Deadlock
“AN ABSORBING, WELL-WRITTEN TALE … A TOP-NOTCH MYSTERY.”
—Publishers Weekly
THE CRITICS LOVE
DEADLOCK
“GOOD FUN, PARTICULARLY IF YOU LIKE THE TOUGH ONES.”
—Chattanooga Times
“A STANDOUT. A RICH AND EXCITING NOVEL.”
—Mystery News
“V. I. WARSHAWSKI IS ONE OF THE TOUGHEST AND PERHAPS THE MOST PERSUASIVELY WRITTEN OF THE NEW BREED OF FEMALE PRIVATE-EYES.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
“FLAWLESS PLOTTING.”
—Booklist
“SWIFT-PACED AND ENGROSSING.”
—The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland)
SARA PARETSKY’S INTRIGUING WOMAN P.I. V. I. WARSHAWSKI IS “THE DETECTIVE MANY MYSTERY FANS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR!”
*
“HER WORK DOES MORE THAN TURN THE GENRE UPSIDE DOWN: her books are beautifully paced and plotted, and the dialogue is fresh and smart.”
—Newsweek
“TENACIOUS, GOOD-NATURED, IDEALISTIC … V. I. Warshawski is a pleasure to see in action.”
—Glamour
“BRASH, BREEZY, AND IN HER OWN SENSE, HIGHLY MORAL, V. I. Warshawski is the best of the new breed of female detectives … a tough female detective working Chicago’s mean streets—a perspective you won’t find anywhere else.”
—Rave Reviews
“A GRIPPING, ENTERTAINING STORY.”
—Publishers Weekly
“PARETSKY JUGGLES WISECRACKS, TENDERNESS AND GRIT IN A STORY THAT RETURNS CHICAGO P.I. V. I. WARSHAWSKI TO HER SOUTHSIDE ROOTS … PARETSKY COULD NOT HAVE WRITTEN THIS ONE BETTER.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“PARETSKY’S NAME ALWAYS MAKES THE TOP OF THE LIST WHEN PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THE NEW FEMALE OPERATIVES.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“V. I. WARSHAWSKI IS … THE TOP OF THE LINE—ATTRACTIVE, INTELLIGENT, TOUGH, AND VULNERABLE.”
—Chicago Tribune
*
Newsweek
Books by Sara Paretsky
TOTAL RECALL
HARD TIME
GHOST COUNTRY
WINDY CITY BLUES
TUNNEL VISION
GUARDIAN ANGEL
BURN MARKS
BLOOD SHOT
BITTER MEDICINE
KILLING ORDERS
DEADLOCK
INDEMNITY ONLY
Edited by Sara Paretsky
WOMEN ON THE CASE
A WOMAN’S EYE
Published by
Dell Publishing
a division of
Random House, Inc.
Copyright © 1984 by Sara Paretsky
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address: Ballantine Books, New York, New York.
Dell
®
is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-78128-4
v3.1
For
Lucella
Wieser,
a lady who sailed these seas
with wit and great courage
for over a hundred and six years.
The Canada Steamship Line very generously allowed me to get a firsthand look at a Great Lakes freighter in operation during the fall of 1980. Captain Bowman, master of their 720-foot self-unloading vessel, the
J. W. McGiffin
, invited me to sail with him from Thunder Bay through the Soo locks to the Welland Canal. He gave me run of the ship, from the bridge to the holds. Chief Engineer Thomas Taylor took me through the engine room and explained the intricacies of the self-unloader. I wish I could have put his humor and his love of machines into this story. However, no resemblance is intended between any of the officers or crew of the
McGiffin
and those of the ships in this novel. Nor are the operation of Grafalk Steamship or the Pole Star Line meant to resemble Canada Steamship in any way.
A former naval person who advised me on ships and maritime law and customs also has my heartfelt thanks.
More than a thousand people attended Boom Boom’s funeral. Many of them were children, fans from the suburbs and the Gold Coast. A handful came from Chicago’s depressed South Side where Boom Boom had learned to fight and skate. He was a wing with the Black Hawks until he shattered his left ankle hang-gliding three years earlier. And before Wayne Gretzky came along, he’d been the game’s biggest hero since Bobby Hull.
He underwent surgery for the ankle three times, refusing to admit he couldn’t skate anymore. His doctors hadn’t even wanted to attempt the third operation, but Boom Boom bowed to reality only when he could find no one to perform a fourth. After that he drifted through a series of jobs. A lot of people were willing to pay him to generate customers and goodwill, but Boom Boom was the kind of person who had to be doing, had to sink his teeth into—whatever it was.
He finally ended up with the Eudora Grain Company, where his father had been a stevedore during the thirties and forties. It was their regional vice-president, Clayton Phillips, who found Boom Boom’s body floating close to the wharf last Tuesday. Phillips tried calling me since Boom Boom’s employment forms listed me as his nearest relative.
However, I was out of town on a case that took me to Peoria for three weeks. By the time the police located me one of Boom Boom’s mother’s numerous sisters had identified the body and begun arranging a big Polish funeral.
Boom Boom’s father and mine were brothers, and we’d grown up together in South Chicago. We were both only children and were closer than many brothers and sisters. My Aunt Marie, a good Polish Catholic, had produced endless babies, dying in her twelfth attempt. Boom Boom was the fourth, and the only one who lived more than three days.
He grew up playing hockey. I don’t know where he got the craze or the skill but, despite Marie’s frenzy over the danger, he spent most of his childhood thinking up ways to play without her knowing. A lot of them involved me—I lived six blocks away, and a visit to Cousin Vic was often a cover for a few precious hours with the puck. In those days all the hockey-mad kids adulated Boom-Boom Geoffrion. My cousin copied his slap shot slavishly; to please him the other boys took to calling him “Boom Boom” and the nickname stuck. In fact when the Chicago police found me at my Peoria hotel and asked if I was Bernard Warshawski’s cousin it took me a few seconds to realize who they meant.
Now I sat in the front pew of St. Wenceslas Church with Boom Boom’s moist, indistinguishable aunts and cousins. All in black, they were offended by my navy wool suit. Several took the trouble to tell me so in loud whispers during the prelude.
I fixed my eyes on the imitation Tiffany windows, depicting in garish colors highlights in the life of St. Wenceslas, as well as the Crucifixion and the wedding at Cana. Whoever designed the windows had combined Chinese perspective with a kind of pseudocubism. As a result, jugs of water spouted from people’s heads and long arms stretched menacingly from behind the cross. Attaching
people to their own limbs and sorting out who was doing what to whom kept me fully occupied during the service and gave me—I hope—a convincing air of pious absorption.
Neither of my parents had been religious. My Italian mother was half Jewish, my father Polish, from a long line of skeptics. They’d decided not to inflict any faith on me, although my mother always baked me little
orecchi d’Aman
at Purim. The violent religiosity of Boom Boom’s mother and the cheap plaster icons in her house always terrified me as a child.