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,” 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.”
