Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (26 page)

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 somebody 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 phone 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.”

He saluted me with his scotch glass. “I sleep fine.”

“I bet you do.”

He was looking past me now. “Is this your lady friend moving across the room? Very lovely.”

“Beautiful women are a habit I just can’t seem to break.”

“Tell you what, Nate,” he said genially. “For old times’ sake. To prove there’s no hard feelings…. Why don’t you and your young lady join me for dinner tonight in our restaurant. It’ll be my treat.”

“No thanks, Seymour,” I said. “I couldn’t properly dress for the occasion.”

He blinked. “It’s not formal. Just a tie and jacket.”

“Maybe. But I forgot my bullet-proof vest.”

I introduced him to Linda, and he was very suave, very charming, before leaving our table to stop by and chat with other guests.

“He seemed nice,” Linda said.

“Seymour’s a gracious host, all right.”

“Kind of ugly, though, don’t you think?”

I sipped my free rum-and-Coke—another Weiss lagniappe. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Seymour—who in his later years got involved with extreme right-wing political organizations and became close pals with J. Edgar Hoover—died in 1969 at age seventy-three.

Many of the others are gone, too: Murphy Roden, Joe Messina, Louis LeSage, Edward Hamilton, even Frank Wilson and Elmer Irey. Carlos Marcello died (as I write this) just a little over a year ago. On the other hand, the questions surrounding the shooting of the Kingfish are alive and well.

In 1985, the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination prompted the usual journalistic rehashes. But one of the articles inspired the public relations director of Mutual Life to look up his company’s policies on Huey Long.

My long-forgotten report was dredged up and its contents made available to the press; considerations of privacy were cast aside in the public interest. A flurry of publicity followed, when it was discovered that, in 1936, Mutual had paid double-indemnity on the accidental-death policy of a political figure that history had declared the victim of an assassin’s bullet.

By this time, I was retired, living in a condo in Coral Springs, Florida, with my second wife. I did a number of interviews for both print and electronic media, and reiterated the “accidental death” conclusion of my report, implicating the bodyguards, all of whom were dead and buried by now. It took about five minutes for my fifteen minutes of fame to lapse.

Then Coleman Vidrine, Jr., a retired captain of the Louisiana State Police, came forward and announced that his late father, Dr. Arthur Vidrine’s first cousin, had passed down to him a bullet—a spent .38 slug—and a story that went with it. Seemed Dr. Vidrine had given the bullet to his cousin for safekeeping. Coleman Vidrine, Sr., had told his son that Arthur was concerned for his safety, and considered the bullet part of his “life insurance policy.”

The .45 slug never showed up, but in the midst of this renewed interest in the case, Merle Welsh—the funeral director who embalmed both Huey Long and Dr. Carl Weiss—confirmed the story of a predawn impromptu autopsy by Dr. Vidrine, during which a .45 slug was recovered from the body of the Kingfish.