“I feel bad,” I said. “I haven’t even seen you since the last time you saved my ass.”
“Alex, stop apologizing and tell me what’s going on.”
“All right,” I said. “Here’s the deal.” I ran through the whole story again, just as I had done for Jackie. A few more days had passed since the last time I told it. I should have felt more distance from it, but I didn’t. It still felt like something that had just happened to me.
“The funny thing is,” I said as I got toward the end of the story, “every time I say that name, Red Albright, it gets more familiar to me. I’m starting to think I’ve heard that name before, somewhere.”
“Well, you said he lives in Detroit, right? You were a police officer down there, when?”
“For eight years. Up until 1984.”
“When you were shot.”
“Yes.”
“Do you think you ran into him when you were on the force?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “I can’t remember.”
“Well, we’ll work on that name,” he said. “I still have access to my databases.”
“Doesn’t that stuff cost you money?”
He hesitated. “Yeah, a little bit.”
“You’re not thinking of going back into business, are you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m done with that. Really.”
I wasn’t sure that I should believe him. But on this day I was glad he could still think like a private investigator.
When we got to his house, I gave his wife Eleanor a hug. She was still just as big as her husband, and she still looked strong enough to bench-press me. If I had any doubts, she gave me a squeeze that almost broke a few ribs.
But as happy as she was to see me, there was something else in her eyes when she looked at me. She had always humored Leon with his private-eye dreams, until those dreams almost got him killed. Now that he was making a safe and steady living selling snowmobiles, his old partner Alex was probably not the most welcome sight.
“I’m helping him with something,” Leon said. “We’re just gonna look somebody up.”
She gave us a weak smile and a nod of her head as he took me into the guest room. He had his computer in there, along with a printer. “Have a seat,” he said. “We’ll get this thing going. Tell me the name of the individual in question.”
There he goes again, I thought. Individual in question. “The man’s name is Red Albright,” I said.
“He’s one of the deceased.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll try a P-search,” he said. “It’s a standard person search, using most of the public databases. You say he lives in Detroit?”
“DeMers said he came from Grosse Pointe.”
“I’ll try all of Michigan,” he said.
I sat there and watched him type.
“This won’t take long,” he said. “Let’s see what comes back.”
A few seconds later, he had exactly one hit to show me. “Here’s a Red Albright in Port Huron.”
“No, that can’t be it,” I said. “I mean, Red is obviously a nickname, don’t you think?”
“I’m sure you’re right. If I try Albright, though, we’re gonna get a lot of names.”
“How about his brother?” I said. “His name is Dal.”
“Probably short for something,” Leon said. “But that’s okay. We’ll look for any first name that begins with those letters.”
He typed that in and waited a few seconds. A few names came back. “Here’s one,” he said. “Dallas Albright, in Grosse Pointe.”
“That’s gotta be him,” I said. “Can you give me that address?”
“Done,” he said. He hit a button and the printer came to life.
“What else can we find out about him?”
Leon smiled at me. “What else? How about his whole life? Employment history, court records… It’s all out there, Alex. Yours is, too.”
“How long will it take?”
“Well, there are a couple of things we can try right now,” he said. He was off and running. Within the next hour, we had found out that Dallas Albright was a part owner of Albright Enterprises in Detroit, and that one of the other owners was named Roland Albright. We assumed Roland was Red. We found his home address, too, and an address for Albright Enterprises on the east side of Detroit. The one thing we didn’t find was any mention of either man in the criminal justice system. They were both clean.
We tried Hank Gannon, too. There was nothing to find, outside of his off-season address in Sudbury and his pilot’s certification.
“I’ve got a friend over at the newspaper,” Leon said. “He’ll run a LexisNexis on them if I ask real nice.”
“That’s the one that searches the newspapers, all over the country?”
“Yeah, it goes back about twenty years.”
“This is really great, Leon. I don’t know how to thank you.”
That sparkle in his eyes faded away as he stood up. “Yeah, well…” he said, looking down at his computer. “It’s no problem.”
“You miss it, don’t you.”
“It was nothing but trouble.”
“You’re good at it,” I said. “Better than I ever was.”
He laughed at that. “That’s not saying much, Alex. You always hated it.”
If only he knew, I thought. But today, what I hated was seeing him like this, trying to live a certain kind of life instead of doing the one thing he loved. I never thought I’d admit it, but I missed being his partner.
And here was another friend, come to think about it, who I hadn’t seen much of lately. Another lost connection. But this one was mostly my fault.
“I should get out of here,” I said. I looked out his window. The sun had gone down. “I think your family ate dinner without you.”
“Let’s take you back to your truck.”
I gave Eleanor another hug on the way out. The two kids were sitting at the kitchen table, doing homework. They gave me the same look their mother had given me. When Alex is around, it usually means trouble. Leon stood there putting his coat on, which made the whole scene look even worse. I was obviously dragging him out into the dark night.
“I’m just gonna run Alex back,” Leon said.
Nobody in the room was buying it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, as we got into his car. “Your family’s all worried now.”
“They’ll be all right. When I get back, they’ll see it was no big deal.”
“I shouldn’t be putting you through this,” I said. “Or them. This was a mistake.”
He drove out to the highway and headed north, back to the motor shop. “You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said. “You say Vinnie’s brother was on parole.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not trying to convince you he was getting in trouble again, but hear me out, okay?”
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve got a convicted drug offender, some men with money, and a bush pilot. Doesn’t that sort of add up to something?”
“Of course it does. If I didn’t know anything about Tom, I’d say the combination looks pretty bad.”
“Do you really know him? I mean, you know Vinnie-”
“And if I’m seeing Tom through Vinnie, I might not be seeing a very clear picture.”
He shrugged. There was nothing to say.
“What am I gonna do? Go hang around the rez and ask about Tom? Find out the real story?”
“You wouldn’t get very far with that,” he said. “You probably need to talk to Vinnie about this.”
“He’s kind of unavailable right now. Maybe in a couple days.” I didn’t feel like talking about it.
He kept driving. The road was empty. It was a lonely October night in the Upper Peninsula. Firearm season was still a week away.
“Just watch yourself, okay?” he said after a while. “I don’t have to tell you, these might be some pretty bad people.”
“I know.”
“Is your gun loaded?”
“I don’t have one anymore,” I said. “I threw it in the lake, remember?”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“I don’t need a gun.”
“You just want to find out what really happened.”
“Yes.”
“And who did this to Vinnie’s brother.”
I thought about it. “Yes.”
“Okay,” Leon said. “Whatever you say.”
I looked at him. “Don’t do it,” I said.