As I got into the Omega, someone drove the Bentley up for her. A thin, sandy-haired man got out, helped her into the car, and headed back to the garage behind the house.
Slowly driving back to Chicago, I thought about Mrs. Grafalk’s remarks. The business deal must have been connected with the Eudora shipping invoices. What if Phillips had split the difference in the bills with Grafalk? Say he got ninety thousand dollars extra over the price registered on the computer for the shipment and gave forty-five thousand to Grafalk. That didn’t make sense, though. Grafalk was the biggest carrier on the lakes. What did he need with penny-ante stuff like that? If Grafalk were involved, the payoff had to be more impressive. Of course, Grafalk operated all those older ships. It cost him more to carry cargo. The amount in the invoices was probably the true price of what it cost Grafalk to carry the stuff. If that was the case, Phillips was really stealing from Eudora Grain—not just pocketing the difference between how much he logged into the contract and the ultimate invoice, but losing money for Eudora on every shipment he recorded when Grafalk was the carrier. What Grafalk got out of it was more shipments in a depressed market in which he had a hard time competing because of his older, inefficient fleet.
Suddenly I saw the whole thing. Or most of it, anyway. I felt as though the truth had been hammered in at me from the day I walked into Percy MacKelvy’s office at Grafalk Steamship down at the Port. I remembered listening to him trying to place orders on the phone, and my frustration while we were talking. Grafalk’s reaction to Bledsoe at lunch. The times in the last two weeks I’d heard how much more efficient the thousand-footers were to operate. I even had an idea where Clayton Phillips had been murdered and how his body had been carried onto the Gertrude Ruttan without anyone seeing it.
A seventy-ton semi blared its horn behind me. I jumped in my seat and realized I had brought the Omega almost to a standstill in the second lane of the Kennedy. No need for anyone to arrange subtle accidents for me—I could kill myself without help. I accelerated quickly and drove on into the Loop. I needed to talk to the Lloyds man.
It was three in the afternoon and I hadn’t eaten. After leaving the car in the Grant Park underground garage, I went into the Spot, a little bar and grill behind Ajax, for a turkey sandwich. In honor of the occasion I also had a plate of french fries and a Coke. My favorite soft drink, but I usually avoid it because of the calories.
I marched across Adams to the Ajax Building, singing, “ ‘Things go better with Coca-Cola,’ ” under my breath. I told the guard I wanted to see Roger Ferrant—the Lloyds man—up in the Special Risks office. After some delay—they couldn’t figure out the Special Risk phone number—they got through to Ferrant. He would be happy to see me.
With my visitor’s ID clipped to my lapel, I rode to the fifty-third floor. Ferrant came out of the walnut office to meet me. A shock of lanky brown hair flopped in his eyes and he was straightening his tie as he came.
“You’ve got some news for us, have you?” he asked eagerly.
“I’m afraid not yet. I have some more questions I didn’t think to ask yesterday.”
His face fell, but he said cheerfully, “Shouldn’t expect miracles, I guess. And why should you succeed where the FBI, the U. S. Coast Guard, and the Army Corps of Engineers have failed?” He ushered me courteously back into the office, which was more cluttered than it had been the night before. “I’m staying in town through the formal inquiry at the Soo next Monday, then back to London. Think you’ll crack the problem by then?”
He was speaking facetiously, but I said, “I should have the answer in another twenty-four hours. I don’t think you’re going to like it, though.”
He saw the seriousness in my face. Whether he believed me or not, he stopped laughing and asked what he could do to help.
“Hogarth said yesterday you were the most knowledgeable person in the world on Great Lakes shipping. I want to know what’s happening to it with this lock blown up.”
“Could you explain what you mean, please?”
“The accident to the lock must be having quite an impact, right? Or can ships still get through?”
“Oh—well, shipping hasn’t come to a complete standstill. They closed the MacArthur and the Davis locks for several days while they cleaned debris out of them and tested them, but they can still use the Sabin Lock—that’s the one in Canadian waters. Of course, the biggest ships are shut off from the upper lakes for a year—or however long it takes them to fix the Poe—the Poe was the only lock that could handle the thousand-footers.”