A doughnut and coffee was all I felt like.
We just sat there in the posh car, with its linen tablecloths, pristine china, and colored waiters in spotless white, and dined quietly, enjoying the air of affluence. She seemed the picture of poise, and it surprised me when she suddenly blurted out that she was sorry for the night before.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“There’s really no excuse for my drunken behavior of yesterday evening.” She was just enough of a Southern belle to make that sound like poetry.
“It’s not a problem. Really.”
She raised her coffee cup to sip; without looking at me, she said over it, “I was…undressed, when I woke.”
I nodded, sipped my own coffee.
“Did you…undress me?”
“You asked for my help.” I gave her half a grin. “We at the A-1 Detective Agency aim to please.”
That seemed to embarrass her, just a little, and she put the coffee cup down and folded her hands; they were small, like a child’s. “You didn’t…”
“No. I didn’t take advantage. I would be lying if I said it didn’t occur to me. You’re a handsome woman, Miss Crosley. If it’s not out of line, my saying so.”
“Thank you. For not…taking advantage of the situation, I mean. That was kind, Mr. Heller.”
“How would you feel about calling me Nate?”
Her smile was tentative, but lovely. “I’d feel fine about it…Nate. And, when no one else is around at least, why don’t you call me Alice Jean.”
“I’d like that,” I said.
“I think I would, too.”
No one from Huey’s party was in the dining car right now, so it didn’t seem an inappropriate time to begin getting some of that background material out of her. For about an hour, she filled me in about the feud between Huey and the so-called Square Dealers, and even gave me the name and address of the man I should call on-Edward Hamilton, an attorney.
“Hamilton and that hawk-faced wife of his, Mildred, have been tryin’ to bring Huey down for years,” Alice Jean said.
Later, when we made our way back to the car where her compartment awaited, I took my position in the hall, back to the wall, arms folded, a cigarette-store Indian in a Panama hat.
“You look beat,” she said.
“Huey kept me running last night”
“So did I.” She was standing with the door to her compartment open; she nodded toward the inside. “It’s a double berth. Wanna take a nap, ’til Harrisburg?”
I grinned. “Are all you Southern girls this hospitable?”
Her smile may have been tiny but it was enormously winning. “My hospitality extends only to lettin’ you take a nap in the upper berth. Period.”
“That’s plenty. Probably all I have energy for, anyway….”
So we let down the upper berth, and I climbed up there and stretched out. It took me a while to go to sleep-thanks to that cup of coffee-but in a few minutes the jostle of the train and the rhythmic song it sang over the tracks had soothed me into slumber.
The train was whining to a stop when she shook me gently awake.
“Harrisburg,” she said. She was small enough to have to stand on tiptoe to look at me in the upper berth.
“You’re the best-looking train conductor I ever saw,” I said, and swung out of there.
“Do you know what the plan is?” she said. “Nobody bothered telling me.”
“Well, we change trains here,” I said, “but we’ve got a layover of a couple hours that Huey’s going to use to talk to the people at the Telegraph, who want to publish his book.”
A smirk dimpled her cheek. “I don’t suppose he’ll want me around.”
“I’ll keep you company,” I said.
We joined up with the entourage out on the platform of the Harrisburg station. It was dark as night on the covered platform, and Huey and Seymour, the bodyguards and aides, too, were huddled around the little publisher’s rep like conspirators.
Alice Jean and I kept back, staying to ourselves, and after a bit, Seymour broke away from the little group and approached us.
He pointed off to the left. “The Telegraph office is just a couple blocks away. We’re gonna hoof it over there, for a conference…you two wait in the station.”
I nodded, and escorted Alice Jean inside; a newsstand separated us from the cavernous waiting room area, and baggage was off to the far right. But at left there was a diner-style coffee shop, where we parked ourselves in a booth and drank coffee.
“You snore,” she said.
“Don’t spread the news,” I said. “People might misinterpret how you came by the information.”
“You’re kind of a flirt, aren’t you?”
“Do you mind?”
She shrugged. “Not really. Shall we take advantage of the time?”
I nodded, and she continued with her background briefing, shifting from the Square Dealers to Standard Oil; it took about forty-five minutes, with me interrupting only occasionally as I jotted down a few pertinent facts in my pocket notebook.
“The man you should talk to, the lobbyist I was referring to,” she said, “is Louis LeSage. You can call him at the refinery.”
And she rattled off the phone number.
I took it down in my notebook.
A remarkable girl, Alice Jean. She may have been Huey’s mistress, but she was no tramp, or at least not a stupid one. She was, as Huey himself had indicated, one sharp cookie.
“Could I ask you a question, Miss Crosley? Alice Jean?”
“Why, certainly.”
“Are you really the Secretary of State of Louisiana?”
She pursed her mouth into what might have been a kiss but was really a smile. “You find that hard to buy, Mr. Heller? Nate?”
“Not really. With your brains, you could be governor. I just wondered how you managed it.”
“You mean, how Huey managed it. Mind if I smoke?”
“Not at all.”
She took a pack of Chesterfields from her purse and tamped one down and lighted it up with a Zippo identical to the one I’d seen in Huey’s bedroom at the New Yorker.
“Actually, I’m not Secretary of State anymore…I haven’t been since ’32. Who told you that…Seymour?”
I nodded.
“He’s a jealous S.O.B., Seymour is. Always has resented me. Fact is, I was only appointed to serve out the term of a poor gentleman whose heart expired.”
“Oh. So now you’re out of a job?”
“Oh no. Huey appointed me Supervisor of Public Accounts and Collector of Revenues.”
That meant Huey’s mistress controlled the purse strings of the state’s economy.
“Shall we have a sandwich, Nate? Who knows when we’ll be catching that next train.”
So I took luncheon with Louisiana’s Supervisor of Public Accounts-bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwich for her, a fried-egg sandwich for me-and pretty soon moved into the third and final phase of the trio of possible Huey murder plotters: the Syndicate, specifically, Frank Costello, with whom Huey had recently gone into the gambling business.
“You’ll want to talk to Costello’s man in New Orleans,” Alice Jean said blandly, as if referring me to a tailor. “‘Dandy Jim’ Kastel…he has a suite at the Roosevelt. Don’t write that down: just remember it.”
“All right,” I said. I checked my watch. “We’ve been sitting here for at least two hours. You want to take a walk or anything? My butt’s getting sore.”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
“Maybe we could find a nice quiet saloon. I could use something stronger than coffee. How about you? Ready for some hair of the dog?”
She smirked and nodded. “I sure am. But what if Huey comes back…?”
“I’ll check at the ticket counter and see when the next train to St. Louis leaves. That’s our next stop.” Funny how that hard little mouth could transform itself into such a soft, sweet smile. “You are a detective, aren’t you?”
The next St. Louis train wasn’t until six-thirty, so I asked the shoeshine “boy” (he was in his sixties) where the nearest bar was, and he pointed the way. We walked toward the river, through a lively commercial district-it was Saturday, and the five-and-tens and department stores were doing a brisk business-until we found a quiet little gin mill. The place was almost empty; we ordered at the bar, then took a back booth.