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.”