Blood and Thunder

“Precisely. Now, when you called my office, you said you were trying to establish that Carl Weiss was indeed the assassin.”

I had told him this at Alice Jean’s suggestion: had I said anything else, the judge would never have consented to meet with me.

“That’s right,” I said. “You see, Mrs. Long is rather financially strapped, so she’s put in a double-indemnity claim. She gets a bigger death benefit if Huey died accidentally.”

“Caught by a stray bullet from Messina or Murphy Roden, I suppose?” He shook his head sadly; he traced lines in the moisture on the cocktail glass-even in the dimly lighted hotel bar, the big diamond danced with reflected light. “It’s truly sad. Can’t blame the poor woman. Huey didn’t put much cash away, for himself, y’know; it all went into his political life.”

“You seem to be skeptical about that theory-that the death might have been accidental.”

The dark blue eyes narrowed. “I was in the thick of it, young man.” He looked into his cocktail, as if it were a crystal ball; but he was seeking the past, not the future.

He said somberly, “I was saying hello to Huey when this man of small stature, dressed in a white suit, flashed among us. He had a little black automatic in his right hand. He was right next to me-I put my hands on his arm and tried to deflect the bullet, as he was firing. Then another of the boys-I later learned it was Murphy Roden- grabbed at him, too, and I shoved the man, who I later learned was Dr. Carl Weiss, and Murphy went down with ’im, but not all the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dr. Weiss was sort of…crouchin’. Tryin’ to shoot again.”

“You feel certain it was Weiss’s bullet that hit Huey, and not one of the bodyguards’?”

“I should say. Huey cried out when he got shot, spun around, and ran down the hall like a scared deer. Then the gunfire escalated.” He shook his head; the piercing gaze glazed for a moment. “I served in the World War-I was a machine gunner-but I never before heard anything like it. A machine gun fires, oh, three hundred to six hundred bullets a minute. Once the shooting started, it sounded like that and then some.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t hit yourself.”

“I just kind of stepped back and it went on before my eyes. Gunsmoke and marble dust made a fog.” He sighed. “Then I went looking for Huey. You’re the one that got him to the hospital, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Otherwise, I don’t know that I’d have talked to you. We both tried, didn’t we?”

“Sir?”

“To save his life. He was a great man. Man of the people.”

And he sipped his cocktail.

His diamond winked at me.

21

1 What visitor to New Orleans wasn’t enraptured by the everyday drama and pageantry of the fourteen miles of docks along this half-mile-wide stretch of the Mississippi, where flags of all nations waved from mastheads, where ferries crossed and recrossed, where paddlewheels churned by invoking bygone days of ruffle-shirted gamblers, where seagulls from the nearby Gulf of Mexico cried mournfully as they trailed ships in search of food. Coffee docks, cotton docks, molasses sheds, bustled with activity; hundreds of sweat-stained workers carried green bunches of bananas from the holds of ships to waiting freight cars on riverside railroad tracks, while fat colored gals in snow white turbans wove their way through the laborers selling sandwiches and sweetcakes.

Administration of the Port of New Orleans was a formidable task, and a great responsibility, regulating commerce and traffic of the harbor, not to mention the wharves and public buildings, and construction of new wharves and sheds. After all, somebody had to collect fees from vessels using the facilities of the port’s forty-three docks.

This grave responsibility fell to the Board of Commissioners of the Port of New Orleans, five public-spirited citizens appointed by the governor. I was about to call on one of these noble public servants, who served their six- year terms without pay.

His name was Joe Messina.

The dock board was at the end of, and facing, Canal Street, between the railroad tracks and the river; the President steamboat was docked nearby. The cheap concrete building-aggregate with shells stirred in, also used for the nearby wharves-was a two-story building with many windows; its blocky ugliness was offset by a vast, lovely, colorful flower garden that served as its front yard.

The downstairs was mostly a countered-off area with secretaries and clerks at desks; the board members had their offices upstairs. That’s where I found Messina, beyond a wall of frosted glass and wood, through an unlocked door with his name on it-sleeping on his brown leather couch in a small wood-and-plaster office that had a desk but no file cabinets. The only paperwork on the desk was some crumpled napkins and a wadded-up paper coffee cup.

Windows looked out on the muddy river and its yellow banks and traffic that consisted of everything from driftwood to ocean-going vessels; at the right, a high via-duct cut off the view. The morning was cloudy, and shadows were sliding over the rippling surface of the river, as if great amorphous sea creatures were swimming just below the surface.

The great amorphous creature on the couch was snoring; he was wearing a white shirt unbuttoned at his thick hairy neck, buttons straining at his generous belly, and dark suit pants on his stumpy legs. His big flat feet were clad in socks with clocks; a pair of black, well-shined Florsheims were on the floor nearby. His suit coat and a tie were slung on a coat tree.

I pulled a chair around and sat; I nudged the couch, with my foot, just a little. When it didn’t stir him, I nudged harder.

He awoke with a start, his snoring turning into a snort that sounded like he was trying to swallow his nose.

“What’s the deal?” he said, trying to right himself, like a turned-over alligator. “What’s the deal?”

“Hi, Joe.”

Finally he managed to sit up, and he rubbed his face with one catcher’s-mitt hand and scratched his belly with the other; his slightly thinning dark hair was mussed. His dark little eyes focused on me.

“I know you! What’s your name?”

“Nate Heller,” I said.

“That’s right!” The blank round face broke into an awful parody of a grin. “You’re my pal!”

“I am?”

He stood and came over and patted me on the back; it about knocked the wind out of me. “You’re the guy that rushed the Kingfish to the hospital! You’re okay.”

“Thanks, Joe.”

“You want coffee? We got coffee.”

I shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind.”

He padded out into the hall in his stocking feet and bellowed: “How about some coffee in here? Two coffees!”

He came back in, sat on the couch and got his shoes on. After he got them tied-which took all his concentration-he gestured around him, to his nearly empty office. The only art on the wall was a calendar of a little girl and her puppy and a framed photograph of Huey Long with his arm around a stiltedly smiling Messina.

“Some layout, huh?”

“Some layout. What do you do here, Joe?”

“I’m on the dock board!”

“Yeah, I gathered, but what…”

“We’re in charge of the docks.”

“Ah.”