2
On a pleasantly warm afternoon, the Friday before, a taxi I’d caught at Newark Airport deposited me in Manhattan on Eighth Avenue between Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth streets, just to the rear of Penn Station, near the garment district. I paid the cabbie off, tipping him well, in return for sparing me any sightseeing remarks on the ride in.
I alighted with valise in hand, a spongy but surprisingly heavy brown-paper package tucked under my arm. Oblivious to the bored, busy New Yorkers whisking by-shoppers, stenographers, businessmen, office clerks-I stood gaping up like any damn-fool out-of-towner at the second-tallest hotel in the city. Back in Chicago, the forty-story Morrison advertised itself as the tallest structure in the city that invented skyscrapers. But the Hotel New Yorker, with its wide, truncated, vaguely Egyptian structure and its intricate art deco setbacks, would have been impressive even if it didn’t trump the Morrison by three stories.
The air-conditioned lobby was a low-ceilinged, sprawling affair that managed to be both stately and modern. I strolled past the coffee shop, newsstand, and a vast bank of elevators, over to the marble check-in counter, where I found myself expected.
“Your room is ready, Mr. Heller,” bubbled a dark-haired, bright-eyed, cheerfully efficient clerk. “I’ll let Mr. Weiss know you’re here….”
In my racket, you’re seldom so graciously received, but I knew I was basking in reflected glory, and didn’t take it very seriously. I took my valise, my paper-wrapped package and my travel-weary behind over to a soft chair and kept a potted fern company for a while.
Not a long while, however.
I’d been glancing around the lobby, cataloging the pretty girls mostly, when suddenly he was standing before me, like he’d just materialized. The apparition was bald, bottle-shaped and extremely well-dressed, his natty dark brown lightweight three-piece suit set off perfectly by a green-and-brown striped tie with diamond stickpin; my rumpled brown Maxwell Street number was no competition.
He was the kind of homely, slightly overweight man who tried to make up for his physical shortcomings via sartorial elegance.
But Seymour Weiss-Huey Long’s second-in-command-had a lot of homeliness to overcome: wisps of brown hair atop an egg-shaped head like dying desert grass, bulbous nose, bump of a chin, dark dead eyes.
“Good to see you again, Mr. Heller,” he said, and his small line of a mouth made itself into a tiny smile.
“Pleasure, Mr. Weiss,” I said. “Elliott Wisbrod asked me to deliver this package to you, personally.”
“Splendid!”
I handed him the brown-paper package and he held it in both hands, like an award he was gratefully accepting.
“I understand this is the Wisbrod Company’s latest model,” he said.
“That’s what Mr. Wisbrod said.”
Seymour beamed at me, pointed a stubby finger at my chest. “I’d like you to deliver it personally to Senator Long.”
Was that why I’d been asked to play messenger, for a package the mails or R.E.A. could have easily handled?
I thought I knew the answer, but I asked anyway. “Why is that, Mr. Weiss?”
“Huey likes you,” Seymour said quietly. “Maybe coming from you, he won’t be so quick to dismiss this effort….”
“If you say so,” I said, shrugging a little.
After all, I’d flown out on his ticket, and I wasn’t due to fly back till tomorrow, anyway. And an encounter with the Kingfish was always a memorable affair.
“Good,” he said, and smiled his tiny smile, and thrust the package back into my arms, where it crinkled like Christmas paper.
As for the Kingfish liking me, that seemed an over-statement to me. I did know him, or at least we’d met. Friendly acquaintances was as far as I’d push it. Huey Long wasn’t exactly the kind of man it was easy to “know.”
But back in June of ’32, when I was a plainclothes dick on the Chicago P.D., I’d got duty as police liaison to Long and four bodyguards, in town to attend the National Democratic Convention, at which Huey was lobbying for the nomination of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In fact, he and his group showed up a week early, so Huey could play politics, get some press and check out the local nightlife-at least ’til
Sergeant Sapperstein, my boss on the pickpocket detail, said somebody upstairs wanted Huey and his boys baby-sat. Seemed Huey’s bodyguards had been deputized as Chicago police officers to give them firearm-carrying privileges; apparently the Kingfish was nervous about assassination attempts.
Huey wasn’t the only nervous one: so was whoever got the payoff for allowing a Louisiana goon squad to go around town carrying guns-otherwise, I wouldn’t have been showing the governor of Louisiana where in the Windy City one might violate the Eighteenth Amendment, not to mention two or three of the Ten Commandments.
“As I recall, you and Huey got along famously,” Seymour said, as we stepped into an otherwise unoccupied elevator. It was one of those modern, self-service jobs; he pushed a button on a panel with more numbers on it than a punch-board.
“Yeah, Huey was okay,” I said. “Even offered me a position. Should’ve taken it.” I shook my head. “Thought I had a police career going.”
“What happened?”
“Testified against some bent cops.”
“Sounds noble.”
“Not really. I did it to keep Frank Nitti from having me killed.”
“Oh,” he said. He cleared his throat. “And how was your flight?”
“Fine.”
“Flying doesn’t bother you?”
“Nope. Not since I went up with Lindy.”
Seymour blinked. His expression was that of an iguana studying a fly. “You flew with Lindbergh?”
“Yeah, I was the Chicago police liaison on the kidnapping. In the early days, they figured Capone was responsible.”
“I remember,” Seymour said, nodding.
“Anyway, Slim’s a real practical joker. I’d never been on a plane before, and he went on one of his hedge- hopping stunt-pilot binges, just to initiate me. Ever since, nothing any pilot can do can faze me.”
On the other hand, this elevator was making my ears stop up. The button Seymour had punched read 32.
He seemed faintly amused. “Frank Nitti. Colonel Lindbergh. You’ve become something of a name-dropper, Mr. Heller.”
I hadn’t meant to be; or maybe in the back of my head I wanted to let Huey Long’s majordomo know I’d been around.
“But I do wish you’d taken that job Huey offered you,” Seymour said glumly.
“Yeah?”
“He could use you on his staff about now.”
“From what I read in the papers, Huey doesn’t go anywhere these days without a
“Trigger-happy thugs, most of them,” Seymour said. “Huey’ll be lucky not to get caught in a cross fire.”
“Which is why you ordered this.” I hefted the brown-paper-wrapped package.
Seymour nodded. The hard dead eyes got as meditative as they were capable of. “Huey engenders strong feelings in the populace,” he said. “He’s worshipped by many….”
“Yeah,” I said, “but you’ve also had armed insurrection in the streets of New Orleans.”
“And Baton Rouge.” Seymour shook his head, his expression grave. “He most definitely needs protection.”
