The hunting wind am-3 Page 4

  “Make that three ballet dancers,” Eleanor said as she came into the room. “I should have just left him out in the snow.” She was carrying a big wooden kitchen chair in each hand as casually as a pair of dinner plates. “You’ll be wanting some chairs in here,” she said, “seeing as how my husband isn’t going anywhere.”

  When we were sitting on either side of the bed, he finished tapping something on the keyboard. From somewhere behind me, a printer sprang to life.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “I’ve put in a good twenty hours on the case, and here’s what I’ve done so far.”

  “Twenty hours?” I said.

  “Hey, what else am I gonna do?”

  “I’m glad that you’re keeping track,” Randy said. “I’m going to be paying you both for your time.”

  “And getting your money’s worth, I hope,” Leon said. “You can count on our best efforts.”

  “Save the commercial,” I said. “And speaking of which, remind me to ask you about that Web site…”

  Leon moved his eyes over to Randy and kept them there. “As I said, here’s what I’ve done so far. I know that you’ve already tried a couple of the locator services. For both Maria and her brother, Leopold. They can run the names through every database out there, but there just isn’t enough information to go on. All we have are a couple names, an approximate year of birth for Maria at least-sometime in 1952, based on the fact that she was nineteen years old in 1971-and a very old address, where she worked with her mother and… you said they lived there, as well?”

  “Yes,” Randy said. “On the top floor.”

  “And you don’t remember either of the parents’ first names?”

  “No, I don’t,” Randy said. “Her mother was just Mama to Maria and Madame Valeska to everybody else. I don’t think I ever heard her father’s first name.”

  “And it was just the one brother, you think? No other siblings?”

  “Yes,” Randy said. “She said her parents had a hard life before they came to America. They were already in their forties when they had Leopold and Maria. I think that’s part of why they were so protective of her.”

  “And you don’t know how old Leopold was in 1971?”

  “I know he was older,” Randy said. “But I have no idea how much.”

  “Those locator services,” Leon said. “They usually need a date of birth, a Social Security number, or a recent address,” Leon said. “Without any of those, they’re not going to get very far. But then, you know that. That’s why you’re here.”

  “Absolutely,” Randy said.

  “The good news, right off the bat,” he said, “is that she isn’t dead. Not if she’s in the Social Security system, anyway. There have been four women with that name who have died since 1971. All four of them were a lot older than she would have been.”

  “Okay,” Randy said. “Okay, that’s good.”

  “I didn’t see a Leopold Valeska, either. For what that’s worth.”

  “That’s good, too,” Randy said. “Even though he did hate me.”

  “She’s not in prison, either. Not in a Michigan state prison, or a federal prison. Again, same thing for Leopold.”

  “Right.”

  “Our biggest problem,” Leon went on, “is the amount of time that has passed since you last saw her. Obviously, a lot can happen in that almost thirty years. A woman can get married. Leopold has the same last name, you would think, but Maria’s name may be different now. She may have moved out of the area. How many people do you know who still live in the same neighborhood they did in 1971? What we have to do, in effect, is go back in time and try to trace her whereabouts from 1971 until the present. It’s not going to be easy, but I think it can be done. The one thing we have going for us is her last name. If you were looking for Maria Smith, I wouldn’t be optimistic. Maria Valeska is another story. That’s gotta be what, some kind of Eastern European name? Yugoslavian maybe? Romanian?”

  “I don’t know for sure,” Randy said. “I just know that both of her parents were born in Europe.”

  “You didn’t even ask her where they came from?” I said. “Or were you too busy doing-how did you put it? What everybody else was doing in 1971?”

  “I might have,” he said. “I just don’t remember.”

  “Alex,” Leon said, “when the man is in this room, he’s our client, okay?”

  “Yeah,” Randy said, “so treat me with some respect.”

  “What happened to your eye, anyway?” Leon said.

  Before I could decide which one to strangle first, Randy told Leon to continue.

  “I know those services must have already given you the numbers for every Maria Valeska listed in all the phone directories in the country right now. Just doing a quick search, I found five of them.”

  “Yeah, I think they gave me seven numbers,” Randy said. “I called them all, but none of them was her.”

  “And Leopold…”

  “They found two Leopold Valeskas,” Randy said. “Neither was the right one.”

  “Life’s not that easy,” Leon said. “But the phone directories are still one way to go here. The name is still an important link. If we call every Valeska in the country, we might find another relative.”

  “Every single Valeska?” Randy said. “In the whole country?”

  “Just counting the people who have listed numbers,” Leon said, “I’ve found about three hundred of them. I did a search on the national directory. That’s what’s printing out right now.”

  “We have to call every one of them?”

  “Well, exactly thirty-one of them live in Michigan, so I started there. I pretended to be a lawyer working on a class-action suit, told them I was looking for a Maria Valeska who lived in the Detroit area in 1971. I said she might be eligible to receive part of a large settlement.”

  “You couldn’t just ask them up front?” Randy said.

  “I could’ve, but you never know these days. People are suspicious. I didn’t get anywhere. So we still have a good two hundred and seventy or so we can try. It’s a lot of work. I think we should try to narrow it down first.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “Well, a birth certificate would be nice, because then we’d have the parents’ names at least. If they were immigrants like we think, there would be records. Problem is, birth certificates are very hard to get in Michigan. Most other states, all you gotta do is walk in the vital records office and ask for them. In Michigan, they’re not supposed to give it to you unless you’re one of the parents or a court officer. Although you never know. You’re pretty sure she was born in Detroit?”

  “She grew up in Detroit,” Randy said. “I gotta think she was probably born there.”

  “They’d have it at the state office in Lansing. You could stop there on your way down. They’d also have it at the city clerk’s office in Detroit. It’s worth trying.”

  “We just go in the office and ask for her birth certificate?”

  “I think you’re gonna have to beg,” Leon said, “and hope you get a clerk who’s having a really good day.”

  “We’ll just turn on the charm, right, Alex?”

  I let that one go right out of the room.

  “Once you get to Detroit,” Leon said, “the first thing you have to do is go to that address on Leverette Street. The man who lives in that house right now is named-what was it?” He grabbed a pad of yellow legal paper off the bed and flipped through it. “Here it is. Henry Shannon.”

  “How did you find that out?” Randy said.

  “The city directory,” Leon said. “I called the Detroit Public Library, asked them to look it up. That’s the thing about librarians. Unlike most public servants, they actually like their jobs. So they’re usually a lot more helpful. She gave me everything she could find on that whole block on Leverette Street. I’ll give you a copy.”

  “So what about this Mr. Shannon? Did you call him yet?”

  “I called him a few times,” Leo
n said. “But he hasn’t been home. I did try calling a couple other numbers on that block, but I didn’t get very far with that. Somebody calling out of nowhere, asking about who might have lived on the block thirty years ago… it just doesn’t work over the phone. That’s the kind of thing you have to do in person. Go up to the door and let them see how nice a guy you are, tell them why you’re there, what you’re looking for.”

  “That’ll work,” Randy said. “We can do that.”

  “I did find out who owned that house in 1971,” Leon said. “A man named Michael Kowalski. The librarian at the Business and Finance desk put me through to the Burton Historical Collection. They’ve got city directories going back to the 1920s.”

  “Wait a minute,” Randy said. “That makes sense. They must have been renting the upstairs of that place. I remember…” He stopped for a long moment, looking into the past. “It’s coming back to me now. She said her father was trying to save some money so they could buy a house. He loved America, but everything was so expensive. Food especially. Sausages. I remember that. He hated to pay a whole dollar for sausages.”

  “Write that down,” I said. “Sausages.”

  “Needless to say,” Leon said, ignoring me, “there are a lot of Kowalskis in Detroit. I tried all the Michaels, but no luck. I think your best bet is still going to be knocking on doors in that neighborhood. You’re bound to find one person who’s lived there a long time, or at least bought his house from somebody who lived there a long time.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Randy said. “This is going to be fun.”

  “And like I said, if you want to stop at the state office on the way down there, or maybe try the city office, you might get lucky on the birth certificate. Oh, and you’ve got to stop in at the library. Here’s the name of the librarian I spoke to at the Burton Historical Collection. She said she’d try to think of some other ways we can trace Maria. Give her my regards when you see her. And buy her some flowers or something.”

  “You got it,” Randy said. “Man, you really know what you’re doing, Leon. I’m impressed.”

  “All part of the job,” Leon said. “Just make sure you guys call me every day, let me know what’s going on.”

  Randy pulled out a roll of bills. “Let me give you some money for what you’ve done so far,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do that now,” Leon said.

  “I insist. You’ve already been working on this. You shouldn’t have to wait. A couple hundred? Five hundred?” He started ripping off twenties and throwing them on the bed.

  “Stop, already!” Leon said. But I knew he had earned that money. I wasn’t going to stop Randy from greasing him.

  “How about you, Alex?” Randy said.

  “I haven’t done anything,” I said. “And if I go down there and help you, I’m going to do it for the hell of it, you understand? You’re not paying me any money. If you were paying me, that would mean I’d have to take orders from you.”

  “I’m a great man to work for,” he said. “Just ask my ex-wife.”

  I was saved by Leon’s two kids in the doorway. Leon Junior and Melissa, nine and eight years old, respectively. They stood there looking at Randy with big eyes, until finally Leon Junior said, “Were you really a major-league baseball player?”

  “Sure was, kids,” he said. “Come on in.” A half hour later, we were all eating pizza around Leon’s bed. Eleanor and the kids, Leon in the middle, spilling pizza sauce on himself, all listening to Randy tell his story again.

  And me, not quite listening, wondering what the hell I was doing there, why I would be going down-state the next morning to help Randy find this woman, driving down like the northern wind, “the hunting wind,” as the Ojibwa call it, hunting for the lost love of his life.

  Jackie was right. I am the biggest sap on the planet.

  It was dark by the time we left. If Randy was cold, he didn’t show it. He was humming to himself all the way out to the truck.

  “You guys really have casinos up here?” he said. “Real casinos?”

  “The Indians do,” I said. “The Sault tribe has the Kewadin here in town, and the Bay Mills tribe has a couple out on the reservation.”

  “What do you say we stop in for a little bit?”

  “We’ve got to get up early tomorrow,” I said.

  “Come on, Alex. I’m feeling homesick here. I love driving across the desert to Vegas. I do it all the time.”

  “These casinos are nothing like Vegas,” I said.

  “One bet,” he said. “One bet for luck.”

  One bet, my ass. Two hours later, he was still ruling the crowd at the craps table. I gave up and went over to the bar for a drink. The bar they’ve got in the Kewadin looks as long as a football field. It’s supposedly one of the longest in the country. To go with the long runway at our airport, I guess.

  I sat there and nursed a scotch and water that was heavy on the water, wishing that the bar had a television so I could see if the Tigers were losing again. Three games into the season and they already had the look of also-rans.

  But no. No televisions in there. Nothing to remind you that there was an outside world and it was almost midnight. Just table games and slot machines, and a lot more people than you’d expect on a cold April night.

  Another hour passed. The crowd around Randy’s table got bigger. I could hear them all the way over at the bar.

  When he finally came over to me, he had a sheepish look on his face. I had a sudden flashback of seeing that look before. After all these years, even with the mustache and goatee he was sporting now, the look was the same. When he would shake off a sign and challenge a batter, if the batter ended up taking him out of the ballpark, I’d throw a new ball out to him while the batter rounded the bases, and Randy would have that look on his face. Most guys are mad at themselves then. Hell, every other pitcher who ever played the game is mad at himself then. But Randy would just look at me like the dog who’d crapped on the new carpeting.

  “Sorry, partner,” he said. “I got on a little roll there.”

  “How much did you win?” I said.

  “I was up three thousand dollars,” he said. “And then I gave it all back.”

  “Ouch.”

  “No problem, right? It’s house money.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  He was quiet for a while, all the way down 1-75 to M-28. When we got into the heavy pine trees, he started humming again. A few minutes later, he was laughing. “This is gonna be so great,” he said. “It’s like a big adventure.”

  “Randy, let me ask you something,” I said. “Have you thought this through all the way to the end? Let’s say you find out where she lives now. You go up to her door and knock on it. With what, flowers in your hand? She opens the door, and behind her you see her three kids, and her husband at the table, eating dinner. What are you gonna say?”

  He looked out the window at a large doe that was standing beside the road. The white on her tail flashed in the headlights. “Hey, a deer,” he said.

  “Randy, what are you gonna say?”

  “If she opens the door and I see three kids and a husband, I’m gonna say, ‘Hello, remember me? I never got to give you these flowers at your wedding.’ And then I’ll ask her to introduce me to him, and to her kids.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Good.”

  “But you know what?” he said.

  “What.”

  “It’s not gonna be like that. She’s gonna be alone.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know it.”

  “Oh Randy. For God’s sake.”

  “I’ll bet you,” he said. “That three grand I just lost. I’ll bet you she’s alone right now.”

  I shook my head. There was nothing else to say.

  “You want to stop at Jackie’s place for a nightcap?” he said.

  “We gotta get up early,” I said. “And I want to take this snowplow off before we go.”

>   “Why do you leave it on so long?” he said. “When’s the last time it snowed?”

  “The day I take it off,” I said. “It’ll snow within twenty-four hours. Guaranteed.”

  “So leave it on.”

  “I’m not hauling a twelve-hundred-pound snow-plow all the way to Detroit and back.”

  “So take it off.”

  We took the snowplow off. In the light from a single bulb outside my cabin, we took the snowplow off and left it sitting there in its springtime resting place behind the little utility shed, a block of wood holding the mount off the ground and a big plastic tarpaulin covering the whole thing.

  By the time we got to bed, the snowflakes were already flying.

  CHAPTER 5

  The next morning, eight inches of new snow lay on the ground. After Randy got done rolling around in it, he helped me put the plow back on the truck, which only takes about forty times as much effort as taking the damned thing off the truck. You have to line it up just right, because technically I don’t have the right kind of front mount to carry that plow. After an hour of monkeying around with it, we got the stupid thing on and plowed the road. Then we tore the stupid thing off again and put it back in its spot behind the shed. The sun was just coming up by then.

  “Come on,” I said when we were all done. “Let’s get out of here before it starts snowing again.”

  “Don’t you want some breakfast?”

  “We’ll grab some on the way,” I said. “We got old flames to find, remember?”

  We jumped in the truck and gunned it through Paradise. The sun shone on the new snow and blinded us. “Snow in April!” Randy said. “I love it!” And then he started singing again. “L’amour, l’amour… Oui, son ardeur… Damn it, Alex, what is the next line to that song?”

  “You just keep singing the one line you know,” I said. “All the way down to Detroit. That’ll make me very happy.”

  We made Mackinac by 9:30, rolled through a McDonalds, where we picked up breakfast and hot coffee. Then we settled in for the long haul on 1-75, right down the middle of the Lower Peninsula. Ten minutes south of Mackinac, all the snow was gone.