Blood and Thunder nh-7

by Max Allan Collins

  “He didn’t slug him, he shot him.” The Neanderthal brow furrowed. “I thought you were the Kingfish’s friend!”

  “I was.” I smiled, shrugged. “You know how it is, Joe. You worked for the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. You know what it’s like to have to investigate….”

  He slapped his chest with a thick hand; his eyes were tortured. “I was his favorite! Some people made fun of me, ’cause I slept at his feet, sometimes. But he had to be protected! They can see that now, now that it’s too late!”

  “Take it easy, Joe.”

  His fist quivered in the air. “I loved that man. He was good to me. I was just sweepin’ up hair in a barbershop when he found me.”

  “Joe, surely you’ve considered the possibility, that with all those slugs flying…”

  He stood up, pushed his chair back with a fingers-on-black-board scrape on the wood floor. “You accusin’ me of somethin’?”

  “No, I…”

  He came around the desk and stood, facing me. His voice was trembling; his eyes had teared up. “You think I’d do that? Shoot the best friend I ever had?”

  “I didn’t say that. Some people think one of the bullets could have ricocheted-”

  I didn’t finish, because a huge fist was flying toward my face; I ducked back, to avoid it, which I did, but with his other hand, he shoved me, and I went backward, ass-over-tea-kettle, taking the chair with me, the rest of my coffee flying against the wall with a splash.

  I landed on my back with a teeth-rattling jolt, and then I was looking up at him, and the grimacing little man seemed huge, towering over me, particularly his Florsheimed foot, which was poised to stomp me. I grabbed hold of it and yanked, and set him on his ass-hard. Everything in the room shook, and so did the frosted glass in the door and outer wall.

  I got on my feet and so did he, and he crouched, like a wrestler about to make a play. So I picked up the chair and hit him with it.

  In the movies, chairs bust in a million pieces when you do that; but this was a solid wood chair and it didn’t break. It just whacked into him and hurt him. Tough as he was, it still made the stocky little bastard drop to one knee and hug himself.

  He was crying. Whether over the pain or his dead boss, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.

  “Joe,” I said. “Honestly, I meant no offense. I had to ask the questions. But Joe, a friendly warning-touch me again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

  And I kicked the chair into the wall, where it made a hell of a racket, and, I hoped, my point.

  Messina didn’t say anything. He was still on one knee, crying. Trying to scare him was probably about as useful as trying to put the fear of God into a potted plant.

  The bespectacled clerk appeared in the doorway, looking like a startled rabbit.

  “No more coffee, thanks,” I said, and got the hell out.

  Diamond Jim Moran wore a double-breasted money green suit and a pale yellow shirt with a light green tie with a diamond stickpin spelling out DJM; the tinted lenses of his gold wire-frames matched the suit.

  “How many pair of tinted glasses do you own, Jim?” I asked him. It was just the two of us, in a booth in the Blue Room on the first floor of the Roosevelt Hotel.

  “Nineteen,” he said, as he studied the menu. He’d invited me for dinner and I’d accepted. “All different colors. Each one matchin’ a different double-breasted.”

  Moran clashed with the blue-tinted glass of the glass-and-chrome cocktail lounge/restaurant with its circular bar and plush deco decor. Phil Harris would be performing later on the Blue Room’s surprisingly small stage; it was early-a little after six. We’d already had a drink-I’d had the Planter’s Punch (I was Ramos Gin-Fizzed out, house specialty or not) and Moran had something called a Roffignac.

  “How’s the slot-machine business?” I asked.

  “Flourishin’,” he said, reading the menu. “Flourishin’.”

  “You and Dandy Phil Kastel getting along okay?”

  “Famously. Famously.” He lowered the menu and looked over it at me; his battered pug’s puss seemed mildly troubled. “Though I am afraid, ’tween you, me and the lamppost, that we been a little overly ambitious.”

  “How so?”

  He brushed his mustache with a thumbnail. “Well, gettin’ the little devils put in places like restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, cigar stores-establishments that never seen a slot machine of any kind, before-that may be askin’ for trouble. Some of the women’s clubs and ministers are gettin’ after Bob.”

  “Bob?”

  “Mayor Maestri.”

  Alice Jean had mentioned His Honor the Mayor-a short, swarthy, inarticulate Sicilian whose business interests included whorehouses and gambling dens-who had been inserted, by Huey, into the office of mayor, unopposed, without an election.

  I hadn’t looked at my menu yet. “Will Kastel pull out, if the slots go?”

  “Hell, no! We’ll just move along onto the next thing.”

  “And what’ll that be?”

  “Pinball machines.” He clicked in his cheek. “Wait’ll you see the latest ones, with their electric lights and trick gadgets and bells and such. That’ll be the next big thing, wait and see.”

  Those were made in Chicago, too.

  I said, “Your invitation was a pleasant surprise.”

  “When I heard you were in town,” he said, putting the menu down, “I wanted to get together.”

  “How did you know I was in town, Jim?”

  His smile was teasing; I couldn’t read his eyes-the green lenses blocked the view. “My office is here in the hotel, remember. Maybe the desk clerk told me.”

  “Why would he?”

  “Maybe a little bird. Word’s around you’re askin’ questions about Huey’s killin’. Only, nobody seems to have a fix on just where you stand on it.”

  I shrugged. “I’m working for Mutual Insurance, following up on Mrs. Long’s double-indemnity claim.”

  “Some people think you’re pushin’ fire.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Causin’ trouble. Some people have the idea you want to clear Dr. Carl Weiss.”

  “What people?”

  He picked the menu back up, opened it and began browsing. “You really should start with the bouillabaisse-the New Orleans variety is sure ’nuff second to none. And we’ll have oysters Rockefeller, of course-even if this ain’t Antoine’s.”

  “Did Kastel ask you to warn me off?”

  His expression was affable. “Nobody asked me to warn nobody off. I jus’ invited an old fren’ out to dinner.”

  “Jim-we’re not old friends. We met, briefly, last year. I’m surprised you even remember me..”

  His expression turned somber. “I remember you. I remember ’cause it got back to me you tried to help the Kingfish. I loved that man.”

  Not again.

  He said, “You were down at the dock board, earlier t’day, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “What kin’a fool thinks he can talk to Joe Messina and learn anything?”

  “I learned Joe Messina is driving himself daffy thinking he might have killed his ‘best friend.’”

  He shrugged his furry eyebrows. “You’re prob’ly right about that. Now, the jambalaya here is really quite respectable, for a fancy hotel…I mean, we’d have to go back down inta the Vieux Carre, to give you the true Creole experience.”

  “What do you want with me, Moran?”

  “I like ‘Jim’ better. You’re readin’ a threat into this, Nate. No threat. I am your friend. And I admire ya for lookin’ inta this killin’.”

  “You do?”

  He sat back, viewed me appraisingly. “What are ya doin’ goin’ aroun’ the dock board, anyway? Three of the five members are ex-Huey bodyguards, and Seymour Weiss hisself is head man. What a setup for dope and other smugglin’ payoffs, and general waterfront shakedowns…. Those boys must be gettin’ nice and rich-even a dumbbell like Messina.”

>   “I hear all the bodyguards got cushy jobs.”

  “That’s the truth. Big George McCracken? He’s buildin’ superintendent out at LSU, now-soakin’ up this federal money that’s flowin’ again. Murphy Roden got appointed assistant superintendent of the state coppers.”

  “And none of ’em are going to like me poking around in this case. Not when maybe they accidentally shot their boss.”

  He looked at me over the tinted glasses. “If it was an accident.”

  “What are you saying?”

  He shrugged. His voice was so soft it was barely audible. “I’m not saying anything. But sottiethin’s been botherin’ me a long, long time…and you’re the first person who I can maybe risk sharin’ it with.”

  “Sharing what?”

  He sat forward, keeping his voice sotto. “Last year, ’round when you came callin’, some of these guys bringin’ them Chief slot machines down from Chicago was shootin’ their mouths off to Dandy Phil about the Cermak rubout”

  The back of my neck began to tingle.

  “They said to Dandy Phil, ‘If Huey Long’s givin’ ya money trouble, you oughta do what Frank Nitti done.’ And Dandy Phil says, ‘What?’ And they tell Dandy Phil, ‘Nitti bumped him.’ And Dandy Phil says, ‘You’re kiddin’.’ And they say, ‘Kiddin’ my ass! He bumped off the goddamn mayor of Chicago!’”

  It was true. Most people thought a crazed assassin named Zangara had missed, when he shot Mayor Cermak, who’d been standing near FDR at a rally for the President-elect at Miami in 1932. Others-like me-knew that Roosevelt was not Zangara’s target; knew that Zangara had been a one-man Sicilian suicide squad out to avenge the corrupt Cermak’s own failed attempt to have Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti, killed.

  “Are you listenin’, Nate?”

  I nodded numbly.

  “Anyway, they told Dandy Phil, ‘Do it right, set it up from the inside, and the most important thing-find yourself a patsy. Do that, and it’ll get written off as a political assassination.’”

  “When…when was this?”

  “When they was bringin’ down one of the first loads of them Chiefs. Probably a few weeks before you come down, last year. Of course, they was prob’ly jus’ shootin’ off their big mouths…. You are familiar with the Cermak hit, Chicago boy like you?”

  “I’m familiar with it,” I said. “Too familiar.”

  “And why’s that?”

  I could barely get the words out. “I was there-in Miami. I was working as one of Cermak’s bodyguards.”

  “Ouch! Remind me not to hire you for protection,” Diamond Jim said, bugging his eyes. “Aw! Here’s the waiter. Hope you’re hungry, Nate….”

  22

  22

  State Police Headquarters was on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, out Florida Boulevard, in a flat, lushly wooded area. The building was new-a V-shaped white-washed brick two-story with its blunt bottom facing Foster Drive. I pulled my rental Ford into a driveway that divided to form a circle with a garden in the middle. Like the dock board building, this was a pedestrian structure whose appearance was gussied up: vivid flower beds were all around it, with moss-draped oaks here and there, providing a Louisianian touch.

  Over the two front doors in the blunt bottom of the V were the bas-relief words: louisiana state police. A pair of troopers in spiffy green-and-black uniforms were coming out as I went in. At the reception counter inside the front door, a policewoman in gray sent me down the left wing of the V, where on either side was a row of offices with frosted glass and names.

  One of them was MURPHY RODEN, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT.

  I knocked.

  “Come on in,” Murphy’s voice said.

  I stepped inside. Blond, rugged Roden, looking fit and trim as ever in white shirt and blue tie, was on the phone, swiveled to one side in his desk chair, looking out the window at the driveway flower garden.

  His office was the opposite of Messina’s: half a dozen file cabinets, a desk cluttered with paperwork and folders, and numerous framed photos of Murphy with the likes of the late Governor O.K. Allen, current Governor Leche and, of course, the Kingfish. There were also watercolor prints of aircraft from the World War on one wall, and a model Fokker atop one of the file cabinets.

  “I’ll be jinks swing!” Murphy said, as he swiveled around just enough to see me; his brown eyes lighted up. Into the phone, he said, “I’ll get back to ya, Ted-ol’ pal of mine just dropped by.”

  He hung up, stood behind the desk and stretched his hand across, grinning. “I wondered when you’d get around to me!”

  I shook his hand, pulled up a chair. “You heard I was in town?”

  “Who hasn’t?” He sat. “You want some coffee?”

  “No thanks. So what do you hear? Is somebody going to shoot me, for poking around?”

  He rocked gently in his chair; his smile was wicked. “I don’t think they decided, yet-’cept maybe for Joe Messina.”

  “I barely asked him a question,” I said. “He just blew the hell up.”

  Murphy shrugged. “Sore point, with him. He’s tore up with the possibility he mighta shot Huey. They had him in a private madhouse for a couple weeks, while back.”

  “No kidding?”

  “If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’. They had him in a jacket that buckles up in back, if ya get my drift-he bawled his head off all day, all night, hollerin’ about how he killed the best friend he ever had. Pitiful.”

  “Did he?”

  “Did he what, Nate?”

  “Kill the best friend he ever had?”

  Murphy rocked; his mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren’t. “What’s your angle on this one, kid?”

  “Well, that kinda depends on who I’m talking to, Murph.”

  He snorted a laugh. “I know that about you. But if you try the truth out on me, maybe I’ll try it out on you.”

  “Sounds fair enough. I’m working as an impartial investigator, mutually acceptable to both the insurance company and Mrs. Long.”

  “The double-indemnity issue, huh?”

  “Right.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Just how impartial are you?”

  “I lean toward Mrs. Long, frankly. She got a raw deal on the financial end of the stick-seems to me all her late husband’s cronies are a hell of a lot more flush than she is.”

  “Includin’ me?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Now his smile turned sly. “This is awful noble of ya, Nate, takin’ Mrs. Long’s part in this. How much is she slippin’ ya under the counter?”

  I grinned. “Why, is that kind of thing just not done in Louisiana?”

  He grinned back. “Why, hell, no. That’s for them graft-happy Northerners, up in Chicago and such.”

  “Your turn.”

  “Pardon?”

  “The truth.”

  He rocked in his chair. “First, answer me: you think this is goin’ to go public?”

  “If I can prove something that contradicts the public record? Hard to say. It shouldn’t-it’s a private matter, between Mrs. Long and her insurance company. But I suppose there’s no guarantee the lid’ll stay on…. That would ultimately be up to Mrs. Long.”

  “I don’t think she’d do that,” he said. “I don’t think she’d trade her martyred husband for a damn fool shot down by his own overzealous men.”

  I said nothing; just waited for him to convince himself. He wanted to talk. I just had to sit and wait and let him.

  Finally, he stopped rocking; sat forward. He folded his hands, prayerfully. “The truth is, Carl Weiss did shoot the Kingfish. I saw the gun in his hand. I saw him shoot the damn thing at him, point-blank.”

  “And it’s that simple?”

  He looked away from me. After a long time, he said, “I didn’t say it was…simple.”

  “What is it, then?”

  He gazed at me with eyes that were a hundred times more intelligent than Joe Messina’s but every bit as tortured.

  “The doc shot
him, all right, but it’s possible…just possible, mind you…that one of our bullets clipped Huey in the back, as he was runnin’ off.”

  I sat forward. “But there was no talk of two wounds-just an entry and an exit….”

  He shrugged. “All I can say is…and I never told a soul on earth this, Nate, goddamnit…I heard Huey cry out a second time. Not as loud. But as he was runnin’ away, he cried out, again.”

  “With all those bullets flying, it wouldn’t be surprising if…”

  “Nate, either way, it was that son of a bitch Carl Weiss’s fault. No doubt about it.” He slammed a fist on his desk and the paperwork shuddered. “But I have to wonder if one of our bullets didn’t, goddamnit, finish the job.”

  “This is just a…feeling on your part. A hunch. A suspicion.”

  “A fear,” he said. “And only one person would really know the answer.”

  I knew.

  “Dr. Vidrine,” I said.

  “Vidrine,” Murphy agreed. “The man who operated on Huey. Maybe you should talk to him….”

  I shook my head. “But would he talk to me? His public statements were that one bullet killed Huey-entry wound, exit wound, front, back. Not two entry wounds. Why the hell would he contradict himself, now?”

  He blinked. “You mean, you don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  His laugh was humorless. “Vidrine’s already disgraced. Governor Leche fired him from his job as superintendent at Charity Hospital, and he’s been demoted from dean to assistant professor, out at LSU. Who knows? Maybe if you go talk to him, he’ll come clean. Now, skeedaddle-I got criminals to catch.”

  I stood. “I appreciate the lead.”

  “No problem,” he said. “Let me know when you’re out from under, so we can go back to the French Quarter and find us a couple more college gals.”

  The stalls of the French Market in the Vieux Carre stretched along Decatur and North Peters streets, from Barracks to St. Ann. Though it was late evening-approaching nine o’clock-the stalls under the dark pitched roof of the tawny shed with its decorative ventilation towers and endless row of pillars were hopping with buying and selling. It was Thursday night-time to buy Friday’s fish.