The midnight blue Caddy shot down the Air-Line Highway like a well-aimed bullet-no blowouts or broken windshields, this trip. Not on a hard stretch of Kingfish concrete that might have been designed for breaking speed limits; and what Louisiana traffic cop was fool enough to stop the car that bore license plate Number 1?
Murphy Roden was a no-nonsense driver: his foot was heavy, sure ’nuff, but his eye was steady and ever on the road. Affable as he was, Murph indulged in little small talk on the drive. I was in the front seat with him, and the Kingfish was by himself in back. Seymour Weiss had remained in New Orleans. It was a hot, sunny day, and the only wind was the one we stirred up; the windows in front were down.
It was the closest I ever came to seeing the Kingfish at repose, and the only time I had evidence that he ever slept. He napped briefly, and read various newspapers and sheafs of correspondence, occasionally scribbled some notes or something, for the rest of the ninety-minute trip. The gregarious, motormouth bear was in near-hibernation.
Suddenly, a gray-granite rocketship, poised to launch into the heavens, rose above the mud flats, before my astounded eyes: Huey’s skyscraper state-house. The tapering spire of the thirty-four-story capitol was like a mirage of the future, an apparition of civilization in a world of swamps and bayous.
“Some buildin’, huh?”
It gave me a start: the Kingfish hadn’t spoken the whole trip, and now, when I glanced over, his shining moon face was next to me, as he sat forward, leaning on my seat, staring ahead at his art deco monument to himself.
“Some building,” I agreed.
“Brother Earl calls it my ‘silo.’ Jealous, as usual. Only cost five millions, and I had the sucker finished within a year of the day we laid the cornerstone.” Then, with no irony and not a twinge of conscience, he added, “Woulda cost fifty millions in New York or Washin’ton, what with their crooked brand of politics.”
If an Empire State Building ascending from marshlands had seemed jarring, the capitol grounds dispelled that sense. As the Caddy glided through a formal, landscaped park-flower beds bursting with color, magnolias and poplars mingling with ghostlike, ancient, moss-hung oaks-the towering stone structure achieved an eerie dignity, like a single massive gravestone in a vast perfect cemetery.
Murphy turned down Capitol Drive, where parking places awaited Huey and the bodyguard car that trailed us (bearing McCracken, Messina and two other Cossacks). These were among the few reserved spaces that weren’t taken: the special session began today, and Louisiana’s pro-Long legislators knew the Kingfish expected their presence, and the anti-Longs weren’t about to give him the satisfaction of no opposition.
The Kingfish was forgoing his private parking place in back, where he could enter the statehouse unobtrusively-but right now, with the session looming, Huey wanted to be seen. It was a time for grand entrances.
To reach the entrance of the 450-foot inverted? that was Huey’s capitol-the Senate and the House of Representatives were in first-floor wings at left and right, respectively-you climbed forty-nine steps, each but the last inscribed with the name of a state. The granite stairway was flanked by somber, imposing statues of explorers, pioneers, settlers and Indians. The majesty of all this, and that of the looming monolithic capitol itself with its historical and patriotic friezes, was undermined by the all-pervasive presence of Huey’s state police.
In their helmets and khakis and boots, strapped with gun-and bullet-belts, they were not a police guard, but a military encampment, standing watch along the perimeter, perched on the edges of the somber statuary, stationed on the landings of the stairway. Their presence only made Huey smile, and he said, “Hello, boys,” half a dozen times along the way; their disciplined lack of response tickled him all the more, as he strutted up the granite stairway followed by Murphy and me, as well as Messina, McCracken (with his deadly grocery sack), and other assorted hooligans.
We followed the Kingfish through the glass doors into a claustrophobic bronze-and-marble entryway, and on into the grandiose main lobby known as Memorial Hall. Our footsteps echoed across the polished lava floors and up to the ornate four-story ceiling; Huey’s voice echoed the same way, as he jauntily greeted legislators and tourists and tour guides.
Yesterday Huey had asked me to stick around, because he needed “another good man.” But inside the capitol was crawling with even more military-style state police, as well as thuglike plainclothes dicks with conspicuous bulges under arms or on hips. The dignified bronze fixtures and patriotic murals decorating Memorial Hall-obviously the capitol’s hub-were at odds with this police-state atmosphere.
It was a straight shot to the trio of elevators, whose elaborate bronze doors depicted bas-relief portraits of what were apparently (judging by the muttonchops) public figures of bygone days; but Huey was among them, up at the top right.
Murph saw me squinting at the little boxes with faces in them and he whispered, “It’s a gallery of the state’s governors, endin’ with Huey.”
I somehow felt sure that the omission of O.K. Allen was okay with the current governor.
We took the middle elevator, which bore a small placard saying private-state employees only. Huey chatted with the elevator operator, a skinny, friendly man in his sixties, inquiring about his wife and children by name.
“Boss has a photographic mem’ry,” Murphy whispered.
I figured as much; nothing I’d observed would have led me to believe Huey cared about individuals like this fellow. Huey worried about only two things: himself and the masses. In that order.
We got off on the twenty-fourth floor, on the other side of the elevator, which opened onto a small, mundane vestibule. Tourists were getting off one elevator and onto another, and gasped at the sight of the Kingfish, who waved and smiled and said, “Howdy.” This was the floor where the common folk could catch two things: glimpses of Huey and the elevator to the observation tower.
The door to Huey’s suite-which took up the rest of the floor-was around to the right. The suite itself was furnished in a sleek, modern style-curves of wood and chrome-but otherwise reminded me of various hotel suites of recent days. The only major difference was we settled ourselves in a living room area and the Kingfish didn’t get into his fabled green-silk pajamas.
For much of the afternoon the Kingfish and a small, dark, apparently Italian gent worked on a new song Huey was cooking up. It was a victory song for the LSU football team, and Huey had some hand-scribbled lyrics he’d done in the car on the ride over from New Orleans.
Murphy, McCracken, Squinch McGee and I were playing poker-using wooden matchsticks for chips-at a card table over in one corner. I was the only one who didn’t smoke, but I might as well have: the blue haze from the cigarettes hung like ground fog.
“Jacks or better,” I said, dealing the cards. “Who’s the ginney?”
“Actually,” Murphy said, “he’s from Costa Rica. Castro Carazo. Writes all the music for the boss’s songs.”
“He used to be the orchestra leader at the Roosevelt Hotel,” McCracken said. “The boss likes him, ’cause Castro used to let him direct the band at the Blue Room, sometimes.”
“What’s he do now?” I asked. “Besides write songs with Huey.”
“He’s director of music at LSU,” Murphy said. “I can open.”
After Huey and his music man had roughed out their composition, the Distinguished Senator from the Great Pelican State came over and pulled us away bodily from the middle of a round of Black Mariah (sometimes called Chicago). This did not make me happy, as I had the ace of spades down, which would have entitled me to half the pot.
But you didn’t argue with the boss.
I have only the faintest memory of the rah-rah number, other than its melody being suspiciously similar to “Every Man a King.”
Nonetheless, I joined in with the effusive praise and applause of the other bodyguards. Messina, who had been seated nearby the musical geniuses while they composed, was smiling like a madman; his eyes were glittering with emotion.
We were allowed to return to our game-which was declared a goddamn misdeal-and were summoned back for three more performances, over the course of the next hour and a half, to hear “improved” versions, every one of which sounded identical to me.
Even for $250 a day, this was not the life for me. Murphy was pleasant company, but the rest of the bodyguard crew were untrained, on-edge thugs that Frank Nitti would have fired in a heartbeat.
With the exception of Murphy, who’d done a few years as a state cop before joining Huey, they had jack shit security experience. Messina was a damn ex-barber from the Roosevelt Hotel.
Also, I was winning at poker. Consistently winning. That didn’t necessarily surprise me (I’m as self-deluded as the next average player), but these guys-even Murphy-were playing sloppy, and if there was one thing I would have confidence that guys like this could do, it’s play cards.
They were nervous. On edge.
“Fuckin’ death threats,” Squinch McGee whispered. He had squinty little eyes behind thick wire-frame glasses-just the kind of guy you’d want handling firearms, right? “I don’t take ’em serious. You take ’em serious?”
“The boss does,” McCracken said, and shook his head. “I ain’t seen this many cops in one place since that all-night diner shut down.”
Messina was in the game now. “Why would anybody wanna kill the boss?”
“It sure ain’t no picnic guardin’ him,” McCracken said, and shook his head again. “Cain’t hardly keep up with him.”
“Walks faster’n most men run,” Murphy said. “Stops and starts, and stops and starts-it’s like chasin’ after a goddamn trolley car.”
“It’s like a goddamn game of musical chairs!” Squinch McGee said, holding his cards in two trembling hands.
A few hours later-after supper had been catered up to us from the cafeteria in the capitol’s basement-I saw the truth of their words. Keeping up with the Kingfish, as he shuttled back and forth between the House on one side of the building, and the Senate way over on the other, was work for Jesse Owens.
Watching this banty rooster expending boundless energy was a thing of wonder: pressing the flesh, keeping an eye on what were apparently routine matters, he obviously wasn’t taking any chances about getting his bills pushed through.
On one of the rare occasions I was able to keep up with him, falling alongside, I said, “Mind if I ask you something, Kingfish?”
“Only way to learn, son.”
“Why do you fight so hard, when you got the battle won from the starting pistol?”
“Son,” he laughed, “I ain’t even begun to shoot from the taw, yet.” He stopped on a dime, put a hand on my shoulder and his bulging brown eyes bore into me like needles. “Why do I run my fanny off like this? I’ll tell ya why, and you’ll wanna remember this: never write what you kin phone, never phone what you kin talk head-to-head, never talk what you kin nod, never nod what you kin wink.”
And he winked at me, and took off like a race car.
He was halfway down the hall from us when a man in white stepped out from where he’d been standing beside a pillar and planted himself in front of Huey, blocking his way.
“Now, I don’t want trouble with you, Tom,” Huey was saying, as we moved quickly up.
“This time ya’ve gone too far, Huey,” the man, who was elderly and frail-looking, said in a tone that managed to be both strong and quavering. Hatless, his snow white hair neatly combed, he wore wire-frame glasses and his face was handsome, dignified, but the sunken cheeks revealed the fragile skull under the creped skin.
“Now, you step aside, Tom.”
“It’s unconstitutional, this bill of yours…. We have a great president, and it shames every citizen of this fine state when you-”
By now, we had formed a half-circle around the pair. The Kingfish had made no indication he wanted us to intercede.
Huey thumped his chest. “Ah do the speeches aroun’ here, you feeble-minded ol’ fool! Git outa my way, and go slap damn to hell, while you’re at it!”
The old man stepped forward, his right hand raised. “Don’t curse me, you power-drunk bastard….”
Huey took several steps back; his face was white. The thought of this old man hitting him had paralyzed the great dictator with fear!
There was a sharp crack! as Big George lurched forward and slapped the old man, knocking his legs out from under him like kindling.
Huey, brave again, stood with windmilling arms, raging over the fallen senior citizen. “You’re the one who’s drunk! Git ’im outa here! Git ’im charged with drunk and disorderly, disturbin’ the goddamn peace or somethin’! And usin’ obscenity in a goddamn fuckin’ public place!”
“I’ll take him,” Messina snarled, and threw himself at the old man like a ball, grabbing the gent’s collar and yanking him to his feet. The old boy looked dazed, his glasses askew.
I pulled Messina away by one thick arm; the look he flashed back at me might have been a rabid animal’s. Nonetheless, I pushed myself between him and the old man. My right hand was on the butt of the nine-millimeter holstered under my left arm.
“Let me take him,” I said to Huey, looking at him hard. “I’m done for the night, anyway.”
Something akin to shame flickered in Huey’s eyes when he saw my expression. Had the Kingfish been a human being, once upon a time?
Then the Kingfish gave me his prize-winning shit-eating grin. “You have put in a long day, Nate. Know where the Baton Rouge police department is?”
“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’ll find it.”
A hand was on my arm; it felt like a giant’s hand, but it was only mental-midget Messina’s.
His eyes were glittering with emotion again, but a different one.
“Don’t ever put your hand on me,” he whispered, his face in mine.
“Sen Sen’s only a nickel,” I said. “Make an investment.”
I hauled the old boy out of there, being just a little rough with him to keep the other bodyguards from looking at me too askance. We went out onto the landing of the capitol, with the forty-nine granite steps stretching down before us; the military guard remained, but at about half the force of before. The gardenlike grounds yawned before us in the pale light of a quarter moon, like a hazy paradise, but the weather made of the night a sultry, sweltering hell.
“Thank you, young man,” the old gentleman said. “I’ve…I’ve never seen you before.”
“I’m just passing through.”
“You’re from Chicago.”
“How did you know?”
He straightened his glasses, smiled; his poise had returned. “I have a good ear for accents. You have a distinctly flat, nasal twang.”
“I know. I’m taking something for it.”
He frowned in thought. “You’re no Cossack. Are you really a detective?”
“Yes.”
“Investigating these murder threats?”
I frowned in thought. “Are you a reporter?”
“Used to be. Work for the administration, now.”
“What administration?”
“Why, FDR’s, of course. Publicity director for the Federal Education Program. Huey wants to pass a law so he can put people like me in jail.”
“You do strike me as a dangerous type.”
His smile might have been a pixie’s. “If you like…I can direct you to the police department….”
“Why, do you want to go to jail?”
“If you don’t take me there, he’ll fire you.”
Fuck the two-fifty a day. The list of things I will do for money is damn near endless; but it doesn’t include aiding and abetting the assault of elderly gentlemen.
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m quitting tomorrow. You got an automobile here?”
“Yes, indeed.”
“Can you drop me somewhere?”
“Yes, indeed!”
The ten-floor Heidelberg Hotel was on Lafayette Street. The Mississippi was damn near in its backyard; and next door was a Victorian residence with a clothesline, and cows and horses grazing in the yard. Baton Rouge was the goddamndest capital city I ever saw.
The hotel’s top-floor restaurant, the Hunt Room, was decorated with fox-and-hounds prints and mounted examples of the taxidermist’s art. Alice Jean and I chose to sit under the canopy in the open-air section of the restaurant. We could see the Mississippi and the quarter moon’s ivory reflection on its black surface; we could see cows belonging to the family in the Victorian home munching in a small pasture separated from the river by some trees. A paddle-wheeler’s mournful whistle echoed down the river.
I had just told Alice Jean-who looked lovely in a white organdy dress with red polka dots and a matching red beret-about the old ex-reporter getting slapped.
“If I hadn’t stepped in,” I said, “Messina would have beat him to a pulp, and Huey would have sent him to jail on trumped-up ‘disturbing the peace’ charges.”
She was sipping a Ramos Gin Fizz, a specialty of the house that Huey had imported from the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans. “‘Tom’ you said? That was probably Tom Harris…they’re old enemies, Huey and Tom.”
I set down my glass of rum. “It doesn’t bother you? Doesn’t it surprise you that-”
“Nothing Huey does, at this point, would surprise me.” She was smiling but her eyes were infinitely sad.
“Nothing?” I hadn’t told her yet. “What if I told you Huey knows we’re sleeping together?”
She almost choked on her latest sip of cocktail. I waited for her to regain her composure; she never quite did. Finally she said, “Can we discuss this in private?”
We sat in her room-the rooms at the Heidelberg were modest, at best, small, colorless studies in cheap wood veneer and cut-rate carpeting. The hotel was the tallest in the city but, remember-it had cows next door.
I was in a straight-back chair; she sat on the edge of the double bed, wrinkling the cream-color spread.
“Huey knows?”
I nodded. “In fact, I think he set us up.”
Her frown was bewildered; her eyes flying. “Set us up?”
“Huey and me hung around together in Chicago, remember. Back in ’32. He knows my style.”
She made a disgusted kiss of her cupie mouth. “Your…style?”
“Yeah…yeah, that I’m a randy son of a bitch, okay? We’ve been together less than a week, and I’ve already cheated on you.”
That was twice I surprised her.
Boy, those eyes could get big. “Cheated on me? Why, you son of a bitch!”
“Randy son of a bitch. I don’t remember anything about her, if that’s any consolation. She might’ve been a redhead. Murphy Roden and I apparently picked up some college girls in the French Quarter a few nights ago.”
“Apparently?”
I shrugged. “Too much tequila. Jesus Christ, Alice Jean, I’m no angel, and neither are you. Don’t you get it? The Kingfish was counting on that. He put us together so we’d maybe become an item, in which case I’d keep you outa his hair for a while. You’re bad for his image, remember? And it worked.”
“Why, that bastard…” But for some reason, she was smiling a little.
I smiled, too. “You gotta admire that kind of manipulation.”
She was nodding. “And I gotta admit, you and me are a good match, Heller.”
“Thanks.”
“And all the while, he was payin’ you, how much?”
“Two-fifty a day.”
She shook her head. “Only Huey. Only Huey.” She narrowed her eyes appraisingly. “Why’d you tell me this? When did you find out?”
“Just yesterday.” I stood. “Look. You’re a great gal, and more fun than a barrel of chorus girls, and I’m gonna miss the hell out of you…but, baby-I want out of this southern-fried insane asylum.”
Now both her eyes and her smile were sad. “Goin’ home, Heller?”
I nodded.
“Don’t like the way the Kingfish does business, huh?”
I came over and sat on the bed next to her. My voice was quiet, almost tender as I said, “I can handle the idea of a little honest graft. Hell, if it wasn’t for patronage, I’d never’ve made it onto the Chicago P.D. But this Gestapo stuff…shit. It’s for the fuckin’ birds.”
She was nodding. “So, then-I would imagine you’ll be donating all the money.”
“What money?”
She put on an innocent air. “Why, the money Huey paid you. You’ll be donating it all to charity, of course.”
I grinned wickedly at her. “You wanna know what I’m gonna do?”
“Sure. I wanna know what you’re gonna do.”
I put my hand on one of those round, high, firm breasts and exerted just enough pressure to make her lean back and she smiled slyly as I climbed on top of her.
“I’m gonna do the same thing to you,” I said, undoing my belt, “that Huey P. Long’s doing to Louisiana….”