He said nothing, so I let him just sit there. The interstate went down to one lane, so we had to slow down to a crawl. More construction.
“That’s her daughter,” he finally said.
“Were you listening to what she told you?”
“I don’t care what she said. That’s Maria’s daughter.”
I would have pulled over if I could have, but we were barely moving anyway. Two seventy-five has five lanes going north, five lanes going south. We were going south on the one lane that was still open while the construction workers tore the hell out of the other four.
“Randy, despite the fact that she told you she wasn’t, why are you so sure that she’s Maria’s daughter?”
“You’re the one who found the house, Alex. A housepainter named Leopold lives there. Is that just a coincidence?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
“No,” he said. “No.”
“She’s what, sixteen years old? Seventeen? You haven’t seen Maria since 1971, right?”
“Right.”
“You haven’t heard from her? Or about her? You know nothing about Maria after 1971?”
“Right.”
“So that girl was born around what, 1983?”
“Yeah, that sounds about right,” he said. “That’s when Maria gave birth to that girl.”
I moved the car up another few feet. Then I stopped again. At this rate, we would be on 275 until September.
“Why didn’t she seem to know that, then? You’d think she’d know who her mother is, right?”
“She knew,” he said. “She was lying.”
I didn’t say anything. There were no words to say. The man was out of his mind. I moved the car forward another few feet.
“Alex, we have to go back.”
“Oh good God,” I said. “I can’t believe this.”
“We have to,” he said. “Turn around.”
“I’m not turning around.”
“Turn the truck around.”
“Randy, so help me, I am not turning this truck around. Not that we’re moving anyway.” I could have gotten out of the truck and taken a long piss against the back tire if I had wanted to. I watched a couple construction workers walk past us.
“I have to talk to her again,” he said. “Just one more thing I have to say to her.”
“What? What do you have to say?”
He paused for a moment. “I have to tell her that it’s okay. If she’s lying because her mother told her to, then I understand. That’s all.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You think Maria told her daughter to be on the lookout for you, just in case you came back thirty years later? She’s supposed to tell you she’s not her daughter to throw you off the trail?”
“I don’t think it would be exactly like that, no.”
“Why not? Maybe she called her this morning to remind her.”
“Alex, we turn around. We go back. I apologize to the girl. We leave. You take me to the airport and I fly back home. The end.”
I had another ten minutes to think about it, while the machines slowly turned four of the southbound lanes into something that looked like the surface of the moon. Finally, we reached an exit and I took it.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You apologize for scaring the hell out of her,” I said. “And then we leave.”
“You got it.”
“I had to do it,” I said. “I just had to try out one more thing. Call the paint stores. What a wonderful idea that was.”
We worked our way back to Telegraph and took that all the way back up to Nine Mile Road. There were some traffic lights to sit through, but it was better than 1-275. We found the same subdivision again, the same street, the same house. As we pulled into the driveway, we saw the same little red compact, and next to it a white truck with a rack of ladders in back.
“Looks like Leopold is here,” he said. “This is good. Hell, he might even remember me.”
“Well, we already know it’s not the same guy,” I said. “But I almost wish it was. Hi, remember me? I got lucky with your sister when she was nineteen.”
“Yeah, that’s funny, Alex.”
We got out of the truck and went to the front door. Randy stepped in front of me and rang the doorbell.
We waited.
He rang it again.
We waited.
Finally, the door opened. A man looked out at us. He was short and dressed in white painter’s overalls.
“Leopold?” Randy said. “Is that you?”
The man just looked at us.
“I’m sorry to bother you!” Randy said. “We were here earlier. We spoke to . . . um . . .”
The man opened the door. “You spoke to Delilah.”
“I don’t suppose you remember me.”
He looked at Randy. He had dark eyes. “No, I don’t.”
“I’m, um . . .” He cleared his throat and looked at his shoes for a moment. “Leopold, I’m actually an old friend of Maria’s. Your sister.” I stood there watching the whole thing, not quite believing any of it.
The man smiled. He opened the inner door all the way, and then he opened the storm door. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Please, come in.”
Randy wiped his shoes on the little mat, and then I did the same. I followed him into the house, and when we were inside, I got my first good look at Leopold. He couldn’t have weighed more than 160 pounds, but he had arms like a boxer. That’s exactly what he looked like, one of those tough little bantamweights.
He just stood there smiling at us. And then the door moved. Another man stepped out from behind it. He was younger. And a lot bigger.
He hit me once before I could even think about what was happening. I tried to duck out of the way of the next one, but he caught me on the side of the head. I went down with my ears ringing and a metallic taste in my mouth, a mixture of blood and adrenaline and sudden fear. I didn’t know what was happening to Randy at that point. I tried to get up. The man was standing above me, ready to hit me again, I was sure, so I picked a spot in the middle of his body and drove my shoulder into it. He gave ground, but not nearly enough. I felt hands on my neck. A grip stronger than human.
He’s choking me.
I grabbed at his hands, at his arms. Useless. You’re going to die right here, Alex.
No, there’s something you can do here. One way out. Somebody showed you this a long time ago . . .
I brought my right arm up and over his wrists, got as much leverage as I could, and then dropped to the floor. He went down with me, his forearms pinned against my chest. I heard him swearing. I felt his hot breath in my face. He drove his forehead into mine and pulled his arms free.
Did it work? Did I break his wrists? Before I could catch my breath, I got my answer. He hit me on the back of the neck with either one fist or both of them, or maybe it was an iron safe. It didn’t matter. I was done fighting back.
A hand on the back of my shirt. Another one on my belt. I am lifted or dragged or God knows what and then there’s a long flight of stairs leading down. I hit every one of them, five hundred steps or a thousand. And then I am at the bottom lying facedown on something soft. It is carpeting, thank God in heaven for carpeting at the bottom of the stairs and then I am out.
CHAPTER 10
I opened my eyes. White ceilings tiles. Bright fluorescent lights. I thought about the hospital, waking up and seeing the doctor looking down at me. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” I heard them say. “We had to leave one of the bullets inside him.”
No. I wasn’t in the hospital. My eyes focused on machines. Stacks of metal plates, gleaming bars. A mirror on the opposite wall.
The basement. I was in the basement. It was filled with every kind of barbell and dumbbell and weight machine. All the fluorescent lights were on above us, so bright it hurt. My back against a wall. My left arm, hanging above my head. I looked up. A handcuff on my left wrist, looped through a D ring bolted to the wall. A
hand in the other cuff. Someone else’s hand.
Randy was sitting right next to me. “Hey buddy,” he said. “Welcome back.”
“Randy,” I said. There was blood on my lower lip. I felt with my tongue where the lip has been split open.
“How ya doin’?” he said.
“What happened?”
“You don’t look so good.”
“Randy, what the fuck happened?”
“I’m not quite sure,” he said.
I took a deep breath. Okay, I could breathe. I moved my legs. My left knee ached, but I could bend it. I moved my arms, as much as possible with the cuff on. The metal bit into the skin. I had forgotten how much handcuffs hurt when you put them on too tightly. I moved my neck. “God,” I said. “That hurts.”
“You gonna be okay?”
“I think so,” I said. “How about you?” I looked at him. He didn’t have a scratch on him.
“I’m fine,” he said. “They didn’t touch me.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “The big guy, behind the door . . .”
“He jumped on you,” Randy said. “Leopold just picked up this shotgun and pointed it at my head. I tried to stop the big guy from pounding on you, but Leopold told me he’d shoot both of us.”
“That’s beautiful,” I said. “He picks me to beat up on and throw down the stairs.”
“You were closest to him,” Randy said. “Luck of the draw.”
“Have you figured out why they’re so mad at us?” I rubbed my neck with my free hand.
“No idea,” he said. “He still can’t be that mad at me thirty years later, can he?”
“Well, whatever it is,” I said, “they obviously want us to stick around awhile. Where are they, anyway?”
“They went upstairs. They put these cuffs on us and said something about making ourselves at home.”
“Did you say anything to them? Did you ask them why there were doing this?”
“I did,” he said. “They said I shouldn’t even have to ask.”
“I don’t get it,” I said. “Does this make any sense to you?”
“There’s gotta be some way out of these, right?” He shook the cuffs.
“Stop doing that,” I said. “It hurts like hell.”
“There’s gotta be some way to pick the lock or something,” he said. “There’s always a way out.”
“These are real handcuffs, Randy. We’re not gonna pick them with the paper clip you happen to have in your pocket. This isn’t a TV show.”
“You used these things when you were a cop, right? You gotta know a way out of them.”
“There is no way,” I said. “Unless . . . Can we stand up?”
I put my weight against the wall, tried to get my feet underneath me. My knee hurt, the muscles under my right arm, my neck, my head. God, my head. I had to stop halfway up and wait for the pounding to go away.
“This thing is bolted in here pretty good,” he said, giving the D ring a tug. “We need a wrench to get it out. Do you see a wrench anywhere?”
“I’m about to pass out here, Randy.”
“If we see a wrench, maybe if one of us stretches real far . . .”
I lifted my head. Big mistake. “Oh God,” I said. “This is not good.”
“I don’t see a toolbox, do you?”
“All I see are weights,” I said. “And machines.”
“That must be how that guy got so big,” he said. “Look at all this. He’s got a whole gym down here.”
“Yeah, believe me,” I said. “He hasn’t missed many workouts.”
“That’s what this ring in the wall is for, I bet. Look, there’re a few of them here. It must be some sort of exercise thing.”
“I’m gonna sit back here,” I said. “I really have to sit down.” I rubbed some of the feeling back into my left arm, and then I slid down the wall.
He sat down next to me. We heard voices above us, but we couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“It’s a nice basement,” Randy said.
I let that one go.
“They did a nice job down here. I wonder if they did it themselves.”
“Randy, what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m just saying it’s a nice place they’ve got here. If you have to get beaten up and thrown into a basement, this is the basement you want to be in.”
“Randy, do you think this is some kind of joke?”
“I’m just trying to keep us psyched up, Alex. We can’t give in to these guys.”
“ ‘We can’t give in to these guys’? Are you really saying that? Are you out of your mind? We’re beyond giving in to these guys, Randy. They’ve got us chained up in their fucking basement and God knows what they’re gonna do to us when they come back down here. We’ve got one chance of getting out of this. We have to convince them that they made a mistake. They did make a mistake, right? They obviously think we’re somebody else. Am I right?”
“We’re just trying to find his sister,” he said. “What else would they think?”
“You tell me,” I said. But before he could answer, we heard footsteps on the stairs.
We saw the legs first, the white of Leopold’s painting overalls, and then the bigger man coming down behind him. It was my first good look at him. He was at least six foot three, and I would have guessed 240 pounds. It was hard to tell. Muscle weighs a lot more than fat, and this guy had plenty. He was wearing baggy gray sweatpants and a white shirt with the collar torn open. The standard bodybuilder’s outfit.
“Gentlemen,” Leopold said. “I trust you’re comfortable.”
“We’d like our check now,” Randy said. I would have jabbed him in the ribs, but it would have hurt me more than him.
“That’s good,” Leopold said. “That’s real good.” He had a dark eyes and a certain Mediterranean intensity about him. But his words came out in a level midwestern accent. The shotgun was tucked under his right arm.
The bigger man sat down on a weight bench. He had the same eyes, the same black hair. This had to be Leopold’s son. He was massaging his wrists. I must have hurt him when I tried that arm lock. Somehow, I didn’t feel too bad for him.
“There’s been a mistake,” I said. “I don’t know who you think we are, but—”
“I know exactly who you are,” Leopold said. He put the shotgun down on another weight bench, then rummaged through the big pockets in his overalls and came out with two wallets. “Let’s see,” he said, opening the first wallet. He held it away from his face and squinted. “Alex McKnight. Says here you’re a private investigator. Prudell-McKnight Investigations. It’s got a nice ring to it, but this business card is kind of second-rate, don’t you think? What’s this, two guns on here? They look like they’re shooting at each other.”
“I’ll tell my partner,” I said.
“Yeah, your partner,” he said. “Where is he, anyway? I assumed this man was your partner.” He looked at Randy as he opened up the other wallet. “But it turns out this is a Mr. Randall Wilkins. From Los Angeles. You came a long way, Mr. Wilkins.”
“I told you,” Randy said. “I just wanted to find your sister.”
“Yeah, about that,” Leopold said. “Tell me a little bit more about why you’d like to find my sister.”
Randy hesitated. “I met her in Detroit,” he said. “A long time ago. In 1971, when I was called up to the Tigers.”
“You were a ballplayer?” Leopold said. “For the Tigers?”
“Yes. I met her when she . . . When you were all living over on Leverette Street. You don’t remember seeing me with her? We ran into you one day on the street down by the waterfront.”
“In 1971? That’s a long time ago.”
“I just wanted to find her again,” Randy said. “I came back here to Michigan to do that. My friend Alex was helping me.”
“Your friend, the private investigator.”
“He’s a private investigator, yes,” Randy said. “But mostly, he’s just a g
ood guy helping out an old teammate. We used to play ball together.”
Leopold looked at me. “You were a Detroit Tiger, too, I suppose?”
“No,” I said. “I never got called up.”
“That’s a shame,” he said. “Isn’t that a shame, Anthony?”
“A real shame,” Anthony said. These were the first words he had spoken.
“Anthony,” Randy said. “You’re Leopold’s son?”
“I am,” he said.
“And Delilah? Is she your sister, or is she—”
Leopold took a step toward us. His eyes darkened. “Do not speak her name again,” he said. “Isn’t it enough that you come here and terrorize her? That you grill her with questions about—”
“About her mother,” Randy said. “She’s Maria’s daughter, isn’t she.”
Leopold turned away from us. He went through a pile of weights and gloves and belts and finally pulled out a dumbbell. It was about eighteen inches long. As he held it up, the polished metal gleamed.
He stopped himself. He closed his eyes for a moment. And then he stood and came back to us—slowly—the bar hanging in his right hand.
“He sent you,” he said. “Didn’t he.”
“Who?” I said.
“You know who.”
“We don’t,” I said. “Randy is looking for Maria. Like he told you. He hasn’t seen her in thirty years.”
“It’s true,” Randy said. “I just wanted to—”
“Is that the best you can do?” Leopold said. “Baseball players from thirty years ago? Let me guess. You both wanted to say you played in the major leagues, but you figured that would sound too far-fetched. So you drew straws, right?” The bar began to sway in his hand. He was slowly twirling it like a baton.
“You’re making a mistake,” I said.
“Where is he?” Leopold said. “Where is he right now?”
“We don’t know who you’re talking about,” I said.
“In Los Angeles?” Leopold said. “Is that where he is right now? He sent you out here to find her. And you hired this guy to help you.”
“No,” Randy said. “It’s like we told you.”
“How long have you been watching our house?” Leopold said. “How long have you been sitting out there on the street watching us?”
The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery Page 11
