“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,” Leon 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.