Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

“Are you listenin’, Nate?”

I nodded numbly.

“Anyway, they told Dandy Phil, ‘Do it right, set it up from the inside, and the most important thing-find yourself a patsy. Do that, and it’ll get written off as a political assassination.’”

“When…when was this?”

“When they was bringin’ down one of the first loads of them Chiefs. Probably a few weeks before you come down, last year. Of course, they was prob’ly jus’ shootin’ off their big mouths…. You are familiar with the Cermak hit, Chicago boy like you?”

“I’m familiar with it,” I said. “Too familiar.”

“And why’s that?”

I could barely get the words out. “I was there-in Miami. I was working as one of Cermak’s bodyguards.”

“Ouch! Remind me not to hire you for protection,” Diamond Jim said, bugging his eyes. “Aw! Here’s the waiter. Hope you’re hungry, Nate….”

State Police Headquarters was on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, out Florida Boulevard, in a flat, lushly wooded area. The building was new-a V-shaped white-washed brick two-story with its blunt bottom facing Foster Drive. I pulled my rental Ford into a driveway that divided to form a circle with a garden in the middle. Like the dock board building, this was a pedestrian structure whose appearance was gussied up: vivid flower beds were all around it, with moss-draped oaks here and there, providing a Louisianian touch.

Over the two front doors in the blunt bottom of the V were the bas-relief words: louisiana state police. A pair of troopers in spiffy green-and-black uniforms were coming out as I went in. At the reception counter inside the front door, a policewoman in gray sent me down the left wing of the V, where on either side was a row of offices with frosted glass and names.

One of them was MURPHY RODEN, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT.

I knocked.

“Come on in,” Murphy’s voice said.

I stepped inside. Blond, rugged Roden, looking fit and trim as ever in white shirt and blue tie, was on the phone, swiveled to one side in his desk chair, looking out the window at the driveway flower garden.

His office was the opposite of Messina’s: half a dozen file cabinets, a desk cluttered with paperwork and folders, and numerous framed photos of Murphy with the likes of the late Governor O.K. Allen, current Governor Leche and, of course, the Kingfish. There were also watercolor prints of aircraft from the World War on one wall, and a model Fokker atop one of the file cabinets.

“I’ll be jinks swing!” Murphy said, as he swiveled around just enough to see me; his brown eyes lighted up. Into the phone, he said, “I’ll get back to ya, Ted-ol’ pal of mine just dropped by.”

He hung up, stood behind the desk and stretched his hand across, grinning. “I wondered when you’d get around to me!”

I shook his hand, pulled up a chair. “You heard I was in town?”

“Who hasn’t?” He sat. “You want some coffee?”

“No thanks. So what do you hear? Is somebody going to shoot me, for poking around?”

He rocked gently in his chair; his smile was wicked. “I don’t think they decided, yet-’cept maybe for Joe Messina.”

“I barely asked him a question,” I said. “He just blew the hell up.”

Murphy shrugged. “Sore point, with him. He’s tore up with the possibility he mighta shot Huey. They had him in a private madhouse for a couple weeks, while back.”

“No kidding?”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’. They had him in a jacket that buckles up in back, if ya get my drift-he bawled his head off all day, all night, hollerin’ about how he killed the best friend he ever had. Pitiful.”

“Did he?”

“Did he what, Nate?”

“Kill the best friend he ever had?”

Murphy rocked; his mouth was smiling, but his eyes weren’t. “What’s your angle on this one, kid?”

“Well, that kinda depends on who I’m talking to, Murph.”

He snorted a laugh. “I know that about you. But if you try the truth out on me, maybe I’ll try it out on you.”

“Sounds fair enough. I’m working as an impartial investigator, mutually acceptable to both the insurance company and Mrs. Long.”

“The double-indemnity issue, huh?”

“Right.”

His eyes narrowed. “Just how impartial are you?”

“I lean toward Mrs. Long, frankly. She got a raw deal on the financial end of the stick-seems to me all her late husband’s cronies are a hell of a lot more flush than she is.”

“Includin’ me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

Now his smile turned sly. “This is awful noble of ya, Nate, takin’ Mrs. Long’s part in this. How much is she slippin’ ya under the counter?”

I grinned. “Why, is that kind of thing just not done in Louisiana?”

He grinned back. “Why, hell, no. That’s for them graft-happy Northerners, up in Chicago and such.”

“Your turn.”

“Pardon?”

“The truth.”

He rocked in his chair. “First, answer me: you think this is goin’ to go public?”

“If I can prove something that contradicts the public record? Hard to say. It shouldn’t-it’s a private matter, between Mrs. Long and her insurance company. But I suppose there’s no guarantee the lid’ll stay on…. That would ultimately be up to Mrs. Long.”

“I don’t think she’d do that,” he said. “I don’t think she’d trade her martyred husband for a damn fool shot down by his own overzealous men.”

I said nothing; just waited for him to convince himself. He wanted to talk. I just had to sit and wait and let him.

Finally, he stopped rocking; sat forward. He folded his hands, prayerfully. “The truth is, Carl Weiss did shoot the Kingfish. I saw the gun in his hand. I saw him shoot the damn thing at him, point-blank.”

“And it’s that simple?”

He looked away from me. After a long time, he said, “I didn’t say it was…simple.”

“What is it, then?”

He gazed at me with eyes that were a hundred times more intelligent than Joe Messina’s but every bit as tortured.

“The doc shot him, all right, but it’s possible…just possible, mind you…that one of our bullets clipped Huey in the back, as he was runnin’ off.”

I sat forward. “But there was no talk of two wounds-just an entry and an exit….”

He shrugged. “All I can say is…and I never told a soul on earth this, Nate, goddamnit…I heard Huey cry out a second time. Not as loud. But as he was runnin’ away, he cried out, again.”

“With all those bullets flying, it wouldn’t be surprising if…”

“Nate, either way, it was that son of a bitch Carl Weiss’s fault. No doubt about it.” He slammed a fist on his desk and the paperwork shuddered. “But I have to wonder if one of our bullets didn’t, goddamnit, finish the job.”

“This is just a…feeling on your part. A hunch. A suspicion.”

“A fear,” he said. “And only one person would really know the answer.”

I knew.

“Dr. Vidrine,” I said.

“Vidrine,” Murphy agreed. “The man who operated on Huey. Maybe you should talk to him….”

I shook my head. “But would he talk to me? His public statements were that one bullet killed Huey-entry wound, exit wound, front, back. Not two entry wounds. Why the hell would he contradict himself, now?”

He blinked. “You mean, you don’t know?”

“Know what?”

His laugh was humorless. “Vidrine’s already disgraced. Governor Leche fired him from his job as superintendent at Charity Hospital, and he’s been demoted from dean to assistant professor, out at LSU. Who knows? Maybe if you go talk to him, he’ll come clean. Now, skeedaddle-I got criminals to catch.”