The Long-Legged Fly Read online

  Betty brought the new drink around to me at the phone and I had a long draw off it. It went down like a wire brush.

  “Lewis, you’ve got to come.”

  “I can’t, Mom. The case might break any day. I’ve got to be here. But I’ll call—I’ll be in touch. You keep me posted.”

  “They’re taking him to surgery tomorrow, Lewis. They’re going to put some kind of a balloon in his heart, something that’s supposed to help him. I hoped you’d be here.”

  “I can’t. I just can’t. Not now. But I’ll be in touch.”

  “Let me give you this number,” she said. “There’s always someone here. You make friends fast when something like this happens. It’s one of the waiting rooms. We all sleep here at night. Everybody looks out for each other. Now you call, you hear? I never can get you.”

  She read off the number and I copied it down in my notebook, scrawling underneath it: Dad. Someone on the line was saying, “But I can’t wait that long, I gotta know tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be talking to you then, Mom,” I said, and hung up.

  I went over to the bar and had three straight doubles. How many of these was it that had killed Dylan Thomas? Then I scooped up my change, all but a couple of dollars, and moved on.

  Chapter Four

  “ROACHES,” I TOLD THE BARTENDER AT A hole-in-the-wall in the Irish Channel. His name was sewn over his shirt pocket, PAT, but whoever did the needlework, in cursive, left a heavy line trailing from the belly of the P to the A, so it looked more like RAT.

  In a notoriously wild city, the Channel at one time and for a long time was the wildest spot of all, scene of bars with names like Bucket of Blood, showers of bricks for encroaching outsiders, police killings. Whenever it rained, which in New Orleans was damn near always, water poured down from the Garden District just uptown onto the poor, low-living Irish here, which is probably where the name came from.

  “Other people’s roaches, other place’s roaches, run for cover when you turn the lights on. You ever seen any different? But not here, man. New Orleans roaches are more liable to drop to one knee and give out with a chorus or two of ‘Swanee.’ They’re the true Negroes, roaches are, the only pure strain that’s left, maybe. You know what happened in all them woodpiles.

  “And the damn things’ve been around forever. You’ve got fossils that are two hundred and fifty thousand goddam years old and the roaches in there are exactly like the ones we could go pull out of your bathroom over there right now. They don’t have to change, man; they can live off of anything. Or nothing.

  “Whatever we dream up to kill them, they learn to live off it. One of them can live for a month off the glue on a postage stamp, for godsake. Cut off their heads and they go on living, even—only finally they starve to death.

  “And here’s something else. Found this in a book published at least a hundred years ago. This was like the Raid of its day, what everybody did. You were supposed to write the roaches a letter, this book says, and you’d say something like, ‘Hey, Roaches, you’ve been on my case long enough, guys, so now it’s time to go bother my neighbors, right?’ Then you’d put this letter wherever the buggers were swarming. But first you’ve got to fold the letter and seal it and go through all the usual shit, the writer says. Like the roaches are gonna know if you get it wrong, if you don’t put on enough postage or whatever. And then he tells you: ‘It is well, too, to write legibly and punctuate according to rule.’ ”

  “You’re drunk, mister,” the barkeep said.

  “I am most assuredly that very thing,” I said with the best Irish lilt I could manage. Just talking was hard enough at that point. “It’s been a long siege.”

  “Have to cut you off, buddy. Sorry.”

  “No problem. I was cut off a long time ago. If you only knew.” I pointed more or less at the stitching on his shirt. “You Irish?”

  “Hell no. Named for my mother, Patricia: Pat.” Then, with a grin: “You?”

  “It’s converted this last St. Pat’s Day I was. Hopin’ just a bit of the luck-of-the might rub off?”

  “And has it?”

  “Not so much as a smudge, I’m sorry to tell you. Not a smudge.”

  And scuttled home in the darkness.

  Chapter Five

  A CASE—THAT’S WHAT I’D TOLD MOM AND VERNE both. But the case had holes you could drive a transport truck through and the break I’d mentioned was as far away as the end of Pinocchio’s nose on Liar’s Day. I thought about the kids playing cops and robbers down by the office. Was that all I was doing?

  I mixed a cup of instant, poured in bourbon, and stretched out on the swayback couch in my half of a shotgun house on Dryades. It was five in the morning. My tongue felt like someone’s dirty glove. Little men with jackhammers and earth-moving machinery were rebuilding the inside of my head.

  At that time of day, Joe’s was filled with Greek sailors and the kind of working girls who hustle day and night just to break even. There were a few scattered businessmen off Canal Street—after all, the place is an institution—and over in the corner, an old man with things bent all around his wrists, neck and ankles. They looked like old spoons, bits of copper wire, just about anything you’d pick up off the street. He was drinking bottled Dixie. He had a scraggly, filthy beard and hair that crept out like vines from beneath a wool knit cap. The place also had more than the usual number of flies, brought there by Joe’s free lunch, which consists of hard-boiled eggs (heavy on the hard) and chopped ham sandwiches out of a can.

  I was halfway through my third Jax, sitting alone at one end of the bar, when I looked up and saw these two dudes walk in. Both wore modified military attire, fatigues and caps, with hightop black tennis shoes. One was deep, ebony black, the other coffee-colored. Café au lait.

  They looked the place over, then went to the far end of the bar and said something to Bobbie. She waved a hand my way and they followed the hand.

  “Lewis Griffin?” the black one said.

  I held up my hand for another Jax. Bobbie nodded.

  “Buy you fellows something?”

  “We don’t pollute our bodies with spirits,” Café au Lait told me.

  “Mr. Griffin,” the black one said, “we are in need of your professional services.”

  Bobbie brought the beer and I slid a dollar across the bar toward her.

  “Sit down?” I said.

  “We’ll stand.” I was sure they knew where the back door was, too.

  “Have it your way.” Bobbie brought change. “Now, what is it that I can do for you?”

  “It’s a matter of some discretion.” The black one seemed to be a natural leader. He looked around the bar. “We would prefer to speak in less public a place.”

  “It’s here or nowhere,” I said. Never give a client the advantage; he’ll think he owns you. Besides, I was thirsty.

  “We have been looking for you for three days,” Blackie said. “Your office, your apartment. A man in your business should make himself more easily available.”

  “Those who need me usually find me, sooner or later.”

  “I suppose we are proof of that statement, yes?” So Café au Lait hadn’t lost his tongue after all.

  “As I say, it’s a matter of some discretion. Your name has come to us from mutual friends. And it’s a matter which only a brother could handle.”

  That “brother” should have warned me; I should have got up then and left. And if we had any mutual friends, I’d turn in an honest tax report next year.

  “You’ve heard, of course, of Corene Davis?” Blackie said. At mention of her name, Café au Lait raised his open hand to chest level, then closed it. The old man with the spoons looked our direction and snorted. I knew how he felt.

  “I subscribe to Time like everybody else,” I said.

  “We—by which I mean, our group—we had arranged a speaking engagement for her here in New Orleans. It was a matter of considerable dispute, as you may realize. A black leader, and a black woman w
hat’s more, in the deepest South.” He looked around the bar again. The three of us were the only black faces in it. I suppose that proved something to him. “Many of her supporters thought it was foolish.”

  Bobbie brought me another beer. Maybe she figured I needed it.

  “At any rate,” Blackie went on, “it was to have been at the Municipal Auditorium, the eighteenth of August, at eight P.M. She was coming in early that morning to speak to some student groups at Tulane and Loyola. She did that wherever she went. Spoke to students, I mean.”

  “The force of the future,” Café au Lait added. I looked at his hand. It remained still.

  “At ten-fifteen on the night of the seventeenth,” Blackie continued, “Corene Davis boarded a night flight to New Orleans at Idlewild. It was a nonstop flight, and a number of her supporters saw her aboard. When we met her plane here in New Orleans—we are a local group, you understand—she was not aboard. Nor has she been heard from since.”

  “And you fear… .”

  “That she has been kidnapped.”

  “Or worse,” Au Lait added.

  “She has many enemies among the establishment,” Blackie said. “Surely you can understand that.”

  “I can indeed. But you need the police, not me.”

  The two looked at one another.

  “It’s a joke,” Au Lait finally said.

  Blackie looked back at me. “Surely you know that nothing good can come of that, Mr. Griffin.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do.” I finished the Jax in front of me and signaled Bobbie for another one. “Just what is it you expect from me?”

  “We expect you to find her, man.”

  “Or find out what’s happened to her,” Au Lait said.

  “I see. Has there been a ransom note, anything like that?”

  “There’s been nothing, man. And lots of it.”

  “And you haven’t released this to the press, the police. How did you explain her missing the engagement?”

  “We covered, friend, we covered.” I suspected Blackie didn’t like me a hell of a lot. “No one knows about this but our people in New York, and us. And now you.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found—you consider that?”

  “Corene? She was devoted, Griffin. Righteous.”

  I shrugged. “Just a thought. Okay, I’ll give it a look. I’ll need some information from you.” I got out my notebook and took down the flight number, departure and arrival times. “She ever been to New Orleans before?”

  He shook his head. “What do you want to know that for?”

  “People tend to repeat themselves. They’ll stay where they’ve stayed before, eat the same kind of foods. But mostly I’m just trying to get the feel of the thing. Her habits, hobbies, things she liked.”

  “Her work was her life.”

  “Right on,” Au Lait said.

  The businessmen had drifted out the door, along with several sailors and some of the girls. Their places had been taken by a pimp in a yellow suit and two guys who looked like narcs. The old man with the spoons and things had gone to sleep with his head back against the wall. Flies were dipping wings over his open mouth.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said. “How do I find you?”

  Blackie looked at Au Lait, back at me. Then he rattled off an address and phone number. “I’m never there, though. Leave a message.”

  I copied them down in the notebook, writing at the top of the page: Corene Davis.

  “That all you need?” Blackie said.

  “I get fifty a day and expenses, no questions asked. Two days up front. Any problem with that?”

  “None.” Blackie handed over a hundred-dollar bill that looked as though it had been folded tightly into someone’s watch pocket and sent through the washer a few times.

  They walked to the door and damned if they didn’t turn around together at the last minute and, raising their hands to chest level, close them into fists. It looked like it was choreographed. Then they went out the door. Damned if I know how they’d lived this long. If the cops don’t get you, the crackers will.

  But anyhow, I had a case.

  Power to the people.

  Chapter Six

  THE FIRST THING I’D DONE WHEN I got back to the office—there was the usual accumulation of mail and messages—was clip a recent picture of Corene Davis from a copy of Time. Then I put in a call to United at Idlewild, finally got through, and was informed that, yes, Miss Corene Davis had had a coach reservation on Flight 417 for New Orleans. She had boarded shortly before takeoff, seat 15-A. The man I talked to remembered her, her being so famous and all. He’d been working the desk that day. She had two pieces of luggage. He gave me the name of the captain and stewardesses on the flight. I thanked him and hung up.

  I sat there for a while watching twilight seep up around everything. The sky had a red tint to it, and everything smelled of magnolia and the river.

  Finally I called downtown and asked for Sergeant Walsh. After a long wait, he came on.

  “Don? Lew,” I said. “I want to drop a name on you. Corene Davis.”

  “That bitch.” There was a long pause. “You know I had half this force turned out for security—you’d have thought the president was coming to town. And what happens? The broad doesn’t show.” Walsh turned away from the phone for a moment, said something, was back. “Why?”

  I wasn’t sure how much I could tell him. Dissembling had kept us alive and more or less intact for a long time when nothing else could.

  “I’d been looking forward to hearing her talk,” I said after a moment. “Wondering what happened.”

  “Great. I’ve got fourteen unsolved homicides, the makings of a race riot out in Gentilly of all places, the commissioner and assorted councilmen on my tail like a hive of bees—big, hairy, mad bees—and you call up to chat about some trouble-making yankee bitch nigger.”

  “Then I guess you better get to work,” I said. “But you know, Don, these days that kind of talk’s a little … passé, if you know what I’m saying.”

  A pause. “Okay, Lew. So she ain’t no bitch.”

  “Knew you’d see it my way.”

  “Sorry. Bad day. So what’d’ya need?”

  “Just what happened.”

  “Hell, I don’t know, that’s the thing. She got sick in New York or something, was what we heard. Maybe she just thought better of it. Anyway, she didn’t make it down here. My men waited for the next flight, almost two hours. When she wasn’t on that one either, they gave up and went home.”

  It was beginning to feel like that’s what I’d better do, too.

  “Anything else?” Don was saying.

  “One thing, quickly. An outfit on Chartres called the Black Hand. Check it out for me?”

  “Don’t have to. Part Panther, part populist politics. There’s money from somewhere, and pull. Into everything. Run by a guy named Will Sansom, now calls himself Abdullah Abded. Lew, you’re not mixed up with them, are you?”

  “Curious, is all. Met a couple of their people.”

  “Well. That it, then?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Don’t forget you owe me dinner and a drink. If I can ever get out of this bear pit long enough.”

  “I hadn’t forgotten, Don. Give me a call. And hey, thanks.”

  Night had just about taken over, and lights were coming on block by block, the city’s dark mask falling into place. In the next few hours those streets would change utterly.

  Big money, Don had said. Hand in everything. Not my league at all. Just what the hell had I got myself into?

  Chapter Seven

  NOW TWO WEEKS HAD PASSED AND I had some idea what I’d got myself into, but I wasn’t any closer to finding Corene Davis. And maybe I was as close as I was going to get.

  I got up and dumped the rest of the coffee, lit a cigarette.

  I had a feeling she’d made it to New Orleans. A hunch. I’d played them before and won at least as often as I’d lost
.

  I’d made the rounds with my clipped picture. No one had seen her. I’d been visited twice by Blackie and Au Lait. They hadn’t seen her either.

  What the hell, maybe she was sick in New York. Maybe she was kidnapped. Or maybe she was dead in a warehouse somewhere.

  About all I’d really accomplished was to learn something about Corene Davis. It’s strange how little is left of our lives once they’re rendered down, once they’ve started becoming history. A handful of facts, movements, conflicts; that’s all the observer sees. An uninhabited shell.

  She was born in Chicago in 1936. Her father picked up what work he could, not much, all of it hard and hardly paid, her mother was a midwife, later a practical nurse. She’d gone to the University of Chicago on scholarship, become something of a student protest leader, then moved on to Columbia for graduate work, where she’d continued her protest activities while simultaneously becoming active (rare then for grad students) in student government. She had been investigated about that time, she claimed, by the FBI and, she suspected, CIA. Stood watching them tap her phone from a pole at the end of the block and took them iced tea when they climbed back down. But it wasn’t until publication of a revised version of her master’s thesis as Chained to Ruin that she’d become a full-fledged black leader. And so she’d made the round of talk shows and lecture circuits, been written about (as though the writers had encountered utterly different women) in everything from Ebony to The New Republic, and generally become a voice for her, our, people. A second book, on women’s rights, was in the works. She had light skin (“She could almost pass for white,” as one reporter put it), wore her hair clipped short, stood five-six, weighed in at one-ten, neither smoked nor drank, was vegetarian.

  And had the capacity, it seemed, to vanish into thin air.