Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 (22 page)

“Why are you telling me this, showing me…?”

He scooped the bullets up in a hand, turned the hand into a fist, shook it as he spoke.

“I’m resigning from LSU, Mr. Heller,” he said. “I’m going to try to put my life back together, away from disloyal, dishonest men. But in the meantime, nothing would please me more than having someone like you making certain people’s lives miserable.” His smile was a study in irony. “Besides—what can they do to me?”

I shrugged. “Kill you?”

Now the smile turned enigmatic. He slipped the bullets in a pocket of his white linen suit coat. “Not with these trump cards tucked away.”

“But you can’t go public….”

“No,” he agreed and sighed. “The twin specters of malpractice and conspiracy would raise their heads. But it’s something of a…what’s the term?”

“Mexican standoff,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“Not all of these men are smart,” I reminded him. “But they’re all brutal. There’s little they’d stop at….”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Should I turn up suspiciously dead, family members of mine will make sure these bullets wind up in the correct hands.”

I tapped a finger on the table. “I could use those bullets, right now….”

“Sorry,” he said, and he stood. His mood had brightened. It was as if a heavy burden had been lifted. “But I’ve given you information, Mr. Heller. And that’s a kind of ammunition in and of itself, isn’t it?”

He plucked one of the doughnuts off the plate, took a bite and walked away, munching it. In a few moments, he was swallowed up into the French Quarter at night.

The gate to the private estate was a self-consciously rustic affair constructed of wagon wheels; it yawned open: I was expected. I tooled the Ford down the gravel drive through a corridor of towering pines, the afternoon sun shimmering through, casting flickering shadows; a day or so later, the grounds of the estate opened up, as rolling, and carefully coifed, as any golf course. A sprawling but modern brick and brown-shingle building—a hunting lodge with aspirations—looked out on the gently rippling, mirrorlike surface of the Tchefuncte River, where a boat landing extended, a motor launch with cabin docked there.

Near the main lodge were kennels, breeding stalls, pens, exercise areas, for the dogs, sheep, Hereford cattle and thoroughbred horses raised here; barns and stables spread behind the lodge, connected by gravel roads and paths. And all the while, towering pines looked on, unimpressed.

Well, I was impressed. Governor Dick Leche, moderately successful attorney, former secretary to O.K. Allen, was doing all right for himself. In the heart of St. Tammany Parish’s Gold Coast, populated by retired financiers and company presidents and other affluent types, Leche had found not only an idyllic retreat, but another moneymaking enterprise.

I pulled the Ford up by several other vehicles parked in front of a triple-door brick garage; but my rental number was not in a league with the Lincoln and two Cadillacs I was joining. I’d barely got out of the car when Seymour Weiss was standing beside me, as if he’d materialized.

In his gray three-piece suit with black-and-white tie, he was as perfectly attired as a manikin in the men’s department at Marshall Field’s, only no department store had a dummy as homely as the iguana-like Seymour Weiss. On the other hand, Seymour was no dummy.

“The governor’s inside,” he said. “Make this brief.”

“I’m disappointed,” I said. “Aren’t you glad to see me, Seymour?”

He said nothing, his pockmarked puss staying blank; but his dead dark eyes were scornful.

“Last time I saw you,” I said, following him to a side door, “you were tossin’ money at me.”

He stopped, turned and said dryly, “That was so you would leave.”

“And I left,” I said. I smiled. “But I’m back.”

Seymour’s irritation hadn’t been as apparent on the phone this morning, when I’d reached him in his office at the Roosevelt Hotel. At least, not at first. He knew I’d been investigating the Long case, but said he didn’t know why. I told him I’d fill him in personally, if we could get together to talk, and he’d only said, “Certainly.”

But he had bristled when I said I also wanted to meet with the governor.

“I can drive over to Baton Rouge this afternoon,” I’d said, “to meet with Governor Leche, either at the capitol, or the governor’s mansion….”

“He’s rarely there,” Seymour had said. “He conducts most of the affairs of state long-distance, from St. Tammany.”

“Where’s that?”

There’d been a long pause before he replied, with obvious reluctance: “Across the lake from New Orleans.”

“Well, why don’t you set up a meeting. I’d suggest, as soon as possible.”

“Do I detect a threat in your voice, Mr. Heller?”

“I don’t know. Do you?”

So, now—just a few hours later—I was in the governor’s sprawling hunting lodge, following Seymour down a hallway with pelican-patterned wallpaper, decorated with framed photos of the governor and various dignitaries and celebrities. We moved into a cozy maple-paneled, open-beamed den with a large braided rug and an enormous, growling bearskin rug before a brick fireplace with a mantel crowded with stuffed ducks, beaver and geese. Though the back walls had built-in bookcases, looking on from every other angle were enough mounted deer heads to form a quorum of the Louisiana House of Representatives. A few long-dead fish swam the walls. The governor was apparently stuffing his taxidermist with cash.

Plump walnut-trimmed brown leather loungers with ottomans were angled toward, and at either side of, the fireplace; between them was a small matching sofa. Here and there, standing lamps wearing beige silk shades provided a woman’s touch, slightly off-kilter in this man’s man’s room. There apparently was a Mrs. Leche.

Big George McCracken was sitting at a card table, playing solitaire. McCracken, with his lumpy, former boxer’s face, still seemed to be buying his baggy suits from Hoodlum Haberdashery, Inc. His suit coat was over the back of the chair and he was in shirtsleeves and suspenders, blood red tie loosened; a stubby cigar smoldered in one corner of his mouth.

But at least he’d given up carrying a tommy gun in a paper bag. Unless it was under the table.

Huey Long’s successor rose endlessly from the leather lounge chair at right and strode across the den like Paul Bunyan to meet us. An enormous man, both tall and heavyset, Leche wore a red-and-black plaid hunter’s shirt and khaki pants and was in his stocking feet; black hair slicked back like George Raft’s, Leche’s facial features were pleasant, even boyishly handsome, though a little small for his bucket-sized head.

“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Heller,” Leche said, almost bubbling, extending his hand. Then, pointlessly, as if I didn’t know who I was calling on, he added a self-introduction: “Dick Leche.”

“And why’s that, Your Excellency?” I said, shaking with him.

“Your efforts to get the Kingfish to Our Lady of the Lake are legend around here. Won’t you sit down?”

He took me by the arm over to the sofa; big as he was, he could have flung me there. I sat on the sofa, and he settled back into his lounge chair, putting his white-stockinged feet up on the ottoman. Seymour took the lounge chair at my right; he sat with his legs crossed, hands folded, slowly twiddling his thumbs. Glowering.

“My efforts may be legendary, Your Excellency,” I said, “but I obviously didn’t do Huey any good.”

“It was the effort, man! It was the effort. But please…call me Dick.”

“Why, thank you, Dick. And call me Nate, if you would.”

From an end table beside him, he took a pipe and relighted it with a kitchen match, as he said, “My pleasure. I understand you’ve been looking into the assassination.”

“That’s right.”

Puffing at the pipe, getting it going, he said, “I’m a little…fuzzy on the exact nature of your investigation. You know, we do have a Bureau of Criminal Investigation in this state.”

“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…”