Sara Paretsky - Deadlock

“No one: I came on my own. Boom Boom Warshawski was my cousin and I feel an obligation to find out the circumstances surrounding his death.”

“Argus came to the funeral. Did he suggest there was anything wrong?”

“What are you trying to tell me, Phillips? Is there some reason to think that my cousin’s death was not an accident?”

“No. No,” he repeated quickly. He smiled and suddenly looked more human. “He came down here on Tuesday-Argus did-and put us through the wringer on safety at the elevators. He took a personal interest in your cousin and he was very upset when he died. I just wondered if he’d asked you to investigate this as part of your professional function rather than as Warshawski’s cousin.”

“I see… Well, Mr. Argus didn’t hire me. I guess I hired myself.” I thought about explaining my personal concern but my detective training made me cautious. Rule number something or other-never tell anybody anything unless you’re going to get something better in return. Maybe someday I’d write up a Manual for the Neophyte Detective .

We were driving past the elevators lining the Calumet River and the entrance to the main Port. Large ships loomed everywhere, poking black smokestacks between gray columns of grain and cement elevators. Little trees struggled for life in patches of earth between railroad tracks, slag heaps, and pitted roadbeds. We passed a dead steel mill, a massive complex of rust-red buildings and railway junctions. The cyclone fence was padlocked shut at the entrance: the recession having its impact-the plant was closed.

The headquarters for the Port of Chicago were completely rebuilt a few years ago. With new buildings, modern docks, and a well-paved road the place looked modern and efficient. Phillips stopped at a guard station where a city cop looked up from his paper and nodded him in. The Alfa purred across smooth tarmac and we stopped in a slot labeled EUDORA GRAIN. We locked the doors and I followed Phillips toward a row of modern buildings.

Everything here was built on a giant scale. A series of cranes towered over the slips for the ships. Giant teeth hovered over one huge vessel and easily lifted the back of a fifty-ton semi from a stack and lowered it onto a waiting truck bed. Some ten ships were docked here at the main facility, flying the flag of many nations.

All the Port buildings are constructed from the same tan brick, two stories high. The Grafalk Steamship Line offices occupied all of one of the larger blocks halfway along the wharf. A receptionist, middle-aged and pleasant, recognized Phillips by sight and sent us on back to see Percy MacKelvy, the dispatcher.

Phillips was clearly a frequent visitor. Greeting various people by name, he led me through a narrow hall which crossed a couple of small rooms. We found the dispatcher in an office crammed with paper. Charts covered every wall and stacks of paper hid the desk, three chairs, and a good deal of the floor. A rumpled man in his mid-forties, wearing a white shirt long since wrinkled for the day, MacKelvy was on the phone when we came in. He took a cigar out of his mouth long enough to say hello.

He grunted into the phone, moved a red tack on a chart of the lakes at his right hand, punched a query into a computer terminal next to the phone, and grunted again. Finally he said, “Six eighty-three a ton. Take it or leave it… Pick up on the fourth, six eighty-two… Can’t bring it any lower than that… No deal? Maybe next time.” He hung up, added a few numbers to the terminal, and snatched up a second phone which had started to ring. “This is a zoo,” he said to me, loosening his tie further. “MacKelvy… Yeah, yeah.” I watched as he followed a similar sequence with chart, tacks, and computer.

When he hung up he said, “Hi, Clayton. This the lady you mentioned?”

“Hi,” I said. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. My cousin Bernard Warshawski was killed last Monday when he fell under the Bertha Krupnik ’s propeller.”

The phone was ringing again. “Yeah? MacKelvy here. Yeah, hold on just a second… You figuring the Bertha was at fault somehow?”

“No. I have some personal concerns as my cousin’s executor. I’d like to know if anyone saw the accident. Phillips here says you can tell me when the Bertha might be expected, either back here, or at some port where I could go talk to the crew.”

“Hi, Duff,” he spoke into the phone. “Sulphur from Buffalo? Three eighty-eight a ton, pick up on the sixth, deliver to Chicago on the eighth. You got it.” He hung up. “What’s the scoop, Clayton? She likely to sue?”

Phillips was standing as far from the desk as possible in the crowded room. He stood very still as it make himself psychologically as well as physically remote. He shrugged. “David has expressed some interest.”

“What about Niels?”

“I haven’t discussed it with him.”

I put my hands on the mass of papers and leaned across the desk as the phone rang again.

“MacKelvy here… Hi, Gumboldt. Hold on a sec, will you?”

“Mr. MacKelvy, I’m not a hysterical widow trying to get financial restitution from the easiest possible source. I’m trying to find anyone who might have seen my cousin in the last minutes of his life. We’re talking about an open dock at ten in the morning. I can’t believe not a living soul saw him. I want to talk with the crew on the Bertha just to make sure.”

“Yeah, Gum? Yeah… yeah… Toledo on the sixteenth? How about the seventeenth? Can’t help ya, fella. Night of the sixteenth? Say two-three in the morning?… Okay, fella some other time.” He shook his head worriedly. “Business is rotten. The steel slump’s killing us and so are the thousand-footers. Thank God, Eudora’s still shipping with us.”

The constant interruptions were getting on my nerves. “I’m sure I can find the Bertha Krupnik , Mr. MacKelvy. I’m a private investigator and I’m used to tracking things down. An active ship on the Great Lakes can’t be that difficult to locate. I’m just asking you to make it easier.”

MacKelvy shrugged. “I’ll have to talk to Niels. He’s coming down here for lunch, Miss-who’d you say?-and I’ll check with him then. Stop back here around two. Right, Clayton?”

The phone rang again. “Who’s Niels?” I asked Phillips as we walked out of the office.

“Niels Grafalk. He owns Grafalk Steamship.”

“Want to give me a lift back to your office? I can pick up my car there and leave you to your meetings.”

His pale eyes were darting around the hall, as if looking for someone or trying to get help from someplace. “Uh, sure.”

We were in the front office, Phillips saying good-bye to the receptionist, when we heard a tremendous crash. I felt a shudder through the concrete floor and then the sound of glass breaking and metal screaming. The receptionist got out of her chair, startled.

“What was that?”

A couple of people came into the reception room from inside the building. “An earthquake?” “Sounds like a car crash.” “Was the building hit?” “Is the building falling over?”

I went to the outer door. Car crash? Maybe, but a damned big car. Maybe one of those semis they’d been loading?

Outside a large crowd was gathering. A siren in the distance grew louder. And at the north end of the pier a freighter stood, nose plowed into the side of the dock. Large chunks of concrete had broken in front of it like a metal road divider before a speeding car. Glass fragments broke loose from the sides of the ship as I moved with the crowd to gawk. A tall crane at the edge of the wharf twisted and slowly fell, crumpling on itself like a dying swan.

Two police cars, blue lights flashing, squealed to a stop as close to the disaster as possible. I jumped to one side to avoid an ambulance wailing and honking behind me. The crowd in front of me parted to let it through. I followed quickly in its wake and made it close to the wreck.