But he had bristled when I said I also wanted to meet with the governor.
“I can drive over to Baton Rouge this afternoon,” I’d said, “to meet with Governor Leche, either at the capitol, or the governor’s mansion….”
“He’s rarely there,” Seymour had said. “He conducts most of the affairs of state long-distance, from St. Tammany.”
“Where’s that?”
There’d been a long pause before he replied, with obvious reluctance: “Across the lake from New Orleans.”
“Well, why don’t you set up a meeting. I’d suggest, as soon as possible.”
“Do I detect a threat in your voice, Mr. Heller?”
“I don’t know. Do you?”
So, now-just a few hours later-I was in the governor’s sprawling hunting lodge, following Seymour down a hallway with pelican-patterned wallpaper, decorated with framed photos of the governor and various dignitaries and celebrities. We moved into a cozy maple-paneled, open-beamed den with a large braided rug and an enormous, growling bearskin rug before a brick fireplace with a mantel crowded with stuffed ducks, beaver and geese. Though the back walls had built-in bookcases, looking on from every other angle were enough mounted deer heads to form a quorum of the Louisiana House of Representatives. A few long-dead fish swam the walls. The governor was apparently stuffing his taxidermist with cash.
Plump walnut-trimmed brown leather loungers with ottomans were angled toward, and at either side of, the fireplace; between them was a small matching sofa. Here and there, standing lamps wearing beige silk shades provided a woman’s touch, slightly off-kilter in this man’s man’s room. There apparently was a Mrs. Leche.
Big George McCracken was sitting at a card table, playing solitaire. McCracken, with his lumpy, former boxer’s face, still seemed to be buying his baggy suits from Hoodlum Haberdashery, Inc. His suit coat was over the back of the chair and he was in shirtsleeves and suspenders, blood red tie loosened; a stubby cigar smoldered in one corner of his mouth.
But at least he’d given up carrying a tommy gun in a paper bag. Unless it was under the table.
Huey Long’s successor rose endlessly from the leather lounge chair at right and strode across the den like Paul Bunyan to meet us. An enormous man, both tall and heavyset, Leche wore a red-and-black plaid hunter’s shirt and khaki pants and was in his stocking feet; black hair slicked back like George Raft’s, Leche’s facial features were pleasant, even boyishly handsome, though a little small for his bucket-sized head.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Mr. Heller,” Leche said, almost bubbling, extending his hand. Then, pointlessly, as if I didn’t know who I was calling on, he added a self-introduction: “Dick Leche.”
“And why’s that, Your Excellency?” I said, shaking with him.
“Your efforts to get the Kingfish to Our Lady of the Lake are legend around here. Won’t you sit down?”
He took me by the arm over to the sofa; big as he was, he could have flung me there. I sat on the sofa, and he settled back into his lounge chair, putting his white-stockinged feet up on the ottoman. Seymour took the lounge chair at my right; he sat with his legs crossed, hands folded, slowly twiddling his thumbs. Glowering.
“My efforts may be legendary, Your Excellency,” I said, “but I obviously didn’t do Huey any good.”
“It was the effort, man! It was the effort. But please…call me Dick.”
“Why, thank you, Dick. And call me Nate, if you would.”
From an end table beside him, he took a pipe and relighted it with a kitchen match, as he said, “My pleasure. I understand you’ve been looking into the assassination.”
“That’s right.”
Puffing at the pipe, getting it going, he said, “I’m a little…fuzzy on the exact nature of your investigation. You know, we do have a Bureau of Criminal Investigation in this state.”
“But, with all due respect, Dick-you never did investigate.”
He shrugged, gestured offhandedly with the pipe. “It didn’t seem…our place, somehow.”
“I’m confused. You’ll have to excuse me…I’m an out-of-towner, you know.”
Leche’s smile was a dazzler; he had teeth like well-scrubbed bathroom tiles. “Certainly.”
“I’m told you ran on a ‘Murder Ticket.’ That you promised the voters you’d get to the bottom of the DeSoto Hotel conspiracy….”
The smile withered around the pipe stem.
“Those were emotional times,” Leche said somberly. “In the cool, reasoned light of day, it became apparent that the man who shot Senator Long was already dead…. So why waste the taxpayers’ hard-earned money?”
Seymour said, “Besides, if the Long family wanted an investigation, Mrs. Long would have petitioned for one.”
“In a way,” I said, “that’s why I’m here.”
“It is?” Leche asked, surprised.
“I thought you were working for Mutual Insurance,” Seymour said.
“Why, Seymour,” I said, and give him a smile just as affable as Leche’s if less toothy, “I thought both you and Dick, here, were ‘fuzzy’ about what I was up to.”
“Are you trying to prove double indemnity,” Seymour said crisply, “or trying to save your bosses some dough?”
“I’m sort of a cross between an investigator and an arbitrator,” I said, settling back in the soft couch. “Both parties have agreed to abide by the findings of my inquiry.”
“So, then,” Seymour said, smiling for the first time, “there might be room for…negotiation.”
“Sure,” I said. “I’m from Chicago, remember? Of course, to some people, having two clients who desire opposite outcomes might seem a conflict of interest….”
“But to Nate Heller,” Seymour said, with smooth, smiling contempt, “it’s an opportunity.”
Leche shifted in his comfortable chair, uncomfortable. Like most crooked politicians, he preferred staying behind the facade of respectability.
Seymour, his mood improved, called out to Big George. “Get us some drinks, would you, George? What would you like, Mr. Heller?”
“Got any Bacardi?”
Big George took our orders and lumbered morosely to a liquor cabinet where he got me my rum, some bourbon and branch water for Leche, and scotch straight up for Seymour.
As McCracken played waiter, Leche said, “George here is doing quite well out at LSU, these days.”
“Yeah,” I said, “I hear you’re building superintendent out there.”
“What else do you hear?” McCracken asked; there was something ominous in the tone.
That you’re feathering your own fucking nest, courtesy of the WPA and the Louisiana taxpayers.
“Nothing,” I said pleasantly.
Somehow I had a feeling McCracken’s presence this afternoon had little if anything to do with his current university position: he was here representing the Bodyguard Contingent. After all, he’d been one of the brave lads who’d fired dozens of bullets into the fallen Dr. Carl Weiss.
Leche put his pipe in an ashtray on the endtable and sipped his drink. “Have you uncovered any…new evidence in your inquiry, Nate?”
“Possibly.”
“What does that mean?” Seymour snapped. His good mood hadn’t lasted long.
“Suppose,” I said, studying the rum in the glass, “I was in possession of a bullet or two, taken from Senator Long’s body.”
The room went deadly quiet: you could have heard a shell casing drop.
“Everyone knows the bullet passed through Senator Long,” Leche said softly.
“Do they?” I sat forward. “What if I had two bullets taken from the Senator’s body that were not bullets from Dr. Weiss’s gun?”
A chair scraped back; I heard McCracken approaching.
“Bullets of a caliber,” I said, “that instead matched those of the guns used by Huey’s bodyguards.”
McCracken, hovering behind me, said, “Let me handle this.”
He wasn’t talking to me.