“Ha! I love that one,” he said. “All right, now where did you put those addresses!”
“They’re in the box,” she said.
“I know they’re in the box! Where’s the box?”
“It’s where it always is! In the bedroom, on the dresser!”
“No, that’s where you always put it! Oh, never mind. I’ll find it myself!” He disappeared into the bedroom.
“I can’t tell you how much we appreciate this, Mrs. Meisner,” Randy said.
“It’s nice to have the company,” she said. “I haven’t thought about the old neighborhood in a long time.”
“I found it!” Mr. Meisner called from the next room. “Right where I put it!”
Mrs. Meisner gave us a smile and a shake of her head.
“Here it is,” he said as he shuffled back into the room. “They moved to Arizona. Can you believe it? All the way out there with the desert and the cactuses. Let’s see, Kowalski…” He looked through the index cards in the box. “Here, Mickey and Martha Kowalski. In Tucson.”
I took the card from him and copied down the address. There was no phone number, but I figured we could look that up.
We stayed for another thirty minutes, listening to more stories about the old neighborhood and how wonderful or horrible this new place was, depending on who was talking. Mr. Meisner stood up to shake our hands as we left. We both bent over Mrs. Meisner in her wheelchair and gave her a hug and a kiss. We promised we’d come back and visit them again someday.
On our way back to the motel, Randy kept looking at the Arizona address I had written down for the Kowalskis, even though he could not read it unless we were passing under a streetlamp. Even though he probably already had it memorized.
“We’re almost there, aren’t we?” he said. “This is them. The people who rented the upstairs to the Valeskas.”
“They may not be much help,” I said. “You heard what the Meisners said about the way the Valeskas left. They probably have no idea where they went.”
“I know,” he said. “But it’ll be good to talk to them anyway. They might help me remember something else. So much is coming back to me now. Like the fact that they were housepainters. It’s like a fuzzy picture that’s coming back into focus, you know what I mean?”
“A picture of the way things were in 1971,” I said. “You can’t forget that, Randy.”
“I know, I know,” he said. “I hear what you’re saying.”
When we were back in our motel room, I sat on one bed, Randy on the other. I called information in Tucson and got the number for the Kowalskis. Before I could dial it, Randy took the phone from me.
“Let me do this one,” he said.
“It’s all yours.”
“What time is it, about nine o’clock? So in Arizona, it’s seven o’clock? No problem.”
He dialed the number, waited for a couple rings, and then said, “Hello! I’m looking for a Mr. Michael Kowalski! Or Mickey, I guess they call him!” He was wearing his killer smile, which doesn’t work so well over the phone. The smile disappeared, and before he could say another word, he was looking at the phone like it had just stung him in the ear.
“They hung up,” he said. “They told me that Mickey was dead and then they hung up.”
“I guess Mrs. Meisner was right,” I said. “Mickey was sick.”
“What am I going to do now?”
“Call them back and apologize?”
“Yeah, I’ll do that,” he said. He dialed the number again. “Oh please, please, ma’am, I’m very sorry. Please, ma’am, don’t hang up. I’m so sorry to hear of your loss and I’m sorry to disturb you. I just spent a couple hours with the Meisners up here in Michigan. They were very good friends with, um-I’m sorry, am I speaking to Mrs. Kowalski?
… Their daughter. Oh, I see. If I could apologize one more time, ma’am. The Meisners had no idea about… Yes, in Michigan. With the Meisners. They used to live down the block, on Leverette Street… Yes… Yes… And they told me to give your parents a call, and
… Oh, your mother is there? That would be, um…”
He looked at me with panic in his eyes.
“Martha,” I said.
“Martha,” he said. “Martha Kowalski. Yes, we were all just talking about… Yes… Oh yes, please. If there’s any way I can just speak to her for a moment… Oh God bless you. Thank you…”
I listened to his end of the conversation with Martha Kowalski. It started out pretty simple, with the Meisners and the old neighborhood and Randy telling her how sorry he was to hear of the loss of her husband. When he got around to the Valeskas, a cloud came over his face. “Are you sure about that, ma’am?” he said at least three times. When he was done, he thanked her and then just sat there on the edge of the bed, looking at me.
“What happened?” I said.
“She remembers them very well,” he said. “It was just like the Meisners said. They stayed there for nine months, and then in the middle of the tenth month, they disappeared.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“She said that Valeska wasn’t their real name. It was Valenescu.”
“Valenescu?”
“That’s what she said. That’s the name that was on their checks. She said she remembers Maria’s mother using ‘Madame Valeska’ on the sign because it wasn’t such a hard name for Americans.”
“Okay,” I said. “That kind of makes sense.”
“It does,” he said. “It makes sense. And this explains why we couldn’t find her before. Or her parents and her brother. We didn’t have the right name.”
“Randy, this kind of tells you something, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t even know her real name.”
“Yeah?”
“You spent one week with her, almost thirty years ago, and you didn’t even know her real name.”
“Ten days,” he said. He picked up the Detroit phone book. “I don’t see any Valenescus in here. What do we do now?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “but Randy-”
“Wait!” he said. The cloud was gone. “Let’s call Leon!”
I let out a long breath, and then I called Leon. I gave him the new name. Maria Valenescu. Her parents, Gregor and Arabella.
“That’s fantastic work!” Leon said. “Now try and tell me you’re not a real private investigator!”
“It wasn’t that hard, Leon.”
“I’ll run these names right now,” he said. “You guys must be psyched down there! We’re getting closer!”
“I’m not so sure,” I said, looking at Randy.
“What’s the matter?”
“Let me take him to dinner and buy him a slinky,” I said. “I need to talk to him.”
“What’s a slinky, Alex?”
“It’s vodka and root beer, Leon. Don’t ask me to explain.” I said good night and hung up the phone.
“Well?” Randy said.
“Leon’s gonna work on those names,” I said.
“Good deal,” he said. “We’re back on track. Come on, let’s go to the Lindell.”
“I’m gonna take you someplace else,” I said. “Someplace a little quieter.”
“It’s your town,” he said. “Let’s go.”
I took him to a restaurant I remembered on Telegraph. I was hoping he’d see it all himself, how ridiculous this whole thing was turning out to be. I kept waiting for it to sink in. It didn’t.
I drove him back to the motel. When I turned out the light, he stayed awake, staring at the ceiling. From outside our room came the sounds of the traffic passing on Michigan Avenue. Then he started talking again. It was just his voice in the darkness, like that first night, the night he flew all the way up to Paradise to find me, waited until he was lying on my couch in the darkness to tell me why he had flown all the way up there.
“The day before the game,” he said, “Maria and I got a hotel room. Maria told her parents that she was sleeping over at a friend’s house. We got this room and we made love. For the first time, really. The first and only time. But then afterward… That’s what I really remember, Alex. I was just sitting on the bed, thinking about the game the next day. It was like my whole future was hanging in the balance, you know? I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep much that night. And Maria, she was just sitting there in a chair. And she was drawing a picture of me. She loved to draw. Did I tell you that?”