Deadlock

by Sara Paretsky

  I drew a round ball and added a thatch of hair. That was supposed to be Phillips. I labeled it in case one of the nurses wanted to save the picture for her grandchildren. I should really talk to all of them-Grafalk, Phillips, Bemis, Sheridan, Bledsoe-and soon.

  I looked balefully at my left shoulder. I couldn’t do much while I lay here attached to my pulley. Still, what about those Eudora shipping contracts? Someone had rescued my canvas bag from the wreckage of the Lynx. It lay now on the lower shelf of the bedside table.

  I lowered the bed, stuck my head over the side to fish the diary out of the bag, raised the bed again, and stared fixedly at that dates circled in the front of the book. I keep track of my period by circling the dates when I get it in my desk calendar, but that wouldn’t be true in my cousin’s case. I grinned to myself, picturing Boom Boom’s reaction if I’d suggested that to him.

  The dates might not track Boom Boom’s menstrual cycle, but maybe they indicated some other periodic occurrence. I copied all of them down on a single sheet of paper. Some were two days apart, some seventeen, eleven, five-all prime numbers-nope, six, three, four, two again. They started at the end of March and ended in November, then started in April again.

  That meant the Great Lakes shipping season. Elementary, my dear Warshawski. It began in late March or early April and ended around New Year’s when ice built up too heavily on the upper lakes for anyone to want to go crashing around in them.

  Eudora Grain operated all year-round, of course, but they could only ship by water nine months of the year. So the case against Phillips had something to do with his shipping contracts. But what?

  My head was starting to feel worse; I drank some water and lowered the bed to rest. I slept for a while. When I woke up a young man was sitting in the visitor’s chair watching me with nervous concern. His smooth, round face with its broken nose and doggy brown eyes looked vaguely familiar. I collected myself.

  “Pierre Bouchard! How nice to see you. Myron told me you were out of town.”

  He smiled and looked much more familiar-I had never seen him around Boom Boom without a smile, “Yes, well, I got back last night. And Anna pointed out the story of your accident in the paper.” He shook his head woefully. “I am so sorry, Vic. First Boom Boom and now this.”

  I smiled awkwardly. “My shoulder will heal. And I know you won’t give me sympathy for a mere dislocated shoulder when you’ve had your leg tied up for weeks, and your nose broken three times-”

  “Four,” he corrected with a twinkle.

  “So did Myron tell you I wanted to see you?”

  “Myron? No. How could he when I have only just returned to Chicago? No, Vic. I came for your sake.” He pulled a package from the floor and handed it to me.

  I opened it up. Inside was a seal carved from the soap-stone used by Eskimos. I was very touched and told him so.

  “Well, in a hospital one gets tired of flowers all day long. I know. This little fellow was carved by Eskimos two, three hundred years ago. I hope he will bring you luck.”

  “Thank you, Pierre. I hope he will too. And he will always help me think of you.”

  He beamed. “Good, good-only don’t let Anna hear you say that!” He paused a minute. “I came, too, on an errand of Boom Boom’s. I have been in Quebec for two weeks-I flew down for the funeral, you know-then went right back there.

  “Well, I got home last night and there was a letter waiting from him! He had mailed it the day before he died.” He fumbled in the breast pocket of his tweedy brown jacket and pulled out the letter, which he handed to me.

  Boom Boom was haunting me from the grave with his letters. Everyone was bringing me personal correspondence from him-why didn’t he ever write me? I pulled the single white sheet from its envelope and read the small, neat handwriting.

  Pierre

  Anna tells me you’re playing in the Coeur d’Argent. Break their heads for me, my friend. I thought I saw Howard the other day in very odd circumstances. I tried calling him but Elsie said he was in Quebec with you. Give me a ring when you get back and let me know.

  Boom Boom

  “Who’s Howard? Howard Mattingly?”

  Pierre nodded. Mattingly was a second-string wing. “Elsie’s his wife. Poor girl. If he told her he was going to the Coeur d’Argent she would believe him-just in order not to find out where he really was.”

  “So he wasn’t in Quebec with you?”

  He shook his head. “Always a new girl, Mattingly. Boom Boom never cared for him-he can’t even play hockey. And he brags, you know.”

  The unforgivable male sin-bragging about your success with girls and on the ice-especially when neither was very admirable.

  I looked at the letter again, dubiously. It seemed totally unrelated to the mess I was trying to sort out. But it had been important enough that my cousin called, then wrote Bouchard. It must mean something. I’d at least have to try to find out where Boom Boom had been the last few days before he died. The letter was dated the twenty-sixth. He’d died on the twenty-seventh. That meant going back maybe to the twenty-third-when the Lucella had taken water on in her holds. Could Mattingly have been involved in that? I started feeling overwhelmed by the enormous amount of work I had to do, and looked despairingly at my arm attached to the ceiling.

  “Do you have a good photo of Mattingly?”

  Bouchard fingered his chin. “Publicity picture. Myron could give me one.”

  “Could you get me half a dozen copies? I want to see if I can find anyone who can ID him in some out-of-the-way places that occur to me.”

  “Sure. Right away.” He got up enthusiastically. Action. That’s what hockey players thrive on. “Maybe you want me to take it around while you’re lying here?”

  “Let me think about it… I know who I need to talk to and you might not be able to get to them.”

  He took off in a cloud of antiseptic. I looked at my cousin’s calendar again. On the twenty-third he’d seen Margolis. Must have been over at the elevator. On the twenty-fourth, a Saturday, he’d been with Paige. He hadn’t written in any other appointments. On Monday he talked to MacKelvy, the dispatcher at Grafalk, and to two people whose names I didn’t recognize. I’d show Mattingly’s picture to Margolis. Maybe get Pierre to do that.

  I looked at my watch, strapped awkwardly on my right wrist. Four-thirty-Paige was probably at the theater. I called, got her answering service, and left a message.

  Lotty came in around five, noting the disarray of papers and bedclothes with her thick black eyebrows raised. “You’re a terrible patient, my dear. They tell me you’re rejecting all medication… Now I do not mind if you don’t want the pain pills-that’s your choice. But you must take the antibiotics. I don’t want any secondary infection in the arm.”

  She straightened the mess around the bed with a few efficient motions. I like watching Lotty-she’s so compact and tidy. She sat down on the bed. A nurse, bringing a supper tray, pursed her lips in disapproval. No sitting on beds, but doctors are sacrosanct.

  Lotty looked at the food. “Everything’s boiled to death. Good-no digestive problems for you.” She grinned wickedly.

  “Pizza,” I groaned. “Pasta. Wine.”

  She laughed. “Everything’s coming along nicely. If you can stand it for one more day I’ll take you home on Monday. Maybe spend a few days with me while you recover, okay?”

  I looked at her through narrowed eyes. “I’ve got work to do, Lotty. I’m not going to lie in bed for two weeks waiting for these shoulder muscles to heal.”

  “Don’t threaten me, Vic: I’m not one of these silly nurses. When have I ever tried to stop you from doing your job, even when you were being a pit dog?”

  I struggled up. “Pit dog, Lotty? Pit dog! What the hell do you mean?”

  “A dog that has to get down in the pit-the ring-and fight every damn person, even its friends.”

  I lay down again. “You’re right, Lotty. Sorry. It’s very kind of you to invite me home. I would appreci
ate that.”

  She brushed a kiss on my cheek and disappeared for a while, coming back with a deep-dish onion and anchovy pizza. My favorite. “No wine while you’re on antibiotics.”

  We ate the pizza and played gin. Lotty won. She whiled away a lot of World War II in London bomb shelters playing gin with the family who had taken her in. She almost always beats me.

  Sunday morning I tried Paige again but she still wasn’t home. Around noon, however, she showed up in person, looking beautiful in a green ruffled blouse and black and green Guatemalan skirt. She moved buoyantly into the room, smelling faintly of spring, and kissed me on the forehead.

  “Paige! How nice to see you. Thanks so much for the flowers-they brighten the place up, as you can see.”

  “Vic, I was so sorry about the accident. But I’m glad you weren’t hurt more seriously. My answering service said you were trying to get in touch with me-I thought I’d come in person and see how you’re doing.”

  I asked how Pavane for a Dope Dealer was doing and she laughed and told me about the performance. We chatted for a few minutes, then I explained that I was trying to follow up on my cousin’s movements the last few days before he died.

  Her arched brows snapped together in a momentary annoyance. “Are you still trailing him around? Don’t you think it’s time you let the dead bury the dead, Vic?”

  I smiled with what calmness I could, feeling at a disadvantage with my hair unwashed and wearing a hospital gown. “I’m doing a favor for an old friend of Boom Boom’s-Pierre Bouchard.”

  Yes, she’d met Pierre. He was a sweetheart. What did he want to know?

  “If you’d seen Howard Mattingly recently.”

  An indefinable expression crossed her face. “I don’t know who that is.”

  “He’s one of the second-string players. Boom Boom didn’t like him, so he might never have introduced you to him… Where did you two go on that last Saturday? Anyplace that he might have seen the guy?”

  She shrugged and gave me a disdainful look, designed to make me feel like a ghoul. I waited. “You’re being extremely vulgar, Vic. That was my last private day with Boom Boom. I want to keep it to myself.”

  “You didn’t see him Monday night?”

  She turned red. “Vic! I know you’re a detective, but this is excessive. You have a morbid interest in your cousin that’s very unhealthy. I believe you can’t stand the thought that he might have been close to any other woman but you!”

  “Paige, I’m not asking you to tell me what kind of lover Boom Boom was or to describe any intimate passages of your lives together. I just want to know what you did on Saturday and whether you saw him on Monday… Look, I don’t want to turn this into a big, hostile ordeal. I like you. I don’t want to start calling Ann Bidermyer and your mother and everyone you know to get a bead on you. I’m just asking you.”

  The honey-colored eyes filled with tears. “I like you too, Vic. You remind me of Boom Boom. But he was never so aggressive, even though he was a hockey player.

  “We were sailing on Saturday. We got back at four so I could get to rehearsal. He may have stayed in Lake Bluff with the boat. I don’t know. Monday night we had dinner at the Gypsy. I never saw him after that. Are you satisfied? Does that tell you what you have to find out? Or will you still be calling my mother and everyone else I know?”

  She turned and left. My head was aching again.

  13 Sherry at Valhalla

  Monday morning, Lotty removed the cast, pronounced the swelling down and healing well under way, and had me released from bondage. We went north to her tidy apartment.

  Lotty drives her green Datsun recklessly, believing that all other cars will move out of the way. A dent in the right fender and a long scrape along the passenger door are testimony to the success of her approach. I opened my eyes on Addison-a mistake, since it was in time to see her swerve in front of a CTA bus and to turn right onto Sheffield.

  “Lotty, if you’re going to drive like this, get a semi-the guy who’s responsible for putting my shoulder in this sling walked away from the accident unscratched.”

  Lotty turned off the ignition and hopped out of the car. “Firmness is necessary, Vic. Firmness or the others will drive one from the streets.”

  It was hopeless; I gave up an unequal struggle.

  We had stopped by my apartment to pick up clothes and a bottle of Black Label-Lotty doesn’t keep whiskey in the house. I’d also taken my Smith & Wesson from a locked cupboard in the bedroom closet. Someone had tried to smash me to bits on the Dan Ryan. I didn’t feel like roving the streets unprotected.

  Lotty went to the clinic she operates nearby. I settled down in her living room with a telephone. I was going to talk to everyone who’d had a chance to take a crack at me. My rage had disappeared as my head wound healed, but my sense of purpose was strengthened.

  I reached the helpful young office manager at the Pole Star Line on the third ring. The news she gave me was not encouraging. The Lucella Wieser had delivered her load in Buffalo and was steaming to Erie to pick up coal bound for Detroit. After that she was booked on the upper lakes for some time-they didn’t expert her in Chicago until the middle of June. They could help me set up a radio conversation if it was urgent. I couldn’t see going over the issues I needed to cover by radio-I’d have to speak to the Pole Star contingent face to face.

  Baffled there, I called down to Eudora Grain’s office and asked for Janet. She came to the phone and told me she was sorry about my accident and glad I was feeling better. I asked her if she knew where Phillips lived-I might pay a surprise visit to his wife to find out what time her husband had come home the night of my accident.

  Janet didn’t know. It was up north someplace. If it was important, she could ask around and find out. It was important, I said, and gave her Lotty’s number.

  While I was waiting I got Howard Mattingly’s number from Myron Fackley. Boom Boom told Pierre he’d seen Mattingly in a strange place. I was betting Mattingly was hanging around Lake Bluff when Boom Boom went sailing there with Paige the Saturday before he died. I wanted to find out.

  Mattingly wasn’t home, but his wife, Elsie the Breathless, was. I reminded her we’d met at a number of hockey functions. Oh yes, she gasped, she remembered me.

  “Boom Boom told me he’d seen your husband sailing on the twenty-third. Did you go with him?”

  She hadn’t gone out with Howard that day-she was pregnant and she got tired so easily. She didn’t know if he’d been sailing or not-he certainly hadn’t said anything about it. Yes, she’d tell Howard to call me. She hung up without asking why I wanted to know.

  Lotty came home for lunch. I fixed sardines on toast with cucumber and tomato and Lotty made a pot of the thick Viennese coffee she survives on. If I drank as much of it as she does they’d have to pull me off the chandeliers. I had orange juice and half a sandwich. My head still bothered me and I didn’t have much appetite.

  Janet called from Eudora Grain after lunch. She’d pilfered the personal files while everyone was eating and gotten Phillips’s address: on Harbor Road in Lake Bluff. I thanked her absently-a lot seemed to go on in Lake Bluff. Grafalk. Paige had grown up there. Phillips lived there. And Paige and Boom Boom had gone sailing there on the twenty-third of April. I realized Janet had hung up and that I was still holding the receiver.

  I put it down and went into the guest room to dress for a trip to the northern suburbs. We were in the second week in May and the air was still cold. My dad used to say Chicago had two seasons: winter and August. It was still winter.

  I put on the blue Chanel jacket with a white shirt and white wool slacks. The effect was elegant and professional. Lotty had given me a canvas sling to keep as much pressure off the shoulder as possible-I’d wear it up in the car and take it off when I got to Phillips’s house.

  Lotty’s spare room doubles as her study and I rummaged in the desk for a pad of paper and some pens. I also found a small leather briefcase. I put the Smith & Wess
on in there along with the writing equipment. Ready for any occurrence.

  Until they processed my claim check, the Ajax Insurance Company provided me a Chevette with the stiffest steering I’ve ever encountered. I’d considered using Boom Boom’s Jaguar but didn’t think I could operate a stick shift one-handed. I was trying to get Ajax to exchange the Chevette for something easier to handle. In the meantime it was going to make getting around difficult.

  Driving up the Edens to Lake Bluff was a major undertaking. Every turn of the wheel wrenched my healing shoulder and strained the muscles in my neck, also weak from the accident. By the time I pulled off the Tri-State Tollway onto Route 137, my entire upper back was aching and my professionally crisp white blouse was wet under the armpits.

  At two-thirty on a weekday Lake Bluff was still. Just south of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station on Lake Michigan, the town is a tiny pocket of wealth. To be sure, there are small lots and eight-room ranch houses, but imposing mansions predominate. A weak spring sun shone on nascent lawns and the trees sporting their first pale green frills.

  I turned south on Green Bay Road and meandered around until I found Harbor Road. As I suspected, it overlooked the lake. I passed an outsize red brick dwelling sprawled on a huge lot, perhaps ten acres, with tennis courts visible through the budding shrubs-they’d be hidden by midsummer when the plants were in full foliage. Three lots later I came to the Phillipses.

  Theirs was not an imposing mansion, but the setting was beautiful. As I wrenched the Chevette up the drive I could see Lake Michigan unfold behind the house. It was a two-story frame structure, topped with those rough shingles people think imitate thatching. Painted white, with a silvery trim around the windows, it looked as if it might have ten rooms or so-a big place to keep up, but an energetic person could do it without help if she (or he) didn’t work outside the home.