“I think he may have just smacked Huey in the mouth, and got shot for the trouble. Talking to Tom Ed Weiss makes me think somebody got the doctor’s handgun out of his car
She shook her head, no. “I don’t think so.”
She seemed certain.
“Why, Alice Jean?”
“The Weiss family knows; so do the Pavys. But I bet they didn’t tell you. And if you ask them, they’ll deny it.”
“Deny
Her smile was not one of amusement. “Huey had a nasty habit of smearing his enemies…sometimes it was with charges of mental illness in the family. Usually it was racial.”
“Racial?”
“Oh, I know you people up North are much too high-minded and advanced to have any racial prejudices or racial difficulties of any kind. But we backward Southern folk haven’t quite worked it out, yet.”
“Alice Jean-what the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Huey needing to fight the opposition to his gerrymander bill. Oh, he could push the bill through, but there’d have been an outcry. Judge Pavy was popular, you know, respected even by his enemies. Except Huey…Huey didn’t really respect anybody, did he?”
“You knew him better than I.”
“Yes…and neither of us knew him at all. How could I love him, Nate? How could I love somebody capable of smearing a fine man like Judge Pavy with public accusations of the most ruinous sort? Huey…Huey was preparing to spread the word that the Pavy family had ‘nigger blood.’”
I frowned. “Huey had done that sort of thing before?”
“Oh yes.”
“And down here, it’s…it’s something you kill over?”
“You definitely kill over. If you were a father, with an infant son you loved very much, and your family was faced with such a scurrilous slur…you might even willin’ly die for it.”
So this was the “aspersion” Huey was casting that Tom Ed had referred to.
“I’m glad to have you back, Nate,” she said, slipping her arms around me; her Chanel Number Five tickled my nostrils. “But don’t look into this morass of unpleasantness anymore. I don’t want another man I love to die in a storm of gunfire.”
She stood and slipped off the robe and turned her perfect dimpled behind to me and walked slowly out of the room.
What she’d had to say was troubling, and my mind was spinning, but you know what?
I followed her.
20
The Reverend Gerald L. K. Smith, his hawklike nose unable to defeat his blond boyishness, was pink and hairless and plump, like a big baby, as he lounged in the large bathtub, overflowing with frothy white bubbles.
“We’re both men,” the enormous child said, with a smile that had charmed many a dollar from a wallet, “so I trust you don’t mind meeting with me in this fashion…. After all, some might consider it undignified.”
I was sitting on the toilet. Lid down. The gleaming white-tiled restroom-in one of the finest suites at the St. Charles Hotel in New Orleans-was larger than some hotel rooms I’d stayed in.
“I’m grateful to get any audience,” I said, “at such short notice.”
He was soaping one fleshy arm with a pink bar-no washcloth for such delicate skin. “Miss Crosley said you’re undertaking an investigation that may prove embarrassing to the curs who displaced from power both that fine young lady and myself.”
It was nice to know that this man of God held so high an opinion of the late Kingfish’s mistress. Who, incidentally, had reluctantly agreed to help me line up a few key interviews, like this one.
“Yes sir, I am undertaking just such an investigation,” I said with ludicrous formality; but sometimes the only way to deal with pompous people is to shove pomposity back at ’em. “I understand I’m lucky to catch you in Louisiana at all, these days.”
He squinted one eye; a fleck of stray bubbles gave him an extra, if foamy, eyebrow. “I’ve presently moved my headquarters to California. I’ve thrown my lot in with Dr. Townsend.”
Dr. Francis E. Townsend of California-a mild-mannered, far more benign version of Huey-was well known for his utopian ideals and notions of higher taxes and generous old-age pensions. His gentle approach seemed at odds with Reverend Smith’s rabble-rousing style, but I could well understand that Townsend would relish inheriting the millions of Huey’s Share the Wealth Club members.
The man of God’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Mr. Heller, before we speak further, I must ask you an… embarrassing, but necessary, question. I already asked Miss Crosley, and she gave me certain assurances. But I must ask you, sir.”
“Well, go ahead, Reverend. By all means.”
“Are you Hebrew? Your last name demands the question.”
“Yes, and it’s a fair one,” I said. “Most ‘Hellers’ are Jewish. My family on my father’s side is German and Catholic. My mother’s people were Irish Catholic.”
This was, of course, a lie, except for the part about my mother.
“Frankly, I would prefer Protestant,” he sighed. “But Catholicism is the far lesser of the two evils. I have a general policy of mistrusting Jews. Some consider this attitude anti-Semitic.”
“No, really?”
He nodded; he had a billy-goat soap-bubble beard. “It is, frankly, a political stand. A
“It’s very sad, sir.”
“And, of course, it’s no surprise that the assassin himself, this Carl Weiss, was a Jew.”
“Actually, he wasn’t.”
He sat up in the tub, sloshing; a few bubbles plopped onto the tile floor. “What are you saying, man?”
I shrugged. “‘Weiss,’ like Heller, is a German name. There are Weisses who are Gentiles, and Dr. Weiss and his family happen to be Catholics.”
This news disturbed him no end. “I find this difficult to believe.”
“Nonetheless, it’s true. Of course, he may not have been an assassin at all.”
Patches of bubbles decorating his pink chest, the Reverend frowned in confusion; for all his abilities-speaking before the public, scheming behind the scenes-Dr. Gerald L. K. Smith was just not very smart.
“What are you saying, man? The Kingfish is our martyred leader!”
“I didn’t say he wasn’t.”
But he was off and running. Gesturing, splashing, turning his bubble bath into a stormy sea, Dr. Smith delivered a brief sermon: “They called him a dictator, but it was the dictatorship of the surgical theater. Huey Long was a political surgeon, working for the welfare of the patient!”
“Right…”
“There are those who claim he was corrupt! I say he merely yielded on lesser principles to serve a greater one. Share the wealth! Every man a king, and no man wears a crown!”
Maybe so, but I was sitting on the throne.
“The point is, Reverend,” I said, hoping we could get back to it, “I believe those around Huey Long were responsible for his death.”
Fire flared in the pale blue eyes. “Yes…I can see it. A conspiracy. Surrounded by those vile Hebrews…. You’re saying the Jews killed Huey, just as they killed our Lord!”
