Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

I didn’t know what to say. The only sounds were the jingle of his change and a distant car. Lights were starting to wink off along fraternity row.

“Dad showed up about that time,” he said, “and took Vonnie inside. I was so…so damn frustrated! We’d had no official word! It was only two blocks to the capitol, so I decided to walk over there, and see for myself. My cousin Jim lived just down the street, and he went over with me.”

“When was this?”

“Oh…it must have been about eleven, eleven-thirty. The capitol doors were locked; the state troopers were keeping people away. But we found Carl’s car.”

“Where?”

“Right in front. Just to the left of that fancy front stairway with the states on the steps. Huey Long himself didn’t have a better parking space.”

How had Carl Weiss managed that?

“The car was locked,” he continued, “but through the window, we could see Carl’s bag on the seat. I figured we ought to move the car, so we ran back home to get the spare keys. But when we came back, the car was gone.”

“Gone? Did you find it?”

The boy nodded. “Somebody had moved it around on the east side of the building. When I unlocked it, I found his medical bag on the floor, on the passenger’s side, and the bag was open.”

“Open?”

“Somebody’d ransacked it, instruments were sticking out every which way, the whole contents in disarray. The glove box was open-they rifled it, too-and there was a white flannel sock on the floor. That made my mouth go dry.”

“Why?”

“That was what Carl carried his gun in. ’Cause the gun had a little grease on it, and he didn’t want to get anything messy.”

“Did he carry the gun in his bag?”

“Sometimes. But mostly in the glove box. He caught a drunk sleepin’ it off in his car one time, and had to scuffle with him, some.” The boy shrugged. “He’d had the gun a long time, you know. It was a little.32 Browning he brought back from France.”

“He liked guns.”

He gave me a hard look. “That doesn’t make him a killer. He liked music, too, but it didn’t make him an opera singer.”

“What do you think Carl was doing at the capitol?”

“Well, he sure as hell wasn’t there to shoot Huey Long. My brother was too moral, had too much respect for life, and love for his family, not to mention a complete disinterest in petty local politics….”

The same Weiss-Pavy family song.

I sang the Heller song: “But he did go in there. He did confront Long. Why?”

Tom Ed shrugged. Jingled his change.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Tom Ed. Something no one in your family has told me, yet.”

He looked at me sharply. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing! I’m trying to find out what the hell your brother was doing there! No one in your family believes the gerrymander issue could have triggered this tragedy. What did ?”

“Well…”

“Well, what, Tom Ed?”

He looked away from me. His voice was barely audible. “If aspersions had been cast on the Pavy family, I could…I could see Carl doing something about it.” Now he looked at me, and his voice was not soft: “Not murder, never murder…but confronting Long? Arguing with him, maybe even punching the son of a bitch in the mouth? I could see that.”

“What sort of aspersions, Tom Ed?”

He shrugged again. “That’s all you’re gettin’ out of me. I gave you plenty.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, you did.”

A tiny half-smile formed. “Didn’t mean to get smart.”

“It’s okay. Family honor’s a big deal down here, isn’t it?”

“Counts for a lot,” he said. “Funny thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You’d be surprised how many people in Louisiana consider Carl a hero. A martyr. We get letters damn near ever’day from people wantin’ to fund a statue.”

“Do you think your brother was a martyr?”

He bristled. “Hell no! He was a murder victim. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Heller. I still have studies to tend to….”

He shook my hand and headed up the walk of the fraternity house. But even this sheltered world wouldn’t be shelter enough for the brother of the man who shot the Kingfish.

Beauregard Town was a residential section near downtown Baton Rouge, a stone’s throw from Huey’s White House-like governor’s mansion. It was after ten o’clock, and the moon mingled with soft-focus street-lamps to lend the quaint, late-nineteenth-century subdivision, which ran to gingerbread cottages with small well-tended yards, a quiet charm.

I pulled the Ford up in front of one of the slightly larger, newer bungalows, a one-and-a-half-story wood-frame with a broad open porch and tapered piers; centered in the roof was a dormer with triple windows. The lights were on in the downstairs front windows.

I went up the walk, onto the gallery-style porch, knocked on the door.

It didn’t take her long to answer. She was wearing a blue satin dressing gown, sashed tight around her waist, and darker blue open-toed high-heeled slippers; she seemed dressed for bed, but she hadn’t yet removed the makeup from her pretty, heart-shaped face. Her cupie-bow mouth really was way the hell out of date. Fetching nonetheless, like her equally dated cap of flapper curls.

Alice Jean Crosley was a sight for sore eyes.

“Your message said you’d be up till eleven,” I told her. “I took you at your word.”

The mouth pursed into her kiss of a smile. “You look tired,” she said, through the screen.

“I had a long day. I’m one of those working men you hear so much about.”

She opened the screen door and made a mock-elegant gesture for me to enter. I did.

The small entryway opened right onto the living room, which was furnished in the modern style, no chrome, but lots of sleek walnut furnishings and a rust-color striped mohair sofa and matching easy chair with ottoman. For a single woman’s living room, it seemed surprisingly male.

But there were feminine touches-floral-print draperies, a dreamy Maxfield Parrish print over the sofa, a bisque baby on a rounded radio console, creamy silk-shaded lamps with pottery bases and antimacassars on the sofa and chair arms.

“Come here, you big lug,” she said.

I just love it when dames say that.

She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a long, hard kiss. It wasn’t passionate, exactly; but it was a hell of a hello.

Then she led me by the hand to the sofa, where we both sat, and she crossed her legs, sharing a well-turned calf and promise of creamy thigh.

“How did you know I was in town?” I asked.

“I still have my spies in Huey’s machine.”

“How did they know I was in town?”

“Are you serious? You’re staying at the Heidelberg, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only decent hotel in Baton Rouge.”

She smirked. “Well, Roy Heidelberg is one of Seymour’s best pals. Everybody knows you’re in town. They just don’t know why.”

She reached for an already opened pack of Chesterfields on the round coffee table before us; a few magazines were spread out there- Vogue, Cosmopolitan, True Romance, Photoplay, Breezy. Apparently, Alice Jean had a lot of spare time, these days.

“Is that why you left the message for me, at the hotel?” I asked. “’Cause you want to know why I’m here?”

She fanned out her match, sucked on her cigarette. “I wanna know how you can have the nerve to come to Baton Rouge and not look me up.”

“I’ve only been here a day,” I grinned. “And here I am.”

She pretended to pout. “And I had to go begging. All those letters I wrote…all those phone calls…”