“It is buried deep. I’ve never told anyone about it, even when Martin left me and I was mad enough to want to hurt him badly. But if there has been a crime committed, if there’s been an attempt on your life, you should know about it.”
I didn’t say anything. Outside, the house cast a lengthening shadow on the beach.
“Martin grew up in Cleveland. Bledsoe is his mother’s maiden name. He never knew who his father was. It could have been any of a series of drunken sailors on Cleveland’s waterfront.”
“That’s not a crime, Mr. Grafalk. And scarcely his fault.”
“True. That’s just to give you a flavor of his home life. He left when he was fifteen, lied about his age, and signed on to sail the Great Lakes. In those days you didn’t need the training you do now, and, of course, there was a lot more shipping—no waiting around union halls hoping to get called up for a job. Any warm body that could haul ropes and lift two hundred pounds would do. And Martin was strong for his age.” He paused to swallow his drink.
“Well, he was a smart fellow and he came to the attention of one of my mates. A man who liked to help the young men in his charge, not stand on their heads. When he was nineteen Martin ended up in our Toledo office. He obviously had far too many brains to waste just doing muscle work that any stupid Polack could handle.”
“I see,” I murmured. “Maybe you could find an opening for me on one of your boats if detective work palls.”
He stared at me for a minute. “Oh, Warshawski. I see. Don’t show your hackles—it’s not worth it. The waterfront is filled with Poles strong as oxen but not much brainpower.”
I thought of Boom Boom’s cousins and declined arguing the point.
“Anyway, to make a long story very short, Martin was operating in an environment he could understand intellectually but not socially. He’d never had much formal education and he never learned any sense of ethics or morality. He was handling too much money and he siphoned some of it off. I lost a tough argument with my father about prosecuting Martin. I had found him, I had pushed him—I was only thirty myself at the time. I wanted to give him a second chance. Dad refused and Martin spent two years in a Cantonville prison. My father died the month before he was released and I hired him back immediately. He never did anything else criminal that I’m aware of—but if there’s some trouble between Pole Star and Eudora Grain or at Eudora Grain itself that involves money, you should know about Martin’s background. I’m relying on your discretion to keep it to yourself—I wouldn’t want Argus, or even Clayton, for that matter, to know about it if it turns out nothing’s wrong.”
I finished my sherry. “So that was what you meant that day at lunch. Bledsoe educated himself in prison and you were hinting you could tell people about it if you wanted to.”
“I didn’t think you’d caught that.”
“Even a boneheaded Polack couldn’t miss that one … Last week you were threatening him, today you’re protecting him—sort of. Which is it?”
Anger flashed across Grafalk’s face and was quickly erased. “Martin and I have—a tacit understanding. He doesn’t attack my fleet, I don’t tell people about his disreputable past. He was making fun of the Grafalk Line. I was backing him off.”
“What do you think is going on at Eudora Grain?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve leaped to a couple of conclusions, based on my investigations down at the Port. You think there might be some kind of a financial problem down there. You’re concerned enough to reveal a well-concealed truth about Bledsoe. Not even his ship’s officers know it—or if they do, they’re too loyal to betray it. You must think something pretty serious is wrong.”
Grafalk shook his head and gave a slightly condescending smile. “Now you’re leaping to conclusions, Miss Warshawski. Everyone knows you’ve been looking into your cousin’s death. And they know you and Phillips have had a few words together—you just can’t keep secrets in a closed community like that. If there is something wrong at Eudora Grain, it would have to involve money. Nothing else important could be wrong there.” He swirled the olive in his glass. “It’s none of my business—but I do periodically wonder where Clayton Phillips gets his money.”
I looked at him steadily. “Argus pays him well. He inherited it. His wife did. Any reason why one of those possibilities wouldn’t be good enough?”
He shrugged. “I’m a very wealthy man, Miss Warshawski. I grew up with a lot of money and I’m used to living with it. There are plenty of people without money who are at ease with and around it—Martin’s one and Admiral Jergensen another. But Clayton and Jeannine aren’t. If they inherited it, it was an unexpected windfall late in life.”
“Still possible. They don’t have to measure it in your class to afford that house and their other amenities. Maybe a crabby old grandmother hoarded it so that it would give everyone the least possible pleasure—that happens at least as often as embezzlement.”
“Embezzlement?”
“You’re suggesting that, aren’t you?”