I mixed a cup of instant, poured in bourbon, and stretched out on the swayback couch in my half of a shotgun house on Dryades. It was five in the morning. My tongue felt like someone’s dirty glove. Little men with jackhammers and earth-moving machinery were rebuilding the inside of my head.
At that time of day, Joe’s was filled with Greek sailors and the kind of working girls who hustle day and night just to break even. There were a few scattered businessmen off Canal Street-after all, the place is an institution-and over in the corner, an old man with things bent all around his wrists, neck and ankles. They looked like old spoons, bits of copper wire, just about anything you’d pick up off the street. He was drinking bottled Dixie. He had a scraggly, filthy beard and hair that crept out like vines from beneath a wool knit cap. The place also had more than the usual number of flies, brought there by Joe’s free lunch, which consists of hard-boiled eggs (heavy on the hard) and chopped ham sandwiches out of a can.
I was halfway through my third Jax, sitting alone at one end of the bar, when I looked up and saw these two dudes walk in. Both wore modified military attire, fatigues and caps, with hightop black tennis shoes. One was deep, ebony black, the other coffee-colored. Cafe au lait.
They looked the place over, then went to the far end of the bar and said something to Bobbie. She waved a hand my way and they followed the hand.
“Lewis Griffin?” the black one said.
I held up my hand for another Jax. Bobbie nodded.
“Buy you fellows something?”
“We don’t pollute our bodies with spirits,” Cafe 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 Cafe 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, Cafe 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,” Cafe 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, 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