All the Port buildings are constructed from the same tan brick, two stories high. The Grafalk Steamship Line offices occupied all of one of the larger blocks halfway along the wharf. A receptionist, middle-aged and pleasant, recognized Phillips by sight and sent us on back to see Percy MacKelvy, the dispatcher.

Phillips was clearly a frequent visitor. Greeting various people by name, he led me through a narrow hall which crossed a couple of small rooms. We found the dispatcher in an office crammed with paper. Charts covered every wall and stacks of paper hid the desk, three chairs, and a good deal of the floor. A rumpled man in his mid-forties, wearing a white shirt long since wrinkled for the day, MacKelvy was on the phone when we came in. He took a cigar out of his mouth long enough to say hello.

He grunted into the phone, moved a red tack on a chart of the lakes at his right hand, punched a query into a computer terminal next to the phone, and grunted again. Finally he said, “Six eighty-three a ton. Take it or leave it … Pick up on the fourth, six eighty-two … Can’t bring it any lower than that … No deal? Maybe next time.” He hung up, added a few numbers to the terminal, and snatched up a second phone which had started to ring. “This is a zoo,” he said to me, loosening his tie further. “MacKelvy … Yeah, yeah.” I watched as he followed a similar sequence with chart, tacks, and computer.

When he hung up he said, “Hi, Clayton. This the lady you mentioned?”

“Hi,” I said. “I’m V. I. Warshawski. My cousin Bernard Warshawski was killed last Monday when he fell under the Bertha Krupnik’s propeller.”

The phone was ringing again. “Yeah? MacKelvy here. Yeah, hold on just a second … You figuring the Bertha was at fault somehow?”

“No. I have some personal concerns as my cousin’s executor. I’d like to know if anyone saw the accident. Phillips here says you can tell me when the Bertha might be expected, either back here, or at some port where I could go talk to the crew.”

“Hi, Duff,” he spoke into the phone. “Sulphur from Buffalo? Three eighty-eight a ton, pick up on the sixth, deliver to Chicago on the eighth. You got it.” He hung up. “What’s the scoop, Clayton? She likely to sue?”

Phillips was standing as far from the desk as possible in the crowded room. He stood very still as it make himself psychologically as well as physically remote. He shrugged. “David has expressed some interest.”

“What about Niels?”

“I haven’t discussed it with him.”

I put my hands on the mass of papers and leaned across the desk as the phone rang again.

“MacKelvy here … Hi, Gumboldt. Hold on a sec, will you?”