Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

This grave responsibility fell to the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans, five public-spirited citizens appointed by the governor. I was about to call on one of these noble public servants, who served their six-year terms without pay.

His name was Joe Messina.

The dock board was at the end of, and facing, Canal Street, between the railroad tracks and the river; the President steamboat was docked nearby. The cheap concrete building-aggregate with shells stirred in, also used for the nearby wharves-was a two-story building with many windows; its blocky ugliness was offset by a vast, lovely, colorful flower garden that served as its front yard.

The downstairs was mostly a countered-off area with secretaries and clerks at desks; the board members had their offices upstairs. That’s where I found Messina, beyond a wall of frosted glass and wood, through an unlocked door with his name on it-sleeping on his brown leather couch in a small wood-and-plaster office that had a desk but no file cabinets. The only paperwork on the desk was some crumpled napkins and a wadded-up paper coffee cup.

Windows looked out on the muddy river and its yellow banks and traffic that consisted of everything from driftwood to ocean-going vessels; at the right, a high via-duct cut off the view. The morning was cloudy, and shadows were sliding over the rippling surface of the river, as if great amorphous sea creatures were swimming just below the surface.

The great amorphous creature on the couch was snoring; he was wearing a white shirt unbuttoned at his thick hairy neck, buttons straining at his generous belly, and dark suit pants on his stumpy legs. His big flat feet were clad in socks with clocks; a pair of black, well-shined Florsheims were on the floor nearby. His suit coat and a tie were slung on a coat tree.

I pulled a chair around and sat; I nudged the couch, with my foot, just a little. When it didn’t stir him, I nudged harder.

He awoke with a start, his snoring turning into a snort that sounded like he was trying to swallow his nose.

“What’s the deal?” he said, trying to right himself, like a turned-over alligator. “What’s the deal?”

“Hi, Joe.”

Finally he managed to sit up, and he rubbed his face with one catcher’s-mitt hand and scratched his belly with the other; his slightly thinning dark hair was mussed. His dark little eyes focused on me.

“I know you! What’s your name?”

“Nate Heller,” I said.

“That’s right!” The blank round face broke into an awful parody of a grin. “You’re my pal!”

“I am?”

He stood and came over and patted me on the back; it about knocked the wind out of me. “You’re the guy that rushed the Kingfish to the hospital! You’re okay.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“You want coffee? We got coffee.”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind.”

He padded out into the hall in his stocking feet and bellowed: “How about some coffee in here? Two coffees!”

He came back in, sat on the couch and got his shoes on. After he got them tied-which took all his concentration-he gestured around him, to his nearly empty office. The only art on the wall was a calendar of a little girl and her puppy and a framed photograph of Huey Long with his arm around a stiltedly smiling Messina.

“Some layout, huh?”

“Some layout. What do you do here, Joe?”

“I’m on the dock board!”

“Yeah, I gathered, but what…”

“We’re in charge of the docks.”

“Ah.”

He got up and went behind his desk and sat. I turned my chair around to face him. Through the windows behind him, the Mississippi looked choppy; the wind was picking up.

“You’re from Chicago,” he said.

“Right.”

“I remember you from ’32.”

“Right again.”

His frown was puzzled, not hostile. “What are you doin’ in town?”

“I’m looking into the Kingfish’s death.”

Now it turned hostile. “What do you mean, ‘lookin’ into’ it?”

“I’m working for an insurance company, trying to establish that Dr. Carl Weiss was responsible.”

He blinked. “What else could he be but responsible? He shot him!”

“There are other opinions.”

The big round head shook, no, no, no. “I don’t know anything about no other opinions. In a cowardly way, Senator Long was shot. That’s the whole story.”

A nervous bespectacled thirtyish male clerk, in a vest and suit pants, came in with two paper cups of coffee. He handed one to Joe, the other to me, and I thanked him. Joe, being a big shot on the dock board, didn’t say a word to him. If anything, that seemed only to relieve the clerk, as he went out.

I sipped my coffee, which was strong and black but not very hot. Then I said, “It would help, Joe, if you told me your version of the shooting.”

He took several gulps of his coffee, swilled it around in his mouth, possibly trying to eradicate the sleep taste of his nap.

“I don’t know nothing till the time the shots were fired,” he said. “When that doc fired the shot, I seen the Senator jump back and I knew he was killed.”

“What did you do, Joe?”

“I immediately run up, pull my rod out and unload it in that bastard.”

“Murphy Roden was scuffling with him, right?”

“I started firing when the guy broke loose from Murphy.”

According to Murphy’s story, Carl Weiss had been shot in the throat by this point; I doubted he’d broke away from anybody, after that.

But I asked, “He got loose from Murphy?”

“I guess. All I know is, I shot the man that shot Senator Long. I saw the pistol in his hand, too.”

“Some people say he didn’t have a gun.”

He had the coffee cup in his hand when he slammed that hand on the desk; the desk whumped and the coffee splashed on Messina and the desktop. “They’re goddamn liars! He had a pistol and woulda shot anybody there!”

Messina, glaring now, began licking the coffee off his hand.

Nonetheless, I ventured another comment: “Some people say the doctor slugged the Kingfish.”

“He didn’t slug him, he shot him.” The Neanderthal brow furrowed. “I thought you were the Kingfish’s friend!”

“I was.” I smiled, shrugged. “You know how it is, Joe. You worked for the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. You know what it’s like to have to investigate….”

He slapped his chest with a thick hand; his eyes were tortured. “I was his favorite! Some people made fun of me, ’cause I slept at his feet, sometimes. But he had to be protected! They can see that now, now that it’s too late!”

“Take it easy, Joe.”

His fist quivered in the air. “I loved that man. He was good to me. I was just sweepin’ up hair in a barbershop when he found me.”

“Joe, surely you’ve considered the possibility, that with all those slugs flying…”

He stood up, pushed his chair back with a fingers-on-black-board scrape on the wood floor. “You accusin’ me of somethin’?”

“No, I…”

He came around the desk and stood, facing me. His voice was trembling; his eyes had teared up. “You think I’d do that? Shoot the best friend I ever had?”

“I didn’t say that. Some people think one of the bullets could have ricocheted-”

I didn’t finish, because a huge fist was flying toward my face; I ducked back, to avoid it, which I did, but with his other hand, he shoved me, and I went backward, ass-over-tea-kettle, taking the chair with me, the rest of my coffee flying against the wall with a splash.

I landed on my back with a teeth-rattling jolt, and then I was looking up at him, and the grimacing little man seemed huge, towering over me, particularly his Florsheimed foot, which was poised to stomp me. I grabbed hold of it and yanked, and set him on his ass-hard. Everything in the room shook, and so did the frosted glass in the door and outer wall.