Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

Irritation dissolved into disgust as I helped myself to a chair. Wilson, Irey’s bald reflection, stood beside me and recounted, in the nasal whine of the grade-school tattletale, my approaching him in the Roosevelt lobby.

I shrugged. “It was a thoughtless slip. I already apologized a dozen times, and hell-there was nobody around to pick up on it.”

Irey looked sharply at Wilson. “Is that right?”

Wilson sighed, nodded, said, “I don’t think anybody heard him.”

Irey sat, motioning Wilson to do the same. The IRS chief was lining me up in gun-sight eyes. Not much missed this sharp son of a bitch: he’d put men away for a misplaced decimal point.

“How’s your friend Ness?” he asked.

“Still keeping the world safe from illegal hooch.”

“Where is he? Ohio? Kentucky?”

“Yeah. Glorified revenooer.

Irey’s mouth twitched. “He deserves better. Hoover’s no prize.”

Though a certain amount of tension existed between Irey and Eliot Ness-both of whom had been dubbed by various members of the press as “the man who got Capone” (as had Wilson)-Irey knew Eliot’s backwoods banishment had to do with FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover’s jealousy of anyone who grabbed more headlines than him. Just ask Melvin Purvis.

“Nate…”

Not “Heller”-Nate. Chummy, now.

“Nate, I can’t buy you uprooting and giving up your agency…I hear you’re fairly successful now….”

I shrugged. “Not doin’ bad. Still a single-man operation but prospering, considering the times.”

“Good. That’s just fine.” He leaned back in his chair; made a tent of his fingers. His smile was a line curved at both ends, like a deft scalpel slash. “So why would you give that up to play bodyguard for a monster like Huey Long?”

“Is this meeting confidential?”

He nodded. The smile released a glimpse of teeth. “Don’t you trust Uncle Sam, Nate?”

“The question is, do I trust Uncle Elmer…not to mention Cousin Frank.”

Wilson said, “I’m the one who’s undercover, Heller.”

“Yes,” I said, and I looked at Irey while jerking a thumb toward Wilson and added, “And as I was saying to Frank, earlier, you guys are putting together some remarkable disguises these days. Why, Sherlock Holmes couldn’t top this one.”

“Go to hell,” Wilson said.

Irey patted the air with one hand. “Let’s keep it civil. Nate…what in God’s name are you up to?”

So I copped to it. I told them about my investigation of the latest Huey Long murder plot, and that I’d been undercover recently myself, seeing if anybody with assassination on their minds or in their hearts would recruit me for help, or possibly even the job.

Irey was slowly nodding through all this. “This sounds more like you. I couldn’t see you joining the ranks of Huey’s Cossacks, no matter what the paycheck was.”

“The high opinion’s appreciated,” I said, “but I reserve the right to sell out if the price is right.”

“I wish you luck on this,” Irey said. “As a general rule, I’m against assassination…even when the target is a corrupt, money-grubbing bastard like Huey Long.”

“Lot of people in this state love him.”

“At least as many hate him-he can’t even trust his own people. That’s why he hired you. Now, I’m prepared to shake you loose, if you promise not to expose Frank, here.”

“Expose him? You have my word-at no time will my hands drift anywhere near the fly of his trousers.”

“Fuck you, Heller,” Wilson said.

I frowned in thought. “Isn’t there a government directive about the use of profanity by agents?”

“Nate,” Irey said, ignoring the floor show, “our investigation into Long and his Longsters has reached a point where an indictment is imminent.”

“Really?”

“Really,” Irey said. “Although, frankly, we’re focusing as much on Seymour Weiss as the Kingfish himself.”

“Seymour? I take him for a glorified gofer.”

“Only around Huey Long,” Wilson said.

“To everyone else in Louisiana,” Irey said, “Weiss is a mover and shaker. That hotel you’re staying in? The Roosevelt? He owns it.”

That was some hunk of real estate.

“This is news to me,” I said, and it was: Alice Jean had told me next to nothing about Seymour.

“He used to manage the Roosevelt barbershop,” Wilson said, “before he hooked up with the Kingfish. Few years later, he buys the place.”

“Owns the New Orleans Pelicans baseball team, too,” Irey said, “and a soda pop company, and…well. Let’s just say he’s a very well-heeled gent.”

“But does he pay his taxes?”

Irey grinned like a skull; I knew the way to make an IRS agent smile, didn’t I?

“Louisiana is honeycombed with graft,” Irey said, savoring his own words. “It’s the shakedown capital of America-puts Chicago to shame. One contracting firm alone paid the Long machine graft in excess of half a million.”

“But can you track the money to Huey?” I asked. “Huey’s like Capone-he’s got one hell of a lot of buffers….”

“He is like Capone,” Irey said ominously. “And where is Capone now?”

He had a point.

“Trust me,” Irey said, “Weiss and all the others will take a very big fall…including the Kingfish. We’ve put a lot of man hours in….”

“Going back to 1930,” Wilson said wearily. “That was when the letter campaign started.”

“Letter campaign?” I asked,

Irey nodded. “Thousands upon thousands of letters from respectable citizens in this state, wanting us to do something about Long’s brazen thievery.”

“Organized, you think?”

“Perhaps. But what’s the difference? They were real letters, from real citizens, with real concerns.”

“If you’ve been at this since ’30,” I said, “and if Long’s such a ‘brazen’ crook, why haven’t you nailed him yet?”

Irey’s expression darkened, and Wilson sighed heavily.

“The investigation was shut down for a time,” Irey said quietly.

I grinned. “I get it! You started lookin’ into Huey’s finances when the Republicans were in office, then when FDR came in, you shut it down! After all, Huey helped get Roosevelt the nomination-it was payoff time.”

Irey’s shrug was barely perceptible; Wilson was looking at the floor.

“But now that Huey’s making noises about running for the presidency himself,” I said, “and hangin’ FDR in effigy in every public speech he makes, you guys are back in business!”

Neither of them spoke; but they didn’t deny it, either.

I stood, and the chair scraped the floor. “Hey-you guys want to nail Huey, Capone-style, that’s your business. But he strikes me as a tough prospect.”

“Oh?” Irey said.

“Like he said to me, he prefers doing business ‘cash on the barrelhead.’”

“That’s certainly true,” Irey admitted. “Huey and his boys have collected millions in graft…but finding a receipt or a canceled check in this case is about as easy as finding an honest man in the Long administration.”

“Hey, I’m in the Long administration.”

“And you’re probably the most honest man in it…and isn’t that saying something?”

Another good point.

“So, I take it, you’ve found something?” I asked, wandering to the door.

“Let’s put it this way,” Irey said, with a tiny enigmatic smile. “Big crooks shouldn’t commit little crimes.”

“Then you are ready to indict?”

“We are,” Irey said, “but you’ll understand, I’m sure, my reluctance to share the details with one of Huey Long’s personal bodyguards.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “But like I told you-I’m working a specific investigation. I don’t see that what you’re doing has anything to do with what Huey hired me to do. I’m prepared to keep it to myself.”