I mean, before he got shot? He didn’t talk to you at all?”
“Harry,” she said. “You’ve got some customers waiting on you.” She nodded her head toward two men on the other side of the bar. They were standing over two empty glasses and looking like their patience was about used up.
Harry didn’t move. He kept watching me.
“Go ahead,” she said. “I think he’s harmless. You can go ahead and frisk him if it’ll make you feel better.”
He backed away slowly and went over to the two men. He kept watching me as he poured out a couple drafts.
Maria put her hands together in front of her face. Without looking at me, she whispered something.
“I can’t hear you,” I said.
“Shhhhh,” she said in a low voice. She kept her hands in front of her face. “Just act natural. Tell me you made a mistake and then leave. In twenty minutes, I’ll go out to my car. Just follow me.”
She brought her hands down and put out her cigarette. She jabbed it in the ashtray like she was punishing it. “I’m sorry,” she said out loud as Harry came back to us. “I don’t remember a Randy Wilkins. The name means nothing to me.”
CHAPTER 16
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in my truck, watching the front door, wondering if my new friend Harry would be coming out to ask me why I was still on the premises. The sun had just come out, a rare event on any of Michigan’s shorelines in mid-April. Maria stepped out into the sunlight and stood there blinking for a moment. She was short and compact, like her brother, Leopold. But where Leopold had muscles, Maria had curves. She looked around the parking lot and saw me sitting there in my truck. She stared right at me for a long time, her head tilted a little to the side. Then she went over to her red Mustang and got in.
She pulled out of the parking lot. I followed her as she took a left toward the center of town. At the intersection, I saw Stu outside pumping gas, but he didn’t look up at either one of us. Maria took a left at the traffic light and went west, toward the shoreline. I lost sight of her for a few seconds; then when I saw her car again, it was stopped in front of the boat launch. I pulled in next to her.
She jumped out of her car, opened my passenger door, slid into the cab, and then closed the door behind her. “Tell me everything you know,” she said. She opened up a black leather bag and left her right hand inside it.
“You don’t waste time,” I said. “And do you mind telling me what kind of gun you have in that bag?”
“Somebody will see us,” she said. “Just tell me. Is he going to live?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The doctor says they’re going to operate on him. A fragment went up into his brain.”
“I can’t believe this is happening.” Her right hand stayed in the bag. I imagined a little revolver with a pearl handle. At least it wasn’t a shotgun.
“I’m supposed to call the hospital later,” I said. “The doctor may have a better idea then.”
“How do you know Randy?” she said. “You’re a friend of his?”
“I was an old teammate of his. He came to me last week and asked me to help him find you. He told me all about how he met you in Detroit, back in 1971.”
“You were his teammate then? In Detroit? I’m sorry, I’m trying to remember you…”
“No, we played ball together in Toledo. He got called up in September, but I didn’t. So I wasn’t around when he met you.”
“Why did he say he was trying to find me?”
“Maria, I don’t blame you for being careful, but I’ve had too many guns pointed at me this week. It’s starting to get to me.”
“It’s not pointed at you,” she said. “I’m just holding it.”
“Either you trust me or you don’t,” I said. “If you don’t, then get out of the truck and I’ll be on my way.”
She pulled her right hand out of the bag. For one frozen instant, I saw a flash of something white in her hand.
It was a hairbrush.
I took a breath. “Remind me to never play poker with you,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “After all I’ve been through… Well, never mind. Just tell me what he said. Why was Randy trying to find me?”
“He said some pretty crazy things. About running out on you back then, and still thinking about you all these years later. And then suddenly deciding that he had to find you again.”
“My God,” she said.
“Of course, now I know he was probably trying to scam you.”
She looked at me. She didn’t say anything.
“We ended up at your brother’s house,” I said. “You know about that. I thought it was all over. I thought he went back to California. Then I found out he came here and got himself shot.”
She looked out the window. The sun went behind a cloud, turning the lake a different shade of green.
“Maria,” I said. “I swear, I had no idea he was a criminal. Not until the chief told me.”
“You hadn’t seen him at all in what, thirty years?” she said. “You had no contact with him?”
“No,” I said.
“And then he just comes back and asks you to help him? Why did he do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Because I live in Michigan. Because I know Detroit.”
“And why did you help him?”
“I don’t know that, either,” I said. “Because he asked me to. Because I thought he was looking for you for a good reason. Or at least a harmless reason. I had no idea he was trying to scam you. Although I suppose it makes sense now. His racket is real estate, and I assume this has something to do with Zambelli-Harwood…”
She looked me in the eyes. “How do you know about that?”
“My partner,” I said. “He found an old news article. He just told me about it. The Zambelli in the name, is that you, or…”
“My husband,” she said. “My late husband. Har-wood killed him.”
I didn’t say anything. The words hung in the air.
A car drove by on the road behind us. Maria slid down in her seat.
“When we were in the bar,” I said, “why didn’t you want Harry to know you recognized Randy’s name?”
“It’s a long story,” she said. “Can you come to my house?”
“I can do that,” I said. “Are you sure you want me to? Your friends in the bar wouldn’t like it if they found out.”
“I showed you my gun, didn’t I?” She put the hairbrush back in her bag. “I’m not as good as my mother, but I think I have some sense of what’s inside a person, as soon as I meet them. I think you’re telling the truth.”
“I’ll follow you,” I said. “Lead the way.”
She got out of the truck and went to her own car, got in and pulled back out onto the road. I followed her for a half mile, until she turned left into a gravel driveway that was heavily rutted. There was an old wooden fence running along the front of the property, so I couldn’t see the house from the road. As soon as I did see it, I knew it was the biggest house in town.
The driveway snaked around to the front door, but she didn’t stop there. She kept going until the driveway stopped at the side of the house. I pulled in behind her, next to a small boat on a trailer. The plastic tarp that covered it was tied down with enough rope to withstand a hurricane.
She took me in the side door. There was a low concrete porch, and then a path that led down to a small boathouse. A late-morning wind was coming in off the lake.
“Nice house,” I said as I stepped inside. There was little room to take your coat off in, and then a large living room done up in white pine, with big roughhewn beams running across the ceiling. I saw a few nautical maps framed on the walls, and a mariner’s barometer set inside a gold wheel. Somehow, I knew she hadn’t decorated the
