Yesterday Huey had asked me to stick around, because he needed “another good man.” But inside the capitol was crawling with even more military-style state police, as well as thuglike plainclothes dicks with conspicuous bulges under arms or on hips. The dignified bronze fixtures and patriotic murals decorating Memorial Hall-obviously the capitol’s hub-were at odds with this police-state atmosphere.
It was a straight shot to the trio of elevators, whose elaborate bronze doors depicted bas-relief portraits of what were apparently (judging by the muttonchops) public figures of bygone days; but Huey was among them, up at the top right.
Murph saw me squinting at the little boxes with faces in them and he whispered, “It’s a gallery of the state’s governors, endin’ with Huey.”
I somehow felt sure that the omission of O.K. Allen was okay with the current governor.
We took the middle elevator, which bore a small placard saying private-state employees only. Huey chatted with the elevator operator, a skinny, friendly man in his sixties, inquiring about his wife and children by name.
“Boss has a photographic mem’ry,” Murphy whispered.
I figured as much; nothing I’d observed would have led me to believe Huey cared about individuals like this fellow. Huey worried about only two things: himself and the masses. In that order.
We got off on the twenty-fourth floor, on the other side of the elevator, which opened onto a small, mundane vestibule. Tourists were getting off one elevator and onto another, and gasped at the sight of the Kingfish, who waved and smiled and said, “Howdy.” This was the floor where the common folk could catch two things: glimpses of Huey and the elevator to the observation tower.
The door to Huey’s suite-which took up the rest of the floor-was around to the right. The suite itself was furnished in a sleek, modern style-curves of wood and chrome-but otherwise reminded me of various hotel suites of recent days. The only major difference was we settled ourselves in a living room area and the Kingfish didn’t get into his fabled green-silk pajamas.
For much of the afternoon the Kingfish and a small, dark, apparently Italian gent worked on a new song Huey was cooking up. It was a victory song for the LSU football team, and Huey had some hand-scribbled lyrics he’d done in the car on the ride over from New Orleans.
Murphy, McCracken, Squinch McGee and I were playing poker-using wooden matchsticks for chips-at a card table over in one corner. I was the only one who didn’t smoke, but I might as well have: the blue haze from the cigarettes hung like ground fog.
“Jacks or better,” I said, dealing the cards. “Who’s the ginney?”
“Actually,” Murphy said, “he’s from Costa Rica. Castro Carazo. Writes all the music for the boss’s songs.”
“He used to be the orchestra leader at the Roosevelt Hotel,” McCracken said. “The boss likes him, ’cause Castro used to let him direct the band at the Blue Room, sometimes.”
“What’s he do now?” I asked. “Besides write songs with Huey.”
“He’s director of music at LSU,” Murphy said. “I can open.”
After Huey and his music man had roughed out their composition, the Distinguished Senator from the Great Pelican State came over and pulled us away bodily from the middle of a round of Black Mariah (sometimes called Chicago). This did not make me happy, as I had the ace of spades down, which would have entitled me to half the pot.
But you didn’t argue with the boss.
I have only the faintest memory of the rah-rah number, other than its melody being suspiciously similar to “Every Man a King.”
Nonetheless, I joined in with the effusive praise and applause of the other bodyguards. Messina, who had been seated nearby the musical geniuses while they composed, was smiling like a madman; his eyes were glittering with emotion.
We were allowed to return to our game-which was declared a goddamn misdeal-and were summoned back for three more performances, over the course of the next hour and a half, to hear “improved” versions, every one of which sounded identical to me.
Even for $250 a day, this was not the life for me. Murphy was pleasant company, but the rest of the bodyguard crew were untrained, on-edge thugs that Frank Nitti would have fired in a heartbeat.
With the exception of Murphy, who’d done a few years as a state cop before joining Huey, they had jack shit security experience. Messina was a damn ex-barber from the Roosevelt Hotel.
Also, I was winning at poker. Consistently winning. That didn’t necessarily surprise me (I’m as self-deluded as the next average player), but these guys-even Murphy-were playing sloppy, and if there was one thing I would have confidence that guys like this could do, it’s play cards.
They were nervous. On edge.
“Fuckin’ death threats,” Squinch McGee whispered. He had squinty little eyes behind thick wire-frame glasses-just the kind of guy you’d want handling firearms, right? “I don’t take ’em serious. You take ’em serious?”
“The boss does,” McCracken said, and shook his head. “I ain’t seen this many cops in one place since that all-night diner shut down.”
Messina was in the game now. “Why would anybody wanna kill the boss?”
“It sure ain’t no picnic guardin’ him,” McCracken said, and shook his head again. “Cain’t hardly keep up with him.”
“Walks faster’n most men run,” Murphy said. “Stops and starts, and stops and starts-it’s like chasin’ after a goddamn trolley car.”
“It’s like a goddamn game of musical chairs!” Squinch McGee said, holding his cards in two trembling hands.
A few hours later-after supper had been catered up to us from the cafeteria in the capitol’s basement-I saw the truth of their words. Keeping up with the Kingfish, as he shuttled back and forth between the House on one side of the building, and the Senate way over on the other, was work for Jesse Owens.
Watching this banty rooster expending boundless energy was a thing of wonder: pressing the flesh, keeping an eye on what were apparently routine matters, he obviously wasn’t taking any chances about getting his bills pushed through.
On one of the rare occasions I was able to keep up with him, falling alongside, I said, “Mind if I ask you something, Kingfish?”
“Only way to learn, son.”
“Why do you fight so hard, when you got the battle won from the starting pistol?”
“Son,” he laughed, “I ain’t even begun to shoot from the taw, yet.” He stopped on a dime, put a hand on my shoulder and his bulging brown eyes bore into me like needles. “Why do I run my fanny off like this? I’ll tell ya why, and you’ll wanna remember this: never write what you kin phone, never phone what you kin talk head-to-head, never talk what you kin nod, never nod what you kin wink.”
And he winked at me, and took off like a race car.
He was halfway down the hall from us when a man in white stepped out from where he’d been standing beside a pillar and planted himself in front of Huey, blocking his way.
“Now, I don’t want trouble with you, Tom,” Huey was saying, as we moved quickly up.
“This time ya’ve gone too far, Huey,” the man, who was elderly and frail-looking, said in a tone that managed to be both strong and quavering. Hatless, his snow white hair neatly combed, he wore wire-frame glasses and his face was handsome, dignified, but the sunken cheeks revealed the fragile skull under the creped skin.
“Now, you step aside, Tom.”
“It’s unconstitutional, this bill of yours…. We have a great president, and it shames every citizen of this fine state when you-”
By now, we had formed a half-circle around the pair. The Kingfish had made no indication he wanted us to intercede.
Huey thumped his chest. “Ah do the speeches aroun’ here, you feeble-minded ol’ fool! Git outa my way, and go slap damn to hell, while you’re at it!”