“What did you say you’re doing now?” I asked him. “Commercial real estate?”
“Yeah, you know, office buildings, retail space, that kind of stuff. My father started the business, did pretty well with it. I never thought I’d take it over, but when he died… I mean, I was already out of baseball.”
“What do you do, build these places?”
“No, just make money off them,” he said. “Buy and sell, talk on the phone, have lunch with the investors. That kind of thing.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
“It has its moments,” he said. “Good and bad. Hey, I told ya about my youngest son, Terry, right? The catcher?”
“You mentioned him, yes.”
“God, you should see him hit the ball, Alex.”
“You mentioned that he’s a good hitter.”
“He drives that ball. Not bad behind the plate, but he’s not a human sponge yet like you were.”
“Uh-huh.”
“That was you, Alex. The human sponge.”
I rubbed the swelling over my right eye. Human sponge indeed.
“How long until we get to Lansing?” he said.
“Three hours maybe.”
“God,” he said. “Three hours.” He laid his head on the back of the seat. Within five minutes, he was snoring. I kept drivin
“Wake up,” I said.
“What? What is it?”
“We’re here,” I said. “We’re in Lansing.”
“Lansing?”
“Yeah, the capital of Michigan,” I said. “Didn’t you learn your state capitals in school?”
He sat up and looked out the window. The truck was parked in a lot next to a complex of tall gray buildings. “Wow, we’re here already?” he said. “I slept that whole time? You should have woken me up and made me drive some.”
“It was the only peace and quiet I’ve had in two days,” I said. “Come on, let’s go.”
We left the truck and went into the first building.
“Where are we going?”
I looked through the papers Leon had sent with us. “State Office of Vital Records,” I said. We looked on the board by the elevator and found it. VITAL RECORDS, THIRD FLOOR. On the ride up the elevator, Randy started humming.
“Positive thoughts,” he said. “Confidence. Charm.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Make sure you mention that you’re a private investigator. That should help, right?”
“I’m not telling anybody I’m a private investigator,” I said.
“Well, then just look him right in the eye and smile. Or her.”
It was a her. Maybe fifty years old, glasses on a chain around her neck. She looked like the attendance officer at a junior high school.
“Can I help you gentlemen?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I’m looking for some information.”
She looked at me.
“Here’s my card,” I said. I took out one of the cards Leon had given me, the cards with the two guns on them. I put it down on the counter in front of her.
She looked down at it, then back up at me. “What did you do to your eye?” she said.
“A little accident,” I said.
“What kind of information?”
“There’s a woman,” I said. “We believe she was born in Detroit in 1952. Her name is Maria Valeska. Or was. It may have changed.”
“Nice name,” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “We were wondering if we could see her birth certificate. It’s extremely important.”
“Birth certificates are not public records,” she said. “Not in the state of Michigan.”
“I understand that,” I said. “I was hoping…”
She kept looking at me.
“You see, it’s very important…”
Nothing. She was a statue.
“We really need to find her…”
A statue carved in white granite. Wearing a blue cashmere sweater.
“I understand that marriage licenses are public,” I finally said. “Could we try that?”
“Year of marriage,” she said.
“I’m not quite sure of that,” I said. I looked back at Randy.
“After 1971,” he said.
“After 1971,” I said.
“It costs seventeen dollars to do a search on a particular year,” she said. “Four dollars for each additional year.” She produced a form and put it on the counter. “Fill this out.”
“Thank you,” I said. I took the form and looked at it. The first line was for the name of the bride, the second for the name of the groom. “Do you need the groom’s name?”
“Yes,” she said. “We need the groom’s name.”
“We don’t know the groom’s name,” I said. “We’re not even sure she got married in Michigan. Or anywhere, for that matter. We were just hoping…”
She went into the statue routine again.
“Please,” I said. “If you can’t help us, just say so.”
“I can’t help you,” she said.
So we left. I left my card there on the counter to torture her with guilt.
“You could have tried helping me,” I said as we rode the elevator back down to the ground floor. “You could have thrown that famous Randy Wilkins charm into the situation.”
“Wouldn’t have worked,” he said. “That woman was impervious to charm. You did good, though. You were smooth.”
“I’m gonna smack you,” I said.
He laughed. “Come on, I’ll buy you lunch. We can celebrate our first total failure. Then it’s on to Detroit!”
It was almost three o’clock in the afternoon when we made Detroit. The interstate goes straight into the middle of the city, then takes a big side step west, right behind Tiger Stadium, then remembers what it’s supposed to be doing and turns back south toward Toledo. At least that’s what it once did, before they started tearing everything up to make room for the new stadium. With a big part of 1-75 closed, we had to bail out at Gratiot and make our way down the side streets to Michigan Avenue. It was a strange feeling, driving around my old hometown. There’s no traffic in the Upper Peninsula, no streets lined with buildings on either side for miles on end.
“One of the new casinos is gonna be over there,” I said as we drove past First Street.
“Casinos in Detroit? Really?”
“The first one doesn’t open until this summer,” I said. “So relax.”
“And a new stadium, too?”
“Next year,” I said.
“It’s like they’re tearing up the whole city and starting over,” he said.
“We might as well get a motel around Corktown,” I said. “If that’s where the old address is.”
“Get someplace nice,” he said.
“We’re just gonna sleep there,” I said. “We don’t need the Hilton.”
“Get the Hilton,” he said. “I’m paying for it.”
“Next stop, the Hilton,” I said. As soon as the stadium was in sight, I pulled into the first motel I saw. The Motor City Motor Court.
“What is this supposed to be?” he said.
“The Detroit Hilton,” I said. “Go check us in.”
While he went inside, I stood in the parking lot, trying to shake out all the kinks in my body from the six hours in the truck. Across the street, a block away, the southeast comer of Tiger Stadium rose into the afternoon sky like a gray battleship. The Tigers were still losing ball games out on the West Coast, would go to Minnesota to lose some more games there, then finally come back here to Detroit for their first loss at home.
“There she is,” Randy said when he came back into the parking lot. “They’re not really going to tear it down, are they?”
“I don’t think they can,” I said. “It’s a national landmark. But they won’t be playing baseball there anymore.”
He shook his head. “Greatest ballpark I’ve ever seen.”
�
�I know,” I said. Tiger Stadium doesn’t look like much from the outside. Just tall gray walls, rounded at the corners. When you go into the place, you realize why it has to look that way from the outside. Because the inside is a world of its own. It’s totally enclosed, the only stadium in the majors with an upper deck that goes all the way around the field. With the overhang in right field, where Al Kaline played. The light towers on the roof, where Reggie Jackson hit that ball in the 1972 All-Star game. The broadcast booths in back of home plate, so close to the field that the guys up there can hear the catcher and umpire talking to each other. Eighty-one more home games, and then it would be all over.
“Come on,” I said. “While we still have some of the day left. Show me where she lived.”
We walked east on Michigan Avenue. There was a big car dealership across from the stadium, and then a little corner bar and a dry cleaner. We passed a block of little brick houses, where during the season the owners would sit outside on their lawn chairs, watching the people make their way toward the stadium. Some of them would make a little money by letting cars park in their driveways. With the new stadium opening up next season, that was about to end.
“Leverette Street,” Randy said. “It’s right up there. God, Alex, this feels kinda weird.”
“I wonder why,” I said.
“Lindell AC is one more block down, right? Whaddya say we go have a drink first?”
“We’ll go there later,” I said. “Show me the house.”
We walked south on Leverette, right into the heart of old Corktown. It used to be a Polish neighborhood, and this street was probably the high end of the market back then. Most of the houses were two-story Victorians, and every single one of them looked restored and freshly painted. A sign on the comer read CORKTOWN, DETROIT’S OLDEST NEIGHBORHOOD.
“God, where’s the house?” he said. “It was two forty-one. That much I remember. Here on the left side, in the middle of the block, close enough to Michigan Avenue that you could see the sign…”
We passed a man mowing his lawn, which, from the size of the lawn, would take him about three minutes. There were thousands of blocks just like this one all through Detroit and into the suburbs. Just enough room for a house, a driveway, and maybe five hundred square feet of lawn in the front, another thousand square feet in the back. Just like the house I had grown up in over in Dearborn. Just like the house I had bought after I got married, over in Redford. If I had stayed down here, I’d still have the same kind of house.
Some kids were out playing catch. Another kid was riding a bike. This street happened to be mostly black now, the Polish immigrants long gone. We were the only two white faces on the block, but nobody seemed to notice. Randy walked slowly. He was trying to picture the place the way it had been almost thirty years before.
The house numbers progressed from 235 to 237 to 239. And then we stopped in front of 241. Randy stood there looking at the house. It was another Victorian, like every other house on the block. It was painted a rosy sort of pink, with green trim.
“This isn’t it,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“This isn’t the house. It can’t be. There was an enclosed staircase on the right side, with a separate door.”
“I thought you said this was the address,” I said.
“It is,” he said. “I mean, it was. Two forty-one Leverette. I’m sure it was.”
A young black woman came out of the house next door, pushing a baby carriage. She didn’t look much older than seventeen.
“Excuse me!” I said. “Is this Mr. Shannon’s house?”
She just looked at us for moment. “Yeah,” she finally said.
“Can I ask you a strange question?”
“How strange?” she said.
“Did this house once have a staircase on the outside of it?”
“What are you talking about?” she said.
We walked over to her. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’m a private investigator.” I started to dig out one of my cards.
“Did somebody steal a staircase?” she said. “Is that what you’re investigating?”
“No, no, ma’am. We’re just looking for somebody who lived here about thirty years ago. We think there was a staircase on the outside of this house then.”
“Don’t know nothin’ about that,” she said.
“I understand,” I said. “How about Mr. Shannon? We’ve been trying to contact him.”
“He’s gone to see his son in St. Louis,” she said. “He’s supposed to be back today, I think. Are you two really private investigators?”
“No, just him,” Randy said. “I’m a normal citizen.”
“Well, good luck finding your staircase,” she said. There was a hint of a smile on her face as she pushed the carriage down the sidewalk.
I smacked Randy on the shoulder.
“Hey, come here, Alex,” he said. “Look at this.” He led me back to the front of Mr. Shannon’s house. “You see how there’s a little bit of extra space here on the right side? Between the house and the driveway?”
“You think they tore the staircase off?”
“They could have,” he said. He walked down the driveway, took two steps up onto a small cement front porch. He looked at the door, and then up at the window on the second story.
“This is it,” he said. “This is the house. Maria lived right up there.”
“Okay, good.”
“I can’t believe it, Alex. I’m standing right underneath her window again.”
“All right, I hear ya,” I said. “Now will you get off the man’s porch before somebody calls the police?”
“So now what?” he said when he was back on the sidewalk. “You wanna start knocking on doors?”
“We could do that,” I said. “Or we could see if Mr. Shannon gets home today, then cover the rest of the neighborhood tomorrow if we have to.”
“What time is it, about four o’clock? Why don’t we hit the city office, see if we can get lucky on her birth certificate. Maybe we’ll get a human being this time.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I said. “But it’s worth a shot.”
“We could try the library, too,” he said. “You know where that is?”
“I was a cop in this city for eight years, Randy.”
“So lead the way,” he said.
We walked back down the block, got in the truck, and headed east toward downtown. After turning onto Woodward Avenue, we were right in the middle of my old precinct.
Woodward Avenue. As I said it to myself, I felt something jump inside me. Woodward Avenue. It shouldn’t have surprised me. It was just a gut reaction. Something I could never stop, no matter how hard I tried.
Woodward Avenue.
“You okay?” Randy said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re just heading down memory lane here. And here we are. City-County Building.”
The building was down at the end of Woodward, right next to the waterfront. From where we stood, we could see the five towers of the Renaissance Center, the great metal fist of Joe Louis, the fountain in Hart Plaza. On a nice day, the sidewalks would be full of people walking up and down the river. Today, it was empty. We walked into the building, past the statue they called the Spirit of Detroit. Or as my old partner used to say, “the great big green guy holding the sun in one hand and the people in the other hand.” When the Red Wings finally won the Stanley Cup in 1997, they put a giant jersey on him. My old partner would have gotten a kick out of that, if he had been alive to see it.
“Why don’t you let me take a try this time?” Randy said.
“It’s all yours,” I said.
“Watch and learn, my friend.”
As soon as we found the city clerk’s office, I knew he had an unfair advantage. With the big windows letting in the late-afternoon sun and an assortment of Tigers and Red Wings posters all over the walls, this room was a hell of a lot nicer than the State Office of Vital Records. The young woman sit
ting at her desk looked almost happy to be working there. “Can I help you?” she said. She was smiling.
“Good afternoon,” Randy said. “We finally made it! Do you know how long we traveled to get here?”
She smiled again. “What can I-”
“What are they doing to this city, anyway?” Randy said. “Every road is closed! Construction everywhere!”
“Tell me about it,” she said. “It takes me over an hour to get to work in the morning now.” This woman was much too friendly to be working as a public servant. How she ever got through the screening process was a complete mystery.
“Last time I was here in town was 1971,” he said. “I was a pitcher with the Tigers.”
“Really?” she said. Her eyes lit up.
“I didn’t last very long in the majors,” he said. “But at least I got the shot, right?”
“Are you serious? Did you really pitch for the Tigers?”
“Long time ago,” he said. “So much has changed here. They got casinos coming in, too, isn’t that right?”
“Ah,” she said with a wave of her hand. “Don’t get me started on the casinos. That’s all we need.”
“Not a gambler, I take it,” he said. “Oh, I’m sorry. This is my friend Alex.”
I woke up out of my trance. Watching the man do his routine was downright hypnotizing. “Good afternoon,” I said.
“Alex was a Detroit police officer for-what did you say, eight years?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Back in the eighties,” he said. “Even Alex doesn’t recognize the place anymore. Ain’t that right, Alex?”
“Like a whole new city,” I said.
“I’ll tell you why we’re here,” Randy said. He moved closer to her desk and lowered his voice. “Alex is a private investigator now. Let me have one of your cards, Alex.”
I took a card out and gave it to him. He put it down on her desk while he gave the room a quick onceover. “We’re trying to locate someone,” he said. “We’re trying to help her, you understand. This could be a matter of life or death.”
“Okay…”
“Her name is Maria Valeska,” he said, letting it hang in the air, as if she were an international agent.
“That’s a nice name,” she said.
“Indeed,” he said. “The problem is, the only information we have, besides her name, is an old address. And we think we she was born here in Detroit in 1952.”
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