Home these days was a four-room apartment on St. Charles where trolleys clanked by late at night and you could always smell the river. It had a couple of overstuffed couches, some Italian chairs, a king-size bed, even pictures on the wall. Mostly Impressionist.
I parked the bug on the street and went in. Poured a brandy and sat on one of the couches sipping at it.
I was thinking about Cordelia Clayson and the ways it could go. Maybe she was hustling on the street corners by now, I didn’t know. Maybe she was into drugs, or booze. Or plain old for-the-hell-of-it sex. Or Jesus. Anything was possible. Whatever, I didn’t feel too hopeful about the news that sooner or later I was going to have to bring her parents. I’d seen too many times what the city could do.
Actress, I kept thinking. Actress. I didn’t know anything about acting, but I’d had a professor at college who had done a bibliography of New Orleans theater since 1868 or some such date, and tomorrow I’d give him a call. Right now it was time for bed. I finished off the brandy, undressed, set the alarm for seven, and hit the sack.
I was wakened at six by the phone.
“Yeah?” I managed to get out.
“Lew? I’m calling from downtown.”
“Don. Don’t you ever go home?”
“Funny, my wife’s always asking me the same thing. Can you come down here, Lew? It’s Vice. They think they’ve got your girl.”
I drove over expecting to talk to Cordelia Clayson in a detention room. Instead, I was ushered into a room on the fourth floor lined with books and what looked like cans of film. Don introduced me to Sergeants Polanski and Verrick and left. “Can’t watch this shit, Lew. Daughters of my own,” he said.
“Something we picked up at a party down on Esplanade,” Polanski told me. “Thought you’d be interested.”
While he was talking he threaded film into a projector. When he raised his hand, Verrick hit the lights and there we were, in dreamland.
A big white dude in black socks was doing things to a young black girl. Alternately fucking and sucking and beating and lecturing her on the philosophy of the bedroom and woman’s natural submission. It sounded like something out of de Sade by way of Heffner and Masters and Johnson-the redeeming social significance, I guess.
It was cheaply made, frames jumpy, figures and faces out of focus. But the girl was undeniably Cordelia.
The film lasted maybe fifteen minutes. Nobody said a word the whole time.
“Your girl?” Polanski said when it was over and the lights were back on.
I nodded.
“Who made it-you know?” I said after a moment.
“Guy by the name of Sanders. You get to know them by their style after a while-camera angles, things like that. Bud Sanders. Rents a cheap motel room, turns a girl up high on speed or whatever’s going, and rolls the camera. Mostly the men are the same ones over and over.”
“You pick him up?”
“What the hell for?” Polanski said. “He’d be back out on the street before we started the paper-work.”
“What about community standards?”
“You’re kidding. In New Orleans?”
“We could try,” Verrick added, “keep him busy a while. But it wouldn’t be long. Nothing would stick. Water off a duck’s back. Then he’d just go out and rent a new camera and start all over again.”
I nodded. I’d seen porn films in my time, some in the line of business, a few for pleasure, but this one had really got to me. I was thinking about Mr. and Mrs. Clayson up on Jackson Avenue and what I’d tell them.
“Where can I find this Sanders?” I said.
“Who knows?” Polanski said.
“Turn over the nearest rock,” Verrick said.
“What happens to the film now?”
“We hold it for evidence, then we file it. But there are probably ten, twelve copies of it on the streets by now.”
“We can’t keep on top of it,” Verrick said. “You close one factory down, two more spring up. Like those dragon’s teeth or whatever they were.”
I nodded again. “Thanks, Polanski,” I said. “Verrick-let me know how it turns out. What becomes of the girl? If you find her.”
“Man, the girl’s nothing. They pop out of the woodwork like sweat on a hog. It’s Sanders we want. For good. The girl’s yours, if we ever get to her. But we won’t.”
I started out the door.
“And you got a room full of this stuff,” I said.
“This is just pending cases. You oughta see the vaults down at Central Holding,” Polanski said.
It was only then, walking out the door, that I realized that I had an erection. It made me remember some of the things my wife had called me.