I had found out about Boom Boom’s death. Or proved to myself what I had suspected for several days, at any rate. I felt a sharp pain across my diaphragm, as though someone had inserted a little needle behind it which jabbed me every time I breathed. That’s what people mean when they say their hearts ache. They really mean their diaphragms. My face felt wet. I passed a hand across my eyes, expecting to find blood. I was crying.
After a while I looked at my watch. It was one o’clock. I looked at my face in the rearview mirror. It had gone very pale and my gray eyes stood out darkly in contrast. There were days when I’d looked better, but that couldn’t be helped. I switched on the engine and slowly turned the car around on the narrow pavement. My arms felt leaden, so heavy I could scarcely lift them to the steering wheel. It would be nice to follow Bobby’s advice and go someplace warm for a few weeks. Instead I drove up the road past the Phillips house to the Grafalks’.
The garage was behind the house to the left; I couldn’t see the cars to tell if anyone was home. I climbed up the shallow wide step to the front porch and rang the bell. A minute or two passed; I was going to ring again when the thickset maid, Karen, answered. She looked at me grudgingly. She remembered my vulgar interest in Mr. Grafalk’s movements last week.
I gave her my card. “Is Mrs. Grafalk in, please?”
“Is she expecting you?”
“No. I’m a detective. I want to talk to her about Clayton Phillips.”
She seemed undecided about whether or not she was going to take my card back. I was too worn out from my encounter with Jeannine to put up much of a fight. As we stood there at an impasse, a high, clipped voice demanded of Karen who it was.
The maid turned around. “It’s a detective, Mrs. Grafalk. She says she wants to talk to you about Mr. Phillips.”
Mrs. Grafalk came into the hall. Her graying black hair was styled to emphasize her high cheekbones, which she had further accentuated with a dark rouge. She was dressed to go out, in a salmon silk suit with a ballet skirt and a flared, ruched jacket. Her eyes were sharp but not unfriendly. She took the card from Karen, who positioned herself protectively between us.
“Miss Warshawski? I’m afraid I don’t have much time. I’m on my way to a Ravinia planning meeting. What did you want to talk about?”
“Clayton and Jeannine Phillips.”
An expression of distaste crossed her face. “There’s not a lot I can tell you about them. Clayton is-was, I should say-a business associate of my husband’s. For reasons I have never understood, Niels insisted we entertain them, even sponsor them at the Maritime Club. I tried to interest Jeannine in some of the work that I do, particularly with the poor immigrant community in Waukegan. I’m afraid it’s hard to get her to think of anything but her clothes.”
She spoke rapidly, scarcely pausing for breath between sentences.
“Excuse me, Mrs. Grafalk, but Mr. Grafalk implied that Jeannine was a protégée of yours and that you wanted to get her into the Maritime Club.”
She raised her black, painted eyebrows and opened her eyes very wide. “Why did Niels say that? I wonder. Clayton obliged him on some business deal and Niels sponsored him in the club to show his appreciation. I’m perfectly sure that was the way it happened. Niels keeps what he does with Grafalk Steamship to himself, so I’ve never known what the arrangement was-in fact I can’t imagine being interested in it. I’m sorry Clayton’s dead, but he was an insufferable climber and Jeannine is no better… Does that answer your questions? I’m afraid I must go now.” She started for the door, buttoning on a pair of pale salmon gloves. I didn’t know anyone wore gloves anymore. She walked outside the door with me, moving at a good clip on needle-pointed shoes. A woman with less force of personality would have looked absurd in that outfit. Mrs. Grafalk seemed elegant.
As I got into the Omega, someone drove the Bentley up for her. A thin, sandy-haired man got out, helped her into the car, and headed back to the garage behind the house.
Slowly driving back to Chicago, I thought about Mrs. Grafalk’s remarks. The business deal must have been connected with the Eudora shipping invoices. What if Phillips had split the difference in the bills with Grafalk? Say he got ninety thousand dollars extra over the price registered on the computer for the shipment and gave forty-five thousand to Grafalk. That didn’t make sense, though. Grafalk was the biggest carrier on the lakes. What did he need with penny-ante stuff like that? If Grafalk were involved, the payoff had to be more impressive. Of course, Grafalk operated all those older ships. It cost him more to carry cargo. The amount in the invoices was probably the true price of what it cost Grafalk to carry the stuff. If that was the case, Phillips was really stealing from Eudora Grain-not just pocketing the difference between how much he logged into the contract and the ultimate invoice, but losing money for Eudora on every shipment he recorded when Grafalk was the carrier. What Grafalk got out of it was more shipments in a depressed market in which he had a hard time competing because of his older, inefficient fleet.
Suddenly I saw the whole thing. Or most of it, anyway. I felt as though the truth had been hammered in at me from the day I walked into Percy MacKelvy’s office at Grafalk Steamship down at the Port. I remembered listening to him trying to place orders on the phone, and my frustration while we were talking. Grafalk’s reaction to Bledsoe at lunch. The times in the last two weeks I’d heard how much more efficient the thousand-footers were to operate. I even had an idea where Clayton Phillips had been murdered and how his body had been carried onto the Gertrude Ruttan without anyone seeing it.
A seventy-ton semi blared its horn behind me. I jumped in my seat and realized I had brought the Omega almost to a standstill in the second lane of the Kennedy. No need for anyone to arrange subtle accidents for me-I could kill myself without help. I accelerated quickly and drove on into the Loop. I needed to talk to the Lloyds man.
It was three in the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten. After leaving the car in the Grant Park underground garage, I went into the Spot, a little bar and grill behind Ajax, for a turkey sandwich. In honor of the occasion I also had a plate of french fries and a Coke. My favorite soft drink, but I usually avoid it because of the calories.
I marched across Adams to the Ajax Building, singing, “ ‘Things go better with Coca-Cola,’ ” under my breath. I told the guard I wanted to see Roger Ferrant-the Lloyds man-up in the Special Risks office. After some delay-they couldn’t figure out the Special Risk phone number-they got through to Ferrant. He would be happy to see me.
With my visitor’s ID clipped to my lapel, I rode to the fifty-third floor. Ferrant came out of the walnut office to meet me. A shock of lanky brown hair flopped in his eyes and he was straightening his tie as he came.
“You’ve got some news for us, have you?” he asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid not yet. I have some more questions I didn’t think to ask yesterday.”
His face fell, but he said cheerfully, “Shouldn’t expect miracles, I guess. And why should you succeed where the FBI, the U. S. Coast Guard, and the Army Corps of Engineers have failed?” He ushered me courteously back into the office, which was more cluttered than it had been the night before. “I’m staying in town through the formal inquiry at the Soo next Monday, then back to London. Think you’ll crack the problem by then?”
He was speaking facetiously, but I said, “I should have the answer in another twenty-four hours. I don’t think you’re going to like it, though.”
He saw the seriousness in my face. Whether he believed me or not, he stopped laughing and asked what he could do to help.