The Hunting Wind: An Alex McKnight Mystery (3 page)

He stopped and took a drink again. A born showman.

“So what happened?” Jackie said.

“Boog Powell hits it into the upper deck.” He took another drink and gave everybody a chance to groan.

“Did they pull you out of the game?”

“No,” Randy said. “They didn’t. The pitching coach came out and talked to me. Then Frank Robinson
came up and I threw the slinky again. Freehan didn’t even call for it. I just threw it. Robinson hit it onto the roof in left field. Now it’s three to nothing. Freehan comes out and just about tears my head off. Tells me the next time I throw that pitch, he’s gonna break me in half. They’ve got two guys working in the bull pen already, and I’m in a daze by then. I walked Hendricks and then I walked Brooks Robinson, and it was just like a nightmare. I kept looking into the dugout, waiting for Billy Martin to come out and get me. But he’s just sitting there looking at me. With that look on his face like he’s got a bad case of gas. I walked Davey Johnson, and now the bases are loaded. Still, Martin’s just sitting in that dugout. So Mark Belanger comes up. And I’m thinking, Okay, finally, here’s the one guy in the lineup who doesn’t hit. I’m gonna settle down and get this guy and get myself out of this. First pitch, Belanger hits this high pop-up down the left-field line. Any other stadium in the world, it’s an easy out, but this is Detroit, so it sneaks over the fence. A grand slam. By Mark fucking Belanger. So finally, Billy Martin comes out and he says to me, ‘Okay, that’s enough, kid. We’re gonna run out of baseballs.’ ”

When he stopped, nobody said anything. It was almost thirty years ago. Billy Martin was dead now. But you could still imagine what it must have felt like.

“So I gave up seven runs in one inning,” Randy said. “Actually in one-third of an inning, because I only got one out. My lifetime ERA is 198. You can look it up.”

And then he laughed. It broke the spell, and gave everyone else in the room permission to laugh with
him. We had a few more beers. We talked some more—about what he had been doing since leaving baseball. Something about him selling commercial real estate, something about coaching baseball at a local high school. More about his divorce, his kids, especially his young son the catcher. He talked a lot that night, and made everybody around him feel glad to be there. Which was always his genius.

But he still never did tell me why he was there.

I had to wait to hear it. Back in my cabin, Randy sleeping on my couch, me in my bed because he wouldn’t hear of kicking me out of it. And he didn’t want to sleep in one of the other cabins, either. He wanted to sleep on the couch.

“Just like the old days, huh?” he said after the lights were out. “Just you and me.”

“That’s not a very comfortable couch, is it?” I said.

“It’s perfect,” he said. “Just like the beds we used to sleep in when we were on the road. You remember?”

“I remember,” I said, and for a moment I was back in a small-town motel room, listening to my crazy roommate talk half the night away.

“So you want to hear it?” he said.

“Hear what?”

“Why I came all the way out here.”

“I figure you’d get to it when you were ready.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about 1971 lately,” he said. I couldn’t see him in the darkness. There was only the sound of his voice. Maybe that’s the way he
wanted it. Just his voice and not having me look at him while he told me.

“About the game?”

“Not so much the game,” he said. “Everything else that happened. You know, that was the best time of my life. Being called up to the big leagues, getting to go to Tiger Stadium, wearing the uniform, getting to sit in that dugout. You know, those dugouts in Detroit are
tiny.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Go on,” I said. “Tell me what you’re gonna tell me.”

“There was a lot going on that week. Outside of the ballpark, I mean. I’d never been to Detroit before. There was a lot to see.”

“In Detroit?”

“All around Detroit,” he said. “They’ve got a great art museum there, a pretty nice zoo. They’ve got that—what do you call it, the Boblo boat?”

“The Boblo boat,” I said. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”

“You ever go on that?”

“Sure, when I was a kid.” It was a big old-fashioned riverboat that would take you down the Detroit River to an amusement park on an island.

“And Greenfield Village? And the Henry Ford Museum? I’m going to all these things, and it’s like everything is just great because I’m going there as a major-league baseball player. I mean, it’s not like anybody’s asking me for my autograph. Nobody even recognizes me. But for the first time in my life, I felt
like I was somebody important, you know? Everything was just . . . perfect.”

“What was her name?” I said.

A long silence. “Maria.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “The museums, the zoo, the Boblo boat . . .”

“With Maria, yes.”

“So what happened?”

“When I got shelled in that game, I sort of wasn’t myself for a few days. I didn’t want to see her. I didn’t want to see
anybody.”

“So you didn’t see her again?”

“No.”

“And now, it’s been almost thirty years . . .”

“I want to find her.”

“Randy, you can’t be serious.”

“I want to find her, Alex.”

“You came all the way out here . . .”

“To ask you to help me, Alex. You’ve got to help me find Maria.”

The woodstove almost killed him the next morning. Five hundred pounds of cast iron came hurtling off the back of my truck, turning the wooden ramp into splinters. If he had been a half a second slower, Randy would have been flattened like piecrust under a rolling pin.

“I told ya those boards wouldn’t be able to take it,” he said. “Good thing I still have the reflexes of a jungle cat.”

I had already torn the old woodstove, worthless piece of crap that it was, out of my second cabin and hauled it away to the dump. When I bought the new one, they wanted three hundred dollars to deliver and install it, so I told them just to put it in the back of my truck. It sat there for two weeks under a plastic tarp, waiting for me to figure out a way to move it. This was a great source of amusement for Jackie, and he never missed a chance to ask me if I was still hauling it everywhere I went. Jackie would have helped me himself, he said, for a flat fee of $350.

When Randy and I had finally muscled the thing into the cabin, he stood with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. “You see, Alex,” he said. “I knew coming here was a good idea. It’s already paying off.”

He hadn’t said a word about Maria that morning. I figured he’d get to it when he was ready.

“It feels good, doesn’t it?” he said.

“What feels good?”

“Stuff like this,” he said. “Having to use your body again.”

“Yeah, I feel great,” I said, rubbing my shoulder.

“You still got your glove?”

“What glove?”

“Your catcher’s glove.”

“Yeah, in my closet. Why?”

“And a ball?”

“Oh no,” I said. “No way.”

“Come on, while we’re warm. Let’s toss a few.”

“You gotta be kidding.”

“When’s the last time you threw a baseball?”

I had to think about that one. Before I could answer, he was out the door.

“Come on, McKnight!” He was already jogging down the road. “I’ll race you back to your cabin.”

“Will ya wait a minute already,” I said.

“All right, we’ll walk,” he said. “It’s what, a whole quarter mile?”

“Something like that.”

“And you got how many of these cabins?”

“Six in all,” I said. “The old man built them.”

We walked down the road, through the pine trees on what had once been an old logging trail. The sun was out, fighting a hard battle to warm up the heavy air. There were patches of ice that would slowly thaw during the day and then freeze again at night. It would be the middle of May before they were all gone.

“And you came up here when?” he said.

“1984,” I said. “After I left the police force.”

He nodded. “After you got shot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “After I got shot.”

“You’ve been up here ever since?”

“I spend my winters in Monte Carlo,” I said. “I have an estate there.”

“No, really,” he said. “You’ve been up here all this time?”

“Yes,” I said. “Is that so amazing?”

He shook his head. “You still got another glove besides the catcher’s mitt?”

“Yes, but we’re not going to play catch, Randy.”

Five minutes later, he had dug out my old catcher’s mitt, along with my first baseman’s glove. Every catcher has a first baseman’s glove or an outfielder’s glove, because every catcher dreams about the day when the manager sends him out into the field, where he can play standing up, without pads and a mask. We stood forty feet away from each other on the road in front of my cabin, and then he tossed the ball to me.

“Just a couple,” I said. “This is crazy.” When I threw the ball back to him, it felt like something I had never done before in my life.

“Since when do you throw like a girl?” he said.

“You’ll have to forgive me,” I said. “They took one bullet out of my rotator cuff, and the other out of my shoulder blade. You kinda lose a little zip on the ball.”

He threw it back to me. “It feels good, right? Throwing the ball again?”

“No,” I said. “As a matter of fact, it hurts a great deal.” I threw it back, trying to use the turn of my body to take the stress off my arm.

“You just need to warm up,” he said.

“By the fire, with a beer,” I said.

“I tried looking her up,” he said, throwing the ball back to me. “On my computer, I mean. Maria Valeska.”

“Randy, that was her name in 1971.” I threw the ball. The pain was starting to go away. Just a little.

“Yeah, I know,” he said. “She could be married now.”

“If she’s married . . .”

“Alex, I’m not expecting that she’s going to be waiting for me after all these years. I know she’s not sitting up in a tower like Rapunzel or something.”

“Then why—”

“Rapunzel was the one with the hair, right? The long hair?”

We kept throwing the ball.

“Although Rapunzel had blond hair, right?” he said. “Maria’s hair was jet black.”

“Randy . . .”

“Have you ever been in love with a girl with dark hair and dark eyes, Alex?”

I threw the ball. “Do green eyes count?”

“In California, there are blondes everywhere. Just gorgeous women, Alex. You look at ’em, and it’s like you’re looking right into the sun. But then you blink and you look away, and it’s like you can’t even remember what they looked like. Now a girl with dark eyes, the kind of eyes that just go right through you . . .”

“Randy . . .”

“That’s the kind of girl that gets under your skin.”

“She’s not a girl anymore,” I said. “She’s gotta be what, in her mid-forties now?”

“About that,” he said.

“Some woman in her mid-forties, probably been married for a long time, probably has a couple kids. You’re gonna walk up to her door and say, ‘Hello, remember me?’ ”

“She’ll remember me,” he said.

“And then what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know, Alex.”

“Randy, do you have
any
idea what this sounds like? I’m sorry, it just sounds so
stupid.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. He backed up a few feet and threw the ball a little faster. It hit my glove with a pop, the same sound I used to hear a thousand times a day. It had been my entire life once, just catching a baseball and throwing it back, again and again.

‘Take it easy,” I said. “I’m not wearing a mask here.”

“Just think about it,” he said. “I look her up and I can’t find her, but instead I find
you.
And it turns out you’re a private eye now.” He threw the ball again.
Pop!

“No, not really,” I said. But he wasn’t listening. I tossed the ball back.

“And you used to be a cop in Detroit, which is where she lived.”

“A long time ago.”

“And you still live in Michigan now.” Another throw, another pop in my glove.

“Detroit’s six hours away from here, Randy.”

“I could always count on you, Alex. You were my catcher, man. I mean, I threw to other guys, but you were
my catcher.”
He backed up another few feet and
threw a hard one. It gave my left hand a little tingle when I caught it.

“Okay, we’re about done here,” I said. I should have pocketed the ball right then, but instead I tossed it back to him.

“Don’t you believe in fate, Alex? With you and Leon helping me, I know this is going to work out.”

“Leon,” I said. “About Leon . . .”

“He’s expecting us today, by the way,” Randy said. “I figure we can go see him after lunch.”

“Expecting us?” I said. “For what?”

“To bring us up-to-date on the case,” he said. “I talked to him a few days ago, you know, when he told me where to find you.”

“Up-to-date?” I said. “On the case?”

“I feel a slinky coming, Alex.”

“Randy, don’t.”

“I got to throw one, Alex. I’m bringing out the slinky.” He went into a slow windup.

“Randy, so help me God, if you throw a slinky . . .”

“Get down, Alex. Here comes the slinky . . .”

I could have thrown my hands up in the air. Or turned my back to him. It probably would have stopped him. I don’t know why I went down into the position, my glove in front of me, my right hand behind my back. Maybe it was just instinct. Or maybe part of me really did want to see him throw the slinky again, one more time.

He threw the ball, dropping down into that sidearm delivery. Just like the old days.

And just like the old days, the ball bounced five feet in front of me.

I didn’t catch it, but at least I stopped it. That was the one thing I was always good at. Whatever it took, whatever part of my body I had to sacrifice, I could always stop the slinky.

“I think I hurt my arm,” Randy said. We were sitting at the bar in Jackie’s place, sitting in front of two big plates of his Wednesday corned beef.