“Was that what set him off? I couldn’t remember.”
“Grafalk said: ‘At Martin’s school they went in for a lot of memorizing.’ Then something about his being a gentleman and not needing to know anything. Even if Bledsoe went to some tacky place like West Schaumburg Tech, that’s scarcely a reason to shatter a wineglass in your fist.”
Sheridan braked at a light at 103rd and Torrence. A Howard Johnson’s on our left struggled ineffectually with prairie grass and a junkyard. Sheridan turned right. “I don’t think Martin went to school at all. He grew up in Cleveland and started sailing when he was sixteen by lying about his age. Maybe he doesn’t like a Northwestern man reminding him he’s self-educated.”
That didn’t make sense—self-educated people are usually proud of the fact. “Well, why is there so much animosity between him and Grafalk?”
“Oh, that’s easy to explain. Niels looks on Grafalk Steamship as a fiefdom. He’s filthy rich, has lots of other holdings, but the shipping company’s the only thing he cares about. If you work for him, he thinks it’s a lifelong contract, just like a baron swearing loyalty to William the Conqueror or something.
“I know: I started my career at Grafalk. He was sore as hell when I left. John Bemis too—the captain of the Lucella. But our going never bugged him when we left the way it did with Martin. He regarded that as the ultimate betrayal, maybe because Martin was the best dispatcher on the lakes. Which is why Pole Star’s done as well as it has. Martin has that sixth sense that tells him what fraction of a dollar he can offer to be the low bidder and still make a profit.”
We were pulling into the yard of another elevator. Sheridan bumped the car across the ruts and parked behind a weather-beaten shed. Four hopper cars were being maneuvered on the tracks in front of us onto the elevator hoist. We picked our way around them, through the ground floor of the giant building, and out to the wharf.
The Lucella loomed high above us. Her red paint was smooth and unchipped. She made the other ships I’d seen that day look like puny tubs. A thousand feet long, her giant hull filled the near horizon. I felt the familiar churning in my stomach and shut my eyes briefly before following Sheridan up a steel ladder attached to her side.
He climbed briskly. I followed quickly, putting from my mind the thought of the black depths below, of the hull thrusting invisibly into murky water, of the sea, alive and menacing.
We met Captain Bemis in the mahogany-paneled bridge perched on top of the pilothouse. Through glass windows encircling the bridge we could see the deck stretching away beneath us. Men in yellow slickers were washing out the holds with high-pressure hoses.
Captain Bemis was a sturdy, short man, barely my height. He had steady gray eyes and a calm manner—useful, no doubt, in a high sea. He called down to the deck on a walkie-talkie to his first mate, asking him to join us. A yellow-slickered figure detached itself from the group on deck and disappeared into the pilothouse.
“We’re very concerned about this vandalism to the Lucella,” Bemis told me. “We were sorry when young Warshawski died. But we’d also like to know what it was he had to say.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I hadn’t talked to Boom Boom for several months … I was hoping he might have said something to you that would give me a clue about his state of mind.”
Bemis gave a frustrated sign. “He wanted to talk to us about this business with the holds. Sheridan told you about that? Well, Warshawski asked if we’d found the culprit. I told him yes. He said he thought there might be more to it than just a dissatisfied seaman. He had some additional checking to do, but he wanted to talk to me the next day.”
The first mate came onto the bridge and Bemis stopped talking to introduce me. The mate’s name was Keith Winstein. He was a wiry young man, perhaps thirty years old, with a shock of curly black hair.
“I’m telling her about the business with young Warshawski,” Bemis explained to the mate. “Anyway, Keith here and I waited on the bridge until five on Tuesday, hoping to talk to him. Then we got the news that he’d died.”
“So no one here saw him fall!” I exclaimed.
The first mate shook his head regretfully. “I’m sorry, but we didn’t even realize there’d been an accident. We were tied up across the way, but none of our men was on deck when the ambulance came.”