The Long-Legged Fly

“He ain’t gonna like it.”

“Who does?”

A couple of minutes later I had Grizzly Jones on the line.

“New York P.D.,” I told him. “We’ve got a missing-persons report down here, David Griffin, yours the last known address, hope you can help.”

“Do all I can, officer. Always cooperate with the law. But we ain’t seen him lately. Off to Europe, he tells us, this is back in June. I’m still picking up his mail out of the box. Apartment’s paid up through November.”

“Nobody living there?”

“No sir.”

“You’ve been up there to check that personally?”

“A week ago. Part of what I’m paid for.”

“You have the mail there by you?”

“Yeah, it’s all here in a box, hold on a minute …. Okay.”

“Tell me what’s there.”

“The usual junk-bank statements, Mastercard bills, a few other charge cards, some magazines, a couple pounds of flyers and advertising. Schedule from a theater showing ‘foreign and art’ films. A book catalog from France.”

“Nothing personal.”

“No sir, not really.”

“Thank you, Mr. Jones.”

“Anytime, sir. Anything I can do for you, anything at all, you just call. You know?”

“I know. Good citizens like yourself make all our jobs easier.”

“ ’s nothing.”

He was right. It was all nothing.

(-I remind you of the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime.

— But the dog did nothing in the nighttime.

— That is the curious incident,

as my colleague Mr. Holmes once put it.)

I finished the pot of coffee, read a little more Chekhov, mixed a pitcher of martinis and dialed the transatlantic operator. Twenty minutes later I had Vicky on the line.

“It’s so very good to hear from you. You’re well, I hope.”

“Ca va bien. Et tu?”

“Marvelous, especially now, talking to you again after all these years.”

“They go by quickly, V.”

“They do that, Lewis. And the people we care for and love go by almost as quickly.”

“A lot of things have changed.”

“A lot haven’t.”

“True enough. How’s Jean-Luc?”

“Splendid. Translating computer books for the most part now. Boring, he says, but quite easy after all those lit’ry novels; and of course the pay’s far, far better.”

“And the real boss of the house?”

She laughed. “Yesterday in English class they had to write an essay: what I want to be when I grow up. Louis has assured us all, and in excellent English, that when he grows up, what he wants most is to be an American.”

“In which case he’d better watch that excellent English.”

“Quite.”

“So he’s in school already.”

“Hard though it may be to believe. He’s six, Lew.”

“Really … Listen, I called to ask a favor of you.”

“I can’t think of anything you’d ask that I wouldn’t gladly do.”

“My son David has been in France this summer on sabbatical. We heard from him fairly regularly, his mother and I, I mean. Then it all stopped: letters, cards, everything. He hasn’t shown up at his school though classes are underway. We don’t even know if he’s returned to the States.”

“And you need for me to check over here?”

“Right. Whatever you can find out.”

“I’ll need return addresses, names of friends or university connections. What else? Airline credit cards?”

That was one I hadn’t thought of. I gave her what I had, said the rest would be coming shortly by wire, including passport number. I thanked her.

“No thanks are necessry, Lew. When Louis grows up and becomes an American, you can track him down for me, tell him to write his poor mother.”

“Je te manque, V.”

“Et moi aussi…. This may take a while, Lew. Things here in France aren’t quite what they used to be.”

“Are they anywhere?”

“Au revoir, mon cher.”

“Au revoir.”

I poured another glassful of martini and stepped out onto the balcony. New Orleans loves balconies-balconies and sequestered courtyards where you can (at least in theory) go on about your life at a remove from the bustle below and about you. Across the street, schoolgirls left St. Elizabeth’s, every doubt or question anticipated, answered, in their catechism and morning instruction, strong young legs moving inside the cage of plaid uniform skirts.

Chapter Five

My cajun, bless his ancient hunter’s heart, was nosing closer and closer to the truth, improvising his way toward it the way an artist does, a jazz musician or bluesman, a poet, and I was remembering what Gide had said about detective stories in which “every character is trying to deceive all the others and in which the truth slowly becomes visible through the haze of deception.” A few chapters back, I’d thrown in some passages from Evangeline, translated into journalese.

But something odd was occurring. The more I wrote about Boudleaux, the less I relied on imagination, using experiences and people of my own past, writing ever closer to my life. Now on page ninety-seven a red-haired nurse materialized without warning, tucking in the edges of Boudleaux’s sheets (he’d been involved in a traffic accident) as she rolled her r’s. I figured Verne would be along soon, maybe even her latest exit scene.