Detective “Handsome” Jimmy McCafferty was chomping Chiclets and talking to a prostitute when Petrosino and Schmittberger walked up. It was dark out, but they could see the silver coins glitter in McCafferty’s hand as he leaned against a lamppost across from Vito Lobaido’s rickety clapboard tenement on Stanton Street. A clock on the post read ten o’clock.
“What the hell are you doing, Jimmy?” Schmittberger said, startling McCafferty and making him spin from the lamppost.
“Just doing my job, Inspector. Why?”
The prostitute had already disappeared into a disorderly house by the time Petrosino and Schmittberger huddled under the street light with McCafferty.
“Doesn’t look like it.” Schmittberger thumbed at the noise from the disorderly house.
“It ain’t what you think. That was just my change, that’s all.”
“What? You mean you’ve been…” Petrosino made a fist-pumping gesture.
“You fucking dolt,” Schmittberger said. “And how do you know Lobaido didn’t slip out while you were humping some two-bit whore?”
“Don’t fret, I tailed him good. I got him up in the morning and put him to bed at night.” McCafferty flashed a charming grin. “And I had a roundsman take my post when I was on her… my break.”
“Aw for the love… you couldn’t keep your inchworm in your trousers?” Schmittberger shook his head. “I’ll have your ass in a sling if Lobaido’s flown the coop.”
“He’s there, I said.” McCafferty hiked up his trousers and put his hands on his hips. “I’ve been awake eighteen hours in the rain, watching the bum, and that perfume was calling to me. And you should’ve seen the tits on-”
“Shut your trap,” Schmittberger said. “Eighteen hours? I’ve been awake two days. We’re going inside. Make sure no one comes out. And, Jimmy, try not to play with your cock?”
McCafferty spat out his gum on the sidewalk.
Petrosino smirked as he and Schmittberger walked across the street and pushed in the front door of the four-story tenement. It was the kind of place that was built in a month to take advantage of the immigrant wave. Probably some wealthy politician or church owned the pile of kindling, Petrosino thought, as they creaked up the wooden steps to the second floor, the light fading in and out from a loose wire. Three layers of paint hung in peels off the wall, and the whole place smelled of yeast from the rain. They stopped in front of 2B.
“2-B,” Schmittberger said, “or not 2B?”
Petrosino shook his head. Schmittberger drew out his billy club, and Petrosino held his .38 against his thigh. Schmittberger tapped the door with the billy. No answer. Schmittberger hit it harder this time, and another door down the hall opened and an angry man peeked out. When he saw it was the cops, he disappeared.
“Should we break it in?” Schmittberger whispered.
Petrosino shook his head and tried the knob. It turned. He looked at Schmittberger, who nodded, and they opened the door and barreled into the room. Two lamps were on, showing a surprisingly large place with two rooms. A kitchen in front, then a bigger room with three cots and a single window with a blanket nailed over it. They kicked at wine bottles, dirty plates, newspapers, and piles of rags on the floor.
“Probably had six or seven of ‘em sleeping here.”
“He’s gone,” Petrosino said, and just as the words came out of his mouth, he kicked a pile of blankets and realized a person was under them. Petrosino saw a tuft of the kid’s brown hair and waved at Schmittberger, who came over and poked the blankets with his billy.
“Wake up, Vito!” Petrosino shouted in Italian. The floorboards groaned.
Schmittberger yanked the blankets off. Vito Lobaido was fully-dressed, shirtcollar, suit, even shoes. He was in the fetal position, hiding his head under his arms, curled up and pretending to be asleep. “Rise and shine, faker!”
Petrosino knelt down and shook the kid. “Curse the fishes.”
“What’s the matter, Joe? Does he need a doctor?”
“He don’t need a doctor. He wants an undertaker.”
Schmittberger knelt next to Petrosino. He touched Lobaido’s hand. “For shit’s sake. He’s as cold as a cucumber.”
Petrosino pulled the kid’s hands away from the face and felt the neck. It was already rigid. He sniffed Lobaido’s mouth and nostrils. Then he pulled the blankets aside and got down on his hands and knees, searching around the floor.
“What is it, Joe?”
“He smells like bitter almonds. Maybe you oughtta read Tanner’s instead of Romeo and Juliet sometime?”
Schmittberger groped around on the floor. “What the hell are we looking for, Joe?”
“Powder. That smell is cyanide of mercury, maybe mixed with bromo.”
“Damn it all, you think he was poisoned?”
“Either that or he killed himself. But he wasn’t the type to take his own life. He was more afraid of Purgatory than even the mafia.” Petrosino lay on the floor and saw a glass that had rolled under a cot. “There it is.” He picked it up and pointed at the stains and dribbles of red wine. “There’s some grains left in the wine, and see the film on the side?”
Schmittberger ripped the blanket off the wall and threw open the window. He shouted down at McCafferty in the street, “Call a wagon, you stupid ass! He’s dead!”
Chapter 20
Petrosino and Schmittberger passed a flask back and forth in Petrosino’s office. After they had found Vito Lobaido dead, McCafferty reported back to Chief Inspector McClusky, and the Irish dicks danced a wicked jig on the Morello gang’s heads into the night. They even took Morello to the Morgue and shoved him against the barrel victim’s naked corpse. But neither he nor any of the other gangsters broke. In a way, Petrosino admired them for it. It was morning now, and he and Schmittberger had just been summoned to the Chief’s Oriental carpet.
They took another swig before they went upstairs and straight into his shuttered office.
“Well, if it isn’t Alphonse and Gaston.” McClusky wagged his leathery yellow finger at them. “It was your fine idea to turn Lobaido loose!”
“Sir, he didn’t die on my watch,” Petrosino said, wanting to blame McCafferty.
“No one breathes a word about Lobaido croaking.” McClusky glowered at them. “I control the news from the PD, and I’ll keep his untimely suicide from the press. Me.”
“Suicide? Chief, I think he was poisoned-”
“He poisoned himself. That’s what I’ll tell the newshounds, and I’ll tell you two bums the same thing. Nobody prints the stuff my dicks get, not a single goddamn word from friends or enemies of the police, without correction from me first.” McClusky banged his desk. “Every single thing you two have touched in this case has turned to shit. I don’t know what the opposite is of the Midas touch, but you shitbirds have it. Now shut up and get out!”
They retreated back to Petrosino’s office, and Petrosino tilted the flask and sipped until his throat screamed. Schmittberger took it and finished the rest.
“Max, you ever consider hopping on the water wagon, the way you drink?”
“Hell no. Water has killed more folks than liquor ever did.”
“You’re raving. How do you figure that?”
“Well, Joe, to begin with, there was the Flood.”
They laughed. “McClusky’s got it in for us now,” Schmittberger said. “You think he’s mixed up in this somehow? Maybe that’s why he put McCafferty on the tail and why he’s trying to sweep Lobaido under the rug now?”
“Or he’s worried about his career. He’s a climber and another body doesn’t look good.”
“What about Flynn? And that weasel, Ritchie?”
“I don’t trust the Service either,” Petrosino said. “But then I don’t trust anybody.”
“McClusky wouldn’t shit on us if we joined the Pequod Club.”
“Why the hell would we want to join Tammany’s police social club?”
“It’s the only hope for promotion. Everyon
e knows that except us chumps.” Max lit a cigarette and inhaled with one eye closed. He pointed at Roosevelt’s portrait on the wall. “Face it, Joe. The real Reform days went away with T.R. to the White House.”
“What we need is a break in this case, and you’ll stop harping on that.” Petrosino picked up his telephone and told the T/S operator to connect him to Minerva & Company.
Steffens’s voice answered, “Ready on the line.”
Petrosino said curtly, “Did you figure out that item yet?”
“Hello, Joe. We’re working on it.”
“What’s it say?” Petrosino covered the receiver and nodded reassuringly at Schmittberger. “They’re working on it.”
“It’s not any language we’ve seen. In fact, we’re quite sure it’s a cipher.”
“What’s it say?”
“There’s the rub. We haven’t cracked the code yet…”
“All right. Please ring me if you do.” Petrosino hung up and shook his head.
“See,” Schmittberger said, “I told you we can’t catch a break.”
Rain ticked like a metronome against the window, and Petrosino could feel the wind’s chilly breath on his neck. The foundation of the Palace had settled over the years, and none of the windows shut all the way. The wind and the whiskey beckoned him to sleep it off.
Schmittberger glanced at The World on the desk. “And to top it all off, I lost five bucks on the Giants and Trolley Dodgers game at the Polo Grounds. For shit’s sake.”
There was a knock at the door, and Petrosino put the flask away. “Come in.”
The old doorman, Strauss, came in, crumpling his nose and holding a parcel and a letter far away from his bluecoat. “Sir, this box has been sitting by the desk sergeant all night. Stinks like the devil’s breath. A letter came separate.”
Petrosino took the parcel and letter, and Strauss wafted his way out of the office. The parcel was about the size of a cigar box. Petrosino shook it, and something weighing a couple of pounds slid back and forth inside. He tore open the wrapping and removed the box’s lid. A dead rat lay inside, its bird-like claws extended upward. Petrosino lifted it by the smooth pink tail, and Schmittberger shrieked like a soprano.
Petrosino chuckled. “What’s the matter, a big man like you? Never seen a rat?”
“I’ve seen plenty, and I still haven’t met one I liked.”
Petrosino looked at the carcass again. The rat had no eyes.
“Why the hell would someone send you that rotten thing in a bundle??” Schmittberger said in a nasal tone, pinching his nose. “What’s that?”
There was a note written inside the box: Preparati per la tua morto.
Petrosino tossed the rat back in the box. “It’s a fatura, an Italian bewitchment. Someone paid an old hag to put a curse on me so I’d stop doing my job.” He paused and thought of the two thugs at the soda fountain. “I wonder if this has something to do with the two bastards who threatened me at the soda shop.”
“Who?” Schmittberger took his hand away from his nose.
“Never seen ‘em before. They were clever about it. One of them pretended to be my cousin from the Old Country. Said I should quit sticking my nose in the barrel murder.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me about it? We oughtta beat the shit out of ‘em!”
“I wanted to, but Adelina was with me, and we were in the middle of the street.”
“You mean Saulino’s daughter? You and… I’ll be damned.” Schmittberger put his hands on his hips and shook his head in amusement. “How many secrets you keeping from me?”
“Less than you’re keeping from me. Look, I could’ve pinched them, but I didn’t have the goods on them. I promise you this though: if I see them again, they’ll be gumming their cakes.”
“You think they sent this to scare you off the case?” Schmittberger asked.
“It could be anybody. See, you and the Irish dicks don’t get these nice little gifts because you’re not Italian. I get hexes all the time. They usually come with a note saying, ‘I cast on you the malocchio.’ The evil eye. This one just tells me to prepare to die. Not so bad.”
Schmittberger grinned. “You believe in that evil eye stuff, that Dago witchcraft?”
“Hell no. Here, hold this. I forgot to open the other thing.” Petrosino tried to hand the parcel to Schmittberger, but the giant retreated with his hand up in protest. Petrosino opened the letter and found a visiting card in embossed gold lettering: Israel Baline, Salesman Extraordinaire, Greater New York. He flipped over the card and read a neatly written note: I’ll wait for you at my uncle’s. Petrosino grinned.
“We just might’ve caught a break, Max. But this stoolie likes to meet alone.”
“I don’t care, go. Just take that foul box with you.”
Petrosino slung on his overcoat and derby hat and flew out of Police Headquarters with the parcel and visiting card in hand. Half a block down Mulberry, he tossed the dead rat into an ash barrel and pointed his index and little fingers at it. He spat out, “Phfft, phfft, phfft,” sending the malocchio back to the strega from where it came, and hurried on to meet Baline.
He squeezed the visiting card in his hand, worried that Israel Baline would grow skittish at any moment and disappear. At the intersection of Mulberry and Spring Streets, he scuttled faster through the wagons, hagglers, and peddlers’ carts and felt his breathing shorten from the pain in his ribs. From behind a pushcart of herbs, a peddler announced in Sicilian, “Parsley is here! I have the best fresh parsley right here!” The Sicilian word for “parsley” was “pitrusinu,” and so Petrosino eyed the peddler, unsure whether the announcement was a witty greeting or a public warning to the thieves on the street that Petrosino was among them and sniffing around.
Petrosino said to the peddler in Sicilian, “Say it again and I’ll shoot you in the leg.”
The peddler blinked nervously and apologized.
Petrosino walked down the Bowery beneath the rumbling thunder and floating ash of the elevated rails. He passed banks advertising postal and telegraph services, letter writing for the illiterate, currency exchange, notary public, and steamship tickets, then a row of pizzerias. At Grand he turned east, and the smells from a thousand fishmongers’ carts on Hester Street carried north and swam in the air. The smells usually made him hungry, but he had only one purpose in mind. To squeeze every atom of information out of Israel Baline’s greedy brain.
Bells jingled on the entrance door as Petrosino stepped inside Verdi’s Libreria at 99 Eldridge Street, smack in the middle of a mixed quarter of Italians and Eastern European Jews. Tonino Verdi was hunched over a glass display case, looking at a flimsy yellow book promising lurid stories of romance. The Libreria was a shotgun style room about eight feet wide, bursting with books, sheet music, piano rolls, and chapbooks. It was empty except for a nonna looking at sheet music with her granddaughter. A small upright piano stood against the wall opposite the display case so patrons could play a new song from the sheet music and decide if they liked it enough to buy. The piano rolls were stored in long boxes on shelves, and librettos and cartoon and magic trick chapbooks were displayed in the case beneath Verdi’s frayed shirtsleeves. Petrosino always lingered in the shop, browsing lyrics on the flip-side of new sheet music, wishing he had a Pianola player-piano so he could listen to live music at home.
“What is it this time?” Verdi’s wild eyebrows met in a knotted clump. “Last Saturday, he goes to Coney Island, comes back with sixty dollars. Nobody knows how. But I know. I told my sister to kick him in the ass a long time ago. That’s what she gets for marrying a Jew.”
“What happened to your Pianola?” Petrosino moved down the counter and squeezed between the piano and the display case to square up to Verdi.
“Sold it to a bigshot merchant.”
“Too bad. Where is he? I mean business.”
“Why don’t you lock him up for a few days, give him a scare? Crooked wood is straightened with fire! Or lock up the bums he
hangs around for perverting his morals?”
“He’s got no morals to pervert.”
“True enough.” Verdi hung his head in agreement. He glanced at the old nonna in the corner of the shop, then whispered, “Stable next door. Kick him in the ass.”
Petrosino nodded, walked out. The stable next door was a pile of rotting boards and whitewash paint held together by pasteboard ads of Beech-Nut Sliced Bacon, White Label Guinness Stout, and Murad’s Turkish cigarettes. The splintered barn doors were cracked open enough for a dog to slip through. Petrosino peeked into the dusky space. It took a second for his eyes to adjust, but he saw that there were no horses in the two stalls. Verdi must have hired them out. He threw one of the barn doors open to let in some light. Manure smells invaded his mouth as he crunched over straw, moving to the rear stall where sunlight splayed through loose planks. He looked over the stall’s low gate and saw the sweet, dark-haired boy slumped in the corner against a water trough. He wore a brown hounds-tooth suit with a yellow shirt, brand new shoes with horseshit on the soles, and twelve hairs posing as a moustache beneath a long Russian Jewish nose. An empty beer bottle and a leather suitcase lay at those reedy and agile hands. Petrosino had never seen them lying still. He could see the magic in them now. With the boy’s innocent face and sweet voice, no one would suspect that those perfect hands belonged to the fastest and most rapacious pickpocket in the East Side. Maybe in all of Greater New York.
“Izzy,” Petrosino said. “Izzy, get up!”
“Who goes there?” Izzy hopped to his feet, eyes twitching alert. He squinted at Petrosino. “Shh. I don’t want no one to see me talking to youse, Joe. Come in.”
Petrosino looked for the clean spots and carefully stepped inside the stall, closing the gate behind. He swatted at buzzing sounds circling in the shadows and frowned. “Look at you. New duds, suitcase… agile as an accountant of a get-rich-quick concern. Your poor mama must be tearing her hair out. You oughtta be ashamed, you little leather-snatcher.”
THE BARREL MURDER - a Detective Joe Petrosino case (based on true events) Page 16
