I was stunned by him, too-but it wasn’t his wardrobe. It was the notion that one of the mobsters I was investigating as a possible Huey Long murder plotter was one of the Kingfish’s former bodyguards.
And, apparently, a loyal one.
“Yeah, I love the Kingfish, and the Kingfish, he loves me,” Moran was boasting good-naturedly.
“When was this?” I asked.
“When was what?”
“You working for the Kingfish.”
“Six, seven years back…. I worked weekends, mostly-’cause of my other business in’tr’sts.” He touched a bejeweled finger to his pink-shirted chest. “I’m the one intr’duced the Kingfish to Bourbon Street! Singin’, dancin’, drinkin’ fools we was, back in them days.”
“He’s on the wagon now.”
“Yeah, and I hear he slimmed down, some. Gotta be in fightin’ trim to take on the president.” He let out a single loud laugh. “The boss is sure ’nuff lucky I ain’t around!”
“Oh?”
His smile pretended to be modest. “I used to cook for him. He’s a fiend for my spaghetti and meatballs.”
Told you he was Italian.
“Why’d you stop working for him, Jim?”
“Well, Uncle Sam sorta stopped me. They nailed me on a bootleggin’ rap, in ’30…did a year inside….”
In case you were wondering what his other “business in’tr’sts” were….
“So now you work for Kastel.”
His beetle brow furrowed; it was almost a frown. “I don’t work for him, Nate…I work with him.”
“I see.”
We passed a restaurant oozing the scent of tomato sauce; the neighborhood was Italian, too-French Quarter or not.
“Phil’s a right guy. Been around. Smart sumbitch. One of Arnold Rothstein’s fair-haired boys, way back when.”
“Impressive company.”
“You’re tellin’ me! High-class operator. Phil was only inside once, and that was on a securities scam.”
High class.
“But working with Kastel,” I said, “it’s not like working for the Kingfish, I guess.”
“Not hardly.” He gestured to the world around him. “I’m tellin’ ya, that Kingfish is the best damn thing that ever happened to this state.”
Never mind that we had turned down a shabby side street where unkempt children scurried in and out of gloomy alleyways, and overflowing trash cans decorated the sidewalk, attracting flies and vermin. The lovely wrought-iron balconies on slender iron pillars, adorning buildings that were shabby shadows of their former splendor, looked down on the scruffy ragamuffins in mocking reminder of the wealth Huey Long promised he would one day share with them.
“Take this bizness we’re in, now,” Moran was saying.
“Which business is that?”
“The slot-machine bizness! You know why the Kingfish cut that deal with the Politician, to bring the machines down from New York?”
The Politician was Frank Costello, also known as the “Prime Minister”-the biggest big shot of the New York mob.
“Because Fiorello LaGuardia threw Costello’s slots in the East River?”
He smirked disgustedly. “I’m not talkin’ ’bout why the Politician made the deal; I’m talkin’ about why Huey made it.”
“Oh. Well. For the money?”
He shook his head, as if disappointed in me. We had paused at a modest-looking church called St. Mary’s; a raggedy man with one leg sat on the stone steps trading pencils for contributions. Moran put a dollar in the man’s hat and took a pencil.
The beggar’s grin was yellow-green. “Thank you, Jim!”
“Thanks for the pencil,” he said affably, tucking it in an inside pocket, as we moved on past decidedly nontouristy businesses-a small grocery, a dry cleaner’s, the courtyard to a private but rundown home with a hand-lettered sign tacked over the stone archway saying hemstitching.
“You poor feeble-minded Yankee,” he said. “You really think ol’ Huey’s in it for the money, do ya?”
Money and power, I thought, but didn’t say it; just shrugged.
“Hell, no!” he said, answering his own question. “The Kingfish is goin’ to pass an ord’nance for the poor and the blind-stir up some relief money for these unfortunates, outa his percentage off the slot-machine take.” He shook his head in admiration. “That Huey…always thinkin’ of the little guy…. Well, here we are.”
We were at a small warehouse; over a single garage door was a wooden sign with block letters: bayou novelty company. We went in a door beside the garage entry, but it didn’t lead into an office, just the warehouse itself, a brick, two-story-high area with a small glass-and-wood office partitioned off in one corner.
Most of the room was taken up by an unmarked semi truck, whose back doors were open, a ramp up to the back accommodating a pair of truckers in caps and work clothes, carrying out bulky wooden crates each about the size of a midget’s coffin. It took both men to carry one crate.
A dark-haired pair of workers, not in work clothes but in dark suits and ties, used crowbars to open crates that had already been unloaded; then they would lift out the contents. Standing like silver totems against the wall were the previously uncrated slot machines with the distinctive emblem of a bronze Indian chief’s head over the dial.
The semi truck had Cook County plates, and that was no surprise: these slot machines, known as Chiefs, were a product of Jennings and Company, a firm on the west side of Chicago.
Outfit territory.
Supervising all this was a handsome, dapper man of perhaps forty-five in a gray silk suit, leaning forward with both hands on a gold-tipped walking stick; he achieved effortlessly a suave, stylish air epitomizing the elegance and class Diamond Jim tried so hard, and so ineptly, to attain.
Moran introduced us, and Kastel took his weight off the walking stick and shook my hand, bestowing me a friendly, if cautious smile.
“It’s nice of you to stop by, Mr. Heller,” he told me. “I consider Frank Nitti a true gentleman. One of the smartest, shrewdest businessmen in our field.”
“He speaks highly of you, as well.” Of course, I’d never heard Frank Nitti so much as utter a word about Dandy Phil Kastel; but a guy with a gold-tipped walking stick obviously had a certain sense of self-importance, so I played into it.
“What brings you here, Mr. Heller? Other than to ‘pay your respects.’”
“Well, uh…that’s basically it. Courtesy call.” I gave him a hard look that tried to send a signaclass="underline" I didn’t feel comfortable talking in front of Moran. His eyes tightened ever so slightly-it was barely perceptible-but he’d gotten the drift.
Kastel gave Moran a bland glance that apparently sent its own signal.
Moran cleared his throat. “Yeah, well…if you don’t need me here, Phil, I’m gonna head back to the office, and mind the phones.”
Kastel nodded his approval of that notion, and the chatty, overdressed mobster left me there with his boss. Or, that is, the man he “worked with.”
I gestured toward the slot machines, lined up St. Valentine’s Day Massacre-like, against one wall; others were being added to the lineup as the wooden crates were crowbarred off. “I see you have friends in Chicago.”
His smile was slight and sly. “Frank Costello has friends everywhere, Mr. Heller.”
“Call me Nate,” I said.
But he didn’t ask me to call him Phil.
“What’s the story on Moran?” I asked. “Is he Huey’s boy?”
“Only in spirit.”
“He says he doesn’t work for you.”
“Diamond Jim represents local interests. He’s something of a…liaison.”
“What, with Sam Carolla’s camp?”
Carolla was the New Orleans equivalent of Frank Nitti.
His glance seemed benign, but he was assessing me. “If you know anything about Frank Costello,” Kastel said, “you’ll know that his style is to cooperate, to collaborate, with local business.”