Seymour said pointedly, “Sit down, and keep out of it.”
McCracken said, “I can handle this sumbitch.”
My nine-millimeter was under my left arm, incidentally. I wasn’t licensed in Louisiana, but I was no fool, either.
“Sit down!” Seymour said. “Shut up! Keep out!”
McCracken’s sigh could have put out a small fire. But he lumbered back and pulled the card-table chair out, scrapingly, and sat, heavily.
“Two lumps of lead,” Leche said. He shrugged. “Who’s to say where they came from?”
“Certainly Dr. Vidrine wouldn’t testify,” Seymour said. “He’d lose his medical license.”
“Or something,” I said cheerfully.
I was here to run a bluff. I had thought this through, and dangerous as it was, this was the best play I could think of, under these conditions, in this situation.
“Suppose I have witnesses,” I said. “Witnesses from whom I’ve taken documented statements. Little loose ends running around hospital halls, and mortuaries, and capitol corridors and such. You’ve had a lot of inner turmoil in what used to be the Long machine. A lot of friends are now enemies. That kind of thing happens, when the spoils get fought over, and some get, and some don’t.”
“If you think any court in Louisiana-” Seymour began.
But I turned to Leche, whose face had fallen. “Governor-I realize I’m playing in your ballpark. The cops are yours. The courts. The legislature. But you forget-maybe you’re no national figure, but the Kingfish sure as hell was. The assassination of Huey Long is of national interest and import…hell, international.”
Leche tasted his tongue; he didn’t seem to like the flavor.
I went on: “The press’ll publicize this new evidence, and pretty soon you’ll have to mount an inquiry…ballistics tests, testimony, you may even have to get the jackhammers out and chisel through that seven feet of concrete and steel you buried the Kingfish under, ’cause he’s gonna have to be exhumed. He’s evidence.”
Leche looked hollowly at Seymour, who shook his head, as if to say, “Don’t worry.”
“Even if a wild bullet from a bodyguard did kill Huey, accidentally,” Seymour said softly, “what good would exposing that do, at this point?”
“Well,” I said, “there’s a family in Baton Rouge who will have to carry with them the stigma of having an assassin for a son, brother, husband, father, for as long as anyone remembers the Kingfish…and that should only be as long as there’s a Louisiana.”
“But everyone agrees that Dr. Weiss did attack Huey,” Seymour said.
Funny: here was a logical place for eyewitness McCracken to contradict me; but on this subject, he stayed silent.
“The doctor may only have slugged Huey,” I said. “Neither of these bullets I’m talking about, remember, is a.32….”
And now McCracken put in his two cents, only it wasn’t a repudiation of what I’d just said. From across the room, he shouted, “Let me handle this!”
“Quiet!” Seymour said. He sat forward, his dark eyes locked on me, his hands gently patting the air diplomatically.
“If this is a matter of money,” he said, “I can just make out a check for ten thousand dollars. Or would Mrs. Long prefer cash?”
Jackpot.
This sort of offer was exactly what I was fishing for. What better way to keep both my clients happy, and get myself that G-note bonus?
“I’ll have to confer with Mrs. Long,” I said. “But I think you might want to consider upping that amount.”
“What for?” Seymour snapped. “That’s all the double-indemnity clause would have paid her!”
“But that’s not the only gauge we have to determine value here,” I said, waggling a professorial finger. “Think of the next election. If Huey was killed accidentally, by a bunch of numb-skull bodyguards…”
“Let me fucking handle it!”
“Shut up!” Seymour said.
“…then you’ve lost a major talking point for future campaigns. After all, what price can you put on the political value of Huey’s martyrdom?”
“What kind of money are we talking about?” Seymour asked, his eyes hooded.
“I’m not talking any kind of money,” I said. “That’s not my place. This is for you and Dick to decide. Now, if pressed, I might suggest you consider upping the amount, oh-ten times. Or maybe twenty.”
Seymour reeled back as if I’d slapped him. “Are you insane, man?”
“Please don’t change the subject,” I said. “I just figured if somebody happened to know what became of a certain ‘dee-duct box,’ they might want to treat Mrs. Long a little more…generously.”
Leche was clutching the arms of the lounger like a man in the electric chair. “Seymour…,” he said. There was a lot in the one word: accusation, a plea for help, a demand that something be done….
Seymour’s dead eyes were fixed on me like the barrels of twin revolvers. Then he looked away, and said, coldly, quietly, “Suppose you talk to Mrs. Long. Talk to her, and get back to me with a figure.”
I stood. “I’ll do that. Governor, pleasure meeting you.”
Leche had the expression of a pouting child; his affability was a memory. And sunk down in the chair like that, he suddenly seemed very small.
“I’ll find my own way out,” I said, and did, feeling pretty damn cocky but not relishing the savage expression on Big George McCracken’s battered face as his eyes trailed after me.
24
Once again we sat in the solarium on dark-stained wicker furniture, drinking iced tea. It was late afternoon, and the tropical garden of Mrs. Long’s backyard was cloaked in shadows that were gradually turning into dusk.
“Mr. Heller,” she said, and it was as if every word she spoke pained her, “it’s not that I don’t appreciate your efforts…” The pale blue eyes in the attractive oval face were troubled. She sat on the wicker couch with her hands folded around a handkerchief; her navy suit was touched with a rose pattern, a pink cloth corsage sewn at one shoulder.
I winced. “I don’t understand your reluctance, Mrs. Long. I’m certain we can get a considerable amount of money from Seymour and Leche and their cronies….”
“It’s blackmail money, Mr. Heller.”
“Not really. Think of it as finally getting to withdraw a few bucks from the ‘dee-duct box.’”
She shook her head, no. “It may be in name only, Mr. Heller, but I am a United States Senator. It wouldn’t be proper.”
I felt dizzy. “Aren’t you the same Mrs. Long who offered me a thousand bucks under the table, to favor her position in this investigation?”
Her smile was tiny and embarrassed as she looked at her lap. “Yes, I am. Perhaps it seems silly to you, having such a…flexible sense of ethics.”
I sighed and sat back. “Not really. I do it all the time.”
She looked at me with a painfully earnest expression. “What I want to know is, do you feel convinced that your investigation has shown my husband was killed accidentally?”
“I saw the bullets,” I said. “I’m no ballistics expert, but I’d say they matched the caliber of the guns the bodyguards were packing. Even though Dr. Vidrine wouldn’t hand the slugs over to me, I can say for a certainty that Senator Long was not shot by Carl Weiss.”
“Will the insurance agency accept your opinion?”
I shrugged. “I see no reason why not. Both you and they agreed to accept my conclusions. This isn’t a court of law-I don’t have to attach evidentiary exhibits. All I have to do is write a reasoned, logical report, citing the various interviews I conducted that have led me to believe Carl Weiss approached your husband, an argument ensued, the doctor struck your husband a blow, and the gunfire began.”
Her eyes were tight with thought. “And Mutual would pay the twenty-thousand-dollar double-indemnity claim?”
“I believe they would, yes.”
Her expression relaxed; she raised her chin. “Then that’s what I want you to do.”