On a pleasantly warm afternoon, the Friday before, a taxi I’d caught at Newark Airport deposited me in Manhattan on Eighth Avenue between Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth streets, just to the rear of Penn Station, near the garment district. I paid the cabbie off, tipping him well, in return for sparing me any sightseeing remarks on the ride in.
I alighted with valise in hand, a spongy but surprisingly heavy brown-paper package tucked under my arm. Oblivious to the bored, busy New Yorkers whisking by-shoppers, stenographers, businessmen, office clerks-I stood gaping up like any damn-fool out-of-towner at the second-tallest hotel in the city. Back in Chicago, the forty-story Morrison advertised itself as the tallest structure in the city that invented skyscrapers. But the Hotel New Yorker, with its wide, truncated, vaguely Egyptian structure and its intricate art deco setbacks, would have been impressive even if it didn’t trump the Morrison by three stories.
The air-conditioned lobby was a low-ceilinged, sprawling affair that managed to be both stately and modern. I strolled past the coffee shop, newsstand, and a vast bank of elevators, over to the marble check-in counter, where I found myself expected.
“Your room is ready, Mr. Heller,” bubbled a dark-haired, bright-eyed, cheerfully efficient clerk. “I’ll let Mr. Weiss know you’re here….”
In my racket, you’re seldom so graciously received, but I knew I was basking in reflected glory, and didn’t take it very seriously. I took my valise, my paper-wrapped package and my travel-weary behind over to a soft chair and kept a potted fern company for a while.
Not a long while, however.
I’d been glancing around the lobby, cataloging the pretty girls mostly, when suddenly he was standing before me, like he’d just materialized. The apparition was bald, bottle-shaped and extremely well-dressed, his natty dark brown lightweight three-piece suit set off perfectly by a green-and-brown striped tie with diamond stickpin; my rumpled brown Maxwell Street number was no competition.
He was the kind of homely, slightly overweight man who tried to make up for his physical shortcomings via sartorial elegance.
But Seymour Weiss-Huey Long’s second-in-command-had a lot of homeliness to overcome: wisps of brown hair atop an egg-shaped head like dying desert grass, bulbous nose, bump of a chin, dark dead eyes.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Heller,” he said, and his small line of a mouth made itself into a tiny smile.
“Pleasure, Mr. Weiss,” I said. “Elliott Wisbrod asked me to deliver this package to you, personally.”
“Splendid!”
I handed him the brown-paper package and he held it in both hands, like an award he was gratefully accepting.
“I understand this is the Wisbrod Company’s latest model,” he said.
“That’s what Mr. Wisbrod said.”
Seymour beamed at me, pointed a stubby finger at my chest. “I’d like you to deliver it personally to Senator Long.”
Was that why I’d been asked to play messenger, for a package the mails or R.E.A. could have easily handled?
I thought I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Why is that, Mr. Weiss?”
“Huey likes you,” Seymour said quietly. “Maybe coming from you, he won’t be so quick to dismiss this effort….”
“If you say so,” I said, shrugging a little.
After all, I’d flown out on his ticket, and I wasn’t due to fly back till tomorrow, anyway. And an encounter with the Kingfish was always a memorable affair.
“Good,” he said, and smiled his tiny smile, and thrust the package back into my arms, where it crinkled like Christmas paper.
As for the Kingfish liking me, that seemed an over-statement to me. I did know him, or at least we’d met. Friendly acquaintances was as far as I’d push it. Huey Long wasn’t exactly the kind of man it was easy to “know.”
But back in June of ’32, when I was a plainclothes dick on the Chicago P.D., I’d got duty as police liaison to Long and four bodyguards, in town to attend the National Democratic Convention, at which Huey was lobbying for the nomination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In fact, he and his group showed up a week early, so Huey could play politics, get some press and check out the local nightlife-at least ’til Mrs. Long arrived for the convention itself.
Sergeant Sapperstein, my boss on the pickpocket detail, said somebody upstairs wanted Huey and his boys baby-sat. Seemed Huey’s bodyguards had been deputized as Chicago police officers to give them firearm-carrying privileges; apparently the Kingfish was nervous about assassination attempts.
Huey wasn’t the only nervous one: so was whoever got the payoff for allowing a Louisiana goon squad to go around town carrying guns-otherwise, I wouldn’t have been showing the governor of Louisiana where in the Windy City one might violate the Eighteenth Amendment, not to mention two or three of the Ten Commandments.
“As I recall, you and Huey got along famously,” Seymour said, as we stepped into an otherwise unoccupied elevator. It was one of those modern, self-service jobs; he pushed a button on a panel with more numbers on it than a punch-board.
“Yeah, Huey was okay,” I said. “Even offered me a position. Should’ve taken it.” I shook my head. “Thought I had a police career going.”
“What happened?”
“Testified against some bent cops.”
“Sounds noble.”
“Not really. I did it to keep Frank Nitti from having me killed.”
“Oh,” he said. He cleared his throat. “And how was your flight?”
“Fine.”
“Flying doesn’t bother you?”
“Nope. Not since I went up with Lindy.”
Seymour blinked. His expression was that of an iguana studying a fly. “You flew with Lindbergh?”
“Yeah, I was the Chicago police liaison on the kidnapping. In the early days, they figured Capone was responsible.”
“I remember,” Seymour said, nodding.
“Anyway, Slim’s a real practical joker. I’d never been on a plane before, and he went on one of his hedge-hopping stunt-pilot binges, just to initiate me. Ever since, nothing any pilot can do can faze me.”
On the other hand, this elevator was making my ears stop up. The button Seymour had punched read 32.
He seemed faintly amused. “Frank Nitti. Colonel Lindbergh. You’ve become something of a name-dropper, Mr. Heller.”
I hadn’t meant to be; or maybe in the back of my head I wanted to let Huey Long’s majordomo know I’d been around.
“But I do wish you’d taken that job Huey offered you,” Seymour said glumly.
“Yeah?”
“He could use you on his staff about now.”
“From what I read in the papers, Huey doesn’t go anywhere these days without a battalion of bodyguards.”
“Trigger-happy thugs, most of them,” Seymour said. “Huey’ll be lucky not to get caught in a cross fire.”
“Which is why you ordered this.” I hefted the brown-paper-wrapped package.
Seymour nodded. The hard dead eyes got as meditative as they were capable of. “Huey engenders strong feelings in the populace,” he said. “He’s worshipped by many….”
“Yeah,” I said, “but you’ve also had armed insurrection in the streets of New Orleans.”
“And Baton Rouge.” Seymour shook his head, his expression grave. “He most definitely needs protection.”
The elevator came to a stop and the door slid open, as I stepped out, swallowing to pop my ears back into full service. I followed Seymour, and it was the damnedest thing: he took small, almost mincing steps, the steps of a guarded man, yet he moved quickly. I almost had trouble keeping up….
He used a key in the door (with a gold plate labeling it 3200) at the end of a hall. I was ushered into an outer sitting room where, at a table meant for dining or perhaps a business conference, two characters out of Damon Runyon sat in a cigar-smoke haze, playing cards.
I knew them both-they’d attended the Chicago convention with Long as part of his four-man bodyguard contingent.
“Hey, it’s the red-headed mick from Chicago!” Big George McCracken said, his lumpy fighter’s face approximating a smile.
Actually, nobody I ever heard of named Heller is a mick, but my Irish Catholic mother had bestowed on me those physical characteristics, whereas all I got from my apostate Jewish father was a last name and bad attitude.
“How you doin’, George?” I asked.
“Can’t complain.” McCracken was in his shirt-sleeves and suspenders, but had his crumpled fedora on. A smoldering stub of a cigar was buried in his cheek as he looked up from a hand of gin. He was winning.
No surprise: his opponent was Joe Messina, who had the mental capacity of a tree stump, and about as much personality. Messina glanced back at me and grunted a greeting, as if my showing up after a three-year absence was completely unremarkable, and studied his cards with all the intensity he could muster.
“Nice to see you again, too, Joe,” I said.
“Comin’ to work with us?” McCracken asked. Next to him, leaned against his chair, I noticed, was a big paper sack, a grocery bag, and in it was a Thompson submachine gun.
A hole in the side of the sack gave him access to the trigger.
“Nope,” I said, following Seymour, who hadn’t bothered speaking to Huey’s roughneck rabble; he was heading past a pair of male aides or secretaries who were seated at another table, going over some papers. They didn’t speak to Seymour or he to them, as he moved toward a closed door, from behind which came the muffled, but enthusiastic, sound of a woman singing.
“Just playing delivery boy,” I added to McCracken, lifting the brown-paper package, and Seymour opened the door.
“…man a king,” the female voice sang in a pleasantly chirpy, Betty Boop-ish way, “every man a king, for you can be a millionaire…”
I trailed Seymour into the large, lavishly appointed, wall-to-wall carpeted bedroom, where next to the window, sun filtering in through sheer drapes, was a spinet piano in front of which stood a pretty little blonde in a slinky white-dotted navy taffeta number. She was swinging a cute fist as she punctuated the lyrics.
“But there’s something belonging to others,” she warbled, “there’s enough for all pee-ple to share…”
At the piano was another cutie; neither one of them had seen twenty-five. This one was brunette and wore taffeta, too, white with navy dots, like the photo negative of the other girl’s frock.
“When it’s sunny June, and December, too,” the blonde sang, “or in the wintertime or spring…”
Jumping in enthusiastically, and off-key, from time to time, was their musical director-in green pajamas and bare feet-directing the musical ensemble as if he were guiding a plane in on a runway. With one arm windmilling in a manner that had nothing to do with the beat, the Kingfish was, as usual, in charge.
Then in a croaking baritone, the senator from Louisiana joined in with the blonde on the bouncy melody, “There’ll be peace without end, every neighbor a friend, with ev…ry man…a…k-i-i-i-i-ng!”
A little man sitting across the room began to applaud enthusiastically; wire-frame glasses pinched his sharp nose, a red bow tie adding a splash of color to his drab brown suit.
“Lovely, Lila,” Huey said, placing one of the blonde’s small hands between his two bigger ones like he was pressing a prom rose in a book. She beamed at him. Then he let go and touched the shoulder of the brunette at the piano who had turned to smile up at him in awe; this was a celebrity, after all.
“I like that ’un best,” he said, “don’t you, ladies?”
The two girls nodded.
The little man in wire-frames rose from his chair, still applauding, which seemed like overkill to me, and through a strained smile he said, “Very nice, Kingfish, very nice indeed.”
“Well, now, thank ya, Lou.”
Lou went to the piano and tapped the sheets of music manuscript. “But I think you may want one of these new songs we commissioned. I mean, Kingfish, this is for your presidential campaign…the public might be a little tired of ‘Every-’”
“Lou,” Huey said with a smile as casual as it was patronizing, “as a theatrical agent, you’re a humdinger. But as a judge of musical composition? Ya ain’t worth the powder and shot it’d take to kill ya.”
The agent frowned in frustration, lifting the handwritten sheets of music and waving them flappingly in the air. “We have compositions from some of the top talent on Tin Pan Alley….”
“I like the song I wrote. Iffen it’s good enough for the LSU marchin’ band, it’s good enough for the American public.”
“But you wanted a campaign song….”
Huey put his hand on the little man’s shoulder. “Tell ya what-we’ll take a vote.” He winked at the blonde and she blushed, or pretended to. “I’m the chairman, I vote we use my song, and the motion is carried.”
Seymour and I had been standing just inside the bedroom door through all this, and had as yet to be acknowledged. I stood with my fedora in my hands, wondering if there was a chance in hell the Kingfish would even recognize me.
Suddenly, as if my thoughts had summoned him, Long turned to us. His happy bumpkin face turned into a scowl.
“Where’d you run off to, Seymour?” he asked irritably. “I was makin’ a goddamn point!”
“But you and Mr. Irwin have important business,” Seymour said, gesturing to the bow-tied agent.
“We had our business,” he said. “Lou, I’ll see you at supper tonight.”
“Looking forward to it, Kingfish.”
Huey slipped one arm around the blonde and the other around the brunette, and walked them toward the door. “It was real sweet of you kids to help the ol’ Kingfish out this afternoon,” he said.
“It was an honor, Senator,” the blonde said, and fluttered her false lashes.
“You thank Nick for me, now, hear?”
“You bet,” the brunette said.
The Kingfish shut the door behind them and his affability evaporated as he walked over to the big double bed and flopped there on his back. There were no pillows; he apparently liked to stretch out, flat. Also, at some point in the last ten minutes, I seemed to have turned invisible.
Seymour wandered over and stood at the bedside, like a butler awaiting his wealthy master’s whim. Huey ignored him, removed a cigar from a box on the bed-stand, biting off the tip, spitting it who-knew-where, then lighting up the cigar with the tall flame of a silver Zippo. He puffed, got it going, then picked up a newspaper on the bed next to him, the Washington Post. He read and smoked and then, finally, spoke.
“Like I was sayin’, Seymour, ‘fore you so rudely run off…you know I don’t mind a few little ol’ isolated pockets of insurrection…after all, even fleas got their use-they keep the dog awake.” He turned the page of the paper and it drooped and he shook it erect, making a whip-crack sound. “And, anyway, I cain’t make a speech worth a damn ’less I’m raisin’ hell about what my enemies are up to.”
Seymour shifted on his feet. “I hope that means you’ve come to your senses on the Judge Pavy matter….”
Huey thrust the paper angrily aside, tightening his fist as he did; the crumpling was like distant thunder. His eyes and nostrils flared. He was an enraged bull in green-silk pajamas.
“Come to my senses is right! Them stubborn hayseeds in St. Landry Parish need to be taught some god-damn respect.” He smiled but it turned quickly into a sneer. “Come Sunday, we’ll gerrymander Judge Pavy slap damn to hell and gone.”
Seymour patted the air cautiously. “Judge Pavy is very popular around Opelousas way….”
“I’ll teach those peckerwoods to git off the sidewalk and bow down good and goddamn low when the Kingfish comes to town.” Huey’s cigar had gone out. He sat up on the bed, and reached for the Zippo on the nightstand. “Who’s that? New bodyguard?”
The Kingfish had finally noticed me.
Seymour smiled. “Old friend of yours. From Chicago.” Slowly, his face began to light up, like a kid handed a candy bar.
He hopped off the bed and came over with his hand extended; it was as if he planned to stab me with it. But we only shook hands, warmly, though truth be told, the Kingfish had a strangely cold, clammy handshake.
Like shaking hands with a corpse.
“Well, well, if it ain’t the smart-ass Chicaga boy hisself! Nat Heller!”
I gave him half a smile. “It’s Nate. But I’m surprised you remember me at all, Senator.”
Both eyebrows lifted momentarily. “Why, ’cause of them speakeasies we damn near drunk outa business?”
“Man like you meets a lot of people, Senator.”
He shook his head. “Not that stands up to me. I scare the bejesus out of ninety-nine out of a hun-erd men, but I guess maybe you’re that other one.”
“I don’t know. Pay me enough money and I’ll be glad to grovel.”
His laugh was a howl, and whether sincere or just part of the rube persona he affected, I couldn’t say. He slipped an arm around my shoulder.
“You know,” he said, “if you didn’t have the same color hair as me, mebbe I wouldn’t cut ya so goddamn much slack….”
I ran a hand through my reddish-brown locks and grinned. “Maybe there was a Long in the woodpile.”
This time the laughter was a roar, and he gestured for me to follow him over to a sofa, where we both sat. Seymour took a chair nearby, but sat quietly.
“Forgive the pajamies, Nate-kinda got to be a trademark with me. People half expect it”
“If it’s good enough for the German consul,” I said, “it’s good enough for me.”
“But it wasn’t good enough for that Heinie son of a bitch,” Huey said good-naturedly. “That’s how these things got to be my trademark.”
We were both referring to a notorious international incident that had made great press for Huey. In New Orleans, at Mardi Gras time a few years ago, the commander of a German cruiser and the German consul called on the Governor of the Great State of Louisiana in the latter’s hotel suite. Huey greeted them in his blue robe, green pajamas and red slippers (he later admitted he’d looked like an “explosion in a paint factory”), unintentionally insulting the dignitaries. The press got hold of it and had a merry time with the story, and ever since, Huey had played up the rustic fool business, probably because it softened his American Hitler image.
“So,” Huey said, using the Zippo again, “what brings the Chicaga Police Department to New York? Bigger and better graft?”
“That might do it,” I said. “But me, I went private back in ’32.”
“Hot damn.” He slapped his thighs. “Hope that means you come here to fin’ly take me up on my job offer!” He shook his head. “Them sorry-ass, shif’less, worthless Cossacks of mine…I can use somebody that don’t think with his fists.”
“Isn’t Murphy Roden still with you? He’s a good man.”
His mouth twitched. “’Ception to the rule. He’s drivin’ my Caddy from D.C. down to Baton Rouge for me. He’d be pleased to see you-took a real shine to you.”
“Huey,” Seymour interjected, “Mr. Heller is here at my invitation.”
“Really? That’s one good idea you had lately.”
Seymour’s eyes tightened. “I…I wanted to give you something special. For your birthday.”
Huey smirked at me, rolled his eyes. “Big day. Big deal. The ol’ Kingfish is gettin’ on in years. So, Seymour. Is Chicaga here my gift? Why ain’t you wearin’ a big red ribbon, Heller?”
“The cake I was going to jump out of fell,” I said.
Seymour nodded toward the brown-paper package I had laid next to me on the couch. “I asked him to bring you a present from Chicago….”
I handed him the crinkly package and he took it eagerly, his smile making his cheeks fat, his eyes those of a greedy child; he tore at the wrapping, but as the contents were revealed to him, his glow turned to glower.
In the Kingfish’s hands was a thick, bulky tan canvas sleeveless garment, a vest of sorts that would cover its wearer neck to waist.
Disgusted, he threw the gift at Seymour who caught it, flinching.
“I don’t need no goddamn bullet-proof BVDs, Seymour! Jesus H. Kee-rist! I’d look, and feel, like a damn fool in the fucker. Send it back!”
Seymour’s homely face was tight with concern. “Huey…please…with these death threats…you have to have protection.”
“The kind of protection I need ain’t the kind you wear.”
“I simply thought…”
“That’s your problem, lately. Simple thinkin’.” He shook his head and the spit curl flounced. “Well, ya did one thing right, anyway-you invited my ol’ pal Heller here to come to my birthday shindig.”
Seymour managed a smile that was a sickly half-moon.
Huey waved dismissively in the air, as if shooing a fly. “Seymour, check on them train reservations.”
“I already have….”
“Double-check. Don’t you understand? I want some privacy here. I want a private consultation with my Chicaga security adviser.”
Seymour nodded numbly, rose, and carrying the tan bullet-proof vest in his hands like something he needed to bury, went out, shutting the door behind him.
The Kingfish slapped me on the shoulder; his grin was tight and somewhat glazed; he was, after all, at least a little crazy. “So…you’re in private practice now, are ya, son? Ya know, I’m serious about that job offer still bein’ good.”
“That’s flattering, Senator.”
“Huey. Call me ‘Huey,’ or ‘Kingfish.’ Senator is what you call them numbskulls back in Washington.”
“All right…Huey. But I got a nice little business goin’ back home.”
He jerked, as if I’d slapped him. “In this goddamn depression? Under Prince Franklin? Are you joshin’?”
Actually, I kind of felt the depression was letting up a little, and I’d voted for FDR; but I didn’t share that with the Kingfish.
“Well, I have clients to consider. Retail credit, insurance investigation…can’t just walk away from them.”
And I had no desire to move to bayou country, even temporarily, though I didn’t share that thought with him, either. Swamps and gators weren’t my style.
“Can you give me jest a little ol’ month of your time, son?” His voice had turned surprisingly gentle; the soapbox nowhere to be seen. “Even jest a measly li’l ol’ two weeks?”
“Well, I might be-”
He leaned forward; his dark brown eyes fixed on me in a manner that was both seductive and discomfiting. “I need a man…a man I can trust.”
“What about Seymour Weiss?”
“I trust him like a brother,” he said flatly. Then he leaned back, and draped his arms along on the top of the sofa. “’Course, on t’other hand, I don’t in particular trust my brothers.”
“You said yourself, Murphy Roden’s a good man.”
“So he is, and so, in his inimitable way, is Joe Messina-he’d die for me.”
“He also needs help tying his shoes.”
“That’s a God-granted fact,” Huey said, and grinned. “So…what I need is a man I can trust, who’s also a man with brains….” He winked at me. “An outside man to be my inside man. What’s your goin’ rate, Detective Heller?”
“Twenty-five a day.” For those clients I figured could afford it, anyway.
He raised his eyebrows and looked down the double barrels of his shotgun nose at me. “Son, I’ll pay you ten times that with a minimum retainer coverin’ a week’s work-cash on the barrelhead.”
I perked up. Despite that cornpone drawl, he was talking my language now.
“And,” he said, with a flourish of a hand gesture, “I’ll toss in a ten-thousand-dollar bonus…iffen you come through for me.”
“Come through how?”
He used the Zippo to light up the cigar again; from the aroma, I’d bet a C-note it was a Havana. Oddly, considering how hard-drinking he’d been back in Chicago in ’32, there was no sign in the suite of a bar or liquor cart or even a bottle.
Then, as casually as if he were asking somebody to pass the salt, he said, “Sometime in the next week or so…give or take…somebody’s gonna try an’ kill the ol’ Kingfish.”
But before my new employer could elucidate, the door burst open and the cute blonde who’d been singing at the piano was back again, this time wearing a black beaded, low-cut gown that exposed lots of creamy white flesh. Additionally, she was holding a big creamy white frosted cake that looked almost as good as she did; it was elaborately decorated with birthday greetings and frosting flowers, all in a shade of green near that of the Kingfish’s silk pajamas. Atop the cake, a forest of little green candles burned.
“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you,” the stunning young woman sang, as Joe Messina, Big George McCracken, the agent Lou Irwin and others in the Long retinue, male secretaries and what-have-you, crowded around, following her into the bedroom. All were gaily joining in except a glum Seymour who trailed after them.
“Happy birthday, dear Huey,” they all sang-even Seymour joined in, finally-as the Kingfish approached, his eyes damp, apparently genuinely touched.
He blew out the candles.
Huey P. Long was forty-two years old.