Blood and Thunder

beauty.”

I gave him half a smile, using the side of my face that wasn’t puffy. “How did you happen to be there, Murph? Or do you usually stroll through the swamp around dawn, Sunday mornings?”

A grin flickered. “Just like a dick. No gratitude, just questions.”

“Thanks for saving my life. What the hell were you doing there?”

“Carlos called me.”

“Carlos called you?”

“Yeah. He’s no flunky, you know-he’s a modern-day Laffite over there in Jefferson Parish, on the West Bank. It’s wide-open over there. They make money hand over fist.”

“And he called you.”

He shrugged. “He and Dandy Phil Kastel and Mayor Maestri got a good thing goin’. Got a lot of good things goin’, in fact. Carlos is no fool-he figured Big George had gone off on a personal tangent, and wanted to make sure helpin’ bump you off was kosher with the boys in the backroom.”

“And you weren’t about to let Big George ‘bump off’ your good pal, were you?”

“Course not.”

“Killing an insurance investigator from up North, who was working on the Long case-think of the trouble it could stir up.”

“Well, that’s true-but friendship…”

“Fuck friendship. You used me.”

He frowned, more confused than irritated. “Used you? Now, how the hell did I use you?”

“You wanted to find out what Dr. Vidrine knew. What he had.” I gave him a full, lovely smile. “What better way to do that than send somebody working to take the Longsters down? Somebody like me.”

“You’re talkin’ fool nonsense, Nate.”

“Well, he has the bullets, Murph. Two of ’em. One’s a.38, the other’s a.45.”

His face whitened; his expression was long and lifeless.

“But,” I said, “he isn’t gonna use ’em.”

Relief showed through. “Not gonna use ’em?”

“If I’m lyin’, you’re dyin’,” I said cheerfully. “He just wants to be left alone, to live his life, and do his work. An admirable point of view. If you boys stay away from him, everything will be just fine. But he’s got those slugs spread out with relatives or lawyers or something, and if he dies under circumstances that even seem the least little bit mysterious, the bullets will surface. And somehow I don’t think it’ll be the assistant superintendent of police whose desk that evidence gets delivered to.”

“Nobody’s gonna bother Vidrine,” he said somberly. “You got my word.”

“I don’t need your word. Vidrine’s got you good ol’ boys by the short and curlies. And you know it.”

He shook his head, laughed humorlessly. “You don’t seem very grateful….”

“What about Big George, Murph? You’re a cop. How did you handle it? How’s it gonna play in the papers? It was justifiable homicide, sure, but one of the state’s top cops, shootin’ down the building superintendent of LSU? That won’t look good.”

Murphy said nothing.

“Or did Big George take a permanent vacation? Let me guess-don’t tell me. Do Carlos and his boys also make Southern-style gumbo, from time to time? Right now, McCracken wouldn’t happen to be in that big gray washer tub, marinating in lye, would he?”

Murphy stood. “You don’t seem to be in the mood for a visitor….”

“By the way,” I said, “d’you think you could have your coppers take a look for that rental Ford of mine?”

“Already did,” he said softly. “It’s out front.”

“Good. My gun’s in the glove compartment. It’s got sentimental value.”

“We at the state police are always anxious to serve the public,” he said dryly. He waved a sour good-bye with his Panama, and was halfway out the bedroom door when I called to him.

“Hey, Murph-stick around. I want to fill you in on my investigation. I want to tell you what really happened in that capitol hallway, on a certain Sunday evening last year.”

“Is that right?” His attention was piqued. “If mem’ry serves, I took that ’un in, firsthand….”

“Forget it, then.”

He strolled back in. “Run it by me, why don’t ya?”

“All right,” I said. “Sit back down. Like we say around these parts-set a spell.”

Murphy sighed heavily and sat back down on the little vanity chair; he began twisting his hat in his hands again.

“It starts with Seymour Weiss,” I said. “Seymour, and probably a number of others in the Long organization, were getting unhappy with Huey. Specifically, with Huey’s unquenchable-and unrealistic-thirst for power. Let’s face it, state political machines all over the country were getting fat on New Deal dollars…but not the Long machine. The Kingfish was too busy battling FDR, alienating the cash source and blocking funds from getting to Louisiana. Now, sacrificing short-term profits for long- term goals is fine-but Huey’s presidential ambitions were a pipe dream.”

“The Kingfish had followers all over the country,” Murphy said. “His Share the Wealth Clubs…”

“Eight million strong. Impressive number. But not enough votes to put a man in the White House, not by a long shot. And just recently Huey’d come a cropper trying to put his man in power in neighboring Mississippi-and if the Kingfish couldn’t sway his own next-door neighbor, if he couldn’t even guarantee carrying the South, what in the hell was the point of a presidential push?”

“Some say he was setting the stage for 1940,” Murphy said.

“And maybe he was. Trouble is, it was 1935 and the federal tax boys were breathing down the Longsters’ collective necks. Now, Seymour knew that without the Kingfish around, he could deliver enough votes to FDR to end both the federal tax probe and the pending congressional inquiry into the constitutionality of Long’s dictatorship.”

“All of a sudden you’re an expert on Louisiana politics.”

“I’m from Chicago, Murph. I’ve been an expert on corrupt politics since grade school. Anyway, it’s just a little over a year after the assassination, and where are we? The Long machine is backing the man Huey used to affectionately call ‘that crippled fucker.’ Federal money’s flowing like water into the Pelican State, and all the tax investigations and congressional inquiries have mysteriously shut down.”

A smile twitched. “You know what they say about politics making strange bedfellows.”

“I sure do. And Seymour has a long history of strange bedfellows-like Louis LeSage, for instance, lobbyist and vice president of Standard Oil. Standard, Huey’s arch enemy, who on the eve of Huey’s murder were just champing at the bit to make a backroom deal. A deal Governor Leche, of course, has since cut. You see, Seymour is one savvy character-he could read the handwriting on the wall: the Long machine could run much more smoothly, and profitably, without the Kingfish around. After all, the Long machine was designed to work on the state level, not national. Huey’s megalomaniac ambitions were derailing that smooth-running machine.”

Murphy smirked dismissively. “But without Huey, where did that leave his ‘machine’?”

“Well, it’s running on all cylinders right now; I saw Leche’s little hunting lodge. It’s as simple as this, Murph: at some point last year, it became clear to Seymour that Huey Long would make a better martyr than a leader.”

He was shaking his head, no. “Seymour and Huey were like brothers.”

“Cain and Abel were brothers. Seymour was also Huey’s treasurer, and he alone knew how much unrecorded cash money was in Huey’s ‘dee-duct box’…it was at least a million. Probably much more…and all that money disappeared when Huey was murdered.”

“Murdered,” Murphy said, “by Dr. Carl Weiss.”

“No. Somebody else, Murph.”

“Who then? Overzealous bodyguards? Even if that were true, it wouldn’t be ‘murder’….”

“Oh, it’s murder, all right.”