Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (16 page)

“They had a lot of practice,” she said, “basking in my husband’s reflected glory. His death was no different.”

I patted the air gently. “I have to tell you, ma’am, my understanding is Dr. Weiss
did
have a motive.”

It had turned out the young ear, nose and throat specialist was the son-in-law of Judge Pavy; one of Huey’s special session bills had been designed to gerrymander the judge out of his district. Both Seymour Weiss and Earl Long had tried to talk Huey out of that bill.

“Do you think that’s a murder motive, Mr. Heller?”

“People have been killed over a lot less…but, frankly, I think it’s more likely the doctor approached your husband in the hall, and argued with him, maybe got physical…and the bodyguards overreacted. And your husband caught a stray bullet.”

She was nodding again. “That’s exactly how I see it. But how did you arrive at that conclusion?”

“Well…I noticed the papers didn’t talk about it much, but your husband’s mouth was bleeding. In fact, when I met him on the steps, when he came weaving down, he spit blood on my suit coat…. Is this distressing you, ma’am?”

“No,” she said. Her eyes were hard, alert, as she leaned forward, hands clasped.

“One of the first things the intern in the operating room did,” I said, “was swab out an abrasion inside your husband’s mouth. This fits in with something Huey said…he didn’t say much, he was pretty much delirious…but he asked, ‘Why did he hit me?’”

“You think Dr. Weiss hit my husband? Not in the sense of…shooting him, but…striking him a blow?”

“It makes sense. A sudden movement, and those hair-trigger moronic bodyguards just exploded. I’m sorry to put it that way, but it’s definitely a possibility.”

“So,” she said. “Where do you start?”

“I think the logical place,” I said, “is with the dead man.”

“My husband?”

“No,” I said, and stood. “The other dead man.”

The bungalow on Lakeland Drive was not a near-mansion; it was a white-frame duplex, what the locals called a “shotgun double,” with separate entryways beneath an overhang, sharing a common, untrimmed-shrubbery-crowded walk up a shallow yard. A dog—from the sound of it, a big one—was barking in the backyard. The spire of Huey’s statehouse loomed, a mere two blocks away.

Like most neighborhoods in Baton Rouge, this one was beautifully shaded; moss-hung oaks, losing their leaves, mingled with evergreens and poplars. But the ivy climbing the posts of the porch looked more parasitic than decorative, and the homes on this block were close together, almost claustrophobic. Perhaps it all would have struck me as cozy if I hadn’t known that tragedy had visited this overgrown cottage.

I’d spent Monday afternoon with Mrs. Long, in New Orleans; it was Tuesday morning now. My interview subject had been at home when I telephoned last evening, and when I told her what my purpose was, she had seemed willing, even eager, to see me.
Knock on the door at right,
she’d said, in a gently musical voice.
Our renters are on the left.

At first she was just a shadow behind the screen door. “Yes?”

I told her my name. “We spoke on the phone?”

“Do you have any identification?”

What happened to her eagerness? “Only my Illinois private investigator’s license,” I said.

“You said you worked for Mutual Insurance.”

I was getting out my billfold; I found an A-1 Agency business card for her, too. “Right now I am. But I’m a private operator.”

She cracked open the screen to have a look, a slender, dark-haired woman in her late twenties; with her flawless complexion, she seemed even younger, but lines of pain were etched at the corners of the large, lovely eyes. Even in a housedress (not that this navy floral-print was in any way frumpy), Mrs. Carl Weiss—the former Yvonne Pavy—was a strikingly beautiful woman.

She stepped out on the porch. Her arms were crossed, as if she were protecting herself from a chill in the air, only there wasn’t one. “I’m sorry, Mr. Heller. After you called, I…had second thoughts. I thought you might be…”

“Another reporter?”

She nodded. “Or some other…grasping individual. I’ve tried to stay out of the public eye as much as possible.”

“I can understand.”

“I’ll invite you in, but first, I must ask you to keep your voice down…Carl Jr. is napping.”

“I see. How old is your son?”

“A year and a half. He’s an active boy, and he needs his rest.”

I risked a smile. “And you need yours.”

I got a tiny one back, as she nodded, and I followed her inside. She led me into a pastel-wallpapered living room dominated by a brownish red overstuffed, mohair-and-walnut sofa and a matching pair of easy chairs, all with rounded arms and backs and colorful floral cushions.

“Handsome suite,” I said.

“My husband and I picked it out at Kornmeyer’s, just a few days before his death. In fact, I had to postpone delivery because of the funeral. Could I get you something? Iced tea perhaps?”

That seemed to be the local drink of choice. I said yes, thank you, and sat in one of the easy chairs, because that was where she’d led me.

I could see through to the dining room, where a table and chairs and china cabinet were carefully arranged. The furniture seemed a little nicer than the house, but the place was also underfurnished. As if this were a work in progress, perhaps one that had gotten stalled.

The place was showroom tidy, with the exception of a scattering of the child’s toys on the living-room floor: a red rubber ball, some ABC blocks, a rubber Big Bad Wolf toy, and an Amos ’n’ Andy windup car, a replica of radio’s celebrated Fresh Air Taxi, with Amos and Andy riding—but the Kingfish conspicuous in his absence.

“I’m afraid I spoil him,” she said, handing me the tall narrow glass of iced tea, garnished with a mint leaf.

I hadn’t even heard her come back in; I’d been studying the toys.

“What else is a kid for?” I asked. I sipped the tea—it was sickly sweet. I’d forgotten to remind her I was a Northerner.

“You mind?” I asked, taking out my pocket notebook and pen.

“Not at all,” she said, and sat on the couch; our configuration echoed that of me and Mrs. Long, the afternoon before.

“Do I understand,” she said, almost reading my mind, “that I have an unlikely ally in Mrs. Long?”

“You could put it that way.”

“Or I
could
put it that it’s to her financial advantage that my husband’s innocence be proved.”

“You could put it that way, too. Does her motivation matter?”

“Motivation is
all
that matters, Mr. Heller.” She sipped her tea. “This is my husband….”

She plucked a framed picture from an end table; the picture had been facing away from me, but now it was thrust before me: Dr. Carl Weiss, in a studio portrait, his earnest eyes searching mine from beyond the grave.

And if that sounds melodramatic to you, too bad: the widow of Huey Long’s purported assassin was holding her dead husband’s picture under my nose and I was spooked.

Spooked by both his surface unassumingness, and an underlying intensity. The eyes behind the wire-framed glasses smoldered; the soft features, the long, straight nose, the full lips, the almost weak chin, were those of a bookworm. The kind of kid who got teased for being so smart. The kind of kid who, under the right conditions, could explode.

She withdrew the picture and her jaw was firmly set; but she was trembling as she said, “Is that the face of a murderer?”

“No,” I said. But I was lying: if I’ve learned one thing, in this life of crime, it’s how many faces murder wears.

“The newspapers have called Carl ‘brooding,’ and a ‘loner,’” she said. She laughed—softly, bitterly. “I never heard anything so ridiculous. He was the most well-rounded, brilliant man…. He finished high school at fifteen, you know.”

“That is remarkable.”

“Graduated college by nineteen, a doctor of medicine by twenty-one…”

“Mrs. Weiss, sometimes brilliant students, prodigies,
are
loners. If you’ve skipped grades, and are thrown in with the older kids, it can—”

“That wasn’t the case with Carl. He loved to read, but he was no egghead. Yes, he was quiet, even shy…but he had a keen sense of humor, and he
loved
music…” She glanced at a spinet piano by the wall. “…But he was also a wonderful carpenter, and an amateur inventor…went to plays and prize fights, alike….”

A Renaissance man who died a political assassin.

I searched for the words. “There was nothing…morbid in his outlook?”

The dark eyes flared. “What you mean is, were there any signs of suicidal tendencies…no there were not. Carl loved his work—he loved working with his father, the two of them were the best ear, nose and throat men in the state. And he was the most
doting
father…took dozens of snapshots of little Carl Jr., gave the baby his two a.m. feeding, wheeled his carriage, I hardly changed a diaper.”

I narrowed my eyes and asked the question she wanted me to ask: “Does a man so devoted to his three-month-old son walk into a suicidal situation?”

“Of course not! Surely, already you can see how ridiculous…”

When she trailed off, I jumped in. “But the gun they found—it
was
your husband’s weapon.”

“Yes.” She tilted her head; her posture, it seemed to me, had become suddenly defensive. “A lot of doctors carry a firearm, in their bags. There are drug addicts lurking on every corner.”

Of Baton Rouge?

“Well, certainly,” I said, smiling affably, “and it’s not like guns were one of your husband’s many interests.”

I was just trying to fill the space with something innocuous, but I’d struck a nerve. She blinked and suddenly she nervously fingered the antimacassar on the arm of the sofa.

“Actually,” she said, “guns
were
an interest of Carl’s. There’s nothing wrong with that, nothing unusual.”

“Of course not. Was he a hunter?”

“Not really. It wasn’t in his character to kill anything; he was a
doctor,
after all. But he and another physician friend liked target shooting. They had rifles, shotguns, pistols. They’d bring clay pigeons with them. Sometimes they’d just shoot at the water. Just…boys will be boys, you know.”

I wasn’t quite sure she bought that, herself.

“Where did they do this target shooting?” I asked.

She frowned. “What does this have to do with proving Carl’s innocence?”

“Mrs. Weiss…my job is to ascertain what really happened that awful night at the capitol. I will tell you, frankly, that I am inclined toward your husband’s innocence.”

The lovely eyes widened. “You are?”

“I told you that on the phone. And it wasn’t a lie, or a ruse, just to get some time with you.”

“What makes you believe in Carl’s innocence?”

I told her about Huey’s bleeding mouth and his question about who hit him.

She shook a righteous fist. “I
heard
that! I
knew
they’d suppressed that evidence! That rumor was flying around Our Lady of the Lake.”

Now I was frowning. “Did your husband have friends on the staff?”

“At the hospital? Of course. He did many operations there. There are only two hospitals in Baton Rouge, Mr. Heller.”

I sipped my sweet, sweet tea. Smiled. “Now,” I said, “where did Carl go target shooting?”

“At Carl’s father’s cabin. On the Amite River, over in Livingston Parish. It’s a popular recreation spot.”

A harmless enough response, considering how hard she’d ducked the question.

I asked, “You didn’t happen to go there, that Sunday afternoon, did you?”

She tugged at the collar of the navy-print frock. “Yes, we did. We frequently spent quiet Sunday afternoons at the cabin.”

Quiet afternoons, shooting.

“Did your husband do any target shooting that particular Sunday afternoon?”

“No! Certainly not!”

Bingo.

Well, this seemed to be the first time she’d lied to me, and it was an understandable falsehood at that: even if he’d spent every Sunday for the previous three years target shooting, doing so on that Sunday would seem to attain a terrible significance.

So I moved on, and said, “There were no signs, on that Sunday, that anything was disturbing him? The morning papers surely must’ve covered the bills Huey was pushing through. Didn’t your father being gerrymandered out of his judgeship kind of spoil your Sunday?”

She sighed. “First of all, you have to understand that Carl wasn’t very political at all. He wasn’t involved in local politics, and it wasn’t a subject he discussed much, even though his father did, all the time.”

“His father had an interest in politics?”

“Particularly Huey Long. He despised him.”

“What about Carl?”

Her shrug only seemed casual. “He was certainly no admirer of the man. Like a lot of people around here, he felt things were being…badly managed. There was some bitterness in our family, toward that administration…my sister Marie lost her third-grade teaching job, and my uncle Paul lost his job as principal of Opelousas High.”

“Why did they lose their jobs?”

“Because they were Pavys. My papa was one of the few anti-Long judges still on the bench, you know.”

I sat forward. “Which brings us back to the gerrymander…. Your family had just heard about it, that Sunday morning, isn’t that right?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “But it was no surprise to us. In fact, my mother was delighted by the prospect.”

“Delighted?”

“Papa didn’t make as much money as a judge as he could in private practice. Mama was elated he’d be stepping down. Papa himself didn’t feel there was any great injustice being done to him, personally. It was just politics. Dirty politics, but politics.”

“So the gerrymander, as a motive for Carl…?”

“Ridiculous. We all knew Papa was ready to step down off the bench, anyway.”

I hadn’t taken many notes, yet. But I needed Carl Weiss’s timetable. “Tell me about that day. That Sunday.”

“All right.” She shrugged. “It was a typical Sunday. We went to Mass, and we came home and changed our clothes, and went to Carl’s parents’ house—we always had Sunday dinner at one o’clock with them—fried chicken, rice, gravy, salad, all the trimmings. Carl’s parents have a wonderful colored cook.”

“And this is when you discussed the gerrymander bill?”

“I…I suppose. I remember someone said it was a kind of backhanded compliment to the judge, from Huey.”

“How so?”

Her smile was small and smug. “Papa must’ve been a pretty good judge, if they couldn’t vote him out of office.”

“Did Carl seem at all…preoccupied?”

“No. He was skinny, you know, and we teased him about it, and I remember he ate really well, and went out of his way to compliment Martha…that’s the cook…about the meal. Tom Ed excused himself…”

“Who?”

“Tom Ed. That’s Carl’s brother…you’ll want to talk to him, too, by the way…. Anyway, Tom Ed went off with some of his college chums to hire a band for their rush-week dance. We went into a bedroom where Carl Jr. had woken from his nap, and I nursed him, and Carl just lay on the bed and we talked. Just talked, like husbands and wives do…quiet things. Unimportant things. So unimportant, I don’t even remember….”

And she began to weep.

I found a handkerchief for her and she took it, apologizing.

“Please don’t apologize,” I said. “I’m the one who should apologize for asking you to talk about all this.”

“I’ll be fine. Really.”

Before long, she was.

“After a while, we all went to the cabin together…it’s just a rustic, three-room affair, you can’t cook there, but it was by the river and nice for picnics and swims and just, you know, relaxing. We went swimming, Carl and I, and we, well the only word for it is, we frolicked. Like children. Isn’t that silly?”

“No,” I said.

“Later, we all sat on the porch, staring at the river moving by. It was almost…hypnotic. Carl and his father talked about medicine, and Mama and I played with the baby, and the clouds threw pretty shadows on the river and on the riverbank.”