Blood and Thunder

this butter-smooth medium-rare New York strip steak but Nate Heller.

As Huey dined on morsels plundered from the plates of others, he expounded on his enemies: Roosevelt’s postmaster and confidant Jim Farley was “the Nabob of New York,” Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace was “that ignoramus from Iowa,” Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes was “the chinch bug of Chicago.”

Mostly, though, he railed about FDR.

“He’s very popular right now, Huey,” Seymour Weiss said quietly, eating the few tidbits of lobster tail that Huey had left on his majordomo’s plate.

“I can take him,” Huey said pugnaciously. “He’s a phony. I can take this Roosevelt. He’s scared of me, Seymour.” He snorted a laugh. “I can out-promise that son of a bitch any day of the week, and he knows it.”

“Excuse me, Senator,” someone said. The voice was male, mellow, slightly nasal.

At first I thought it was Jack Benny, and there was a resemblance, but then I realized this was another, if lesser, radio star: Phil Baker. I’d seen him in vaudeville in Chicago-the Benny similarity extended to his use of a musical instrument, an accordion substituting for Benny’s violin. Baker was a better musician, a pleasant singer, but not, in my opinion, particularly funny.

“The Armour Jester!” Huey said, standing, brimming with enthusiasm. “Why, son, you’re the best thing on the Blue Network!”

As they shook hands, the smiling Baker, hair slicked back, in a dark blue suit with dark blue bow tie, said, “I’m not gonna be on for Armour, anymore, Senator. I’m movin’ to CBS, for Gulf Oil.”

“So long as it ain’t Standard.”

They both laughed; everybody knew Huey Long and Standard Oil were bitter enemies.

“I just signed the contract today, actually,” Baker said. “Real piece of luck.”

“What’s that, son?”

“I’m getting Will Rogers’s Sunday time slot.”

Will Rogers and Wiley Post had died in a plane crash in Alaska two weeks ago. Real piece of luck.

This good fortune had Baker bubbling. “Senator, I want you to meet the two most beautiful girls in New York, my wife, Peggy, and her niece, Cleanthe Carr.”

Baker, who my trained detective’s eye placed at around forty, had a younger, quite attractive wife with dark blonde hair, chic and shapely in a black-and-white print satin evening dress with matching gloves.

But next to her was a honey-blonde eyeful of probably eighteen, blue-eyed and sparkling of smile, her slender curves well served by a rose-color brocade taffeta gown that left her arms bare. Her shoulders were covered by puffs of sleeve tied with bows, her heart-shaped neckline modest but alluring.

“Well, howdy do, ladies,” Huey said elegantly.

“A pleasure, Senator,” Mrs. Baker said.

“Cleanthe is Gene Carr’s daughter, Senator,” Baker said, as the Kingfish approached the girl with the same look in his eyes he would give the person-next-to-him’s plate of food.

“What a charmin’ child,” he said, taking her hands in his. “‘Cleanthe’-that’s a nice Southern-soundin’ name for an East Coast kiddo like you, honey.”

Her smile dimples seemed about to burst her pretty face; even for someone with a radio-star uncle, meeting the Kingfish was a big deal. And getting fussed over by the famous is hard to shrug off, even if you aren’t an eighteen-year-old girl.

“Gene Carr is her father,” Baker told him again, as if that were important.

“Gene Carr?” Huey asked absently, his eyes bulging and full of the girl.

“The syndicated cartoonist?” Baker asked, seeking recognition. “His panel, ‘Metropolitan Movies,’ is very popular.”

“Oh, that Gene Carr,” Huey said. He was still holding the girl’s hands. Staring at her. “Don’t imagine there’s a cartoon man anywhere on earth, under God’s livin’ sun, that’s better known.”

I’d never heard of Carr, although Huey may have. Of course, I didn’t read the comics. But I would have said, “What about Walt Disney?” if I’d been part of the conversation, which I wasn’t.

The girl, however, was beaming, hearing this praise heaped on her father.

“Pull yourselves up some chairs, and join us!” Huey said gaily, nudging Seymour to make room for the honey blonde. Lou Irwin, on Huey’s other side, made room for Baker and his wife. I was next to Seymour, and scooted down accordingly.

“Ha! Ha! Oh boy,” Baker said, treating us to an inane radio catch phrase of his. “Imagine finding a Kingfish inside a stork.”

But Huey didn’t laugh or even seem to be paying attention to Baker; he was massaging the honey blonde with his eyeballs.

“That’s my orchestra, you know,” Baker said, nodding toward the stage. “Frank Shields and his boys, I mean. They’re on my radio show.”

“You want some champagne, young lady?” Huey asked her. “Seymour, pass that bubble water down heah!”

“Cleanthe is an aspiring artist herself,” Baker said, finally grasping the only subject that interested Huey at the moment. “She’s going to study in France.”

“Why get involved with them highfalutin’ suckers?” Huey asked her earnestly. “Honey, we got art classes at LSU.”

The orchestra was making a decent enough job of “I’m in the Mood for Love.” Reading Huey’s mind, perhaps.

“Just how good an artist is this little girl?” the Kingfish asked Baker, eyeing her in a manner that seemed unlikely to assess artistic skill.

“She’s every bit as good a cartoonist as her father,” Baker said.

Huey grabbed one of the napkins, with its top-hatted stork emblems. He dug in an inside pocket and came back with a fountain pen. He put the napkin before her, and held out the pen like a dare.

“Then let’s see ya sketch me, young lady!”

The young woman, who as yet had not spoken, did a quick, deft caricature of Huey with the fountain pen; in bold strokes, she caught him without flattering, or insulting him, which was a good trick for any caricaturist. She depicted him frozen in mid-hellfire speech: arms out, hair flying. Mouth open. It seemed the most natural way to depict him.

He held the little napkin before him like a pocket mirror he was looking into, his eyes wide, his face a blank putty mask. Then he smiled, as if he relished the reflection.

“Normally,” she said, in measured tones at odds with her college-girl good looks, “I work in wash, or charcoal.”

“How would you like a job?” he asked her. He wasn’t looking at her with backwoods wanton lust anymore; he was appraising her as the talented young woman she was.

“You mean, in the art field, Senator?”

“I don’t mean in the cotton field, missy. I jest finished writin’ my latest masterpiece…li’l ol’ tome called My First Days in the White House. Thought I best write my memoirs of my presidential years ’ fore I got there, ’cause I’ll be too busy durin’, and after’s way too late.”

I was eating my dessert, some cherry cheesecake; but sweet as it was, this latest explosion of Huey b.s. made me smile more. The guy was outrageous; you had to give him that.

“Miss Carr,” he said almost formally, “I have been considerin’ adding some caricature illustrations to my book. Of myself and the other public figures depicted therein. And I think you’re the perfect man for the job. So to speak.”

Her eyes were as wide as they were blue. She seemed flabbergasted, but had the presence of mind to say, “Why, I’d be honored, Senator.”

“Is he serious about that book?” I whispered to Seymour.

Seymour, who was pouring himself some champagne, nodded, and whispered back: “He finished dictating it last week. Intends it to be a major tool in his presidential effort-that’s why we’re in New York.”

“What is?”

“To place the book with a publisher.”