“Wrong. He was not a member.”
I sat forward. “What about the DeSoto Hotel conference? The Long people’s ‘Assassination Ticket,’ last election, was predicated on evidence that Weiss attended.”
“Ridiculous. I was there. Carl Austin Weiss wasn’t.”
“You’re telling me that in this hotbed of anti-Long feeling, Carl Weiss wasn’t one of the chiefs?”
He raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Mr. Heller-he wasn’t even an Indian.”
It took one ferry across the Mississippi to Port Allen, and another across the Atchafalya, to get to Opelousas. Highway 90 was dotted with roadside parks and tourist camps, a scenic drive that, in two and a half hours, put me in this hamlet of six thousand or so souls. Signs and commemorative markers trumpeted Opelousas as the birthplace of Jim Bowie, of hunting knife and Alamo fame-otherwise, beyond enduring a couple centuries of existence, the town seemed undistinctive. Past the typical town square, dominated by a Victorian monstrosity of a courthouse, I tooled my rental Ford through residential sections of tree-lined streets with unremarkable frame homes perched on generous lawns.
The Pavy place was an exception. It had the generous lawn, all right-a luxurious expanse with a long walkway I strode down, past two ancient, Spanish-moss-hung oaks-but was a remarkably well-preserved example of an antebellum residence. The afternoon was dwindling. Judge Benjamin Pavy sat in a rocking chair on the unenclosed porch, looking beyond the white pillars of his plantation-style home at the lengthening shadows.
He stood as I approached. A towering, heavyset, broad-shouldered old gentleman with gray mustache and full head of silver hair, he would have seemed the picture of health had his complexion not been so pallid. His round jaw was offset by a high forehead; his nose was well sculpted, almost prominent; his eyes dark and kind under curves of salt-and-pepper eyebrows.
If his home could have served as a museum exhibit, he could have passed as the tour guide, decked out in blue alpaca coat, white shirt and striped blue-and-white tie, and white linen trousers, Southern colonel-style.
“Thank you for seeing me,” I said, as I accepted his firm handshake.
“A pleasure, sir,” he said, and there was a French lilt under the melodic drawl. He gestured to a second rocker he had waiting for me, beside him.
I sat. Rocked.
“If you’ll excuse my lack of hospitality,” he said, “I prefer we speak out of doors. Talk of this tragedy only serves to upset Mrs. Pavy.”
“I understand. Your daughter explained what I’m up to?”
“Yes. Yes, indeed. I will be glad to answer any questions, but I’m afraid you’ll find little of use, here.”
The sun going down was turning the Spanish moss into spun gold.
“He was a very fine young man, Carl was,” the judge said. “Vonnie…my daughter…brought him to meet me one Sunday afternoon. They wanted my approval, but I gave it even before they could ask. They were married here in Opelousas, you know, at St. Landry Parish church.”
“Judge-why did Huey Long go to so much trouble to get rid of you? With all the judges he controlled, why bother?”
The thin line beneath the mustache formed a faint, proud smile. “Because I made him look bad. You see, I stood up to him. I wasn’t afraid to throw his election officials in jail for their chicanery. His pawn O.K. Allen would pardon them, mere hours later, but just the same, I was pleased to be a burr under Long’s saddle.”
I said, “The general thinking is that Carl Weiss snapped because Long was about to gerrymander you off the bench.”
He rocked for a while before answering; his expression was as blank as a stone. “I’m afraid I’ve tortured myself over that possibility,” he admitted, “ever since that terrible night. The thought that I, however innocently, might have prompted, or even indirectly contributed to Carl’s death, gnaws at the inside of me. I keep wondering…if I hadn’t been so deeply involved in politics, would Carl have gone to the capitol that night?”
“Do
His tone was weary but not impatient. “You have to understand, young man, that Carl and I never discussed politics….”
“He never mentioned Huey Long in your presence?”
He took his time before answering. “Only once, that I can think of.”
“Yes?”
“Carl was a student in Vienna…he was a gifted boy, you know. But he had seen dictatorship in full sway, in Europe. Once, I remember he compared Long to Mussolini, Hitler and Dollfuss.”
“Dollfuss,” I said. “Wasn’t he that Austrian dictator?”
“Yes. That’s correct….”
“And wasn’t he assassinated?”
The old judge said nothing; merely looked out at the shadows, which were lengthening and blending and turning into darkness.
19
Arms folded, Tom Ed Weiss, looking very collegiate in his white shirt, lime green sweater-vest and darker green gabardine pleated slacks, leaned against my Ford, parked in front of the Sigma Pi fraternity, just off the LSU campus. The street, like so many in Baton Rouge, was lavishly shaded; a nearly full moon filtered through leaves and painted the world a perfect ivory. It was after nine, and fairly quiet, though most of the lights were on in the two-story frame frat house behind us, and an occasional couple walked by, arm-in-arm, the girl giggling and snuggling, the boy carrying a double pile of schoolbooks under his other arm; the library probably just closed. Now and then a clunker car with college kids would rumble by. This was the never-never land of academia; the controlled climate of studies and homecoming dances and bonfires and coeds and frat rats.
But Tom Ed, a handsome enough kid, his looks echoing his late brother’s but minus the specs, was scowling.
“The bastards framed him,” Tom Ed said.
“You really think so?” I said. I was leaning against the car. Just a couple of pals talking, though we’d known each other about two minutes.
“Those B.C.I. sons of bitches didn’t even want to hear my story,” he said. “Do you know the cops never came around? Some of ’em milled around out front, on the lawn, but my family, all of us, heard about it this way and that…some from the radio, some word of mouth-my
“
He turned his head, sideways, to give me an appraising stare. Yvonne Weiss had told me that Tom Ed idolized his brother, though the gulf of that decade or so between them had kept them from being close; the boy was taking pre-med, not to follow in his father’s footsteps, but his brother’s.
“Vonnie says you’re trying to help,” he said.
“I’m an impartial investigator,” I said.
“Compared to what’s gone on before, that qualifies as a help.” He looked out at the street, gazing at the pavement as if he could view the past there. “Anyway, it was Rush Week. Some frat brothers and me, we were riding around with some high-school seniors we were rushing.”
“Night of the shooting, you mean?”
“Yes. We were circlin’ around the statehouse, lookin’ for a parking place. We thought it’d be a riot, goin’ in and watchin’ the Kingfish and his big show. We all thought he was kind of a royal joke, y’know. I mean, everybody laughed at him behind his back, leadin’ the marching band, ridin’ in parades next to cheerleaders, struttin’ along the sidelines bossin’ the football coach aroun’. Sometimes it wasn’t so funny, like when he expelled the newspaper staff for printing one negative letter about him.”
I recalled the meeting between Huey and LSU President Smith, who had catered to the Kingfish’s every whim and had exhibited no particular interest in the students.
“But we couldn’t find an empty spot that night,” he went on; he put his hands in the pockets of his loose
