Deadlock

12 Bedside Stories

The next day I entertained a stream of visitors. Charles McCormick, a sergeant from the Traffic Division, came to report to me on the accident and to find out my version of what had happened. I told him as much as I could remember. As I suspected, the semi that was bearing down on me had hit a car when it moved into the left lane. The sedan’s driver had been thrown into the windshield and killed. Two passengers were on the critical list, one with spinal cord injuries. I must have looked as horrified and guilty as I felt, for he tried to reassure me.

“They weren’t wearing seat belts. I’m not saying it would have saved them, but it might have helped. It certainly saved your life when your car went over on its side. We arrested the truck driver-not a scratch on him, of course-reckless driving and involuntary manslaughter.”

“Did you inspect my car?”

He looked at me curiously. “Someone had emptied all the brake fluid for you. And cut through the power steering cables. You had enough left to get you going, but moving the wheel would have worked through the last bit of the cables for you.”

“How come I could stop at the lights down on 130th?” fluid left in the lines to hold you. But if you slammed on the brakes you wouldn’t get anything… Now who would do a thing like that? Where had you parked your car?”

I told him. He shook his head. “Lot of vandals down in the Port. You’re lucky you got out of this alive.”

“There’s a feeble excuse for a guard down at the Tri-State yard. You might have somebody talk to him and see if he noticed anything.”

McCormick said he’d think about it. He asked a few more questions and took off.

Someone brought in an enormous bouquet of spring flowers. The note read:

Vic:

So sorry to read about your accident. Speedy recovery.

Paige

That was kind. Bobby Mallory’s wife sent a plant. Murray Ryerson came in person, carrying a cactus. His idea of a joke. “Vic! You must have cat blood. Nobody ever gets hit by a semi and lives to tell it.”

Murray is a big guy with curly reddish hair. He looks sort of like a Swedish Elliott Gould. His hearty voice and forty-six-inch shoulders contracted the hospital room into half its size.

“Hi, Murray. You read too many sensational newspapers. I wasn’t hit by a semi-it got off my tail and ran into some other poor bastard.”

He pulled a vinyl-coated chair over to the bedside and straddled it backward. “What happened?”

“Is this an interview or a sick visit?” I asked crossly.

“How about an interview in exchange for the story on Paige? Or are you up to that sort of thing?”

I brightened up considerably. “What’d you find out?”

“Ms. Carrington’s a hardworking girl-excuse me, young woman. She has one older sister, no brothers. She had a scholarship at the American Ballet Theater when she was fifteen but wasn’t good enough for them in the long haul. She lives in a condo on Astor Place. Father’s dead. Mother lives in Park Forest South. Her family doesn’t have a lot of money. She may have a rich friend helping her out, or the ballet people may pay her a lot-you’d have to sic a detective on her to find out for sure. Anyway, she’s lived at the same place for several years now.”

I wrinkled my face. “Park Forest South? She told me she grew up in Lake Bluff.”

“Maybe she did. That’s just where her mother lives… Anyway, about her and your cousin. There was some talk about her and Boom Boom the last month or so before he died. They didn’t go to any of the celebrity hot spots, so it took Greta a while to catch on-someone spotted her with him at the Stadium back in March. If it was serious they kept it mighty quiet. We talked to some of the other hockey players. They seemed to think she was pursuing him-he wasn’t so involved.”

I felt an ignoble twitch of pleasure at that.

“Your turn.” Murray’s blue eyes were bright with amusement. I told him everything I knew about the accident.

“Who emptied your brake fluid?”

“Police say it’s vandals down at the Port.”

“And you say?”

“I say it was whoever pushed my cousin under the Bertha Krupnik.” But that I said to myself. “Not a glimmer, Murray. I can’t figure it out.”

“Vic, with anyone else I’d believe it. But not with you. You got someone mad and they cut your power steering. Now, who?”

I shut my eyes. “Could have been Lieutenant Mallory-he wants me to keep my nose out of the Kelvin case.”

“Someone at the Port.”

“I’m an invalid, Murray.”

“Someone connected with Kelvin.”

“No comment.”

“I’m going to follow you around, Vic. I want to see this thing happening before it happens.”

“Murray, if you don’t get out of here I’m going to sic the nurses on you. They’re a very mean lot in this hospital.”

He laughed and ruffled my hair. “Get well soon, Vic. I’d miss you if you got to your ninth life… Just for laughs, I’m going to talk to your red-faced guard over at Tri-State Grain.”

I opened my eyes. “If you find anything, you’d better let me know.”

“Read about it in the Star, Vic.” He laughed and was gone before I could think of a snappy comeback.

After he left, quiet descended for a while. I raised the head of the bed and struggled to fix up the side table so that I could write. I’d never mangled an arm before and hadn’t realized how hard it is to do things with one hand. Thank goodness for power steering, I thought, then remembered I didn’t have a car, either. I called my insurance agent to report the loss. I hoped my policy covered vandalism.

I doodled around on a sheet of cheap hospital paper-a freighter bouncing through a high sea, a few crocodiles. Anyone down at the Port could have sabotaged my car. Phillips knew I was there-he’d seen me outside the Pole Star offices. He could have told Grafalk or anyone at Grafalk’s-the dispatcher, for example.

I added a shark with rows of wild teeth, jaws big enough to swallow the freighter, and a few panicky fishes. Everyone at the Lucella knew I was there. That included Bledsoe. Trouble was, Bledsoe kissed well. Could anyone who kissed that well be evil enough to put my car out of commission? Still, the Lucella had a complete machine shop in the engine room. Sheridan or Winstein-even Bemis-could have taken care of my car while Bledsoe fed me dinner.

Then, take Phillips. He acted strange whenever I talked to him. Maybe he had fallen in love with me and couldn’t articulate it, but I didn’t think so. Also, Boom Boom and he argued over the contracts the day before my cousin’s accident.

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 appreciate 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.