“I gave De Priemo tea and cookies,” Flynn said, “and I read the paper for two hours while he sat there like the King of Italy. Then I led him out to the hall in plain view of the other Italians. I patted him on the back and thanked him like he’d just given me a promotion.”
Petrosino said, “The other two must’ve thought De Priemo squealed, because they started muttering under their breaths and giving each other dirty looks.”
Flynn snickered. “By the time Romano came into my office, he was white as a sheet. He spilled the whole milk bottle to get his charges dismissed. He was the real rat, not De Priemo.”
“I still don’t follow how De Priemo fits into the barrel murder,” McClusky said.
“Sir, the Morello gang follows the laws of vendetta,” Petrosino said. “If they thought a gang member squealed, they would’ve put him in a wooden kimono. The problem with De Priemo was that he was already behind two feet of stone and watchtower rifles at Sing Sing. Since they couldn’t get to him, maybe they took revenge on his nearest male kin: Benedetto Madonnia is De Priemo’s brother-in-law.”
“You’re sure this Madonnia is our barrel victim?”
“De Priemo positively identified his Morgue picture at Sing Sing. The one thing that doesn’t fit though, is why they would put Madonnia on display like that in a barrel?”
“I don’t want another Primrose.” McClusky tossed his cigar into the cuspidor and drew a comb out of his desk. He stood to look at his reflection in the windowpane and raked the comb across his hair. “You got any other confirmation on the ID, Sergeant? Next of kin?”
“I wired the Buffalo police to track down Madonnia’s wife. She’s De Priemo’s sister. If she gives a positive ID from the photos, we’ll bring her here for a viewing at the Morgue.”
“What about a signed statement from De Priemo?”
“He was jittery. I think we ought to bring him in and have Mr. Jerome question him.”
“Joe caught a hell of a break, Chief,” Schmittberger said. “We thought you’d be pleased.”
“Can’t you see me dancing?” McClusky stopped combing his hair and turned around. He pointed the comb at Flynn. “Bill, I can handle it from here. Thanks for your help.”
“Remember, George, we are fighting not against people but against demons within people. Keep faith in Jesus.” Flynn shook hands with McClusky. He donned his straw boater and tipped it at Petrosino on his way out.
“Shut that goddamn door,” McClusky hissed. He stared at Schmittberger as he picked up his telephone and asked to be connected to the District Attorney’s office. “Mr. Jerome, it’s George McClusky. How are you, sir?” McClusky’s voice was cheerful. “Fine, fine. Listen, you’ve been asking when we’re going to break the barrel murder. Well, I’ve hooked a big one. …Yes, sir, I’ve identified the victim. …From an Italian up the river name of Giuseppe De Priemo. I think we should bring him in so you can question him.” McClusky squeezed the receiver tightly and smiled fakely. “All right, I’ll make arrangements.”
McClusky hung up the receiver. “I’m bringing in that Sing Sing Dago tomorrow morning so Jerome can question him. I expect you to be there, Petrosino.”
“I ought to be there, too,” Schmittberger said.
McClusky kicked his polished shoes on his desk, laced his fingers behind his head, and smiled at Schmittberger. “You ever have a dog, Broom?”
“Sure I have.”
“You like ‘em.”
“Just fine.”
“I love dogs,” McClusky said. “When I was a boy, I had the best two hunting dogs you’ve ever seen. Red Setters. The runt was dumb as hell, but loyal and always came to heel when I called. The other one was big and smart and chased fox like a champ. But he never listened. He’d always run off on his own, chew shit to bits, sometimes even mess in his own house. You know what I did with the big one, Broom?”
“I don’t know, Chief…” Schmittberger glanced over at Petrosino, unsure where this was going. “Did you give it away to the SPCA?”
“I put it on a wagon, and I drove out as far as I could in the middle of some woods where I knew there was all kinds of wild animals. Then I tied it to a tree with ten foot of rope. You should’ve heard it yelping when I drove off. I swear to this day it sounded like a child.”
Petrosino felt sick to his stomach, imagining the poor dog starving to death. He looked into McClusky’s hollow eyes and that’s when Petrosino was sure that the Chief had some skin in the game. Something the son of a bitch was hiding in the barrel murder.
Even Schmittberger was disturbed by the story and McClusky’s icy stare. It took him a moment to fire off a quip, “I take it this story doesn’t end with the pup finding his way home?”
McClusky shook his head. “I luncheoned with Flynn today. Of course, I’m on the water wagon and don’t drink, but Flynn had a few chianti toddies. He let it slip that it wasn’t Agent Ritchie. No, it was you who figured out that Primrose couldn’t have done the killing.”
Petrosino didn’t look, but he could hear Schmittberger swallow hard.
“I guess you went to that sanitarium,” McClusky said, “checked the records yourself, and then fed it to the Secret Service? Course, you did all that without telling me one fucking word.” Schmittberger stood, holding out his hands to explain. McClusky shouted, “Shut your trap! Three days’ suspension for insubordination, and you’re off the barrel case when you come back.”
“You can’t do that.” Schmittberger leaned over the desk. “Deputy Commissioner Piper is the judge for police misconduct trials, and I’m entitled to a hearing.”
Petrosino slowly stood. “Chief, we need Max-”
“Stay out of this, Petrosino. Go take the rest of the day off, unless you want the boot, too.” McClusky turned back to Schmittberger and held out his hand.
“I’ve got plenty other guns,” Schmittberger said and slid his service revolver across the desk. “Besides, I never needed one to pinch a crook. But you’ll not get my badge. Not for three days, not for three seconds. You want it, you come try and take it from me… Chief.”
“Three days penance is easy, you Jew squealer,” McClusky said. “Now you can go to your temple and do whatever you heathens do.”
Chapter 23
“Can you believe that fucking Irish peacock?” Schmittberger said. “We I.D. the victim, crack the case open, and what does he do? Suspends me!”
“He’s crooked as a ram’s horn,” Petrosino said.
“Of course he is. He’s a Tammany man, ain’t he?”
“On this case in particular. First, he wanted it to go away when we pinned it on Primrose. Then he didn’t bat an eyelash when Primrose croaked. He was almost relieved-”
“Let’s do this over a drink, Joe. I need one. Or five.” Schmittberger paced between an armchair and the brown velvet parlor suite in Petrosino’s sitting room. He stopped and looked through a bookcase and laughed. “Phelps on Wounds, Brundage on Toxicology, Tanner’s Memorandum of Poisons, firearms manuals, and a dictionary. Jesus, don’t you ever read for pleasure? I thought you’d at least have Sherlock Holmes with all the fibs you tell?”
“Me? You’re the master of tall tales. I’ve got Twain’s Double Barreled Detective Story there, but it wasn’t very good. Cool your heels.”
Petrosino went to his kitchen and opened a beer. He split it between two coffee cups and brought it out with a loaf of black bread, a white onion, a jar of green olives, some old salami, and a hunk of fresh cheese from the best latteria in Little Italy.
Schmittberger was sitting in the armchair, and Petrosino settled into a rocker.
“After Primrose kicks the bucket,” Petrosino said, “Lobaido just so happens to follow. And whose watch was that on?”
“His favorite. Handsome Jimmy, another potato-eater.”
“Right. And now he’s made some deal with Flynn so he’s got full control of the investigation. Then he takes you off the case. Max, what if he’s behind these killings?”
&nb
sp; “Or suicides, you mean? Either way that Mick is trying to take this from me.” Max tapped the gold Inspector’s shield in his vest. “But I’m going to protect it with all I got.”
“Listen, he said you’re off the barrel case, but that doesn’t mean you can’t detail other men to work on it, right? Hell, he wouldn’t even know if you were still on the job. He doesn’t step foot outside the Marble Palace except to eat dinner at Delmonico’s.”
Schmittberger finished his beer and started in on the food. He took a bite of cheese and smiled. “You’re right, Joe. I guess that means I can keep feeding you these notes?”
“Notes? You found another one?”
“I was going to tell the bastard, but fuck him now.” Schmittberger took out a notepad and flipped it open. “Another one appeared behind that loose brick at the Star of Italy. I’ve had my man Stransky watching. We left it there, but I copied it down.”
Petrosino took out his butcher’s book and wrote down the code:
FRJOLDPR O’HUED SHU OD YROSH.
“I still can’t make heads or tails of it, Max. We need to give this to Steffens-”
“I already tried his office. They’re out for the day. Besides, it’s after six now.”
“You know where his office is?” Petrosino said.
“I followed you there once. It gets my goat that no one trusts me, you especially. That’s always been your Achille’s heel. You get so steamed up on a case, you let yourself get tailed.”
Petrosino shook his head. He didn’t know which was worse. The fact that Schmittberger had tailed him or that he hadn’t known he was being tailed. “Son of a . . .”
“Aw, don’t be sore, Joe. There’s nothing to do until the next of kin identify Madonnia and Jerome questions De Priemo.” Schmittberger ate a handful of olives, pits and all. He smiled. “I’m on suspension so we might as well keep drinking, right? Where’s the good stuff?”
“Don’t follow me again.” Petrosino went into the kitchen and looked in the back of a cupboard. He brought a dusty bottle into the sitting room. “You gave me this for helping you on that kidnapping, remember? I’ve been saving it for a special occasion, but I never have one.”
“Don’t be so glum. Let me see that treasure.” Schmittberger read the label, “PEARL WEDDING RYE bears the indorsement of some of our most famous physicians, because of its medicinal qualities. It is an almost infallible cure for gout and rheumatism, and used as a preventative will invariably ward off attacks of colds and la grippe!”
Petrosino said, “I do feel a soreness in my ribs.”
“Sounds like you need this medicine to me.” Schmittberger’s tongue raked over his lips as he opened the bottle. He poured the golden nectar halfway up two coffee cups and they toasted to the lighted apartments and the misty halo of stars shining outside the windows. Petrosino moved his rocking chair next to the Edison phonograph on the bureau, setting the cup of whiskey on a footstool. Everything within arms-length. They lit cigars and balanced them on the lip of an empty olive jar, then they took a long sip of rye and puffed on the cigars.
The smoky flavor soothed Petrosino’s throat.
“That’ll save many a doctor’s bill,” Max said. “How about some music, maestro?”
The phonograph was Petrosino’s most expensive treasure, and the black canisters of wax cylinders gleamed on the bureau, all identical, so he had no way of knowing which song was which. He took another sip of rye and played the first two-minute recording.
The announcer’s voice crackled through the phonograph’s black and brass horn, “Selection from Rigoletto, played by the Edison Concert Band!” And the music tumbled out and filled the sitting room while their fingers began tapping, Petrosino’s along the arm of the rocking chair and Schmittberger’s on the armchair. Petrosino sang to the instrumental accompaniment, “La donna è mobile, qual piuma al vento, muta d’accento, e di pensiero. Ba, ba, ba, da da-da!”
Then another gold moulded cylinder. “Whistling solo, anvil chorus from Il Trovatore by Joe Belmont, Edison Records!” The music came out fast and frolicking.
Schmittberger tried to whistle along and almost lost his cigar. Petrosino’s foot tapped to the beat. More sips of whiskey and the next cylinder. “I never trouble trouble until trouble troubles me, sung by Collins and Natus, Edison Records!”
“That’s your tune, Max.” The vocals and the tinkling sounds of piano started Petrosino’s head bobbing and kept his foot tapping.
Max dropped two bits into the knob of the coin-slot gas meter to keep the light on, and they went through a dozen more cylinders like that: a toast of rye, a puff of tobacco, and their chairs moving farther away from the phonograph as they contorted and sang along with the baritone solo in “El Toreador” from Carmen and the Edison Male Quartet’s rendition of “Keep on a-shing silv’ry moon” and the French tenor Bartel singing from Aida.
When the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana began playing, Petrosino rushed into his bedroom to dig out his violin case. He rosined his bow, and they listened to another dozen songs while Petrosino drew the bow softly across the violin’s strings. By his seventh cup of whiskey and second visit to the water closet, his hand was pulling the bow wildly back and forth, his feet stamping as if they were putting out a fire, and his left shoulder was numb as an icebox.
Schmittberger was laughing wildly and dancing with a broom.
It made Petrosino think of dancing partners. He noticed that the lighted squares were blinking out across the street, and the stars were becoming slow comets.
The recorded voice announced the next song from the brass horn, “Adelina, the Yale boola girl, by the Edison Quartet!” Petrosino’s chest swelled up, and he said, “For my dear Adelina. You’re the only reason I bought this rotten record.” He sung along with the cheerleading chants and music, and when the song ended, he looked out the window. She would be going upstairs soon to brush her hair and get ready for sleep. Only half a block away.
“How’d you meet Saulino’s girl?” Schmittberger said, reading his mind.
“At a Saturday evening dance for the Italian Benevolent Association.”
“That’s a gas! You dance?”
“I did that night. She had a violet ribbon in her hair, big sad eyes, and big feet. No one asked her to dance because she wore a widow’s dress. Men kept passing over her, asking other girls to dance, but she never got upset. Even danced once with her pop. So at the end of the night, I got up my courage and asked for a dance. She trampled all over my toes and, by the end of the song, we couldn’t stop laughing.”
“Why don’t you go see her?”
“Who?”
“Who? Joe, you’re like a brother to me, but you’re a schmuck.” Schmittberger put his arm around him. “I’ve got Sarah and the kids, and, at the end of the day, that’s all that counts. So if you want that girl, go get her damn it… or I will!”
They laughed, and Petrosino said, “One more,” fumbling for another cylinder.
“Stars and Stripes Forever, march, played by the Edison Military Band!”
“Dear old John Philip Sousa!” Petrosino waved his violin bow like a bandleader’s baton, and they both marched in tune with the triumphant horns and the crashing cymbals, out the door and into the stairwell. Petrosino nearly slipped down the stairs, but Max caught him by the collar. They high-stepped outside as if they were in full parade march to Saulino’s restaurant.
“Go on home, I can do this by myself,” Petrosino whispered.
“Godspeed, Romeo.” Schmittberger saluted and slipped away.
Petrosino stood beneath Adelina’s window and began playing his violin, making music like a male lark. Her face appeared behind a pot of basil on the sill, hiding, but Petrosino thought he could see her eyes, big and purple as sloe berries, watching him. Smiling. His violin strings yowled over cackling from the street and a man shouting, “That sounds like a cat in heat!” Another said, “Maybe he’s got a Jew’s harp stuck up his culo!” Laughter echoed. For s
ome reason he wasn’t embarrassed. He felt alive as he strummed the bow and plucked strings and finally opened his eyes to see Vincenzo Saulino’s baffled frown.
The bow screeched over the strings, and the music halted.
“My God, you’ve had a snootful, huh?” Vincenzo said.
Petrosino nodded silently, watching a comet spinning silver pinwheels in the night. All the Saints had turned against him.
Vincenzo Saulino looked out on life like a resentful crab peering out of its shell a few moments at a time. He put his arm around Petrosino and walked him back to his flat. “I like you, Joe, you’re a good man. But she’s already lost one husband. With your line of work, I couldn’t bear to see her hurt like that again. Now please, don’t embarrass us.”
“Signore, with all due respect,” Petrosino said as Vincenzo walked him upstairs and into his flat, “I’m going to see her whether you like it or not.”
“Papa, go back home,” Adelina’s voice said. Petrosino was in bed now. He could hear them argue in whispers. At the end, he made out her voice saying, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Fine, look what happened the last time you went against me.” The door slammed.
“You’ve done it now,” Adelina said, staring down at him. “You and your crazy violin.”
Petrosino looked up at her face and the kaleidoscope of shadows and colors and dreams on the ceiling above her, and he said, “Pearl Wedding Rye is an infallible cure for gout.”
He woke up dying for a glass of water, and there she was next to him. She opened her eyes, and they touched each other’s faces. She rolled her back to him, and he put his arms around her and held tight, afraid he was dreaming and that he’d hear a rooster or a wagon in a minute, and she’d vanish. But she was real. She whispered, “You stubborn bastard.”
He couldn’t remember every detail, but he knew he’d embarrassed himself. He kissed the back of her neck. “Are you cross with me?”
THE BARREL MURDER - a Detective Joe Petrosino case (based on true events) Page 18
