James Sallis - The Long-Legged Fly

It went on another hour, perhaps more, the edge, as we learned the next day, of hurricanes that touched down in Galveston, extracting individual buildings like teeth, and blew themselves out on the way up the channel toward Mobile.

The morning we learned this, weather was mild, air exceptionally clear, sun bright and cool in the sky. Worms had come out onto sidewalks and lay there uncurled in the steam rising lazily from them. In every street, cars maneuvered around the fallen limbs of age-old trees. And ship-wrecked on the neutral ground, crisscrossing trolley tracks, lay uprooted palms-fully a third of the city’s ancient, timeless crop.

And it seemed to them that in only a few more minutes a solution would be found and a new, beautiful life would begin; but both of them knew very well that the end was still a long, long way away and that the most complicated and difficult part was only just beginning.

I consoled myself with Chekhov.

Then I called David’s number in New York and, getting no answer, dialed O and asked to be put through to a New York operator at that exchange. I got a quiet-spoken, courteous type and asked if it were possible to obtain the number of an apartment complex’s superintendent in an emergency. She put me through to her supervisor, who listened to my explanation, said she’d call me back, did, and gave me the number for a Fred Jones.

I dialed again and got a “Yeah?”

“Is Mr. Jones in, please?”

“Depends. You a tenant?” In the background I could hear kids shouting one another down, a blaring TV.

“No ma’am,” I said, hoping imagination might rush in, or at least stumble in, to fill the void.

“ About one of the tenants, then.”

“No ma’am.”

“Yeah…. Well, he’s asleep, that’s what it is. You want for me to wake him up?”

“I think that would be best, yes ma’am.”

“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 ve r y good to hea r f r om you. You’ r e well, I hope.”

“Ca va bien. Et tu?”

“Marvelous, especially now, talking to you again afte r all these yea r s.”

“They go by quickly, V.”

“They do that, Lewis. And the people we ca r e fo r and love go by almost as quickly.”

“A lot of things have changed.”

“A lot haven’t.”

“True enough. How’s Jean-Luc?”

“Splendid. T r anslating compute r books fo r the most pa r t now. Bo r ing, he says, but quite easy afte r all those lit’ r y novels; and of cou r se the pay’s fa r , fa r bette r .”

“And the real boss of the house?”

She laughed. “Yeste r day in English class they had to w r ite an essay: what I want to be when I g r ow up. Louis has assu r ed us all, and in excellent English, that when he g r ows up, what he wants most is to be an Ame r ican.”

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

“Quite.”

“So he’s in school already.”

“Ha r d 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 fo r me to check ove r he r e?”

“Right. Whatever you can find out.”

“I’ll need r etu r n add r esses, names of f r iends o r unive r sity connections. What else? Ai r line c r edit ca r ds?”

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 a r e necess r y, Lew. When Louis g r ows up and becomes an Ame r ican, you can t r ack him down fo r me, tell him to w r ite his poo r mothe r .”

“ Je te manque , V.”

“ Et moi aussi …. This may take a while, Lew. Things he r e in F r ance a r en’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.

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.