I wandered up to the dais, thinking that the floor of the Louisiana House of Representatives was one place I never expected to be, and looked up at Huey behind the dais like he was the teacher and I was about seven years old.
“See that feller over there?” the Kingfish asked.
I glanced over where he was pointing, and between the railing and the wall, a handful of people were talking. Possibly legislators, although there were reporters and various political hangers-on lurking about, as well. The only one I recognized was my old friend, lobbyist Louis LeSage.
“You mean LeSage?” I asked.
“No! The one smokin’ that big old ceegar.”
A dark-haired guy about forty was indeed enjoying a “big old ceegar.” I recognized him as one of the many political appointees who’d stopped by the suite on the twenty-fourth floor to chat with the Kingfish this afternoon.
“I’m about to give ya your last official assignment on my staff,” the Kingfish said.
“What is it?”
He raised his eyebrows and grinned like the greedy kid he was. “I want you to get me half a dozen of them Corona Belvedere cigars.”
“I thought you quit smoking.”
He frowned. “It would be my luck to hire the only man in Chicaga with a goddamn conscience. I’m in the mood to celebrate, son! Get me them cigars!”
I shrugged. “Sure. Where?”
“Downstairs in the cafeteria. They got a box of ’em down there, at the tobacca stand. Now go on, git outa here-make yourself useful!
So I went down the stairs to the cafeteria. The white-tile-and-gleaming-chrome restaurant was deserted except for the help, two girls behind the food line and a few colored guys back in the kitchen. I got myself a cup of coffee, decided against the apple pie with cheese, and took my time buying Huey his cigars, so I could flirt with the pretty blonde behind the tobacco counter. She had eyes that were a robin’s egg blue and a Southern accent you could have ladled onto pancakes. She was also chewing gum: nobody’s perfect.
“I get off at ten, han’some,” she said. “Why? You got somethin’ in mind?”
Us randy sumbitches always do, but before I could mount a reply that would combine just enough sincerity with the vague promise of sin, a sound, from above, interrupted.
Muffled thunder.
“What the hell was that?” the blonde asked.
“Not thunder,” I said, and ran, pushing open one of the heavy glass doors like it was spun sugar, rushing up into the stairwell, where the rumbling sound continued and goddamn it, I knew what it was,
Not one gun, but many, an artillery barrage of handguns and maybe a machine gun….
Pulling my nine-millimeter out from under my left shoulder, I went up the stairs two at a time, the echo of continuous gunfire rumbling down the stairwell like an earthquake.
I practically collided with him, as he came staggering around the corner, onto a landing of the stairway: the Kingfish!
His mouth was bloody, but his suit was pristine; his eyes lighted up at the sight of me, and he held out his arms as if he wanted to hug me.
I slipped my arm around his shoulder, as he leaned on the railing. I managed, “What the hell?…”
“I’m shot,” the Kingfish sputtered, and in the process spit blood all over my suit coat.
We were both shouting: the echoing thunder of gunfire upstairs roared on, unabated. We were in a terrible fever dream and neither of us could wake up. He was stumbling down the stairs, weaving, and I supported him as he tried to walk, and guided him out of the stairwell, down a hallway and to a bank of glass doors at a side entrance, pushed one open with my shoulder and drunk-walked him outside.
When the glass door shut, the thunder of guns finally stopped-or did it just seem to?
I had no idea what had happened up there, except that it had been some form of hell on earth. I knew, for certain, only two things: I had failed this man leaning limply against me; and that I mustn’t fail him now.
I leaned the Kingfish against the glass doors, like I was balancing a bass fiddle against a wall, and ran out under the portico into the driveway and stood in front of two approaching headlights with my arms outstretched.
13
The beat-up black four-door Ford screeched to a halt, more from age than speed; the legislative session-with its promise of Kingfish theatrics-had attracted a packed house of spectators, starting to leisurely clear out now that the show was over, wandering into the sultry night, getting their cars from the parking lots on either side of the building. Most of these good citizens weren’t aware a second, bigger show had eclipsed the main attraction….
I was still standing like a scarecrow in front of his car when the driver leaned his head out and, more startled than angry, yelled, “What the hell’s the idea, bub?”
I spoke as I came around to him. “Where’s the nearest hospital?”
“Are you crazy?” He was a little man in his thirties, straw hat, wire-frame spectacles, suspenders over a white T-shirt; a farmer, most likely, and a poor one. Your typical Huey supporter.
“The Senator’s been shot, you dumb rube! Where’s the nearest hospital?”
He opened his eyes wide and pointed. Through the portals of the portico, the statehouse lights danced on the small, manmade Capitol Lake, and on just the other side of it, not a quarter of a mile away, the lights of a low-slung building winked on the black surface of the water, as well.
“Our Lady of the Lake,” he said.
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s a hospital, ya dumb city slicker!”
I yanked his door open. “Help me with the Senator….”
The driver got out, leaving his motor running, and now he saw Huey leaning against the glass doors like a statue that lost its pedestal. “Jesus Christ…it’s Huey Long.”
“Help me with him!”
We drunk-walked him to the car, eased him into the backseat; Huey didn’t cry out or even moan-he was barely conscious. I sat back there with him as the car drove through the portico, made a U-turn and pulled around to head north on a street that hugged the wooded lakeside. The farmer had the old sedan floored, but top speed seemed to be about forty. The skyscraper Huey had built in this wilderness receded behind us; the motor thrummed in tune with the nocturnal drone of crickets. Between statehouse and hospital was a little bitty stretch of untamed Louisiana….
With both hands, Huey held on to the right side of his upper belly; he lay draped across the backseat, his head resting on my shoulder. I kept an arm around him, as if he were a big child I were comforting.
“We’re almost there,” I said. “Very close.”
“I wonder…”
His eyes were wild.
“What, Kingfish?”
“…I wonder why he hit me?”
He closed his eyes. I patted his shoulder gently as the lights of the sprawling three-story brick building that was Our Lady of the Lake Sanitarium grew larger before us.
The beat-up sedan pulled under the brick canopy of the emergency entrance and jolted to a stop. I got out on my side and came around and opened Huey’s door. The driver was still behind the wheel.
“Give me some help, goddamnit!” I said.
“I helped you,” he said. “I brung you here.”
I half-dragged Huey out of the backseat-he was just awake enough to be cooperative-and was standing there
