Baton Rouge Bingo

by Greg Herren

  So what about the charges of corruption that are so casually attached to Governor Long? In a state with a long history of corrupt governors and corrupt legislatures, where there has never been a decade in over a hundred years without some elected official being convicted of some kind of corruption in office, what sins did Governor Long commit to make him stand out from the rest?

  Much of his reputation as “corrupt” has come about because of the way he funded his campaigns. Anyone who had a state job was, of course, in the governor’s debt, and Governor Long had no compunction about deducting money from the salaries of the state employees for his campaign finances—since they owed their jobs to him, saying no to his request was simply not an option. Governor Long believed cash was the best way to go—whether this was because paying in cash ensured there would be no accurate accounting and no record of how much money was being spent is a matter for debate. Others besides state employees contributed to the fund, which was kept in a large strong box everyone in the Long organization called the “deduct box,” which was usually kept in the safe at the Roosevelt Hotel, where Governor Long kept a suite of rooms (the owner of the hotel at the time, Seymour Weiss, was a vital part of the Long organization). The box was moved shortly before then–Senator Long was assassinated in Baton Rouge, and no one knew where he had moved the box. Some of his men asked him for its location as he lay dying, and his only response was “Later, later.” The location of the famed box, rumored to contain over a million dollars in cash as well as damaging information about his political enemies—which included, at the time of his death, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—remains a mystery to this very day. A replica of the box is currently on display at the Roosevelt Hotel.

  I leaned back in my chair and stared at the computer screen.

  It made absolutely no sense.

  How on earth would Mom know where Huey Long’s deduct box was?

  But scrolling through all the other links that had come up in my search, it was pretty clear that the only “deduct box” was Huey Long’s.

  I went back to the article and read it over again. Paige Tourneur was right—all I knew about Huey Long was that he’d been a corrupt demagogue. I’d had no idea he’d accomplished so much, had done so much for Louisiana.

  But what was the connection between Huey Long and my parents?

  I couldn’t think of one. As far I could remember, I’d never heard either of my parents mention his name.

  Maybe the connection is Veronica Porterie somehow. Maybe her murder has to do with this deduct box, and for some reason they think Mom knows more than she does.

  Veronica met with Mom over the weekend. If someone was watching Veronica, following her…

  The more I thought about it, the more sure I was that I was right.

  I walked down the hall to ask her more, but when I stuck my head in through the door, she was sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, I shut the door carefully.

  I walked out onto the balcony and pulled out my cell phone. “Hey, Frank.” I filled him in quickly. Once I finished it all hit me, like an anvil landing on my head. I started to tremble and had to grab on to the railing as my knees buckled a little.

  Someone had kidnapped my father because they thought my mother knew where Huey Long had hidden the deduct box—and she not only didn’t know its location, she didn’t even know what the deduct box was.

  They weren’t above kidnapping—so why wouldn’t they stoop to murder?

  It was highly likely they’d already killed Veronica.

  “Frank, think we should call Venus and Blaine?” I said, managing somehow to keep my voice from shaking. Sure, they’d said not to call in the police—but they couldn’t possibly know everything. They might have Mom’s place under surveillance, may have even tapped her phone, but they couldn’t have my phone tapped and they couldn’t have my place watched, too.

  Or Frank’s phone either, for that matter.

  “Just to ask them what they think we should do,” I went on, leaning on the black iron railing and watching the people walking around below me. “Obviously, we can’t do anything overt with the police—they may be watching the apartment—but I don’t think they could have tapped her phone or anything. As long as Venus and Blaine don’t come anywhere near here, we should be okay.” I exhaled. “No, honey, it just doesn’t really seem real to me yet. I don’t want to leave her here alone—do you think you could call Rain and see if she’ll come sit with her? I think we should be doing everything we can to look for Dad, you know?” Just saying it made me feel a lot better, and I could feel adrenaline starting to surge through me as the despair faded. “Okay, call me back and let me know what Rain says.”

  I hung up and put my phone back in my shorts pocket.

  The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.

  We were investigators. We could investigate. We could find him.

  I went back inside, feeling even better about everything.

  I sat down at the computer again and entered “Huey P. Long” in the search engine. There was actually a website for him: hueylong.com. I clicked on the search function and typed “deduct box” into it. It brought up a page titled Governor, and I quickly scanned through the text. There was nothing in it about the deduct box, but I was startled to read he’d been impeached while governor, and he’d accomplished a lot more than what Tourneur had said in her article. A column on the right side of the page listed: 9,700 miles of new roads, 111 new toll-free bridges, free textbooks, free schools, statewide school bussing, adult literacy programs, reformed mental institutions, abolished poll tax, built a new state capital and governor’s mansion, built the New Orleans airport and sea wall, reduced bank failures… I whistled.

  His enemies, I reflected, had done a great job of smearing his memory and legacy.

  I was about to search again when I noticed a small box of text further down on the right of the page, under the words People Are Asking:

  What Was the Deduct Box?

  Most state employees who received a job from Long were expected to contribute to his campaign fund, which was kept in a locked “deduct box” at his Roosevelt Hotel headquarters in New Orleans.

  Without a base of wealthy political contributors, Huey reasoned that this was an appropriate source of funds for his political activities. He refused to take the usual bribes offered by business in exchange for their support, and he was frequently in need of cash to print circulars and travel the state to advocate for his programs and combat negative press.

  According to historian T. Harry Williams, Long collected between $50,000 to $75,000 each election cycle from state employees, contrary to exaggerated reports that he collected a million dollars per year.

  Few employees complained about the deducts, because jobs were scarce. They knew they would lose their jobs if Long lost his.

  Huey did not personally enrich himself with these funds and had surprisingly little money to his name when he was killed. The deduct box was never found and is believed to have been stolen by one of his associates.

  That’s weird, I thought. Hardly seems like there’s enough money in there for anyone to care about now. Maybe a hundred thousand or so dollars?

  It was a lot of money, but not enough to justify kidnapping and murder.

  I did some more searching but didn’t find anything new that I hadn’t already found.

  I was about to go check on Mom again when my cell phone started vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out and Frank’s promotional photo for GSWA was on the screen. I couldn’t help but smile—he looks so hot in that picture—before touching the screen to take the call. “Hey, Frank, what’s up?”

  “Rain is on her way over, and I called Storm as well,” Frank said. “Taylor’s unpacking and is out of the way. I decided not to call Venus and Blaine just yet, not until we know a little bit more about what’s going on. When do you think you’ll be heading back over here?”

  “As soon as Rain gets here,” I replied. “Frank,
I’ve been doing some checking on this ‘deduct box’ thing—it’s Huey Long related.” I remembered something. “Didn’t we meet someone at a party at Papa Diderot’s who’s an expert on Long?”

  “That Tulane professor who wanted to get in Colin’s pants,” Frank replied. “Remember?”

  That was the trigger I needed.

  My maternal grandparents lived on Third Street in the Garden, and every year on the Sunday before Fat Tuesday they had an open house for anyone who wanted to come by and watch the parades that day—five parades were regularly scheduled for that Sunday, including two of my favorites, Bacchus and Thoth. This past year was the first year we’d actually made it to the party. In previous years we were either too worn out from dancing till dawn or hungover from drinking till dawn or some combination of the two to make it uptown. But there had been a horrific thunderstorm on Saturday night. That night’s major parade, Endymion, had been postponed until Sunday night to follow Bacchus. The weather had been so horrible we hadn’t been in the mood to brave the elements. (Primarily because our costumes were flimsy and revealing, and getting soaked to the skin wasn’t any of our idea of a good time.) So, when Sunday morning dawned sunny and bright, we decided to head to the Diderot manse and drink for free on my grandparents.

  The Tulane professor in question was actually more interested in getting into my uncle Misha’s pants when we arrived—Misha has an amazing body—but soon switched his attentions to Colin. Being loyal lovers, Frank and I left him to get away from him on his own—while pointing and laughing the entire time, of course.

  It might seem mean, but we enjoyed it.

  And he’d do the same to either one of us.

  The professor’s name was Barney Fleming, and he was a Louisiana history expert. I just remembered him drunkenly going on and on about how Huey Long had been a great man whose reputation had been blackened by his enemies after his death. I told Frank his name and asked him to look him up.

  I hung up and took a deep breath. It might not be much, but at least we were doing something.

  I heard footsteps coming up the back staircase. A moment later my sister Rain, a grim look on her face, came through the back door.

  “Oh, Scotty.” She gave me a big hug. She shuddered. “What are we going to do?”

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered. “Frank and I will find Dad.”

  And I pity the bastards who took him.

  Chapter Seven

  Four of Cups

  A time for reevaluation

  I managed to make it to the bottom of the stairs before I lost it.

  I sat down hard on the steps and buried my face in my hands.

  My mind was spiraling out of control, but I knew better than to try to stop it. That was futile and a waste of energy. Instead, I gave in to it, allowing my fears and worries to take over. I leaned down with my head between my knees and took deep breaths. My eyes overflowed and the sobs racked my body as my brain raced from thought to thought, each one a little bit scarier and worse than the one before.

  After what seemed like forever, my mind calmed down. I wiped my face off with my T-shirt and stood up. I took a few more deep breaths before opening the door and stepping out onto the sidewalk.

  Dad would be fine. We’d find what the kidnappers wanted or we’d find him.

  I started walking back to my apartment.

  The sky had clouded over a bit while I was at Mom’s, so it wasn’t as bright out as I hurried down Royal Street, dodging around window shoppers and other pedestrians. The air felt like a hot wet cloth, and sweat ran down the sides of my face. It felt like it was going to rain at any moment. Every once in a while my mind started going to the bad place again, but I quickly pushed those thoughts out of my head. Everything will be fine, I would remind myself.

  But I still couldn’t wrap my mind around Dad being kidnapped.

  My father was one of the kindest, gentlest people on the planet.

  I’d been kidnapped a couple of times. It’s really not a pleasant experience, to say the least. I could easily go the rest of my life without it ever happening again. Both times it worked out for the best—well, I’m still alive, at any rate—and as worried as I was about Dad, I felt pretty damned confident we’d be able to find and rescue him. It’s not like we were your typical kidnap victim’s family—if there is such a thing. Frank was a retired FBI special agent, and we were both licensed private investigators. And I had the perspective of someone who’d been kidnapped before. However, I was really sorry Colin was out of the country on a job. His access to Blackledge assets and their sophisticated technology would be a huge help to us.

  I wiped sweat off my forehead as I unlocked the gate and slipped through, pulling it shut behind me. As I climbed the back steps to my apartment, I wondered if the mysterious Angela Blackledge would help us—or could somehow get a message to Colin.

  Not likely, I thought as I opened my apartment door. She wouldn’t want him to get distracted.

  “Distractions can get you killed,” Colin had told us once when I’d asked about getting in touch with him when he was on a job. “So there’s no telling when Angela would get the message to me.”

  Needless to say, the last thing I would ever do is distract him from the job at hand. His work was too dangerous—he needed to be able to focus on what he was doing.

  But I couldn’t help but feel he’d want to know about Dad.

  “Frank?” I called as I walked in the door. I could hear the television in the living room, but the entire apartment was dark. The shower in the master bathroom was running, and I walked down the dark hallway to the living room. What the hell? I thought as I recognized the sounds coming from the television as grunts and groans—and finally a male voice was saying, “Oh, yeah, baby, that’s what I like—”

  I flipped the light switch and the chandelier flooded the room with light.

  There’s nothing like coming home worrying about your kidnapped father and walking in on a gay teenager pleasuring himself to The Squirt Locker.

  The absurdity of it all!

  “You’re watching porn?” I gasped out as Taylor leaped up, pulling up his shorts and underwear while I looked away, trying hard not to laugh.

  Taylor’s face was beet red as he fumbled with the DVD player’s remote and the television screen returned to Judge Judy. “I—uh—”

  I knew I had to handle this the proper way—I didn’t want to scar him or make him feel unwelcome or uncomfortable in our home. I also knew laughing was one of the worst things I could do, so I did everything I could to control it—to no avail. I doubled over and gave in to it, managing to hold the sound in while my entire body rocked with it. After a few moments, I got myself back under control and took some deep breaths, straightening up and forcing myself to look him squarely in the face.

  “I’m sorry, really, I am, but when I was going through the DVDs I found some porn and I—” He broke off, sounding completely mortified and embarrassed. He was staring at the floor, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Uncle Frank was taking a shower, so I figured…”

  I took a deep breath and walked into the living room, gesturing for him to sit back down. He’s just a kid, I reminded myself, and remember what you were like at eighteen? You were a walking, talking hard-on, that’s what you were.

  “Seriously, Taylor, it’s okay,” I said, managing to keep my voice even. “It was a bit of a shock, you know? I just wasn’t expecting to walk in on that, you know.” I smiled. “You weren’t doing anything wrong, so don’t be embarrassed. It’s normal, and it’s healthy—believe it or not, I was your age once, and I can remember what it was like. But in the future, let’s just try to make sure that when you’re, um, pleasuring yourself, no one is going to walk in on you, okay? Make sure you have some privacy. I hope I didn’t embarrass you too badly.” Looking at his face, I could tell it was going to be a long time before he got over this mortification. So I brightly added, “Did you get all settled upstairs?”
r />   He nodded, his face still red.

  I heard the shower water stop running. “Okay, then. Do you mind running upstairs? I need to talk to your uncle Frank privately.”

  “You’re not going to mention this?” His voice cracked.

  “Of course not.” I patted him on the leg. “We’ll just keep this between us, okay?”

  He nodded and fled down the hall. I heard the door slam behind him, then his running footsteps going up the back stairs. I rubbed my eyes. Having an eighteen-year-old around was going to take some getting used to, apparently.

  I reached under the couch and retrieved the worn cigar box where I kept my old deck of tarot cards. I opened it and caressed the deck.

  The cards had been a gift from a friend of my mother’s when I was a teenager. Madame Xena, a friend of my parents’ who was a psychic, had given them to me. She’d come to dinner one night and when she met me, her eyes got really wide and she proclaimed, “But, Cecile, he has the gift!” I didn’t know what she was talking about at first, but a few days later the cards arrived with a note from her. She told me that I was a psychic, just as she was, and she had found when she was first trying to master her own gift that she used the tarot cards to focus and refine it. I just thought they were cool—I’d never seen a deck of them before. Mom bought me a copy of Eden Gray’s book Mastering the Tarot, and I started studying the cards, learning the different layouts for readings and practicing. I got pretty good at it pretty fast, and I also began communing with the Goddess.