Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (18 page)

He rocked for a while before answering; his expression was as blank as a stone. “I’m afraid I’ve tortured myself over that possibility,” he admitted, “ever since that terrible night. The thought that I, however innocently, might have prompted, or even indirectly contributed to Carl’s death, gnaws at the inside of me. I keep wondering…if I hadn’t been so deeply involved in politics, would Carl have gone to the capitol that night?”

“Do
you
think he shot Long?”

His tone was weary but not impatient. “You have to understand, young man, that Carl and I never discussed politics….”

“He never mentioned Huey Long in your presence?”

He took his time before answering. “Only once, that I can think of.”

“Yes?”

“Carl was a student in Vienna…he was a gifted boy, you know. But he had seen dictatorship in full sway, in Europe. Once, I remember he compared Long to Mussolini, Hitler and Dollfuss.”

“Dollfuss,” I said. “Wasn’t he that Austrian dictator?”

“Yes. That’s correct….”

“And wasn’t he assassinated?”

The old judge said nothing; merely looked out at the shadows, which were lengthening and blending and turning into darkness.

Arms folded, Tom Ed Weiss, looking very collegiate in his white shirt, lime green sweater-vest and darker green gabardine pleated slacks, leaned against my Ford, parked in front of the Sigma Pi fraternity, just off the LSU campus. The street, like so many in Baton Rouge, was lavishly shaded; a nearly full moon filtered through leaves and painted the world a perfect ivory. It was after nine, and fairly quiet, though most of the lights were on in the two-story frame frat house behind us, and an occasional couple walked by, arm-in-arm, the girl giggling and snuggling, the boy carrying a double pile of schoolbooks under his other arm; the library probably just closed. Now and then a clunker car with college kids would rumble by. This was the never-never land of academia; the controlled climate of studies and homecoming dances and bonfires and coeds and frat rats.

But Tom Ed, a handsome enough kid, his looks echoing his late brother’s but minus the specs, was scowling.

“The bastards framed him,” Tom Ed said.

“You really think so?” I said. I was leaning against the car. Just a couple of pals talking, though we’d known each other about two minutes.

“Those B.C.I. sons of bitches didn’t even want to hear my story,” he said. “Do you know the cops never came around? Some of ’em milled around out front, on the lawn, but my family, all of us, heard about it this way and that…some from the radio, some word of mouth—my
mom
had a damn
reporter
come to the door and tell her!”

“
I
want to hear your story,” I said.

He turned his head, sideways, to give me an appraising stare. Yvonne Weiss had told me that Tom Ed idolized his brother, though the gulf of that decade or so between them had kept them from being close; the boy was taking pre-med, not to follow in his father’s footsteps, but his brother’s.

“Vonnie says you’re trying to help,” he said.

“I’m an impartial investigator,” I said.

“Compared to what’s gone on before, that qualifies as a help.” He looked out at the street, gazing at the pavement as if he could view the past there. “Anyway, it was Rush Week. Some frat brothers and me, we were riding around with some high-school seniors we were rushing.”

“Night of the shooting, you mean?”

“Yes. We were circlin’ around the statehouse, lookin’ for a parking place. We thought it’d be a riot, goin’ in and watchin’ the Kingfish and his big show. We all thought he was kind of a royal joke, y’know. I mean, everybody laughed at him behind his back, leadin’ the marching band, ridin’ in parades next to cheerleaders, struttin’ along the sidelines bossin’ the football coach aroun’. Sometimes it wasn’t so funny, like when he expelled the newspaper staff for printing one negative letter about him.”

I recalled the meeting between Huey and LSU President Smith, who had catered to the Kingfish’s every whim and had exhibited no particular interest in the students.

“But we couldn’t find an empty spot that night,” he went on; he put his hands in the pockets of his loose trousers and jingled his change nervously. “The lot was jam-packed—every farmer, every shopkeeper, every mother’s son, not to mention every mother, was piled inside that capitol watching that clown perform.”

“So you didn’t stop?”

“We would’ve had to park a couple blocks away, and we said, forget it.” He shook his head. “Shit. If only I’d stopped in there, maybe I’d’ve run into Carl and stopped it. Whatever the hell happened.”

“I wouldn’t waste time thinking about that. Your sister-in-law said you ‘know things.’ What things, Tom Ed?”

A girl’s happy laughter rippled through the night; a horn honked a few blocks away.

“I was still drivin’ around with my pals, along Third Street, when we noticed a crowd swarmin’ around the
State-Times
newspaper office. I pulled over and got out, and somebody in the crowd said Long had been shot. Somebody else said that a Dr. Weiss did it. That gave me a chill.”

“Did you think of Carl?”

“Carl? Hell, no! I thought of my dad! With his hotheaded political ideas, it’d be just like him to get in some stupid scrape with Long. Anyway, I asked the guys to take me back home, drop me off. The front porch lights were on, and Dad was standing on the front steps. He looked kind of…dazed. He said, ‘Something’s wrong. Your mother’s sleeping, she doesn’t know.’ And I said, ‘Doesn’t know what?’ And he said, ‘I’m not sure, but I’m afraid something’s happened to Carl.’”

He swallowed and touched his hand to his face; squeezed his nose. Swallowed again. I patted him lightly on the shoulder.

“Then what, Tom Ed?”

“Then I guess I told Dad what I heard at the newspaper office. And he told me he’d heard something over the radio, and sent me over to Carl’s, to see what was going on. There were all sorts of people, in the street and on the lawn; I pushed through, and rang the doorbell. Vonnie stepped out on the porch. She was very panicky. She said, ‘Carl’s gun isn’t in the house!’”

“Why do you think she checked for his gun?”

“She’d heard the vague radio report, too. I don’t know—maybe she thought Dad had taken it. Maybe she didn’t know Carl had been carrying it with him a lot, lately. Anyway…I told her I thought Carl had been killed, and she looked out at all those faces in front of her house, and she…she started to scream.”

I didn’t know what to say. The only sounds were the jingle of his change and a distant car. Lights were starting to wink off along fraternity row.

“Dad showed up about that time,” he said, “and took Vonnie inside. I was so…so damn frustrated! We’d had no official word! It was only two blocks to the capitol, so I decided to walk over there, and see for myself. My cousin Jim lived just down the street, and he went over with me.”

“When was this?”

“Oh…it must have been about eleven, eleven-thirty. The capitol doors were locked; the state troopers were keeping people away. But we found Carl’s car.”

“Where?”

“Right in front. Just to the left of that fancy front stairway with the states on the steps. Huey Long himself didn’t have a better parking space.”

How had Carl Weiss managed that?

“The car was locked,” he continued, “but through the window, we could see Carl’s bag on the seat. I figured we ought to move the car, so we ran back home to get the spare keys. But when we came back, the car was gone.”

“Gone? Did you find it?”

The boy nodded. “Somebody had moved it around on the east side of the building. When I unlocked it, I found his medical bag on the floor, on the passenger’s side, and the bag was open.”

“Open?”

“Somebody’d ransacked it, instruments were sticking out every which way, the whole contents in disarray. The glove box was open—they rifled
it,
too—and there was a white flannel sock on the floor. That made my mouth go dry.”

“Why?”

“That was what Carl carried his gun in. ’Cause the gun had a little grease on it, and he didn’t want to get anything messy.”

“Did he carry the gun in his bag?”

“Sometimes. But mostly in the glove box. He caught a drunk sleepin’ it off in his car one time, and had to scuffle with him, some.” The boy shrugged. “He’d had the gun a long time, you know. It was a little .32 Browning he brought back from France.”

“He liked guns.”

He gave me a hard look. “That doesn’t make him a killer. He liked music, too, but it didn’t make him an opera singer.”

“What do you think Carl was doing at the capitol?”

“Well, he sure as hell wasn’t there to shoot Huey Long. My brother was too moral, had too much respect for life, and love for his family, not to mention a complete disinterest in petty local politics….”

The same Weiss-Pavy family song.

I sang the Heller song: “But he
did
go in there. He
did
confront Long. Why?”

Tom Ed shrugged. Jingled his change.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Tom Ed. Something no one in your family has told me, yet.”

He looked at me sharply. “What have you heard?”

“Nothing! I’m trying to find out what the hell your brother was doing there! No one in your family believes the gerrymander issue could have triggered this tragedy. What
did
?”

“Well…”

“Well, what, Tom Ed?”

He looked away from me. His voice was barely audible. “If aspersions had been cast on the Pavy family, I could…I could see Carl doing something about it.” Now he looked at me, and his voice was not soft:
“Not
murder,
never
murder…but confronting Long? Arguing with him, maybe even punching the son of a bitch in the mouth? I could see that.”

“What sort of aspersions, Tom Ed?”

He shrugged again. “That’s all you’re gettin’ out of me. I gave you plenty.”

I patted him on the shoulder. “Yes, you did.”

A tiny half-smile formed. “Didn’t mean to get smart.”

“It’s okay. Family honor’s a big deal down here, isn’t it?”

“Counts for a lot,” he said. “Funny thing, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You’d be surprised how many people in Louisiana consider Carl a hero. A martyr. We get letters damn near ever’day from people wantin’ to fund a statue.”

“Do you think your brother was a martyr?”

He bristled. “Hell no! He was a
murder
victim. You’ll have to excuse me, Mr. Heller. I still have studies to tend to….”

He shook my hand and headed up the walk of the fraternity house. But even this sheltered world wouldn’t be shelter enough for the brother of the man who shot the Kingfish.

Beauregard Town was a residential section near downtown Baton Rouge, a stone’s throw from Huey’s White House–like governor’s mansion. It was after ten o’clock, and the moon mingled with soft-focus street-lamps to lend the quaint, late-nineteenth-century subdivision, which ran to gingerbread cottages with small well-tended yards, a quiet charm.

I pulled the Ford up in front of one of the slightly larger, newer bungalows, a one-and-a-half-story wood-frame with a broad open porch and tapered piers; centered in the roof was a dormer with triple windows. The lights were on in the downstairs front windows.

I went up the walk, onto the gallery-style porch, knocked on the door.

It didn’t take her long to answer. She was wearing a blue satin dressing gown, sashed tight around her waist, and darker blue open-toed high-heeled slippers; she seemed dressed for bed, but she hadn’t yet removed the makeup from her pretty, heart-shaped face. Her cupie-bow mouth really was way the hell out of date. Fetching nonetheless, like her equally dated cap of flapper curls.

Alice Jean Crosley was a sight for sore eyes.

“Your message said you’d be up till eleven,” I told her. “I took you at your word.”

The mouth pursed into her kiss of a smile. “You look tired,” she said, through the screen.

“I had a long day. I’m one of those working men you hear so much about.”

She opened the screen door and made a mock-elegant gesture for me to enter. I did.

The small entryway opened right onto the living room, which was furnished in the modern style, no chrome, but lots of sleek walnut furnishings and a rust-color striped mohair sofa and matching easy chair with ottoman. For a single woman’s living room, it seemed surprisingly male.

But there were feminine touches—floral-print draperies, a dreamy Maxfield Parrish print over the sofa, a bisque baby on a rounded radio console, creamy silk-shaded lamps with pottery bases and antimacassars on the sofa and chair arms.

“Come here, you big lug,” she said.

I just love it when dames say that.

She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a long, hard kiss. It wasn’t passionate, exactly; but it was a hell of a hello.

Then she led me by the hand to the sofa, where we both sat, and she crossed her legs, sharing a well-turned calf and promise of creamy thigh.

“How did you know I was in town?” I asked.

“I still have my spies in Huey’s machine.”

“How did
they
know I was in town?”

“Are you serious? You’re staying at the Heidelberg, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only decent hotel in Baton Rouge.”

She smirked. “Well, Roy Heidelberg is one of Seymour’s best pals. Everybody knows you’re in town. They just don’t know why.”

She reached for an already opened pack of Chesterfields on the round coffee table before us; a few magazines were spread out there—
Vogue, Cosmopolitan, True Romance, Photoplay, Breezy.
Apparently, Alice Jean had a lot of spare time, these days.

“Is that why you left the message for me, at the hotel?” I asked. “’Cause you want to know why I’m here?”

She fanned out her match, sucked on her cigarette. “I wanna know how you can have the nerve to come to Baton Rouge and not look me up.”

“I’ve only been here a day,” I grinned. “And here I am.”

She pretended to pout. “And I had to go begging. All those letters I wrote…all those phone calls…”

“I have great affection for you, Alice Jean. But it took money to get me to come back to this state.”

“You
are
on a job.”

“That’s right.”

“Tell me about it.”

I waggled a scolding finger. “There’s such a thing as client confidentiality.”

“Warm in here. I oughta buy myself a nice big electric fan.” She unsashed her satin robe, opened it up some; gave the globes of her bosom a chance to cool off. She was right: all of sudden it was warm in here.

“I’m working for Mutual Insurance,” I said.

She inhaled. “Tell me more.”

“I don’t think so. Even if you take it all the way off.”

That made her smile. “You know what I like about you? You’re shifty, but you have standards.”

“You could take it off and call my bluff, you know. Might be worth a try.”

“Nate,” she said, and her hand found the back of my neck and she scratched and tickled and played with my hair. “I’m not in the enemy camp. I’m just curious.”