Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (3 page)

Seymour wandered over and stood at the bedside, like a butler awaiting his wealthy master’s whim. Huey ignored him, removed a cigar from a box on the bed-stand, biting off the tip, spitting it who-knew-where, then lighting up the cigar with the tall flame of a silver Zippo. He puffed, got it going, then picked up a newspaper on the bed next to him, the
Washington Post.
He read and smoked and then, finally, spoke.

“Like I was sayin’, Seymour, ‘fore you so rudely run off…you
know
I don’t mind a few little ol’ isolated pockets of insurrection…after all, even fleas got their use—they keep the dog awake.” He turned the page of the paper and it drooped and he shook it erect, making a whip-crack sound. “And, anyway, I cain’t make a speech worth a damn ’less I’m raisin’ hell about what my enemies are up to.”

Seymour shifted on his feet. “I hope that means you’ve come to your senses on the Judge Pavy matter….”

Huey thrust the paper angrily aside, tightening his fist as he did; the crumpling was like distant thunder. His eyes and nostrils flared. He was an enraged bull in green-silk pajamas.

“Come to my senses is right! Them stubborn hayseeds in St. Landry Parish need to be taught some god
-damn
respect.” He smiled but it turned quickly into a sneer. “Come Sunday, we’ll gerrymander Judge Pavy slap damn to hell and gone.”

Seymour patted the air cautiously. “Judge Pavy is very popular around Opelousas way….”

“I’ll teach those peckerwoods to git off the sidewalk and bow down good and goddamn low when the Kingfish comes to town.” Huey’s cigar had gone out. He sat up on the bed, and reached for the Zippo on the nightstand. “Who’s that? New bodyguard?”

The Kingfish had finally noticed me.

Seymour smiled. “Old friend of yours. From Chicago.” Slowly, his face began to light up, like a kid handed a candy bar.

He hopped off the bed and came over with his hand extended; it was as if he planned to stab me with it. But we only shook hands, warmly, though truth be told, the Kingfish had a strangely cold, clammy handshake.

Like shaking hands with a corpse.

“Well, well, if it ain’t the smart-ass Chicaga boy hisself! Nat Heller!”

I gave him half a smile. “It’s Nate. But I’m surprised you remember me at all, Senator.”

Both eyebrows lifted momentarily. “Why, ’cause of them speakeasies we damn near drunk outa business?”

“Man like you meets a lot of people, Senator.”

He shook his head. “Not that stands up to me. I scare the bejesus out of ninety-nine out of a hun-erd men, but I guess maybe you’re that
other
one.”

“I don’t know. Pay me enough money and I’ll be glad to grovel.”

His laugh was a howl, and whether sincere or just part of the rube persona he affected, I couldn’t say. He slipped an arm around my shoulder.

“You know,” he said, “if you didn’t have the same color hair as me, mebbe I wouldn’t cut ya so goddamn much slack….”

I ran a hand through my reddish-brown locks and grinned. “Maybe there was a Long in the woodpile.”

This time the laughter was a roar, and he gestured for me to follow him over to a sofa, where we both sat. Seymour took a chair nearby, but sat quietly.

“Forgive the pajamies, Nate—kinda got to be a trademark with me. People half expect it”

“If it’s good enough for the German consul,” I said, “it’s good enough for me.”

“But it
wasn’t
good enough for that Heinie son of a bitch,” Huey said good-naturedly. “That’s how these things got to
be
my trademark.”

We were both referring to a notorious international incident that had made great press for Huey. In New Orleans, at Mardi Gras time a few years ago, the commander of a German cruiser and the German consul called on the Governor of the Great State of Louisiana in the latter’s hotel suite. Huey greeted them in his blue robe, green pajamas and red slippers (he later admitted he’d looked like an “explosion in a paint factory”), unintentionally insulting the dignitaries. The press got hold of it and had a merry time with the story, and ever since, Huey had played up the rustic fool business, probably because it softened his American Hitler image.

“So,” Huey said, using the Zippo again, “what brings the Chicaga Police Department to New York? Bigger and better graft?”

“That might do it,” I said. “But me, I went private back in ’32.”

“Hot damn.” He slapped his thighs. “Hope that means you come here to fin’ly take me up on my job offer!” He shook his head. “Them sorry-ass, shif’less, worthless Cossacks of mine…I can
use
somebody that don’t think with his fists.”

“Isn’t Murphy Roden still with you? He’s a good man.”

His mouth twitched. “’Ception to the rule. He’s drivin’ my Caddy from D.C. down to Baton Rouge for me. He’d be pleased to see you—took a real shine to you.”

“Huey,” Seymour interjected, “Mr. Heller is here at my invitation.”

“Really? That’s one good idea you had lately.”

Seymour’s eyes tightened. “I…I wanted to give you something special. For your birthday.”

Huey smirked at me, rolled his eyes. “Big day. Big deal. The ol’ Kingfish is gettin’ on in years. So, Seymour. Is Chicaga here my gift? Why ain’t you wearin’ a big red ribbon, Heller?”

“The cake I was going to jump out of fell,” I said.

Seymour nodded toward the brown-paper package I had laid next to me on the couch. “I asked him to bring you a present from Chicago….”

I handed him the crinkly package and he took it eagerly, his smile making his cheeks fat, his eyes those of a greedy child; he tore at the wrapping, but as the contents were revealed to him, his glow turned to glower.

In the Kingfish’s hands was a thick, bulky tan canvas sleeveless garment, a vest of sorts that would cover its wearer neck to waist.

Disgusted, he threw the gift at Seymour who caught it, flinching.

“I don’t need no goddamn bullet-proof BVDs, Seymour! Jesus H. Kee-rist! I’d look, and
feel
, like a damn fool in the fucker. Send it back!”

Seymour’s homely face was tight with concern. “Huey…please…with these death threats…you have to have protection.”

“The kind of protection I need ain’t the kind you
wear.
”

“I simply thought…”

“That’s your problem, lately. Simple thinkin’.” He shook his head and the spit curl flounced. “Well, ya did one thing right, anyway—you invited my ol’ pal Heller here to come to my birthday shindig.”

Seymour managed a smile that was a sickly half-moon.

Huey waved dismissively in the air, as if shooing a fly. “Seymour, check on them train reservations.”

“I already have….”

“Double-check. Don’t you understand? I want some privacy here. I want a private consultation with my Chicaga security adviser.”

Seymour nodded numbly, rose, and carrying the tan bullet-proof vest in his hands like something he needed to bury, went out, shutting the door behind him.

The Kingfish slapped me on the shoulder; his grin was tight and somewhat glazed; he was, after all, at least a little crazy. “So…you’re in private practice now, are ya, son? Ya know, I’m serious about that job offer still bein’ good.”

“That’s flattering, Senator.”

“Huey. Call me ‘Huey,’ or ‘Kingfish.’ Senator is what you call them numbskulls back in Washington.”

“All right…Huey. But I got a nice little business goin’ back home.”

He jerked, as if I’d slapped him. “In this goddamn depression? Under Prince Franklin? Are you joshin’?”

Actually, I kind of felt the depression was letting up a little, and I’d voted for FDR; but I didn’t share that with the Kingfish.

“Well, I have clients to consider. Retail credit, insurance investigation…can’t just walk away from them.”

And I had no desire to move to bayou country, even temporarily, though I didn’t share that thought with him, either. Swamps and gators weren’t my style.

“Can you give me jest a little ol’ month of your time, son?” His voice had turned surprisingly gentle; the soapbox nowhere to be seen. “Even jest a measly li’l ol’ two weeks?”

“Well, I might be—”

He leaned forward; his dark brown eyes fixed on me in a manner that was both seductive and discomfiting. “I need a
man
…a man I can trust.”

“What about Seymour Weiss?”

“I trust him like a brother,” he said flatly. Then he leaned back, and draped his arms along on the top of the sofa. “’Course, on t’other hand, I don’t in particular trust my brothers.”

“You said yourself, Murphy Roden’s a good man.”

“So he is, and so, in his inimitable way, is Joe Messina—he’d die for me.”

“He also needs help tying his shoes.”

“That’s a God-granted fact,” Huey said, and grinned. “So…what I need is a man I can trust, who’s also a man with brains….” He winked at me. “An
outside
man to be my
inside
man. What’s your goin’ rate, Detective Heller?”

“Twenty-five a day.” For those clients I figured could afford it, anyway.

He raised his eyebrows and looked down the double barrels of his shotgun nose at me. “Son, I’ll pay you ten times that with a minimum retainer coverin’ a week’s work—cash on the barrelhead.”

I perked up. Despite that cornpone drawl, he was talking my language now.

“And,” he said, with a flourish of a hand gesture, “I’ll toss in a ten-thousand-dollar bonus…iffen you come through for me.”

“Come through
how?”

He used the Zippo to light up the cigar again; from the aroma, I’d bet a C-note it was a Havana. Oddly, considering how hard-drinking he’d been back in Chicago in ’32, there was no sign in the suite of a bar or liquor cart or even a bottle.

Then, as casually as if he were asking somebody to pass the salt, he said, “Sometime in the next week or so…give or take…somebody’s gonna try an’ kill the ol’ Kingfish.”

But before my new employer could elucidate, the door burst open and the cute blonde who’d been singing at the piano was back again, this time wearing a black beaded, low-cut gown that exposed lots of creamy white flesh. Additionally, she was holding a big creamy white frosted cake that looked almost as good as she did; it was elaborately decorated with birthday greetings and frosting flowers, all in a shade of green near that of the Kingfish’s silk pajamas. Atop the cake, a forest of little green candles burned.

“Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you,” the stunning young woman sang, as Joe Messina, Big George McCracken, the agent Lou Irwin and others in the Long retinue, male secretaries and what-have-you, crowded around, following her into the bedroom. All were gaily joining in except a glum Seymour who trailed after them.

“Happy birthday, dear Huey,” they all sang—even Seymour joined in, finally—as the Kingfish approached, his eyes damp, apparently genuinely touched.

He blew out the candles.

Huey P. Long was forty-two years old.

The Stork Club, that legendary habitat of café society and newspaper columnists, with its white-lettered navy blue canopy and entryway murals of top-hatted storks, seemed an unlikely venue for the birthday party of a Louisiana Kingfish. But the theatrical agent Lou Irwin, who had booked the orchestra in the club’s main room, told us owner Sherman Billingsley had just hired a new French chef who made the best onion soup in the world.

And Huey, through an enormous mouthful of frosted cake, said he liked the sound of that “jes’ fine.”

I still needed to check into the hotel, and several others wanted to tidy up before going out, so it was just after dark when the group—including the bodyguards, but unfortunately minus the blonde, who was a singer with Nick Lucas’s band in the New Yorker supper club—piled into two taxi cabs and headed uptown. I rode with two male aides and Seymour Weiss, who looked like a headwaiter in his tuxedo.

“Huey says you’ve come aboard,” he said, seeming in a better mood.

“For a week or two, anyway,” I admitted. I tried not to let my uneasiness show: thanks to the interruption of the birthday party, getting any details from Huey about his supposedly imminent assassination would have to wait.

Like the rest of the country, I’d seen in the papers that Huey had, on the floor of the Senate, accused FDR of aiding and abetting a murder plot against him; something about conspirators meeting at some hotel somewhere. But I’d really merely read the headlines, skimmed the stories. Nobody was taking it very seriously. After all, Huey made a habit out of such accusations. He was a wolf who kept crying little boy.

The Stork Club was, obviously, for the class customer—the affluent, the prominent. Seymour was the only one in the party in a tux, however, though Huey had traded his green-silk pajamas for a light tan poplin suit, an expanse of tie that looked to have been splattered by its green-and-red colors and a lavender shirt with a checkered pattern. Explosion in a paint factory was right.

Messina and McCracken were in their usual baggy mobster suits (McCracken had left his tommy gun in a bag behind), while I probably looked a little gangsterish myself in my rumpled dark suit. There hadn’t been time to have it, or my lightweight white spare, pressed at the hotel.

But we were part of Senator Long’s party, and none of the stuck-up Stork Club staff dared say a word or risk a disapproving glance; the hatcheck girl, a curvy little redhead, even gave me a wink, a smile and a celluloid token in return for my fedora.

Leaving the real world behind and entering into the fantasy realm of the rich, you were stopped at nothing so common as a velvet rope: the Stork Club had an eighteen-carat gold chain. This glittering barricade was lifted from our path by a dinner-jacketed captain who ushered us to the left, past a long, oval bar where, over cocktails, men in tails looking for tail murmured at frails in gowns that were no more expensive than your average Buick. Pretty chichi company for hoi polloi like me.

Beyond a scattering of bar tables was the main room, where the Frank Shields Orchestra, on its tiered stage, was performing a rather listless “Begin the Beguine.” I hoped the onion soup was better.

There were eight in our motley little party, all males, seated at a long table in the midst of the room like an island of riffraff in a sea of sophistication. All around us were men in white ties and ladies in dark gowns, both sexes smoking with that casual elegance only the rich (and, of course, movie stars who grew up in ghettos) can effortlessly affect, from barely legal debutantes to the barely living debauched, and all ages between, all dressed to the nines.

Whether they were Manhattan society or tourists from Peoria who slipped the maître d’ a ten-spot, they were here to dine on the Stork Club’s specialty of the house: celebrity. You might see H. L. Mencken or Eddie Cantor; Ernest Hemingway or Claudette Colbert. Tonight, the main course was Kingfish.

Not that anybody—except, perhaps, a tourist or two—gawked or gaped or any such thing. These raised-pinky types were more discreet. But out around the edges of their elegance, they were watching the Kingfish’s antics, taking it all in. What were they thinking, these rich people whose money Huey wanted to reclaim for the poor (and himself)?

When a distinguished-looking older couple, on the way to the dance floor, stopped for a moment to pay their regards to the senator, he played modest. “Aw, I ain’t nothin’ much—only a little Kingfish from off yonder there.”

When our waiter came for his order, the Kingfish said, “All I want’s a bowl of this here onion soup I been hearin’ so much about. And if it’s not up to snuff, tell that French chef of yours, I’m gon’ be back there next to ’im, with my coat off, teachin’ him how the Cajuns cook.”

When the head bartender brought him over a complimentary gin fizz, a drink widely reported in the press to be Huey’s favorite, the senator at first declined, then relented, saying, “You know, I ain’t had a drink in eighteen months, but I’ll sample this, son, in order to be able to assure ya that it’s gen-you-wine.” He took a sip, said, “I think that’s all right, I think that’s all right…better be sure about it.”

And he took another big drink, and flashed his rascal’s grin of approval around at all the eavesdroppers.

But that was the last sip of anything alcoholic I saw him sip that night, or ever again, for that matter.

When the onion soup arrived, it was damn good, a flavorful broth under a crust of browned swiss cheese that passed Huey’s muster. But when other people’s meals began to arrive, Huey—who hadn’t ordered anything but the soup—began casually plucking this and that off the plates of those around him. A boiled potato here, a carrot there, a bite or two of fish.

Nobody at the table said a word about it, or even reacted; I wasn’t surprised, either—I’d noticed this behavior, back in Chicago in ’32. Par for the course, at mealtime with Huey. The only difference was, back then he ordered a plate of food for himself, as well.

But now he was slimming down; preparing for the battle royal against “Prince Franklin.”

In any case, I had positioned myself as far away from the Kingfish as possible. Nobody was getting a fork in this butter-smooth medium-rare New York strip steak but Nate Heller.

As Huey dined on morsels plundered from the plates of others, he expounded on his enemies: Roosevelt’s postmaster and confidant Jim Farley was “the Nabob of New York,” Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace was “that ignoramus from Iowa,” Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes was “the chinch bug of Chicago.”

Mostly, though, he railed about FDR.

“He’s very popular right now, Huey,” Seymour Weiss said quietly, eating the few tidbits of lobster tail that Huey had left on his majordomo’s plate.

“I can take him,” Huey said pugnaciously. “He’s a phony. I can
take
this Roosevelt. He’s scared of me, Seymour.” He snorted a laugh. “I can out-promise that son of a bitch
any
day of the week, and he
knows
it.”

“Excuse me, Senator,” someone said. The voice was male, mellow, slightly nasal.

At first I thought it was Jack Benny, and there
was
a resemblance, but then I realized this was another, if lesser, radio star: Phil Baker. I’d seen him in vaudeville in Chicago—the Benny similarity extended to his use of a musical instrument, an accordion substituting for Benny’s violin. Baker was a better musician, a pleasant singer, but not, in my opinion, particularly funny.

“The
Armour Jester
!” Huey said, standing, brimming with enthusiasm. “Why, son, you’re the best thing
on
the Blue Network!”

As they shook hands, the smiling Baker, hair slicked back, in a dark blue suit with dark blue bow tie, said, “I’m not gonna be on for Armour, anymore, Senator. I’m movin’ to CBS, for Gulf Oil.”

“So long as it ain’t Standard.”

They both laughed; everybody knew Huey Long and Standard Oil were bitter enemies.

“I just signed the contract today, actually,” Baker said. “Real piece of luck.”

“What’s that, son?”

“I’m getting Will Rogers’s Sunday time slot.”

Will Rogers and Wiley Post had died in a plane crash in Alaska two weeks ago. Real piece of luck.

This good fortune had Baker bubbling. “Senator, I want you to meet the two most beautiful girls in New York, my wife, Peggy, and her niece, Cleanthe Carr.”

Baker, who my trained detective’s eye placed at around forty, had a younger, quite attractive wife with dark blonde hair, chic and shapely in a black-and-white print satin evening dress with matching gloves.

But next to her was a honey-blonde eyeful of probably eighteen, blue-eyed and sparkling of smile, her slender curves well served by a rose-color brocade taffeta gown that left her arms bare. Her shoulders were covered by puffs of sleeve tied with bows, her heart-shaped neckline modest but alluring.

“Well, howdy do, ladies,” Huey said elegantly.

“A pleasure, Senator,” Mrs. Baker said.

“Cleanthe is Gene Carr’s daughter, Senator,” Baker said, as the Kingfish approached the girl with the same look in his eyes he would give the person-next-to-him’s plate of food.

“What a charmin’ child,” he said, taking her hands in his. “‘Cleanthe’—that’s a nice Southern-soundin’ name for an East Coast kiddo like you, honey.”

Her smile dimples seemed about to burst her pretty face; even for someone with a radio-star uncle, meeting the Kingfish was a big deal. And getting fussed over by the famous is hard to shrug off, even if you aren’t an eighteen-year-old girl.

“Gene Carr is her father,” Baker told him again, as if that were important.

“Gene Carr?” Huey asked absently, his eyes bulging and full of the girl.

“The syndicated cartoonist?” Baker asked, seeking recognition. “His panel, ‘Metropolitan Movies,’ is very popular.”

“Oh,
that
Gene Carr,” Huey said. He was still holding the girl’s hands. Staring at her. “Don’t imagine there’s a cartoon man anywhere on earth, under God’s livin’ sun, that’s better known.”

I’d never heard of Carr, although Huey may have. Of course, I didn’t read the comics. But I would have said, “What about Walt Disney?” if I’d been part of the conversation, which I wasn’t.

The girl, however, was beaming, hearing this praise heaped on her father.

“Pull yourselves up some chairs, and join us!” Huey said gaily, nudging Seymour to make room for the honey blonde. Lou Irwin, on Huey’s other side, made room for Baker and his wife. I was next to Seymour, and scooted down accordingly.

“Ha! Ha! Oh boy,” Baker said, treating us to an inane radio catch phrase of his. “Imagine finding a Kingfish inside a stork.”

But Huey didn’t laugh or even seem to be paying attention to Baker; he was massaging the honey blonde with his eyeballs.

“That’s my orchestra, you know,” Baker said, nodding toward the stage. “Frank Shields and his boys, I mean. They’re on my radio show.”

“You want some champagne, young lady?” Huey asked her. “Seymour, pass that bubble water down heah!”

“Cleanthe is an aspiring artist herself,” Baker said, finally grasping the only subject that interested Huey at the moment. “She’s going to study in France.”

“Why get involved with
them
highfalutin’ suckers?” Huey asked her earnestly. “Honey, we got art classes at LSU.”

The orchestra was making a decent enough job of “I’m in the Mood for Love.” Reading Huey’s mind, perhaps.

“Just how good an artist is this little girl?” the Kingfish asked Baker, eyeing her in a manner that seemed unlikely to assess artistic skill.

“She’s every bit as good a cartoonist as her father,” Baker said.

Huey grabbed one of the napkins, with its top-hatted stork emblems. He dug in an inside pocket and came back with a fountain pen. He put the napkin before her, and held out the pen like a dare.

“Then let’s see ya sketch
me,
young lady!”

The young woman, who as yet had not spoken, did a quick, deft caricature of Huey with the fountain pen; in bold strokes, she caught him without flattering, or insulting him, which was a good trick for any caricaturist. She depicted him frozen in mid-hellfire speech: arms out, hair flying. Mouth open. It seemed the most natural way to depict him.

He held the little napkin before him like a pocket mirror he was looking into, his eyes wide, his face a blank putty mask. Then he smiled, as if he relished the reflection.

“Normally,” she said, in measured tones at odds with her college-girl good looks, “I work in wash, or charcoal.”

“How would you like a job?” he asked her. He wasn’t looking at her with backwoods wanton lust anymore; he was appraising her as the talented young woman she was.

“You mean, in the art field, Senator?”

“I don’t mean in the cotton field, missy. I jest finished writin’ my latest masterpiece…li’l ol’ tome called
My First Days in the White House.
Thought I best write my memoirs of my presidential years ’
fore
I got there, ’cause I’ll be too busy durin’, and after’s way too late.”

I was eating my dessert, some cherry cheesecake; but sweet as it was, this latest explosion of Huey b.s. made me smile more. The guy was outrageous; you had to give him that.

“Miss Carr,” he said almost formally, “I have been considerin’ adding some caricature illustrations to my book. Of myself and the other public figures depicted therein. And I think you’re the perfect man for the job. So to speak.”

Her eyes were as wide as they were blue. She seemed flabbergasted, but had the presence of mind to say, “Why, I’d be honored, Senator.”

“Is he serious about that book?” I whispered to Seymour.

Seymour, who was pouring himself some champagne, nodded, and whispered back: “He finished dictating it last week. Intends it to be a major tool in his presidential effort—that’s why we’re in New York.”

“What is?”

“To place the book with a publisher.”

Huey was saying, “Do you know what I want for my birthday, young lady? To show you how we cut a rug back in Loozyana.”