Read Online The Long-Legged Fly by James Sallis - Free Book Online Page B

had changed to a tragic one as exaggerated as the earlier smile. He mimed wiping tears from one eye, then the other. For a moment he hung his head, then shook it sadly again and again.
    But an idea was starting up in his mind, and as it formed, the smile slowly returned, more natural now, less exaggerated. He held out his hand and, magically, a forty-five appeared in it. Waving good-bye with one hand, with the other he put the barrel of the gun into the smile.
    And that was how I had found him.
    “Jesus,” Don said.
    Polanski and Verrick looked at one another, shaking their heads.
    “He and the girl were living together?” Don said.
    I nodded.
    “How’d you know that?”
    “Someone told me,” I said.
    “ Who told you?”
    “I forget.”
    “He the one that drugged her?”
    I shrugged.
    Don looked back up at the blank screen.
    “This is one fucked-up world. And the best we can do is shovel shit from one place to somewhere else for a while.”
    “You need me for anything else, Don?”
    “No. Go on, Lew. Be careful.”
    I walked down the four flights of stairs and outside. An old man in rags was sitting on the sidewalk with his back against the building. “Lock me up, officer,” he told me.
    It was a little after nine and had probably been dark thirty minutes or so. A haze of heat and light shimmered over the city. Breathing was like walking in wet tennis shoes.
    I retrieved my car from the police lot where Don had checked it in, and drove out Poydras to Hotel Dieu.
    At the nurse’s station in intensive care I explained who I was and was told that one of the doctors would see me shortly, please wait in the family room outside. The fear, pain and blinding hope in that room were palpable. At length a tall, stooped young man in yellow scrubs came to the door and said quietly: “Mr. Griffith?”
    “Griffin,” I said.
    “About Cordelia Clayson?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Please come with me.”
    We went back into intensive care and to a small room at the far end. He pulled the door closed. Through it I could hear the sound of alarms going off, a voice saying: I need some help over here.
    “And just what is your relationship to the patient, Mr. Griffin?”
    “As I told the nurse, I’m a private detective engaged by the girl’s parents.”
    “To investigate what brought her here to us?”
    I shook my head. “To find her for them. My job’s done, except that now I have to go and tell them. And I need to know what to tell them.”
    “I see. You’re in touch with the parents, then.”
    “I know where to find them.”
    He had sad brown eyes. You wondered if they would stay that way, or if after years of this (he couldn’t be more than twenty-six or -seven) they would harden.
    “I can’t hold out a lot of hope,” he said. “It’s not the drugs themselves, of course; we’ve learned how to handle all that. But Cordelia had a hard hit of some unusually pure heroin. She was out for a long time, and what happened was, she developed what we call shock-lung syndrome. The heart slows down dramatically and loses the force of its contractions, so that everything kind of backs up. Her lungs are full of fluid. They’re hard to inflate—every breath is like the first time you blow into a balloon—and oxygen levels in the blood are critically low. We’re doing what we can. She’s on a ventilator that does all her breathing for her, and she’s receiving hundred-percent oxygen at high pressures. But we’re not gaining much ground, Mr. Griffin. And frankly, the interventive measures we’ve been forced to use are more likely to lead to further complications than to any resolution of the original problems. We get in this sort of downward spiral after a while. I’m sorry.”
    I stood. “Thank you, Doctor. Will Mr. and Mrs. Clayson be able to see their daughter if I bring them down here? Are there restricted visiting hours?”
    “Not in this case, Mr. Griffin. I’ll leave instructions at the desk.”
    I went out