Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08

by Blood (and Thunder) (v5. 0)

  “We’re almost there,” I said. “Very close.”

  “I wonder…”

  His eyes were wild.

  “What, Kingfish?”

  “…I wonder why he hit me?”

  He closed his eyes. I patted his shoulder gently as the lights of the sprawling three-story brick building that was Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium grew larger before us.

  The beat-up sedan pulled under the brick canopy of the emergency entrance and jolted to a stop. I got out on my side and came around and opened Huey’s door. The driver was still behind the wheel.

  “Give me some help, goddamnit!” I said.

  “I helped you,” he said. “I brung you here.”

  I half-dragged Huey out of the backseat—he was just awake enough to be cooperative—and was standing there with the Kingfish leaning his full weight against me when the driver said, “I didn’t even vote for the son of a bitch,” and peeled off in a cloud of gravel dust.

  Shit! And here I thought Huey had the farm vote sewed up….

  I lifted Huey gently up, on his back, onto a rolling metal stretcher-table that waited by the emergency room doors; he groaned, moaned, but did not cry out. He seemed semidelirious, muttering, “Why?” and “Why’d he shoot me?” and “I don’t understan’” and variations and combinations. All I could see on the suit coat was a quarter-size black powder burn surrounding a small bullet hole, and some flecks of blood. But his mouth bubbled bloody foam….

  There was a bell to summon aid, and I rang it, rang it hard, and kept ringing, but nothing happened, so I kept ringing while I pounded my fist on the nearest of the double doors so hard the goddamn hinges started coming loose. Finally a ghostlike figure of a nun in her flowing white habit came rushing into view, and pushed open the doors.

  “It’s the Senator, Sister,” I said.

  Her pale pretty face was a cameo of concern as she went to the Kingfish, stretched out on the rolling table. “Oh, dear—what’s this?”

  “He’s been shot.”

  “Help me wheel him to the elevator.”

  We pushed him through the doors and onto an elevator, which the Sister operated.

  “What happened?” she asked. “Who shot Senator Long?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

  I told her how he’d come stumbling down the stairs, and I’d commandeered a car to bring him here.

  She was shaking her head. Then she said something that surprised me, something I’ll never forget: “This was bound to happen.”

  We got off on the third floor; most of the lights were out in the hospital, it was after hours, but things were coming alive, nuns floating down the hallway like pelicans, and other medical personnel, nurses, interns, were starting to gather, as well. It all seemed unreal; the world whirled as we rolled the silent Kingfish down dark narrow hallways and finally toward, and through, the double doors labeled emergency operating room.

  Suddenly the world was blinding white, as more ghosts gathered ’round the Kingfish and eased him from the metal stretcher onto a sheet-covered operating table. A white-garbed intern, with no surgical mask, a blond boy who looked impossibly young, approached with a scalpel; but all he did was start razoring off the Kingfish’s clothes.

  Huey was conscious, but he wasn’t saying anything; he was staring at the ceiling with wide empty eyes. If his chest hadn’t been heaving, I’d have taken him for dead.

  Another intern, a dark-haired boy, was swabbing out Huey’s mouth. “Little abrasion.” He turned to glance at me; I was keeping back, out of the way. “Did he hit himself against something?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he stumbled against a wall, coming down the stairwell….”

  The blond intern was still cutting Huey’s coat open when a big dark curly-haired man with a cleft jaw burst in, sweating, breathing hard. I recognized him at once, and was relieved to see him.

  “Dr. Vidrine!” the blond intern said. “We’re glad to see you, sir…the Senator’s been shot.”

  “Ran all the way over here, from the capitol.” He was removing his coat, and a nurse was taking it. “My wife and I were attending the legislative session…. There was a bad shooting over there.” He walked to the prone Kingfish, still speaking to the intern. “Word was it involved Senator Long, and I thought maybe somebody might have had the presence of mind to bring him over here….”

  “That gentleman did,” the dark-haired intern said, pointing.

  I nodded. “Dr. Vidrine.”

  He frowned at me. “Have we met?”

  “I’ve been working as one of Huey’s bodyguards. I was in the Kingfish’s suite when you dropped by this afternoon.”

  He was leaning over the Kingfish, but speaking to me. “I see. Did you witness this?”

  “No,” I said, and told him briefly what little I knew.

  “Your quick action probably saved this man’s life,” Vidrine said. He was looking at the Kingfish’s wound, a small bluish hole under the right nipple. “Huey?” the doctor asked gently. “Do you recognize me? It’s Arthur Vidrine.”

  Huey nodded.

  “Senator, we’re going to need to clean this wound.”

  “Go…go ahead.”

  “What happened here on your lip, Huey?”

  “That’s where he hit me! Why’d he hit me, anyway?”

  This seemed to upset Huey, and Vidrine let go of the topic. He turned to the nun who’d helped me bring Huey in. “Sister Michael, can you make some phone calls, at once?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Begin with Dr. Maes, in New Orleans. He’s the best surgeon in the state. Then call Dr. Lorio, here in Baton Rouge…he’s the Senator’s personal physician….” Huey raised his head. “Am I going to live, doc?”

  His voice was as casual as if he were ordering a ham sandwich; but his eyes were wild.

  “Huey, I feel certain everything will come out jus’ fine. Now, Sister….”

  “Sister!”

  It was Huey, crying out. Not in pain. Fear.

  “Yes, Senator?”

  “You won’t lie to me, Sister. How bad is it?”

  “Gunshot cases are always serious,” she said softly. “It’s best to be prepared.”

  “Would you pray for me, Sister?”

  She took his hand. “We’ll pray together, Senator.”

  “Sister…I’m a Baptist….”

  The kindness of her smile was heartbreaking. “Just repeat after me, Senator…. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry…”

  “Oh my God I am heartily sorry,” Huey muttered.

  Vidrine stepped away from the surgical table as the Sister and Huey prayed. Another nurse, a pleasant-looking brunette who was not a nun, approached Vidrine and said that she would contact the doctors for him.

  “Once you’ve located Maes and Lorio,” Vidrine said, “call Seymour Weiss in New Orleans, at the Roosevelt Hotel. Then contact the Long family…. Weiss will have their private number.”

  The nurse nodded and hurried out. Vidrine motioned for the blond intern to come over. They huddled for a conference, close by.

  “I want his blood pressure taken,” Vidrine said, “and blood tests for a transfusion…. God, I hope that isn’t necessary.”

  “A transfusion?”

  Vidrine shook his head, no. “That prayer.”

  “I firmly resolve, with the help of thy Grace,” Sister Michael was saying.

  “I firmly resolve, with the help of thy Grace,” Huey weakly repeated.

  “That’s the Act of Contrition,” Vidrine whispered.

  “…to confess my sins,” the nun said.

  “…confess my sins,” Huey repeated.

  Even a nonpracticing Jew like yours truly knew what that was: the prayer of a dying Catholic.

  Shortly after that, Vidrine asked me to leave the operating room, and I was happy to comply. I leaned against the wall, in the hallway, as hospital staff rushed in and out; I was having a look at my suit, to see just how much blo
od Huey had spit on it. It wasn’t too bad. Luckily it wasn’t the white linen.

  A lanky, lantern-jawed guy in a brown suit and boater-style straw hat came down the hallway, moving like a man trying to catch a bus; his breath was heaving—he’d been running. When he saw me, his eyes narrowed.

  He stood before me. “You’re one of Huey’s bodyguards!”

  He had a husky voice and an affable manner; both rubbed me the wrong way.

  “Yeah. So?”

  “You’re the new one. From Chicago.”

  “And who the hell are you?”

  “Chick Frampton,” he said, and extended his hand. I just looked at it. “I’m with the Item-Tribune.”

  That was a New Orleans paper.

  He withdrew the hand, raised an eyebrow. “I’m also on the payroll, if that helps any. Statistician in the Attorney General’s office.”

  I smiled a little. “Not part of ‘the lyin’ press,’ then?”

  “No. More, the Long organization’s unofficial press agent.” He gestured toward the double doors of the operating room. “Kingfish in there?”

  I nodded.

  He grinned. “I figured as much! I spoke to Huey just minutes…hell, seconds, before the shit hit the fan.”

  “What happened?”

  He shrugged in frustration, rolled his eyes. “I didn’t see it! Biggest story of the century, and I’m a closed door away!”

  “How so?”

  He leaned in, chummily, gesturing with a loose-fingered hand. “I was in the governor’s office, in the anteroom, see, usin’ the phone callin’ an item in. I was just about to leave, my hand on the damn doorknob, when what do I hear but a shot! I crack open the door and see Senator Long stumblin’ by, movin’ down the hall, claspin’ his side with his hands.”

  “Christ, man, what else did you see?”

  His eyes widened, trying to recall it all; even for a trained reporter, a chaotically unfolding event can be overwhelming.

  “Murphy Roden was strugglin’ with a guy in a white suit; Murph had his back to me, kind of stooped over the guy, little Caspar Milquetoast feller. Then Murphy fires, and backs away, and fires some more, and the guy kinda shook, like a kid gettin’ shook by the shoulders, only he was freestandin’—then, shit, all of them bodyguards of Huey’s started firin’ into the guy. Messina, some state troopers, too, a mess of ’em, blazin’ away like a Wild West show. The guy kinda pitched forward, fell down with his head near this marble pillar, by the wall. Face to the floor. Shot to shit.”

  I’d missed all the fun. Thank God.

  “Hell,” I said. “Who was he?”

  “The shooter? Nobody knows.”

  I thought about the old gentleman who’d had the altercation with Huey and his bodyguards last night. “Not Tom Harris?”

  “Hell, no! I know Tom. I don’t know this poor bastard. I don’t know if anybody’ll know ’im, now. Skinny little bastard must weigh a thousand pounds.”

  “A thousand pounds?”

  His mouth twitched. “With all that lead in ’im.”

  He dug out a pack of Lucky Strikes and lighted one up.

  I said, “You’re the first one here, besides me and Huey. How’d you manage it, Frampton?”

  He waved out his match. “Mrs. Frampton’s little boy is a reporter. I went in the direction Huey went, and followed the breadcrumb trail of blood drops on the marble floor, and on down the steps…”

  “I met him coming down. Brought him here.”

  He grinned again, snapped his fingers. “I figured somethin’ like that happened! I talked to some bystanders ’round the rear entrance who said they saw somebody pile Huey into a car and took off toward here.” His breathing had slowed; the cigarette had helped calm him. “Ran the hell over here. How’s Huey doin’?”

  “Well, that depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you consider getting read the Last Rites is a good sign.”

  He thought about that. Then he pulled a notebook out of an inside suit coat pocket. “I better start callin’ people,” he said, and rushed off.

  Where any of this left me, who the hell knew? Now that Frampton would get the word out, this joint would soon be swarming with cops, bodyguards, politicians, reporters, sightseers, what-have-you. Best plan I could come up with was to get out before that started happening.

  And I couldn’t see where I was of any use here, anyway. So I wandered downstairs, looking for a way out, and on a first-floor hallway, just off the main reception area, I almost bumped into Murphy Roden, being guided along by a young highway patrolman as if under arrest.

  Murphy’s face, around his eyes, was scorched.

  “Jesus, Murphy!” I said.

  He couldn’t see me; his eyes were tearing, but he was not crying. “Heller?”

  He was blind; whether temporarily or not, I didn’t know. But right now, this was a blind guy….

  I took his other arm. “I know how to get to the emergency area,” I told the highway patrolman, and took the lead.

  “What the hell happened, Murphy?” I asked.

  “Muzzle flash,” he mumbled, and passed out.

  We dragged him onto the elevator, and I played operator, taking us up to three.

  “What the hell happened over there?” I asked the patrolman.

  “Damned if I know,” he said. “Somebody took a shot at the Kingfish, and then all hell broke loose.”

  The back of Murphy’s suit coat was scorched, and his neck was powder-burned, too; he’d obviously been caught in the middle of one hell of a gun battle.

  Murphy came around just enough to walk a little as the patrolman and I guided him toward the emergency operating room, where the Kingfish was still being tended to. The blond intern stepped into the hall and had a look at Murphy.

  “We better get those eyes swabbed,” he said to his patient, and he and the highway patrolman helped Murphy toward another examining room.

  I didn’t go with them. I went back downstairs and out the front entry, where I could see the parking lot of the hospital—almost empty now, but not for long—and the lake with the reflection of Huey’s statehouse shimmering on it.

  The statehouse itself was ablaze with lights. Sirens howled in the night; horns honked. A line of cars was heading this way on the street that edged the lake.

  I walked toward the tower. My suit was sticking to me; the heat was as unbearable as the tension. I walked beside the lake, on the grass, by the trees, as cars whizzed by me, on their way to help turn a tragedy into full-scale pandemonium.

  The capitol had already been cordoned off. A human ring of highway patrolmen encircled the building, with a few extra at every exit. Many had riot guns or tommy guns slung over their arms. Flashing my Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Investigation badge, I got past the troops, going in the back way, through the portico entrance where I had taken Huey out. I kept the badge in my palm, showing it to the various patrolmen I encountered as I retraced my steps.

  The blood drops that Frampton had trailed us by were still there; were still wet. It hadn’t even been an hour yet. God, how could time crawl so? And how could it race so frantically by?

  There were no gawking spectators; the building had been cleared of them. Even the legislators and lobbyists and other politicos had been banished. Only Huey’s inner circle, and of course his storm troopers, both uniformed and hoodlum-style, were allowed.

  And when I saw the man in the linen suit, oddly, no one was around. He’d been abandoned there, probably for just a moment, but it seemed so strange. There he was, the slender young man sprawled lifelessly face down across the base of a pillar in a vast puddle of blood pooled on the cold marble floor. Black round glasses on his face askew, frames broken, glass shattered. His back was like a punchboard, with all the punches out. It was hard to imagine how many bullets must have been pumped into him. Huey’s boys must have stood there emptying their rage and their guns into an already dead man’s back. Such noble warriors. Even now,
almost an hour later, the smell of cordite was so thick in this hallway, you had to work at it not to cough. Bullet holes had been gouged in the orangeish marble walls. But the marble didn’t bleed.

  I was standing with my back to the twin doors of the governor’s office, where the narrow corridor widened just a little. This was a hell of a cramped area for a gunfight—no wonder Murphy had got powder-burned. And no wonder the echo of it had carried all the way down the nearby stairwell.

  An oversize hand clutched my arm, startling me.

  I turned and was facing the glittering dark eyes in the round terrible face of Joe Messina.

  “We got the bastard! He shot the boss, but we got him! We got him! We got him!”

  He was either smiling or grimacing; you tell me.

  I said, “No shit.”

  Messina was beaming at me adoringly; it was the goddamndest thing. “You saved him. Everybody says so. Word’s around. You saved him!”

  He hugged me.

  Now I knew how a toothpaste tube felt, on its last day.

  “Thanks, Joe,” I said, easing out of his sweaty grasp.

  He grabbed my arm and tugged, like a kid trying to get his pop to take him on an amusement-park ride. His eyes were bright and crazed and wet.

  “We gotta go over and see the Kingfish!” Messina said.

  “No thanks, Joe. I’ve been over there, already.”

  “Okay. Okay. You done good, Heller! You done good….”

  I began to walk away. When I glanced back, Messina was scowling at the bullet-riddled corpse. He was pointing an accusing finger, shaking his finger at the body, as if he were putting even more slugs into it.

  I shivered and found my way out.

  As I walked the several blocks to the Heidelberg, the whole city seemed to be coming my way, in cars and on foot, civilians and police, mothers, fathers, children, converging first on the statehouse, then the hospital across the lake.

  When I walked by the door to Alice Jean’s room, I stopped. Paused. Thought about knocking. Had anyone told her? Somebody had to….

  Somehow I didn’t think I was the one who should bear her these bad tidings.

  I moved on down the hall, to my own room. If she wanted to turn to me for comfort, she knew where to find me.