Blood and Thunder

The green-pajamaed Southern-fried potentate was flat on the bed, stomach down, going over his notes in pencil when he suddenly called me over. I went.

“You like golf?” he asked.

“I don’t know if I like it, exactly. I’ve learned to put up with it-I do a lot of work for bankers and insurance people, you know.”

“Well, you won’t have to play, son. Jest caddy.”

“Caddy?”

“I always use my bodyguards as caddies,” the Kingfish said, glancing up from his notes with a sly smile. “I don’t want nobody makin’ a hole-in-one in me.”

Speaking of Caddies, a few minutes later I was sent down to wait for Murphy Roden, the Long bodyguard who’d been dispatched to trade in the Kingfish’s last-year’s-model Cadillac for a new number. I stood outside, near the Roosevelt entry that straddled the corner of Canal and Baronne. A New Orleans P.D. sawhorse reserved a parking place, and when the shiny-new, midnight blue buggy rolled in, I cleared the way.

The long, rakish Caddy purred like a thousand kittens; behind the wheel, Roden’s blond, brown-eyed, roughly handsome countenance lighted up with a grin, upon seeing me.

We had hit it off, back in Chicago in ’32, which is something I couldn’t really say about any of Huey’s other Cossacks. Murphy was a small-town boy who’d wanted to be a flyer, but washed out and joined the Louisiana State Police, where he set countless sharp-shooting records-I heard one of the other bodyguards say that Murphy could empty a.38 into a four-inch target at fifty feet.

He got assigned to the Kingfish as a driver for one upstate visit, and Huey took such a shine to him, Murphy became his personal chauffeur, and easily his most trusted bodyguard.

“Nate Heller!” he said, climbing out of the Caddy, dropping its silvery keys into a pocket of his tan suit. “I heard you joined the circus!”

Murphy was probably thirty, and he was brawny but not big: maybe five seven, five eight.

“Just short-term,” I said, as we shook hands. “Your boss has had some death threats and wanted to put on some extra security.”

“He always did like you, Nate.” He cocked his head, raised an eyebrow. “Death threats are pretty much old news around here, but the boss is takin’ this one serious. He’s reassigned every available highway patrolman and B.C.I. agent to the capitol. So-what do you think of my spandynew wheels?”

“Yours?”

“Well, the boss never drives ’em. Maybe we can take a spin, a little later. I need to show you the French Quarter.”

“I saw it.”

“Daytime or nighttime?”

“Daytime.”

“Then you ain’t seen it, nohow.”

I walked down the sidewalk, along the endless length of the new Caddy; sun glinted off in cross fires of glare. “I see what Huey means by ‘sharing the wealth.’ Doesn’t this rub his dirt-poor constituents the wrong way?”

“Hell, no! He leaves the slouchy duds and horse-and-buggies for the also-ran candidates. He wants people to think he’s somebody special-and they do.”

“How does this thing handle?”

Murphy put his hands on his hips and appraised the vehicle. “Well, I’ve only driven it a mile or so, over from the dealership. But these babies handle fine…leastways, now that Huey paved the roads. Back when I was navigating gravel roads, at eighty miles an hour, we used to go through windshields twice a month. And hell, I must’ve blown out more tires than Carter’s got pills.”

I winced. “On gravel roads?”

He nodded, and his sunny smile was seductive. “I tell ya, when I had a blowout on a downgrade, and was strugglin’ to keep control of the wheel, them folks in the backseat, they really come alive. If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’.”

“I believe you.”

We strolled into the Roosevelt’s block-long, chandeliered lobby, and Murphy asked me how I was getting along with Messina.

I shrugged. “No real problems, since Oklahoma City.”

“You know, he loves the boss. Sleeps near his feet; plays valet for ’im. He’d do anything for the boss.”

“You mean, he handles the murders.”

Murphy shook his head and laughed, a little. “You ain’t changed much, Nate.”

That evening, around seven, as I sat on the rider’s side in the front seat of the big blue Caddy, Murphy Roden switched on the radio. A lively live rendition of “Every Man a King” was emanating from the speakers, straight from the Roosevelt Hotel’s Fountain Lounge.

“The boss told Seymour to reserve a three-hour time slot,” Murphy said, grinning over at me. His arm was elbowed out the window, his blond hair ruffling in the breeze the buggy was stirring up out of this hot humid night.

“This is Senator Huey P. Long talkin’,” the Kingfish began, “and since the lyin’ newspapers won’t tell you these things, I’ll have the boys play a little music so you can call up your friends and neighbors and tell ’em I’m on the air….”

Murphy switched off the radio, shook his head, grinned over at me again. “The boss is a cutter, ain’t he? You ready to learn why they call N’Owluns the city that care forgot?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re sure you’re sure?”

“If I’m lyin’, I’m dyin’,” I said.

The next morning-on the plushly green links of the Audubon Park Club’s golf course-two bleary-eyed caddies, both of whom were entirely too hungover to be carrying handguns in holsters under the jackets of their white linen suits (though they were), followed a pair of golfers up a slope. The golfers were Huey Long-in a short-sleeve white shirt with a loud red-and-green tie, tan slacks and white golfer’s shoes-and Seymour Weiss, atypically jaunty in green cap, white sport shirt and brown knickers with matching socks.

A third member of the party, with his own armed (but apparently not hungover) bodyguard, was off to the left somewhere, chasing a ball in the rough.

The strap of the bag of clubs slung over my shoulder created a band of pain that almost equaled the ache in my legs as we scaled the hill.

“Have a little too much fun last night, kiddo?” Murphy Roden asked; he was grinning, but he couldn’t have felt much better than me. His eyes were filigreed with red.

“I don’t remember anything after the tequila.”

“La Lune! Now there’s a club…. Don’t tell me you could ever forgot the Dog House.”

I winced as I tried to think. “Was that a colored show?”

“Yes sir, but so was Popeye’s. And Mama’s Place.”

For whatever reason, these words summoned images of flickering lights and floor shows with barely clothed high-yellow gals stomping in abandon to red-hot jazz. I trudged up the hill, following the Kingfish’s tan-trousered behind.

“Murph…did we pick up a couple of girls?”

“Sure ’nuff did. College gals from Philadelphia.”

“Legal age?”

“I don’t believe we asked.”

Huey had reached his ball, where it rested at the hill’s summit like the cherry on a sundae. He walloped it a good one, and it sailed down the fairway two hundred fifty yards, easy.

He whooped with delight.

“Nice,” Seymour said.

“Top that, sucker!” Huey cackled.

Actually, Seymour was winning. Huey had power, but no finesse. It didn’t seem to bother him, though, when