Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

I got on my feet and so did he, and he crouched, like a wrestler about to make a play. So I picked up the chair and hit him with it.

In the movies, chairs bust in a million pieces when you do that; but this was a solid wood chair and it didn’t break. It just whacked into him and hurt him. Tough as he was, it still made the stocky little bastard drop to one knee and hug himself.

He was crying. Whether over the pain or his dead boss, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.

“Joe,” I said. “Honestly, I meant no offense. I had to ask the questions. But Joe, a friendly warning-touch me again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”

And I kicked the chair into the wall, where it made a hell of a racket, and, I hoped, my point.

Messina didn’t say anything. He was still on one knee, crying. Trying to scare him was probably about as useful as trying to put the fear of God into a potted plant.

The bespectacled clerk appeared in the doorway, looking like a startled rabbit.

“No more coffee, thanks,” I said, and got the hell out.

Diamond Jim Moran wore a double-breasted money green suit and a pale yellow shirt with a light green tie with a diamond stickpin spelling out DJM; the tinted lenses of his gold wire-frames matched the suit.

“How many pair of tinted glasses do you own, Jim?” I asked him. It was just the two of us, in a booth in the Blue Room on the first floor of the Roosevelt Hotel.

“Nineteen,” he said, as he studied the menu. He’d invited me for dinner and I’d accepted. “All different colors. Each one matchin’ a different double-breasted.”

Moran clashed with the blue-tinted glass of the glass-and-chrome cocktail lounge/restaurant with its circular bar and plush deco decor. Phil Harris would be performing later on the Blue Room’s surprisingly small stage; it was early-a little after six. We’d already had a drink-I’d had the Planter’s Punch (I was Ramos Gin-Fizzed out, house specialty or not) and Moran had something called a Roffignac.

“How’s the slot-machine business?” I asked.

“Flourishin’,” he said, reading the menu. “Flourishin’.”

“You and Dandy Phil Kastel getting along okay?”

“Famously. Famously.” He lowered the menu and looked over it at me; his battered pug’s puss seemed mildly troubled. “Though I am afraid, ’tween you, me and the lamppost, that we been a little overly ambitious.”

“How so?”

He brushed his mustache with a thumbnail. “Well, gettin’ the little devils put in places like restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, cigar stores-establishments that never seen a slot machine of any kind, before-that may be askin’ for trouble. Some of the women’s clubs and ministers are gettin’ after Bob.”

“Bob?”

“Mayor Maestri.”

Alice Jean had mentioned His Honor the Mayor-a short, swarthy, inarticulate Sicilian whose business interests included whorehouses and gambling dens-who had been inserted, by Huey, into the office of mayor, unopposed, without an election.

I hadn’t looked at my menu yet. “Will Kastel pull out, if the slots go?”

“Hell, no! We’ll just move along onto the next thing.”

“And what’ll that be?”

“Pinball machines.” He clicked in his cheek. “Wait’ll you see the latest ones, with their electric lights and trick gadgets and bells and such. That’ll be the next big thing, wait and see.”

Those were made in Chicago, too.

I said, “Your invitation was a pleasant surprise.”

“When I heard you were in town,” he said, putting the menu down, “I wanted to get together.”

“How did you know I was in town, Jim?”

His smile was teasing; I couldn’t read his eyes-the green lenses blocked the view. “My office is here in the hotel, remember. Maybe the desk clerk told me.”

“Why would he?”

“Maybe a little bird. Word’s around you’re askin’ questions about Huey’s killin’. Only, nobody seems to have a fix on just where you stand on it.”

I shrugged. “I’m working for Mutual Insurance, following up on Mrs. Long’s double-indemnity claim.”

“Some people think you’re pushin’ fire.”

“What does that mean?”

“Causin’ trouble. Some people have the idea you want to clear Dr. Carl Weiss.”

“What people?”

He picked the menu back up, opened it and began browsing. “You really should start with the bouillabaisse-the New Orleans variety is sure ’nuff second to none. And we’ll have oysters Rockefeller, of course-even if this ain’t Antoine’s.”

“Did Kastel ask you to warn me off?”

His expression was affable. “Nobody asked me to warn nobody off. I jus’ invited an old fren’ out to dinner.”

“Jim-we’re not old friends. We met, briefly, last year. I’m surprised you even remember me..”

His expression turned somber. “I remember you. I remember ’cause it got back to me you tried to help the Kingfish. I loved that man.”

Not again.

He said, “You were down at the dock board, earlier t’day, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. So?”

“What kin’a fool thinks he can talk to Joe Messina and learn anything?”

“I learned Joe Messina is driving himself daffy thinking he might have killed his ‘best friend.’”

He shrugged his furry eyebrows. “You’re prob’ly right about that. Now, the jambalaya here is really quite respectable, for a fancy hotel…I mean, we’d have to go back down inta the Vieux Carre, to give you the true Creole experience.”

“What do you want with me, Moran?”

“I like ‘Jim’ better. You’re readin’ a threat into this, Nate. No threat. I am your friend. And I admire ya for lookin’ inta this killin’.”

“You do?”

He sat back, viewed me appraisingly. “What are ya doin’ goin’ aroun’ the dock board, anyway? Three of the five members are ex-Huey bodyguards, and Seymour Weiss hisself is head man. What a setup for dope and other smugglin’ payoffs, and general waterfront shakedowns…. Those boys must be gettin’ nice and rich-even a dumbbell like Messina.”

“I hear all the bodyguards got cushy jobs.”

“That’s the truth. Big George McCracken? He’s buildin’ superintendent out at LSU, now-soakin’ up this federal money that’s flowin’ again. Murphy Roden got appointed assistant superintendent of the state coppers.”

“And none of ’em are going to like me poking around in this case. Not when maybe they accidentally shot their boss.”

He looked at me over the tinted glasses. “ If it was an accident.”

“What are you saying?”

He shrugged. His voice was so soft it was barely audible. “I’m not saying anything. But sottiethin’s been botherin’ me a long, long time…and you’re the first person who I can maybe risk sharin’ it with.”

“Sharing what?”

He sat forward, keeping his voice sotto. “Last year, ’round when you came callin’, some of these guys bringin’ them Chief slot machines down from Chicago was shootin’ their mouths off to Dandy Phil about the Cermak rubout”

The back of my neck began to tingle.

“They said to Dandy Phil, ‘If Huey Long’s givin’ ya money trouble, you oughta do what Frank Nitti done.’ And Dandy Phil says, ‘What?’ And they tell Dandy Phil, ‘Nitti bumped him.’ And Dandy Phil says, ‘You’re kiddin’.’ And they say, ‘Kiddin’ my ass! He bumped off the goddamn mayor of Chicago!’”

It was true. Most people thought a crazed assassin named Zangara had missed, when he shot Mayor Cermak, who’d been standing near FDR at a rally for the President-elect at Miami in 1932. Others-like me-knew that Roosevelt was not Zangara’s target; knew that Zangara had been a one-man Sicilian suicide squad out to avenge the corrupt Cermak’s own failed attempt to have Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti, killed.