Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (13 page)

“Now. This comin’ fall…those journalism students I expelled last year, they’ll be back on the
Reveille,
I suppose.”

“Yes sir. Except for those that graduated.”

“Well, tell those prima donnas that if they print any more unflatterin’ letters or editorials about me and my administration,
they
won’t
be
graduatin’.”

“I’ll make that clear, Senator. I’ve already told them I would fire the entire faculty and expel the complete student body before I’d offend you, sir.”

The Kingfish’s grin just about burst his face. “You’re my kinda educator, Jimmy. Now…you handpick the new editor, and tell him LSU is Huey Long’s university, and no bastard is gonna criticize Huey Long on Huey Long’s own goddamn money! Is that clear.”

“Crystal, Senator.”

“I enjoy our little talks, Jimmy. Go, now.”

He stood. “Yes, Senator.”

And he was up and out.

The Kingfish sat shaking his head. He said to nobody in particular, “Now that’s my brand of university president. Not a straight bone in his body, but he does what I tell ’im to.”

That evening, the Kingfish was in top form, bounding across Memorial Hall, down this corridor, down that one, outdistancing his half-dozen thuglike guards, with whom I blended in disturbingly well. Brushing by lobbyists, tourists, legislators, stopping to chat sometimes for a couple minutes, sometimes a couple seconds, he finally strutted into the House of Representatives like a rich uncle arriving late at the family reunion.

The human dynamo bounded up and down the aisles, showing off that shit-eating grin, pressing the flesh, laughing loud, an important man making his minions feel important, too. Now he was crouched beside this member’s seat, whispering, now he was jumping up like a jack-in-the-box at a question directed to him by another member, now he was leaning in at
that
member’s seat, bellowing with shared laughter, only to suddenly propel himself up to the dais, to consult the Speaker, before strutting back down an aisle, grimacing, shouting. And then the process began again.

The balcony was packed with spectators, whose eyes followed the bouncing ball of the Kingfish, who was after all the whole show here. The legislature rubber-stamping process was devoid of drama.

Finally Huey ambled back up to the dais and helped himself to the swivel armchair by the Speaker of the House. No one objected; certainly no one was surprised.

The down-home crudity of Huey’s style was at odds with this magnificent tan-and-brown marble chamber; a frieze of the state’s plants and animals hugged the ceiling, and various fixtures were also decorated with stylish flora and fauna. But the massive walnut voting panel, behind the Speaker’s chair, invoked an altar, and the place resembled nothing so much as a Protestant church with a very wealthy congregation.

Our hoodlum honor guard was again assembled at the rear, seated behind a rail, with the exception of Big George; maybe he and his brown-bagged tommy gun weren’t welcome in the House. Huey had told us that if any pro-Long legislator got confused and pushed the “no” button on any of his bills, one of us was to guide that lawmaker’s hand to “yes.”

I was no judge, but the going-through-the-motions session seemed to be moving right along. Absentmindedly, I checked my watch—it was nine on the nose. When I glanced up, Huey—still seated up on the dais—was waving at somebody in the back of the room. Trying to get their attention.

It took me a while, but I finally got it.

Me?
I mouthed to him.

And his head bobbed up and down, yes.

I wandered up to the dais, thinking that the floor of the Louisiana House of Representatives was one place I never expected to be, and looked up at Huey behind the dais like he was the teacher and I was about seven years old.

“See that feller over there?” the Kingfish asked.

I glanced over where he was pointing, and between the railing and the wall, a handful of people were talking. Possibly legislators, although there were reporters and various political hangers-on lurking about, as well. The only one I recognized was my old friend, lobbyist Louis LeSage.

“You mean LeSage?” I asked.

“No! The one smokin’ that big old ceegar.”

A dark-haired guy about forty was indeed enjoying a “big old ceegar.” I recognized him as one of the many political appointees who’d stopped by the suite on the twenty-fourth floor to chat with the Kingfish this afternoon.

“I’m about to give ya your last official assignment on my staff,” the Kingfish said.

“What is it?”

He raised his eyebrows and grinned like the greedy kid he was. “I want you to get me half a dozen of them Corona Belvedere cigars.”

“I thought you quit smoking.”

He frowned. “It would be my luck to hire the only man in Chicaga with a goddamn conscience. I’m in the mood to celebrate, son! Get me them cigars!”

I shrugged. “Sure. Where?”

“Downstairs in the cafeteria. They got a box of ’em down there, at the tobacca stand. Now go on, git outa here—make yourself useful!
Earn
that two-fifty a day….”

So I went down the stairs to the cafeteria. The white-tile-and-gleaming-chrome restaurant was deserted except for the help, two girls behind the food line and a few colored guys back in the kitchen. I got myself a cup of coffee, decided against the apple pie with cheese, and took my time buying Huey his cigars, so I could flirt with the pretty blonde behind the tobacco counter. She had eyes that were a robin’s egg blue and a Southern accent you could have ladled onto pancakes. She was also chewing gum: nobody’s perfect.

“I get off at ten, han’some,” she said. “Why? You got somethin’ in mind?”

Us randy sumbitches always do, but before I could mount a reply that would combine just enough sincerity with the vague promise of sin, a sound, from above, interrupted.

Muffled thunder.

“What the hell was that?” the blonde asked.

“Not thunder,” I said, and ran, pushing open one of the heavy glass doors like it was spun sugar, rushing up into the stairwell, where the rumbling sound continued and goddamn it, I knew what it was,
not thunder,
but the sound of blood being spilled: gunfire, roaring gunfire.

Not one gun, but many, an artillery barrage of handguns and maybe a machine gun….

Pulling my nine-millimeter out from under my left shoulder, I went up the stairs two at a time, the echo of continuous gunfire rumbling down the stairwell like an earthquake.

I practically collided with him, as he came staggering around the corner, onto a landing of the stairway: the Kingfish!

His mouth was bloody, but his suit was pristine; his eyes lighted up at the sight of me, and he held out his arms as if he wanted to hug me.

I slipped my arm around his shoulder, as he leaned on the railing. I managed, “What the hell?…”

“I’m shot,” the Kingfish sputtered, and in the process spit blood all over my suit coat.

We were both shouting: the echoing thunder of gunfire upstairs roared on, unabated. We were in a terrible fever dream and neither of us could wake up. He was stumbling down the stairs, weaving, and I supported him as he tried to walk, and guided him out of the stairwell, down a hallway and to a bank of glass doors at a side entrance, pushed one open with my shoulder and drunk-walked him outside.

When the glass door shut, the thunder of guns finally stopped—or did it just seem to?

I had no idea what had happened up there, except that it had been some form of hell on earth. I knew, for certain, only two things: I had failed this man leaning limply against me; and that I mustn’t fail him now.

I leaned the Kingfish against the glass doors, like I was balancing a bass fiddle against a wall, and ran out under the portico into the driveway and stood in front of two approaching headlights with my arms outstretched.

The beat-up black four-door Ford screeched to a halt, more from age than speed; the legislative session—with its promise of Kingfish theatrics—had attracted a packed house of spectators, starting to leisurely clear out now that the show was over, wandering into the sultry night, getting their cars from the parking lots on either side of the building. Most of these good citizens weren’t aware a second, bigger show had eclipsed the main attraction….

I was still standing like a scarecrow in front of his car when the driver leaned his head out and, more startled than angry, yelled, “What the hell’s the idea, bub?”

I spoke as I came around to him. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”

“Are you crazy?” He was a little man in his thirties, straw hat, wire-frame spectacles, suspenders over a white T-shirt; a farmer, most likely, and a poor one. Your typical Huey supporter.

“The Senator’s been shot, you dumb rube! Where’s the nearest hospital?”

He opened his eyes wide and pointed. Through the portals of the portico, the statehouse lights danced on the small, manmade Capitol Lake, and on just the other side of it, not a quarter of a mile away, the lights of a low-slung building winked on the black surface of the water, as well.

“Our Lady of the Lake,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a hospital, ya dumb city slicker!”

I yanked his door open. “Help me with the Senator….”

The driver got out, leaving his motor running, and now he saw Huey leaning against the glass doors like a statue that lost its pedestal. “Jesus Christ…it’s Huey Long.”

“Help me with him!”

We drunk-walked him to the car, eased him into the backseat; Huey didn’t cry out or even moan—he was barely conscious. I sat back there with him as the car drove through the portico, made a U-turn and pulled around to head north on a street that hugged the wooded lakeside. The farmer had the old sedan floored, but top speed seemed to be about forty. The skyscraper Huey had built in this wilderness receded behind us; the motor thrummed in tune with the nocturnal drone of crickets. Between statehouse and hospital was a little bitty stretch of untamed Louisiana….

With both hands, Huey held on to the right side of his upper belly; he lay draped across the backseat, his head resting on my shoulder. I kept an arm around him, as if he were a big child I were comforting.

“We’re almost there,” I said. “Very close.”

“I wonder…”

His eyes were wild.

“What, Kingfish?”

“…I wonder why he hit me?”

He closed his eyes. I patted his shoulder gently as the lights of the sprawling three-story brick building that was Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium grew larger before us.

The beat-up sedan pulled under the brick canopy of the emergency entrance and jolted to a stop. I got out on my side and came around and opened Huey’s door. The driver was still behind the wheel.

“Give me some help, goddamnit!” I said.

“I helped you,” he said. “I brung you here.”

I half-dragged Huey out of the backseat—he was just awake enough to be cooperative—and was standing there with the Kingfish leaning his full weight against me when the driver said, “I didn’t even vote for the son of a bitch,” and peeled off in a cloud of gravel dust.

Shit! And here I thought Huey had the farm vote sewed up….

I lifted Huey gently up, on his back, onto a rolling metal stretcher-table that waited by the emergency room doors; he groaned, moaned, but did not cry out. He seemed semidelirious, muttering, “Why?” and “Why’d he shoot me?” and “I don’t understan’” and variations and combinations. All I could see on the suit coat was a quarter-size black powder burn surrounding a small bullet hole, and some flecks of blood. But his mouth bubbled bloody foam….

There was a bell to summon aid, and I rang it, rang it hard, and kept ringing, but nothing happened, so I kept ringing while I pounded my fist on the nearest of the double doors so hard the goddamn hinges started coming loose. Finally a ghostlike figure of a nun in her flowing white habit came rushing into view, and pushed open the doors.

“It’s the Senator, Sister,” I said.

Her pale pretty face was a cameo of concern as she went to the Kingfish, stretched out on the rolling table. “Oh, dear—what’s this?”

“He’s been shot.”

“Help me wheel him to the elevator.”

We pushed him through the doors and onto an elevator, which the Sister operated.

“What happened?” she asked. “Who shot Senator Long?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there.”

I told her how he’d come stumbling down the stairs, and I’d commandeered a car to bring him here.

She was shaking her head. Then she said something that surprised me, something I’ll never forget: “This was bound to happen.”

We got off on the third floor; most of the lights were out in the hospital, it was after hours, but things were coming alive, nuns floating down the hallway like pelicans, and other medical personnel, nurses, interns, were starting to gather, as well. It all seemed unreal; the world whirled as we rolled the silent Kingfish down dark narrow hallways and finally toward, and through, the double doors labeled emergency operating room.

Suddenly the world was blinding white, as more ghosts gathered ’round the Kingfish and eased him from the metal stretcher onto a sheet-covered operating table. A white-garbed intern, with no surgical mask, a blond boy who looked impossibly young, approached with a scalpel; but all he did was start razoring off the Kingfish’s clothes.

Huey was conscious, but he wasn’t saying anything; he was staring at the ceiling with wide empty eyes. If his chest hadn’t been heaving, I’d have taken him for dead.

Another intern, a dark-haired boy, was swabbing out Huey’s mouth. “Little abrasion.” He turned to glance at me; I was keeping back, out of the way. “Did he hit himself against something?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe he stumbled against a wall, coming down the stairwell….”

The blond intern was still cutting Huey’s coat open when a big dark curly-haired man with a cleft jaw burst in, sweating, breathing hard. I recognized him at once, and was relieved to see him.

“Dr. Vidrine!” the blond intern said. “We’re glad to see you, sir…the Senator’s been shot.”

“Ran all the way over here, from the capitol.” He was removing his coat, and a nurse was taking it. “My wife and I were attending the legislative session…. There was a bad shooting over there.” He walked to the prone Kingfish, still speaking to the intern. “Word was it involved Senator Long, and I thought maybe somebody might have had the presence of mind to bring him over here….”

“That gentleman did,” the dark-haired intern said, pointing.

I nodded. “Dr. Vidrine.”

He frowned at me. “Have we met?”

“I’ve been working as one of Huey’s bodyguards. I was in the Kingfish’s suite when you dropped by this afternoon.”

He was leaning over the Kingfish, but speaking to me. “I see. Did you witness this?”

“No,” I said, and told him briefly what little I knew.

“Your quick action probably saved this man’s life,” Vidrine said. He was looking at the Kingfish’s wound, a small bluish hole under the right nipple. “Huey?” the doctor asked gently. “Do you recognize me? It’s Arthur Vidrine.”

Huey nodded.

“Senator, we’re going to need to clean this wound.”

“Go…go ahead.”

“What happened here on your lip, Huey?”

“That’s where he hit me! Why’d he hit me, anyway?”

This seemed to upset Huey, and Vidrine let go of the topic. He turned to the nun who’d helped me bring Huey in. “Sister Michael, can you make some phone calls, at once?”

“Certainly.”

“Begin with Dr. Maes, in New Orleans. He’s the best surgeon in the state. Then call Dr. Lorio, here in Baton Rouge…he’s the Senator’s personal physician….” Huey raised his head. “Am I going to live, doc?”

His voice was as casual as if he were ordering a ham sandwich; but his eyes were wild.

“Huey, I feel certain everything will come out jus’ fine. Now, Sister….”

“Sister!”

It was Huey, crying out. Not in pain. Fear.

“Yes, Senator?”

“You won’t lie to me, Sister. How bad is it?”

“Gunshot cases are always serious,” she said softly. “It’s best to be prepared.”

“Would you pray for me, Sister?”

She took his hand. “We’ll pray together, Senator.”

“Sister…I’m a Baptist….”

The kindness of her smile was heartbreaking. “Just repeat after me, Senator…. Oh my God, I am heartily sorry…”

“Oh my God I am heartily sorry,” Huey muttered.

Vidrine stepped away from the surgical table as the Sister and Huey prayed. Another nurse, a pleasant-looking brunette who was not a nun, approached Vidrine and said that she would contact the doctors for him.

“Once you’ve located Maes and Lorio,” Vidrine said, “call Seymour Weiss in New Orleans, at the Roosevelt Hotel. Then contact the Long family…. Weiss will have their private number.”

The nurse nodded and hurried out. Vidrine motioned for the blond intern to come over. They huddled for a conference, close by.

“I want his blood pressure taken,” Vidrine said, “and blood tests for a transfusion…. God, I hope that isn’t necessary.”

“A transfusion?”

Vidrine shook his head, no. “That prayer.”

“I firmly resolve, with the help of thy Grace,” Sister Michael was saying.

“I firmly resolve, with the help of thy Grace,” Huey weakly repeated.

“That’s the Act of Contrition,” Vidrine whispered.

“…to confess my sins,” the nun said.

“…confess my sins,” Huey repeated.

Even a nonpracticing Jew like yours truly knew what that was: the prayer of a dying Catholic.

Shortly after that, Vidrine asked me to leave the operating room, and I was happy to comply. I leaned against the wall, in the hallway, as hospital staff rushed in and out; I was having a look at my suit, to see just how much blood Huey had spit on it. It wasn’t too bad. Luckily it wasn’t the white linen.

A lanky, lantern-jawed guy in a brown suit and boater-style straw hat came down the hallway, moving like a man trying to catch a bus; his breath was heaving—he’d been running. When he saw me, his eyes narrowed.

He stood before me. “You’re one of Huey’s bodyguards!”

He had a husky voice and an affable manner; both rubbed me the wrong way.

“Yeah. So?”

“You’re the
new
one. From Chicago.”

“And who the hell are you?”

“Chick Frampton,” he said, and extended his hand. I just looked at it. “I’m with the
Item-Tribune.
”

That was a New Orleans paper.

He withdrew the hand, raised an eyebrow. “I’m also on the payroll, if that helps any. Statistician in the Attorney General’s office.”

I smiled a little. “Not part of ‘the lyin’ press,’ then?”

“No. More, the Long organization’s unofficial press agent.” He gestured toward the double doors of the operating room. “Kingfish in there?”

I nodded.

He grinned. “I figured as much! I spoke to Huey just minutes…hell,
seconds,
before the shit hit the fan.”

“What happened?”

He shrugged in frustration, rolled his eyes. “I didn’t see it! Biggest story of the century, and I’m a closed door away!”

“How so?”

He leaned in, chummily, gesturing with a loose-fingered hand. “I was in the governor’s office, in the anteroom, see, usin’ the phone callin’ an item in. I was just about to leave, my hand on the damn doorknob, when what do I hear but a shot! I crack open the door and see Senator Long stumblin’ by, movin’ down the hall, claspin’ his side with his hands.”

“Christ, man, what else did you see?”

His eyes widened, trying to recall it all; even for a trained reporter, a chaotically unfolding event can be overwhelming.

“Murphy Roden was strugglin’ with a guy in a white suit; Murph had his back to me, kind of stooped over the guy, little Caspar Milquetoast feller. Then Murphy fires, and backs away, and fires some more, and the guy kinda shook, like a kid gettin’ shook by the shoulders, only he was freestandin’—then, shit, all of them bodyguards of Huey’s started firin’ into the guy. Messina, some state troopers, too, a mess of ’em, blazin’ away like a Wild West show. The guy kinda pitched forward, fell down with his head near this marble pillar, by the wall. Face to the floor. Shot to shit.”

I’d missed all the fun. Thank God.

“Hell,” I said. “Who was he?”

“The shooter? Nobody knows.”

I thought about the old gentleman who’d had the altercation with Huey and his bodyguards last night. “Not Tom Harris?”

“Hell, no! I know Tom. I don’t know this poor bastard. I don’t know if anybody’ll know ’im, now. Skinny little bastard must weigh a thousand pounds.”

“A thousand pounds?”

His mouth twitched. “With all that lead in ’im.”

He dug out a pack of Lucky Strikes and lighted one up.

I said, “You’re the first one here, besides me and Huey. How’d you manage it, Frampton?”

He waved out his match. “Mrs. Frampton’s little boy is a reporter. I went in the direction Huey went, and followed the breadcrumb trail of blood drops on the marble floor, and on down the steps…”

“I met him coming down. Brought him here.”

He grinned again, snapped his fingers. “I figured somethin’ like that happened! I talked to some bystanders ’round the rear entrance who said they saw somebody pile Huey into a car and took off toward here.” His breathing had slowed; the cigarette had helped calm him. “Ran the hell over here. How’s Huey doin’?”

“Well, that depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you consider getting read the Last Rites is a good sign.”

He thought about that. Then he pulled a notebook out of an inside suit coat pocket. “I better start callin’ people,” he said, and rushed off.

Where any of this left me, who the hell knew? Now that Frampton would get the word out, this joint would soon be swarming with cops, bodyguards, politicians, reporters, sightseers, what-have-you. Best plan I could come up with was to get out before that started happening.