“Yeah. So?”
“You’re the
“And who the hell are you?”
“Chick Frampton,” he said, and extended his hand. I just looked at it. “I’m with the
That was a New Orleans paper.
He withdrew the hand, raised an eyebrow. “I’m also on the payroll, if that helps any. Statistician in the Attorney General’s office.”
I smiled a little. “Not part of ‘the lyin’ press,’ then?”
“No. More, the Long organization’s unofficial press agent.” He gestured toward the double doors of the operating room. “Kingfish in there?”
I nodded.
He grinned. “I figured as much! I spoke to Huey just minutes…hell,
“What happened?”
He shrugged in frustration, rolled his eyes. “I didn’t see it! Biggest story of the century, and I’m a closed door away!”
“How so?”
He leaned in, chummily, gesturing with a loose-fingered hand. “I was in the governor’s office, in the anteroom, see, usin’ the phone callin’ an item in. I was just about to leave, my hand on the damn doorknob, when what do I hear but a shot! I crack open the door and see Senator Long stumblin’ by, movin’ down the hall, claspin’ his side with his hands.”
“Christ, man, what else did you see?”
His eyes widened, trying to recall it all; even for a trained reporter, a chaotically unfolding event can be overwhelming.
“Murphy Roden was strugglin’ with a guy in a white suit; Murph had his back to me, kind of stooped over the guy, little Caspar Milquetoast feller. Then Murphy fires, and backs away, and fires some more, and the guy kinda shook, like a kid gettin’ shook by the shoulders, only he was freestandin’-then, shit, all of them bodyguards of Huey’s started firin’ into the guy. Messina, some state troopers, too, a mess of ’em, blazin’ away like a Wild West show. The guy kinda pitched forward, fell down with his head near this marble pillar, by the wall. Face to the floor. Shot to shit.”
I’d missed all the fun. Thank God.
“Hell,” I said. “Who was he?”
“The shooter? Nobody knows.”
I thought about the old gentleman who’d had the altercation with Huey and his bodyguards last night. “Not Tom Harris?”
“Hell, no! I know Tom. I don’t know this poor bastard. I don’t know if anybody’ll know ’im, now. Skinny little bastard must weigh a thousand pounds.”
“A thousand pounds?”
His mouth twitched. “With all that lead in ’im.”
He dug out a pack of Lucky Strikes and lighted one up.
I said, “You’re the first one here, besides me and Huey. How’d you manage it, Frampton?”
He waved out his match. “Mrs. Frampton’s little boy is a reporter. I went in the direction Huey went, and followed the breadcrumb trail of blood drops on the marble floor, and on down the steps…”
“I met him coming down. Brought him here.”
He grinned again, snapped his fingers. “I figured somethin’ like that happened! I talked to some bystanders ’round the rear entrance who said they saw somebody pile Huey into a car and took off toward here.” His breathing had slowed; the cigarette had helped calm him. “Ran the hell over here. How’s Huey doin’?”
“Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether you consider getting read the Last Rites is a good sign.”
He thought about that. Then he pulled a notebook out of an inside suit coat pocket. “I better start callin’ people,” he said, and rushed off.
Where any of this left me, who the hell knew? Now that Frampton would get the word out, this joint would soon be swarming with cops, bodyguards, politicians, reporters, sightseers, what-have-you. Best plan I could come up with was to get out before that started happening.
And I couldn’t see where I was of any use here, anyway. So I wandered downstairs, looking for a way out, and on a first-floor hallway, just off the main reception area, I almost bumped into Murphy Roden, being guided along by a young highway patrolman as if under arrest.
Murphy’s face, around his eyes, was scorched.
“Jesus, Murphy!” I said.
He couldn’t see me; his eyes were tearing, but he was not crying. “Heller?”
He was blind; whether temporarily or not, I didn’t know. But right now, this was a blind guy….
I took his other arm. “I know how to get to the emergency area,” I told the highway patrolman, and took the lead.
“What the hell happened, Murphy?” I asked.
“Muzzle flash,” he mumbled, and passed out.
We dragged him onto the elevator, and I played operator, taking us up to three.
“What the hell happened over there?” I asked the patrolman.
“Damned if I know,” he said. “Somebody took a shot at the Kingfish, and then all hell broke loose.”
The back of Murphy’s suit coat was scorched, and his neck was powder-burned, too; he’d obviously been caught in the middle of one hell of a gun battle.
Murphy came around just enough to walk a little as the patrolman and I guided him toward the emergency operating room, where the Kingfish was still being tended to. The blond intern stepped into the hall and had a look at Murphy.
“We better get those eyes swabbed,” he said to his patient, and he and the highway patrolman helped Murphy toward another examining room.
I didn’t go with them. I went back downstairs and out the front entry, where I could see the parking lot of the hospital-almost empty now, but not for long-and the lake with the reflection of Huey’s statehouse shimmering on it.
The statehouse itself was ablaze with lights. Sirens howled in the night; horns honked. A line of cars was heading this way on the street that edged the lake.
I walked toward the tower. My suit was sticking to me; the heat was as unbearable as the tension. I walked beside the lake, on the grass, by the trees, as cars whizzed by me, on their way to help turn a tragedy into full- scale pandemonium.
The capitol had already been cordoned off. A human ring of highway patrolmen encircled the building, with a few extra at every exit. Many had riot guns or tommy guns slung over their arms. Flashing my Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Investigation badge, I got past the troops, going in the back way, through the portico entrance where I had taken Huey out. I kept the badge in my palm, showing it to the various patrolmen I encountered as I retraced my steps.
The blood drops that Frampton had trailed us by were still there; were still wet. It hadn’t even been an hour yet. God, how could time crawl so? And how could it race so frantically by?
There were no gawking spectators; the building had been cleared of them. Even the legislators and lobbyists and other politicos had been banished. Only Huey’s inner circle, and of course his storm troopers, both uniformed and hoodlum-style, were allowed.
And when I saw the man in the linen suit, oddly, no one was around. He’d been abandoned there, probably for just a moment, but it seemed so strange. There he was, the slender young man sprawled lifelessly face down across the base of a pillar in a vast puddle of blood pooled on the cold marble floor. Black round glasses on his face askew, frames broken, glass shattered. His back was like a punchboard, with all the punches out. It was hard to
