He answered my unasked question.
“Don’t misjudge that little gal. Alice Jean may look like Clara Bow, but just ’cause she’s built like a brick shithouse, that don’t make her no goddamn floozy. She’s got the mind of a college professor.”
What, in a jar?
“But, Huey-I need to ask you about that FDR hotel conference…how does that fit in?”
“Ask Alice Jean.”
Then he was opening the door, and I found myself leaving even as the little bespectacled man with the briefcase was brushing eagerly past me. The publisher’s rep was taking his four-in-the-morning meeting with the Kingfish, and being greeted in a typically warm, typically demented Huey Long manner.
“Howdy do, Mr. Telegraph Man-never mind the money. We can talk ’bout that, second. First question is, can you boys get my book on the stands by next month? I need that sucker in print now, fer out on the stump….”
And the door shut behind me.
On the way back to my room, all I could think of was two things: Alice Jean’s pale, bare, curvaceous body…
…and that she made a likelier suspect than information source.
5
The phone rang me awake to a still-dark room, and again I fumbled for the receiver and the lamp switch. I ignored the second ring, plucking my wristwatch from the nightstand.
It was a few minutes past five a.m. I’d slept maybe an hour.
“Yes,” I said into the phone, cutting the third ring in half.
“Get your things packed.”
Seymour Weiss’s voice.
My response was typically articulate: “Huh?”
“We’re leaving in ten minutes. We just have time to catch the Broadway Limited to Harrisburg. The meeting’s just breaking up now…. Huey’s gonna make a deal with the Telegraph to publish his book.”
“Doesn’t that S.O.B. ever sleep?”
“Occasional naps. That’s about the extent of it. Shake a leg, Heller…oh, and collect Miss Crosley, would you? She has her phone off the hook.”
There was no time to bathe; I threw some cold water on my face, quickly shaved, nicking myself a couple times, threw my things in my valise, got into the white suit, snugged on my Panama. Within three minutes of Seymour’s call, I was at Alice Jean’s room, knocking.
I knocked quite a while.
Finally something clattered against the door, on the other side, startling me. A shoe she’d tossed, perhaps.
Raising my voice, I said, “Miss Crosley! The Kingfish is leaving-you want to come?”
I stared at the door and it stared back at me. Then I heard the squeak of bedsprings; some rustling around in there. Finally the door cracked barely open and one large, long-lashed, very bloodshot hazel eye peeked out at me.
“The Kingfish has a train to catch,” I said. “Can you throw yourself together in one hell of a hurry?”
The eye studied me. Then it narrowed, uncertainly. From the slice of her I could see, she’d slung on a pink satin dressing gown.
“Did I throw up on you last night?” she asked.
Her voice carried no embarrassment, no regret-just curiosity.
“Yeah.”
“Suit looks none the worse for it.”
“Different suit.”
“Oh.”
She shut the door.
Then it opened again, a little wider, just enough for me to see both eyes and the generous curve of one breast peeking out from what I could now confirm was indeed a pink dressing gown, with pink ostrich-feather trim.
“You mind waiting for me?” she asked. “I have two bags and could use some help.”
“Not at all.”
“Your name was…?”
“Nate Heller.” I risked a little smile. “Still is, in fact.”
She was too hungover to be amused; the door closed, and I waited for perhaps three minutes, and then suddenly she was next to me in the hallway, ready to go.
For a little past five in the morning, considering she hadn’t even had time to sleep it off yet, Alice Jean Crosley didn’t look half bad. Actually, she didn’t look bad at all.
A flower-trimmed navy blue bandeau hat with an angled brim set off the short, flapperish hairdo framing her round cutie-pie face; her bosomy frame was tucked into a mannish lightweight suit-tan waistcoat with navy buttons, navy blue skirt. A navy-and-white print silk scarf was arranged at her throat.
I took her traveling bag and walked her down the hall.
“How did you manage it?” I asked her.
“What?”
I raised an appreciative eyebrow and set it down. “Would’ve taken most women two hours to put themselves together like this. You look like you stepped out of a band box.”
The hard little mouth traced a faint smile, but only momentarily.
“I’ve known Huey for some time,” she said. “I’ve had to learn to pull up camp stakes quickly. You’re bleeding.”
“What? Oh. Cut myself shaving.”
“Should’ve stuck a little toilet paper on it. Here.”
She stopped and so did I. She put her bag on the floor, and licked the tip of the middle finger of her right hand and touched the damp digit against the spot near my mouth, held it there hard. Released it. The hazel eyes, under naturally long lashes, looked at the place, head moving side to side. She was a pretty thing.
“There. That’s better.”
And she picked up her bag and moved down the hall quickly, on her high heels; I followed the impertinent sway of her rounded rear, having trouble keeping up. And I wasn’t in heels, or hungover.
At Suite 3200, Huey and his entourage were emerging noisily, bags in hand; no one spoke to us as we fell in step. Nobody bothered checking out-we just barreled through the lobby and down a wide stairway into an underground tunnel that connected the hotel with Pennsylvania Station.
In the vast, echoey main hall of the station, while Seymour Weiss was at a ticket window making arrangements, shielded by the ambience of footsteps, chatter and amplified announcements, Huey ambled over to Alice Jean and whispered in her ear a while. She looked at him blankly, nodded, and he gave her a half-moon grin, patted her on the shoulder and went back to pretending she didn’t exist.
Not long after, out on the train platform, in the bustle of passengers and redcaps, under a cloak of steam and clanging bells and hoarse train whistles, Huey appeared at my side, his hand on my arm, his mouth to my ear.
“You been assigned to watch Alice Jean,” he whispered. “That’ll give her time to fill ya in on things, and nobody the wiser.”
We boarded the sleekly modern train, with its black streamlined engine looking like something out of Buck Rogers, and trailed along to a car where Huey had a private compartment. He and Seymour and the little publisher’s rep holed up there, to talk about Huey’s book, presumably. Messina and McCracken took turns standing in the narrow hallway outside the door.
In the next car down, I took a similar position outside the door of Alice Jean’s compartment. There was no room for a chair. Bone tired, I stood leaning against the wall, letting the rattle of wheels over track joints lull me. It was going to be at least a three-hour ride.
On the other hand, for $250 a day, I could learn to sleep standing up.
After about fifteen minutes, the door opened and Alice Jean seemed startled to see me.
“What are you doin’ out here?” she asked.
“I’m assigned to guard you.”
“You should have knocked. Huey says I’m suppose’ to help you out on some things.”
“That’s right. But for appearance’s sake, I’m your bodyguard.”
She nodded that she understood, and squeezed out in the hallway; there really wasn’t room for all four of us-me, her and her breasts. But I didn’t mind.
“I was just going to get some breakfast,” she said. “Would you care to join me?”
“Sure.”
I followed that swaying rump to the dining car, where she had a very full breakfast-scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, cottage fries, toast-for a girl who’d tied one on last night. If she threw this up, it wasn’t going to be pretty.