Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

Carlos wandered back and, reaching for a wad of dough in one pants pocket, began peeling off bills and handing them to the grinning truckers, who’d finished unloading.

“Well, you’ve obviously got work to do,” I said, heading to the door. But I made the point one more time: “If you need anything done-from gathering inside information to, well, whatever …I’m up for the job.”

“If Frank Nitti trusts you,” he said quietly, “that’s all the reference necessary.”

He shook my hand again. “Where are you staying?”

“Tonight, the Roosevelt, here in town. After that, back to the Heidelberg in Baton Rouge.”

He walked me to the door; he used the walking stick, but didn’t seem to have any sort of limp. “Well…we’ll be in touch if anything comes up.”

“Nice meeting you, Mr. Kastel.”

“Call me Phil.”

I was back on the street; he filled the doorway. His smile was as charming as it was meaningless.

“And, uh, Nate-you didn’t mention any of this to Diamond Jim, by any chance? Your willingness to…help with the Kingfish problem, I mean.”

“Why, no.”

“Good.”

“Why is that?”

“Oh, because he’d very likely kill you. A very loyal boyo, our Mr. Moran.”

And he shut the door.

Normally, I don’t like playing any kind of game with mobsters; too many characters who underestimated the likes of Diamond Jim and Dandy Phil wound up dead in a ditch.

Nonetheless, I figured I’d put my scam across, and didn’t feel terribly intimidated. Or maybe the dangling carrot of the Kingfish’s ten-grand bonus was just clouding my normally conservative (where my skin is concerned) judgment.

Whistling “Anything Goes,” I strolled into the Roosevelt’s lavish, story-and-a-half lobby feeling pretty good about how I’d handled myself. That was when I spotted a familiar Chicago face. Seated between a potted palm and a marble column was Frank Wilson-dark-haired, jug-eared, round-jawed, the dour Wilson, with his black horn-rimmed glasses and baggy suit, might have been a schoolteacher.

But he wasn’t. He was a fed-specifically, one of the IRS team that, in tandem with Eliot Ness and his Capone Squad, had put Big Al away.

Feeling a little cocky, I sauntered up and said, “Hiya, Frank-what brings you to New Orleans? Investigating Huey Long’s taxes?”

His long face got longer and the eyes between the round lenses flared.

Whoops….

Wilson was on his feet in a fraction of an instant and his hand clamped on my forearm and he whispered, harshly, in my ear: “Keep your mouth shut, Heller…. We’re goin’ for a ride.”

This was a new one: getting taken for a ride by a G-man.

But I was in no position to argue. I let him walk me quickly along to the corner doors and out onto the street, where in a few paces we were at a parked-at-the-curb black Ford that he indicated was his by shoving me toward the rider’s door. He got in. Me, too.

Wilson, glancing behind him like a getaway driver pulling away from a just-robbed bank, swung the Ford out onto Canal.

“To answer your question,” Wilson said tightly, “yes: I am here investigating Huey Long’s taxes.”

“Hey, Frank…it was just a smart-ass remark….”

“Whatever, you hit the bull’s-eye.” He stopped at the light, glanced over at me. “Sorry about the bum’s rush. But I’m undercover.”

This guy couldn’t have looked more like a fed if he tried.

“Ingenious disguise,” I said.

His smirk was fleeting and disgusted. “I’m posing as a radio station executive.”

“A radio station executive? What for?”

He turned right, onto St. Charles. “There’s a radio station at the Roosevelt that Long’s right-hand man Seymour Weiss is involved in; gives me a natural in-road with the Longsters.”

I’d never heard that one before: Longsters. But it was apt enough.

Wilson was saying, “You see, I’m having difficulty getting my FCC permit….”

“Oh. So you’re cozying up to Seymour, to get the Kingfish’s help cutting federal red tape.”

He flashed a little smile. “Bingo. I’m spreading some dough around. I’ve even played poker with the Kingfish-who’s a lousy damn loser, by the way.”

“Sounds like you made the inner circle.”

He smirked again. “As long as nobody heard you call me ‘Frank’ in the lobby.”

“That was stupid of me. Sorry….”

“I think we’re all right. But I had to get you out of there. And you better talk to the boss.”

“Is Irey here?”

He nodded. We were cruising past the grand old many-columned St. Charles Hotel. Elmer Irey had been chief of the IRS tax unit that put Capone away.

“Irey doing fieldwork?” I shook my head. “I thought he was strictly Washington, D.C., these days….”

“This is a big effort, Nate. Louisiana is crawling with grafters, and the President sent the boss down, personal. Long and his gang are stealing everything that isn’t nailed down, and they’re using the claw end of the hammer to pry up the rest.”

“Heaven forbid they’re not paying taxes on their ill-gotten gains.”

That made him smile, a little. “What are you doing in this part of the world?”

We were passing the Whitney Bank; I set my watch by its two gigantic square bronze clocks and said, “Working for Huey Long.”

He damn near ran the car up over the curb. “What?”

“Yeah, I’m one of his bodyguards. We met in Chicago at the ’32 convention-I was police liaison with him and his goons.”

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me!”

“Why? You think it’s pertinent?”

He glowered, and pulled the car over into a space in front of the United Fruit Company Building, an elaborately decorated granite structure with bas-relief baskets of fruit over the windows.

“You guys gone undercover as banana craters?” I asked pleasantly.

“Come on,” he growled, leading me down the street to the eighteen-story stone edifice that was the Masonic Temple. We went through the middle of a trio of high vaulted entryways and used the elevator to one of the numerous floors of offices above the meeting hall.

A pair of armed uniformed private security guards were waiting as we got off the elevator. Wilson nodded to them.

“You guys got armed guards posted?” I asked him, incredulous.

“Twenty-four hours a day,” Wilson said, as we wandered into the big open room filled with agents sitting at desks, typewriters and adding machines making mechanical music. Whirring fans overhead mingled with street noise leaching in through open windows; phones rang, occasionally. No partitions separated the bustling agents, who were frequently moving from their desk to a brother’s to share a piece of information, although at the right was a wall of small, glassed-in offices. Only one of these was in use, and in it sat Elmer Irey.

Irey was another dark-haired, jug-eared, round-jawed professor in black horn-rimmed glasses. He and Wilson were the Gold Dust Twins of the Internal Revenue Unit. The only difference was, Irey’s hairline was making its escape more slowly.

He glanced up from a desk filled with papers, reports and adding-machine scrolls, and glimpsed me through the glass. His expression was at first confused, then irritated. He stood as we came into the cubby-hole, Wilson shutting the door behind us, muffling the din of the busy office.

Rather reluctantly, I thought, Irey extended his hand across the desk and I shook it as he said, “What the hell are you doing in New Orleans, Heller?”

“Nice to see you, too, Elmer. I’m on Huey Long’s bodyguard staff. Why would that be of interest to a bunch of IRS agents?”