For a twentieth-century capital city in the United States of America, downtown Baton Rouge had a surprising number of ancient, wood-frame buildings; the Reymond Building, however, wasn’t one of them. The gray granite office building might have been a post office or some other government facility, with its chiseled eagle decorations and sleek, modern, yet unostentatious lines.
But it certainly wasn’t part of Huey Long’s government. Though a few pro-Kingfish supporters maintained offices in the Reymond, it was generally known as the city’s foremost anti-Long enclave.
The Square Deal Association did not have an office here per se, but its founder, attorney Edward Hamilton, did, on the sixth floor.
It was Tuesday afternoon.
On Sunday morning, the Long party had arrived in St. Louis, with Huey greeting a rally-size crowd at the station, where we’d had only five minutes to make the train to Oklahoma City. Lack of sleep-and an attack of hay fever-finally slowed the Kingfish down, and our stay at the Black Hotel in Oklahoma City, that night, was uneventful-although my bodyguarding duties remained interesting and rewarding, thanks to the remarkable female whose body I was guarding.
After the Labor Day speech at the Oklahoma State Fair, the Long group caught the only available east-bound train; Alice Jean and I continued conferring in her compartment.
By that evening I was finally in Louisiana: at Dallas, two more Huey Long bodyguards (their names were Two-Gun Thompson and Squinch McGee-enough said) had met us in black unmarked State Police cars. Our party had been escorted to Shreveport, where the Kingfish summoned me to his room in the Washington-Youree Hotel.
As usual, he’d been spread out, flat as a stiff on a morgue slab, on the double bed of the suite, in his fabled green-silk pajamas.
We were alone.
“I’m gonna be burrowed in, in Baton Rouge, with my attorneys and advisers and such,” Huey said, “for the next two, mebbe three days.”
“Okay,” I said, because he’d left a rare hole in the conversation for me to fill.
“Me and the boys got thirty-one bills to polish up, for the special legislative session, Sund’y. You ready to start pokin’ around some for me, son?”
“Sure.”
“Alice Jean, she’s gived all you need?”
“Oh yes.”
“Well, that’s fine. She’s a good girl. Jest a little too ambitious. Ambition can be a mighty destructive thing.”
If I hadn’t been banging his girlfriend, and taking $250 a day from him for the pleasure, this is where I would have made a smart remark.
“Run along ’bout your bizness, now. On the way out, ask Seymour for your Bureau of Criminal ’vestigation badge, and the car keys.”
“What car keys?”
“I sent for an unmarked B.C.I. buggy for ya to use while you’re workin’ for me.”
So I’d driven down from Shreveport this morning, in a big black Buick that made me feel like a gangster (not an unusual outlook for a Huey Long bodyguard, really), following State Highway 20 along the Red River. I knew I was in the Pelican State because the highway signs bore an ungainly cartoon version of the bird. The road rolled by rich farmland and eerie wilderness alike, giving me glimpses of sprawling antebellum-style cotton plantations, as well as swampy expanses with willows, cottonwood and cypress trees. At Alexandria I picked up US Highway 71, swinging south, away from the Red River and into wooded bottomland, where truck farms, cotton and sugar-cane fields and uncultivated fields were alive with the colors of wild flowers.
I arrived in Baton Rouge, two hundred miles of Louisiana the wiser, with a solid sense of just how big a fish out of water I was, here.
And you know what pelicans do with fish.
The sixth floor of the Reymond Building did not look like an enemy encampment: gray-and-black speckled marble floor; dark-wood-and-pebbled-glass offices; names of attorneys, doctors and insurance agents in block-letter respectability on the frosty glass. No barbed wire or armed sentries in sight.
And on guard in Edward Hamilton’s outer office was a schoolmarmish matronly secretary who interrupted her typing to note my arrival and my business card, and announced my presence by intercom.
My card, incidentally, said “Hal Davis-Chicago Daily News.” I had taken half a dozen of these out of Hal’s billfold, a few months back, when he’d drunk himself to sleep on the bar next to me at my friend Barney Ross’s joint.
“Mr. Hamilton is expecting you,” she said, and parceled out a smile before returning to her work.
And he was expecting me: I had called from the hotel this morning, before I left Shreveport. I’d had no trouble getting in: I said I’d traveled South to “get the truth” about “Dictator Long” for my paper.
While I hadn’t spoken to Hamilton personally, but rather this matronly secretary, she had passed my message along to him, coming back almost immediately with an afternoon appointment.
Now he was rising from behind his desk, extending his hand, a white-haired, dark-eyebrowed and-mustached, medium-sized man in a well-tailored gray three-piece suit and blue tie that suggested both dignity and prosperity. His handsome face had a lived-in look, and the easiness of his smile was offset by deep-socketed sorrowful gray eyes that had seen way too much in half a century or so.
“I’m pleased to see you, Mr. Davis,” Hamilton said, in a mellow, Southernly soothing but quietly commanding baritone that must have served him well in a courtroom.
“My pleasure, Mr. Hamilton,” I said as we shook hands. “Thanks for seeing me at such short notice.”
A chair opposite him was waiting, and I took it.
I had glimpsed a sizable law library off the reception area, but Hamilton’s own office was modest, though that mahogany desk must have cost a small fortune. Vintage prints of riverboats, a signed photo of FDR and a few diplomas were the sole wall decorations; a couple of file cabinets were against a side wall. On his desk were a few framed photos, facing away from me; family photos, no doubt. One of them would be of his wife, Mildred-organizer of the anti-Long Women’s Committee of Louisiana.
I knew, from what Alice Jean had told me, that Hamilton had been special counsel to two state boards, patronage appointments from the previous administration, before the Kingfish had fired him, and battle lines had been drawn between them ever since.
I didn’t even have to ask a question: Hamilton was ready, willing and eager to speak his anti-Long piece.
“If you in the North think Huey Long is a peculiarly Southern phenomenon, Mr. Davis, you may soon learn how sadly mistaken you are.” He was sitting in a swivel chair and he rocked back easily in it as he spoke; his smile was gentle, his eyes hard, “First of all, the ‘Kingfish’ is no clown…. The Northern papers take that rustic-fool facade entirely too lightly, too lit’rally.”
I shrugged. “Makes good copy.”
“It makes good sense for Huey to sugarcoat his tyranny.”
“‘Tyranny’ is a pretty strong word, Mr. Hamilton.”
His smile stayed gentle, amused; and his speech remained softly Southern in cadence. But the words themselves were harsh.
“Make no mistake, Mr. Davis,” he said. “The Kingfish is an American Mussolini, a home-grown Hitler…a queer mixture of Fascism, baloney and old-fashioned bossism, Tammany Hall-style.”
That seemed a little overstated to me, but I merely nodded, and made notes.
“Louisiana under Huey P. Long,” the attorney continued, “is a banana republic with a particularly odious, megalomaniacal dictator. He owns the state government, the governor, the state university, the treasury, the state buildings and the Louisianians inside ’em. With a few isolated exceptions-my friend Judge Pavy, for one-Long owns the courts, as well. His secret police terrorize, and kidnap at will-”
I raised my pen as I interrupted. “My understanding is that Huey won his last election, handily. And that his candidates for other offices are usually big winners, too-”
Hamilton’s sorrowful eyes flared with anger. “He runs the elections, he counts the votes! He wields life-and-death power over private business, through his bank examiners, his homestead agents, his boards and commissions….”
“Is that why a law-abiding citizen, like yourself, took up arms and rose up against him?”
I was referring to uprisings in both New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
Last year in New Orleans, Huey-at odds with local politicians-had passed legislation giving the state (i.e., himself) control over the New Orleans police and fire departments; and usurped the city’s authority over voter registration and election machinery, as well. Huey had Governor O.K. Allen declare martial law, and soon the New Orleans police and an “army” of local citizens were facing down the National Guard. The comic opera situation had attracted both the national press and the White House, and-eventually-civic leaders had convinced both sides of the conflict to declare an armistice.
But the Baton Rouge uprising, earlier this year, had been the work of Hamilton’s Square Dealers. The group consisted largely of embittered Standard Oil employees who feared Huey’s personal war on Standard would drive out the company that kept the community financially afloat.
“Armed insurrection was not our goal,” Hamilton said quietly, the rocking in his swivel chair ceasing. “Only to rid the state of obnoxious dictatorial laws.”
I gave him a smirk. “Come on now, Mr. Hamilton. You wore little blue uniforms, you formed ‘battalions,’ you marched and drilled….”
His frown turned his dark eyebrows into one straight, furrowed line. “We were a paramilitary organization. So are the Boy Scouts. Neither group is inherently violent.”
“Your slogan was ‘Direct Action.’ One of your members spoke openly about hanging Huey and his puppet governor and all the rubber-stamp legislators-”
He bit the words off: “It was not our purpose to assassinate or murder anybody. For God’s sake, man, we numbered two ex-governors among our membership, and the mayor of New Orleans.” He shook his head. “I must say, I’m disappointed with the tack you’re takin’, Mr. Davis. I’m not certain this interview should…”
I replaced the smirk with an easygoing smile. “Mr. Hamilton, please understand. The things that are happening down here are difficult for folks up North to grasp.”
His eyes were scolding. “That’s the point I’ve been tryin’ to make. Don’t feel so smug about it. Huey’s already in Washin’ton, and he’s knockin’ at your door. He’ll smile and grin and guffaw his way into America’s house and steal off with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and every man, woman and child’s immortal soul.”
That all seemed pretty arch to me, and perhaps my expression showed it. Hamilton sat forward, leaned his elbows on the desk and looked at me, wearily.
“You see, Mr. Davis, after our impeachment efforts failed, and when Long began pushin’ through his ‘special legislature sessions’ in 1934-there have been six such sessions in the past thirteen months-well, it created a sort of…wildness in the air.”
“‘Somebody oughta kill that guy’ became more than just a wisecrack, you mean?”
Sitting back, Hamilton nodded gravely.
I asked, “Is ‘a wildness in the air’ why three hundred armed Square Dealers stormed and occupied the East Baton Rouge courthouse, last January?”
He winced at the memory. “You must try to understand, Mr. Davis…. Long sneaked a bill through that gave his stooge O.K. Allen leeway to appoint new members to the governing board of our parish-our last vestige of representative government had been stolen from us.”
“I thought storming the courthouse had to do with one of your people being arrested.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, that did fuel the ill-advised episode.”
“So Huey sent the militia in, and the Square Dealers folded.”
He shook his head, quickly. “No. We received word that our arrested member had been released, and we went home. The irony is, that ‘member’ was an undercover agent of Huey’s all along. In fact, during his ‘arrest,’ he was probably reportin’ in, deliverin’ names and phone numbers. That would certainly explain the airport debacle.”
The morning after the seizing of the courthouse, a hundred armed Square Dealers had arrived at the Baton Rouge airport, where they were greeted by five hundred national guardsmen with machine guns and teargas.
The sorrowful eyes took on a haunted aspect. “Most of the Square Dealers were gassed, and one was shot. Half a dozen were hospitalized. No fatalities, thank God. Some of us made it to our cars, or into the woods, before anything serious happened…other than abject humiliation, that is.”
“What possessed you to send a hundred of your men to the airport, anyway?”
His laugh was short, deep, humorless. “That’s the most humiliatin’ part. Even those of us in leadership capacities didn’t know why we were there! We all received urgent anonymous phone calls, urgin’ us to get out to the airport.”
“Phone numbers provided by Huey’s spy?”
He sighed. “I can only assume so. At any rate, that was the end of the Square Dealers, for all intents and purposes. A while later Huey banned the organization, officially. Martial law wasn’t lifted in Baton Rouge until only just last month.”
“When you say the Square Dealers are ‘officially’ dead, do you mean…?”
A brave smile formed on that lived-in face. “That unofficially, the anti-Long movement is very much alive? Oh yes, Mr. Davis. Yes indeed.”
“Alive, like at the DeSoto Hotel conference?”
The smile disappeared and he winced again; sat forward. “That’s been highly exaggerated, Mr. Davis. Most of what the press has said about that conference is based upon Huey’s own irresponsible hyperbole on the floor of the Senate of the United States.”
“He named FDR as a conspirator in a murder plot against him,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s either irresponsible, or goddamn disturbing. The idea of the President of the United States, conspiring to have one of his challengers killed…”
His frown was dismissive. “It’s absurd! The DeSoto Hotel conference was aboveboard and respectable-four of the five pro-Roosevelt Louisiana congressmen were present, for God’s sake, as were ex-governors Sanders and Parker, and Mayor Walmsley….”
“All gathered to discuss the Huey Long problem?”
“It was a political caucus, sir, plain and simple. The business at hand was to select anti-Long candidates to run in the comin’ primary election.”
“What about Huey’s claim of having a transcript of the conference taken from a dictaphone his men planted?”
“Ludicrous.”
“Maybe so, but colorful as hell.” I checked my notes from my briefing by Alice Jean. “Among the tidbits Huey reported on the Senate floor was one unidentified speaker’s offer to ‘draw straws in a lottery to go out and kill Long. It would only take one man, one gun and one bullet.’”
“Please, sir, don’t dignify-”
“Another unidentified voice supposedly said, later, ‘Does anyone doubt that President Roosevelt would pardon anyone who killed Long?’”
He was shaking his head, slowly, his smile one of frustration. “Mr. Davis…how often do you suppose someone in Louisiana says ‘Somebody ought to kill that Huey Long’?”
“Every thirty seconds or so?”
“Precisely. It doesn’t mean they’ll do it, or even that they’re thinkin’ serious of it. It’s just a kind of…wish. A daydream.”
He made it sound wistful.
“Mr. Hamilton,” I said, “I have an admission to make.”
He looked at me sharply.
“My name isn’t Davis,” I said, “and I’m not a reporter. Name’s Nate Heller-I’m a bodyguard on Senator Long’s staff.”
He almost lost his balance in the swivel chair; he tried for indignation, but his fear was showing, as he said, “This is outrageous, sir! I must ask you to-”
My hands patted the air. “Whoa,” I said, “settle down. I said I was a bodyguard, not a spy….”
He stood. Pointed at the door. “Leave. Now.”
“I really am from Chicago,” I said pleasantly, crossing my legs, smiling up at him, ignoring his commands. “The Kingfish took a shine to me back at the Democratic Convention in ’32, when I was his police bodyguard. I came down on an errand, and he offered me a position….”
“What is your point, Mr. Heller?”
I arched an eyebrow, smiled half a smile. “My point is that I’m from Chicago, and I’m on the inside of the Kingfish’s personal staff…and did I mention I’m willing to do just about anything for money?”
He sat, slowly, studying me carefully. “I was just beginning to gather that.”
I shrugged. “So…if there’s any information you, or any of your Square Dealer or DeSoto conference pals, might need…anything you might need done.…Catch my drift?”
“I’m beginning to.”
The attorney swiveled in his chair and faced the window behind his desk, looking somberly out at the city the Kingfish had taken away from people like him.
“Just over a year ago,” he said very quietly, “a goodly number of ‘law-abiding citizens’ were gathered in this very office…most of them armed. We seriously discussed stormin’ Long’s suite in the Heidelberg Hotel…just a few blocks away…bravin’ the nests of machine guns and such to rid the world of a tyrant.”
“What made you change your mind?”
Hamilton shrugged. “Cowardice, perhaps. Reason, possibly. At any rate, we didn’t resort to assassination then, and I seriously doubt we would do it today…much as we might like to.”
“I see.”
“We are not barbarians, Mister…Heller, was it? We are civilized men in the grasp of a barbarian.”
That would’ve seemed arch, too, if Hamilton’s expression hadn’t been so tragically grave.
“Well,” I said, as I stood. “I appreciate your time.”
He nodded noncommittally, numbly.
I went to the door. “And I apologize for the deception. But if you change your mind, or talk to any of your friends who might see things…differently…well, don’t hesitate to contact me.”
“In that unlikely event,” Hamilton said, “where are you staying?”
“At the Heidelberg,” I said, at the door. “Just down the hall from the machine-gun nest.”
And I left him there, to ponder the possibilities.