Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (20 page)

“What do you mean?”

“Dr. Weiss was sort of…crouchin’. Tryin’ to shoot again.”

“You feel certain it was Weiss’s bullet that hit Huey, and not one of the bodyguards’?”

“I should say. Huey cried out when he got shot, spun around, and ran down the hall like a scared deer. Then the gunfire escalated.” He shook his head; the piercing gaze glazed for a moment. “I served in the World War—I was a machine gunner—but I never before heard anything like it. A machine gun fires, oh, three hundred to six hundred bullets a minute. Once the shooting started, it sounded like that and then some.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t hit yourself.”

“I just kind of stepped back and it went on before my eyes. Gunsmoke and marble dust made a fog.” He sighed. “Then I went looking for Huey. You’re the one that got him to the hospital, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Otherwise, I don’t know that I’d have talked to you. We both tried, didn’t we?”

“Sir?”

“To save his life. He was a great man. Man of the people.”

And he sipped his cocktail.

His diamond winked at me.

What visitor to New Orleans wasn’t enraptured by the everyday drama and pageantry of the fourteen miles of docks along this half-mile-wide stretch of the Mississippi, where flags of all nations waved from mastheads, where ferries crossed and recrossed, where paddlewheels churned by invoking bygone days of ruffle-shirted gamblers, where seagulls from the nearby Gulf of Mexico cried mournfully as they trailed ships in search of food. Coffee docks, cotton docks, molasses sheds, bustled with activity; hundreds of sweat-stained workers carried green bunches of bananas from the holds of ships to waiting freight cars on riverside railroad tracks, while fat colored gals in snow white turbans wove their way through the laborers selling sandwiches and sweetcakes.

Administration of the Port of New Orleans was a formidable task, and a great responsibility, regulating commerce and traffic of the harbor, not to mention the wharves and public buildings, and construction of new wharves and sheds. After all, somebody had to collect fees from vessels using the facilities of the port’s forty-three docks.

This grave responsibility fell to the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans, five public-spirited citizens appointed by the governor. I was about to call on one of these noble public servants, who served their six-year terms without pay.

His name was Joe Messina.

The dock board was at the end of, and facing, Canal Street, between the railroad tracks and the river; the
President
steamboat was docked nearby. The cheap concrete building—aggregate with shells stirred in, also used for the nearby wharves—was a two-story building with many windows; its blocky ugliness was offset by a vast, lovely, colorful flower garden that served as its front yard.

The downstairs was mostly a countered-off area with secretaries and clerks at desks; the board members had their offices upstairs. That’s where I found Messina, beyond a wall of frosted glass and wood, through an unlocked door with his name on it—sleeping on his brown leather couch in a small wood-and-plaster office that had a desk but no file cabinets. The only paperwork on the desk was some crumpled napkins and a wadded-up paper coffee cup.

Windows looked out on the muddy river and its yellow banks and traffic that consisted of everything from driftwood to ocean-going vessels; at the right, a high via-duct cut off the view. The morning was cloudy, and shadows were sliding over the rippling surface of the river, as if great amorphous sea creatures were swimming just below the surface.

The great amorphous creature on the couch was snoring; he was wearing a white shirt unbuttoned at his thick hairy neck, buttons straining at his generous belly, and dark suit pants on his stumpy legs. His big flat feet were clad in socks with clocks; a pair of black, well-shined Florsheims were on the floor nearby. His suit coat and a tie were slung on a coat tree.

I pulled a chair around and sat; I nudged the couch, with my foot, just a little. When it didn’t stir him, I nudged harder.

He awoke with a start, his snoring turning into a snort that sounded like he was trying to swallow his nose.

“What’s the deal?” he said, trying to right himself, like a turned-over alligator. “What’s the deal?”

“Hi, Joe.”

Finally he managed to sit up, and he rubbed his face with one catcher’s-mitt hand and scratched his belly with the other; his slightly thinning dark hair was mussed. His dark little eyes focused on me.

“I know you! What’s your name?”

“Nate Heller,” I said.

“That’s right!” The blank round face broke into an awful parody of a grin. “You’re my pal!”

“I am?”

He stood and came over and patted me on the back; it about knocked the wind out of me. “You’re the guy that rushed the Kingfish to the hospital! You’re okay.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“You want coffee? We got coffee.”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind.”

He padded out into the hall in his stocking feet and bellowed: “How about some coffee in here?
Two
coffees!”

He came back in, sat on the couch and got his shoes on. After he got them tied—which took all his concentration—he gestured around him, to his nearly empty office. The only art on the wall was a calendar of a little girl and her puppy and a framed photograph of Huey Long with his arm around a stiltedly smiling Messina.

“Some layout, huh?”

“Some layout. What do you do here, Joe?”

“I’m on the dock board!”

“Yeah, I gathered, but what…”

“We’re in charge of the docks.”

“Ah.”

He got up and went behind his desk and sat. I turned my chair around to face him. Through the windows behind him, the Mississippi looked choppy; the wind was picking up.

“You’re from Chicago,” he said.

“Right.”

“I remember you from ’32.”

“Right again.”

His frown was puzzled, not hostile. “What are you doin’ in town?”

“I’m looking into the Kingfish’s death.”

Now it turned hostile. “What do you mean, ‘lookin’ into’ it?”

“I’m working for an insurance company, trying to establish that Dr. Carl Weiss was responsible.”

He blinked. “What else could he be but responsible? He shot him!”

“There are other opinions.”

The big round head shook, no, no, no. “I don’t know anything about no other opinions. In a cowardly way, Senator Long was shot. That’s the whole story.”

A nervous bespectacled thirtyish male clerk, in a vest and suit pants, came in with two paper cups of coffee. He handed one to Joe, the other to me, and I thanked him. Joe, being a big shot on the dock board, didn’t say a word to him. If anything, that seemed only to relieve the clerk, as he went out.

I sipped my coffee, which was strong and black but not very hot. Then I said, “It would help, Joe, if you told me your version of the shooting.”

He took several gulps of his coffee, swilled it around in his mouth, possibly trying to eradicate the sleep taste of his nap.

“I don’t know nothing till the time the shots were fired,” he said. “When that doc fired the shot, I seen the Senator jump back and I knew he was killed.”

“What did you do, Joe?”

“I immediately run up, pull my rod out and unload it in that bastard.”

“Murphy Roden was scuffling with him, right?”

“I started firing when the guy broke loose from Murphy.”

According to Murphy’s story, Carl Weiss had been shot in the throat by this point; I doubted he’d broke away from anybody, after that.

But I asked, “He got loose from Murphy?”

“I guess. All I know is, I shot the man that shot Senator Long. I saw the pistol in his hand, too.”

“Some people say he didn’t have a gun.”

He had the coffee cup in his hand when he slammed that hand on the desk; the desk
whumped
and the coffee splashed on Messina and the desktop. “They’re goddamn liars! He had a pistol and woulda shot anybody there!”

Messina, glaring now, began licking the coffee off his hand.

Nonetheless, I ventured another comment: “Some people say the doctor slugged the Kingfish.”

“He didn’t slug him, he shot him.” The Neanderthal brow furrowed. “I thought you were the Kingfish’s friend!”

“I was.” I smiled, shrugged. “You know how it is, Joe.
You
worked for the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. You know what it’s like to have to investigate….”

He slapped his chest with a thick hand; his eyes were tortured. “I was his favorite! Some people made fun of me, ’cause I slept at his feet, sometimes. But he had to be protected! They can see that now, now that it’s too late!”

“Take it easy, Joe.”

His fist quivered in the air. “I loved that man. He was good to me. I was just sweepin’ up hair in a barbershop when he found me.”

“Joe, surely you’ve considered the possibility, that with all those slugs flying…”

He stood up, pushed his chair back with a fingers-on-black-board scrape on the wood floor. “You accusin’ me of somethin’?”

“No, I…”

He came around the desk and stood, facing me. His voice was trembling; his eyes had teared up. “You think I’d do that? Shoot the best friend I ever had?”

“I didn’t say that. Some people think one of the bullets could have ricocheted—”

I didn’t finish, because a huge fist was flying toward my face; I ducked back, to avoid it, which I did, but with his other hand, he shoved me, and I went backward, ass-over-tea-kettle, taking the chair with me, the rest of my coffee flying against the wall with a splash.

I landed on my back with a teeth-rattling jolt, and then I was looking up at him, and the grimacing little man seemed huge, towering over me, particularly his Florsheimed foot, which was poised to stomp me. I grabbed hold of it and yanked, and set him on his ass—hard. Everything in the room shook, and so did the frosted glass in the door and outer wall.

I got on my feet and so did he, and he crouched, like a wrestler about to make a play. So I picked up the chair and hit him with it.

In the movies, chairs bust in a million pieces when you do that; but this was a solid wood chair and it didn’t break. It just whacked into him and hurt him. Tough as he was, it still made the stocky little bastard drop to one knee and hug himself.

He was crying. Whether over the pain or his dead boss, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.

“Joe,” I said. “Honestly, I meant no offense. I had to ask the questions. But Joe, a friendly warning—touch me again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

And I kicked the chair into the wall, where it made a hell of a racket, and, I hoped, my point.

Messina didn’t say anything. He was still on one knee, crying. Trying to scare him was probably about as useful as trying to put the fear of God into a potted plant.

The bespectacled clerk appeared in the doorway, looking like a startled rabbit.

“No more coffee, thanks,” I said, and got the hell out.

Diamond Jim Moran wore a double-breasted money green suit and a pale yellow shirt with a light green tie with a diamond stickpin spelling out DJM; the tinted lenses of his gold wire-frames matched the suit.

“How many pair of tinted glasses do you own, Jim?” I asked him. It was just the two of us, in a booth in the Blue Room on the first floor of the Roosevelt Hotel.

“Nineteen,” he said, as he studied the menu. He’d invited me for dinner and I’d accepted. “All different colors. Each one matchin’ a different double-breasted.”

Moran clashed with the blue-tinted glass of the glass-and-chrome cocktail lounge/restaurant with its circular bar and plush deco decor. Phil Harris would be performing later on the Blue Room’s surprisingly small stage; it was early—a little after six. We’d already had a drink—I’d had the Planter’s Punch (I was Ramos Gin-Fizzed out, house specialty or not) and Moran had something called a Roffignac.

“How’s the slot-machine business?” I asked.

“Flourishin’,” he said, reading the menu. “Flourishin’.”

“You and Dandy Phil Kastel getting along okay?”

“Famously. Famously.” He lowered the menu and looked over it at me; his battered pug’s puss seemed mildly troubled. “Though I am afraid, ’tween you, me and the lamppost, that we been a little overly ambitious.”

“How so?”

He brushed his mustache with a thumbnail. “Well, gettin’ the little devils put in places like restaurants, cafés, grocery stores, cigar stores—establishments that never seen a slot machine of any kind, before—that may be askin’ for trouble. Some of the women’s clubs and ministers are gettin’ after Bob.”

“Bob?”

“Mayor Maestri.”

Alice Jean had mentioned His Honor the Mayor—a short, swarthy, inarticulate Sicilian whose business interests included whorehouses and gambling dens—who had been inserted, by Huey, into the office of mayor, unopposed, without an election.

I hadn’t looked at my menu yet. “Will Kastel pull out, if the slots go?”

“Hell, no! We’ll just move along onto the next thing.”

“And what’ll that be?”

“Pinball machines.” He clicked in his cheek. “Wait’ll you see the latest ones, with their electric lights and trick gadgets and bells and such. That’ll be the next big thing, wait and see.”

Those were made in Chicago, too.

I said, “Your invitation was a pleasant surprise.”

“When I heard you were in town,” he said, putting the menu down, “I wanted to get together.”

“How did you know I was in town, Jim?”

His smile was teasing; I couldn’t read his eyes—the green lenses blocked the view. “My office is here in the hotel, remember. Maybe the desk clerk told me.”

“Why would he?”

“Maybe a little bird. Word’s around you’re askin’ questions about Huey’s killin’. Only, nobody seems to have a fix on just where you stand on it.”

I shrugged. “I’m working for Mutual Insurance, following up on Mrs. Long’s double-indemnity claim.”

“Some people think you’re pushin’ fire.”

“What does that mean?”

“Causin’ trouble. Some people have the idea you want to clear Dr. Carl Weiss.”

“What people?”

He picked the menu back up, opened it and began browsing. “You really should start with the bouillabaisse—the New Orleans variety is sure ’nuff second to none. And we’ll have oysters Rockefeller, of course—even if this ain’t Antoine’s.”

“Did Kastel ask you to warn me off?”

His expression was affable. “Nobody asked me to warn nobody off. I jus’ invited an old fren’ out to dinner.”

“Jim—we’re not old friends. We met, briefly, last year. I’m surprised you even remember me..”

His expression turned somber. “I remember you. I remember ’cause it got back to me you tried to help the Kingfish. I loved that man.”

Not again.

He said, “You were down at the dock board, earlier t’day, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“What kin’a fool thinks he can talk to Joe Messina and learn anything?”

“I learned Joe Messina is driving himself daffy thinking he might have killed his ‘best friend.’”

He shrugged his furry eyebrows. “You’re prob’ly right about that. Now, the jambalaya here is really quite respectable, for a fancy hotel…I mean, we’d have to go back down inta the Vieux Carré, to give you the true Creole experience.”