11
The midnight blue Caddy shot down the Air-Line Highway like a well-aimed bullet-no blowouts or broken windshields, this trip. Not on a hard stretch of Kingfish concrete that might have been designed for breaking speed limits; and what Louisiana traffic cop was fool enough to stop the car that bore license plate Number 1?
Murphy Roden was a no-nonsense driver: his foot was heavy, sure ’nuff, but his eye was steady and ever on the road. Affable as he was, Murph indulged in little small talk on the drive. I was in the front seat with him, and the Kingfish was by himself in back. Seymour Weiss had remained in New Orleans. It was a hot, sunny day, and the only wind was the one we stirred up; the windows in front were down.
It was the closest I ever came to seeing the Kingfish at repose, and the only time I had evidence that he ever slept. He napped briefly, and read various newspapers and sheafs of correspondence, occasionally scribbled some notes or something, for the rest of the ninety-minute trip. The gregarious, motormouth bear was in near- hibernation.
Suddenly, a gray-granite rocketship, poised to launch into the heavens, rose above the mud flats, before my astounded eyes: Huey’s skyscraper state-house. The tapering spire of the thirty-four-story capitol was like a mirage of the future, an apparition of civilization in a world of swamps and bayous.
“Some buildin’, huh?”
It gave me a start: the Kingfish hadn’t spoken the whole trip, and now, when I glanced over, his shining moon face was next to me, as he sat forward, leaning on my seat, staring ahead at his art deco monument to himself.
“Some building,” I agreed.
“Brother Earl calls it my ‘silo.’ Jealous, as usual. Only cost five millions, and I had the sucker finished within a year of the day we laid the cornerstone.” Then, with no irony and not a twinge of conscience, he added, “Woulda cost fifty millions in New York or Washin’ton, what with their crooked brand of politics.”
If an Empire State Building ascending from marshlands had seemed jarring, the capitol grounds dispelled that sense. As the Caddy glided through a formal, landscaped park-flower beds bursting with color, magnolias and poplars mingling with ghostlike, ancient, moss-hung oaks-the towering stone structure achieved an eerie dignity, like a single massive gravestone in a vast perfect cemetery.
Murphy turned down Capitol Drive, where parking places awaited Huey and the bodyguard car that trailed us (bearing McCracken, Messina and two other Cossacks). These were among the few reserved spaces that weren’t taken: the special session began today, and Louisiana’s pro-Long legislators knew the Kingfish expected their presence, and the anti-Longs weren’t about to give him the satisfaction of no opposition.
The Kingfish was forgoing his private parking place in back, where he could enter the statehouse unobtrusively-but right now, with the session looming, Huey wanted to be seen. It was a time for grand entrances.
To reach the entrance of the 450-foot inverted? that was Huey’s capitol-the Senate and the House of Representatives were in first-floor wings at left and right, respectively-you climbed forty-nine steps, each but the last inscribed with the name of a state. The granite stairway was flanked by somber, imposing statues of explorers, pioneers, settlers and Indians. The majesty of all this, and that of the looming monolithic capitol itself with its historical and patriotic friezes, was undermined by the all-pervasive presence of Huey’s state police.
In their helmets and khakis and boots, strapped with gun-and bullet-belts, they were not a police guard, but a military encampment, standing watch along the perimeter, perched on the edges of the somber statuary, stationed on the landings of the stairway. Their presence only made Huey smile, and he said, “Hello, boys,” half a dozen times along the way; their disciplined lack of response tickled him all the more, as he strutted up the granite stairway followed by Murphy and me, as well as Messina, McCracken (with his deadly grocery sack), and other assorted hooligans.
We followed the Kingfish through the glass doors into a claustrophobic bronze-and-marble entryway, and on into the grandiose main lobby known as Memorial Hall. Our footsteps echoed across the polished lava floors and up to the ornate four-story ceiling; Huey’s voice echoed the same way, as he jauntily greeted legislators and tourists and tour guides.
Yesterday Huey had asked me to stick around, because he needed “another good man.” But inside the capitol was crawling with even more military-style state police, as well as thuglike plainclothes dicks with conspicuous bulges under arms or on hips. The dignified bronze fixtures and patriotic murals decorating Memorial Hall-obviously the capitol’s hub-were at odds with this police-state atmosphere.
It was a straight shot to the trio of elevators, whose elaborate bronze doors depicted bas-relief portraits of what were apparently (judging by the muttonchops) public figures of bygone days; but Huey was among them, up at the top right.
Murph saw me squinting at the little boxes with faces in them and he whispered, “It’s a gallery of the state’s governors, endin’ with Huey.”
I somehow felt sure that the omission of O.K. Allen was okay with the current governor.
We took the middle elevator, which bore a small placard saying private-state employees only. Huey chatted with the elevator operator, a skinny, friendly man in his sixties, inquiring about his wife and children by name.
“Boss has a photographic mem’ry,” Murphy whispered.
I figured as much; nothing I’d observed would have led me to believe Huey cared about individuals like this fellow. Huey worried about only two things: himself and the masses. In that order.
We got off on the twenty-fourth floor, on the other side of the elevator, which opened onto a small, mundane vestibule. Tourists were getting off one elevator and onto another, and gasped at the sight of the Kingfish, who waved and smiled and said, “Howdy.” This was the floor where the common folk could catch two things: glimpses of Huey and the elevator to the observation tower.
The door to Huey’s suite-which took up the rest of the floor-was around to the right. The suite itself was furnished in a sleek, modern style-curves of wood and chrome-but otherwise reminded me of various hotel suites of recent days. The only major difference was we settled ourselves in a living room area and the Kingfish didn’t get into his fabled green-silk pajamas.
For much of the afternoon the Kingfish and a small, dark, apparently Italian gent worked on a new song Huey was cooking up. It was a victory song for the LSU football team, and Huey had some hand-scribbled lyrics he’d done in the car on the ride over from New Orleans.
Murphy, McCracken, Squinch McGee and I were playing poker-using wooden matchsticks for chips-at a card table over in one corner. I was the only one who didn’t smoke, but I might as well have: the blue haze from the cigarettes hung like ground fog.
“Jacks or better,” I said, dealing the cards. “Who’s the ginney?”
“Actually,” Murphy said, “he’s from Costa Rica. Castro Carazo. Writes all the music for the boss’s songs.”
“He used to be the orchestra leader at the Roosevelt Hotel,” McCracken said. “The boss likes him, ’cause Castro used to let him direct the band at the Blue Room, sometimes.”
“What’s he do now?” I asked. “Besides write songs with Huey.”
“He’s director of music at LSU,” Murphy said. “I can open.”
After Huey and his music man had roughed out their composition, the Distinguished Senator from the Great Pelican State came over and pulled us away bodily from the middle of a round of Black Mariah (sometimes called Chicago). This did not make me happy, as I had the ace of spades down, which would have entitled me to half the pot.
But you didn’t argue with the boss.
I have only the faintest memory of the rah-rah number, other than its melody being suspiciously similar to “Every Man a King.”
Nonetheless, I joined in with the effusive praise and applause of the other bodyguards. Messina, who had been seated nearby the musical geniuses while they composed, was smiling like a madman; his eyes were glittering with emotion.
We were allowed to return to our game-which was declared a goddamn misdeal-and were summoned back
