THE BARREL MURDER - a Detective Joe Petrosino case (based on true events)

by MICHAEL ZAROCOSTAS

  “George, I’d be glad to get out of this crooked chamber of horrors and let you grope around in the dark. But not until Ritchie sees Primrose and questions him.”

  “He’s not here,” McClusky said, eyeballing Schmittberger and Petrosino. “I sent him to the Tombs last night. I wanted to have an alienist examine him since he’s not in his right mind.”

  Schmittberger spoke up, “Mr. Flynn, this Primrose is loony as a seagull. We questioned him for hours, from the time we pinched him till we sent him to the Tombs. Besides, he’s already confessed so it’s no use pestering him.”

  Flynn ignored Schmittberger and said to McClusky, “If I went upstairs to Commissioner Greene, it would look like you’re not cooperating with your federal brothers. And I know that’s not your intention, George. You’re not a stingy Jew. You’re a Christian, and a Christian shares the fruits of his success. Luke 6:38 says to give and God will see that others give unto you.”

  McClusky’s eyelid twitched before he finally huffed, “Fine. These two will take Ritchie to the Tombs.” He hit the button on his desk, and a sergeant opened the door to let them out.

  Petrosino stood and led Ritchie out of the office, but Schmittberger was slow to follow. He put on his fedora and, from the doorway, turned and spoke absent-mindedly to Flynn, “Was it Shakespeare who said, ‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose’? By Jove, I think it was-”

  Petrosino pulled Schmittberger away before he got them both canned.

  “The Tombs” detention center

  Chapter 11

  Schmittberger and Petrosino sat side-by-side, across from Ritchie in the carriage on the way to the Tombs. It would have been a good walk, but Ritchie insisted on riding. There was a rush of traffic on Centre Street, and the clatter of metal and carriage wheels on the roads was deafening, making conversation almost impossible. Petrosino was examining the young Secret Service agent’s face along the way to the detention center. The kid was in his mid-twenties, light brown hair straight as thread, yellow-green eyes, and freckles stippling his cheekbones.

  Petrosino shouted inside the carriage, “Ritchie, the way you said Corleone in the Chief’s office, you must be Italian.”

  “I’m American, born in Jersey.” Ritchie looked irritated. “My father’s name was R-I-C-C-I, but I changed it to R-I-T-C-H-I-E. What’s it to you?”

  “Nothing, but being Italian ain’t a disease, kid.”

  “It is to me,” Ritchie said stone-faced.

  “To each, his own,” Petrosino said. “So you really think Primrose was mixed up with a counterfeiting gang?”

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Ritchie said, like a kid mocking a teacher. “We do things different in the Service. We spend a lot of time on surveillance so we can nail a case down.”

  Over the street din, Schmittberger said, “Some wealthy Italian merchants have been getting extortion letters from gangs in Little Italy. You think that angle plays here instead of our love triangle?”

  “Could be. But… nevermind.”

  “But?” Petrosino raised his eyebrows. “But all the other extortion cases involved wealthy Italians. And Primrose is an American, a doctor at that. He wouldn’t be as susceptible to idle threats from immigrant thugs. And he’d be more likely to go the police, right?”

  Ritchie shrugged, still playing coy.

  The carriage stopped at the rear entrance of the Tombs, and the guards recognized Schmittberger and Petrosino and waved them in. They vouched for Agent Ritchie, but Ritchie still insisted on showing his federal tin. The trio weaved through the maze of stench and gates. Doors were unlocked before them and clanged shut and locked behind them, and they slipped deeper into the darkness and cramped tiers. When they entered the wing where the lunatics were held, Sandy the Whale popped up from a stool, like a giant white ghost with a shock of red hair. He had a five-pound can of chocolate creams and six of the little brown globules in his mouth and smeared on his chin. He smiled and shook hands with sticky fingers.

  “Long time no see, Whale.” Schmittberger tried to wipe off his hands.

  “We got him in a padded cell,” Sandy said with a broad smile and hooked his thumbs in his pockets. “In a straight waistcoast the whole stretch, just like ye ordered. See fer yerself.”

  Petrosino smiled kindly at the Whale, wondering how the big dullard did his job, much less tied his shoes. They went to the end of the hall, through another locked door to four small cells, two on each side. The prisoners were on the floor sleeping, perfectly silent. The last cell on the right was where Petrosino noticed a white cloth tied to one of the slimy black bars. It was knotted tight, but he couldn’t see the rest of the murky cell until they came right up to unlock it.

  Sandy gasped, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”

  “What the hell happened?” Ritchie said, covering his nose.

  Petrosino and Schmittberger nudged them both out of the way. One sleeve of the strait jacket was tied to an iron bar, and the other sleeve was a noose. Knotted around Dr. Primrose’s neck. He was sitting in a puddle of excrement and urine on the floor, slumped over, his face frozen in a dark blue grimace. His head hung taut from the sleeve, a few feet from the iron bars, suspended in mid-air. The eyes were open, looking up to heaven, blood vessels broken. There was a scrap of paper on the ground near the clenched fist of his right hand.

  “Harry Fucking Houdini,” Schmittberger said.

  “He must’ve wriggled out of it,” Sandy muttered in shock, crossing himself. “Poor bastard’s stuck in Purgatory now.”

  “Open it,” Petrosino and Schmittberger said at the same time.

  Sandy fumbled with a ring of keys and unlocked the cell. Ritchie started in, but Petrosino grabbed him by the collar. “Stay put.”

  Schmittberger nodded at Petrosino, and Petrosino stepped inside the cell, walking a careful swath around Primrose’s body.

  “Check his pulse,” Ritchie hissed.

  “He’s fucking dead, kid,” Petrosino snapped. He crouched low and touched Primrose’s hand. Ice cold. He carefully went through Primrose’s clothes and searched the folds of the strait jacket. Nothing. Then he picked up the scrap of paper with handwritten capital letters in pencil.

  “Block print,” Petrosino said to Schmittberger. He read it to himself and then held it up for the other men to see:

  I KILLED THE MAN IN THE BARREL.

  MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON MY SOUL.

  “Son of a bitch couldn’t take the guilt,” Schmittberger muttered.

  Petrosino put the note back down where he found it and went outside the cell, closing the door. He pointed at the Whale. “Lock it tight, and call Central to send an evidence crew. Don’t let anyone near here until we collect the clues and get pictures.”

  Sandy waddled off and back through the main door.

  Petrosino turned back around and squinted at the note on the floor again. “Wait…”

  “Do you recognize him?” Schmittberger asked Ritchie.

  Ritchie shook his head. “I’ve never seen him before. But it looks like you had the right man all along. He confessed by his own hand now.”

  “He’s right, Joe,” Schmittberger said grimly.

  Petrosino tugged on Schmittberger’s arm, leading him to the other end of the corridor. He waved him close and whispered, “Max, it’s a stage job.”

  “Joe, you think someone framed up a suicide in here with all these locked doors and all these guards? You can’t admit that you were wrong, can you? For shit’s sake.”

  “You ever see a doctor write in block print? They don’t write legible script, much less block print. Anybody can write block print. And we just so happen to find him dead after we find out that our victim was last seen with a mafia gang?”

  Schmittberger held the bridge of his nose, frowning as he thought it over. “You’re losing your mind, Joe. Primrose did the murder.”

  “Where’s the pencil he wrote the note with?”

  “You’re tired and hungover. Let me take care of the scene her
e.”

  Petrosino felt like he wanted to punch Schmittberger again. He stared at him, trying to understand what his friend saw that he didn’t. “Max, collar or not, this is horseshit!”

  “I said I’ll take care of it. Let it be, Joe. Go get some air.”

  Petrosino gritted his teeth and glanced at Agent Ritchie dumbly staring at Primrose’s corpse. “Get some air? What’s wrong with you, Max? Maybe Steffens was right about you.”

  “Go to hell, Joe.” Schmittberger shook his head and walked back to Primrose’s cell.

  “You first,” Petrosino said as he stormed out of the Tombs.

  Chapter 12

  The office was east of Washington Square, a four-story red brick neo-classical with bright flower boxes overlooking the park. Petrosino flashed his badge, and the doorman let him in. He walked up to the top floor and hooked a left. At the end of the hall, his knees ached as he read an engraved placard, Minerva & Company. The door was ajar, and Petrosino peeked in at two desks against a wall of windows on the left. Steffens leaned back at one desk, daydreaming at the window, and a secretary dressed primly in a high shirtwaist and long skirt was at the partner desk, glancing at a book, scribbling notes. There was a rolltop in the back with a bald man typing away, the boss maybe. The air clicked with the typographic machine and smelled of ardor and pipe smoke, and the room was Spartan and clean with an efficiency that impressed Petrosino. He was about to knock when he noticed a mezuzah nailed to the office door.

  “Say, look who’s here!” Steffens popped up from his chair and pointed at the mezuzah. “I’m almost a Jew. I worked the Ghetto so much in my Post days that I became as infatuated with them as eastern boys are with the wild west.”

  “That so?” Petrosino entered the office, taking off his derby.

  “The music moves me the most. Sometimes I think I was born to follow the sad feelings of the Jew and the beautiful old ceremony of their orthodox services. Come in. Let me give you the tour.” Steffens pointed out the windows at the view of the park. “Look there. You can see Stanford White’s marble arch to Washington and over there’s the bronze of Garibaldi drawing a sword, your unifier. Oh, I almost forgot. Congratulations for the barrel murder. We were talking about you over the morning papers. Bully for you, sir.”

  Petrosino nodded and paid more attention to the other two people in the room. He wanted to avoid any conversation of a murder case he felt was unraveling. In his pocket, he was carrying The World picture of the barrel victim’s face, like a key to an unknown lock.

  “Where are my manners?” Steffens pointed to the woman. “This is my boss. Ida Minerva Tarbell. Minerva, this is Detective Joe Petrosino.”

  Petrosino hesitated before saying, “Pleased to meet you, Miss Tarbell.”

  “You didn’t expect to meet a woman in charge, did you?” Tarbell stood from her desk. She was a tall lady in her forties, prominent nose, frizzy hair tied back and bundled, but luminous eyes. Starry and focused at the same time. “That’s Frank McAlpin, my assistant. He doesn’t talk much, but men of few words are the best kind.”

  McAlpin bobbed up from the rolltop and waved, plumped with an air of excitement and nervous energy. He was young, but bald as a bocce ball.

  “Frank’s always steamed up,” Steffens said, pulling up a chair for Petrosino.

  Petrosino sat facing Steffens and Tarbell. “You said you worked for McClure’s. Don’t they have offices on Park Row?”

  “Sam McClure is a menace.” Steffens pointed at a framed picture of a stern man on the wall. “So we rented out this private office where he can’t invade our work.”

  “I see.” Petrosino nodded at their adjoining desks. “You two are partners?”

  “She’s like another fellow, a good-humored fellow to me.” Steffens smiled warmly at her. Petrosino noticed that Tarbell had a humbling effect on Steffens’ ego. “There’s no feeling of man or woman in our office, but she’s the smart one and the better writer.”

  “I am not, Steff.”

  “Yes, she is. Don’t let her petticoats fool you. She was the only girl in her freshman class at Allegheny College. Studied Greek, Latin, French, German, botany, geology, and geometry.”

  Petrosino forced a smile at this sharp woman who wore no wedding band and was taller than he was. “You did all that schooling to become a muckraker, Miss Tarbell?”

  “I don’t like that new label. I prefer ‘investigative journalist.’” Tarbell sat back down on a bentwood chair with baskets of paper in messy heaps in front of her. “We are not yellow journalists either. We don’t depend on exaggeration or grisly sensations. We depend on facts.”

  “Ah, another investigator like Steffens here?” Petrosino raised an eyebrow. “And just what kinds of sources do you use when you go sleuthing, Miss Tarbell?”

  “You’d be surprised by the breadth of my, what do you call it, dope?” Tarbell smiled. “I track down hot tips, review court documents, I spy on folks, I interview people with information. Stoolies, you call them? I have contacts, reporters all over the country and Europe, I know dignitaries and foreign officials. Why, I even use public and government libraries in New York, Washington, and Paris. You’d be surprised what a woman can find in the public record, sir.”

  “You might be a sleuth, Miss Tarbell.” Petrosino turned to Steffens. “Unlike Steff.”

  “But we don’t practice the Third Degree,” Tarbell said with a smile that was beginning to win Petrosino over. “There are many different kinds of monsters to slay, Detective. I intend to bring down Standard Oil, for one. Have you read my stories against Standard and J.D. Rockefeller, or, as I call him, The Wolf in a Prayer Shawl?”

  Petrosino chuckled. “No, but I imagine you’re making plenty of enemies in that line of work. Aren’t you afraid they’ll come after you and ruin your magazine?”

  “Horsefeathers. For them to do that would be an indictment of themselves.”

  “She’s got so many enemies now that we started writing in cipher,” Steffens said. “We send Frank out to get the dirt, and he sends his research back in code because of sabotage.”

  “Sounds like more trouble than it’s worth. May I?” Petrosino took out a cigar.

  “Please do,” Tarbell said. “We love the smell of a good cigar, don’t we fellas?”

  Petrosino looked at her as he lit the cigar. “How about the smell of a cheap one?” She giggled. “So what’s this Shame of New York, Steffens? And why talk to me about it?”

  Steffens perked up, turning his chair around backwards and resting his forearms on the chair back. “Frank, could you run across the street and get us all some sandwiches? Some of those big pickles, too? And some hot beef tea for the Detective.”

  Frank was out the door before Petrosino could say, “I can’t stay long, Steffens.”

  “That’s all right. I just wanted privacy so I can say it flat out. The story we’ve been working on involves the police. So I must know that you’ll keep it in strict confidence.”

  “I’ll keep mum, but don’t expect my help.”

  “Joe, I grew up believing in government of the people, by the people, for the people. Instead, I’ve found we are a government of the people, by the rascals, for the rich. You see, I fear that New York’s Reform government is doomed to defeat in the fall elections. Seth Low is a fine mayor despite the fact that he’s an educated and honest businessman. But the voters are unhappy, and Tammany is in the whisperings in the wind.”

  “Why should the voters be unhappy? The police are good, the laws are pretty-well enforced, and graft is at a minimum.”

  “That’s just it, Joe. The laws are being enforced, and there’s less graft. But that hurts business, and bad business affects everyone.”

  “Maybe so, but I don’t believe Reform is on its way out.”

  “Well then, answer me this: how is it that ‘Chesty’ George McClusky was just installed as Chief Inspector at Police Headquarters?”

  Petrosino couldn’t think of an answer and shrugged
.

  “Backroom dealing has returned for everything: streetcar lines, garbage collection, public water supply, gambling, saloons, brothels. And do you know which is most profitable?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Gambling. Everyone gambles. Faro, poker, the lottery. And the gambling houses rig the odds and fix the wheels, and then they share the profits with corrupt officials. The racket is worth some five millions a year. Maybe more. And do you know who runs it?”

  “Who?”

  “Why, it’s the police!” Steffens boomed with such astonishment and indignation that it gave the impression it was the first time he’d heard it himself.

  Petrosino shook his head. “Those days are over, Steffens.”

  “Oh no they aren’t. Certain politicians and police brass are running a Syndicate, making four to five hundred thousands a month from the gambling houses and pool rooms alone.”

  Tarbell nodded. “If Tammany were incorporated and its money earnings gathered together, its dividends would pay out better than Standard Oil.”

  “Worse yet,” Steffens said, “they learned from Lexow. The graft is so concentrated now that the divvy is between only three or four men at the top. The rest get chicken feed.”

  “Which men?” Petrosino’s foot started tapping. He began to wonder about his friends on the job. His empty stomach growled as he waited for an answer.

  “We can’t go that far with you yet, Joe. Let’s just say that we think it’s a triumvirate, maybe a quartet, of very powerful men. They need a ward boss to control the underworld, an alderman to control the honest folks and pull political strings, and a high-ranking cop to turn a blind eye to their crimes. Maybe even a federal lawman.”

  “Yesterday you said something about the mafia? Now you’re saying corruption?”