I fixed myself a large scotch and stood at the living room window drinking it. I stared down at the late-night traffic on Halsted. Boom Boom had tried to call me to tell me what he’d found out. When he couldn’t get hold of me, he stuffed the papers behind my picture—not for me to find, but to keep anyone else from finding them. He’d thought he’d get back to them, and to me, so he didn’t leave a message for me. A spasm of pain contracted my chest. I missed Boom Boom terribly. I wanted to cry, but no tears would come.
I finally left the window and went to bed. I didn’t sleep much and what sleep I had was tormented by dreams of Boom Boom stretching his arms out from a cold, black lake while I stood helplessly by. At seven I gave up trying to rest and took a bath. I waited until eight o’clock, then called Bledsoe’s pilot, Cappy. His wife answered and called him in from the backyard where he was planting petunias.
“Mr. Cappy?” I said.
“Capstone. People call me Cappy.”
“I see … Mr. Capstone, my name is Warshawski. I’m a detective and I’m looking into Howard Mattingly’s death.”
“Never heard of the guy.”
“Wasn’t he your passenger back from Sault Ste. Marie on Friday night?”
“Nope. Not that guy.”
“Bright red hair? Scar on the left side of his face? Stocky build?”
He guessed that sounded like the same person.
“Well, we believe he was traveling under an assumed name. He turned up dead later that night. What I’m trying to find out is where he went when he left the airport.”
“Couldn’t tell you that. All I know, there was a car waiting for him at Meigs. He got in it and they took off. I was filling out my log forms, didn’t really notice.”
He hadn’t been able to see the driver. No, he couldn’t say what kind of car. It was big, not a limo, but it might have been a Caddy or an Oldsmobile.
“How did you come to take this guy home? I thought you were going to fly Mr. Bledsoe down, but you left before the Lucella got through the lock.”
“Yeah, well, Mr. Bledsoe called and told me he wasn’t flying down. Told me to take this guy instead. He said his name was Oleson and that’s what I put down on the log.”
“When did Bledsoe call you? He was on board ship all day Friday.”
He’d called Thursday afternoon. No, Cappy couldn’t swear it was Bledsoe. Matter of fact, Bledsoe himself had just phoned with the same question. But he didn’t take orders from anyone except the plane owner—so who else could it have been?
The logic of this argument somewhat escaped me. I asked him for whom else he flew, but he got huffy and said his client list was confidential.
Hanging up slowly, I wondered again if it was time to turn my information about Mattingly over to Bobby Mallory. The police could put their investigative machinery into motion and start questioning everyone who’d been at Meigs Field on Friday night until they found someone to identify that car. I looked at Boom Boom’s documents on the table next to the phone. The answer to the mess lay in these papers. I’d give myself twenty-four more hours, then turn it over to Bobby.
I tried calling Pole Star. The lines were busy. I tried Eudora Grain. The receptionist told me Mr. Phillips had not yet come in for the day. Was he expected? As far as she knew. I called his Lake Bluff residence. Mrs. Phillips told me tightly that her husband had left for work. So he had come home last night? I asked. She hung up on me again.
I made myself coffee and toast and dressed for action: running shoes, blue jeans, a gray cotton shirt, and a denim jacket. I regretted my Smith & Wesson, lying somewhere at the bottom of the Poe Lock. Maybe when they hauled up the Lucella they could fish my gun out of the moldy barley and give it back to me.
Before I took off, the doorbell rang. I buzzed the caller in through the front door and went on downstairs to meet him. It turned out to be a process server—a college student—with a summons for me to attend a Court of Inquiry in Sault Ste. Marie next Monday. The youth seemed relieved that I accepted it so calmly, merely stuffing it into my shoulder bag. I serve a lot of subpoenas myself—recipients range from tetchy to violent.
I stopped at the corner to buy Lotty a bunch of irises and chrysanthemums and zipped up to her apartment in the Omega. Since my little suitcase was also mushed in with fifty thousand tons of barley at Sault Ste. Marie, I stuffed my belongings into a grocery bag. I put the flowers on the kitchen table with a note.
Lotty darling.
Thank you for looking after me. I’m hot on the scent. I’ll bring your keys by tonight or tomorrow night.
Vic
I had to keep the keys to lock the apartment door behind me.
I sat at her kitchen table with my stack of contracts and went through them until I found one that matched the invoice I had in hand. It was for three million bushels of soybeans going from Chicago to Buffalo on July 24, 1981. The price quoted in the contract was $0.33 a bushel. The invoice billed it at $0.35. Two cents a bushel on three million bushels. Came out to sixty thousand dollars.