The Long-Legged Fly

would have led us to Cordelia. But Sanders himself seemed, as they said over at Jefferson Downs, a better horse.

Still, I didn’t really expect him to meet me. I figured it might take two or three times to convince him I was serious. And next time he wouldn’t be so easy to find.

I was half right.

Just as I was leaving the office to head for Jackson Square, the phone rang.

“Griffin? Sanders, Bud Sanders. I asked some people about you, man.”

I let it hang there.

“They said you’re crazy as shit. Someone told me you killed a man you didn’t even know up near Baton Rouge a couple of years back.”

“The girl, Sanders.”

“Look, give me some time-a day, right? I’ll do what I can.”

“Noon tomorrow, call me then or before. And Sanders?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t disappear.”

“Disappear, hell. I’m getting easier to spot all the time. Got cops sitting out in the alley waiting to go through my goddam garbage, my wife’s lawyers on me like fleas. Now I gotta have you burning my ass.”

“Reaping what you sow, Sanders.”

“And what about you, man? You ain’t no goddamn pope yourself, now, are you?”

“Noon. Tomorrow.”

I hung up.

And what about me? Back when I found Corene Davis I’d thought my anger, my hatred, was gone forever. I’d been on top for a long time now, even chipped off a little corner of the good life for myself. But it was a lie, a story that didn’t work, a piece of white man’s life, not mine; and now the anger and hatred were coming back. I had kicked that guy in the hotel room in the stomach. I had wanted to kill him, kill them both. Robert Johnson’s hellhound was nipping at my heels.

I tried a couple of numbers for LaVerne and didn’t get her, so I figured she was with a client. Not much wanting to be alone just then, not really alone, but not with anyone either, I drove over to Joe’s.

Happy hour was in full bloom. One guy had already zonked out, face down on one of the corner tables, but everybody kept buying rounds for him and lining them up in front of him. There were the usual jokes about Joe’s hard-boiled eggs. Two guys were throwing darts in the back, with a Playboy picture of Ursula Andress tacked to the board. Nipples were automatic wins.

Nancy asked me what it was going to be and I said it was going to be scotch. To see her, you’d think Joe was violating child-labor laws. She looked fifteen and was twenty-four, with three bad marriages already behind her and another (I’d met the guy, and there was no way) looming on the horizon.

She brought the scotch for me and an orange juice for herself. I’ve never known her to drink.

“How ya been, Lew? It’s been a while.”

“Ca va bien, as our friends from the swamps say.”

“Yeah, I took French in high school. Had this teacher, one of the best-looking guys I’ve ever seen. He’d sit on the edge of the desk, throw his hair back, it was real long for them days, and he’d recite these poems and things. And I’d be looking at his pants the whole time, cause he wore them real tight, and you could see his dick laying there on his left leg. Looked absolutely huge.” She took a swig of o.j. “Found out later he was queer.”

“C’est la vie.”

“How’s Verne?”

“Fine, last I saw of her.”

“She working?”

“Guess so.”

She finished off the o.j. and rinsed her glass, put it mouth-down on a towel.

“I get off at eleven, Lew.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Yeah, well, like you say: C’est la vie. Such as it is. You want another, you let me know. That one’ll be on the house.”

“Joe doesn’t believe in the concept of ‘on the house,’ as near as I can recall.”

“What Joe don’t believe in is coming in once in a while to find out what the fuck is going on.” She laughed. “Got him a new young honey.”

“At his age?”

“Ain’t no age limit on love, Lew.”

“How about ‘at his size,’ then?”

“There’s always ways.”

“Right. Wills and ways. What does Martha have to say about this?”

She shrugged. “What’s Martha said about all the others? She’d better be clean, not in his house ever, watch the money, knock on my door when it’s over.”

After a few more scotches I joined the dart throwers and hit four nipples in a row. Goaded on by them, I ate four of Joe’s eggs, then we started in together on the drinks lined up by the zonked guy at the corner table. A long time later I realized that Nancy had her purse and was standing by the door.

“Hey, you coming with?” she said. “Or not?”

“With,” I said. I was wobbly on the way to the car, hers, but I rolled the window down and let air blow in my face all the way to her place and got at least halfway straight.

In her bed, one mattress stacked on top of another, we held one another closely, and soon slept.

Chapter Eight

I woke up feeling like the inside of someone’s shoe.

There was a clock on the floor beside the bed and it read 9:43. In the kitchen there was coffee and soft music and a note that said “Thanks, Lew.” There was also, warming in the oven, breakfast.

A cross and a heart-shaped locket hung together from a magnetic hook on the refrigerator.

I finished off the pot of coffee. I couldn’t face food but dumped it in the toilet and flushed, so she wouldn’t know. I showered off the whiskey’s sour smell, her perfume, a little bit of my shakiness and shame.

By eleven I was at the office. There were three messages on the machine. One was from Nancy and said I wish there could be no past, only the present and a future. The second was from Francy, to tell me that Mom was sick with what they were calling an acute depression. The last was from Sanders. Come out to Algiers, he said, 408 Socrates.

I was heading out the door when the phone rang.

“Lew?” LaVerne said when I answered. “Back off Bud Sanders. Please.”

I didn’t say anything for a while, then I said, “I don’t know where this is starting, I don’t know what’s being said here.”

“You don’t have to. Shit, you have to understand everything?” I heard ice cubes clinking against a glass. “He’s a good man, Lew. Everything’s coming down on him now and I don’t know how much more he’s gonna be able to take.”

“You’re telling me he’s a client.”

“No.” Ice again. “I’m telling you he’s a friend, Lew. For a long time now.”

“Like me.”

“Right.”

“And you know what he does for a living?”

“Just like I know what I do for a living. What you do for a living. What we all do, one way or another.” She took another drink. “We aren’t angels, Lew. Angels couldn’t breathe the air down here.