“When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
She looked away from me, looked at nothing for maybe a minute. Barely audible, from the kitchen, on the radio she’d turned on doing the dishes, Bing Crosby softly sang “Pennies from Heaven.”
“Before you go,” she said, “there’s two things I want to give you.”
“You’ve given me plenty, Alice Jean. Starting with throwing up in my lap.”
She laughed a little, and nestled her head against my shoulder. “Does that hurt?”
“No. Alice Jean?”
“Yes?”
“Are you…crying?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Usually when I catch a train, the girl’s relieved.”
She laughed again, but it choked in a sob. “I…I heard it.”
“Heard what?”
“I was outside the door. Yesterday. Eavesdropping. When you and Murphy were talking…”
“Oh. Oh, Jesus.”
She looked up at me and the hazel eyes were streaming tears. “They killed my Huey. They murdered him….”
I slipped my arm around her, patted her, soothed her. “Nothing we can do,” I told her. “Nothing we can do….”
She wept a long time, and I patted her a long time, and the radio shifted to an instrumental version of “There’s a Small Hotel.” Then, suddenly, she shot to her feet and scurried off, like she just remembered she had something on the stove.
She was gone so long, I started to get worried; must have been half an hour.
When she came back in, she was self-composed, her eyes red but no tears, and had redone her makeup, her pretty Clara Bow features looking as perfect as a movie queen’s eight-by-ten glossy. She was carrying with her a briefcase-it was old, battered and brown, and rather large, and looked like a suitcase in her dainty fist.
She slammed it onto the sofa.
Through her tiny white teeth, she said, “Can’t do anything, huh?”
I frowned. “What’s this?”
She snapped it open. The briefcase was piled with official-looking papers and folders; I began thumbing through-there were reams of the stuff, government documents, both photostats and originals.
“What…?”
“Under Huey’s tenure,” she said, with arch formality, “a lot of public and not-so-public documents passed through my hands.”
“No kidding,” I said.
Ledger books, too! After all, she’d been Secretary of State, Revenue Collector, Supervisor of Accounts….
“I don’t have a life insurance policy with Mutual,” she said. She patted the papers in the briefcase. “This is my life insurance policy.”
Flipping through page after page, I could barely focus my eyes; my head was reeling. “It’s one hell of a policy, Alice Jean.”
“I want you to have it, Nate. I want you to take it.”
It was like I’d been slapped. “What?”
She closed the lid of the briefcase with a thud.
“I want you to use these,” she said coldly. “Use them to bring those bastards down.”
I gave her an astounded grin. “Alice Jean, I’m just a private operator. I’m in no position…”
Her jaw was tilted and firm. “Anybody with these documents I pilfered is in a position to do a lot of damage. They’re yours, Nate, to do with as you please-but not for blackmail purposes. I’m not giving you this material so you can make a buck. Promise me.”
And a buck could be made. Many bucks.
But I said, “I promise,” and I meant it.
Then I laughed, and shook my head. “You know, baby-Huey made a big mistake, putting a pretty young thing like you in such a position of responsibility.”
She actually smiled. “Think so?”
“Yeah. He should have stuck with dumb clucks like O.K. Allen and Dick Leche.”
She clicked shut the latches of the briefcase; put it on the coffee table on top of her movie and romance magazines.
I looked at her carefully as she settled back next to me on the sofa. I said, “Two things.”
“What?”
“You said there were two things you wanted to give me, before I left. That’s only one.”
“It’s pretty substantial, though, don’t you think?”
“Oh, yes. Pretty substantial indeed. But what’s the other thing?”
The cupie smile turned wicked. She began to unbutton the blouse and reveal the creamy slopes of her bosom overflowing the white lacy brassiere.
“Pretty,” I said, “substantial…”
Indeed.
We stayed there on the couch, and she kissed every bruise on me, and-for a while anyway-made all the pain go away.
27
A week later, back in Chicago, I was sitting at my desk in the big single room that was my office on the fourth floor of the four-story building at Van Buren and Plymouth. I was batting out another insurance report for Mutual, an investigation that had been far less troublesome than the Long case. But also less profitable.
Business was pretty good; I’d brought back two grand and expenses from my Louisiana excursion. I was thinking about taking an apartment at the Morrison Hotel; for too long a time I’d been sleeping on the Murphy bed in this office, playing night watchman for the building in exchange for my rent. After all, I was beginning to move up in the world….
When the phone rang, I figured it was that North Side bank wondering about the credit checks I was supposed to be running. I’d started thinking about putting on an op or two. What good was being president of a firm if you didn’t have somebody to boss around?
“A-1 Detective Agency,” I picked up the phone and said. “Nathan Heller speaking.”
“Is this some kind of joke?” The voice was male and tightly wound.
“Is that you, Elmer?”
“Yes,” Elmer Irey said, softly. “This package that came in the mail-are these documents legitimate?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call anything about those documents ‘legitimate,’ but if you mean, are they for real, they’re for real, all right. Genuine pilfered files, records, what-have-you, largely pertaining to finance during the administration of Huey P. Long, and shortly thereafter.”
“Where in hell did you get them?”
“Where do you think? From an insider who got screwed over, and wants to get even.”
“I…I don’t see how I can use these in any court of law. They’re…stolen. Illegally obtained…”
“I don’t know anything about that. Anyway, you didn’t illegally obtain ’em. They’re a…” I laughed to myself. “…hell, Elmer, they’re a lagniappe.”
“A what?”
“A gift. A little something extra.”
There was a long staticky pause.
“You know, Elmer, as a taxpayer, I kinda resent this cavalier use of long-distance.”
“Heller, I don’t know what to say…I had figured this investigation was over, but from what I see here, there’s no way even the Attorney General could stop it, now. But, damnit, I still don’t think these are admissible as evidence….”
“Maybe not, but they sure as hell tell you what’s been going on, who’s been stealing what, and point you in all sorts of interesting right directions.”
“That’s true. That’s certainly true….”
I leaned back in my swivel chair. “I didn’t go all the way through those. I’m no accountant. But I did hear some other rumors, only I don’t think they’re rumors.”
“Such as?”
I told him what Dr. Vidrine had told me about President James Monroe Smith at LSU, and about the building scams and misappropriation of WPA funds and materials by one George McCracken, whose current whereabouts were unknown.
“This will take some time,” Irey said cautiously. And then something unusual began creeping into the dour T-man’s voice: happiness. “I’ll have to be discreet. We’ll have to go through these records with a fine-tooth comb…but I do believe we’ll see some results.”
“Have fun.”
“Something I don’t understand, Heller.”
“Yeah?”
“What’s in it for you?”
“Jesus, I told you it was a lagniappe, Elmer!”