Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

He used a key in the door (with a gold plate labeling it 3200) at the end of a hall. I was ushered into an outer sitting room where, at a table meant for dining or perhaps a business conference, two characters out of Damon Runyon sat in a cigar-smoke haze, playing cards.

I knew them both-they’d attended the Chicago convention with Long as part of his four-man bodyguard contingent.

“Hey, it’s the red-headed mick from Chicago!” Big George McCracken said, his lumpy fighter’s face approximating a smile.

Actually, nobody I ever heard of named Heller is a mick, but my Irish Catholic mother had bestowed on me those physical characteristics, whereas all I got from my apostate Jewish father was a last name and bad attitude.

“How you doin’, George?” I asked.

“Can’t complain.” McCracken was in his shirt-sleeves and suspenders, but had his crumpled fedora on. A smoldering stub of a cigar was buried in his cheek as he looked up from a hand of gin. He was winning.

No surprise: his opponent was Joe Messina, who had the mental capacity of a tree stump, and about as much personality. Messina glanced back at me and grunted a greeting, as if my showing up after a three-year absence was completely unremarkable, and studied his cards with all the intensity he could muster.

“Nice to see you again, too, Joe,” I said.

“Comin’ to work with us?” McCracken asked. Next to him, leaned against his chair, I noticed, was a big paper sack, a grocery bag, and in it was a Thompson submachine gun.

A hole in the side of the sack gave him access to the trigger.

“Nope,” I said, following Seymour, who hadn’t bothered speaking to Huey’s roughneck rabble; he was heading past a pair of male aides or secretaries who were seated at another table, going over some papers. They didn’t speak to Seymour or he to them, as he moved toward a closed door, from behind which came the muffled, but enthusiastic, sound of a woman singing.

“Just playing delivery boy,” I added to McCracken, lifting the brown-paper package, and Seymour opened the door.

“…man a king,” the female voice sang in a pleasantly chirpy, Betty Boop-ish way, “every man a king, for you can be a millionaire…”

I trailed Seymour into the large, lavishly appointed, wall-to-wall carpeted bedroom, where next to the window, sun filtering in through sheer drapes, was a spinet piano in front of which stood a pretty little blonde in a slinky white-dotted navy taffeta number. She was swinging a cute fist as she punctuated the lyrics.

“But there’s something belonging to others,” she warbled, “there’s enough for all pee -ple to share…”

At the piano was another cutie; neither one of them had seen twenty-five. This one was brunette and wore taffeta, too, white with navy dots, like the photo negative of the other girl’s frock.

“When it’s sunny June, and December, too,” the blonde sang, “or in the wintertime or spring…”

Jumping in enthusiastically, and off-key, from time to time, was their musical director-in green pajamas and bare feet-directing the musical ensemble as if he were guiding a plane in on a runway. With one arm windmilling in a manner that had nothing to do with the beat, the Kingfish was, as usual, in charge.

Then in a croaking baritone, the senator from Louisiana joined in with the blonde on the bouncy melody, “There’ll be peace without end, every neighbor a friend, with ev…ry man…a… k-i-i-i-i-ng !”

A little man sitting across the room began to applaud enthusiastically; wire-frame glasses pinched his sharp nose, a red bow tie adding a splash of color to his drab brown suit.

“Lovely, Lila,” Huey said, placing one of the blonde’s small hands between his two bigger ones like he was pressing a prom rose in a book. She beamed at him. Then he let go and touched the shoulder of the brunette at the piano who had turned to smile up at him in awe; this was a celebrity, after all.

“I like that ’un best,” he said, “don’t you, ladies?”

The two girls nodded.

The little man in wire-frames rose from his chair, still applauding, which seemed like overkill to me, and through a strained smile he said, “Very nice, Kingfish, very nice indeed.”

“Well, now, thank ya, Lou.”

Lou went to the piano and tapped the sheets of music manuscript. “But I think you may want one of these new songs we commissioned. I mean, Kingfish, this is for your presidential campaign…the public might be a little tired of ‘Every-’”

“Lou,” Huey said with a smile as casual as it was patronizing, “as a theatrical agent, you’re a humdinger. But as a judge of musical composition? Ya ain’t worth the powder and shot it’d take to kill ya.”

The agent frowned in frustration, lifting the handwritten sheets of music and waving them flappingly in the air. “We have compositions from some of the top talent on Tin Pan Alley….”

“I like the song I wrote. Iffen it’s good enough for the LSU marchin’ band, it’s good enough for the American public.”

“But you wanted a campaign song….”

Huey put his hand on the little man’s shoulder. “Tell ya what-we’ll take a vote.” He winked at the blonde and she blushed, or pretended to. “I’m the chairman, I vote we use my song, and the motion is carried.”

Seymour and I had been standing just inside the bedroom door through all this, and had as yet to be acknowledged. I stood with my fedora in my hands, wondering if there was a chance in hell the Kingfish would even recognize me.

Suddenly, as if my thoughts had summoned him, Long turned to us. His happy bumpkin face turned into a scowl.

“Where’d you run off to, Seymour?” he asked irritably. “I was makin’ a goddamn point!”

“But you and Mr. Irwin have important business,” Seymour said, gesturing to the bow-tied agent.

“We had our business,” he said. “Lou, I’ll see you at supper tonight.”

“Looking forward to it, Kingfish.”

Huey slipped one arm around the blonde and the other around the brunette, and walked them toward the door. “It was real sweet of you kids to help the ol’ Kingfish out this afternoon,” he said.

“It was an honor, Senator,” the blonde said, and fluttered her false lashes.

“You thank Nick for me, now, hear?”

“You bet,” the brunette said.

The Kingfish shut the door behind them and his affability evaporated as he walked over to the big double bed and flopped there on his back. There were no pillows; he apparently liked to stretch out, flat. Also, at some point in the last ten minutes, I seemed to have turned invisible.

Seymour wandered over and stood at the bedside, like a butler awaiting his wealthy master’s whim. Huey ignored him, removed a cigar from a box on the bed-stand, biting off the tip, spitting it who-knew-where, then lighting up the cigar with the tall flame of a silver Zippo. He puffed, got it going, then picked up a newspaper on the bed next to him, the Washington Post. He read and smoked and then, finally, spoke.

“Like I was sayin’, Seymour, ‘fore you so rudely run off…you know I don’t mind a few little ol’ isolated pockets of insurrection…after all, even fleas got their use-they keep the dog awake.” He turned the page of the paper and it drooped and he shook it erect, making a whip-crack sound. “And, anyway, I cain’t make a speech worth a damn ’less I’m raisin’ hell about what my enemies are up to.”

Seymour shifted on his feet. “I hope that means you’ve come to your senses on the Judge Pavy matter….”

Huey thrust the paper angrily aside, tightening his fist as he did; the crumpling was like distant thunder. His eyes and nostrils flared. He was an enraged bull in green-silk pajamas.