“Hell, no! We’ll just move along onto the next thing.”
“And what’ll that be?”
“Pinball machines.” He clicked in his cheek. “Wait’ll you see the latest ones, with their electric lights and trick gadgets and bells and such. That’ll be the next big thing, wait and see.”
Those were made in Chicago, too.
I said, “Your invitation was a pleasant surprise.”
“When I heard you were in town,” he said, putting the menu down, “I wanted to get together.”
“How did you know I was in town, Jim?”
His smile was teasing; I couldn’t read his eyes-the green lenses blocked the view. “My office is here in the hotel, remember. Maybe the desk clerk told me.”
“Why would he?”
“Maybe a little bird. Word’s around you’re askin’ questions about Huey’s killin’. Only, nobody seems to have a fix on just where you stand on it.”
I shrugged. “I’m working for Mutual Insurance, following up on Mrs. Long’s double-indemnity claim.”
“Some people think you’re pushin’ fire.”
“What does that mean?”
“Causin’ trouble. Some people have the idea you want to clear Dr. Carl Weiss.”
“What people?”
He picked the menu back up, opened it and began browsing. “You really should start with the bouillabaisse- the New Orleans variety is sure ’nuff second to none. And we’ll have oysters Rockefeller, of course-even if this ain’t Antoine’s.”
“Did Kastel ask you to warn me off?”
His expression was affable. “Nobody asked me to warn nobody off. I jus’ invited an old fren’ out to dinner.”
“Jim-we’re not old friends. We met, briefly, last year. I’m surprised you even remember me..”
His expression turned somber. “I remember you. I remember ’cause it got back to me you tried to help the Kingfish. I loved that man.”
Not again.
He said, “You were down at the dock board, earlier t’day, weren’t you?”
“Yeah. So?”
“What kin’a fool thinks he can talk to Joe Messina and learn anything?”
“I learned Joe Messina is driving himself daffy thinking he might have killed his ‘best friend.’”
He shrugged his furry eyebrows. “You’re prob’ly right about that. Now, the jambalaya here is really quite respectable, for a fancy hotel…I mean, we’d have to go back down inta the Vieux Carre, to give you the true Creole experience.”
“What do you want with me, Moran?”
“I like ‘Jim’ better. You’re readin’ a threat into this, Nate. No threat. I
“You do?”
He sat back, viewed me appraisingly. “What are ya doin’ goin’ aroun’ the dock board, anyway? Three of the five members are ex-Huey bodyguards, and Seymour Weiss hisself is head man. What a setup for dope and other smugglin’ payoffs, and general waterfront shakedowns…. Those boys must be gettin’ nice and rich-even a dumbbell like Messina.”
“I hear
“That’s the truth. Big George McCracken? He’s buildin’ superintendent out at LSU, now-soakin’ up this federal money that’s flowin’ again. Murphy Roden got appointed assistant superintendent of the state coppers.”
“And none of ’em are going to like me poking around in this case. Not when maybe they accidentally shot their boss.”
He looked at me over the tinted glasses. “
“What are you saying?”
He shrugged. His voice was so soft it was barely audible. “I’m not saying anything. But sottiethin’s been botherin’ me a long, long time…and you’re the first person who I can maybe risk sharin’ it with.”
“Sharing what?”
He sat forward, keeping his voice sotto. “Last year, ’round when you came callin’, some of these guys bringin’ them Chief slot machines down from Chicago was shootin’ their mouths off to Dandy Phil about the Cermak rubout”
The back of my neck began to tingle.
“They said to Dandy Phil, ‘If Huey Long’s givin’ ya money trouble, you oughta do what Frank Nitti done.’ And Dandy Phil says, ‘What?’ And they tell Dandy Phil, ‘Nitti bumped him.’ And Dandy Phil says, ‘You’re kiddin’.’ And they say, ‘Kiddin’ my ass! He bumped off the goddamn mayor of Chicago!’”
It was true. Most people thought a crazed assassin named Zangara had missed, when he shot Mayor Cermak, who’d been standing near FDR at a rally for the President-elect at Miami in 1932. Others-like me-knew that Roosevelt was not Zangara’s target; knew that Zangara had been a one-man Sicilian suicide squad out to avenge the corrupt Cermak’s own failed attempt to have Capone’s successor, Frank Nitti, killed.
“Are you listenin’, Nate?”
I nodded numbly.
“Anyway, they told Dandy Phil, ‘Do it right, set it up from the inside, and the most important thing-find yourself a patsy. Do that, and it’ll get written off as a political assassination.’”
“When…when was this?”
“When they was bringin’ down one of the first loads of them Chiefs. Probably a few weeks before you come down, last year. Of course, they was prob’ly jus’ shootin’ off their big mouths…. You
“I’m familiar with it,” I said. “Too familiar.”
“And why’s that?”
I could barely get the words out. “I was there-in Miami. I was working as one of Cermak’s bodyguards.”
“Ouch! Remind me not to hire you for protection,” Diamond Jim said, bugging his eyes. “Aw! Here’s the waiter. Hope you’re hungry, Nate….”
22
State Police Headquarters was on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, out Florida Boulevard, in a flat, lushly wooded area. The building was new-a V-shaped white-washed brick two-story with its blunt bottom facing Foster Drive. I pulled my rental Ford into a driveway that divided to form a circle with a garden in the middle. Like the dock board building, this was a pedestrian structure whose appearance was gussied up: vivid flower beds were all around it, with moss-draped oaks here and there, providing a Louisianian touch.
Over the two front doors in the blunt bottom of the V were the bas-relief words: louisiana state police. A pair of troopers in spiffy green-and-black uniforms were coming out as I went in. At the reception counter inside the front door, a policewoman in gray sent me down the left wing of the V, where on either side was a row of offices with frosted glass and names.
One of them was MURPHY RODEN, ASSISTANT SUPERINTENDENT.
I knocked.
“Come on in,” Murphy’s voice said.
I stepped inside. Blond, rugged Roden, looking fit and trim as ever in white shirt and blue tie, was on the phone, swiveled to one side in his desk chair, looking out the window at the driveway flower garden.
His office was the opposite of Messina’s: half a dozen file cabinets, a desk cluttered with paperwork and
