Blood and Thunder nh-7

by Max Allan Collins

  Leche put his pipe in an ashtray on the endtable and sipped his drink. “Have you uncovered any…new evidence in your inquiry, Nate?”

  “Possibly.”

  “What does that mean?” Seymour snapped. His good mood hadn’t lasted long.

  “Suppose,” I said, studying the rum in the glass, “I was in possession of a bullet or two, taken from Senator Long’s body.”

  The room went deadly quiet: you could have heard a shell casing drop.

  “Everyone knows the bullet passed through Senator Long,” Leche said softly.

  “Do they?” I sat forward. “What if I had two bullets taken from the Senator’s body that were not bullets from Dr. Weiss’s gun?”

  A chair scraped back; I heard McCracken approaching.

  “Bullets of a caliber,” I said, “that instead matched those of the guns used by Huey’s bodyguards.”

  McCracken, hovering behind me, said, “Let me handle this.”

  He wasn’t talking to me.

  Seymour said pointedly, “Sit down, and keep out of it.”

  McCracken said, “I can handle this sumbitch.”

  My nine-millimeter was under my left arm, incidentally. I wasn’t licensed in Louisiana, but I was no fool, either.

  “Sit down!” Seymour said. “Shut up! Keep out!”

  McCracken’s sigh could have put out a small fire. But he lumbered back and pulled the card-table chair out, scrapingly, and sat, heavily.

  “Two lumps of lead,” Leche said. He shrugged. “Who’s to say where they came from?”

  “Certainly Dr. Vidrine wouldn’t testify,” Seymour said. “He’d lose his medical license.”

  “Or something,” I said cheerfully.

  I was here to run a bluff. I had thought this through, and dangerous as it was, this was the best play I could think of, under these conditions, in this situation.

  “Suppose I have witnesses,” I said. “Witnesses from whom I’ve taken documented statements. Little loose ends running around hospital halls, and mortuaries, and capitol corridors and such. You’ve had a lot of inner turmoil in what used to be the Long machine. A lot of friends are now enemies. That kind of thing happens, when the spoils get fought over, and some get, and some don’t.”

  “If you think any court in Louisiana-” Seymour began.

  But I turned to Leche, whose face had fallen. “Governor-I realize I’m playing in your ballpark. The cops are yours. The courts. The legislature. But you forget-maybe you’re no national figure, but the Kingfish sure as hell was. The assassination of Huey Long is of national interest and import…hell, international.”

  Leche tasted his tongue; he didn’t seem to like the flavor.

  I went on: “The press’ll publicize this new evidence, and pretty soon you’ll have to mount an inquiry…ballistics tests, testimony, you may even have to get the jackhammers out and chisel through that seven feet of concrete and steel you buried the Kingfish under, ’cause he’s gonna have to be exhumed. He’s evidence.”

  Leche looked hollowly at Seymour, who shook his head, as if to say, “Don’t worry.”

  “Even if a wild bullet from a bodyguard did kill Huey, accidentally,” Seymour said softly, “what good would exposing that do, at this point?”

  “Well,” I said, “there’s a family in Baton Rouge who will have to carry with them the stigma of having an assassin for a son, brother, husband, father, for as long as anyone remembers the Kingfish…and that should only be as long as there’s a Louisiana.”

  “But everyone agrees that Dr. Weiss did attack Huey,” Seymour said.

  Funny: here was a logical place for eyewitness McCracken to contradict me; but on this subject, he stayed silent.

  “The doctor may only have slugged Huey,” I said. “Neither of these bullets I’m talking about, remember, is a.32….”

  And now McCracken put in his two cents, only it wasn’t a repudiation of what I’d just said. From across the room, he shouted, “Let me handle this!”

  “Quiet!” Seymour said. He sat forward, his dark eyes locked on me, his hands gently patting the air diplomatically.

  “If this is a matter of money,” he said, “I can just make out a check for ten thousand dollars. Or would Mrs. Long prefer cash?”

  Jackpot.

  This sort of offer was exactly what I was fishing for. What better way to keep both my clients happy, and get myself that G-note bonus?

  “I’ll have to confer with Mrs. Long,” I said. “But I think you might want to consider upping that amount.”

  “What for?” Seymour snapped. “That’s all the double-indemnity clause would have paid her!”

  “But that’s not the only gauge we have to determine value here,” I said, waggling a professorial finger. “Think of the next election. If Huey was killed accidentally, by a bunch of numb-skull bodyguards…”

  “Let me fucking handle it!”

  “Shut up!” Seymour said.

  “…then you’ve lost a major talking point for future campaigns. After all, what price can you put on the political value of Huey’s martyrdom?”

  “What kind of money are we talking about?” Seymour asked, his eyes hooded.

  “I’m not talking any kind of money,” I said. “That’s not my place. This is for you and Dick to decide. Now, if pressed, I might suggest you consider upping the amount, oh-ten times. Or maybe twenty.”

  Seymour reeled back as if I’d slapped him. “Are you insane, man?”

  “Please don’t change the subject,” I said. “I just figured if somebody happened to know what became of a certain ‘dee-duct box,’ they might want to treat Mrs. Long a little more…generously.”

  Leche was clutching the arms of the lounger like a man in the electric chair. “Seymour…,” he said. There was a lot in the one word: accusation, a plea for help, a demand that something be done….

  Seymour’s dead eyes were fixed on me like the barrels of twin revolvers. Then he looked away, and said, coldly, quietly, “Suppose you talk to Mrs. Long. Talk to her, and get back to me with a figure.”

  I stood. “I’ll do that. Governor, pleasure meeting you.”

  Leche had the expression of a pouting child; his affability was a memory. And sunk down in the chair like that, he suddenly seemed very small.

  “I’ll find my own way out,” I said, and did, feeling pretty damn cocky but not relishing the savage expression on Big George McCracken’s battered face as his eyes trailed after me.

  24

  Once again we sat in the solarium on dark-stained wicker furniture, drinking iced tea. It was late afternoon, and the tropical garden of Mrs. Long’s backyard was cloaked in shadows that were gradually turning into dusk.

  “Mr. Heller,” she said, and it was as if every word she spoke pained her, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts…” The pale blue eyes in the attractive oval face were troubled. She sat on the wicker couch with her hands folded around a handkerchief; her navy suit was touched with a rose pattern, a pink cloth corsage sewn at one shoulder.

  I winced. “I don’t understand your reluctance, Mrs. Long. I’m certain we can get a considerable amount of money from Seymour and Leche and their cronies….”

  “It’s blackmail money, Mr. Heller.”

  “Not really. Think of it as finally getting to withdraw a few bucks from the ‘dee-duct box.’”

  She shook her head, no. “It may be in name only, Mr. Heller, but I am a United States Senator. It wouldn’t be proper.”

  I felt dizzy. “Aren’t you the same Mrs. Long who offered me a thousand bucks under the table, to favor her position in this investigation?”

  Her smile was tiny and embarrassed as she looked at her lap. “Yes, I am. Perhaps it seems silly to you, having such a…flexible sense of ethics.”

  I sighed and sat back. “Not really. I do it all the time.”

  She looked at me with a painfully earnest expression. “What I want to know is, do you feel convinced that your investigation ha
s shown my husband was killed accidentally?”

  “I saw the bullets,” I said. “I’m no ballistics expert, but I’d say they matched the caliber of the guns the bodyguards were packing. Even though Dr. Vidrine wouldn’t hand the slugs over to me, I can say for a certainty that Senator Long was not shot by Carl Weiss.”

  “Will the insurance agency accept your opinion?”

  I shrugged. “I see no reason why not. Both you and they agreed to accept my conclusions. This isn’t a court of law-I don’t have to attach evidentiary exhibits. All I have to do is write a reasoned, logical report, citing the various interviews I conducted that have led me to believe Carl Weiss approached your husband, an argument ensued, the doctor struck your husband a blow, and the gunfire began.”

  Her eyes were tight with thought. “And Mutual would pay the twenty-thousand-dollar double-indemnity claim?”

  “I believe they would, yes.”

  Her expression relaxed; she raised her chin. “Then that’s what I want you to do.”

  “Is that it?” I asked, still trying to make heads or tails of this. “You want the truth to come out?”

  She sighed, sat back. “Actually…I haven’t decided yet. The insurance company won’t make your findings public, will they?”

  “No. It’s a confidential matter, between you and them.” I leaned forward, shaking my head. “Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to be out of line…but I just don’t get it. I mean, if you were planning to expose Seymour and those trigger-happy Cossacks, that would be one thing. But if you aren’t, then this effort is strictly for the twenty-grand insurance payoff, and we can squeeze twenty times that out of those bastards! Excuse my French.”

  She smiled gently, leaned forward and touched my hand. “Mr. Heller…there are other factors at play here. I have to live in this state. My son Russell has become very interested in the world of politics…. He’s fallen in love with Washington, and…well, I think Russell would like to finish what his father began, someday. But I believe…and I mean no disrespect to my late husband’s memory, which I cherish…I believe my son is a different sort of man than my husband. Russell is honest, ethical…he views politics as a pathway to social change.”

  “He’s young.”

  She nodded. “Yes he is. Huey was an idealist, once, before he learned to love power more than what he believed in. But Russell, Russell is different. Someday he’ll run for office, and he will run as Huey Long’s son. He will need friends, because as Huey Long’s son, he’s bound to have enemies, isn’t he? And these men, Seymour Weiss and Richard Leche and the others, they’re in political power, at least right now. For Russell’s sake, I don’t wish to alienate them.”

  Rose Long was a lovely woman. Huey had been lucky to have her at his side when he made his climb; but somehow I figured her son would appreciate her more. Anyway, he ought to.

  “So-you will write that report?” she asked.

  “Yes, I will.”

  Now she seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid I don’t have your thousand dollars in the house, right now. And I won’t be able to get to the bank until Monday morning….”

  Tomorrow was Sunday.

  “My phone call didn’t give you much notice,” I said. “I’ll go back to my hotel room, write the report and drop by with it Monday afternoon, if that’s convenient.”

  “As long as it’s before Tuesday morning. We’re heading back to Washington, Russell and Rose and I.”

  I stood, hat in hand. “A pleasure doing business with you, ma’am,” I said. “And an education.”

  She walked me to the door, her hand on my arm. “You know, you’re quite a remarkable young man.”

  That was a new one.

  I said, “What makes you think that?”

  “You took a great risk, going into the lion’s den like that, this afternoon. Those men might have done anything.”

  “They’re politicians. They pay people off, not bump people off.”

  “Perhaps. But it was ingenious, your plan to serve both my interests and those of Mutual Insurance. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to accept it.”

  “Me too,” I said. “I was figurin’ on hitting you up for ten percent of whatever I squeezed outa Seymour.”

  We were at the front door. She shook her head and laughed; squeezed my arm. “Mr. Heller, you’re terrible.”

  “That’s more like it,” I grinned, and went out.

  She gave me a smile and a wave from the ornate entryway of the Mediterranean near-mansion, and I returned them as I walked out into a cool twilight, past broad-leafed banana trees, to the cement-block driveway. I climbed in the Ford, and I was just thinking there was an odd sort of medicinal smell in the car when something cold and hard and rectangular pressed against the back of my neck.

  The nose of an automatic.

  “How-do, you Yankee sumbitch,” Big George McCracken whispered in my ear. “You ’bout to find out how the bug feels when he gits stepped on.”

  The nine-millimeter was in the glove compartment. I hadn’t thought I’d need it, calling on Mrs. Long, and hadn’t wanted to alarm her with a glimpse of it.

  “What do you want, George?”

  “Those two bullets they dug outa Huey,” he said.

  “George…I don’t have ’em….”

  “Sure you do,” he said.

  “I don’t.”

  “We’ll jus’ hafta talk about it, some.”

  And a hand slipped around and pressed a chloroformed cloth in my face. My last thought, before slipping into blackness, was so that’s what the medicinal smell was….

  When I woke up I was in a pitch-dark place, on my side, a fetus in what I soon realized was the cramped metal womb of an automobile trunk. The car was jostling along a gravel road-I could hear the rocks kicking up under the car and against the fenders.

  I had barely figured this out when the car rolled to a stop. I felt around for something, for anything, maybe a tire iron, but the lid of the trunk lifted and the moonlight was so bright I squinted as Big George McCracken looked in at me with a sneer of a smile. Next to him was a dark-haired, hook-nosed, bull-necked tough in a dark suit and a tie. He looked familiar, but in my dazed condition, I couldn’t place him.

  “Git ’im outa there, wouldja, Carlos?”

  Carlos.

  Last year at Dandy Phil Kastel’s warehouse, this short, muscular hood had been uncrating slot machines, and doing Kastel’s bidding.

  Carlos’s big hands grabbed on to my suit coat and he hauled me out of the trunk like a sack of grain. My feet tried to keep my body upright, but my knees wobbled. Carlos held on to me by the waist and dragged me along.

  The car, I noted for no good reason, was a black Studebaker two-door coupe. It had pulled up on the grass incline with perhaps a dozen other vehicles, ranging from new sedans to beat-up pickup trucks, in front of a rambling ramshackle oversize shed of a building alive with lights and laughter and honky-tonk piano; a crude wood-burned sign sat on two legs in the unmowed yard: WILLSWOOD TAVERN. Silhouetted behind the gray, unpainted wooden frame structure, with its split-log shingles, loomed the ghostly, foreboding shapes of a swamp.

  They dragged me behind the building; through open windows, I glimpsed a burly bartender with no apron dispensing sweaty bottles of beer, drunken men dancing with loose women, long picnic-type tables where spaghetti and oysters and crawfish were being chowed down by a rowdy clientele, smaller tables where men were playing cards with piles of cash on the table.

  Behind the building, across a short yard with tall unmowed grass, the darkness of the swamp beckoned me to make a break for it. Whatever dangers lurked there, they were surely preferable to the certainty of what faced me with Big George and Carlos.

  But my muscles weren’t working yet; my brain barely was.

  McCracken opened a door, and Carlos pushed me through. I stumbled into a dark room and rolled on a hard dirt floor, bumping up against a wooden chair. A door slammed, and a cone of light clicked on from a hanging lam
p, and I was a huddled shape in the spotlight.

  “Put ’im in the chair, Carlos.”

  The big hands were on me again, and I was hoisted off the floor and slammed into the wooden chair. Carlos got around behind me and yanked my arms behind me and rope looped around my wrists and around through the rungs of the chair. I could feel him knotting them, tying me into the chair; at least the hemp wasn’t so tight as to cut off the circulation. Thank God for small favors.

  It was a small supply room-shelves of canned goods, stacked cartons of bottled beer; a big gray metal washer tub was shoved against the slats of one wall.

  “I can handle this by myself,” McCracken said to Carlos.

  “Thanks,” Carlos said. “No good de boss not bein’ ’round on Sat’dy night.”

  The bullnecked hood-and apparent proprietor of the Willswood Tavern-opened a door that must have led into the kitchen, because the pungent aroma of tomato sauce filled the room. Dishes and kettles clattered.

  “You get tired, George my fren’,” Carlos said, “jus’ let me know. I send Bucky Boy back.”

  Then it was just me and McCracken.

  He took off his suitcoat and rested it on the stacked beer cartons. A.38 revolver was shoulder-holstered under his left arm. He unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. Then he plucked something off a shelf-he was outside the cone of light, and I couldn’t make out what it was-and stepped into the light, right in front of me, the hand with the object, whatever it was, behind his back.

  His battered fighter’s mug worked up a smile. “We already tossed your hotel room, didn’t find ’em. Didn’t find ’em in your car, neither….”

  The noise of drunken merriment, from out in the saloon, leached through the wooden walls.

  “I don’t have the goddamn bullets,” I said.

  “Sure you do. You said you did. I heard ya tell Seymour and Dickie.”

  “I was bluffing.”

  He frowned; thinking was an effort. “Bluffin’?”

  “There are no bullets. I was just tryin’ to extort some dough out of Seymour for Mrs. Long.”