Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

“I understand. Your daughter explained what I’m up to?”

“Yes. Yes, indeed. I will be glad to answer any questions, but I’m afraid you’ll find little of use, here.”

The sun going down was turning the Spanish moss into spun gold.

“He was a very fine young man, Carl was,” the judge said. “Vonnie…my daughter…brought him to meet me one Sunday afternoon. They wanted my approval, but I gave it even before they could ask. They were married here in Opelousas, you know, at St. Landry Parish church.”

“Judge-why did Huey Long go to so much trouble to get rid of you? With all the judges he controlled, why bother?”

The thin line beneath the mustache formed a faint, proud smile. “Because I made him look bad. You see, I stood up to him. I wasn’t afraid to throw his election officials in jail for their chicanery. His pawn O.K. Allen would pardon them, mere hours later, but just the same, I was pleased to be a burr under Long’s saddle.”

I said, “The general thinking is that Carl Weiss snapped because Long was about to gerrymander you off the bench.”

He rocked for a while before answering; his expression was as blank as a stone. “I’m afraid I’ve tortured myself over that possibility,” he admitted, “ever since that terrible night. The thought that I, however innocently, might have prompted, or even indirectly contributed to Carl’s death, gnaws at the inside of me. I keep wondering…if I hadn’t been so deeply involved in politics, would Carl have gone to the capitol that night?”

“Do you think he shot Long?”

His tone was weary but not impatient. “You have to understand, young man, that Carl and I never discussed politics….”

“He never mentioned Huey Long in your presence?”

He took his time before answering. “Only once, that I can think of.”

“Yes?”

“Carl was a student in Vienna…he was a gifted boy, you know. But he had seen dictatorship in full sway, in Europe. Once, I remember he compared Long to Mussolini, Hitler and Dollfuss.”

“Dollfuss,” I said. “Wasn’t he that Austrian dictator?”

“Yes. That’s correct….”

“And wasn’t he assassinated?”

The old judge said nothing; merely looked out at the shadows, which were lengthening and blending and turning into darkness.

Arms folded, Tom Ed Weiss, looking very collegiate in his white shirt, lime green sweater-vest and darker green gabardine pleated slacks, leaned against my Ford, parked in front of the Sigma Pi fraternity, just off the LSU campus. The street, like so many in Baton Rouge, was lavishly shaded; a nearly full moon filtered through leaves and painted the world a perfect ivory. It was after nine, and fairly quiet, though most of the lights were on in the two-story frame frat house behind us, and an occasional couple walked by, arm-in-arm, the girl giggling and snuggling, the boy carrying a double pile of schoolbooks under his other arm; the library probably just closed. Now and then a clunker car with college kids would rumble by. This was the never-never land of academia; the controlled climate of studies and homecoming dances and bonfires and coeds and frat rats.

But Tom Ed, a handsome enough kid, his looks echoing his late brother’s but minus the specs, was scowling.

“The bastards framed him,” Tom Ed said.

“You really think so?” I said. I was leaning against the car. Just a couple of pals talking, though we’d known each other about two minutes.

“Those B.C.I. sons of bitches didn’t even want to hear my story,” he said. “Do you know the cops never came around? Some of ’em milled around out front, on the lawn, but my family, all of us, heard about it this way and that…some from the radio, some word of mouth-my mom had a damn reporter come to the door and tell her!”

“ I want to hear your story,” I said.

He turned his head, sideways, to give me an appraising stare. Yvonne Weiss had told me that Tom Ed idolized his brother, though the gulf of that decade or so between them had kept them from being close; the boy was taking pre-med, not to follow in his father’s footsteps, but his brother’s.

“Vonnie says you’re trying to help,” he said.

“I’m an impartial investigator,” I said.

“Compared to what’s gone on before, that qualifies as a help.” He looked out at the street, gazing at the pavement as if he could view the past there. “Anyway, it was Rush Week. Some frat brothers and me, we were riding around with some high-school seniors we were rushing.”

“Night of the shooting, you mean?”

“Yes. We were circlin’ around the statehouse, lookin’ for a parking place. We thought it’d be a riot, goin’ in and watchin’ the Kingfish and his big show. We all thought he was kind of a royal joke, y’know. I mean, everybody laughed at him behind his back, leadin’ the marching band, ridin’ in parades next to cheerleaders, struttin’ along the sidelines bossin’ the football coach aroun’. Sometimes it wasn’t so funny, like when he expelled the newspaper staff for printing one negative letter about him.”

I recalled the meeting between Huey and LSU President Smith, who had catered to the Kingfish’s every whim and had exhibited no particular interest in the students.

“But we couldn’t find an empty spot that night,” he went on; he put his hands in the pockets of his loose trousers and jingled his change nervously. “The lot was jam-packed-every farmer, every shopkeeper, every mother’s son, not to mention every mother, was piled inside that capitol watching that clown perform.”

“So you didn’t stop?”

“We would’ve had to park a couple blocks away, and we said, forget it.” He shook his head. “Shit. If only I’d stopped in there, maybe I’d’ve run into Carl and stopped it. Whatever the hell happened.”

“I wouldn’t waste time thinking about that. Your sister-in-law said you ‘know things.’ What things, Tom Ed?”

A girl’s happy laughter rippled through the night; a horn honked a few blocks away.

“I was still drivin’ around with my pals, along Third Street, when we noticed a crowd swarmin’ around the State-Times newspaper office. I pulled over and got out, and somebody in the crowd said Long had been shot. Somebody else said that a Dr. Weiss did it. That gave me a chill.”

“Did you think of Carl?”

“Carl? Hell, no! I thought of my dad! With his hotheaded political ideas, it’d be just like him to get in some stupid scrape with Long. Anyway, I asked the guys to take me back home, drop me off. The front porch lights were on, and Dad was standing on the front steps. He looked kind of…dazed. He said, ‘Something’s wrong. Your mother’s sleeping, she doesn’t know.’ And I said, ‘Doesn’t know what?’ And he said, ‘I’m not sure, but I’m afraid something’s happened to Carl.’”

He swallowed and touched his hand to his face; squeezed his nose. Swallowed again. I patted him lightly on the shoulder.

“Then what, Tom Ed?”

“Then I guess I told Dad what I heard at the newspaper office. And he told me he’d heard something over the radio, and sent me over to Carl’s, to see what was going on. There were all sorts of people, in the street and on the lawn; I pushed through, and rang the doorbell. Vonnie stepped out on the porch. She was very panicky. She said, ‘Carl’s gun isn’t in the house!’”

“Why do you think she checked for his gun?”

“She’d heard the vague radio report, too. I don’t know-maybe she thought Dad had taken it. Maybe she didn’t know Carl had been carrying it with him a lot, lately. Anyway…I told her I thought Carl had been killed, and she looked out at all those faces in front of her house, and she…she started to scream.”