James Sallis - The Long-Legged Fly

“I’m looking for a girl, Eddie.”

“Aren’t we all.”

“Calls herself Blanche. A hustler. You seen her in here?”

“Blanche. Hmmm, let me see now. ‘Bout five-six, real looker?”

I nodded.

“That’d be Long John’s girl. Brought her marks here a couple of times. Been on the street a week, two at the most. Fresh pony, you know?”

So now I was looking for two people.

“What’s this Long John look like?”

“Mean mother. Real dark-alley material. Six-three or — four, maybe two-forty. Always wears a yellow suit. Never synthetics, always cotton. Says cotton is the American Negro’s heritage. Heavy user.”

“And where could I find him, if I looked?”

“Cafe du Monde or Joe’s, likely.”

“Thanks, Eddie. Keep your nose clean.”

“Just cleaned it, didn’t I? Cool as silk.”

I went out wondering what Eddie had under the bar for special customers.

Not wanting to go two out of three falls with the traffic, I grabbed a cab back downtown and had the driver drop me off on Canal.

A crowd was gathering on the sidewalk in front of Werlein’s, doubled by its reflection in storefront glass among black pianos and shiny brass horns. I walked over, hearing about me a flurry of commentary, query, invective.

“Never knew what was coming.”

“I seen it, seen it all.”

“Bad blood ’tween ’em, had to be.”

“Just like that, and its over.”

“Anybody call the police yet?”

One man-both were black-lay on the sidewalk in a mirrorlike pool of blood and urine. There was a sucking wound in his chest where the bullet had smashed its way in; each time he tried to breathe, the fabric around it, though blood-logged, fluttered. Then light went out from behind his eyes and his shirt grew still. He was done with all this.

Another man of about the same age stood over him with the gun hanging limply at his side, saying over and over to himself what sounded like “I done tried to tell him, I done tried to tell him.” As though (I thought, walking on toward the Quarter), speechless and dumb for years, he had found at last a way to speak, to say the things he wanted.

Years later, as I stood in Beaucoup Books reading a poem in one of the magazines I skimmed from time to time there, that scene, something I’d never again thought of in all those years, came back to me full force. Once again I could see the shirt fabric flapping, the reflection of the crowd in the windows, the peace in both those men’s eyes. You must learn to put your distress signals in code, the poem read.

By the time i’d walked back into the Quarter, rain was imminent. I hurried down Chartres and through Jackson Square, with the smell of the brewery everywhere, to the Cafe du Monde.

He was sitting outside, in one of his yellow suits, with at least half a dozen empty coffee cups on the table in front of him. His pupils were as big as saucers. I could feel hatred building inside me, swelling, like the rain.

“Long John,” I said. “Long gone, like a turkey through the corn-if I remember my blues. Lew Griffin. Where’s Blanche?”

He looked at me out of those huge eyes.

“Now,” I said.

“What, you got a thing for white, man?” he said.

“Just Blanche. Used to know her.”

He seemed to be looking at something very far away, very private.

“She done changed since then,” he finally said. He picked up one of the cups and peered into it as though he knew coffee was still there, as though its absence were only illusion: interesting, inarguable, but (nevertheless) soon over. “Let me turn you a nice nigger girl. Got some lookers in the bag, whatever you want, they be waiting. Young stuff. Foxes. Lady wrestlers.”

I shook my head.

“It’s Blanche or nothing.”

“Then it’s nothing,” he said after a minute. He laughed and, raising his voice as if to order, said, “Nothing for all my friends. Lot of that going ’round, you know. Everywhere you look: nothing.”

“All right. You probably know my name, Johnny, back in there somewhere, wherever you are. And that pretty face of yours, pretty as any of your girls-remember? Think about make-overs, Johnny. About what you could look like tomorrow morning, n’est-ce-pas? ”

He looked across the table at me much as he’d looked into the empty coffee cup.

“Yeah, I know the name, Griffin. I done heard ’bout you. But she don’t work for me no more, that’s fact.”

“I don’t give a shit who she works for. No more than I give a shit about your pretty face.”

“Yeah.” His head drooped. Suddenly he was tired. “Yeah. I hear you. Thing is, I don’t know where she is. I just don’t know.” Something flickered in his dull eyes. “Maybe still at the hospital.”

“What hospital? What happened?”

He stared off toward the river. Atop the levee an old man and a kid were playing godawful trumpet and tap dancing tolerably together. I picked up one of the cups and smashed it down on the table. I went on grinding the shards into the table, blood running from my hand and pooling at the table’s metal rim by his arm. He lifted a sleeve clear.

“Preparing your facial,” I said. “Won’t be a minute.”

“Okay, man, okay. I hear you.”

He pulled a handful of napkins out of the dispenser and dropped them on top of the blood, pulled some more and handed those to me, still looking off toward the river.

“Saturday night we’re together and she just went plain wild on me, man. Crazy-you know what I’m sayin’? I cain’t have no crazy woman workin’ for me. So I dropped her off at the emergency room and left her there. What else could I do? And I knew they’d know what to do for her there.”

“Which hospital?” I said. “Which hospital was it?”

He thought. “Let me see. Baptist. Yeah, that’s it, Baptist. Cause I stopped off at the K amp;B up the street for a bottle when I left.”

“And this was Saturday night?”

“Saturday night. She just went crazy on me, man.” He looked back at me. Picked up one of the cups and tipped it back as though drinking. Dabbed at his mouth with the back of a hand. “Now what kind of girl was it you said you wanted?”

I wanted to kill him. Kill someone. Instead, I got up and walked away. I found a pay phone down the street, dropped in a nickel and dialed Baptist Memorial, asking for Admissions.

“I’m trying to find my sister,” I said when I got through. “She ran away from home-Mom’s worried to death-and we don’t even know what name she was using other than Blanche. I heard she might have been hurt Saturday night and brought there.”

“Just a minute, sir, I’ll check.” She was gone two or three minutes. “Sir, our records show that a Blanche Davis was admitted Saturday night. Negro, late twenties, early thirties. Could that be your sister?”

“Almost certainly. Could you tell me what room she’s in?”

“Just a moment.” A shorter wait this time. “Sir, our records show that Miss Davis is no longer a patient at this hospital.”

“Can you tell me where she is?”

“This is your sister, you said?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then I suppose it’s okay to tell you. Miss Davis was transferred from our own psychiatric wing to the state hospital in Mandeville on Monday.”

Halfway across lake Ponchartrain I almost turned around and went back. The rain came down in buckets. Suspended there on the Cause-way, both shores out of sight, I wondered: did I really want to know? That twenty-six miles was the longest trip of my life.