Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08

by Blood (and Thunder) (v5. 0)

  But the Baton Rouge uprising, earlier this year, had been the work of Hamilton’s Square Dealers. The group consisted largely of embittered Standard Oil employees who feared Huey’s personal war on Standard would drive out the company that kept the community financially afloat.

  “Armed insurrection was not our goal,” Hamilton said quietly, the rocking in his swivel chair ceasing. “Only to rid the state of obnoxious dictatorial laws.”

  I gave him a smirk. “Come on now, Mr. Hamilton. You wore little blue uniforms, you formed ‘battalions,’ you marched and drilled….”

  His frown turned his dark eyebrows into one straight, furrowed line. “We were a paramilitary organization. So are the Boy Scouts. Neither group is inherently violent.”

  “Your slogan was ‘Direct Action.’ One of your members spoke openly about hanging Huey and his puppet governor and all the rubber-stamp legislators—”

  He bit the words off: “It was not our purpose to assassinate or murder anybody. For God’s sake, man, we numbered two ex-governors among our membership, and the mayor of New Orleans.” He shook his head. “I must say, I’m disappointed with the tack you’re takin’, Mr. Davis. I’m not certain this interview should…”

  I replaced the smirk with an easygoing smile. “Mr. Hamilton, please understand. The things that are happening down here are difficult for folks up North to grasp.”

  His eyes were scolding. “That’s the point I’ve been tryin’ to make. Don’t feel so smug about it. Huey’s already in Washin’ton, and he’s knockin’ at your door. He’ll smile and grin and guffaw his way into America’s house and steal off with the Bill of Rights and the Constitution and every man, woman and child’s immortal soul.”

  That all seemed pretty arch to me, and perhaps my expression showed it. Hamilton sat forward, leaned his elbows on the desk and looked at me, wearily.

  “You see, Mr. Davis, after our impeachment efforts failed, and when Long began pushin’ through his ‘special legislature sessions’ in 1934—there have been six such sessions in the past thirteen months—well, it created a sort of…wildness in the air.”

  “‘Somebody oughta kill that guy’ became more than just a wisecrack, you mean?”

  Sitting back, Hamilton nodded gravely.

  I asked, “Is ‘a wildness in the air’ why three hundred armed Square Dealers stormed and occupied the East Baton Rouge courthouse, last January?”

  He winced at the memory. “You must try to understand, Mr. Davis…. Long sneaked a bill through that gave his stooge O.K. Allen leeway to appoint new members to the governing board of our parish—our last vestige of representative government had been stolen from us.”

  “I thought storming the courthouse had to do with one of your people being arrested.”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes, that did fuel the ill-advised episode.”

  “So Huey sent the militia in, and the Square Dealers folded.”

  He shook his head, quickly. “No. We received word that our arrested member had been released, and we went home. The irony is, that ‘member’ was an undercover agent of Huey’s all along. In fact, during his ‘arrest,’ he was probably reportin’ in, deliverin’ names and phone numbers. That would certainly explain the airport debacle.”

  The morning after the seizing of the courthouse, a hundred armed Square Dealers had arrived at the Baton Rouge airport, where they were greeted by five hundred national guardsmen with machine guns and teargas.

  The sorrowful eyes took on a haunted aspect. “Most of the Square Dealers were gassed, and one was shot. Half a dozen were hospitalized. No fatalities, thank God. Some of us made it to our cars, or into the woods, before anything serious happened…other than abject humiliation, that is.”

  “What possessed you to send a hundred of your men to the airport, anyway?”

  His laugh was short, deep, humorless. “That’s the most humiliatin’ part. Even those of us in leadership capacities didn’t know why we were there! We all received urgent anonymous phone calls, urgin’ us to get out to the airport.”

  “Phone numbers provided by Huey’s spy?”

  He sighed. “I can only assume so. At any rate, that was the end of the Square Dealers, for all intents and purposes. A while later Huey banned the organization, officially. Martial law wasn’t lifted in Baton Rouge until only just last month.”

  “When you say the Square Dealers are ‘officially’ dead, do you mean…?”

  A brave smile formed on that lived-in face. “That unofficially, the anti-Long movement is very much alive? Oh yes, Mr. Davis. Yes indeed.”

  “Alive, like at the DeSoto Hotel conference?”

  The smile disappeared and he winced again; sat forward. “That’s been highly exaggerated, Mr. Davis. Most of what the press has said about that conference is based upon Huey’s own irresponsible hyperbole on the floor of the Senate of the United States.”

  “He named FDR as a conspirator in a murder plot against him,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “That’s either irresponsible, or goddamn disturbing. The idea of the President of the United States, conspiring to have one of his challengers killed…”

  His frown was dismissive. “It’s absurd! The DeSoto Hotel conference was aboveboard and respectable—four of the five pro-Roosevelt Louisiana congressmen were present, for God’s sake, as were ex-governors Sanders and Parker, and Mayor Walmsley….”

  “All gathered to discuss the Huey Long problem?”

  “It was a political caucus, sir, plain and simple. The business at hand was to select anti-Long candidates to run in the comin’ primary election.”

  “What about Huey’s claim of having a transcript of the conference taken from a dictaphone his men planted?”

  “Ludicrous.”

  “Maybe so, but colorful as hell.” I checked my notes from my briefing by Alice Jean. “Among the tidbits Huey reported on the Senate floor was one unidentified speaker’s offer to ‘draw straws in a lottery to go out and kill Long. It would only take one man, one gun and one bullet.’”

  “Please, sir, don’t dignify—”

  “Another unidentified voice supposedly said, later, ‘Does anyone doubt that President Roosevelt would pardon anyone who killed Long?’”

  He was shaking his head, slowly, his smile one of frustration. “Mr. Davis…how often do you suppose someone in Louisiana says ‘Somebody ought to kill that Huey Long’?”

  “Every thirty seconds or so?”

  “Precisely. It doesn’t mean they’ll do it, or even that they’re thinkin’ serious of it. It’s just a kind of…wish. A daydream.”

  He made it sound wistful.

  “Mr. Hamilton,” I said, “I have an admission to make.”

  He looked at me sharply.

  “My name isn’t Davis,” I said, “and I’m not a reporter. Name’s Nate Heller—I’m a bodyguard on Senator Long’s staff.”

  He almost lost his balance in the swivel chair; he tried for indignation, but his fear was showing, as he said, “This is outrageous, sir! I must ask you to—”

  My hands patted the air. “Whoa,” I said, “settle down. I said I was a bodyguard, not a spy….”

  He stood. Pointed at the door. “Leave. Now.”

  “I really am from Chicago,” I said pleasantly, crossing my legs, smiling up at him, ignoring his commands. “The Kingfish took a shine to me back at the Democratic Convention in ’32, when I was his police bodyguard. I came down on an errand, and he offered me a position….”

  “What is your point, Mr. Heller?”

  I arched an eyebrow, smiled half a smile. “My point is that I’m from Chicago, and I’m on the inside of the Kingfish’s personal staff…and did I mention I’m willing to do just about anything for money?”

  He sat, slowly, studying me carefully. “I was just beginning to gather that.”

  I shrugged. “So…if there’s any information you, or any of your Square Dealer or DeSoto conference pals, might need…anything you might need done.…Catch my drift?”<
br />
  “I’m beginning to.”

  The attorney swiveled in his chair and faced the window behind his desk, looking somberly out at the city the Kingfish had taken away from people like him.

  “Just over a year ago,” he said very quietly, “a goodly number of ‘law-abiding citizens’ were gathered in this very office…most of them armed. We seriously discussed stormin’ Long’s suite in the Heidelberg Hotel…just a few blocks away…bravin’ the nests of machine guns and such to rid the world of a tyrant.”

  “What made you change your mind?”

  Hamilton shrugged. “Cowardice, perhaps. Reason, possibly. At any rate, we didn’t resort to assassination then, and I seriously doubt we would do it today…much as we might like to.”

  “I see.”

  “We are not barbarians, Mister…Heller, was it? We are civilized men in the grasp of a barbarian.”

  That would’ve seemed arch, too, if Hamilton’s expression hadn’t been so tragically grave.

  “Well,” I said, as I stood. “I appreciate your time.”

  He nodded noncommittally, numbly.

  I went to the door. “And I apologize for the deception. But if you change your mind, or talk to any of your friends who might see things…differently…well, don’t hesitate to contact me.”

  “In that unlikely event,” Hamilton said, “where are you staying?”

  “At the Heidelberg,” I said, at the door. “Just down the hall from the machine-gun nest.”

  And I left him there, to ponder the possibilities.

  Industrial sites were nothing new to a Chicago boy like yours truly; the steel mills and factories of the South Side, and of Gary, Hammond and East Chicago, Indiana, were like a foul-smelling forest just beyond my backyard.

  But approaching by car, after dark, heading north from Baton Rouge, I felt overwhelmed by the sprawling otherworldly Standard Oil refinery. Appearing at first like some modern artist’s semi-abstract, geometrical vision of a metropolitan skyline, the vast facility soon filled the horizon, blotting out the world of woods and bluffs it emerged from, dwarfing even the Mississippi along whose banks its shadows fell. Security spotlights and billowing flares adding soft-focus radiance, scaffolding clinging like exoskeletons, the turrets of cat-crackers and the cannon-barrel towers of white-smoking chimneys loomed over a Paul Bunyan’s playground of baseball spheres and bullet tubes and cake-pan storage tanks.

  The guard in the booth at the chain-link gate looked at my business card (or that is, Hal Davis’s card) and checked his clipboard. I was expected. He threw a switch and the gate slid open with a metallic whine that seemed only appropriate, and I guided the Buick into this city of steel and flame and smoke.

  Louis LeSage—chief lobbyist for Standard Oil, and vice president of public relations—was waiting out in front of a three-story brick administration building. He rocked on his feet, hands clasped behind him, a tiny, balding man with a round cheerful face on a slender body. His wispy waxed mustache, like his cream-color suit and crisp red bow tie, somehow underscored his air of confidence.

  When LeSage spotted me, he lighted up as if we were old friends—we had of course never met—and he walked over quickly to the side parking area where I was climbing out of the Buick. His arm was thrust out like a spear as he offered me his hand.

  “Mr. Davis,” he said, exuberantly, his voice high-pitched and only faintly Southern, “I’m so very pleased to meet you. We don’t often get representatives of the Northern press down to have a look at our little facility.”

  I let him pump my hand for a while, then dug out my notebook, looked up at the towering smokestacks and columnlike cat-crackers. “Just how ‘little’ is this facility?”

  He gestured. “Shall we stroll?”

  “Why not? It’s a pleasant enough evening. I’m surprised the air isn’t fouled by all that smoke.”

  He established an easygoing pace as we walked down a cinder street; but he was holding back—he was in the energy game.

  “You don’t see any black fumes, messin’ up the sky, do you, Mr. Davis?” he asked, but it wasn’t a question. “We’re a clean business, here at Standard. Oh, you may get a nasty little whiff of this or that…but for the most part, we pride ourselves at not foulin’ our nest. As for how ‘little’ we are, this is the biggest refinery in the world. Even bigger’n Bayonne.”

  I didn’t doubt it. Right now we were strolling past a row of steel stills that could have kept Kentucky in moonshine for decades.

  “We process 110,000 barrels of crude oil, each and every day, day in day out…am I talkin’ too fast for ya, Mr. Davis?”

  “No. But, frankly, this isn’t the kind of information I’m after….”

  He smiled; the ends of the mustache pointed upward, emphasizing the smile’s smugness. “I know. You indicated on the phone your primary interest was in Senator Long.”

  “That’s right.” I glanced around at the monumental spires of industry rising into the night sky; the smoke really was white—as if they were a cloud-making factory. “And seeing all this, it’s frankly hard to understand why Huey Long would make an enemy out of such a boon to his state.”

  LeSage stopped. “Have you met the Senator, Mr. Davis?”

  “No.”

  “Well, if you’re able to get an interview with him…and you probably will be—he likes to show off for the ‘lyin’ press,’ ’ specially likes to play monkey for the Northern papers, keepin’ you folks off your guard…but when you get to talk to him, you’ll find out that logic is not one of his stronger suits.”

  “I understand he’s a brilliant man.”

  “He’s a brilliant child, Mr. Davis. Yes, I would say Standard Oil is a boon to this state, you’re correct. At this facility alone, we employ five thousand workers…several hundred more in management positions.”

  Actually, I hadn’t seen more than a handful of workers, in their hard hats and jumpsuits; but that was deceiving. With a place as expansive as this one, it wouldn’t take long for handfuls of workers to add up to a number like five thousand.

  LeSage began to stroll again; I fell in alongside him. His smile seemed mildly amused as he said, “Do you know why Huey Long has it in for Standard Oil?”

  “For the same reason he has it in for Wall Street, I suppose. He thinks ‘robber barons’ should be stopped, and the wealth should be shared with the little guy.”

  LeSage chuckled; it made his bow tie bobble. “Huey’s feud with Standard Oil has nothing at all to do with helping ‘the little guy’ and takin’ on the evil rich.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No. Not in the least.” He paused for effect. “It’s about Huey Long not gettin’ rich himself.”

  LeSage stopped again; he gestured gently, with a lecturing forefinger, waving it like the laziest flag in the world. “When Huey was a young lawyer in Shreveport, he used to take payment for legal services in royalty shares and acreage allotments.”

  “I don’t understand….”

  “Oil had been found in the Pine Island area, nearby, and there was a boom on, y’see. Huey figured he’d be joinin’ the ranks of oil millionaires by the time he was thirty.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  LeSage shook his head, kept smiling that knowing little smile under that tiny twitchy mustache. “Not when the only available pipeline belonged to the Standard Oil Company.”

  “And owning the pipeline made Standard the only game in town?”

  “An astute observation, Mr. Davis.”

  “And they weren’t exactly paying top dollar.”

  The smile kept going. “If you don’t mind, since you are takin’ notes, and presumably plan to quote me…I’ll allow you to draw your own conclusions. But it would be fair to say, the shares and allotments Huey dreamed would make him so very wealthy were, in fact, next to worthless.”

  This was all new to me—Alice Jean had filled me in on none of the facts behind Huey’s feud with Standard.

  Despite her bitt
er outbursts, Alice Jean still retained some admiration for Huey’s defense of the common man and his interests. Now, as I strolled with Standard’s own lobbyist through the bowels of the fire-breathing dragon St. Huey so frequently battled, I finally understood what motivated the crusade.

  “Revenge, Mr. Davis,” LeSage was saying. “Revenge, not public concern, fueled Huey Long’s Holy War against Standard Oil.”

  “Didn’t you come close to getting him impeached, in ’29?”

  “You know what they say about ‘close’ only countin’ in horseshoes, Mr. Davis.” LeSage shrugged. “Huey bought himself enough votes to stave off impeachment, more or less permanently. Ever hear of the Round Robin? You cover that story, up North in your papers?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  We were walking, again.

  LeSage said, “He got fifteen senators to sign a document pledgin’ that no matter what Huey ever did, they’d never vote to impeach him; just enough votes—actually one extra—to block impeachment, no matter what the charges. He rewarded ’em with cushy jobs and patronage spoils. Like Huey says, he plays the legislature like a deck of cards.”

  “You sound like you know Huey, personally.”

  His laugh was barely perceptible. “Of course I do. I’m a lobbyist, Mr. Davis—I spend the majority of my time over at the capitol building, swimmin’ in that particular slough. I know Huey well. We get along just fine.” He grinned; so did the mustache. “You know where they say Huey used to hide that Round Robin document of his, for safe-keepin’?”

  “Where?”

  “In his girlfriend Alice Jean’s brassiere.”

  Well, it wasn’t there now.

  “What were the grounds of impeachment?” I asked.

  “Huey tried to push through an exorbitant five-cents-a-barrel crude oil tax, in one of his ‘special sessions’ of the legislature. While obviously we didn’t get his behind tossed out of office, the fuss was enough to block the tax…for a while. Then—just last Christmas—he finally snuck it through.”

  “That’s what got the Square Dealers so riled up, isn’t it?”