Blood and Thunder nh-7

by Max Allan Collins

  “Ma!” the boy said.

  “But even if the public will never know,” I said, “I thought you…and your family…had a right to know the truth.”

  She looked down at her son, who was playing with his Fresh Air Taxi. “You’re most considerate, Mr. Heller….”

  “Cah!” the boy said. I think he meant “car.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Weiss.”

  Her gaze moved from her son back to me; she locked onto me with dark steady eyes, her lovely face a cameo of serenity. Her smile was faint, like the Mona Lisa’s.

  “But, meaning in no way to belittle your efforts, or your kindness,” she said quietly, “we already did know that Carl was not a murderer.”

  Clumsy me.

  “Ball!” the boy shouted merrily.

  And she showed me out.

  That evening, Alice Jean fed me a delicious rice dish called congri; there wasn’t much to it, except rice and peas and onion and a little ham, a few spices. But it hit the spot.

  We ate in the small white-tile kitchen. The dining room table was still spread out with the typewriter and my notes and several drafts of my report. Alice Jean wore an apron over her white blouse and pleated tan slacks.

  I touched a napkin to my mouth. “I can’t make up my mind whether you look like a movie star or a housewife.”

  Her bee-stung lips pursed into a little smile. “Funny you should say that.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “I’ve been thinking about going to California, for a while.”

  “Alice Jean Crosley, leave Louisiana? Seems unthinkable.”

  “Well, I’m going to,” she said, but didn’t explain any further.

  She wouldn’t let me help with the dishes-I was still an “invalid”-so I waited in the living room, on the sofa. Only one lamp was on, and its soft light filtering through the silk shade softened the sleek modern lines of the furnishings. I was feeling better. I could almost get comfortable.

  The apron was gone when she drifted into the living room-the mannish slacks and blouse were made feminine by her generous curves. She settled next to me and put her hand on my leg.

  “Does that hurt?” she asked.

  “If it did,” I said, “it’d take somebody bigger than you to make me admit it.”

  “You’re leaving soon, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah. I called and got train reservations, this afternoon.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning.”

  She looked away from me, looked at nothing for maybe a minute. Barely audible, from the kitchen, on the radio she’d turned on doing the dishes, Bing Crosby softly sang “Pennies from Heaven.”

  “Before you go,” she said, “there’s two things I want to give you.”

  “You’ve given me plenty, Alice Jean. Starting with throwing up in my lap.”

  She laughed a little, and nestled her head against my shoulder. “Does that hurt?”

  “No. Alice Jean?”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you…crying?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why? Usually when I catch a train, the girl’s relieved.”

  She laughed again, but it choked in a sob. “I…I heard it.”

  “Heard what?”

  “I was outside the door. Yesterday. Eavesdropping. When you and Murphy were talking…”

  “Oh. Oh, Jesus.”

  She looked up at me and the hazel eyes were streaming tears. “They killed my Huey. They murdered him….”

  I slipped my arm around her, patted her, soothed her. “Nothing we can do,” I told her. “Nothing we can do….”

  She wept a long time, and I patted her a long time, and the radio shifted to an instrumental version of “There’s a Small Hotel.” Then, suddenly, she shot to her feet and scurried off, like she just remembered she had something on the stove.

  She was gone so long, I started to get worried; must have been half an hour.

  When she came back in, she was self-composed, her eyes red but no tears, and had redone her makeup, her pretty Clara Bow features looking as perfect as a movie queen’s eight-by-ten glossy. She was carrying with her a briefcase-it was old, battered and brown, and rather large, and looked like a suitcase in her dainty fist.

  She slammed it onto the sofa.

  Through her tiny white teeth, she said, “Can’t do anything, huh?”

  I frowned. “What’s this?”

  She snapped it open. The briefcase was piled with official-looking papers and folders; I began thumbing through-there were reams of the stuff, government documents, both photostats and originals.

  “What…?”

  “Under Huey’s tenure,” she said, with arch formality, “a lot of public and not-so-public documents passed through my hands.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  Ledger books, too! After all, she’d been Secretary of State, Revenue Collector, Supervisor of Accounts….

  “I don’t have a life insurance policy with Mutual,” she said. She patted the papers in the briefcase. “This is my life insurance policy.”

  Flipping through page after page, I could barely focus my eyes; my head was reeling. “It’s one hell of a policy, Alice Jean.”

  “I want you to have it, Nate. I want you to take it.”

  It was like I’d been slapped. “What?”

  She closed the lid of the briefcase with a thud.

  “I want you to use these,” she said coldly. “Use them to bring those bastards down.”

  I gave her an astounded grin. “Alice Jean, I’m just a private operator. I’m in no position…”

  Her jaw was tilted and firm. “Anybody with these documents I pilfered is in a position to do a lot of damage. They’re yours, Nate, to do with as you please-but not for blackmail purposes. I’m not giving you this material so you can make a buck. Promise me.”

  And a buck could be made. Many bucks.

  But I said, “I promise,” and I meant it.

  Then I laughed, and shook my head. “You know, baby-Huey made a big mistake, putting a pretty young thing like you in such a position of responsibility.”

  She actually smiled. “Think so?”

  “Yeah. He should have stuck with dumb clucks like O.K. Allen and Dick Leche.”

  She clicked shut the latches of the briefcase; put it on the coffee table on top of her movie and romance magazines.

  I looked at her carefully as she settled back next to me on the sofa. I said, “Two things.”

  “What?”

  “You said there were two things you wanted to give me, before I left. That’s only one.”

  “It’s pretty substantial, though, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, yes. Pretty substantial indeed. But what’s the other thing?”

  The cupie smile turned wicked. She began to unbutton the blouse and reveal the creamy slopes of her bosom overflowing the white lacy brassiere.

  “Pretty,” I said, “substantial…”

  Indeed.

  We stayed there on the couch, and she kissed every bruise on me, and-for a while anyway-made all the pain go away.

  27

  A week later, back in Chicago, I was sitting at my desk in the big single room that was my office on the fourth floor of the four-story building at Van Buren and Plymouth. I was batting out another insurance report for Mutual, an investigation that had been far less troublesome than the Long case. But also less profitable.

  Business was pretty good; I’d brought back two grand and expenses from my Louisiana excursion. I was thinking about taking an apartment at the Morrison Hotel; for too long a time I’d been sleeping on the Murphy bed in this office, playing night watchman for the building in exchange for my rent. After all, I was beginning to move up in the world….

  When the phone rang, I figured it was that North Side bank wondering about the credit checks I was supposed to be running. I’d started thinking about putting on an op or two. What good was being president of a firm if you didn’t have so
mebody to boss around?

  “A-1 Detective Agency,” I picked up the phone and said. “Nathan Heller speaking.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?” The voice was male and tightly wound.

  “Is that you, Elmer?”

  “Yes,” Elmer Irey said, softly. “This package that came in the mail-are these documents legitimate?”

  “Well, I don’t know if I’d call anything about those documents ‘legitimate,’ but if you mean, are they for real, they’re for real, all right. Genuine pilfered files, records, what-have-you, largely pertaining to finance during the administration of Huey P. Long, and shortly thereafter.”

  “Where in hell did you get them?”

  “Where do you think? From an insider who got screwed over, and wants to get even.”

  “I…I don’t see how I can use these in any court of law. They’re…stolen. Illegally obtained…”

  “I don’t know anything about that. Anyway, you didn’t illegally obtain ’em. They’re a…” I laughed to myself. “…hell, Elmer, they’re a lagniappe.”

  “A what?”

  “A gift. A little something extra.”

  There was a long staticky pause.

  “You know, Elmer, as a taxpayer, I kinda resent this cavalier use of long-distance.”

  “Heller, I don’t know what to say…I had figured this investigation was over, but from what I see here, there’s no way even the Attorney General could stop it, now. But, damnit, I still don’t think these are admissible as evidence….”

  “Maybe not, but they sure as hell tell you what’s been going on, who’s been stealing what, and point you in all sorts of interesting right directions.”

  “That’s true. That’s certainly true….”

  I leaned back in my swivel chair. “I didn’t go all the way through those. I’m no accountant. But I did hear some other rumors, only I don’t think they’re rumors.”

  “Such as?”

  I told him what Dr. Vidrine had told me about President James Monroe Smith at LSU, and about the building scams and misappropriation of WPA funds and materials by one George McCracken, whose current whereabouts were unknown.

  “This will take some time,” Irey said cautiously. And then something unusual began creeping into the dour T-man’s voice: happiness. “I’ll have to be discreet. We’ll have to go through these records with a fine-tooth comb…but I do believe we’ll see some results.”

  “Have fun.”

  “Something I don’t understand, Heller.”

  “Yeah?”

  “What’s in it for you?”

  “Jesus, I told you it was a lagniappe, Elmer!”

  “It’s not like you, Heller.”

  “Just don’t audit me, okay?”

  He chuckled. “Not this year,” he said, and clicked off.

  Irey was right: it did take a while; but in 1939, Seymour Weiss got a four-year sentence for mail fraud relating to a 1936 “commission” he received for the sale of a hotel to be used at LSU as a nurses dormitory. One of the codefendants in the scheme, also found guilty, was Louis LeSage.

  Irey’s man John Rogge got Seymour on another four years of income-tax evasion, as well, but the mail-fraud and tax-evasion terms ran concurrently. Sent to the federal pen in Atlanta, Seymour was paroled in 1942, after cutting a deal to pay his back taxes.

  Seymour deserved much worse, of course, but I felt Alice Jean’s thirst for revenge had been fairly well served: by 1940, the Long machine had crumbled-scandal, jail terms, millions in back taxes and court fines, a number of suicides.

  Most of the Longsters landed in jail, fulfilling Huey’s prediction that without him, that’s where all his people would wind up. Dr. James Monroe Smith of LSU beamed cheerfully in prison stripes for the news photographers, before trying to kill himself in his cell. Governor Dick Leche resigned, in the wake of the LSU building scams and rumors of his own hunting-lodge estate being built with WPA materials; and Rogge destroyed Leche on the witness stand, getting him to admit to having made one million dollars in kickbacks while governor. Leche drew a ten-year sentence on income-tax evasion. He died in 1965.

  Not everyone in the Long camp fared badly. Judge Fournet, despite being on the LSU board when corruption was running rampant, remained untouched by scandal. By 1949 he had risen to chief justice of the State Supreme Court. In later years, the once tall judge, now stooped with age, walked with a cane, because (he said) of the disc he ruptured scuffling with Dr. Carl Weiss in that capitol corridor. He died in 1988.

  Murphy Roden had a long, successful career in Louisiana law enforcement, taking time out to serve in the Navy during the Second World War; he held high police positions throughout his life, eventually becoming State Police Chief under Huey’s brother Earl, and Commissioner of Public Safety under Governor Jimmie Davis. He resigned in 1962, citing poor health, including a bursitis-plagued shoulder.

  Earl Long, despite being Leche’s lieutenant governor, remained standing, unscathed, when the old Long machine fell. Perhaps, in retrospect, he was grateful to Huey for not allowing him in the inner circle. His own three terms as governor were both colorful and checkered, but unlike Huey, whose shadow he never escaped, nor stopped resenting, he was content with Louisiana for his kingdom.

  Alice Jean Crosley returned from California to make closed-session appearances before several federal grand juries during the various inquiries into the Longsters. She was active in campaign work for Earl, and married a man who had a high-paying job with the state. Childless, the couple remain happily married to this day, and live in a quiet, exclusive neighborhood in Baton Rouge.

  Dr. Arthur Vidrine returned to his native Ville Platte where he lived quietly and well, founding a private hospital in 1937, which he ran until he retired in ill health. He died in 1955.

  Yvonne Weiss left Louisiana. She went to New York with her young son, returning to school for a master’s degree in French. She remarried, became a librarian, and always spoke of her late husband fondly. When the rare journalist would track her down, Yvonne-who died in 1963-would gladly speak of Carl-but not of the shooting.

  On the other hand, Dr. C. A. Weiss, Carl’s father, was vocal on the subject: whenever a national publication referred to his son as an “assassin,” he bitterly-and eloquently-demanded a retraction. He died in 1947, never losing faith in his son’s innocence.

  Carl Weiss, Jr., only three months old when his father died, is a successful orthopedic surgeon in Long Island, New York, where his uncle, Dr. Tom Ed Weiss, also practiced.

  After finishing out her husband’s Senate term, Rose Long never again entered public life; her later years were quiet and, due to the accomplishments of her son Russell, proud. Russell was elected to the United States Senate in 1948 and retired thirty-eight years later, a respected and powerful Senator. He seemed to devote himself on the one hand to praising and protecting the good things his father did; and on the other, to make up for the bad with good works and ethical practices. Along the way, he became exactly the kind of career politician his father abhorred.

  The Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith never regained his national prominence, although he built a small empire in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, with a Bible college and a yearly Passion Play that attracted big crowds. He died, in 1976, a minor-league Oral Roberts.

  I don’t know what became of Diamond Jim Moran, other than he was a high-profile presence in New Orleans throughout Mayor Maestri’s election-free six years in office. But Dandy Phil Kastel went on to build the Tropicana in Las Vegas in partnership with Frank Costello; in the late 1950s, Kastel was found with six bullets in him-it was ruled a suicide.

  Kastel’s assistant, Carlos, went on from the rustic roots of his Willswood Tavern to be undisputed ruler of the mob in New Orleans. He was implicated in a later political assassination. His last name, incidentally, was Marcello.

  Most of these people I kept track of casually, through the papers, chats with Eliot Ness, Wilson and Irey, and via sporadic correspondence and pho
ne calls with Alice Jean. The only other one I ever had direct contact with again was, ironically enough, Seymour Weiss.

  In 1955 I was in New York with a lady friend of mine for a long weekend of Broadway plays, shopping and fancy dining. On nostalgic impulse, I stayed at the Hotel New Yorker, and in the lounge, Seymour Weiss-looking like a fat, urbane lizard in his green-silk suit and narrow green-and-white tie-appeared at our table just after my female friend had gone to the powder room.

  “Nate Heller?” he said, and that homely puss of his smiled; at age sixty or so, he didn’t look a hell of a lot older, but a little pudgier. Prosperous.

  “Hiya, Seymour. Sit down.”

  He did. “What brings you to New York?”

  “Pleasure trip. Still hangin’ out in Huey’s hotel, after all these years?”

  His smile was small and self-satisfied. “I own the hotel, Nate. I own a lot of hotels.”

  “You must have invested wisely.”

  “I did. I’ll buy you a drink….” He waved for a waiter.

  “Swell. Just as long as it’s not a Ramos Gin Fizz.”

  I had a rum-and-Coke, and he had some Dewar’s. Too casually, he asked, “You didn’t really believe that nonsense you told Murphy Roden, way back when?”

  “How is Murphy?”

  “Ailing. Did you, Nate? Do you?”

  “What?”

  “Believe that nonsense.”

  I sipped my drink; smiled nastily. “Seymour, I’m at an age where I’m not believing in much of anything. You tell me something.”

  “All right.”

  “Way back when, why did you bring me here from Chicago, to deliver your damn birthday present to Huey?”

  He shrugged; the dead eyes avoided me. “Because I was worried about him. I thought he’d listen to reason, coming from you.”

  “I think it’s because Huey’d had a tip that somebody on the inside, somebody close to him, was gonna betray him. Maybe you just wanted him to think you were worried about him.”

  The pockmarked face was immobile. “Is that any way to repay my hospitality?”

  “I was just curious. Certain things, certain loose ends from cases long ago, can keep a detective up at night.”