Steve Hamilton - The hunting wind

“I don’t know about that,” I said. “Maybe.”

“And Maria,” he said. “I swear to God, Alex, she knew me just as well as you did. It didn’t matter that we only spent a week and a half together. No matter how long ago it might have been. Hell, it doesn’t even matter that I didn’t know her real name.”

Another silence, and then another truck rumbling by in the night.

“No offense, Alex,” he said. “You both knew me just as well, but she wins the evening gown competition.”

I laughed. What else was I going to do?

“Do you think we’ll find her?” he said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t put money on it at this point.”

“Do you think we should stop looking?”

“Don’t ask me that,” I said. “Not unless you want the truth.”

‘Tell me.”

“Randy, I’ve been telling you all along that this is crazy. I know you don’t want to hear that. And I know that if I had stayed home, you would have come down here by yourself. So I figured I had nothing to lose. A couple days hanging out with my old teammate, just to see what happens. But now I think you should stop. I really do. I think this is a bad idea.”

Another long silence. Another truck passing outside, and then the sound of him breathing in the dark.

When I woke up the next morning, Randy wasn’t there. His bag was still in the room, and when I looked out the window, I could see my truck parked in the lot. So I figured he couldn’t have gone too far.

I took a shower and got dressed, went down to the motel lobby and sat there reading the paper for a while. Then I gave up waiting for him and went outside. It was an overcast April day in Detroit, with a fine mist in the air that worked its way into your lungs and through your clothes.

I found him on Michigan Avenue, sitting on a bench across from Tiger Stadium.

“Good morning,” I said as I sat down next to him. “Not a real nice day to be sitting out here.”

“I just wanted to look at this place one more time,” he said.

“You planning on going somewhere soon?”

He smiled and shook his head. “I’ll let you go home, Alex. I’ve kept you away too long already.”

“I’m sure Jackie’s managing quite well without me,” I said. “Hell, he probably feels like he’s on vacation.”

He looked back up at the gray wall of the stadium. “You know, if I had gotten Rettenmund out instead of walking him, then I would have had two outs, with Boog Powell coming up. I would have been in a whole different frame of mind. The whole game could have gone my way at that point.”

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to argue with him, or tell him to forget about it.

“And then after the game,” he said, “I would have gone out to celebrate with Maria.”

“Randy…”

“Maria Valenescu,” he said. “Anyway, you can’t undo the past, right? Only a fool would even try.”

“Let’s go, Randy.”

I took him back to the motel so he could put some dry clothes on. When we got to the room, the message light on our phone was blinking. I called the desk. A Mr. Leon Prudell had called, they said, and left a message to please call him back.

“What do you have for us, Leon?” I said when I got him on the line.

“Not a whole lot. I’ve only found three Valenescus in the entire country. They’re all in New York City. I don’t see any Gregor or Arabella or Leopold or Maria. It’s worth calling these numbers, though. There might be a connection. You want to call, or should I?”

“I’m not sure we’ll need them,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ah hell, give me the names,” I said. “I’ll call you back later.”

“All right, let me know how it goes!”

I thanked him and hung up. Randy came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his neck.

“He found three Valenescus,” I said. “You want me to call them?”

“It’s up to you,” he said. He sat down on the bed.

I dialed the first number and asked if they knew any of the four names. They didn’t.

I dialed the next number. Same question. Nothing.

I dialed the last number. Whoever answered couldn’t speak English very well. I think I got the idea across, and the answer seemed to be a firm no.

“No go,” I said when I hung up.

“Okay,” he said. “Time to pull the plug. Let me give Leon a call so I can thank him myself.”

I didn’t say anything. I sat there with the phone still in my hand.

“We played it out,” he said. “That was our last card. What else could we do now, anyway?”

“Just hold on,” I said. “Give me a minute here.” I grabbed the Yellow Pages. “How old would her parents be right now?”

He looked at me. “What are you doing?”

“Humor me,” I said. “How old would they be?”

“Eighties at least. Maybe nineties.”

“Like the Meisners,” I said. “So maybe they’re living in the same kind of place right now.”

“Assuming they’re still alive, and assuming they’re still in the area, then yes.”

I looked up “Nursing Homes” again. I had just seen the same pages the day before, when we found the Peach Tree Senior Community.

“Alex, you’re the one who told me this is a bad idea.”

“I know,” I said. “I just want to do this one thing. Otherwise, it’s gonna bother me.”

“You’re gonna call every one of them, Alex? How many are there?”

“A lot,” I said. “This might take awhile. Why don’t you go get us some breakfast?”

A couple of hours later, I dialed the last number. I went through the routine for the hundredth time. Ask for Mrs. Valenescu, figuring there would be more chance of her being alive than her husband. In the obituaries, it’s always men who are survived by their loving wives. The women die alone. Even if I was wrong on that, they’d probably catch me on it and tell me that there was no Mrs. Valenescu there but that there was a Mr. Valenescu. The name would stick out in their mind.

“Okay, thank you,” I said, and hung up. I stood up and stretched.

“You’re something else, you know that?” Randy said.

“It was worth a shot,” I said.

“Thanks, Alex. Now we can stop.”

“Not so fast,” I said. “I got one more idea.”

“Now what?”

“Her brother,” I said. “What did he do for a living in 1971?”

“He was a housepainter. Like his father.”

“Mr. Meisner said he was good at it, right?”

“Yeah, so?”

“So what do you think he’s doing for a living right now?”

“I suppose he could still be a housepainter.”

“Let’s say he is,” I said. “Do you think he still lives around here?”

“He might.”

I grabbed the Yellow Pages again. “I don’t see him listed here under ‘Paint Contractors,’ but that doesn’t mean much. Most of those guys just work on word of mouth. So let’s say that’s what he does. What do you think he’s doing right now?”

“Painting something?”

“Okay,” I said. “You think he still makes people call him Leopold?”

“I would bet on it, yeah.”

“So what happens when Leopold runs out of paint?”

“He buys more paint.”

“He buys more paint,” I said. “And where does he buy it?”

“At a paint store?”

“And how about next week,” I said, “when he needs more paint?”

“At a paint store?”

“At the same paint store,” I said. “I see about forty listings here for the whole Detroit metropolitan area. Why don’t you go get us some lunch?”

When he was gone, I started working through the numbers. It was a long shot, but I’d be thinking about it for weeks if I didn’t give it a try.