Max Collins - Blood and Thunder

“But, with all due respect, Dick-you never did investigate.”

He shrugged, gestured offhandedly with the pipe. “It didn’t seem…our place, somehow.”

“I’m confused. You’ll have to excuse me…I’m an out-of-towner, you know.”

Leche’s smile was a dazzler; he had teeth like well-scrubbed bathroom tiles. “Certainly.”

“I’m told you ran on a ‘Murder Ticket.’ That you promised the voters you’d get to the bottom of the DeSoto Hotel conspiracy….”

The smile withered around the pipe stem.

“Those were emotional times,” Leche said somberly. “In the cool, reasoned light of day, it became apparent that the man who shot Senator Long was already dead…. So why waste the taxpayers’ hard-earned money?”

Seymour said, “Besides, if the Long family wanted an investigation, Mrs. Long would have petitioned for one.”

“In a way,” I said, “that’s why I’m here.”

“It is?” Leche asked, surprised.

“I thought you were working for Mutual Insurance,” Seymour said.

“Why, Seymour,” I said, and give him a smile just as affable as Leche’s if less toothy, “I thought both you and Dick, here, were ‘fuzzy’ about what I was up to.”

“Are you trying to prove double indemnity,” Seymour said crisply, “or trying to save your bosses some dough?”

“I’m sort of a cross between an investigator and an arbitrator,” I said, settling back in the soft couch. “Both parties have agreed to abide by the findings of my inquiry.”

“So, then,” Seymour said, smiling for the first time, “there might be room for…negotiation.”

“Sure,” I said. “I’m from Chicago, remember? Of course, to some people, having two clients who desire opposite outcomes might seem a conflict of interest….”

“But to Nate Heller,” Seymour said, with smooth, smiling contempt, “it’s an opportunity.”

Leche shifted in his comfortable chair, uncomfortable. Like most crooked politicians, he preferred staying behind the facade of respectability.

Seymour, his mood improved, called out to Big George. “Get us some drinks, would you, George? What would you like, Mr. Heller?”

“Got any Bacardi?”

Big George took our orders and lumbered morosely to a liquor cabinet where he got me my rum, some bourbon and branch water for Leche, and scotch straight up for Seymour.

As McCracken played waiter, Leche said, “George here is doing quite well out at LSU, these days.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I hear you’re building superintendent out there.”

“What else do you hear?” McCracken asked; there was something ominous in the tone.

That you’re feathering your own fucking nest, courtesy of the WPA and the Louisiana taxpayers.

“Nothing,” I said pleasantly.

Somehow I had a feeling McCracken’s presence this afternoon had little if anything to do with his current university position: he was here representing the Bodyguard Contingent. After all, he’d been one of the brave lads who’d fired dozens of bullets into the fallen Dr. Carl Weiss.

Leche put his pipe in an ashtray on the endtable and sipped his drink. “Have you uncovered any…new evidence in your inquiry, Nate?”

“Possibly.”

“What does that mean?” Seymour snapped. His good mood hadn’t lasted long.

“Suppose,” I said, studying the rum in the glass, “I was in possession of a bullet or two, taken from Senator Long’s body.”

The room went deadly quiet: you could have heard a shell casing drop.

“Everyone knows the bullet passed through Senator Long,” Leche said softly.

“Do they?” I sat forward. “What if I had two bullets taken from the Senator’s body that were not bullets from Dr. Weiss’s gun?”

A chair scraped back; I heard McCracken approaching.

“Bullets of a caliber,” I said, “that instead matched those of the guns used by Huey’s bodyguards.”

McCracken, hovering behind me, said, “Let me handle this.”

He wasn’t talking to me.

Seymour said pointedly, “Sit down, and keep out of it.”

McCracken said, “I can handle this sumbitch.”

My nine-millimeter was under my left arm, incidentally. I wasn’t licensed in Louisiana, but I was no fool, either.

“Sit down!” Seymour said. “Shut up! Keep out!”

McCracken’s sigh could have put out a small fire. But he lumbered back and pulled the card-table chair out, scrapingly, and sat, heavily.

“Two lumps of lead,” Leche said. He shrugged. “Who’s to say where they came from?”

“Certainly Dr. Vidrine wouldn’t testify,” Seymour said. “He’d lose his medical license.”

“Or something,” I said cheerfully.

I was here to run a bluff. I had thought this through, and dangerous as it was, this was the best play I could think of, under these conditions, in this situation.

“Suppose I have witnesses,” I said. “Witnesses from whom I’ve taken documented statements. Little loose ends running around hospital halls, and mortuaries, and capitol corridors and such. You’ve had a lot of inner turmoil in what used to be the Long machine. A lot of friends are now enemies. That kind of thing happens, when the spoils get fought over, and some get, and some don’t.”

“If you think any court in Louisiana-” Seymour began.

But I turned to Leche, whose face had fallen. “Governor-I realize I’m playing in your ballpark. The cops are yours. The courts. The legislature. But you forget-maybe you’re no national figure, but the Kingfish sure as hell was. The assassination of Huey Long is of national interest and import…hell, inter national.”

Leche tasted his tongue; he didn’t seem to like the flavor.

I went on: “The press’ll publicize this new evidence, and pretty soon you’ll have to mount an inquiry…ballistics tests, testimony, you may even have to get the jackhammers out and chisel through that seven feet of concrete and steel you buried the Kingfish under, ’cause he’s gonna have to be exhumed. He’s evidence.”

Leche looked hollowly at Seymour, who shook his head, as if to say, “Don’t worry.”

“Even if a wild bullet from a bodyguard did kill Huey, accidentally,” Seymour said softly, “what good would exposing that do, at this point?”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a family in Baton Rouge who will have to carry with them the stigma of having an assassin for a son, brother, husband, father, for as long as anyone remembers the Kingfish…and that should only be as long as there’s a Louisiana.”

“But everyone agrees that Dr. Weiss did attack Huey,” Seymour said.

Funny: here was a logical place for eyewitness McCracken to contradict me; but on this subject, he stayed silent.

“The doctor may only have slugged Huey,” I said. “Neither of these bullets I’m talking about, remember, is a.32….”

And now McCracken put in his two cents, only it wasn’t a repudiation of what I’d just said. From across the room, he shouted, “Let me handle this!”

“Quiet!” Seymour said. He sat forward, his dark eyes locked on me, his hands gently patting the air diplomatically.

“If this is a matter of money,” he said, “I can just make out a check for ten thousand dollars. Or would Mrs. Long prefer cash?”

Jackpot.

This sort of offer was exactly what I was fishing for. What better way to keep both my clients happy, and get myself that G-note bonus?

“I’ll have to confer with Mrs. Long,” I said. “But I think you might want to consider upping that amount.”

“What for?” Seymour snapped. “That’s all the double-indemnity clause would have paid her!”

“But that’s not the only gauge we have to determine value here,” I said, waggling a professorial finger. “Think of the next election. If Huey was killed accidentally, by a bunch of numb-skull bodyguards…”