“It’s a private individual—not someone you’d know.… How long does it take to clear up a claim like this?”
“Years.” Ferrant and Hogarth spoke in chorus. The Englishman added, “Honestly, Miss Warshawski, it takes a very long time.” He stumbled a bit pronouncing my name, unlike Hogarth, who got it right the first time.
“Well, who pays Bledsoe’s expenses while he reassembles the Lucella?”
“We do,” Hogarth said. “Ferrant here handles the hull damage. We pay for the destroyed cargo and the business interruption—the loads that Bledsoe is forgoing by having his ship lying in the bottom of the lock.”
“Do you ante up a check to cover the cost of repairing the ship?”
“No,” Ferrant said. “We pay the bills as the shipyard submits them.”
“And your policy covers Pole Star even though it’s clear that someone blew up the ship, that it didn’t just crack due to bad workmanship?”
Ferrant crossed one storklike leg over the other. “That was one of the first questions we went into. As far as we can tell, it was not blown up as an act of war. There are other exclusions under the policy, but that’s the main one … Unless Bledsoe destroyed the ship himself.”
“There’d have to be a significant financial advantage to him for doing so,” I pointed out. “If he collected the value of the hull and could invest it while he rebuilt the ship, there might be some, but otherwise it doesn’t sound like it.”
“No,” Hogarth said impatiently. “There isn’t any point to ruining a brand-new ship like the Lucella. Now if it were one of those old clunkers that cost more to operate than they bring in revenues, I’d see it, but not a thousand-foot self-unloader.”
“Like Grafalk’s, you mean,” I said, remembering the Leif Ericsson running into the side of the wharf my first day down at the Port. “He’s better off collecting the insurance money than running his ships?”
“Not necessarily,” said Hogarth uneasily. “It’d depend on the extent of the damage. You’re thinking of the Leif Ericsson, aren’t you? He’ll have to pay for the damage to the wharf. That’s going to run him more than the cost of repairing the Ericsson’s hull.”
Bledsoe had told me he wasn’t liable for the damage to the lock. I asked Hogarth about that. He made a face. “That’s another one that’s going to tie the lawyers up for a decade or two. If Bledsoe was responsible for the damage to the ship, which in turn damaged the forward lock gates, he’s liable. If we can find the real culprit, he’s liable. That’s what we’d like to do: find whoever blew up the ship so we can subrogate against him—or her.”
I looked a question.
“Subrogate—get him to repay us for whatever we pay Bledsoe. And if we don’t find the real culprit, your rich Uncle Sam is going to pay for the lock. He’ll probably have to anyway—no one could afford to replace that. They’ll just prosecute and send whoever did it to jail for twenty years. If they can find him.” The phone rang and he answered it. The caller seemed to be his wife: he told her placatingly that he’d be out of the office in twenty minutes and please to hold dinner for him.
He turned to me with an aggrieved expression. “I thought you came by because you had some hot information on the Lucella. All we’ve been doing is answering your questions.”
I laughed. “I don’t have any information for you now. But I think I may in a day or two. You’ve given me some ideas I want to play around with first.” I hesitated, then decided to go ahead and tell them about Mattingly. I was on my way to the police to let them know, anyway. “The thing is, the guy who probably set off the explosion has been murdered himself. If the police can track down who killed him, they’ll probably find the person who paid him to blow up the ship. I’m sure Mattingly was killed to keep him from bragging about it. He was a disagreeable guy who liked to boast about the sleazy things he did.”
Getting the inside story on Mattingly cheered up Hogarth and Ferrant, even though it hadn’t helped their investigation into ultimate liability much. They put on their suit jackets and walked out of the office with me.
“The thing is,” Ferrant said confidentially in his English accent, “it’s just cheering to know there may really be a villain out there.”
“Yeah,” I said as we came out in the deserted lobby, “but what if you find he works for another one of your insureds?”
“You mustn’t say things like that,” Ferrant said. “You really mustn’t. I feel like eating for the first time since I heard about the Lucella last Saturday morning. I don’t want you to ruin my dinner with horrible suggestions.”