He got up and went behind his desk and sat. I turned my chair around to face him. Through the windows behind him, the Mississippi looked choppy; the wind was picking up.
“You’re from Chicago,” he said.
“Right.”
“I remember you from ’32.”
“Right again.”
His frown was puzzled, not hostile. “What are you doin’ in town?”
“I’m looking into the Kingfish’s death.”
Now it turned hostile. “What do you mean, ‘lookin’ into’ it?”
“I’m working for an insurance company, trying to establish that Dr. Carl Weiss was responsible.”
He blinked. “What else could he be but responsible? He shot him!”
“There are other opinions.”
The big round head shook, no, no, no. “I don’t know anything about no other opinions. In a cowardly way, Senator Long was shot. That’s the whole story.”
A nervous bespectacled thirtyish male clerk, in a vest and suit pants, came in with two paper cups of coffee. He handed one to Joe, the other to me, and I thanked him. Joe, being a big shot on the dock board, didn’t say a word to him. If anything, that seemed only to relieve the clerk, as he went out.
I sipped my coffee, which was strong and black but not very hot. Then I said, “It would help, Joe, if you told me your version of the shooting.”
He took several gulps of his coffee, swilled it around in his mouth, possibly trying to eradicate the sleep taste of his nap.
“I don’t know nothing till the time the shots were fired,” he said. “When that doc fired the shot, I seen the Senator jump back and I knew he was killed.”
“What did you do, Joe?”
“I immediately run up, pull my rod out and unload it in that bastard.”
“Murphy Roden was scuffling with him, right?”
“I started firing when the guy broke loose from Murphy.”
According to Murphy’s story, Carl Weiss had been shot in the throat by this point; I doubted he’d broke away from anybody, after that.
But I asked, “He got loose from Murphy?”
“I guess. All I know is, I shot the man that shot Senator Long. I saw the pistol in his hand, too.”
“Some people say he didn’t have a gun.”
He had the coffee cup in his hand when he slammed that hand on the desk; the desk
Messina, glaring now, began licking the coffee off his hand.
Nonetheless, I ventured another comment: “Some people say the doctor slugged the Kingfish.”
“He didn’t slug him, he shot him.” The Neanderthal brow furrowed. “I thought you were the Kingfish’s friend!”
“I was.” I smiled, shrugged. “You know how it is, Joe.
He slapped his chest with a thick hand; his eyes were tortured. “I was his favorite! Some people made fun of me, ’cause I slept at his feet, sometimes. But he had to be protected! They can see that now, now that it’s too late!”
“Take it easy, Joe.”
His fist quivered in the air. “I loved that man. He was good to me. I was just sweepin’ up hair in a barbershop when he found me.”
“Joe, surely you’ve considered the possibility, that with all those slugs flying…”
He stood up, pushed his chair back with a fingers-on-black-board scrape on the wood floor. “You accusin’ me of somethin’?”
“No, I…”
He came around the desk and stood, facing me. His voice was trembling; his eyes had teared up. “You think I’d do that? Shoot the best friend I ever had?”
“I didn’t say that. Some people think one of the bullets could have ricocheted-”
I didn’t finish, because a huge fist was flying toward my face; I ducked back, to avoid it, which I did, but with his other hand, he shoved me, and I went backward, ass-over-tea-kettle, taking the chair with me, the rest of my coffee flying against the wall with a splash.
I landed on my back with a teeth-rattling jolt, and then I was looking up at him, and the grimacing little man seemed huge, towering over me, particularly his Florsheimed foot, which was poised to stomp me. I grabbed hold of it and yanked, and set him on his ass-hard. Everything in the room shook, and so did the frosted glass in the door and outer wall.
I got on my feet and so did he, and he crouched, like a wrestler about to make a play. So I picked up the chair and hit him with it.
In the movies, chairs bust in a million pieces when you do that; but this was a solid wood chair and it didn’t break. It just whacked into him and hurt him. Tough as he was, it still made the stocky little bastard drop to one knee and hug himself.
He was crying. Whether over the pain or his dead boss, I wouldn’t hazard a guess.
“Joe,” I said. “Honestly, I meant no offense. I had to ask the questions. But Joe, a friendly warning-touch me again, and I’ll fucking kill you.”
And I kicked the chair into the wall, where it made a hell of a racket, and, I hoped, my point.
Messina didn’t say anything. He was still on one knee, crying. Trying to scare him was probably about as useful as trying to put the fear of God into a potted plant.
The bespectacled clerk appeared in the doorway, looking like a startled rabbit.
“No more coffee, thanks,” I said, and got the hell out.
Diamond Jim Moran wore a double-breasted money green suit and a pale yellow shirt with a light green tie with a diamond stickpin spelling out DJM; the tinted lenses of his gold wire-frames matched the suit.
“How many pair of tinted glasses do you own, Jim?” I asked him. It was just the two of us, in a booth in the Blue Room on the first floor of the Roosevelt Hotel.
“Nineteen,” he said, as he studied the menu. He’d invited me for dinner and I’d accepted. “All different colors. Each one matchin’ a different double-breasted.”
Moran clashed with the blue-tinted glass of the glass-and-chrome cocktail lounge/restaurant with its circular bar and plush deco decor. Phil Harris would be performing later on the Blue Room’s surprisingly small stage; it was early-a little after six. We’d already had a drink-I’d had the Planter’s Punch (I was Ramos Gin-Fizzed out, house specialty or not) and Moran had something called a Roffignac.
“How’s the slot-machine business?” I asked.
“Flourishin’,” he said, reading the menu. “Flourishin’.”
“You and Dandy Phil Kastel getting along okay?”
“Famously. Famously.” He lowered the menu and looked over it at me; his battered pug’s puss seemed mildly troubled. “Though I am afraid, ’tween you, me and the lamppost, that we been a little overly ambitious.”
“How so?”
He brushed his mustache with a thumbnail. “Well, gettin’ the little devils put in places like restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, cigar stores-establishments that never seen a slot machine of any kind, before-that may be askin’ for trouble. Some of the women’s clubs and ministers are gettin’ after Bob.”
“Bob?”
“Mayor Maestri.”
Alice Jean had mentioned His Honor the Mayor-a short, swarthy, inarticulate Sicilian whose business interests included whorehouses and gambling dens-who had been inserted, by Huey, into the office of mayor, unopposed, without an election.
I hadn’t looked at my menu yet. “Will Kastel pull out, if the slots go?”
