She began to weep again. Who could blame her? She still had my handkerchief.
When the time seemed right, I said, “Mrs. Weiss, your husband’s behavior is definitely not that of an assassin on his way to perform a suicide mission.”
“I know that. The whole family knows that.”
“My problem is-I have to prove it. I can’t promise you that that’s possible.”
Her half-smile was lovelier than most whole ones. “You don’t owe me anything, Mr. Heller.”
“I think I do. For your kindness. And patience.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“I’d like to talk to your father, and to Carl’s father, as well. And you said I should speak to Tom Ed?”
“Definitely. He knows things.”
I liked the sound of that.
“Can you help me make some calls? Pave the way for me a little bit?”
In the other room, the wail of the waking child cut through like a police siren.
“I’ll be glad to, if you’ll give me a minute.” She rose, and was going quickly to her boy, when she stopped cold and said, “You know, I can sympathize with Mrs. Long.”
“Really?”
“Carl’s policy had a double-indemnity accidental death clause, too. But it didn’t pay on death by homicide, either.”
And she went out.
18
The frosted glass read dr. c. a. weiss, m.d.-eye, ear, nose and throat specialist; another doctor’s name was beneath. But the bottom third of the window space was left awkwardly open-no doubt the other, younger Doctor Weiss’s name had been lettered here, before thunderous gunfire in the capitol’s marble halls, last year, had gotten it scraped off.
The suite of offices was on the seventh floor of the Reymond Building-I’d once visited the sixth floor-and the chairs in the spacious waiting room were filled with patients thumbing through the out-of-date magazines. Maybe they weren’t here for their eyes.
Despite the crowd, the lanky brunette nurse came out from around her reception desk and showed me right in. The doctor had an impressive spread: I was led down a hallway off of which were two treatment cubicles with eye charts, and doors marked RECOVERY LAB AND X-RAY ROOM. The office at the end of the hallway was small and spartan, however, just the usual diplomas, a few file cabinets and a big, open rolltop desk. I sat in an uncushioned wooden chair near the cushioned swivel one at the rolltop, and waited. Not long.
Meticulous in a dark vested suit, a silver stickpin in his blue tie, Dr. Weiss was of medium height and probably around sixty, though he looked older; he had a stern face, but the gray eyes behind the rimless glasses were gentle and, not surprisingly, sad. He was bald as an egg.
I stood and offered my hand and he shook it.
“My daughter-in-law tells me you’re trying to help clear Carl’s name,” he said.
“I don’t want to misrepresent myself, doctor. I’m working as an impartial investigator, merely trying to ferret out the truth of this unhappy situation.”
He gestured for me to sit, and he settled into the swivel chair, resting an elbow on the neatly ordered desk. “That’s more than can be said for any prior investigation.”
“My understanding was that the D.A. who held the inquest into your son’s death was no fan of Huey Long’s.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s true. In fact, the district attorney attended the notorious DeSoto Hotel conference…and once that fact was thrust in his face, and in that of the press, our illustrious D.A. backed off. And the Long machine’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation…which is investigation by criminals, as I see it…put their rubber stamp on the whole sorry affair.”
“You were no fan of Huey Long’s, either.”
His smile was thin and bitter. “No. There were those in my family who, upon hearing the news that Long had been shot, prayed I hadn’t done it. But thousands upon thousands of families in Baton Rouge had the same reaction about someone in their own families.”
“And no one would have suspected your son of this?”
He shook his head, no, gravely. “If anything, Carl tried to calm me down, when I’d rant and rave about that tin-pot Napoleon. Oh, he was no admirer of Long’s, and from time to time expressed a general dismay over Long’s puppet government. But, like so many people who stand apart from politics, Carl accepted it as if it were inevitable.”
“And you didn’t?”
The gentle eyes flared, but he remained calm as he said, “To me, Huey Long stood for everything that was wrong, dishonest and conniving in mankind. He was without integrity, and felt every man had his price. He would have run roughshod over this entire country, given the chance.”
“Some of the poor people in this state,” I said, trying to plumb the depths of his rage, “think Huey’s heart was in the right place.”
He lifted his chin and peered down his nose at me. “Perhaps that was once the case, and he initially did pursue noble goals with an ends-justify-the-means approach. But, remember, Mr. Heller-at a certain point, to such men, the means become an end in themselves.”
“I wonder if you’d mind my taking a few notes? And could you go over that last Sunday you spent with your son, as you remember it?”
He had no objection, and he told in detail a story that paralleled the young widow’s: Mass, a meal with the family, an afternoon at the cabin, home by 7:30.
“Did you speak with Carl again, after that?” I asked.
“No,” he said. He shook his head, adjusted the rimless glasses. “You know, when I heard the radio report that Long had been shot and a Dr. Weiss killed…I couldn’t imagine it was Carl. But there was no answer when I tried to phone. My son-other son, Tom Ed-came home and he’d heard a rumor about Long and ‘Dr. Weiss,’ but didn’t know any more than I did. I sent him over to Carl’s to check up on the situation. I didn’t wake my wife, so after a while I just…walked the two blocks to their house, to see if this nightmarish thing could be true…. There were people all over the front lawn, neighbors, reporters, police-and Yvonne was on the porch. Screaming.”
He was staring into nothing.
I said, “Dr. Weiss, did your son carry a pistol when he went out at night?”
“Occasionally, he did.”
“Why?”
He winced. “Well…we’d had prowlers in the neighborhood. And a doctor carries narcotics in his bag, after all.”
I nodded. “Is it possible that your son felt as deeply about Long as you, but kept it to himself? By all reports, he was quiet, retiring….”
“Not around the family and his close friends,” he said. “He had a lovely sense of humor-his college friends called him ‘Weissguy’! Mr. Heller, I don’t equivocate in any way on this subject: I am convinced beyond any doubt that my Carl did not go into the capitol intending to kill Long.”
I tapped my pencil on the pad. “You know, doctor, from everything I’ve learned, I’d tend to agree with you. But there’s one snag: he did go into the capitol-and did, in some fashion, confront Long.”
His eyes tightened; it was a riddle he’d been unable to solve, in all these months. How many sleepless nights had he spent trying to?
“All I know, Mr. Heller, is that my son was too happy to even think of doing what he is accused of having done. Too brilliant, too…good. Too happy with his wife, his child, too much in love with them to want to end his life after such a murder.”
“Maybe he thought he could get away with it. Hit-and-run…”
“You embarrass yourself with the question. You can barely get it out, can you, Mr. Heller? Carl would have known that it was suicide, that he was walking into cold, deliberate self-destruction under the guns of those vicious ‘bodyguards.’”