Sara Paretsky - Deadlock

I hailed a Yellow Cab there to take me crosstown to Lotty’s. Five miles on city streets is a slow ride and I went to sleep in the lurching, elderly vehicle about the time we crossed Milwaukee Avenue. The movement of the taxi made me think I was back on board the Lucella . Bledsoe was standing next to me, holding onto the self-loader. He kept staring at me with his compelling gray eyes, repeating, “Vic: I wasn’t on the plane. I wasn’t on the plane.”

I woke up with a start as we turned onto Sheffield and the driver asked me for Lotty’s apartment number. As I paid him off and made my weary way up to the second floor, my dream remained very real to me. It contained an important message about Bledsoe but I just couldn’t figure out what it was.

Lotty greeted me with a most uncharacteristic gasp of relief. “My God, Vic, it’s really you! You made it back!” She hugged me fiercely.

“Lotty, what on earth is the matter? Didn’t you think you’d see me again?”

She put me at arm’s length, looked me up and down, kissed me again, and then gave a more Lotty-like grin. “The boat you were on, Vic. It was on the news. The explosion and so on. Four dead, they said, one of them a woman, but they wouldn’t give names until the families were notified. I was afraid, my dear, afraid you might be the only woman on board.”

By now she had ascertained my disheveled state. She hustled me into the bathroom and sat me in a steaming bath in her old-fashioned porcelain tub. She blew her nose briskly and went off to put a chicken on to simmer, then came back with two tumblers of my scotch. Lotty rarely drank-she was clearly deeply upset.

She perched on a three-legged stool while I soaked my sore shoulder and related the highlights of my adventures.

“I can’t believe Bledsoe hired Mattingly,” I concluded. “I just don’t believe my judgment of character can be so wrong. Bledsoe and his captain roused my hackles. But I liked them.” I went on to tell her the same thoughts that had tormented my four-hour ride in from the Soo. “I guess I’ll have to put my prejudices aside and look into Pole Star’s insurance arrangements and their general financial health.”

“Sleep on it,” Lotty advised. “You have a lot of different avenues to explore. In the morning one of them will look the most promising. Maybe Phillips. He has the most definite tie to Boom Boom, after all.”

Wrapped in a large terry-cloth robe, I sat with her in the kitchen eating the chicken and feeling comfort seep into the worn spots of my mind. After dinner Lotty rubbed Myoflex into my back and arms. She gave me a muscle relaxant and I fell into a deep, peppermint-scented sleep.

The phone dragged me out of the depths some ten hours later. Lotty came in and gently touched my arm. I opened bleary eyes.

“Phone’s for you, my dear. Janet somebody-used to be Boom Boom’s secretary.”

I shook my head groggily and sat up to take the phone by the guest bed.

Janet’s homey, middle-aged voice woke me up more thoroughly. She was upset. “Miss Warshawski, I’ve been fired. Mr. Phillips told me it was because they didn’t have enough for me to do, with Mr. Warshawski gone and all. But I think it’s because I was going through those files for you. I don’t think they would have fired me if I hadn’t done that. I mean, there was always enough work before-”

I cut into the repetitive flow. “When did this happen?”

“Last night. Last night I stayed behind to see if I could find out anything about Mr. Phillips’s paycheck, you know, like you asked me to. I thought about it, and I thought, really, now, if Mr. Warshawski was killed like you say he was, and if this will help, I ought to find out. But Lois came in to see what I was doing. I guess she was all set to spy on me if I stayed late or stayed after lunch, and then she called Mr. Phillips at home. Well, he wasn’t home yet, of course. But she kept calling him, and about ten o’clock last night he called and told me they don’t need me to come in anymore and he’ll send me two weeks’ salary instead of notice. And, like I said, it just doesn’t seem fair.”

“No, it doesn’t,” I agreed warmly. “What did you tell her you were doing?”

“Who?”

“Lois,” I said patiently. “When she came in and asked you what you were doing, what did you tell her?”

“Oh! I said I’d written a personal letter and I couldn’t find it so I was looking to see if it got thrown out.”

I thought that was pretty fast thinking and said so.

She laughed a little, pleased with the compliment, but added despondently, “She didn’t believe me, because there wasn’t any reason for it to be in Mr. Phillips’s wastebasket.”

“Well, Janet, I don’t know what to say. You certainly tried your hardest. I’m extremely sorry you lost your job, and all for nothing, but if-”

“It wasn’t all for nothing,” she interrupted. “I did find his pay stub just as you thought I might.”

“Oh!” I stared at the receiver in disbelief. For once something in this cockeyed investigation had worked out the way I thought it should. “How much does he make?”

“He gets thirty-five hundred forty-six dollars and fifteen cents every two weeks.”

I tried multiplying in my head but I was still too groggy.

“I figured it out on my calculator last night. That’s ninety-two thousand a year.” She paused, wistfully. “That’s a lot of money. I was only making seven-two hundred. And now I don’t have that.”

“Look, Janet. Would you be willing to work downtown? I can get you some interviews-at the Ajax Insurance Company and a couple of other places.”

She told me she’d think about it: she’d rather find something in her neighborhood. If that didn’t work out, she’d give me a call back and ask me to set up an interview for her. I thanked her profusely and we hung up.

I lay back in bed and thought. Ninety-two thousand a year was a lot of money-for me or Janet. But for Phillips? Say he had good deductions and a good tax accountant. Still, he couldn’t take home more than sixty or so. His real estate tax bill was probably three thousand. A mortgage, maybe another fifteen. Dues at the Maritime Club and the monthly fees for tennis, twenty-five thousand. Tuition, et cetera, at Claremont. The boat. The Alfa. Food. Massandrea dresses for Jeannine. Maybe she bought them at the Elite Repeat shop, or used from Mrs. Grafalk. Still it would take a good hundred thousand net to cover everything.

After breakfast I walked the mile between Lotty’s apartment and my own down on Halsted. I was getting out of shape from lying around too much, but I wasn’t sure I was up to running yet and I knew I couldn’t lift my ten-pound shoulder weights.

My mailbox was bulging. I get the Wall Street Journal every day. Five copies were stacked with letters and a small parcel on the floor. I picked up two armfuls and climbed the three flights to my apartment. “No place like home,” I murmured to myself, looking with a jaundiced eye at the dust, the magazines strewn around the living room, and the bed which hadn’t been made for more than two weeks now. I put the mail down and gave myself over to one of my rare housewifely fits, vacuuming, dusting, hanging up clothes. Having ruined a pantsuit, a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a blouse since I left home, there was less to put away than there might have been.

Glowing with virtue, I settled down with a cup of coffee to sort through the mail. Most of it was bills, which I tossed aside unopened. Why look at them just to get depressed? One envelope held a thirty-five-hundred-dollar check from Ajax to pay for a new car. I was grateful for the care of the U. S. Postal Service, which had left that on my lobby floor for any dope addict on Halsted to find. Also, wrapped in a small box were the keys to Boom Boom’s apartment with a note from Sergeant McGonnigal saying the police were through with their investigation and I could use it anytime I wanted to.