The Long-Legged Fly

by James Sallis

  “Your folks home, young lady?”

  “Naw. Ain’t never home ’fore ‘leven or twelve.”

  “You get your sweet little butt back over here, LuAnne, and tell whoever that asshole is you’re busy,” a voice said inside the apartment.

  “You know where I might reach them at work?”

  She shrugged.

  “Excuse me, LuAnne,” I said, and kicked the door in.

  He was on the couch, thirty-eight or forty maybe, wearing a doubleknit leisure suit with the pants pulled down around his ankles.

  “Don’t bother getting up,” I said. “If you do, I’ll kick your balls into Oklahoma. Go put your clothes on, honey,” I told the girl. “You know about statutory rape, mister? Even prison-yard hardasses take a dim view of it.”

  “You a cop, man?”

  “Are you out of here?”

  “You told me not to move. ’Sides, I’m the girl’s uncle.”

  He was coming up off the couch and I kicked him in the belly. He grunted and fell back.

  “This is a child, asshole.”

  After a while, when he was able, he hauled himself afoot, pulled up his pants and left. The girl looked after him, tears forming in her round eyes.

  “World’s full of them,” I said.

  “I loved him,” she said.

  The second lead came up just as empty: a used book and record store not far off Veterans near Causeway. It had that fusty, peculiar smell they all have. A girl of twenty or so sat behind the counter braiding lustrous black hair that, unbraided, must have reached her knees.

  “I’m looking for Frances Villon,” I said.

  “Frances Villon?” Tentatively.

  “I was given this address. I could have the spelling wrong.” I spelled it out. “She’d arranged a loan from us.”

  “Frances Villon.” First with an English pronunciation, then the French. Her eyes wandered off and came back. “I get it—François Villon.”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been had. François Villon was a fifteenth-century French poet. I don’t think he’d be in need of any loans just now.

  ‘I am François to my great dismay,

  Born in Paris, up Pontoise way;

  By a fathom of hempen cord I’ll sway

  While my neck discovers what my buttocks weigh.’

  Someone’s idea of a joke, huh?”

  “Any idea who might be inclined to that kind of joke?”

  “Not really, but it’s kind of appropriate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Villon himself was a professional thief.”

  The address I had for Cherie Smith led me to a converted garage apartment behind a lumberyard. It was empty; through the front window I saw only a sack of trash and some sweepings on the bare floor. I tried the door. It was locked.

  Walking around back to look for a rear door or usable window, I discovered another, larger garage apartment. A tall, stooped young man with longish stringy hair was just backing out the door.

  “Come to see the place?” he said.

  “You the agent?”

  “Showing it for them. I’m on my way to class, but I’ve got a few minutes, if you want to look it over. There wouldn’t be any problem with your renting it. You know….”

  I knew only too well.

  “To tell the truth,” I said, “I was looking for the former tenant.”

  “You a cop?”

  “Do I look like a cop, son?”

  “You sure as hell ain’t her daddy.”

  “Friend of her brother’s. He asked me to find her, if I can. Hasn’t heard from her in a long time. He’s been worried.”

  “Not much I can tell you. She stayed pretty much to herself. Never had people over, didn’t go out much.”

  “She work?”

  He shrugged. “I guess.”

  “When’d she leave?”

  “Let’s see…. Close to a month, must be.”

  “You know why?”

  “Couldn’t make the rent. Owner finally had to ask her to move out.”

  “Did she?”

  “The very next morning. Cleaned the apartment up and all before she went, too. Not many’ll do that anymore.”

  “No forwarding address?”

  “Not with me, not with the post office. I know because the owner was going to send back part of the deposit even though she missed the last month’s rent. Felt kind of bad about the whole thing, I guess.”

  “Okay. Listen, I don’t want to keep you, but if you happen to think of anything, anything that might help, could you give me a call?”

  I handed him a card and a ten dollar bill.

  “I can’t take your money, Mr.—” He looked down at the card. “—Griffin?”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Wouldn’t feel right about it.”

  “All right. Then you just keep it a while and if nothing comes up, you send it back to me.”

  “Well,” he said.

  “Listen, I’ve held you up. Which school you go to?”

  “Loyola.”

  “Then let me drop you. Wouldn’t be a problem. You know….”

  He grinned. “I would appreciate it, if you’re sure it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Not at all.”

  I dropped him off amidst armies of long legs and round bottoms in tight jeans and perfect breasts under sweaters, thinking I’d never make it to class in all that. Or wouldn’t have—more years ago than I want to think about.

  I headed back downtown, brewed a pot of coffee at the apartment—Vicky was on a rare day shift—and had just poured some Irish into it when the phone rang.

  “Mr. Griffin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Kirk Woodland.”

  I waited.

  “At the apartment a little while ago.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “I just thought of something, might help you. There’s this kid down the street from where I live. He’s, I don’t know, eighteen or so, but really retarded, you know? Cherie used to go see him a lot, tell him stories and all, try to teach him things. You think she might show up there sometime?”

  “She might indeed. Thank you, Kirk. You know the address?”

  “No, but it’s the only two-story wood house on the next block south. Can’t miss it. White with yellow trim.”

  “There’ll be twenty more coming to match what you have. I’ll shove it under the door.”

  “No, Mr. Griffin. This is more than enough.”

  “I insist. You may have saved me a lot of time and work. And I never knew a student who couldn’t use an extra dollar or two.”

  “Well,” he said.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “You have trouble concentrating with all those fine young ladies around all the time?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  “God, I hope so. I hope it’s not just old men like me.”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Good. And thanks again.”

  I finished the Irish coffee, and another couple of cups without the Irish, and headed back to Metairie. LuAnne was still alone and without parents, Frances Villon remained a thief, and at the two-story wood house I met only suspicion.

  I finally convinced the father (Mom had split a long time ago) that I wasn’t a welfare officer or child molester (they probably came down to the same thing in his mind) and was introduced to Denny.

  “She was real good with him, Cherie was. Only body ever spent any time with him save me.”

  Denny was not only eighteen, he was a giant, almost as tall as myself and built like a linebacker. He had full, slack lips and brown eyes that never blinked. He didn’t talk, but made soft cooing sounds.

  “When did you last see Cherie, Mr. Baker?”

  “She came by, just for a few minutes, last week. Said she couldn’t stay ’cause of a job interview but she had missed Denny so much.”

  “Say anything about when
she might make it by again?”

  “Said a couple of days. That was Tuesday. Guess she must of got tied up with the new job or something, huh?”

  “If she does come back, Mr. Baker, could you give me a call?”

  “You’re a friend of her brother, you say?”

  “Yes, sir. I can give you his number, if you’d like.”

  He looked at me for several moments. “I don’t need his number,” he said. “When you live with someone like Denny, who can’t ever tell you what’s inside him, you learn things most people don’t know. I see the pain and confusion in your face. It’s been there a long time. But I also see you’re a good man, and I know you’re telling me the truth.”

  I nodded, and he told me he’d let me know when Cherie showed up again. “She will,” he said. “It’s just a matter of when.”

  Isn’t everything, I thought, and headed back to town.

  Vicky was home, sitting on the couch with a gin and tonic. She’d taken off her uniform pants but still wore the top, underpants, white stockings. Something about those white uniforms is sexy enough anyway, and it was accented by her pale skin and red hair.

  “Posing for Penthouse?”

  “For you,” she said, raising her glass. “Want a drink?”

  “I’ll get it. You look tired.”

  “I’ve had a terrible day. A man we were ambulating died, just dropped dead right there in the hall with family and all the rest of the patients looking on. Then all afternoon it’s the head nurse I have to put up with, going on and on about quotas and priorities as I’m trying to catch up on my work.”

  I got my drink, we both sipped, then she went on, her words as ever falling into natural cadences, so musical and lilting you could sink into the sensual pleasures of the language itself and lose meaning altogether.

  “She refers to patients as ‘units.’ An acutely ill patient is twenty-five units, a bed bath is two units, an IV is one unit, and on and on. And on.” She sipped again. “It’s rather like a factory, isn’t it?”

  “And shouldn’t be?”

  “Can’t be. Because things are changing all the time, patients’ conditions, their needs. You can’t very well plot that out on paper now, can you?”

  “But the managers, that new, huge and ever-increasing class, must have something to do.” I slipped into a dissembling voice, a mixture of Amos and Andy and sixties cant. “When duh rev’lushun cums, dose wif briefcases gone be de furst shot.”

  Vicky didn’t feel like cooking, we both felt like eating, and the only thing in the fridge was very leftover lasagna. The choice came down to ordering from Yum Yum’s, the Chinese restaurant a few blocks away that delivered, or going out somewhere. We had another drink and thought it over. Images of Yum Yum’s greasy paper food cartons (like the kind used to carry goldfish home from the dime store) helped the decision immeasurably.

  Chapter Four

  WE WALKED FOR A WHILE AND WOUND UP AT A CREOLE café run by an ageless Cajun and his family. Two kids about nine or ten were seating customers and clearing tables; a girl of thirteen or so was the waitress. The menu was chalked on a board by the door to the kitchen.

  We each had a fish soup, fiery red beans and rice, boudin, all of it eased considerably by a chilled bottle of white wine. The bill came to $28.66—I swear I don’t know how the man makes a living. Bouchard came out himself in his bloody, grease-smeared apron as we left, to make sure everything was satisfactory. We told him, as we always did, that it was far more than satisfactory, it was indeed and in fact excellent. “Merci,” he said, and fled back as though relieved to his beloved kitchen.

  We were walking aimlessly back toward the apartment, enjoying the flush from the wine and the chilly air, when a car slowed and pulled alongside us. There were two young white guys in it. One had a quart of beer, the other a fifth of whiskey, and they kept passing the bottles back and forth.

  “Hey look,” one of them said. “This nigger’s got him a white girl. Must think he’s cock of the walk now, huh?”

  “Hey, man, you cock of the walk?”

  “Talkin’ to you, nigger.”

  I turned, looked at them, waited. This was an old, familiar scene, only the minute particulars of which ever changed. Nothing would happen until they got out of the car. And then it had better happen fast, before they were ready for it.

  “Nigger can’t talk,” the driver said.

  “Must be one of them dumb niggers.”

  “Bear shit in the woods?”

  They laughed, drank, laughed some more. The one on the passenger side reached for the door handle.

  “I’ve heard of things like this happening in the States,” Vicky said, “but I di’n’t believe it, not really. I guess every country must have bloody buggers like these two, though.”

  Everything was very still and quiet for a moment there.

  “Shee-it, man,” the passenger told the driver. “She ain’t even a white woman, she’s a damn foreigner.”

  They switched bottles once again and drove off.

  “Welcome to the ghetto, Miss Herrington,” I said, and we fell against one another laughing, laughing as one does only after great tension has passed.

  Back home, Vicky drew a tub and came back through the living room naked to pour herself a brandy.

  “You ever wear clothes?” I asked her. She made a face at me and licked her lips.

  I put on some Chopin, low, and checked the answering machine. This is Vicky, I’m out just now, please leave your name, etc., then the same thing in French. Sansom and Walsh had both called to see how things were going. Jimmi Smith wanted me to call him when I got in, didn’t matter how late.

  I dialed and waited through six or seven rings.

  “Yeah?”

  “Jimmi?”

  “Lew. Thanks for calling me back. You found out anything?”

  “Not much. Not as much as I would’ve hoped for. But I do have a good lead and something may come of that. I’ll let you know.”

  “Yeah, please do, and Lew—?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks. You’re a good man, don’t ever let no one tell you different from that.”

  “Good night, Jimmi.”

  I walked into the bathroom. Vicky was reading a novel; only her head and hands and two small knee-islands stuck out above water. I lifted her glass off the side of the tub and took a sip of brandy.

  “Any calls for me?” she said.

  I shook my head. “You want company?”

  “This tub’s not big enough for the both of us, partner.”

  “I’ll take one of Alice’s pills and make myself small.”

  “O well. Perhaps the water will shrink you.”

  She raised her knees and patted the water in front of her: “Right here, cowboy.”

  Afterwards, just as we were drifting off to sleep, I asked her, “How many units would your head nurse assign to that?”

  “Grrrrr,” she told me.

  Since Vicky was going back on nights, we had a rare, leisurely breakfast together the following morning, stretching it out, over coffee, fruit, toast, boiled eggs and herring, to well over an hour. She had decided that she fancied a bit of shopping this morning. We rinsed and stacked dishes, and I dropped her off on Canal on my way to the loan company.

  There wasn’t much, and what there was, was light-weight. I spent a few hours chasing leads around the downtown area and netted enough to call it a day (a slow day, mind you), then remembered that I’d forgotten to drop off the extra twenty I had promised Kirk Woodland and headed back out to Metairie.

  A squad car sat outside Baker’s house and a cop opened the door when I knocked.

  “What’s your business?” the cop said. He’d recently grown a mustache to make him look older. It hadn’t helped.

  “Mr. Griffin. How did you know?” Baker said from across the room.

  “You know this man?” Mustache said.

  “A friend,” Baker said, and asked me again how I knew. Musta
che stepped back and let me walk in.

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Don’t. I was passing by and saw the chariot.”

  “Denny’s disappeared, Mr. Griffin. Nothing like this’s ever happened before. I went around the corner for some milk and when I got back, he was gone. He never left the house when I wasn’t here.”

  “He probably didn’t go very far, Mr. Baker. He’ll turn up soon. You have my number. Call if there’s anything I can do to help.”

  “I hope you’re right, Mr. Griffin. And thanks.”

  More from habit than anything else I took a few swings through the neighborhood. Seemed to be mostly older people, not many kids or much evidence of kids—swing sets, bicycles and the like.

  There was a battered old gas station on one corner, the kind we used to hang around as kids, sharing precious bottles of Nehi and Pepsi, and I stopped there to fill up. Went into the cluttered, cavelike office to pay, half-blind in the dim light. A surprisingly young man sat between two room fans, sweating. I paid him, looked around at the cheesecake calendars and asked if by any chance he’d seen a kid go by in the last hour or two, a big kid.

  Fear broke in his eyes.

  “I ain’t touched no kids in years. It ain’t that I ain’t had the need, but I done learned, I ain’t going back inside for nothing. You guys gotta know I’m clean.”

  “Hey, take it easy.”

  He looked closely at me, squinting. “You ain’t a cop?”

  I shook my head.

  “Look like one,” he said.

  “A friend up a few blocks, his son wandered off. Cops are up there now. I thought maybe I could help, just look around some, at least.”

  “Wouldn’t be that big, retarded kid?”

  I nodded.

  “Cops are up there now, they’ll be down here soon enough.”

  “If you’re clean, they won’t bother you.”

  “Either I didn’t hear that, or you just look black.”

  “Right,” I said after a moment. “Something I heard Jack Webb say, I guess. Dumb. But good luck.”

  “Thanks. You too—finding the kid, I mean.”

  He shut off the fans and began counting the money in the register.

  I made another couple of pointless swings around the neighborhood, started back into New Orleans, remembered I’d again forgotten to drop off the twenty at Woodland’s, and turned around.