Blood and Thunder nh-7

by Max Allan Collins

  “That would be nice.”

  “We’ll just climb in the car and go wherever we want to, and not make one single, solitary, slivery plan in advance.”

  This moment indicated a depth of friendship between the two men that I hadn’t picked up on before. I found it oddly touching, although I wasn’t touched enough to tell these two friends, in the midst of their income-tax discussion, about Elmer Irey’s “vacation” plans for them. I’d rather have a root canal than an IRS audit.

  In the midst of all this, Huey was going over his notes for a speech he was going to give, via that Weiss-controlled radio station in the Roosevelt that Frank Wilson had mentioned.

  So I’d had no opportunity to get Huey alone long enough to fill him in, properly, about what I’d been up to.

  The green-pajamaed Southern-fried potentate was flat on the bed, stomach down, going over his notes in pencil when he suddenly called me over. I went.

  “You like golf?” he asked.

  “I don’t know if I like it, exactly. I’ve learned to put up with it-I do a lot of work for bankers and insurance people, you know.”

  “Well, you won’t have to play, son. Jest caddy.”

  “Caddy?”

  “I always use my bodyguards as caddies,” the Kingfish said, glancing up from his notes with a sly smile. “I don’t want nobody makin’ a hole-in-one in me.”

  Speaking of Caddies, a few minutes later I was sent down to wait for Murphy Roden, the Long bodyguard who’d been dispatched to trade in the Kingfish’s last-year’s-model Cadillac for a new number. I stood outside, near the Roosevelt entry that straddled the corner of Canal and Baronne. A New Orleans P.D. sawhorse reserved a parking place, and when the shiny-new, midnight blue buggy rolled in, I cleared the way.

  The long, rakish Caddy purred like a thousand kittens; behind the wheel, Roden’s blond, brown-eyed, roughly handsome countenance lighted up with a grin, upon seeing me.

  We had hit it off, back in Chicago in ’32, which is something I couldn’t really say about any of Huey’s other Cossacks. Murphy was a small-town boy who’d wanted to be a flyer, but washed out and joined the Louisiana State Police, where he set countless sharp-shooting records-I heard one of the other bodyguards say that Murphy could empty a.38 into a four-inch target at fifty feet.

  He got assigned to the Kingfish as a driver for one upstate visit, and Huey took such a shine to him, Murphy became his personal chauffeur, and easily his most trusted bodyguard.

  “Nate Heller!” he said, climbing out of the Caddy, dropping its silvery keys into a pocket of his tan suit. “I heard you joined the circus!”

  Murphy was probably thirty, and he was brawny but not big: maybe five seven, five eight.

  “Just short-term,” I said, as we shook hands. “Your boss has had some death threats and wanted to put on some extra security.”

  “He always did like you, Nate.” He cocked his head, raised an eyebrow. “Death threats are pretty much old news around here, but the boss is takin’ this one serious. He’s reassigned every available highway patrolman and B.C.I. agent to the capitol. So-what do you think of my spandynew wheels?”

  “Yours?”

  “Well, the boss never drives ’em. Maybe we can take a spin, a little later. I need to show you the French Quarter.”

  “I saw it.”

  “Daytime or nighttime?”

  “Daytime.”

  “Then you ain’t seen it, nohow.”

  I walked down the sidewalk, along the endless length of the new Caddy; sun glinted off in cross fires of glare. “I see what Huey means by ‘sharing the wealth.’ Doesn’t this rub his dirt-poor constituents the wrong way?”

  “Hell, no! He leaves the slouchy duds and horse-and-buggies for the also-ran candidates. He wants people to think he’s somebody special-and they do.”

  “How does this thing handle?”

  Murphy put his hands on his hips and appraised the vehicle. “Well, I’ve only driven it a mile or so, over from the dealership. But these babies handle fine…leastways, now that Huey paved the roads. Back when I was navigating gravel roads, at eighty miles an hour, we used to go through windshields twice a month. And hell, I must’ve blown out more tires than Carter’s got pills.”

  I winced. “On gravel roads?”

  He nodded, and his sunny smile was seductive. “I tell ya, when I had a blowout on a downgrade, and was strugglin’ to keep control of the wheel, them folks in the backseat, they really come alive. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”

  “I believe you.”

  We strolled into the Roosevelt’s block-long, chandeliered lobby, and Murphy asked me how I was getting along with Messina.

  I shrugged. “No real problems, since Oklahoma City.”

  “You know, he loves the boss. Sleeps near his feet; plays valet for ’im. He’d do anything for the boss.”

  “You mean, he handles the murders.”

  Murphy shook his head and laughed, a little. “You ain’t changed much, Nate.”

  That evening, around seven, as I sat on the rider’s side in the front seat of the big blue Caddy, Murphy Roden switched on the radio. A lively live rendition of “Every Man a King” was emanating from the speakers, straight from the Roosevelt Hotel’s Fountain Lounge.

  “The boss told Seymour to reserve a three-hour time slot,” Murphy said, grinning over at me. His arm was elbowed out the window, his blond hair ruffling in the breeze the buggy was stirring up out of this hot humid night.

  “This is Senator Huey P. Long talkin’,” the Kingfish began, “and since the lyin’ newspapers won’t tell you these things, I’ll have the boys play a little music so you can call up your friends and neighbors and tell ’em I’m on the air….”

  Murphy switched off the radio, shook his head, grinned over at me again. “The boss is a cutter, ain’t he? You ready to learn why they call N’Owluns the city that care forgot?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “You’re sure you’re sure?”

  “If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’,” I said.

  The next morning-on the plushly green links of the Audubon Park Club’s golf course-two bleary-eyed caddies, both of whom were entirely too hungover to be carrying handguns in holsters under the jackets of their white linen suits (though they were), followed a pair of golfers up a slope. The golfers were Huey Long-in a short-sleeve white shirt with a loud red-and-green tie, tan slacks and white golfer’s shoes-and Seymour Weiss, atypically jaunty in green cap, white sport shirt and brown knickers with matching socks.

  A third member of the party, with his own armed (but apparently not hungover) bodyguard, was off to the left somewhere, chasing a ball in the rough.

  The strap of the bag of clubs slung over my shoulder created a band of pain that almost equaled the ache in my legs as we scaled the hill.

  “Have a little too much fun last night, kiddo?” Murphy Roden asked; he was grinning, but he couldn’t have felt much better than me. His eyes were filigreed with red.

  “I don’t remember anything after the tequila.”

  “La Lune! Now there’s a club…. Don’t tell me you could ever forgot the Dog House.”

  I winced as I tried to think. “Was that a colored show?”

  “Yes sir, but so was Popeye’s. And Mama’s Place.”

  For whatever reason, these words summoned images of flickering lights and floor shows with barely clothed high-yellow gals stomping in abandon to red-hot jazz. I trudged up the hill, following the Kingfish’s tan-trousered behind.

  “Murph…did we pick up a couple of girls?”

  “Sure ’nuff did. College gals from Philadelphia.”

  “Legal age?”

  “I don’t believe we asked.”

  Huey had reached his ball, where it rested at the hill’s summit like the cherry on a sundae. He walloped it a good one, and it sailed down the fairway two hundred fifty yards, easy.

  He whooped with delight.

  “Nice,” Seymour said.


  “Top that, sucker!” Huey cackled.

  Actually, Seymour was winning. Huey had power, but no finesse. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, when he flubbed a shot; the glee when he really connected with one made up for it.

  We began to trudge down the hill, to where Seymour’s ball waited.

  “These college girls,” I said to Murphy. My head was playing the Anvil Chorus. “Do I remember us goin’ to their hotel room?”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  “Was mine a redhead?”

  “I believe so.”

  “I’m not married or anything….”

  “I couldn’t rightly say.”

  Seymour hit the ball straight and hard and it bounced onto the green, a healthy but possible putt from the pin.

  The Kingfish chipped it on, but he three-putted and then Seymour made his shot with grace and seeming ease. I was keeping score for the Kingfish, and when he reported the number of his strokes-off of which he had shaved two-I jotted it down dutifully. The shakiness of my pencil line, however, might have been the work of a recent stroke patient.

  As we walked to the next tee, Seymour said, “Shouldn’t we wait for Dr. Smith?”

  “Hell, no,” Huey blurted. “Let that slowpoke sumbitch catch up on his own time, at his own speed. I don’t wait for nobody.”

  “Actually,” Seymour said conspiratorially, “I’m glad he’s not around.”

  “Oh?”

  “Couple things I wanted to mention that I’d just as soon the good doctor not be privy to.”

  “Well, then, hell’s bells-shoot.”

  Seymour tasted the sentence before spitting it out; it was bitter. “I’ve been able to confirm that Elmer Irey’s in town.”

  That remark penetrated the swollen lump of pain that was my head, as I dragged my sorry ass and the ton of clubs behind them.

  Huey seemed unconcerned. “That right?”

  “No question there’s a major investigation under way.”

  “They won’t git anything on me. You got yourself covered, Seymour?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know about you boys,” the Kingfish said, shaking his head, teeing up. “Without me ’round to hold ya down, I’m ’fraid you’d all land in the penitentiary.”

  He swung, missed, said, “Shit!” then grinned back like a silly kid at Seymour and said, “Practice swing.”

  Then he slammed it down the fairway.

  Seymour teed up. “This bad blood between you and the White House, it could ruin us, Huey. Never mind this tax threat-look at the way they’re usin’ patronage against us! Shuttin’ us off, and givin’ all the WPA jobs to our political enemies to dole out! It’s goddamn blackmail.”

  Huey’s grin was nasty as he rocked on his heels, holding his golf club in two hands before him like a riding crop. “Ever hear of the tenth article of the Bill of Rights, Seymour?”

  Pausing at the tee, Seymour frowned. “Certainly. It’s not exactly on the tip of my tongue….”

  It was on Huey’s. “Anythin’ not specifically permitted to the federal government or forbidden to the states is straightout reserved to the people.” He bounced over to me, handed me the club to put away in the bag.

  Then he turned to Seymour, and thumped himself on the chest.

  “And of course,” he said, “as we all know, I am the people.”

  Seymour had been about to address the ball, but this stopped him. He frowned in concern.

  “What do you have in mind, Huey?”

  Huey’s sneering smile made me think of a mean little kid laying out the details of a particularly nasty prank for his cohorts.

  “One of the laws I’m gonna push through in this special session,” he said, “forbids any federal official or employee from disbursin’ any public funds appropriated or made available by the Congress…if, in the Louisiana state government’s opinion, that spendin’ would encroach upon states’ rights.”

  “This is a law you’re talkin’ about?”

  “Sure as hell ain’t a request. Violators’ll be sentenced to a year in jail! We’ll fill the hoosegow so full of them Roosevelt henchmen, there won’t be no room left for the honest crooks.”

  Seymour seemed to have forgotten his teed-up ball; he went over to the tee bench and sat, numbly, and Huey joined him.

  Quietly, reasonably, Seymour said, “Kingfish…you have one of the best legal minds in the country…”

  “Why, thank you, Seymour. The Supreme Court of the United States, ’fore whom I’ve argued many a case for the great state of Loozyana, agrees with you.”

  “…and you know, at least as well as I, that such a law would be found unconstitutional….”

  “I don’t give a diddly damn. Either way, it’ll tie up them federal funds till after the election, come January.”

  Seymour sighed; his expression was dark. “You’re playing into FDR’s hands with this one, Kingfish-with this probe he and the House of Representatives are about to launch…”

  Huey stood, stamped his feet like a child in a tantrum. “They can probe my hind quarters till the cows come home! Claimin’ Louisiana ain’t a ‘representative form of government’ no more? Hell-that duck won’t hunt. Everybody knows that crippled fucker is afraid of me!”

  “Then you haven’t…reconsidered?”

  Huey spoke through clenched teeth; whatever subject Seymour had just broached, it was a sore one. “Reconsidered what, Seymour?”

  Seymour said nothing.

  Huey put his hands on his hips and leaned forward mockingly, inches from Seymour’s dour face, pronouncing every word distinctly.

  “Yes, I’m runnin’ for president,” Huey said, “and no, I don’t necessarily expect to win…not in ’36. But by God, I’ll sure as hell set the stage for 1940!”

  Huey backed off, folded his arms, raised his chin.

  Seymour said, “Kingfish…we don’t even have the damn South sewed up. Does the word ‘Mississippi’ conjure up anything? Bilbo’s man just beat your candidate’s ass, there!”

  Senator Bilbo, another rabble-rousing populist, had backed Hugh White for governor of Mississippi; Huey’s man Paul Johnson had been narrowly defeated. The papers were still full of the ongoing recount.

  “That’s a goddamn fluke,” Huey said dismissively. “And it wasn’t me that got beat-it’s that shif’less sucker Johnson…he shoulda took more of my help! Look what my stumpin’ done for Hattie Carraway! Jesus Christ couldn’ta got that prune-faced old gal elected. But I did!”

  Seymour was shaking his head. “I’ve told you how expensive a campaign of that magnitude would-”

  “Fuck it! We got a war chest so fulla loot we cain’t close the goddamn fuckin’ thing!”

  “It’ll clean us out, Kingfish.”

  He nodded, and kept nodding. “And we’ll have another four years, ’fore ’40, to fill the ol’ dee-ducts box back up ag’in, won’t we? Now, git off your ass, and hit your goddamn ball, Seymour. I ain’t got all day.”

  A weary Seymour got up, his demeanor at odds with his sporty golf apparel, addressed the ball, hit it hard and clean, but not as forcefully as Huey, who was heading down the slope while Seymour’s ball was still in the air.

  “House of Representatives my ass,” he was muttering. “Four hundred and thirty-five fuckin’ dumbbells…”

  As I trailed along, my pounding head barely functioning, I gathered that Huey and Seymour had moved on to discussing possible candidates for the next figurehead governor, now that O.K. Allen’s “reign” was coming to an end. Huey kept saying that he’d promised this one and that one the job.

  “Jesus, Huey-who haven’t you promised this job to?”

  “Hey, it keeps ’em all on my side, and when the time comes, I’ll find an excuse and a fat job for each of ’em, to keep ’em there. You worry too much, Seymour.”

  “Fore!” someone shouted, and a ball went sailing over our heads.

  “Jesus H. Christ!” a startl
ed Huey shouted.

  He stood fuming, like a bull preparing to charge, as up and over the hill came the party responsible. Trailed by his armed caddy, the blond heavyset man, with an eagle’s beak nose in an incongruously blue-eyed, boyish face, trotted down the hill, smiling benignly. He wore a straw hat, a short-sleeve white shirt with no tie, an argyle sweater vest, and-like Seymour-the childish knickers so many golfers insisted upon humiliating themselves in.

  “Didn’t expect to get such a good piece of that, Kingfish!” he called, in a booming, pulpit-schooled baritone.

  “You dumb sumbitch!” Huey shouted. “You tryin’ to kill me?”

  “What,” Murphy whispered to me, “and end his meal ticket?”

  This “dumb sumbitch” was Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith, the rabble-rousing revivalist preacher who headed up the Kingfish’s nationwide Share the Wealth Clubs.

  Smith knocked his ball up over the next hill and he and his caddy moved on ahead of us, for a change.

  “Why do you tolerate that two-bit bible-thumper?” Seymour muttered to Huey, as they walked along. “He’s only out to feather his own damn nest.”

  Huey snorted a laugh. “Tell me somethin’ I don’t know.”

  Seymour frowned, and didn’t even bother lowering his voice. “The bastard’s a Jew-hating Fascist, and his ravings and rantings draw us the wrong kind of attention.”

  “There’s no such thing as the ‘wrong kind’ of votes, Seymour.” The Kingfish laid a hand on his adviser’s shoulder. “Besides-next to me, the Rev is the best damn rabble-rouser in the You Ass of A.”

  I whispered to Murphy, “Is Seymour right about Smith?”

  “Guess you folks up North don’t get the priv’lige of Reverend Smith’s insights,” he said dryly. “We hear ’im on the radio, a lot, down these parts.”

  “Really?”

  Murphy nodded. “The Rev got bounced out of his home church ’cause he was spendin’ too much time workin’ with a North Carolina black-shirt outfit.”

  “North Carolina Nazis?”

  “If I’m jokin’, I’m chokin’. They advocate overthrow of the gov’mint by armed insurrection-the whole shootin’ match.”