The Long-Legged Fly

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. Cafe 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,” Cafe 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 Cafe 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, Cafe 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 what’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,” Cafe 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.”