Blood and Thunder

for three more performances, over the course of the next hour and a half, to hear “improved” versions, every one of which sounded identical to me.

Even for $250 a day, this was not the life for me. Murphy was pleasant company, but the rest of the bodyguard crew were untrained, on-edge thugs that Frank Nitti would have fired in a heartbeat.

With the exception of Murphy, who’d done a few years as a state cop before joining Huey, they had jack shit security experience. Messina was a damn ex-barber from the Roosevelt Hotel.

Also, I was winning at poker. Consistently winning. That didn’t necessarily surprise me (I’m as self-deluded as the next average player), but these guys-even Murphy-were playing sloppy, and if there was one thing I would have confidence that guys like this could do, it’s play cards.

They were nervous. On edge.

“Fuckin’ death threats,” Squinch McGee whispered. He had squinty little eyes behind thick wire-frame glasses-just the kind of guy you’d want handling firearms, right? “I don’t take ’em serious. You take ’em serious?”

“The boss does,” McCracken said, and shook his head. “I ain’t seen this many cops in one place since that all-night diner shut down.”

Messina was in the game now. “Why would anybody wanna kill the boss?”

“It sure ain’t no picnic guardin’ him,” McCracken said, and shook his head again. “Cain’t hardly keep up with him.”

“Walks faster’n most men run,” Murphy said. “Stops and starts, and stops and starts-it’s like chasin’ after a goddamn trolley car.”

“It’s like a goddamn game of musical chairs!” Squinch McGee said, holding his cards in two trembling hands.

A few hours later-after supper had been catered up to us from the cafeteria in the capitol’s basement-I saw the truth of their words. Keeping up with the Kingfish, as he shuttled back and forth between the House on one side of the building, and the Senate way over on the other, was work for Jesse Owens.

Watching this banty rooster expending boundless energy was a thing of wonder: pressing the flesh, keeping an eye on what were apparently routine matters, he obviously wasn’t taking any chances about getting his bills pushed through.

On one of the rare occasions I was able to keep up with him, falling alongside, I said, “Mind if I ask you something, Kingfish?”

“Only way to learn, son.”

“Why do you fight so hard, when you got the battle won from the starting pistol?”

“Son,” he laughed, “I ain’t even begun to shoot from the taw, yet.” He stopped on a dime, put a hand on my shoulder and his bulging brown eyes bore into me like needles. “Why do I run my fanny off like this? I’ll tell ya why, and you’ll wanna remember this: never write what you kin phone, never phone what you kin talk head-to-head, never talk what you kin nod, never nod what you kin wink.”

And he winked at me, and took off like a race car.

He was halfway down the hall from us when a man in white stepped out from where he’d been standing beside a pillar and planted himself in front of Huey, blocking his way.

“Now, I don’t want trouble with you, Tom,” Huey was saying, as we moved quickly up.

“This time ya’ve gone too far, Huey,” the man, who was elderly and frail-looking, said in a tone that managed to be both strong and quavering. Hatless, his snow white hair neatly combed, he wore wire-frame glasses and his face was handsome, dignified, but the sunken cheeks revealed the fragile skull under the creped skin.

“Now, you step aside, Tom.”

“It’s unconstitutional, this bill of yours…. We have a great president, and it shames every citizen of this fine state when you-”

By now, we had formed a half-circle around the pair. The Kingfish had made no indication he wanted us to intercede.

Huey thumped his chest. “Ah do the speeches aroun’ here, you feeble-minded ol’ fool! Git outa my way, and go slap damn to hell, while you’re at it!”

The old man stepped forward, his right hand raised. “Don’t curse me, you power-drunk bastard….”

Huey took several steps back; his face was white. The thought of this old man hitting him had paralyzed the great dictator with fear!

There was a sharp crack! as Big George lurched forward and slapped the old man, knocking his legs out from under him like kindling.

Huey, brave again, stood with windmilling arms, raging over the fallen senior citizen. “You’re the one who’s drunk! Git ’im outa here! Git ’im charged with drunk and disorderly, disturbin’ the goddamn peace or somethin’! And usin’ obscenity in a goddamn fuckin’ public place!”

“I’ll take him,” Messina snarled, and threw himself at the old man like a ball, grabbing the gent’s collar and yanking him to his feet. The old boy looked dazed, his glasses askew.

I pulled Messina away by one thick arm; the look he flashed back at me might have been a rabid animal’s. Nonetheless, I pushed myself between him and the old man. My right hand was on the butt of the nine-millimeter holstered under my left arm.

“Let me take him,” I said to Huey, looking at him hard. “I’m done for the night, anyway.”

Something akin to shame flickered in Huey’s eyes when he saw my expression. Had the Kingfish been a human being, once upon a time?

Then the Kingfish gave me his prize-winning shit-eating grin. “You have put in a long day, Nate. Know where the Baton Rouge police department is?”

“I’m a detective,” I said. “I’ll find it.”

A hand was on my arm; it felt like a giant’s hand, but it was only mental-midget Messina’s.

His eyes were glittering with emotion again, but a different one.

“Don’t ever put your hand on me,” he whispered, his face in mine.

“Sen Sen’s only a nickel,” I said. “Make an investment.”

I hauled the old boy out of there, being just a little rough with him to keep the other bodyguards from looking at me too askance. We went out onto the landing of the capitol, with the forty-nine granite steps stretching down before us; the military guard remained, but at about half the force of before. The gardenlike grounds yawned before us in the pale light of a quarter moon, like a hazy paradise, but the weather made of the night a sultry, sweltering hell.

“Thank you, young man,” the old gentleman said. “I’ve…I’ve never seen you before.”

“I’m just passing through.”

“You’re from Chicago.”

“How did you know?”

He straightened his glasses, smiled; his poise had returned. “I have a good ear for accents. You have a distinctly flat, nasal twang.”

“I know. I’m taking something for it.”

He frowned in thought. “You’re no Cossack. Are you really a detective?”

“Yes.”

“Investigating these murder threats?”

I frowned in thought. “Are you a reporter?”

“Used to be. Work for the administration, now.”

“What administration?”

“Why, FDR’s, of course. Publicity director for the Federal Education Program. Huey wants to pass a law so he can put people like me in jail.”

“You do strike me as a dangerous type.”

His smile might have been a pixie’s. “If you like…I can direct you to the police department….”

“Why, do you want to go to jail?”