The next morning Vic phoned Phillips again. Mrs Phillips said her husband wasn’t in and she didn’t know when he would be. She sounded afraid.
Vic sat at her kitchen table and went through the copies of the shipping contracts from Eudora Grain until Vic found one that matched the invoice Vic had from Boom Boom. It was for three million bushels of grain going from Chicago to Buffalo on 24 July 1981. The price in the contract with Grafalk was thirty-three cents per bushel. The invoice from Grafalk had charged thirty-five cents. Two cents a bushel on three million bushels. Came to sixty thousand dollars.
Boom Boom’s list of six dates when Pole Star lost contracts to Grafalk was even more surprising. On the contracts Vic had got from Janet, grafalk was listed as offering the lowest price. But Boom Boom’s list showed Pole Star’s offer as the lowest.
It was time to get some explanations from these guys. I wished I had the Smith and Wesson, lying at the bottom of the Poe Lock. I put all the papers back into the bag and drove to Eudora Grain. Phillips wasn’t there. Not at home and not at the office. Vic went to Grafalk’s office. He wasn’t there either.
Vic walked over to Pole Star. The office manager was busy with phone calls from newspapers about the Lucella’s accident. She told vic Martin was down at Plymonth Iron and Steel, on the Gertrude Ruttan, another sixteen kilometres around the lake to the east.
The streets there were dirty and poor, reminding me her of South Chicago where Vic grew up. Vic found Bledsoe on the wharf, watching the ship unloading coal on to the great hills of coal on the wharf. It was three days since Vic would seen him, and he looked thinner. It was shockingly noticeable-he must have lost four kilos.