“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.
Jackie was right. I am the biggest sap on the planet.
It was dark by the time we left. If Randy was cold, he didn’t show it. He was humming to himself all the way out to the truck.
“You guys really have casinos up here?” he said. “Real casinos?”
“The Indians do,” I said. “The Sault tribe has the Kewadin here in town, and the Bay Mills tribe has a couple out on the reservation.”
“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?”
