“Now get back out there, and keep an eye on the crowd. Shee-it…there’s murder plots afoot, and you’re back here havin’ a good time! Get out there and protect the boss.”

Messina nodded again, flashed me a glare, and shuffled away, around the tent, back into the crowd.

McCracken’s battered pan cracked into a smile. He put a hand the size of an outfielder’s glove on my shoulder.

“Don’t mind Joe,” he said. “When it comes to the Kingfish, ol’ Messina’s loyal as a dog.”

“And damn near as smart,” I said. My heart was in my throat. I wondered how close I’d really come to shooting it out with that mental midget.

McCracken and I returned to the crowd; nobody seemed wise to the little melodrama that had just played itself out. McCracken moved up by the stage, and I worked my way to the back of the crowd.

“Now, Roosevelt’s boy Jim Farley,” Huey was saying, “why, he can take the corns off your toes without removin’ your shoes-he’s that slick.”

I was studying the audience. In a bodyguard situation like this, when a public figure is up there making a target of himself, you study faces and reactions. With a politician as loved and hated as Huey Long, the most suspicious expression is a blank one.

A very pretty female face caught my attention, as pretty female faces are wont to do, but it sure wasn’t blank. In fact, it was smiling and sparkling-eyed and animated.

She was blonde with Shirley Temple’s curls and Jean Harlow’s body, and wore a wispy white summery dress with red polka dots and had a big purse tucked under one pale arm.

Something about that all-American-beauty face was a little harder than it ought to be; this was what you got when you asked the madam at a bordello for a virgin. But she was good: the clothes were just sexy enough to attract attention, but not so sexy as to outrage a matron.

Right now she was moving through the crowd, stopping occasionally to look toward the platform, where Huey was managing to find still more unflattering things to say about the President of the United States. Then she would move along, weaving her way through the throng like a snake with lipstick.