The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery (6 page)

“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.

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.

“What did you say you’re doing now?” I asked him. “Commercial real estate?”

“Yeah, you know, office buildings, retail space, that kind of stuff. My father started the business, did pretty well with it. I never thought I’d take it over, but when he died . . . I mean, I was already out of baseball.”

“What do you do, build these places?”

“No, just make money off them,” he said. “Buy and sell, talk on the phone, have lunch with the investors. That kind of thing.”

“Sounds fascinating.”

“It has its moments,” he said. “Good and bad. Hey, I told ya about my youngest son, Terry, right? The catcher?”

“You mentioned him, yes.”

“God, you should see him hit the ball, Alex.”

“You mentioned that he’s a good hitter.”

“He drives that ball. Not bad behind the plate, but he’s not a human sponge yet like you were.”

“Uh-huh.”

“That was you, Alex. The human sponge.”

I rubbed the swelling over my right eye. Human sponge indeed.

“How long until we get to Lansing?” he said.

“Three hours maybe.”

“God,” he said. “Three hours.” He laid his head on the back of the seat. Within five minutes, he was snoring. I kept driving.

_______

“Wake up,” I said.

“What? What is it?”

“We’re here,” I said. “We’re in Lansing.”

“Lansing?”

“Yeah, the capital of Michigan,” I said. “Didn’t you learn your state capitals in school?”

He sat up and looked out the window. The truck was parked in a lot next to a complex of tall gray buildings. “Wow, we’re here already?” he said. “I slept that whole time? You should have woken me up and made me drive some.”

“It was the only peace and quiet I’ve had in two days,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”

We left the truck and went into the first building.

“Where are we going?”

I looked through the papers Leon had sent with us. “State Office of Vital Records,” I said. We looked on the board by the elevator and found it.
VITAL RECORDS, THIRD FLOOR
. On the ride up the elevator, Randy started humming.

“Positive thoughts,” he said. “Confidence. Charm.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Make sure you mention that you’re a private investigator. That should help, right?”

“I’m not telling anybody I’m a private investigator,” I said.

“Well, then just look him right in the eye and smile. Or her.”

It was a her. Maybe fifty years old, glasses on a chain around her neck. She looked like the attendance officer at a junior high school.

“Can I help you gentlemen?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for some information.”

She looked at me.

“Here’s my card,” I said. I took out one of the cards Leon had given me, the cards with the two guns on them. I put it down on the counter in front of her.

She looked down at it, then back up at me. “What did you do to your eye?” she said.

“A little accident,” I said.

“What kind of information?”

“There’s a woman,” I said. “We believe she was born in Detroit in 1952. Her name is Maria Valeska. Or was. It may have changed.”

“Nice name,” she said.

“Yes,” I said. “We were wondering if we could see her birth certificate. It’s extremely important.”

“Birth certificates are not public records,” she said. “Not in the state of Michigan.”

“I understand that,” I said. “I was hoping . . .”

She kept looking at me.

“You see, it’s very important. . . .”

Nothing. She was a statue.

“We really need to find her. . . .”

A statue carved in white granite. Wearing a blue cashmere sweater.

“I understand that marriage licenses are public,” I finally said. “Could we try that?”

“Year of marriage,” she said.

“I’m not quite sure of that,” I said. I looked back at Randy.

“After 1971,” he said.

“After 1971,” I said.

“It costs seventeen dollars to do a search on a particular year,” she said. “Four dollars for each additional year.” She produced a form and put it on the counter. “Fill this out.”

“Thank you,” I said. I took the form and looked at it. The first line was for the name of the bride, the second for the name of the groom. “Do you need the groom’s name?”

“Yes,” she said. “We need the groom’s name.”

“We don’t know the groom’s name,” I said. “We’re not even sure she got married in Michigan. Or anywhere, for that matter. We were just hoping . . .”

She went into the statue routine again.

“Please,” I said. “If you can’t help us, just say so.”

“I can’t help you,” she said.

So we left. I left my card there on the counter to torture her with guilt.

“You could have tried helping me,” I said as we rode the elevator back down to the ground floor. “You could have thrown that famous Randy Wilkins charm into the situation.”

“Wouldn’t have worked,” he said. “That woman was impervious to charm. You did good, though. You were smooth.”

“I’m gonna smack you,” I said.

He laughed. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch. We can celebrate our first total failure. Then it’s on to Detroit!”

It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon when we made Detroit. The interstate goes straight into the middle of the city, then takes a big side step west,
right behind Tiger Stadium, then remembers what it’s supposed to be doing and turns back south toward Toledo. At least that’s what it once did, before they started tearing everything up to make room for the new stadium. With a big part of 1-75 closed, we had to bail out at Gratiot and make our way down the side streets to Michigan Avenue. It was a strange feeling, driving around my old hometown. There’s no traffic in the Upper Peninsula, no streets lined with buildings on either side for miles on end.

“One of the new casinos is gonna be over there,” I said as we drove past First Street.

“Casinos in Detroit? Really?”

“The first one doesn’t open until this summer,” I said. “So relax.”

“And a new stadium, too?”

“Next year,” I said.

“It’s like they’re tearing up the whole city and starting over,” he said.

“We might as well get a motel around Corktown,” I said. “If that’s where the old address is.”

“Get someplace nice,” he said.

“We’re just gonna sleep there,” I said. “We don’t need the Hilton.”

“Get the Hilton,” he said. “I’m paying for it.”

“Next stop, the Hilton,” I said. As soon as the stadium was in sight, I pulled into the first motel I saw. The Motor City Motor Court.

“What is this supposed to be?” he said.

“The Detroit Hilton,” I said. “Go check us in.”

While he went inside, I stood in the parking lot, trying to shake out all the kinks in my body from the six hours in the truck. Across the street, a block away,
the southeast comer of Tiger Stadium rose into the afternoon sky like a gray battleship. The Tigers were still losing ball games out on the West Coast, would go to Minnesota to lose some more games there, then finally come back here to Detroit for their first loss at home.

“There she is,” Randy said when he came back into the parking lot. “They’re not really going to tear it down, are they?”

“I don’t think they can,” I said. “It’s a national landmark. But they won’t be playing baseball there anymore.”

He shook his head. “Greatest ballpark I’ve ever seen.”

“I know,” I said. Tiger Stadium doesn’t look like much from the outside. Just tall gray walls, rounded at the corners. When you go into the place, you realize why it
has
to look that way from the outside. Because the inside is a world of its own. It’s totally enclosed, the only stadium in the majors with an upper deck that goes all the way around the field. With the overhang in right field, where Al Kaline played. The light towers on the roof, where Reggie Jackson hit that ball in the 1972 All-Star game. The broadcast booths in back of home plate, so close to the field that the guys up there can hear the catcher and umpire talking to each other. Eighty-one more home games, and then it would be all over.

“Come on,” I said. “While we still have some of the day left. Show me where she lived.”

We walked east on Michigan Avenue. There was a big car dealership across from the stadium, and then a little corner bar and a dry cleaner. We passed a
block of little brick houses, where during the season the owners would sit outside on their lawn chairs, watching the people make their way toward the stadium. Some of them would make a little money by letting cars park in their driveways. With the new stadium opening up next season, that was about to end.