16 Stowaway

I took the Fairmont back to the Holiday Inn, singing “A Capital Ship for an Ocean Trip” and “The Barbary Pirates.” I repacked the little canvas bag and checked out, leaving a note for Roland Graham with the Ford’s keys at the counter. It was one o’clock. If the Lucella wasn’t sailing until five, I might as well get some lunch.

By the time I’d eaten and found a taxi to take me out to Elevator 67 it was after three-thirty. The midday sun made the air hot enough for me to take off my sweater and stuff it into my canvas bag before once more climbing the ladder to the Lucella’s main deck.

They had just finished loading. The heavy grain chutes were being hauled into the elevator from above. Under the second mate’s direction, men began operating two little deck gantries to put the hatch covers back onto the hold openings. One man worked each crane, using controls in front of a small seat on the starboard side. He lifted the hatch cover while two seamen steadied it at either end-they were very large, unstable steel lids. Then he lowered the cover while the other two fitted it onto some twenty or thirty protruding bolts. The three would move along to the next cover while a fourth seaman followed behind with an enormous wrench, screwing all the bolts into place.

As I stood watching, I felt the ship begin to vibrate. The engines had been turned on. Soon the air was filled with their urgent racket. A trail of black diesel smoke drifted upward from the giant funnel. I had no idea how long the engines ran before the ship moved out, but I noticed a couple of seamen at the guy ropes on shore, ready to loose them as soon as the signal was given. I hadn’t come back a minute too early.

I felt very keyed up. I knew I was wasting time on deck when I should have been on the bridge confronting anyone who had returned, but I was very nervous and didn’t know what to say once I got up there. In my heightened state I thought I saw someone swimming away from the port side of the ship. I moved as quickly as I could past the clutter around the self-unloader but didn’t see anything. I stood straining my eyes against the reflecting water and finally saw a figure break the surface twenty yards away, close to the shore.

When I turned back, Bledsoe was just coming on board. He stopped to talk to the second mate, then headed for the bridge without seeing me. I was about to follow when it occurred to me I might be better off just stowing away and presenting myself after castoff. Accordingly, I moved to the back of the pilothouse where a stack of giant oil drums served as both garbage cans and an effective shield from the bridge. I sat down on a metal box, placed my bag against a coil of rope, and leaned back to enjoy the view.

I had momentarily forgotten the figure I’d seen, but now I noticed him-or her-walk out of the water some fifty yards away, on the other side of the elevator yard. A clump of trees soon hid the person from my sight. After that nothing happened for about forty-five minutes. Then the Lucella gave two deep hoots and slowly pulled away from the wharf.

Two gray-green troughs appeared at my feet, the wake of the giant screws, and the distance between the ship and the wharf widened quickly. Actually, the ship didn’t seem to move; rather, the shore appeared to back away from us. I waited another ten minutes, until we were a good mile or two from land and no one would be disposed to turn around to send me back.

Leaving my bag amidst the coiled rope, I made my way up to the bridge. I loosened the gun in its holster and released the safety catch. For all I knew, I was going up to face one or more killers. A few crew members passed me on my way up. They gave me curious stares but didn’t question my right to be there. My heart pounding, I opened the door to the bridge.

Up the flight of narrow wooden stairs. A murmur of voices at the top. I emerged into a busy scene-Winstein was going over charts at the drafting table. A burly, red-haired man with two inches of cigar in his mouth stood at the wheel taking direction from Captain Bemis. “Off the second port island,” Bemis said. “Off the second port island,” the helmsman repeated, turning the wheel slightly to his left.

Bledsoe stood behind, looking on. Neither he nor the captain turned when I came in, but Winstein looked up from the charts and saw me. “There she is,” he said quietly.

The captain turned at that. “Ah, Miss Warshawski. The first mate said you’d turn up.”

“Technically you’re a stowaway, Vic.” Bledsoe gave the glimmer of a smile. “We could lock you in the holds until we get to Sault Ste. Marie.”

I sat down at the round table. Now that I was here my nervous tension receded; I felt calm and in charge. “I only have a rudimentary knowledge of maritime law. I gather the captain is complete master of the ship-that he evaluates any crimes committed under his jurisdiction and dispenses judgment, if any?”

Bemis looked at me seriously. “Technically, yes, as long as the ship is at sea. If some crime was committed on board, though, I’d probably just hang on to the person and turn him over to the regular judiciary at our next port of call.”

He turned to Winstein and told him to take over the bridge for a few minutes. The first mate finished drawing a line on the chart and then got up to stand by the helmsman. We were going through a channel with a lot of little islands planted in it-humps of earth with one or two trees or a scraggly bush clinging to them. The sun glinted off the gray-green water. Behind us, Thunder Bay was still visible with its line of elevators.

Bledsoe and Bemis joined me at the table. “You’re not supposed to come on board without the captain’s permission.” Bemis was serious but not angry. “You don’t strike me as a frivolous person and I doubt you did it frivolously, but it’s still a major breach of maritime custom. It’s not a crime, per se, but I don’t think that’s what you were referring to, was it?”

“No. What I really wanted to know was this: suppose you have someone on board who committed a crime while he was on shore. You find out about it while you’re at sea. What do you do with that person?”

“It would depend in part on what the crime was.”

“Attempted murder.”

Bledsoe’s eyes narrowed. “I assume this isn’t hypothetical, Vic. Do you think one of this crew tried killing someone? Who and why?”

I looked at him steadily. “I was the intended victim. I’m trying to find out for sure that someone here wasn’t after me.”

For a count of ten there was no sound in the small room but the faint throb of the engines. The helmsman kept his eyes in front of him, but his back twitched. Bemis’s jaw set in an angry line.

“You’d better explain that one, Miss Warshawski.”

“Gladly. Last Thursday night Martin Bledsoe here took me out for dinner. I left my car in the elevator yard. While we were gone someone cut through the steering controls with a cutting torch and emptied the brake fluid. It was a miracle that when my car crashed on the Dan Ryan I escaped with minor injuries. An innocent driver was killed, though, and one of his passengers is now paralyzed for life. That’s murder, assault, and a lot of other ugly stuff.”

Bledsoe gave an exclamation. “My God, Vic!” He fished around for something else to say but made several false starts before he could get a coherent thought out. I watched him carefully. Surprise is such an easy feeling to counterfeit. It looked genuine, but…

The captain looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You seem pretty cool about it.”

“Would it be more believable if I lay down on the floor and screamed?”

Bemis made a gesture of annoyance. “I assume I could radio the Chicago police and get some verification of this.”

I pointed to the radio on the port wall. “By all means. A Lieutenant Robert Mallory can tell you anything you want to know.”

“Can you give us some more detail on what happened?” That was Bledsoe, finding his voice and his authoritative manner.

I obliged with as much of the accident as I could recall.

“Now what makes you think someone on the Lucella might be involved?”

“There’s a limited universe of who could have done it,” I explained. “Only a few people knew I was down there. Only a few could identify my car.”

“How do you figure that?” That was the captain again. “There are a lot of vandals down at the Port and this frankly sounds like vandalism.”

“Captain, I don’t know what your exposure to vandals is, but I see a lot of them. I don’t know of any vandal who goes around with a cutting torch and a ratchet wrench to disable cars. It’s a lengthy procedure with a very high risk of getting caught, and there’s no point to it. Especially in a place like a grain elevator, which is hard to get to.”

Bemis’s brow creased. “You think just because the Lucella was tied up there we’re implicated somehow?”

“You people and Clayton Phillips are the only ones who knew I was down there… Captain, I’m certain that my cousin was pushed overboard last month-or underboard, to be literal about it. And I know someone else was killed in connection with my cousin’s affairs. The way I see it, the killer is either connected with this ship or with Eudora Grain. Now you’ve got a big machine shop here. I’m sure you have a couple of cutting torches lying around-”

“No!” Bemis exploded. “No way in hell is Mike Sheridan involved in this.”

“How long have you known him?”

“Twenty years. At least twenty years. We’ve been sailing together a long time. I know that man better than I know-my wife. I see more of him.”

“Besides,” Bledsoe put in, “there’s no reason for Mike-or any of us-to want to kill you.”

I rubbed my forehead tiredly. “Ah, yes. The reason. That’s the real stumper. If I knew what my cousin had found out I’d know who did the murders. I thought it had something to do with those grain shipment orders, Martin, but you assured me they were perfectly legitimate. But what if it had something to do with the vandalism to your cargo holds? You told me that was what Boom Boom called you about.”

“Yes, but, Vic, we all need this ship operating to make a living. Why would we put it out of commission?”

“Yes, well, something occurred to me about that, too.” I looked at my hands, then at Bledsoe. “What if someone were blackmailing you-something along the lines of ‘I’ll tell your secret history if you don’t give up that load.’ ”

Bledsoe’s face turned white under his windburn. “How dare you!”

“How dare I what? Suggest such a thing-or bring up your past?”

“Either.” He smashed the table with his fist. “If I had such a past, such a secret, who told it to you?”

Bemis turned to Bledsoe in surprise. “Martin-what are you talking about? Do you have a mad wife stashed away in Cleveland that I never heard of?”

Bledsoe recovered himself. “You’ll have to ask Warshawski here. She’s telling the story.”

Up to that point I hadn’t been sure whether Grafalk had told the truth. But he must have to get that reaction. I shook my head.

“It’s just a hypothesis, Captain. And if there is something in Bledsoe’s past-why, he’s kept it to himself long enough. I don’t think it would be very interesting to anyone else these days.”

“You don’t?” Bledsoe pounced on that. “Then why would anyone blackmail me to keep it quiet?”

“Oh, I don’t think it’s very interesting. But you clearly do. Your reaction just now clinches it. What set me wondering was why you smashed a wineglass just because Grafalk made a crack that day about where you went to school.”

“I see.” Bledsoe gave a short laugh. “You’re not so dumb, are you?”

“I get by… I’d like to ask you one question in private, however.”

Bemis stood up politely. “I ought to look at the course, anyway… By the way, Martin’s occupying our only guest room. We’ll put a cot up for you in my dining room.”

I thanked him. Bledsoe looked at me speculatively. I leaned forward and said in a low voice, “I want to know that you didn’t get Sheridan to doctor my car while we were at dinner that night.” I saw a pulse start to move in his jaw. “Believe me, I hate to ask it. I hate even to think it. But that was a pretty horrifying experience-it shook my trust in human nature.”

Bledsoe pushed back his chair with enough force to knock it over. “Go ask him yourself! I’m fucked if I’ll put up with any more of this.”

He stormed down the stairs and the bridge echoed with the vibration of the slammed door. Bemis looked at me coldly, “I’m running a ship, Miss Warshawski, not a soap opera.”

I felt a violent surge of anger. “Are you, now? I’ve had a cousin killed and someone’s tried to kill me. Until I’m sure your ship and crew didn’t do it, you’ll damned well live in my soap opera and like it.”

Bemis left the helm and came over to lean across the table into my face. “I don’t blame you for being upset. You lost a cousin. You’ve been badly hurt. But I think you’re blowing up a couple of very sad accidents into a conspiracy and I won’t have you disrupting my ship while you do it.”

My temples pounded. I kept just enough control not to offer any grandiose threats. “Very well,” I said tightly, my vocal cords straining, “I won’t disrupt your ship. I would like to talk to the chief engineer while I am on board, however.”

Bemis jerked his head at Winstein. “Get the lady a hard hat, Mate.” He turned back to me. “You may question the chief. However, I don’t want you talking to the crew unless either the first mate or I am present. He’ll instruct the second mate to make sure that happens.”

“Thanks,” I said stiffly. While I waited for Winstein to bring me a hard hat, I stared moodily out the rear of the bridge. The sun was setting now and the shoreline showed as a distant wedge of purple in front of it. To the port side I could see a few chunks of ice. Winter lasted a long time in these parts.

I was doing a really swell job. So far I didn’t know a damned thing I hadn’t known three weeks ago, except how to load a Great Lakes freighter full of grain. In my mind’s ear I could hear my mother chewing me out for self-pity. “Anything but that, Victoria. Better for you to break the dishes than lie about feeling sorry for yourself.” She was right. I was just worn out from the aftermath of my accident. But that, in Gabriella’s eyes, was the reason, not the excuse-there was no excuse for sitting around sulking.

I pulled myself together. The first mate was waiting to escort me from the bridge. We walked down the narrow staircase, me following on his heels. He gave me a hard hat with his name on the front in faded black type; he explained that it was his spare and I was welcomed to it as long as I was on board.

“If you’re thinking of going down to talk to the chief now, why not wait until dinner? The chief eats dinner in the captain’s dining room and you can talk to him there. You won’t be able to hear each other over the engines, anyway.”

I looked at him grudgingly, wondering if he was deflecting me from Sheridan long enough to let Bledsoe tell him his version of the story.

“Where’s the captain’s dining room?” I asked.

Winstein took me there, a small, formal room on the starboard side of the main deck. Flowered curtains hung at the portholes and an enormous photo of the Lucella’s launching decorated the forward wall. The crew’s mess was next door to it. The same galley served both, but the captain was waited on at table by the cooks whereas the crew served themselves cafeteria style. The cooks would serve dinner between five-thirty and seven-thirty, Winstein told me. I could get breakfast there between six and eight in the morning.

Winstein left me to go back to the bridge. I waited until he was out of sight and then descended into the engine room. I vaguely remembered my way from the previous visit, going through a utility room with a washer and dryer in it, then climbing down a flight of linoleum-covered stairs to the engine-room entrance.

Winstein was right about the noise. It was appalling. It filled every inch of my body and left my teeth shaking. A young man in greasy overalls was in the control booth that made up the entrance to the engines. I roared at him over the noise; after several tries he understood my query and told me I would find the chief engineer on level two inspecting the port journal bearings. Apparently only an idiot would not know about port journal bearings. Declining further assistance, I swung myself down a metal ladder to the level below.

The engines take up a good amount of space and I wandered around quite a bit before I saw anyone. I finally spotted a couple of hard-hatted figures behind a mass of pipes and made my way over to them. One was the chief engineer, Sheridan. The other was a young fellow whom I hadn’t seen before. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or disappointed not to find Bledsoe with Sheridan-it would have given a more solid direction to my inchoate searching to see them in cahoots.

The chief and the other man were totally absorbed in their inspection of a valve in a pipe running at eye level in front of them. They didn’t turn when I came up but continued their work.

The younger man unscrewed the bottom part of a pipe which came up from the floor at right angles to the overhead valve and then joined it. He stuck a stainless steel tube into the opening, checked his watch, and pulled the tube out again. It was covered with oil, which seemed to satisfy both of them. They tightened up the pipes again and wiped their hands on their grimy boiler suits.

At that point they realized I was there, or perhaps just realized I wasn’t a regular member of the team. Sheridan put his hands to my head to bellow an inquiry at me. I bellowed back at him. It was obvious that no one could conduct a conversation over the roar of the engines. I yelled in his ear that I would talk to him at dinner; I wasn’t sure he heard me but I turned and climbed back up onto the main deck.

Once outside I breathed in the late afternoon air thankfully. We were well away from the shore and it was quite cold. I remembered my bag resting among the coils of rope behind the pilothouse and went back there to take out my heavy sweater and put it on. I dug out a tam and pulled it down over my ears.

The engines clattered at my feet, less loudly but still noticeably. Turbulent water lifted the stern periodically, giving the Lucella a choppy, lurching ride.

In search of quiet I walked down to the bow. No one else was outside. As I walked the length of the ship, nearly a quarter mile, the noise gradually abated. By the time I reached the stern, the frontmost tip of the vessel, I couldn’t hear a sound except the water breaking against the bow. The sun setting behind us cast a long shadow of the bridge onto the deck.

No guardrail separated the deck from the water. Two thick parallel cables, about two feet apart, were strung around the edge of the ship, attached to poles protruding every six feet or so. It would be quite easy to slip between them into the water.

A little bench had been screwed into the stem. You could sit on it and lean against a small toolshed and look into the water. The surface was greeny black, but where the ship cut through it the water turned over in a sheen of colors from lavender-white to blue-green to green to black-like dropping black ink onto wet paper and watching it separate into its individual hues.

A change in the light behind me made me brace myself. I reached for the Smith & Wesson as Bledsoe came up beside me.

“It would be easy to push you in, you know, and claim that you fell.”

“Is that a threat or an observation?” I pulled the gun out and released the safety.

He looked startled. “Put that damned thing away. I came out here to talk to you.”

I put the safety on and returned the gun to its holster. It wouldn’t do me much good at close quarters, anyway-I’d brought it out mainly for show.

Bledsoe was wearing a thick tweed jacket over a pale blue cashmere sweater. He looked nautical and comfortable. I was feeling the chill in my left shoulder-it had started to ache as I sat staring into the water.

“I blow up too fast,” he said abruptly. “But you don’t need a gun to keep me at bay, for Christ’s sake.”

“Fine.” I kept my feet braced, ready to spring to one side.

“Don’t make things so fucking difficult,” he snapped.

I didn’t move, but I didn’t relax either. He debated some point with himself-to stomp off offended or say what was on his mind. The second party won.

“It was Grafalk who told you about my youthful misadventure?”

“Yes.”

He nodded to himself. “I don’t think there’s another person who knows-or still cares… I was eighteen years old. I’d grown up in a waterfront slum. When he pulled me into the Cleveland office I ended up handling a lot of cash transactions. His mistake-he should never have put anyone that age in front of so much money. I didn’t steal it. That is, of course I stole it. What I mean is, I wasn’t thinking of stashing away loot and escaping to Argentina. I just wanted to live in a grand style. I bought myself a car.” He smiled reminiscently. “A red Packard roadster. Cars were hard to get in those days, right after the war, and I thought I was the slickest thing on the waterfront.”

The smile left his face. “Anyway, I was young and foolish and I spent the stuff blatantly, begging to be caught, really. Niels saw me through it, rehired me right out of Cantonville. He never mentioned it in twenty years. But he took it very personally when I set up Pole Star back in ’74. And he started throwing it in my face-that he knew I was a criminal at heart, that I’d stayed with him just to learn the secrets of his organization and then left.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I’d wanted to run my own show for years. My wife was sick, had Hodgkins disease, and we never had any children. I guess I turned all my energy to shipping. Besides, after Niels refused to build any thousand-footers, I wanted to have a ship like this one.” He patted the guy ropes affectionately. “This is a beautiful ship. It took four years to build. Took me three years to put the financing together. But it’s worth it. These things run at about a third the cost of the old five-hundred-footers. The cargo space goes up almost as the square of the length-I can carry seven times the load of a five-hundred-foot vessel… Anyway, I wanted one very badly and I had to start my own company to get it.”

How badly? I wondered to myself. Badly enough to run a more sophisticated scam than he’d thought of thirty years ago and come up with the necessary capital? “What does a ship like this cost to build?”

“The Lucella ran just a hair under fifty million.”

“You float stock or bonds or what?”

“We did some of everything. Sheridan and Bemis coughed up their savings. I put mine in. The Fort Dearborn Trust owns the biggest chunk of this and we finally got them to arrange a series of loans with about ten other banks. Other people put in personal money. It’s a tremendous investment, and I want to make sure it carries a cargo every day between March 28 and January 1 so we can pay off the debt.”

He sat down next to me on the small bench and looked at me, his gray eyes probing. “But that isn’t what I came out here to say to you. I want to know why Niels brought up the story of my past. Not even Bemis and Sheridan know it, and if the tale had gotten around three years ago, I could never have built this beauty. If Niels wanted to hurt me, he could have done it then. So why did he tell you now?”

It was a good question. I stared into the churning water, trying to recall my conversation with Grafalk. Maybe he wanted to ventilate some of his pent-up bitterness against Bledsoe. It couldn’t have been from a desire to protect Phillips-he’d raised questions about Phillips, too.

“What do you know about the relationship between Grafalk and Clayton Phillips.”

“Phillips? Not much. Niels took him up as a protegé about the time I started Pole Star-a year or two later, maybe. Since he and I didn’t part too amicably, I didn’t see much of him. I don’t know what the deal was. Niels likes to patronize young men-I was probably the first one and he took up a number of others over the years.” He wrinkled his forehead. “Usually they seemed to have better abilities than Phillips. I don’t know how he manages to keep that office in the black.”

I looked at him intently. “What do you mean?”

Bledsoe shrugged. “He’s too-too finicky. Not the right word. He’s got brains but he gets in their way all the time. He has sales reps who are supposed to handle all the shipping contracts but he can’t leave ’em to it. He’s always getting involved in the negotiations. Since he doesn’t have day-to-day knowledge of the markets, he often screws up good deals and saddles Eudora with expensive contracts. I noticed that when I was Niels’s dispatcher ten years ago and I see it now with my own business.”

That didn’t sound criminal, just stupid. I said as much and Bledsoe laughed. “You looking for a crime just to drum up business or what?”

“I don’t need to drum up business. I’ve plenty in Chicago to occupy me if I ever get this mess unsnarled.” I got up. Stowing away on the Lucella had been one of my stupider ideas. None of them would tell me anything and I didn’t know how to sort out natural loyalty to the ship and each other from concealing a crime. “But I’ll find out.” I spoke aloud without realizing it.

“Vic, don’t be so angry. No one on this ship tried to kill you. I’m not convinced anyone tried to kill you.” He held up a hand as I started to talk. “I know your car was vandalized. But it was probably done by a couple of punks who never saw you in their life.”

I shook my head, tired. “There are too many coincidences, Martin. I just can’t believe that Boom Boom and the watchman in his building died and I was almost killed through a series of unrelated events. I can’t believe it. And I start wondering why you and the captain want me to believe it so badly.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and whistled silently. “Why don’t you step me through your logic? I’m not saying I’ll buy it. But give me a chance.”

I drew a breath. If he were responsible, he knew all about it anyway. If he wasn’t, there wasn’t any harm in his knowing. I explained about Boom Boom’s death, the quarrel with Phillips, the search through my cousin’s apartment, Henry Kelvin’s death.

“There’s got to be a reason for it and the reason is at the Port. It has to be. You told me those shipping orders I showed you last week seemed perfectly legitimate. So I don’t know where else to look. If Phillips was deliberately fudging the contracts and running Eudora Grain’s Chicago office at a loss, that’d be a reason. Although I think Argus would have been on his tail for that a long time ago, especially if he’s been doing it for ten years.” I pushed back the tam and rubbed my forehead. “I was hoping it would be those shipping orders, since that’s what Boom Boom was arguing over with Phillips two days before he died.”

Bledsoe looked at me seriously. “If you really want to be certain, you’ll have to look at the invoices. The contracts themselves appear fine, but you want to see what Phillips actually paid for the orders. How much do you know about the way an office like that operates?”

I shook my head. “Not much.”

“Well, Phillips’s main job is to act as the controller. He should leave the sales to his salesmen but doesn’t. He handles all the financial stuff. Now it’s his job, too, to know prices and what the market is doing so that when he pays bills he can check on his reps to make sure they’re getting the best prices. But he’s supposed to stay out of the selling end. He handles the money.”

I narrowed my eyes. A man who handled all the money bore further investigation. Trouble was, everything in this damned case bore further investigation and I wasn’t getting anywhere. I massaged my stiffening shoulder, trying to push my frustration away.

Bledsoe was still speaking; I’d missed some of it.

“You getting off in Sault Ste. Marie? I’ll fly you down to Chicago-my plane is there and I’m planning on going back to the office this week.”

We got up together and started back down the long deck. The sun had set and the sky was turning from purple to gray-black. Overhead, the first stars were coming out, pricks of light in the dusky curtain. I’d have to come back out when it was completely dark. In the city one doesn’t see too many stars.

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