Blood and Thunder

that, he suddenly seemed very small.

“I’ll find my own way out,” I said, and did, feeling pretty damn cocky but not relishing the savage expression on Big George McCracken’s battered face as his eyes trailed after me.

24

Once again we sat in the solarium on dark-stained wicker furniture, drinking iced tea. It was late afternoon, and the tropical garden of Mrs. Long’s backyard was cloaked in shadows that were gradually turning into dusk.

“Mr. Heller,” she said, and it was as if every word she spoke pained her, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts…” The pale blue eyes in the attractive oval face were troubled. She sat on the wicker couch with her hands folded around a handkerchief; her navy suit was touched with a rose pattern, a pink cloth corsage sewn at one shoulder.

I winced. “I don’t understand your reluctance, Mrs. Long. I’m certain we can get a considerable amount of money from Seymour and Leche and their cronies….”

“It’s blackmail money, Mr. Heller.”

“Not really. Think of it as finally getting to withdraw a few bucks from the ‘dee-duct box.’”

She shook her head, no. “It may be in name only, Mr. Heller, but I am a United States Senator. It wouldn’t be proper.”

I felt dizzy. “Aren’t you the same Mrs. Long who offered me a thousand bucks under the table, to favor her position in this investigation?”

Her smile was tiny and embarrassed as she looked at her lap. “Yes, I am. Perhaps it seems silly to you, having such a…flexible sense of ethics.”

I sighed and sat back. “Not really. I do it all the time.”

She looked at me with a painfully earnest expression. “What I want to know is, do you feel convinced that your investigation has shown my husband was killed accidentally?”

“I saw the bullets,” I said. “I’m no ballistics expert, but I’d say they matched the caliber of the guns the bodyguards were packing. Even though Dr. Vidrine wouldn’t hand the slugs over to me, I can say for a certainty that Senator Long was not shot by Carl Weiss.”

“Will the insurance agency accept your opinion?”

I shrugged. “I see no reason why not. Both you and they agreed to accept my conclusions. This isn’t a court of law-I don’t have to attach evidentiary exhibits. All I have to do is write a reasoned, logical report, citing the various interviews I conducted that have led me to believe Carl Weiss approached your husband, an argument ensued, the doctor struck your husband a blow, and the gunfire began.”

Her eyes were tight with thought. “And Mutual would pay the twenty-thousand-dollar double-indemnity claim?”

“I believe they would, yes.”

Her expression relaxed; she raised her chin. “Then that’s what I want you to do.”

“Is that it?” I asked, still trying to make heads or tails of this. “You want the truth to come out?”

She sighed, sat back. “Actually…I haven’t decided yet. The insurance company won’t make your findings public, will they?”

“No. It’s a confidential matter, between you and them.” I leaned forward, shaking my head. “Excuse me, ma’am, I don’t mean to be out of line…but I just don’t get it. I mean, if you were planning to expose Seymour and those trigger-happy Cossacks, that would be one thing. But if you aren’t, then this effort is strictly for the twenty- grand insurance payoff, and we can squeeze twenty times that out of those bastards! Excuse my French.”

She smiled gently, leaned forward and touched my hand. “Mr. Heller…there are other factors at play here. I have to live in this state. My son Russell has become very interested in the world of politics…. He’s fallen in love with Washington, and…well, I think Russell would like to finish what his father began, someday. But I believe…and I mean no disrespect to my late husband’s memory, which I cherish…I believe my son is a different sort of man than my husband. Russell is honest, ethical…he views politics as a pathway to social change.”

“He’s young.”

She nodded. “Yes he is. Huey was an idealist, once, before he learned to love power more than what he believed in. But Russell, Russell is different. Someday he’ll run for office, and he will run as Huey Long’s son. He will need friends, because as Huey Long’s son, he’s bound to have enemies, isn’t he? And these men, Seymour Weiss and Richard Leche and the others, they’re in political power, at least right now. For Russell’s sake, I don’t wish to alienate them.”

Rose Long was a lovely woman. Huey had been lucky to have her at his side when he made his climb; but somehow I figured her son would appreciate her more. Anyway, he ought to.

“So-you will write that report?” she asked.

“Yes, I will.”

Now she seemed embarrassed. “I’m afraid I don’t have your thousand dollars in the house, right now. And I won’t be able to get to the bank until Monday morning….”

Tomorrow was Sunday.

“My phone call didn’t give you much notice,” I said. “I’ll go back to my hotel room, write the report and drop by with it Monday afternoon, if that’s convenient.”

“As long as it’s before Tuesday morning. We’re heading back to Washington, Russell and Rose and I.”

I stood, hat in hand. “A pleasure doing business with you, ma’am,” I said. “And an education.”

She walked me to the door, her hand on my arm. “You know, you’re quite a remarkable young man.”

That was a new one.

I said, “What makes you think that?”

“You took a great risk, going into the lion’s den like that, this afternoon. Those men might have done anything.”

“They’re politicians. They pay people off, not bump people off.”

“Perhaps. But it was ingenious, your plan to serve both my interests and those of Mutual Insurance. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to accept it.”

“Me too,” I said. “I was figurin’ on hitting you up for ten percent of whatever I squeezed outa Seymour.”

We were at the front door. She shook her head and laughed; squeezed my arm. “Mr. Heller, you’re terrible.”

“That’s more like it,” I grinned, and went out.

She gave me a smile and a wave from the ornate entryway of the Mediterranean near-mansion, and I returned them as I walked out into a cool twilight, past broad-leafed banana trees, to the cement-block driveway. I climbed in the Ford, and I was just thinking there was an odd sort of medicinal smell in the car when something cold and hard and rectangular pressed against the back of my neck.

The nose of an automatic.

“How-do, you Yankee sumbitch,” Big George McCracken whispered in my ear. “You ’bout to find out how the bug feels when he gits stepped on.”

The nine-millimeter was in the glove compartment. I hadn’t thought I’d need it, calling on Mrs. Long, and hadn’t wanted to alarm her with a glimpse of it.

“What do you want, George?”

“Those two bullets they dug outa Huey,” he said.

“George…I don’t have ’em….”

“Sure you do,” he said.

“I don’t.”

“We’ll jus’ hafta talk about it, some.”

And a hand slipped around and pressed a chloroformed cloth in my face. My last thought, before slipping into blackness, was so that’s what the medicinal smell was….