He found me another smile, though not much of one, sighed, and started in: “Huey came out of the House like a runaway train, hurtlin’ down the corridor. We couldn’t nearly keep up. Then he ducked into the governor’s office-”
“The governor’s office?”
“Yeah…yeah, Huey wanted O.K. Allen’s help roundin’ up some more votes for the special session. But he just sort of stuck his head in, hollered, then was back out in the hall again. He didn’t get far before Judge Fournet came up and said hello.”
“Who’s Fournet?”
Murphy shrugged. “Political appointee of the Kingfish, just a friend…. That was when this skinny young guy in black-rimmed glasses and a white linen suit come up from the other side of the Kingfish…on the left. Guy’d been standin’ by the wall, by a pillar. He had a straw hat in front of him, both hands hidden behind it…then I saw the little gun in his right hand and I dove for him.”
His eyes were wide and staring at nothing but the memory.
“I grabbed his hand as the gun went off…” Now his eyes looked at me; he had a point to make. “The Kingfish woulda got it right through the pump if I hadn’t done that!”
“And he’d have been dead on the spot,” I said, since he seemed to want the reassurance. “Go ahead, Murph….”
“Anyway, I tried to wrest the gun away from the guy, but I couldn’t do it, so I put my arm around his neck, kinda wrestled him, and then my heels went out from under me, on that slick goddamn marble floor, and we both went down, wham! And that’s when I got my pistol out from under my shoulder holster and fired one into the bastard’s throat, up into his head.”
I’d seen Murphy’s gun-a revolver, a Colt-.38 on a.45 frame. Big damn gun.
“I use strictly hollow-point ammo, y’know,” he said, almost proudly. “So the son of a bitch, the assassin was dead, then and there.”
Dead before the fusillade of the other bodyguards’ guns turned him into that punched-out punchboard. Murphy had done him that much of a favor, anyway.
“I was barely to my feet, away from him, when all hell broke loose, Messina and the others blastin’ away like the Fourth of fuckin’ July. That’s…that’s when the muzzle blasts blinded me.”
“A cramped area like that, it’s no surprise,” I said. “I heard somebody at the hotel say it’s a guy named Weiss…no relation to Seymour, I assume.”
“Not hardly,” Murphy said wryly. “Dr. Carl Austin Weiss.”
“A doctor? Not a medical doctor?”
“Yeah, a medical doctor.”
“You’re kidding…”
“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”
I thought about the bloody rag of a man I’d seen sprawled on the marble floor last night. “He looked so young…what was left of him.”
Murphy nodded. “Just twenty-nine, they say. Top ear, nose and throat man in the state.”
“That’s goddamn odd, if you ask me.”
“What is?”
“A doctor, trying to commit murder.”
Murphy’s smile was condescending; he shook his head. “Not murder-assassination. It’s politics, Nate. Dr. Carl Weiss was just another of thousands of respectable citizens who hate the Kingfish. His office was in the Reymond Building…that’s a hotbed of anti-Long cranks, you know. Something wrong, Nate? You turned white.”
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing’s wrong.”
But I was lying and dying; hearing the name “Reymond Building” gave me a sick feeling, and I didn’t think a doctor could cure it.
I asked, “How’s the Kingfish doing?”
“Holdin’ his own,” Murphy said. “Guy’s bullet went through him-but last night was chaos…that operatin’ room was a goddamn vaudeville show. More doctors in there than a country club dance…politicians…bodyguards….”
He waved his hands in the air, in distaste.
I rose, patted him on the shoulder. “Glad you’re okay. What’s a copper without his peepers?”
“You gonna leave soon?”
“Most likely.”
He stood, extended his hand. “You take care, Nate. You’re a good man, for a Yankee.”
“We’re both good men. But some son of a bitch still shot the Kingfish.”
We traded disgusted smirks, and waved, and I moved down the hall toward 314. Along the way I passed the Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith. He wore a somber black suit and dark blue tie, but his mood was boisterous. He was slapping reporter Chick Frampton on the back.
“This is great!” Smith was saying. “The Kingfish’ll get well, and what a fine piece of propaganda that’ll make!”
Frampton’s smile was skeptical. “You really think so, Rev?”
Smith gestured expansively; the hallway was his pulpit. “How many years have we been saying that the corporations have been tryin’ to kill Huey? Now we can say-‘I told you so.’”
I didn’t stop to be part of that. But I did stop when I spotted, sitting alone in an alcove with three empty chairs in this standing-room-only house, Alice Jean Crosley.
She wore black-a black bonnet and prim-and-proper black dress. Her hands were folded in her lap like a corsage and she was doing her best not to cry. But her eyes were laced with red.
“Want some company?” I asked her.
She found a little smile for me, somewhere, and patted the chair beside her.
“I feel like a heel,” I said.
That statement astounded her. “Why?”
“I didn’t have the guts to knock on your door last night, and tell you. I didn’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings.”
She lowered her head, but the little smile was back. “I think I understand.”
“We…we’ve had a great time, Alice Jean, you and I, but we’re bound together by that man, and whether he’s a saint or the biggest sinner the South has ever seen, he’s important to us. You hate him, and you love him. Me, I don’t know him all that well, frankly. How do you get to know a force of nature? I don’t know if I could ever understand a man who’s that motivated by power. Greed, I understand. Sex, I got a feel for that, too. But power I don’t begin to get.”
“What are you trying to say, Nate?”
“Just that I don’t want him to die, either, Alice Jean. If for no other reason than it might cast a pall on our friendship.”
She reached out for my hand and squeezed. “Will you do me a favor…friend?”
“Name it.”
“Nobody will talk to me. The only reason I got in was my statehouse pass-and now they’re afraid to cross me for fear I’ll blab to those reporters downstairs.”
“So what can I do for you?”
“Find out how he really is. See him, if you can.”
“You bet.”
And I squeezed her hand.
The red-laced eyes were glimmering with tears, but at least I’d made her smile.
Down the hall, just outside Room 314, I saw Seymour Weiss. He was standing with a heavy-set white-haired gent who was obviously Governor O.K. Allen; shrewd detective that I am, I figured this out when I overheard Weiss refer to him as “Governor.”
Seymour noticed me, where I was standing patiently a ways down the hall-not wanting to interrupt him and the governor, after all-and came quickly over.
“Heller!” he said, with a somber smile. He extended his hand and I shook it. Why the hell was he glad to see me? He said, “There are some people I want you to meet,” and slipped his arm around my shoulder and walked me into the room just opposite 314. All of a sudden I was the guest of honor….
“Rose,” Seymour said, gesturing to me, “I’d like you to meet the young man who brought your husband to the hospital last night.”
Chairs had been arranged and the hospital bed removed; this was a sitting room now, a lounge for family members. Mrs. Long was standing talking to a young man of perhaps twenty, in white shirt and dark tie, who was a startling replica of what Huey must have looked like at that age.
She turned to me and her smile
was both dignified and brave. Rose Long was a pretty, pale-blue-eyed Irish lass who had grown pleasantly plump in middle age; she wore a dark brown dress with her namesake flower pinned to the breast.
“We’re very grateful to you, Mr. Heller,” she said. “This is my son Russell….”
I shook hands with the boy. It was as if he’d been stamped in his father’s image. But his handshake was firmer.
She introduced me to her father-in-law-a long-faced, haggard, no-nonsense-looking farmer who was seated by Huey’s brother Earl-and her other two children, a pretty teenager also named Rose, and another Huey-in-the-making, eleven-year-old Palmer. They all seemed more confused than worried. It’s difficult to summon concern, let alone grieve, in the midst of bedlam. Outside the window, the crowd had begun to sing, “Every Man a King.” Its jaunty air seemed out of place.
Still, Mrs. Long said, “Huey would appreciate that.”
“Only if they let him direct, Mother,” Russell said, and they exchanged smiles. But their eyes were damp.
This group did not seem to share Rev. Smith’s optimism or glee about the wounded Kingfish.
Mrs. Long clasped my hand. “My husband spoke of you just recently, Mr. Heller. He regards you highly.”
I gave her half a smile. “I’m afraid my efforts didn’t prove of much use, Mrs. Long.”
“If you hadn’t rushed him here,” she said, “he’d have died last night. He asked me to thank you.”
“I was hoping to see him myself….”
Seymour took me by the arm and whispered, “That’s not going to be possible. A word with you?”
I nodded to Mrs. Long and her family and allowed Seymour to buttonhole me in the hallway.
Seymour raised a lecturing finger. “The Kingfish wants you to keep mum about what you’ve been up to.”
“He’s conscious?”
“He’s driftin’ in and out…sometimes he’s rational, sometimes not. But he told me day before yesterday, when we were golfin’, what you’ve been doin’ for him….”
I smirked and shook my head. “Did a hell of a job, didn’t I?”
Seymour put a hand on my shoulder. “No one’s blamin’ you. One man, in a few days, tryin’ to sort out a lifetime of enemies…. And this doctor was apparently a wild card, a crank outa left field.”
“How is the Kingfish, really?”
“Not good.”
As if on cue, the door to 314 opened as a nun exited, giving me a view of the Kingfish in his hospital bed-under an oxygen tent.
Seymour’s head was lowered as he spoke. “Dr. Maes-the top surgeon in the state-got delayed by an accident on his way from New Orleans. Last night, it got to where we couldn’t wait-and Dr. Vidrine went ahead and performed the operation.”
I shrugged. “I saw Vidrine in action. He seemed more than competent.”
Seymour raised both eyebrows. “Mebbe so-but when Dr. Maes arrived, about an hour after the operation, he examined Huey-and then he read Vidrine the riot act.”
“Why, in God’s name?”
“I’ll tell you as best I can, one layman to another. Dr. Maes’s diagnosis was that Huey had been shot through the kidney…but Vidrine didn’t probe the bullet beyond the intestines. Another operation was indicated, but Maes refused to do it.”
“Why?”
Seymour gazed at me without blinking. “He said…he doesn’t operate on dead men.”
It looked like I was going to bear Alice Jean the bad tidings, after all.
Seymour slipped his arm back around my shoulder and walked me slowly down the hall.
“If Huey dies,” I said, “there’ll be an inquest….”
“You needn’t worry about that,” Seymour said. “You didn’t witness the shooting, did you? You’re free to go back to Chicago.”
Seymour stopped for a moment, dug inside his suit coat and came back with a fat wallet; from it, he peeled out two hundred dollars in twenties.
“Your train ticket’s waitin’ at the Heidelberg desk. You leave this afternoon. Acceptable?”
“Fine with me,” I said, pocketing the cash. “I don’t particularly need this kind of publicity. The detective hired to prevent a killing that’s headline news all over the world? Not great for business.”
“Here’s another hundred,” Seymour said, taking out another handful of twenties.
I took them, tucked them away. “I hope Huey beats the odds. Tell him that for me, Seymour. So long….”
I’d taken a few steps when Seymour called out to me.
“Oh, and Heller?”
“Yeah?”
He walked quickly up to me and pressed still more twenties into my palm.
“What’s this for?”
“It’s what we call in Louisiana a lann-yapp.”
“A what?”
He repeated it, and spelled it: l-a-g-n-i-a-p-p-e.
“Means somethin’ extra, for no special reason. Somethin’ for nothin’.” He patted me on the shoulder, smiled, then as an apparent afterthought added, “Oh, and would you, on your way, get Alice Jean out of here? Her presence upsets Mrs. Long.”
15
It didn’t begin raining until Monday night. I was well on my way home, dry as a bone, in a private compartment, thanks to Seymour Weiss’s largess. But a day later, when I spoke to Alice Jean, long distance from Chicago, she said the rain had started Monday evening and was still coming down. Not a storm, but a steady, rhythmic rain. A deluge couldn’t have dampened the vigil of his followers, and when Huey died before sunup Tuesday morning, just as it was beginning to build, they were waiting, ready to add their tears to the downpour.
They had sunny weather for the funeral, except for a brief sprinkle that quickly turned to steam. It was so hot, in fact, many of the mourners used umbrellas to shield themselves and their children from the rays. Even in Chicago, you couldn’t avoid the details of the spectacle. Every radio carried it live; every newspaper gave it the front page; and a week later, the newsreels were full of it.
As it turned out, his skyscraper statehouse was the only gravestone large enough to suit Huey: it had been his wish to be buried on the capitol grounds, and he was, in the sunken garden facing his art moderne memorial. But first, twenty-two thousand mourners passed by the bier as he lay, strangely enough, in a citified tuxedo, a peasant under glass in an open coffin in grandiose Memorial Hall. So many flowers were sent, they would have overflowed the hall, had they all been displayed there; instead, they were set up on the grounds and extended out over several acres.
By daybreak Thursday-the day of the funeral-mourners were streaming into Baton Rouge from all over the state, by train and bus, by limo and pickup, black and white, rich and poor, man/woman/child, hillbillies and rednecks and Creoles and Cajuns, in tailored suits, in dusty coveralls, by some estimates as many as 150,000, congregating everywhere from oak trees to rooftops, perched on statues, peeking out capitol office windows, but most of all swarming the capitol grounds.
While the LSU Marching Band played a minor-key dirge variation of “Every Man a King,” Huey Long’s bronze casket was carried by Seymour Weiss, Judge Fournet, Governor Allen and other key figures in the Long machine, down the forty-nine steps through the crowd’s weeping gauntlet, to the resting place in the sunken garden.
At the graveside, Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith delivered the eulogy, making a bid for Huey’s followers. (The next day, in a press conference at the Roosevelt, in a flurry of anti-Semitism, the Rev announced himself officially the heir to the Kingfish’s throne.)
When the last mourner had drifted away, one final precaution was taken to guard Huey Long: he was buried beneath seven feet of steel and cement. Alice Jean said it was Seymour Weiss’s idea. Dillinger’s dad had done much the same for him. Keeps the tourists out.
A smaller funeral had been held, in the pouring rain, three days before: that of Dr. Carl Weiss. The monsignor at St. Joseph’s didn’t feel it had been clearly proven Dr. Weiss shot Huey, and granted a church burial. The funeral
was attended by Baton Rouge’s business, civic and social leaders, as well as every doctor in town, not to mention several congressmen and one former governor.
And the Kiwanis and Young Men’s Business Club sent wreaths.
Sometimes at night, in the months that followed, I would think about being in the Reymond Building, trying to ferret out the Huey Long murder plot, wondering how many offices away from the real thing I’d been.
Other times I would think about Alice Jean, who occasionally dropped me a note, sometimes even called, urging me to return for a visit; but fond of her as I was, I wasn’t about to.
If I wanted to go to a banana republic, I’d hop a tramp steamer to South America.
16
The Mediterranean-style, creamy-stucco, tile-roofed two-story, in the Garden District of New Orleans near Tulane University, wasn’t a mansion, exactly. Not that it wasn’t impressive, with its railings and ornamentation and many windows, not to mention the manicured lawn and exotic shrubbery. Small cedars hugged the first floor and moss-hung oaks protected the perimeter, and here and there were other, more tropical trees, including several broad-leafed banana trees.
I shook my head, as I pulled my black rental Ford into the cement-block driveway: here I was, back in the banana republic of Louisiana, after all. And only one thing could have coaxed my return. Alice Jean Crosley, you’re thinking? The love of a woman? How romantic.
Hardly. I was here on a thousand-dollar retainer from the Chicago office of the Mutual Life Insurance Company. The woman-a widow, who lived in this near-mansion at 14 Audubon Boulevard-had put in an accidental death claim on her husband. I had been chosen as a neutral third party, acceptable both to the insurance company and the widow (and her attorney), to determine whether her husband’s death was accidental or not.
Actually, I wasn’t sorry to be back in Louisiana at all. We’d had a cold snap, and Chicago had done that disappearing act it occasionally likes to perform: skipping fall and cutting straight to winter. It felt good to be in a lightweight white linen suit, walking around in seventy-degree weather, even if it was slightly humid.
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