That was handy. The Great Lakes Naval Training Station lay on Lake Bluff’s northern border. Where would Grafalk keep his yacht when Jergensen retired? The problems the very rich face are different from yours and mine.
I sat in a bamboo chaise lounge. Grafalk opened a window. He busied himself with ice and glasses in a bar built into the room’s teak panels. I opted for sherry-Mike Hammer is the only detective I know who can think and move while drinking whiskey. Or at least move. Maybe Mike’s secret is he doesn’t try to think.
With his back still turned to me, Grafalk spoke. “If you weren’t spying on me, you must have been spying on Clayton. What’d you find out?”
I put my feet on the red-flowered cushion sewn to the bamboo. “Let’s see. You want to know what I think about Jeannine and what I found out about Clayton. If I did divorces I’d suspect you of sleeping with Jeannine and wondering how much Phillips knew about it. Except you don’t strike me as the type who cares very much what men think about your cavorting with their wives.”
Grafalk threw back his sun-bleached head and gave a great shout of laughter. He brought me a fluted tulip-shaped glass filled with straw-colored liquid. I sipped it. The sherry was as smooth as liquid gold. I wished now I’d asked for scotch. A millionaire’s whiskey might be something unique.
Grafalk sat facing me in a chintz-covered armchair. “I guess I’m being too subtle, Miss Warshawski. I know you’ve been asking questions around the Port. When I find you up here it makes me think you’ve found something out about Phillips. We carry a lot of grain for Eudora. I’d like to know if there’s something going on with their Chicago operation I should know about.”
I took another sip of sherry and put the glass on a tiled table at my right hand. The floor was covered with hand-painted Italian tiles in bright reds and greens and yellows and the table top matched them.
“If there are problems with Eudora Grain that you should know about, ask David Argus. My main concern is who tried to kill me last Thursday night.”
“Kill you?” Grafalk’s bushy eyebrows arched. “You don’t strike me as the hysterical type, but that’s a pretty wild accusation.”
“Someone took out my brakes and steering last Thursday. It was only luck that kept me from careening into a semi on the Dan Ryan.”
Grafalk finished whatever he was drinking-it looked like a martini. Good old-fashioned businessman-no Perrier or white wine for him. “Do you have a good reason for thinking Clayton might have done it?”
“Well, he certainly had opportunity. But motive-no. No more than you or Martin Bledsoe or Mike Sheridan.”
Grafalk stopped on his way back to the bar and looked at me. “You suspect them as well? You’re sure the-uh-damage took place at the Port? Could it have been vandals?”
I swallowed some more sherry. “Yes, yes, and possibly, although I don’t believe it. It’s true anyone could empty brake fluid with a little ingenuity-but what vandals carry around a ratchet wrench and a cutting torch just on the off chance that they’ll find a car to mutilate? They’re much more likely to slash tires, steal hubcaps, or smash in windows. Or all three.”
Grafalk brought over the sherry bottle and topped off my glass. I tried to pretend I drank the stuff every day and didn’t attempt to read the label. I’d never be able to afford this sherry anyway; what did I care what it was called?
He sat back down with a fresh martini and looked at me intently. He was turning something over in his mind. “How much do you know about Martin Bledsoe?”
I stiffened. “I’ve met him a few times. Why?”
“He didn’t tell you anything about his background at dinner on Thursday?”
I put the expensive glass down with a snap on the tiled table. “Now who is spying on whom, Mr. Grafalk?”
He laughed again. “The Port is a small community, Miss Warshawski, and gossip about shipowners travels fast. Martin hasn’t asked a woman out to dinner since his wife died six years ago. Everyone was talking about it. Likewise your accident. I knew you were in the hospital but I didn’t know someone had deliberately tampered with your car.”
“The Herald-Star gave me a front-page story-picture of my poor Lynx with its front missing and everything… Gossip about Bledsoe must be buried pretty deep. No one gave me a whiff about his background that sounded as troublesome as you’re seeming to imply.”
“It is buried deep. I’ve never told anyone about it, even when Martin left me and I was mad enough to want to hurt him badly. But if there has been a crime committed, if there’s been an attempt on your life, you should know about it.”
I didn’t say anything. Outside, the house cast a lengthening shadow on the beach.
“Martin grew up in Cleveland. Bledsoe is his mother’s maiden name. He never knew who his father was. It could have been any of a series of drunken sailors on Cleveland’s waterfront.”
“That’s not a crime, Mr. Grafalk. And scarcely his fault.”
“True. That’s just to give you a flavor of his home life. He left when he was fifteen, lied about his age, and signed on to sail the Great Lakes. In those days you didn’t need the training you do now, and, of course, there was a lot more shipping-no waiting around union halls hoping to get called up for a job. Any warm body that could haul ropes and lift two hundred pounds would do. And Martin was strong for his age.” He paused to swallow his drink.
“Well, he was a smart fellow and he came to the attention of one of my mates. A man who liked to help the young men in his charge, not stand on their heads. When he was nineteen Martin ended up in our Toledo office. He obviously had far too many brains to waste just doing muscle work that any stupid Polack could handle.”
“I see,” I murmured. “Maybe you could find an opening for me on one of your boats if detective work palls.”
He stared at me for a minute. “Oh, Warshawski. I see. Don’t show your hackles-it’s not worth it. The waterfront is filled with Poles strong as oxen but not much brainpower.”
I thought of Boom Boom’s cousins and declined arguing the point.
“Anyway, to make a long story very short, Martin was operating in an environment he could understand intellectually but not socially. He’d never had much formal education and he never learned any sense of ethics or morality. He was handling too much money and he siphoned some of it off. I lost a tough argument with my father about prosecuting Martin. I had found him, I had pushed him-I was only thirty myself at the time. I wanted to give him a second chance. Dad refused and Martin spent two years in a Cantonville prison. My father died the month before he was released and I hired him back immediately. He never did anything else criminal that I’m aware of-but if there’s some trouble between Pole Star and Eudora Grain or at Eudora Grain itself that involves money, you should know about Martin’s background. I’m relying on your discretion to keep it to yourself-I wouldn’t want Argus, or even Clayton, for that matter, to know about it if it turns out nothing’s wrong.”
I finished my sherry. “So that was what you meant that day at lunch. Bledsoe educated himself in prison and you were hinting you could tell people about it if you wanted to.”
“I didn’t think you’d caught that.”
“Even a boneheaded Polack couldn’t miss that one… Last week you were threatening him, today you’re protecting him-sort of. Which is it?”
Anger flashed across Grafalk’s face and was quickly erased. “Martin and I have-a tacit understanding. He doesn’t attack my fleet, I don’t tell people about his disreputable past. He was making fun of the Grafalk Line. I was backing him off.”
“What do you think is going on at Eudora Grain?”
“What do you mean?”