This sort of defensive jeremiad fell very flat when in country-school assembly halls, in churches, in fraternal-lodge rooms and other small rural meeting places, administration speakers became emotional over basins of red dye, lifting the fluid in cupped hands and letting it trickle back in the lamplight while declaiming: “Here it is, like the blood Huey Long shed for you, the blood that stained the floor as it poured from his body. Are you going to vote for those who planned this deed and carried it into execution?”
It soon became obvious to even the most optimistic leaders of the self-styled Home Rule faction that something must be done to stem the “assassination” tide. The climax was reached when Mayor Walmsley was booed to the echo by the throng that had come to see the first bridge ever built across the Mississippi at New Orleans formally dedicated and opened to traffic. The official name of the structure, and so marked on War Department maps: the Huey P. Long Bridge. The chorus of boos drowned out every word that Mayor Walmsley uttered at the dedication, and was maintained until he resumed his seat.
Whether or not this incident precipitated the final effort of the Home Rulers to escape the assassination onus in that cheerless campaign no one can say at this late date. But a charge by Dear in his next address before a large meeting gave birth to the bodyguard-bullet story, or at least brought about its acceptance as factual in many circles to this day.
“Isn’t it true that one of Huey Long’s bodyguards is in a mental institution this very minute?” he cried dramatically. “Is he not muttering to himself over and over again: ‘I’ve killed my best friend! I’ve killed my best friend! I’ve killed my best friend!’?”
This was not true. Dear did not name the bodyguard supposedly thus afflicted, and the newspapers thought so little of his outburst, or were so reluctant to risk a libel suit, that they did not even include the quotation in their accounts of the rally. But for some reason which now escapes the memory of those who recall the incident, it was taken for granted that the candidate had referred to Joe Messina.
Marching steadily toward a landslide victory by a larger majority than had ever been cast for any other Louisiana candidate for governor—even for the Kingfish himself—Judge Leche was asked whether he knew anything about the basis, if any, of the Dear statement; specifically, whether Joe Messina was then or had been confined recently to a mental institution.
“I’d say yes to that,” he replied. “At least, he is one of the doorkeepers at the executive mansion, and whenever I think of how crazy I am to give up a quiet, peaceful, dignified place on the appeals bench for a chance to live in that mansion four long years, I’d definitely class it as a madhouse.”
None the less, the charge—a countercharge, really—that the bullet which ended Huey Long’s life came from the gun of one of his bodyguards was repeated so often thereafter, and with so many elaborations, that it was permanently embedded in the twentieth-century folklore of Louisiana.
The Long machine, for the moment an invincible political juggernaut, rolled on to total victory; but without Huey’s genius for organization, for expelling undesirables and recruiting replacements, and above all for having his absolute authority accepted by those serving under him, it ground to a halt and collapsed within three years.
Beyond doubt another factor in the swiftness with which a monolithic organization of incipiently national scope crumbled into nothingness was the realization that its treasury had disappeared. Naturally, every effort was made to trace this hoard of dollars and documents. In November of 1936, while the Long estate was still under probate, the safety-deposit box which the Riggs National Bank at Washington still held in the late Senator’s name was opened in the presence of Mrs. Long, the deputy Register of Wills, Earle Christenberry, a bank official, and a representative of the Internal Revenue Service. It was found empty, stripped of the trove which Long told Seymour Weiss he had removed to another and secret place of concealment.