The Long-Legged Fly Read Free Page A

spirits,” Café au Lait told me.
    “Mr. Griffin,” the black one said, “we are in need of your professional services.”
    Bobbie brought the beer and I slid a dollar across the bar toward her.
    “Sit down?” I said.
    “We’ll stand.” I was sure they knew where the back door was, too.
    “Have it your way.” Bobbie brought change. “Now, what is it that I can do for you?”
    “It’s a matter of some discretion.” The black one seemed to be a natural leader. He looked around the bar. “We would prefer to speak in less public a place.”
    “It’s here or nowhere,” I said. Never give a client the advantage; he’ll think he owns you. Besides, I was thirsty.
    “We have been looking for you for three days,” Blackie said. “Your office, your apartment. A man in your business should make himself more easily available.”
    “Those who need me usually find me, sooner or later.”
    “I suppose we are proof of that statement, yes?” So Café au Lait hadn’t lost his tongue after all.
    “As I say, it’s a matter of some discretion. Your name has come to us from mutual friends. And it’s a matter which only a brother could handle.”
    That “brother” should have warned me; I should have got up then and left. And if we had any mutual friends, I’d turn in an honest tax report next year.
    “You’ve heard, of course, of Corene Davis?” Blackie said. At mention of her name, Café au Lait raised his open hand to chest level, then closed it. The old man with the spoons looked our direction and snorted. I knew how he felt.
    “I subscribe to Time like everybody else,” I said.
    “We—by which I mean, our group—we had arranged a speaking engagement for her here in New Orleans. It was a matter of considerable dispute, as you may realize. A black leader, and a black woman what’s more, in the deepest South.” He looked around the bar again. The three of us were the only black faces in it. I suppose that proved something to him. “Many of her supporters thought it was foolish.”
    Bobbie brought me another beer. Maybe she figured I needed it.
    “At any rate,” Blackie went on, “it was to have been at the Municipal Auditorium, the eighteenth of August, at eight P.M. She was coming in early that morning to speak to some student groups at Tulane and Loyola. She did that wherever she went. Spoke to students, I mean.”
    “The force of the future,” Café au Lait added. I looked at his hand. It remained still.
    “At ten-fifteen on the night of the seventeenth,” Blackie continued, “Corene Davis boarded a night flight to New Orleans at Idlewild. It was a nonstop flight, and a number of her supporters saw her aboard. When we met her plane here in New Orleans—we are a local group, you understand—she was not aboard. Nor has she been heard from since.”
    “And you fear… .”
    “That she has been kidnapped.”
    “Or worse,” Au Lait added.
    “She has many enemies among the establishment,” Blackie said. “Surely you can understand that.”
    “I can indeed. But you need the police, not me.”
    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,