“I like the song I wrote. Iffen it’s good enough for the LSU marchin’ band, it’s good enough for the American public.”
“But you wanted a campaign song….”
Huey put his hand on the little man’s shoulder. “Tell ya what-we’ll take a vote.” He winked at the blonde and she blushed, or pretended to. “I’m the chairman, I vote we use my song, and the motion is carried.”
Seymour and I had been standing just inside the bedroom door through all this, and had as yet to be acknowledged. I stood with my fedora in my hands, wondering if there was a chance in hell the Kingfish would even recognize me.
Suddenly, as if my thoughts had summoned him, Long turned to us. His happy bumpkin face turned into a scowl.
“Where’d you run off to, Seymour?” he asked irritably. “I was makin’ a goddamn point!”
“But you and Mr. Irwin have important business,” Seymour said, gesturing to the bow-tied agent.
“We had our business,” he said. “Lou, I’ll see you at supper tonight.”
“Looking forward to it, Kingfish.”
Huey slipped one arm around the blonde and the other around the brunette, and walked them toward the door. “It was real sweet of you kids to help the ol’ Kingfish out this afternoon,” he said.
“It was an honor, Senator,” the blonde said, and fluttered her false lashes.
“You thank Nick for me, now, hear?”
“You bet,” the brunette said.
The Kingfish shut the door behind them and his affability evaporated as he walked over to the big double bed and flopped there on his back. There were no pillows; he apparently liked to stretch out, flat. Also, at some point in the last ten minutes, I seemed to have turned invisible.
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 protectio
n 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.
3
The Stork Club, that legendary habitat of cafe 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 maitre 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.
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