

  I’d gotten so absorbed I hadn’t noticed Paige come out of the bathroom to finish her packing. I hesitated, then said, “I’ve been worried about whether Boom Boom went under that propeller-deliberately. This thing”-I waved the paper at her-“tells you everything you’d ever want to know about grains and shipping them. It apparently comes out twice a month, weekly during the harvest. If Boom Boom was involved enough at Eudora Grain to study something like this, it gives me some reassurance.”

  Paige looked at me intently. She took Grain News and flipped through it. Looking at the pages, she said, “I know losing hockey upset him-I can imagine how I’d feel if I couldn’t dance, and I’m not nearly as good a ballerina as he was a hockey player. But I think his involvement with me-kept him from being too depressed. I hope that doesn’t offend you.”

  “Not at all. If it’s true, I’m pleased.”

  Her thin, penciled brows rose. “If it’s true? Do you mind explaining that?”

  “Nothing to explain, Paige. I hadn’t seen Boom Boom since January. He was still fighting the blues then. If knowing you helped him out of the depths, I’m glad… There was some talk at the funeral about his being in trouble down at Eudora Grain-I guess there’s a rumor going around that he stole some papers. Did he say anything about that to you?”

  The honey-colored eyes widened. “No. Not a word. If people were talking about it, it must not have bothered him enough to mention it; we had dinner the day before he died. I wouldn’t believe it, anyway.”

  “Do you know what he wanted to talk to me about?”

  She looked startled. “Was he trying to get in touch with you?”

  “He left an urgent message for me with my answering service, but he didn’t say what it was about. I wondered: if there was some story going around the docks maybe he wanted my professional help.”

  She shook her head, fiddling with the zipper on her purse. “I don’t know. He seemed fine Monday night. Look-I’ve got to get going. I’m sorry if I upset you earlier, but I have to run now.”

  I walked back to the front door with her and shut it behind her-I’d forgotten to close it when I came back for my shoes earlier. I also fastened the deadbolt. I was damned if the doorman was going to let in anyone else without telling me-at least not while I was in the apartment.

  Before getting down to the dispiriting task of sorting my cousin’s papers I took a quick look around. Unlike me, he was-had been-phenomenally tidy. If I’d been dead a week and someone came into my place, they’d find some nasty surprises in the sink and a good layer of dust, not to mention an array of clothes and papers in the bedroom.

  Boom Boom’s kitchen was spotless. The refrigerator was clean inside as well as out. I went through it and got rid of vegetables which were going bad. Two gallons of milk went down the sink-I guess he never got out of the habit of drinking it, even when he wasn’t training any longer. Tidy, tidy. I’d often said the same thing to Boom Boom, teasing him. Remembering those words made my stomach turn over, as if the air had been sucked out from underneath it. It’s like that when someone you love dies. I’d been through it with my parents, too. Little things keep reminding you and it takes a while before the physical pain goes out of the memory.

  I went back to the study and made an organized attack on the drawers. Left to right, top to bottom. If it has to be done, do it thoroughly so there’s no need to take extra time backtracking. Fortunately, my cousin was not only a pack rat, he was also organized. The eight drawers all had neatly labeled file folders.

  The top left held fan mail. Given the size of the turnout at the funeral, I shouldn’t have been surprised to see how many letters people sent him. He still got three or four a week in labored boyish handwriting.

  Dear Boom Boom Warshawski,

  I think you’re the greatest hockey player in the universe. Please send me your picture.

  Your friend,

  Alan Palmerlee

  P.S. Here is a picture of me playing wing for the Algonquin Maple Leafs.

  Across each letter was a neatly written note indicating the date and the reply-“March 26, sent signed picture” or “Called Myron. Asked him to arrange speaking date.” A lot of high schools wanted him to speak at graduation or at sports banquets.

  The next drawer contained material relating to Boom Boom’s endorsement contracts. I’d have to go over these with Fackley and Simonds. My cousin had done some TV spots for the American Dairy Association. Maybe that explained his milk-if you advertise it, you have to drink it. There was also the Warshawski hockey stick, a warm-up jersey, and an ice-skate endorsement.

  At five o’clock I rummaged through the spotless kitchen and found a can of coffee and an electric percolator. I made a pot and carried it back into the study with me. At eight-thirty I located Boom Boom’s liquor supply in a carved Chinese chest in the dining room and poured myself a Chivas-not my first choice in scotch but an adequate substitute for Black Label.

  By ten o’clock I was surrounded by stacks of papers-a pile for Fackley, the agent. One for the attorney, Simonds. Quite a few for the garbage. A few things of sentimental value to me. One or two that might interest Paige. Some memorabilia for the Hockey Hall of Fame in Eveleth, Minnesota, and some other items for the Black Hawks.

  I was tired. My olive silk blouse had a smear of greasy dust across the front. My nylons were full of runs. I was hungry. I hadn’t found Paige’s letters. Maybe I’d feel better after some food. At any rate, I’d been through all the drawers, including the ones in the desk. What had I really expected to find?

  Abruptly I stood and skirted the mounds of paper to get to the telephone. I dialed a number I knew by he
art and was relieved to hear it answered on the third ring.

  “This is Dr. Herschel.”

  “Lotty: it’s Vic. I’ve been sorting through my cousin’s papers and gotten myself thoroughly depressed. Have you eaten?”

  She had had dinner several hours ago but agreed to meet me at the Chesterton Hotel for coffee while I got something to eat.

  I washed up in the master bedroom, looking enviously at the sunken tub with its whirlpool attachment. Relief for my cousin’s shattered ankle. I wondered if he’d bought the condo for the whirlpool. It would be like Boom Boom, tidy in details but not very practical.

  On my way out I stopped to talk to the doorman, Hinckley. He was long gone for the day. The man on duty now was more of a security guard. He sat behind a desk with TV consoles on it-he could see the street or the garage or look at any of the thirty floors. A tired old black man with tiny wrinkles that showed only when I got close to him, he looked at me impassively as I explained who I was. I showed him my power of attorney from Simonds and told him I would be coming around until my cousin’s affairs were straightened out and the unit was sold.

  He didn’t say anything. He didn’t blink or move his head, just looked at me through expressionless brown eyes whose irises were stained yellow with age.

  I could feel my voice rising and checked it. “The man on duty this afternoon let someone into the apartment. Can you please see that no one goes in unless I accompany him or her?”

  He continued to stare at me with unblinking eyes. I felt anger flush my face. I turned and left him sitting under the mustard-colored weaving.

  3 Reflections

  “What were you looking for?” Lotty sat drinking coffee, her sharp black eyes probing me, but with affection.

  I took a bite of my sandwich. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve been a detective too long-I keep expecting to find secrets in people’s desks.”