I nodded, and escorted Alice Jean inside; a newsstand separated us from the cavernous waiting room area, and baggage was off to the far right. But at left there was a diner-style coffee shop, where we parked ourselves in a booth and drank coffee.
“You snore,” she said.
“Don’t spread the news,” I said. “People might misinterpret how you came by the information.”
“You’re kind of a flirt, aren’t you?”
“Do you mind?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Shall we take advantage of the time?”
I nodded, and she continued with her background briefing, shifting from the Square Dealers to Standard Oil; it took about forty-five minutes, with me interrupting only occasionally as I jotted down a few pertinent facts in my pocket notebook.
“The man you should talk to, the lobbyist I was referring to,” she said, “is Louis LeSage. You can call him at the refinery.”
And she rattled off the phone number.
I took it down in my notebook.
A remarkable girl, Alice Jean. She may have been Huey’s mistress, but she was no tramp, or at least not a stupid one. She was, as Huey himself had indicated, one sharp cookie.
“Could I ask you a question, Miss Crosley? Alice Jean?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Are you really the Secretary of State of Louisiana?”
She pursed her mouth into what might have been a kiss but was really a smile. “You find that hard to buy, Mr. Heller? Nate?”
“Not really. With your brains, you could be governor. I just wondered how you managed it.”
“You mean, how Huey managed it. Mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all.”
She took a pack of Chesterfields from her purse and tamped one down and lighted it up with a Zippo identical to the one I’d seen in Huey’s bedroom at the New Yorker.
“Actually, I’m not Secretary of State anymore…I haven’t been since ’32. Who told you that…Seymour?”
I nodded.
“He’s a jealous S.O.B., Seymour is. Always has resented me. Fact is, I was only appointed to serve out the term of a poor gentleman whose heart expired.”
“Oh. So now you’re out of a job?”
“Oh no. Huey appointed me Supervisor of Public Accounts and Collector of Revenues.”
That meant Huey’s mistress controlled the purse strings of the state’s economy.
“Shall we have a sandwich, Nate? Who knows when we’ll be catching that next train.”
So I took luncheon with Louisiana’s Supervisor of Public Accounts-bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich for her, a fried-egg sandwich for me-and pretty soon moved into the third and final phase of the trio of possible Huey murder plotters: the Syndicate, specifically, Frank Costello, with whom Huey had recently gone into the gambling business.
“You’ll want to talk to Costello’s man in New Orleans,” Alice Jean said blandly, as if referring me to a tailor. “‘Dandy Jim’ Kastel…he has a suite at the Roosevelt. Don’t write that down: just remember it.”
“All right,” I said. I checked my watch. “We’ve been sitting here for at least two hours. You want to take a walk or anything? My butt’s getting sore.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Maybe we could find a nice quiet saloon. I could use something stronger than coffee. How about you? Ready for some hair of the dog?”
She smirked and nodded. “I sure am. But what if Huey comes back…?”
“I’ll check at the ticket counter and see when the next train to St. Louis leaves. That’s our next stop.” Funny how that hard little mouth could transform itself into such a soft, sweet smile. “You
The next St. Louis train wasn’t until six-thirty, so I asked the shoeshine “boy” (he was in his sixties) where the nearest bar was, and he pointed the way. We walked toward the river, through a lively commercial district-it was Saturday, and the five-and-tens and department stores were doing a brisk business-until we found a quiet little gin mill. The place was almost empty; we ordered at the bar, then took a back booth.
“Here we are sitting again,” she said.
I sipped my rum-and-Coke. “Yeah, but my butt doesn’t hurt anymore. Mind if I ask you something personal?”
“You can ask.”
“How does a girl…how old are you? Twenty-five?”
“More or less.”
“How does a girl twenty-five, more or less, wind up Secretary of State and Supervisor of Whatever?”
“You mean, besides by being the Kingfish’s girlfriend?”
“Is that what you are?”
She looked sourly into her beer. “Not anymore, I guess.” Then she made three words of it:
I studied her through narrowed eyes. “Alice Jean, if you don’t mind my saying so…you’re no dummy.”
“How flatterin’.”
“I mean, I can tell just by talking to you that you’re up to any job in government that might get thrown at you. I just wondered how it happened. Are you a college girl?”
She laughed. “Not hardly. Tenth-grade dropout.”
“Hard to believe.”
She shrugged “I developed secretarial skills, even so. My daddy used to run a well-known newspaper in the state. The
This last was posed as if I probably would have heard of it, which of course I hadn’t. Might as well have been the
But I said, “Is that right? Well, that is impressive.”
“Daddy helped me get a nice secretarial job, in Baton Rouge…. Then when I was eighteen, I went to work in the Long gubernatorial campaign. Pretty soon I was his confidential secretary. One thing sorta led to another.”
One beer led to another, too. By the third one, Alice Jean’s bitterness was starting to show.
“You sign your resignation yet?” she asked suddenly.
“What do you mean?”
She shrugged again, poutily, swirled her beer in its glass. “Usually when you sign on with Huey, you have to sign an undated resignation, too. He does that with all his employees.”
“No kidding.”
“Sure. You know what every state employee in Louisiana does, first thing every morning?”
“No. What?”
“Checks the morning paper, to see if they resigned yesterday.” She grinned one-sidedly, but the grin was caustic. “Has he paid you anything yet?”
“Yeah. He gave me a retainer.”
“Bet it’s in cash. That’s how Huey does all his business.”
As Supervisor of Public Accounts, she was in a position to know.
“Is he makin’ you kick back five percent? ’Cause that’s what
“Where?”
“Right into the ol’ ‘dee-duct box.’”
I checked my watch. The afternoon was drifting toward evening. I figured maybe Alice Jean had had enough to drink; I didn’t want to get that breakfast I saw her eat, plus that bacon-lettuce-tomato sandwich, all over my remaining suit.
So I asked the bartender if there was a city park around, where we might take a leisurely stroll, and he
