Blood and Thunder

It didn’t take her long to answer. She was wearing a blue satin dressing gown, sashed tight around her waist, and darker blue open-toed high-heeled slippers; she seemed dressed for bed, but she hadn’t yet removed the makeup from her pretty, heart-shaped face. Her cupie-bow mouth really was way the hell out of date. Fetching nonetheless, like her equally dated cap of flapper curls.

Alice Jean Crosley was a sight for sore eyes.

“Your message said you’d be up till eleven,” I told her. “I took you at your word.”

The mouth pursed into her kiss of a smile. “You look tired,” she said, through the screen.

“I had a long day. I’m one of those working men you hear so much about.”

She opened the screen door and made a mock-elegant gesture for me to enter. I did.

The small entryway opened right onto the living room, which was furnished in the modern style, no chrome, but lots of sleek walnut furnishings and a rust-color striped mohair sofa and matching easy chair with ottoman. For a single woman’s living room, it seemed surprisingly male.

But there were feminine touches-floral-print draperies, a dreamy Maxfield Parrish print over the sofa, a bisque baby on a rounded radio console, creamy silk-shaded lamps with pottery bases and antimacassars on the sofa and chair arms.

“Come here, you big lug,” she said.

I just love it when dames say that.

She wrapped her arms around me and gave me a long, hard kiss. It wasn’t passionate, exactly; but it was a hell of a hello.

Then she led me by the hand to the sofa, where we both sat, and she crossed her legs, sharing a well-turned calf and promise of creamy thigh.

“How did you know I was in town?” I asked.

“I still have my spies in Huey’s machine.”

“How did they know I was in town?”

“Are you serious? You’re staying at the Heidelberg, aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “It’s the only decent hotel in Baton Rouge.”

She smirked. “Well, Roy Heidelberg is one of Seymour’s best pals. Everybody knows you’re in town. They just don’t know why.”

She reached for an already opened pack of Chesterfields on the round coffee table before us; a few magazines were spread out there-Vogue, Cosmopolitan, True Romance, Photoplay, Breezy. Apparently, Alice Jean had a lot of spare time, these days.

“Is that why you left the message for me, at the hotel?” I asked. “’Cause you want to know why I’m here?”

She fanned out her match, sucked on her cigarette. “I wanna know how you can have the nerve to come to Baton Rouge and not look me up.”

“I’ve only been here a day,” I grinned. “And here I am.”

She pretended to pout. “And I had to go begging. All those letters I wrote…all those phone calls…”

“I have great affection for you, Alice Jean. But it took money to get me to come back to this state.”

“You are on a job.”

“That’s right.”

“Tell me about it.”

I waggled a scolding finger. “There’s such a thing as client confidentiality.”

“Warm in here. I oughta buy myself a nice big electric fan.” She unsashed her satin robe, opened it up some; gave the globes of her bosom a chance to cool off. She was right: all of sudden it was warm in here.

“I’m working for Mutual Insurance,” I said.

She inhaled. “Tell me more.”

“I don’t think so. Even if you take it all the way off.”

That made her smile. “You know what I like about you? You’re shifty, but you have standards.”

“You could take it off and call my bluff, you know. Might be worth a try.”

“Nate,” she said, and her hand found the back of my neck and she scratched and tickled and played with my hair. “I’m not in the enemy camp. I’m just curious.”

“Since when is Alice Jean Crosley not a part of the Huey Long machine?”

“Since that peckerwood Governor Leche fired me.”

I blinked. “What? You were fired? But, Alice-you know which bayous the bodies are buried in.”

She shrugged. “Didn’t matter, apparently. I was friendly with Jimmy Noe, and that was all it took.”

“Who’s Jimmy Noe?”

“He was governor, briefly, after O.K. Allen died. Just one of the many of Huey’s minions, squabblin’ over the spoils. But I like Jimmy better than that fat crook Leche. And Jimmy’s been lining up support around the state, and we were friendly, and so I got fired. All my relatives, too.”

“Hell of a thing.” I glanced around at her bungalow full of new furniture. “Looks like the Collector of Revenue may have collected a little revenue herself, over the years.”

“Moral indignation, from the Chicago delegation?”

“Just an idle observation. You know, I would’ve thought Seymour and the gang would’ve been up the river by now. When I was here last year, the tax boys were closing in.”

She laughed harshly. “Are you kidding? Nothin’ touches Seymour Weiss. Elmer Irey and his boys packed up their bags, not long after Huey was killed.”

“What?”

“Sure! All indictments pending against Seymour and the other ‘Longsters’ were dropped.”

“Sounds like the fix was in.”

She blew a perfect smoke ring. “Of course-clear from Washington, D.C. If Huey’s heirs will just cooperate with FDR’s administration, all sins are forgiven. That was the rumor around the statehouse.”

“Only it wasn’t just a rumor….”

She raised an eyebrow and gestured grandly with her Chesterfield. “Let’s put it this way-last June, Seymour Weiss was Louisiana’s national committeeman at the Democratic National Convention.”

And I thought Chicago was something.

“So, Nate,” she said, and she slipped the robe down to her waist and folded her arms across her treasure chest like a genie, “what brings you to Louisiana?”

“You really think a cheap, vulgar move like that would work on me?”

She put her hands on her hips.

I told her everything.

When I was finished, she got back in the robe, tied it tightly and got up. She began to pace and smoke.

“That isn’t fair,” I said.

“Fair, hell,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re crazy. Completely bughouse.”

“Why?”

She stood facing me; her face was white. “This is one case that you cannot go messin’ in. Understand? These people will kill you.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You don’t, huh? Do you know that when they lifted Carl Weiss’s body off the marble floor, it sounded like a hailstorm, with all those bullets fallin’ outa him? You know what kinda men you’re dealin’ with-Messina, McCracken, even your chum Roden. Homicidal thugs! They’ve been rewarded with fancy jobs, you know. They’re not gonna want that threatened.”

I waved at the air, dismissively. “If they kill me, it’s an admission of guilt. And another investigator will follow, and another, and eventually even in this swamp of a state, it’ll all catch up with ’em.”

“Meanwhile, Heller, you’re dead.”

She had a point.

She came around and sat next to me, very close; put her hand on my leg. “Why bother with this? You’re on a fool’s errand. Everybody in the state knows it’s possible, maybe even probable, that Huey got hit by a stray bullet in the close-quarter chaos of that hallway. But everybody also knows that Dr. Carl Weiss at the very least