Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

This impudent turn of phrase created a ripple of titters (well, it did) but the moment was spoiled a tad when that heckler-whose red face suggested both rage and alcohol-called out again: “Go back to the swamp, Crawfish!”

The guy was on the perimeter of the crowd, off to my left. Through the crowd, something-someone-was moving, causing a wave in the sea of straw hats and Sears amp; Roebuck chapeaus, with the single-mindedness of a shark.

This, I knew, was trouble. I started moving through the crowd myself, even as Huey continued.

“Ladies an’ ge’men, I’m here to tell you that Prince Franklin Roosevelt, Knight of the Nourmahal, enjoyin’ himself on that million-dollar yacht with the Astors and royalty, lettin’ the farmers starve…why Prince Franklin, he was born with the sugar tit in his mouth. Been sucklin’ ever since. He’s worn out a dozen of ’em…now he’s grabbin’ for more.”

“Fascist!” the guy hollered.

I could see him better now, and I could see something else. Someone else.

Knocking people out of his way like bowling pins now, ignoring their cries of “Hey!” “Watch it, bub!” and the like, a squat, swarthy figure in a dark, baggy gangster’s suit was zeroing in on the heckler.

I picked up speed, earning a “Watch it!” or two, myself.

But Joe Messina-thick-necked fireplug of a man that he was, with a round face as free of thought or morality as a newborn baby’s-was already on the heckler, a skinny redneck in white shirt and red suspenders. The heckler was saying, “You backwoods Hit,” and never got to the “ler,” because that’s where Messina’s blackjack stopped the sentence.

The man’s howl was short and loud, when Messina laid that blackjack across the side of his head, but by the time the crowd had looked in that direction, Messina was hustling the guy off, behind a nearby tent.

Over the loudspeakers, Huey was in the process of explaining the difference between a hoot owl and a scrootch owl.

I found Messina, behind one canvas tent and between it and another, out of public view, hovering over the heckler sprawled on the grass by the tent posts, bending over him as if to give him a hand.

Problem was, that hand still had the blackjack in it and Messina was waling the guy with it, hitting him all over his arms and on his side. The heckler wasn’t heckling now: he was whimpering, weeping, begging in a barely audible voice for mercy.

A word, like so many other words, that wasn’t in Messina’s vocabulary.

Messina’s coat was flapping, as he drew back his arm to put force into his blows, revealing the pearl-handled.38 on his hip. His arm was like that when I grabbed it by a massive wrist.

“That’s enough,” I said.

Somehow that bull neck managed to allow the medicine ball head it supported to swivel toward me. The round empty face took on a snarling expression.

“Stay out,” he said; his voice was oddly high-pitched, and breathy.

He yanked his hand free and slammed the blackjack into the heckler’s shoulder, and I spun him around and grabbed him by both lapels.

“I said enough!”

He pushed me away, but what I’d done gave the heckler a chance to summon what little energy he had left, and he scurried away, scrambling between the tents. Messina started after him, and I followed, but we both saw the man disappear down the midway, getting lost in the crowd. Not everybody was listening to Huey speak.

“A hoot owl,” Huey’s amplified voice informed us, “barges right into the roost and knocks the hen clean off her perch, and catches her while she’s fallin’….”

Messina turned slowly and faced me; his upper lip peeled back over his teeth and it wasn’t a smile.

His hand seemed to be drifting for the pearl-handled.38 on his hip; he looked like Spanky from Our Gang playing western gunfighter. Only quite a bit more intimidating…

“But a scrootch owl,” Huey continued, “he slips into the roost and just scrootches up to the hen and sweet-talks her. And then the hen falls in love with him, and the first thing you know…there ain’t no hen!”

The crowd laughed, on the other side of the tent. Back here, two of Huey’s own people were staring at each other coldly. I had a gun, too-a nine-millimeter Browning in a shoulder holster. This would be a first: shooting it out with somebody I was bodyguarding with.

“Now Hoover was sure enough a hoot owl,” Huey’s booming voice continued, “but Roosevelt-he’s a scrootch owl!”

There was laughter and applause, and I said, “Don’t do anything stupid, Joe.”

Messina’s tiny dark eyes-like the black beaded eyes sewn on a rag doll-narrowed in something approaching thought, reminding me that anything this beefy little bastard did was bound to be stupid.

Huey said something else, but I wasn’t listening. I said, “Joe-you were making your boss look bad. I was just trying to help.”

“Heller’s right,” a commanding male voice said, and we both turned to see Big George McCracken, the third member of our bodyguard squad, come lumbering up. Burly, with the puffy, lumpy features of an ex-pug, his dark baggy suit from the same thug haberdashery as Messina’s, McCracken was no dope.

Especially compared to Messina.

“Those people saw you smack that sumbitch,” McCracken said to Messina.

Messina’s head drooped like he was a scolded school kid and McCracken the teacher.

“You want the lyin’ papers to pick up somethin’ like that?” McCracken asked. “Next time, jest yank ’im outa there, and don’t commence to beatin’ on ’im ’til you’re behind the goddamn tent.”

“Okay,” Messina said, reluctantly.

“And be careful. You don’t wanna kill some fucker. Just shut him up, teach him a little lesson, and shoo him off. Got it?”

Messina nodded.

“Now get back out there, and keep an eye on the crowd. Shee- it …there’s murder plots afoot, and you’re back here havin’ a good time! Get out there and protect the boss.”

Messina nodded again, flashed me a glare, and shuffled away, around the tent, back into the crowd.

McCracken’s battered pan cracked into a smile. He put a hand the size of an outfielder’s glove on my shoulder.

“Don’t mind Joe,” he said. “When it comes to the Kingfish, ol’ Messina’s loyal as a dog.”

“And damn near as smart,” I said. My heart was in my throat. I wondered how close I’d really come to shooting it out with that mental midget.

McCracken and I returned to the crowd; nobody seemed wise to the little melodrama that had just played itself out. McCracken moved up by the stage, and I worked my way to the back of the crowd.

“Now, Roosevelt’s boy Jim Farley,” Huey was saying, “why, he can take the corns off your toes without removin’ your shoes-he’s that slick.”

I was studying the audience. In a bodyguard situation like this, when a public figure is up there making a target of himself, you study faces and reactions. With a politician as loved and hated as Huey Long, the most suspicious expression is a blank one.

A very pretty female face caught my attention, as pretty female faces are wont to do, but it sure wasn’t blank. In fact, it was smiling and sparkling-eyed and animated.

She was blonde with Shirley Temple’s curls and Jean Harlow’s body, and wore a wispy white summery dress with red polka dots and had a big purse tucked under one pale arm.

Something about that all-American-beauty face was a little harder than it ought to be; this was what you got when you asked the madam at a bordello for a virgin. But she was good: the clothes were just sexy enough to attract attention, but not so sexy as to outrage a matron.

Right now she was moving through the crowd, stopping occasionally to look toward the platform, where Huey was managing to find still more unflattering things to say about the President of the United States. Then she would move along, weaving her way through the throng like a snake with lipstick.