Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

The beggar’s grin was yellow-green. “Thank you, Jim!”

“Thanks for the pencil,” he said affably, tucking it in an inside pocket, as we moved on past decidedly nontouristy businesses-a small grocery, a dry cleaner’s, the courtyard to a private but rundown home with a hand-lettered sign tacked over the stone archway saying hemstitching.

“You poor feeble-minded Yankee,” he said. “You really think ol’ Huey’s in it for the money, do ya?”

Money and power, I thought, but didn’t say it; just shrugged.

“Hell, no!” he said, answering his own question. “The Kingfish is goin’ to pass an ord’nance for the poor and the blind-stir up some relief money for these unfortunates, outa his percentage off the slot-machine take.” He shook his head in admiration. “That Huey…always thinkin’ of the little guy…. Well, here we are.”

We were at a small warehouse; over a single garage door was a wooden sign with block letters: bayou novelty company. We went in a door beside the garage entry, but it didn’t lead into an office, just the warehouse itself, a brick, two-story-high area with a small glass-and-wood office partitioned off in one corner.

Most of the room was taken up by an unmarked semi truck, whose back doors were open, a ramp up to the back accommodating a pair of truckers in caps and work clothes, carrying out bulky wooden crates each about the size of a midget’s coffin. It took both men to carry one crate.

A dark-haired pair of workers, not in work clothes but in dark suits and ties, used crowbars to open crates that had already been unloaded; then they would lift out the contents. Standing like silver totems against the wall were the previously uncrated slot machines with the distinctive emblem of a bronze Indian chief’s head over the dial.

The semi truck had Cook County plates, and that was no surprise: these slot machines, known as Chiefs, were a product of Jennings and Company, a firm on the west side of Chicago.

Outfit territory.

Supervising all this was a handsome, dapper man of perhaps forty-five in a gray silk suit, leaning forward with both hands on a gold-tipped walking stick; he achieved effortlessly a suave, stylish air epitomizing the elegance and class Diamond Jim tried so hard, and so ineptly, to attain.

Moran introduced us, and Kastel took his weight off the walking stick and shook my hand, bestowing me a friendly, if cautious smile.

“It’s nice of you to stop by, Mr. Heller,” he told me. “I consider Frank Nitti a true gentleman. One of the smartest, shrewdest businessmen in our field.”

“He speaks highly of you, as well.” Of course, I’d never heard Frank Nitti so much as utter a word about Dandy Phil Kastel; but a guy with a gold-tipped walking stick obviously had a certain sense of self-importance, so I played into it.

“What brings you here, Mr. Heller? Other than to ‘pay your respects.’”

“Well, uh…that’s basically it. Courtesy call.” I gave him a hard look that tried to send a signal: I didn’t feel comfortable talking in front of Moran. His eyes tightened ever so slightly-it was barely perceptible-but he’d gotten the drift.

Kastel gave Moran a bland glance that apparently sent its own signal.

Moran cleared his throat. “Yeah, well…if you don’t need me here, Phil, I’m gonna head back to the office, and mind the phones.”

Kastel nodded his approval of that notion, and the chatty, overdressed mobster left me there with his boss. Or, that is, the man he “worked with.”

I gestured toward the slot machines, lined up St. Valentine’s Day Massacre-like, against one wall; others were being added to the lineup as the wooden crates were crowbarred off. “I see you have friends in Chicago.”

His smile was slight and sly. “Frank Costello has friends everywhere, Mr. Heller.”

“Call me Nate,” I said.

But he didn’t ask me to call him Phil.

“What’s the story on Moran?” I asked. “Is he Huey’s boy?”

“Only in spirit.”

“He says he doesn’t work for you.”

“Diamond Jim represents local interests. He’s something of a…liaison.”

“What, with Sam Carolla’s camp?”

Carolla was the New Orleans equivalent of Frank Nitti.

His glance seemed benign, but he was assessing me. “If you know anything about Frank Costello,” Kastel said, “you’ll know that his style is to cooperate, to collaborate, with local business.”

By local business, of course, he meant the local mob.

“Now, Mr. Heller…Nate. Why are you here? Really here, I mean.”

I shrugged a little. “Back in Chicago, I heard rumors that you guys are having some problems with the Kingfish.”

He laughed silently. “Interesting, how word travels. How is it you happen to be working for Long as a bodyguard?”

I explained about hitting it off with Huey at the Chicago convention in ’32, and how Huey had offered me a job when I delivered a package to him recently.

“I just thought if there was any package you wanted delivered,” I said, “you should be aware you have a friend in the enemy’s camp.”

He twitched a smile; his eyes were hooded, near sleepy in a face almost movie-star handsome. “I see. That’s white of you.”

“I just wanted you to know where my loyalty lies. That if you need any help, in any way, you have but to ask.”

“That is generous. But I hope it won’t be necessary,”

“But it might be?”

He seemed to be tasting the little smile; he shrugged his shoulders, Cagney-like, and leaned on the walking stick. “I admit there have been…problems with the former governor. When he invited us down here, I expected the hospitality to be longer lasting.”

“And it hasn’t been?”

He shook his head, no. “Problems have arisen, due to Senator Long’s lack of control over the local municipal administration. We discovered, too late, that Sam Carolla had much more influence, in that regard, than the Senator.”

“Huey promised something he couldn’t deliver, you mean.”

“That’s a minor irritation. With Diamond Jim’s help, we were able to iron things out. Senator Long agreed to provide political protection, statewide, to Mr. Carolla’s various…business activities. Prior to this, New Orleans had been Sam’s sole bailiwick.”

“Well, then, what’s the problem?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “The problem is that the redoubtable Kingfish, who had agreed to a very reasonable piece of the action…ten percent…recently upped the ante.”

“To what? Fifteen? Twenty?”

His lips pursed in amusement. “He wants a flat fee, Mr. Heller…Nate. He wants three million a year.”

“That’s a lot of dough….”

He gestured around the room, where the truck was nearly unloaded now. “This is not a huge operation, Nate. By the end of the year, we’ll have six hundred machines around town-in drug stores, saloons, cigar stores.”

“Lucrative…but not lucrative enough for a three-mil yearly payoff.”

“Correct. Just a moment. Carlos!”

One of the well-dressed workers who’d been uncrating the slot machines turned and looked our way. A dark-haired, hook-nosed bucket-headed tough, short but burly with a face that seemed set in a permanent scowl, young Carlos lumbered over sullenly, though his voice was respectful.

“Yes, Mis’ Kastel?”

“I appreciate you and your brother helping out, with this physical labor.”

“T’ink nuttin’ of it, Mis’ Kastel.”

“Would you pay off these truckers, and see about getting our little Indians into the designated locations?”

“Dey be in dere by midnight, Mis’ Kastel.”

If I’d thought Moran’s Italian-Louisianian accent was something, this kid was something else.