The Long-Legged Fly
Read The Long-Legged Fly Online
Authors: James Sallis
Book One of the Lew Griffin SeriesThere are those who vanish into the steaming New Orleans night - and it is part time Private Investigator, Repo-man and blues aficionado Lew Griffin’s job to find them. A prisoner of the bottle, his past and his skin, Griffin knows every hidden corner of Hell - and is on intimate terms with the demons that dwell there. But the disappearance of a militant woman activist is about to set Griffin on a roller-coaster ride towards rock bottom - carrying the brilliant, tormented PI ever closer to a nightmare that threatens to hit him where he lives - and more brutally than he ever imagined possible.
James Sallis
has published fourteen novels, multiple collections of short stories, essays, and poems, books of musicology, a biography of Chester Himes, and a translation of Raymond Queneau’s novel
Saint Glinglin
. He has written about books for the
L.A. Times, New York Times
, and
Washington Post
, and for some years served as a books columnist for the
Boston Globe
. In 2007 he received a lifetime achievement award from Bouchercon. In addition to
Drive
, the six Lew Griffin books are now in development as feature films. Jim teaches novel writing at Phoenix College and plays regularly with his string band, Three-Legged Dog. He stays busy.
Novels Published by No Exit Press
The Long-Legged Fly – Lew Griffin Book One,
1992
Moth – Lew Griffin Book Two,
1993
Black Hornet – Lew Griffin Book Three,
1994
Death Will Have Your Eyes,
1997
Eye of the Cricket – Lew Griffin Book Four
, 1997
Bluebottle – Lew Griffin Book Five,
1998
Ghost of a Flea – Lew Griffin Book Six,
2001
Cypress Grove – Turner Trilogy Book One,
2003
Drive,
2005
Cripple Creek – Turner Trilogy Book Two,
2006
Salt River – Turner Trilogy Book Three,
2007
The Killer Is Dying,
2011
Driven,
2012
Renderings
What You Have Left: The Turner Trilogy
A Few Last Words
Limits of the Sensible World
Time’s Hammers: Collected Stories
A City Equal to my Desire
Sorrow’s Kitchen
My Tongue In Other Cheeks: Selected Translations
Ash of Stars: On the Writing of Samuel R. Delany
Jazz Guitars
The Guitar In Jazz
The Guitar Players
Difficult Lives
Saint Glinglin by Raymond Queneau
(translator)
Chester Himes: A Life
A James Sallis Reader
Praise for
The
Long-Legged Fly
‘Haunting…a lyrical, unconventional suspense novel that reads like variations on a blues riff’
–
Publishers Weekly
‘Sallis has created in Lew Griffin one of the great literary characters and written what may very well be the last great detective novel’
–
Spinetingler Magazine
‘Not so much a detective story as a story about a detective, then – but one that exploits the conventions of the genre with quietly distinctive power’
–
Kirkus
Praise for James Sallis
‘Sallis is an unsung genius of crime writing’
–
Independent on Sunday
‘James Sallis is a superb writer’
–
Times
‘James Sallis – he’s right up there, one of the best of the best… Sallis, also a poet, is capable of smart phrasing and moments of elegiac energy’
– Ian Rankin,
Guardian
‘[A] master of America noir…Sallis creates vivid images in very few words and his taut, pared down prose is distinctive and powerful’
–
Sunday Telegraph
‘Sallis’ spare, concrete prose achieves the level of poetry’
–
Telegraph
‘Sallis is a wonderful writer, dark, lyrical and compelling’
–
Spectator
‘Sallis is a fastidious man, intelligent and widely read. There’s nothing slapdash or merely strategic about his work’
–
London Review of Books
‘
Unlike those pretenders who play in dark alleys and think they’re tough, James Sallis writes from an authentic noir sensibility, a state of mind that hovers between amoral indifference and profound existential despair’
–
New York Times
‘carefully crafted, restrained and eloquent’
–
Times Literary Supplement
‘James Sallis is without doubt the most underrated novelist currently working in America’
–
Catholic Herald
‘Sallis writes crime novels that read like literature’
–
Los Angeles Times
‘Allusive and stylish, this stark metaphysical landscape will leave a resounding impression’
– Maxim Jakubowski,
Guardian
‘The brooding atmosphere and depth of characterisation mark this as superior mystery fare’
– Simon Shaw,
Mail on Sunday
‘I’m brought back, yet again, to my conviction that the best American writers are hiding out like CIA sleepers, long forgotten fugitives from a discontinued campaign’
– Iain Sinclair,
London Review of Books
‘Classic American crime of the highest order’
–
Time Out
To
Karyn
Part One
1964
Chapter One
“
H
ELLO,
H
ARRY.
”
His sick eyes slid in the light. He was wearing a corduroy coat over a denim shirt, chinos bagged out at knee and butt, pant legs too long, cuffs frayed. They’d all seen better days, clothes and man alike. Harry had always been a sharp dresser, people said; they even used the word natty. But now skag and his own errant heart had got him.
“Carl?” His voice was an emphysematous whisper. Even now a cigarette dangled out the side of his mouth. It waggled up and down as he talked. “I got the money, man. Business as usual, right? Just like you said.” A rumbling cough deep in his chest.
“No rush, Harry. Be cool, there’s plenty of time. Let up a little, enjoy life.” The yard lights were behind me and he squinted at the shadow moving toward him. Not that it would have made much difference. He didn’t know me from Earl Long. “And anyhow, first I want to tell you a story. You like stories, Harry?”
Behind us, oil derricks heaved and rested, heaved and rested.
“Magazine Street. Ten-fifteen, Saturday night, about a month ago. There was a girl from Mississippi, Harry. And a party. And you. Any of this beginning to sound familiar?”
His eyes searched the darkness around him.
“I’ve been looking for you a long time, Harry. It took a long time to find you. A man like you, with your needs, he shouldn’t be so hard to find.”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth and threw it down. It lay there like a half-blind eye. I stepped out of the light and when he saw me he was scared for the first time, really scared. Old fears die hard.
“It’s only a story, of course. Stories help us go on living. Stories can’t hurt anyone, can they, Harry?”
I let him see the knife in my hand then, a leatherworker’s knife.
“Big Black Sambo’s coming to get you, Harry. Nigger’s gonna carve you up like you did her. Nothing left for the pigs and chickens, not even enough for soul food.”
His eyes moved. He knew escape was somewhere. But he also knew that like everything else in his life it was going to get away from him.
“Look, man, I don’t know who you are, but you got it all wrong. You listen to me, it wasn’t my fault. I just fix things—arrange them, like—that’s all I ever done. It was those crazies, man. Goddamn long hair and kraut van. They’re the ones did that girl.”
It tumbled out of him much as the world must have gone in: fitful starts, none of them connected; and underneath, everything blurring together.
I raised the knife and light glinted on the curved blade.
“Yeah, I know, Harry. Crazies on skag and smack feeding new monkeys, crazies on speed and booze and horse and the rush of a couple hundred dollars they just boosted out of some mom and pop’s till. But who got the stuff for them, Harry? Who gave it to them and started the party? How much of their stake did it cost them? And whose idea to bring the girl into that?”
Fear lit his eyes like a torch. All around us oil derricks sighed, the last breaths of tired old men.
He turned to run but fear tangled his legs. He fell. I let him crawl, a few yards. He was sobbing. Choking.
“You didn’t even know her name, Harry.” I walked up slowly behind him, got a foot under and flipped him over. He flopped like something not human, and his eyes rolled. I let him have a good long look at my face, all the things that were in it.
“Sleepy after your bedtime story?”
Blood welled out of his throat and soaked denim, corduroy, ground. No light left behind those eyes now. No light anywhere.
I searched his pockets and got the money—that was for the kid. Then I bent down and opened up his wasted belly with the knife.
“That was for Angie,” I said.
Behind us, oil derricks shushed any eulogy.