The Long-Legged Fly

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 … passe, 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