I walked her along.
“Tell me why I’m bad for his public image,” she said, “and pawin’ that little blonde chippy, out in fronta God and the Astors and ev’rybody, isn’t. Tell me that!”
She leaned against me, and I continued supporting her with an arm around her waist, as I worked the key in the door. The ostrich feathers on her beret tickled my nose, and I blew at them, to get them out of my line of vision. Even leaning against me, she was weaving. Spewing that champagne from her system and onto my poor suit hadn’t seemed to make her any less drunk.
The room was small but, typically for this hotel, well appointed: dark, modern furnishings, a pale green carpet muffling the elephant footsteps of our double entry.
I risked allowing her to stand on her own steam. She wobbled, but didn’t fall; she was watching the floor with frowning fascination. What she perceived the floor as being up to, I couldn’t hazard a guess.
“Are you going to be all right now?” I asked her. I was standing at the door, which was open.
“Shut the door,” she said. She tossed her beret toward a chair, missed by a mile. “What’s your name again?”
“Nate Heller.”
She looked like she was going to cry. “You been awful nice. What’s your name?”
“Good-night, Alice Jean.”
But before I could go, she stumbled over to me, and fell into my arms: it was not an embrace. More a collapse.
Hugging me, to keep from falling, she said, “Goddamn bastard. Goddamn bastard. Undo me.”
“What?”
She stood away from me, weaving, but more or less keeping her footing. She wiggled her fingers. “Bananas.”
“What?”
“Got bananas for fingers. Can’t do a thing with ’em. Undo me.” With considerable effort, as if backing a big automobile into a tiny parking place, she maneuvered her body, turning her back to me, and I got the message: she needed help with her zipper.
I unzipped the black gown and a beautifully curved, wonderfully pale back revealed itself, right down to the dimples over her full little ass. She wore scanty step-ins, but no camisole, under the gown. The banana fingers managed to brush the dress off either shoulder and the garment dropped to her feet in a black beaded puddle.
Somehow she stepped out of the puddle without falling, but when she tried to take her right heel off, I had to catch her, a bundle of drunken but firm and beautifully rounded flesh in my hands. While I supported her, she got the heels off, then she stumbled a few steps, in the cream-color lace step-ins, matching garter belt and dark-seamed silk stockings.
A man of true moral fiber would have been disgusted by this drunken display; me, I had a raging hard-on.
She stumbled toward the room’s single bed and fell face down; instantly, she began to snore. I studied her for a few moments; one of her bare breasts, her left one, ballooned interestingly on the bed as she pressed her slumbering weight against it. What would a man of true moral fiber do? Neither I, nor my hard-on, had a clue.
She was tiny, and lifting her in my arms was no trick, though getting the bedspread and sheets pulled back, while cradling her like that, was. I deposited my pretty, unconscious bundle between the sheets, making sure her head was resting comfortably against a fluffy pillow, and I tucked her in.
And that-believe it or not, to quote Mr. Ripley-was all I did.
Back in my own room, on the same floor, it took me forever to get to sleep. I lay in the dark on my back and stared at the ceiling and thought about the perfect little body on that foulmouthed, drunken little dame; thought about holding her, naked, in my arms. Thought about tucking her in and leaving. Thought about what a schmuck I was.
I didn’t even realize I’d fallen asleep when the phone on the nightstand rang, startling me awake.
“Y-yes?”
“Kingfish speakin’. Over at Phil Baker’s place.”
My fingers fumblingly found the switch on the lamp by the bed; I could see my watch, but my eyes weren’t focusing yet.
“Yes?” I said again. It was the best I could manage-my mind was as fuzzy as my mouth.
Huey, on the other hand, was peppy as a pup. “Meet me in the lobby, long ’bout fifteen minutes from now. So we can finish up what we were talkin’ about, before.”
Now my eyes could see the time. “Jesus, Huey, it’s after three a.m.!”
“See ya in fifteen, son.”
I stumbled to the sink and threw some water on my face; powdered up my toothbrush and got the sour taste out of my mouth. Did the Kingfish ever sleep, I wondered? My suit was still damp, but I’d put my lightweight white seersucker on a hanger, and the wrinkles had pretty well hung out.
The lobby was quiet, the coffee shop closed, though a skeleton crew manned the marble check-in, a lone bellboy was on duty, and the newsstand was apparently open all night. I bought a Racing News, just in case I had time to get out to Saratoga while I was in the area.
So I sat reading my paper, minding my own business, chaperoning a potted plant, enjoying the solitude of the nearly empty lobby, when I noticed the guy.
He looked respectable and yet…he didn’t. He was small, pale, brown-haired, probably in his mid-forties, very average looking…except. Behind his thick, almost scholarly glasses, wild eyes flashed; and-despite the air-cooled lobby-that high, intelligent forehead required an occasional mopping with a handkerchief. His mustache was well tended, but his cheeks were stubbly-he needed a shave. His dark suit looked expensive, but it also looked rumpled, and his tasteful striped silk tie was loose. He carried his hat in one hand and a briefcase in the other, and he prowled the lobby like a nervous cat.
Several years before, I had been on the scene when an assassin named Zangara shot Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago, in Miami, Florida, where the mayor was sharing the spotlight with the supposed intended victim, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Perhaps that made me more suspicious than most, even propelled me toward outright paranoia, possibly; but looking at this jumpy, off-kilter character, knowing that Senator Huey P. Long, the Kingfish himself, was not only staying at this hotel but on his way to this very lobby this very instant, made me wonder if I was observing a specimen of that oh-so-special breed: the potential political assassin.
I was trying to decide whether to buttonhole the guy when through the front entry, like a train noisily entering the station, the Kingfish and his retinue rolled in. McCracken was out front, followed by Huey, Seymour and the male aides (the theatrical agent, Irwin, was gone) and that bulldog Messina bringing up the rear.
The nervous little guy with the briefcase perked up, seeing the entrance of the Kingfish, who was moving quickly, his voice echoing as he animatedly expressed some opinion or other to a patient, weary-looking Seymour.
Then Huey stopped at the newsstand, checking out the front pages of several papers’ early-bird editions.
The nervous guy, making a beeline toward Huey, was about to pass by where I sat.
I raised my leg, like the gate of a toll crossing, lowered my Racing News and said blandly, “Something I can help you with, pal?”
“Are you with the hotel?” he asked, annoyed at being stopped this way, eyes tight behind the Coke-bottle glass.
I folded the paper, tossed it on the chair next to mine, rose.
“No,” I said.
There was a flash of fright before his expression turned eager. “You wouldn’t happen to be part of Senator Long’s staff, would you?”
Did he have a bomb in that briefcase?
“Suppose I am,” I said.
He frowned. “Well, are you or not?”
My nine-millimeter was in my valise, in my room; I was not licensed in the state of New York, and hadn’t seen any reason to carry it.
“I’m on his staff,” I said.
A big sigh of relief ruffled his mustache. “Thank God. Could you take me over and introduce me?”