Blood and Thunder nh-7 Read online

  We had the same thing in Chicago, of course-the Bund was always rattling imaginary swords-but I couldn’t dispel from my hungover brain the absurd image of a bunch of hillbillies wearing bib overalls over paramilitary black.

  Then Seymour hit a long ball that sent him out ahead of the pack, and it was Reverend Smith’s turn to do the bad-mouthing.

  “That Hebrew ‘friend’ of yours is untrustworthy, you know,” Smith said, in a hypnotically mellow voice. Like so many preachers, the resonance of his voice lent Smith’s words undeserved weight.

  “If I can trust anybody,” Huey said offhandedly, it’s Seymour.”

  “So Christ thought of Judas,” Smith insisted. “Weiss is one of that tribe that uses both capitalism and communism to dominate the world and eradicate the godly.”

  Huey said nothing, as they trudged down a steep hill; his ball mocked him from a sand trap up ahead.

  “And this is a worldwide problem, Kingfish,” Smith continued. “Brave men all around this globe are uniting to fight these godless forces….”

  This guy obviously wanted to play Goebbels to Huey’s Hitler, but then he made the mistake of being too direct about it.

  “America needs its own Fuhrer,” Smith began.

  And Huey turned on him.

  “Don’t you compare me to that son of a bitch!” he roared, his nose an inch from the blinking Smith’s, his forehead buckling the brim of the Reverend’s straw fedora. “And knock off the goddamn Jew-baitin’ bullshit!”

  When Huey backed away, the Reverend hung his head and said, “Please accept my apologies. I forgot myself. I bow to your more Christian instincts.”

  “And don’t you fuckin’ forget it,” Huey muttered, moving on.

  Two holes later, Smith and Huey were alone again. After Huey swung-and his mood was brightened by another two-hundred-yard-plus drive-the ass-kissing Reverend politely asked if he could discuss business for a moment.

  “What kind of bizness, Rev?”

  “Share the Wealth Club. I merely wanted to suggest that we charge our members a nominal ten cents in dues….”

  “No.”

  From his expression, you’d think Smith had been struck a blow. “But with eight million members at ten cents a month each, think what that would bring us!”

  Huey looked like he was going to spit out a seed. But all he spit out were words: “We’re lookin’ for support, not money, Rev. The money’ll come. It’ll come. Now…what’s this about you bein’ against tellin’ our members about my thirty-dollar-a-month old-age pension plan?”

  The Reverend lowered his voice to the timbre of a very special prayer. “Dr. Townsend is promising his followers two hundred dollars a month…so I suggest we just put in the word ‘adequate’ and let every man name his own figure….”

  Huey roared with laughter. He slapped his spiritual adviser on the back.

  “The Lord broke the mold when he made you, Rev,” Huey said. I couldn’t tell if that was spoken in admiration or contempt, or maybe half-and-half.

  Finally, Huey and I found ourselves alone, with both Smith and Weiss off chasing their balls, so to speak. I filled the Kingfish in on my visits to the three names he provided me from his “son-of-bitch” book. I did it quickly, but in detail, and he took it all in with eyes that were hard and focused.

  “I’ve made myself available,” I said, “and easy to find. I was at the Heidelberg most of the time, as you know, but the night I called on Dandy Phil, I stayed in New Orleans. And nobody’s contacted me, or approached me, about anything.”

  “You think you gave ’em enough time?”

  I shrugged. “I think if anything was afoot, from these quarters, we’d know. Remember, I talked to Hamilton and LeSage on Tuesday, and Dandy Phil on Wednesday. Your old pal Diamond Jim sends his regards, by the way.”

  Huey shook his head. “God, I miss his spaghetti and meatballs.” We had reached his ball and he began to address it, then turned to me with a frown of thought and said, “You know, that tip I got said I wouldn’t live through the special session.”

  “How long did you say the session would take, again?”

  “By Monday, we’ll have them thirty-one bills rammed through. Would ya mind stickin’ aroun’ till then? I can use another good man at my side.”

  I stepped back while he took a swing and raised a healthy divot.

  “Practice swing,” I said.

  “Goes without sayin’,” the Kingfish said, and waled at the thing. It went flying over the hill, just like my ten-grand advance had flown.

  But another few days at $250 per wasn’t a bad consolation prize.

  “I’ll stay,” I said.

  “I thought you might,” he said jovially. “Considerin’ how you and Alice Jean done hit it off….”

  He went on up and over the hill while I stood there with my mouth open.

  “What’s wrong?” Murph asked, as he came down over the slope behind me.

  I swallowed thickly. “I think the Kingfish knows I’m bangin’ his sweetie.”

  “Hell, Nate,” Murphy said, moving on past me with a soft chuckle, “everybody in this damn circus knows that.”

  11

  The midnight blue Caddy shot down the Air-Line Highway like a well-aimed bullet-no blowouts or broken windshields, this trip. Not on a hard stretch of Kingfish concrete that might have been designed for breaking speed limits; and what Louisiana traffic cop was fool enough to stop the car that bore license plate Number 1?

  Murphy Roden was a no-nonsense driver: his foot was heavy, sure ’nuff, but his eye was steady and ever on the road. Affable as he was, Murph indulged in little small talk on the drive. I was in the front seat with him, and the Kingfish was by himself in back. Seymour Weiss had remained in New Orleans. It was a hot, sunny day, and the only wind was the one we stirred up; the windows in front were down.

  It was the closest I ever came to seeing the Kingfish at repose, and the only time I had evidence that he ever slept. He napped briefly, and read various newspapers and sheafs of correspondence, occasionally scribbled some notes or something, for the rest of the ninety-minute trip. The gregarious, motormouth bear was in near-hibernation.

  Suddenly, a gray-granite rocketship, poised to launch into the heavens, rose above the mud flats, before my astounded eyes: Huey’s skyscraper state-house. The tapering spire of the thirty-four-story capitol was like a mirage of the future, an apparition of civilization in a world of swamps and bayous.

  “Some buildin’, huh?”

  It gave me a start: the Kingfish hadn’t spoken the whole trip, and now, when I glanced over, his shining moon face was next to me, as he sat forward, leaning on my seat, staring ahead at his art deco monument to himself.

  “Some building,” I agreed.

  “Brother Earl calls it my ‘silo.’ Jealous, as usual. Only cost five millions, and I had the sucker finished within a year of the day we laid the cornerstone.” Then, with no irony and not a twinge of conscience, he added, “Woulda cost fifty millions in New York or Washin’ton, what with their crooked brand of politics.”

  If an Empire State Building ascending from marshlands had seemed jarring, the capitol grounds dispelled that sense. As the Caddy glided through a formal, landscaped park-flower beds bursting with color, magnolias and poplars mingling with ghostlike, ancient, moss-hung oaks-the towering stone structure achieved an eerie dignity, like a single massive gravestone in a vast perfect cemetery.

  Murphy turned down Capitol Drive, where parking places awaited Huey and the bodyguard car that trailed us (bearing McCracken, Messina and two other Cossacks). These were among the few reserved spaces that weren’t taken: the special session began today, and Louisiana’s pro-Long legislators knew the Kingfish expected their presence, and the anti-Longs weren’t about to give him the satisfaction of no opposition.

  The Kingfish was forgoing his private parking place in back, where he could enter the statehouse unobtrusively-but right now, with the session looming, Huey wanted
to be seen. It was a time for grand entrances.

  To reach the entrance of the 450-foot inverted? that was Huey’s capitol-the Senate and the House of Representatives were in first-floor wings at left and right, respectively-you climbed forty-nine steps, each but the last inscribed with the name of a state. The granite stairway was flanked by somber, imposing statues of explorers, pioneers, settlers and Indians. The majesty of all this, and that of the looming monolithic capitol itself with its historical and patriotic friezes, was undermined by the all-pervasive presence of Huey’s state police.

  In their helmets and khakis and boots, strapped with gun-and bullet-belts, they were not a police guard, but a military encampment, standing watch along the perimeter, perched on the edges of the somber statuary, stationed on the landings of the stairway. Their presence only made Huey smile, and he said, “Hello, boys,” half a dozen times along the way; their disciplined lack of response tickled him all the more, as he strutted up the granite stairway followed by Murphy and me, as well as Messina, McCracken (with his deadly grocery sack), and other assorted hooligans.

  We followed the Kingfish through the glass doors into a claustrophobic bronze-and-marble entryway, and on into the grandiose main lobby known as Memorial Hall. Our footsteps echoed across the polished lava floors and up to the ornate four-story ceiling; Huey’s voice echoed the same way, as he jauntily greeted legislators and tourists and tour guides.

  Yesterday Huey had asked me to stick around, because he needed “another good man.” But inside the capitol was crawling with even more military-style state police, as well as thuglike plainclothes dicks with conspicuous bulges under arms or on hips. The dignified bronze fixtures and patriotic murals decorating Memorial Hall-obviously the capitol’s hub-were at odds with this police-state atmosphere.

  It was a straight shot to the trio of elevators, whose elaborate bronze doors depicted bas-relief portraits of what were apparently (judging by the muttonchops) public figures of bygone days; but Huey was among them, up at the top right.

  Murph saw me squinting at the little boxes with faces in them and he whispered, “It’s a gallery of the state’s governors, endin’ with Huey.”

  I somehow felt sure that the omission of O.K. Allen was okay with the current governor.

  We took the middle elevator, which bore a small placard saying private-state employees only. Huey chatted with the elevator operator, a skinny, friendly man in his sixties, inquiring about his wife and children by name.

  “Boss has a photographic mem’ry,” Murphy whispered.

  I figured as much; nothing I’d observed would have led me to believe Huey cared about individuals like this fellow. Huey worried about only two things: himself and the masses. In that order.

  We got off on the twenty-fourth floor, on the other side of the elevator, which opened onto a small, mundane vestibule. Tourists were getting off one elevator and onto another, and gasped at the sight of the Kingfish, who waved and smiled and said, “Howdy.” This was the floor where the common folk could catch two things: glimpses of Huey and the elevator to the observation tower.

  The door to Huey’s suite-which took up the rest of the floor-was around to the right. The suite itself was furnished in a sleek, modern style-curves of wood and chrome-but otherwise reminded me of various hotel suites of recent days. The only major difference was we settled ourselves in a living room area and the Kingfish didn’t get into his fabled green-silk pajamas.

  For much of the afternoon the Kingfish and a small, dark, apparently Italian gent worked on a new song Huey was cooking up. It was a victory song for the LSU football team, and Huey had some hand-scribbled lyrics he’d done in the car on the ride over from New Orleans.

  Murphy, McCracken, Squinch McGee and I were playing poker-using wooden matchsticks for chips-at a card table over in one corner. I was the only one who didn’t smoke, but I might as well have: the blue haze from the cigarettes hung like ground fog.

  “Jacks or better,” I said, dealing the cards. “Who’s the ginney?”

  “Actually,” Murphy said, “he’s from Costa Rica. Castro Carazo. Writes all the music for the boss’s songs.”

  “He used to be the orchestra leader at the Roosevelt Hotel,” McCracken said. “The boss likes him, ’cause Castro used to let him direct the band at the Blue Room, sometimes.”

  “What’s he do now?” I asked. “Besides write songs with Huey.”

  “He’s director of music at LSU,” Murphy said. “I can open.”

  After Huey and his music man had roughed out their composition, the Distinguished Senator from the Great Pelican State came over and pulled us away bodily from the middle of a round of Black Mariah (sometimes called Chicago). This did not make me happy, as I had the ace of spades down, which would have entitled me to half the pot.

  But you didn’t argue with the boss.

  I have only the faintest memory of the rah-rah number, other than its melody being suspiciously similar to “Every Man a King.”

  Nonetheless, I joined in with the effusive praise and applause of the other bodyguards. Messina, who had been seated nearby the musical geniuses while they composed, was smiling like a madman; his eyes were glittering with emotion.

  We were allowed to return to our game-which was declared a goddamn misdeal-and were summoned back for three more performances, over the course of the next hour and a half, to hear “improved” versions, every one of which sounded identical to me.

  Even for $250 a day, this was not the life for me. Murphy was pleasant company, but the rest of the bodyguard crew were untrained, on-edge thugs that Frank Nitti would have fired in a heartbeat.

  With the exception of Murphy, who’d done a few years as a state cop before joining Huey, they had jack shit security experience. Messina was a damn ex-barber from the Roosevelt Hotel.

  Also, I was winning at poker. Consistently winning. That didn’t necessarily surprise me (I’m as self-deluded as the next average player), but these guys-even Murphy-were playing sloppy, and if there was one thing I would have confidence that guys like this could do, it’s play cards.

  They were nervous. On edge.

  “Fuckin’ death threats,” Squinch McGee whispered. He had squinty little eyes behind thick wire-frame glasses-just the kind of guy you’d want handling firearms, right? “I don’t take ’em serious. You take ’em serious?”

  “The boss does,” McCracken said, and shook his head. “I ain’t seen this many cops in one place since that all-night diner shut down.”

  Messina was in the game now. “Why would anybody wanna kill the boss?”

  “It sure ain’t no picnic guardin’ him,” McCracken said, and shook his head again. “Cain’t hardly keep up with him.”

  “Walks faster’n most men run,” Murphy said. “Stops and starts, and stops and starts-it’s like chasin’ after a goddamn trolley car.”

  “It’s like a goddamn game of musical chairs!” Squinch McGee said, holding his cards in two trembling hands.

  A few hours later-after supper had been catered up to us from the cafeteria in the capitol’s basement-I saw the truth of their words. Keeping up with the Kingfish, as he shuttled back and forth between the House on one side of the building, and the Senate way over on the other, was work for Jesse Owens.

  Watching this banty rooster expending boundless energy was a thing of wonder: pressing the flesh, keeping an eye on what were apparently routine matters, he obviously wasn’t taking any chances about getting his bills pushed through.

  On one of the rare occasions I was able to keep up with him, falling alongside, I said, “Mind if I ask you something, Kingfish?”

  “Only way to learn, son.”

  “Why do you fight so hard, when you got the battle won from the starting pistol?”

  “Son,” he laughed, “I ain’t even begun to shoot from the taw, yet.” He stopped on a dime, put a hand on my shoulder and his bulging brown eyes bore into me like needles. “Why do I run my fanny off like this? I’ll t
ell ya why, and you’ll wanna remember this: never write what you kin phone, never phone what you kin talk head-to-head, never talk what you kin nod, never nod what you kin wink.”

  And he winked at me, and took off like a race car.

  He was halfway down the hall from us when a man in white stepped out from where he’d been standing beside a pillar and planted himself in front of Huey, blocking his way.

  “Now, I don’t want trouble with you, Tom,” Huey was saying, as we moved quickly up.

  “This time ya’ve gone too far, Huey,” the man, who was elderly and frail-looking, said in a tone that managed to be both strong and quavering. Hatless, his snow white hair neatly combed, he wore wire-frame glasses and his face was handsome, dignified, but the sunken cheeks revealed the fragile skull under the creped skin.

  “Now, you step aside, Tom.”

  “It’s unconstitutional, this bill of yours…. We have a great president, and it shames every citizen of this fine state when you-”

  By now, we had formed a half-circle around the pair. The Kingfish had made no indication he wanted us to intercede.

  Huey thumped his chest. “Ah do the speeches aroun’ here, you feeble-minded ol’ fool! Git outa my way, and go slap damn to hell, while you’re at it!”

  The old man stepped forward, his right hand raised. “Don’t curse me, you power-drunk bastard….”

  Huey took several steps back; his face was white. The thought of this old man hitting him had paralyzed the great dictator with fear!

  There was a sharp crack! as Big George lurched forward and slapped the old man, knocking his legs out from under him like kindling.

  Huey, brave again, stood with windmilling arms, raging over the fallen senior citizen. “You’re the one who’s drunk! Git ’im outa here! Git ’im charged with drunk and disorderly, disturbin’ the goddamn peace or somethin’! And usin’ obscenity in a goddamn fuckin’ public place!”

  “I’ll take him,” Messina snarled, and threw himself at the old man like a ball, grabbing the gent’s collar and yanking him to his feet. The old boy looked dazed, his glasses askew.