The Axeman’s Jazz

by Ray Celestin

Ida stared at Lewis, realizing he blamed himself and that the slump she noticed about him was something much deeper than tiredness.

  ‘Ain’t your fault,’ she said, shaking her head. He returned her look and then she took him in her arms and they hugged.

  ‘I should have come to see you,’ she said, cursing herself for letting Daisy get between them. ‘I would have if I’d known.’

  ‘It’s OK. You’re here now,’ he said warmly.

  They held each other for a while longer and then Lewis pulled a bottle of beer from one of his pockets. He opened the cap on the handrail of the stairs with a thump of his palm, and offered it to Ida, who took a birdlike sip. The beer was warm, frothy and watered-down and it left her mouth tangy and dry. She passed it back to Lewis, who took a long swig, and they stared at the goings-on at the party once more.

  ‘So what’s up with you?’ he asked. ‘Must be important if you coming into Back o’ Town?’

  Ida stared at him, embarrassed that she hadn’t come down just to see how he was. ‘Am I that obvious?’ she asked.

  Lewis smiled and shook his head. ‘I’ve known you a long time,’ he said.

  Ida nodded and bit her lip. ‘I need to interview someone,’ she said, ‘and I didn’t really wanna do it on my own. I was hoping you’d come with me.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Lewis, ‘you ain’t going with Lefebvre?’

  Lefebvre was Ida’s boss at the detective agency, an obese white Creole, listless, slow-mannered and stricken by liquor.

  ‘This is kinda . . . extracurricular,’ she said. ‘I been reading about the Axeman murders in the newspapers and I kinda noticed something.’

  Lewis rummaged around his pockets, found a pack of cigarettes and offered one to Ida. The cigarettes were the cheap ones they sold in Back o’ Town, the ones tobacco-pickers made themselves from stolen leaves. The tobacco was untreated and it burned the back of the throat like hell, but Ida took one anyway.

  ‘At work we got this list of “non-contracted agents”, which is company-speak for stoolies,’ she explained. ‘The Axeman victims from two weeks ago, the Romanos, well, the wife had a nurse. The nurse was who discovered the bodies – Millicent Hawkes. Well, her name came up on our stooley list. She turned up a few years ago trying to sell info to us on the Romanos, saying they were up to something. We get lots of folks coming in trying to do that, like we Marie Laveau or something. All the newspapers are talking about innocent victims, but that don’t sound so innocent to me,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I just wanna find out what she was trying to sell. See, Hess never bought it, but he left a record she came. Hess was like that. Kept records o’ everything.’

  ‘Hess?’ asked Lewis, frowning.

  ‘Hess was Lefebvre’s old partner,’ said Ida. ‘Anyhow, I can’t investigate officially, cuz the police ain’t asked us for assistance, so, I was gonna do it on my own.’

  ‘That’s jake, Ida,’ said Lewis, ‘but why you want me to come with you? I ain’t exactly hard-boiled.’

  ‘I ain’t never interviewed someone on my own before,’ she said. ‘I’m gonna feel kinda stupid turning up there, you know, I’m just a girl and all. I don’t reckon she’ll take me seriously.’

  ‘Well, I can understand that,’ said Lewis, his face suddenly somber. ‘I don’t take you seriously either.’

  He grinned and Ida smiled and shook her head.

  ‘Why you wanting to go stepping on the cops’ toes anyway?’ he asked. ‘You getting bored already?’

  Ida bit her lip again and thought for a moment. ‘Kinda,’ she said. Lefebvre had promised her fieldwork when she had first been hired, but the promise had proved hollow. She found herself spending her days answering letters, filing and running to the store to buy him rye. She deserved a break, a chance to prove herself. Ida had graduated top of her class in every subject and was better read than most of her teachers, and she didn’t see why she should have to settle for a career at the bottom of the ladder, just because other people deemed her gender and the tint of her skin to be a hindrance.

  Lewis peered at her and nodded. ‘I’m free next week if you wanna go then,’ he said. ‘Any daytime’s good. I got ’em open since I quit the coal carts.’

  Ida stared at him and frowned. ‘You quit the coal carts?’ she asked. ‘When?’

  ‘Last year,’ he said. ‘Armistice Day. ’Bout thirty seconds after I heard the war was over.’

  Ida frowned at him and he explained how the end of the war meant the nightclubs reopening and work for musicians becoming abundant once more. He told her of the upturn in his fortunes, how he had been recruited by Kid Ory to play with his band at the New Orleans Country Club every Saturday. And how a few months after that, at a gig in the Cooperator’s Hall, Fate Marable had heard him and signed him up to play on the steamboats that took moonlight cruises up and down the Mississippi for the Streckfuss line.

  ‘Lewis, that’s great,’ said Ida, grinning at him. ‘Just wait till I tell Daddy. He’s gonna be rightly proud.’

  Ida’s father, Peter Davis, was the reason the two of them had met. He had been Lewis’s music teacher when Lewis was an inmate at the New Orleans Home for Colored Waifs, a Victorian correctional institution that Lewis was sent to when he was twelve. Professor Davis had taken Lewis under his wing, and would occasionally ask him over to his house to play cornet while Ida accompanied him on the piano. Ida was never more than a passable pianist, but she obliged her father and, over time, the two lonely children became friends.

  ‘Main thing is I’m learning,’ said Lewis. ‘Kid Ory’s a step up, and Marable’s band, they say that’s like going to the conservatoire.’ He finished the sentence in a sing-song, hoity-toity voice and the two of them chuckled. ‘They all sight-read,’ he continued, ‘and they teaching me this and that. It ain’t every uptown darky gets to play with the Creole bands.’

  Lewis smiled awkwardly and Ida could tell he was both proud and bashful. He had always had a streak in him for self-improvement, for bettering himself, for learning everything he possibly could about music – traits that made him different from most of the stony-faced, cocksure Waifs’ Home boys her father taught.

  ‘So you reckon you can figure out this Axeman thing?’ said Lewis, turning to look at her.

  Ida stared at him and raised her eyebrows with mock seriousness.

  ‘There is no combination of events for which the wit of man cannot conceive an explanation,’ she said, before a Cheshire-cat grin broke out on her face. Ever since Lewis had met her, she had either been reading Conan Doyle books, or quoting them at him, and the thing had become a joke between the two of them.

  ‘That Sherlock talking again?’ asked Lewis, and Ida nodded.

  ‘You need to stop reading those books, Ida. They stopping you from seeing the world right.’

  Lewis tapped his finger against his temple and Ida shook her head at him. Then they smiled at each other and lapsed into silence, smoking and taking sips of the warm, frothy beer, watching the crowds opposite coming and going, stumbling and buzzing around the house like moths at a lamp.

  5

  The detective bureau was a bustling mess of noise, people and furniture that just about fitted into the second floor of the 1st Police Precinct. Over the years the bureau had swelled, pushed out the other occupants of the floor and spread itself contentedly across the entire story. It had been a haphazard expansion and it had turned the bureau into a dense, almost impassable place, brimming with desks, crates, partitions and cops. Tables jutted into corridors, filing cabinets blocked doorways and stacks of boxes that no one ever thought to look inside of gathered dust and obscured the light from windows.

  Michael wound his way around these various obstructions on his return from the Maggios’, and on past the different bureau teams – Vice, Juvenile, Robbery, the newly established Narcotics division, and his own team, Homicide. Some of the men were shouting to each other across the floor, others talking on phones or tapping out reports on typewriters. He passe
d a knot of detectives taking part in a meeting, horseshoed in front of a blackboard adorned with chalk diagrams, suspect photographs, and frayed copperplate maps of the city. Further on, a clutch of men sat in a rec area drinking coffee and chatting. Their conversation died down when they saw him pass. Wherever he went in the department, people stayed silent, partly to protect themselves, mainly to show him he wasn’t wanted. It had been five years since he testified against Luca and still the enmity hadn’t ebbed. Although recently he had noticed a change in the looks and silences that shadowed his steps – the distrust was giving way to pity.

  He reached his desk, deposited his hat and coat on a stand and was about to sit when the door to the bureau captain’s office opened and an iron-clad voice boomed his name out over the floor.

  When Michael entered McPherson’s office, the captain was sat behind his desk, palms pressed together prayer-like in front of his chin. There was something otherworldly about the captain’s bearing that Michael could never quite get a handle on – the frosty blue eyes, the bony face. Michael thought McPherson would have made an excellent monk – his looks lending themselves as much to the cassock as to the bluecoat.

  Michael sat and McPherson tossed a newspaper across the desk at him.

  ‘Read that,’ said the captain, his Scottish accent soft and cold. Michael took the paper in hand and turned to the front page.

  ‘Last night some Spic thought the Axeman was in his house,’ said McPherson, précising the story for Michael in a weary voice. ‘So he went into the kitchen and shot what he believed to be an intruder. Turned the lights on and realized he’d killed his own wife. You can add her to the list of victims.’

  McPherson stood, walked to the window and stared out onto the busy street below. Michael scanned the paper. The story was splashed across the front page, accompanied by a drawing of the Mexican man in question, above a caption which described him as ‘hapless’. Michael contemplated the choice of words.

  ‘What did you get from the crime scene?’ asked McPherson, his voice betraying an almost personal concern that Michael hadn’t noticed before.

  ‘It’s the same story, sir. No one sees anything. No one hears anything. The killer leaves no clues. Except for the tarot cards, of course. And this time there was some graffiti.’

  ‘Graffiti?’ McPherson turned from the window to face him. The sky outside was ghostly white and McPherson’s frame looked faintly menacing outlined in front of it.

  ‘It read like a threat. To a Mrs Tenebre,’ said Michael, trying to ignore the effect. ‘I’ve put a bluecoat on it.’

  ‘Good,’ said McPherson. ‘There can’t be too many Tenebres in the city. Anything else?’

  ‘Might’ve found some counterfeits, too,’ said Michael. ‘They’ll be checked out in a day or two.’

  McPherson nodded and ran his fingers across the silver tie pin at his chest. ‘Have you been through the latest-sightings file yet?’

  ‘A little,’ Michael replied, stifling a groan.

  The sightings file was a weighty bound folder listing all the sightings the public had made of suspicious characters around the time of the attacks. The file was a disturbing look into the psychology of New Orleans’s residents, or at least those residents who sent letters to the police. People wrote in to say they had seen Negro men flying through windows, eight-foot-tall Italians, Slavs with horned heads, dwarves, Chinamen, Creoles who disappeared in a puff of smoke, or banshees fluttering between rooftops. One letter that made a particular impression on Michael explained in disturbingly lucid language how its author had seen the devil himself promenading down Esplanade Avenue in a top hat and tails, twirling a cane in the moonlight. Michael had taken to reading the file on the tram home, more as a macabre distraction than anything else.

  ‘The sighting file’s full of cranks, sir. You can’t trust what people see,’ he said. ‘The reward was a bad idea.’

  The file was already thick before the mayor announced the reward, and now the tip-offs were coming in by the hundred.

  ‘Tell the mayor,’ said McPherson, the weariness returning to his voice. Michael let the comment hang in the silence.

  ‘You know I have a soft spot for you, lad,’ said the old man, his tone changing, becoming more fatherly, and Michael realized he was hearing the preamble to some bad news.

  ‘You’ve proved your loyalty in the past. Made sacrifices. Heavy ones that we are fully appreciative of. But the longer this goes on for, the more the chance your . . .’ McPherson paused to choose his next words carefully, ‘personal life might come to the public’s attention.’

  Michael shifted in his seat, the Damoclean sword that was his personal life glinting momentarily in the corner of his eye.

  ‘I know Behrman has some pull with the newspapers,’ added the captain, ‘but the leash is only so long.’

  Michael frowned, puzzled as to why McPherson was making the threat now, after all these years. Was he trying to warn him of something? Michael stared at the old man, studying his eyes for some kind of clue.

  ‘If it would help, sir,’ said Michael, ‘I’d resign the case.’

  McPherson thought for a moment, then moved from the window, and sat on the edge of the desk.

  ‘Resignation’s not an option, lad. The mayor said that would smell like failure, and it’d only keep them at bay for so long.’

  ‘So you’ve discussed the possibility?’ said Michael, a little too quickly.

  McPherson paused, embarrassed at having made the slip.

  ‘We’ve discussed it,’ he said flatly. Michael nodded, the news making him feel numb. His failure was getting him noticed in all the wrong places.

  ‘I can’t offer you much in the way of protection,’ continued McPherson, ‘but I thought you’d like to know. Like I said, I’ve a soft spot for you.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ said Michael.

  The old man grew silent and Michael got the feeling there was more to come. He reached for his cigarettes, patting down his breast pockets before realizing he had left the silver case in his coat.

  ‘Which is why I felt I should let you know about something else,’ said McPherson. ‘I had word from Angola. Luca D’Andrea’s being released today.’

  Michael felt a pang in his chest, as if he had been caught at some kind of wrongdoing. Luca coming back to the city was something Michael was expecting, a vague, dark event looming on a far horizon, but the reality of it, the fact it had actually happened, caught him unaware, and he was surprised at how unsettled he felt.

  ‘He got released early?’

  ‘Early parole for good behavior.’ The captain sighed. ‘It seems the Family’s grasp extends to the members of the parole board. Obviously we’ll be keeping an eye on him, but I thought you’d like to know.’

  Michael returned to his desk and slumped into his chair. He put a hand to his forehead and mulled over the news that Luca had been freed. A menacing image of him stalking the streets looped over and over in his head like a snatch of discordant music. He wondered what Luca was like now, if Angola had mellowed him, doused his energy. Or had he grown angry, ready to seek revenge on his protégé? In the years since the trial, Michael had not been bothered by Luca’s associates – there had been no attempted hits, or beatings or threats, and although he thought this strange, he had become accustomed to it as the status quo. Perhaps Luca’s associates had been instructed to leave Michael in peace, that the settling of scores was Luca’s right alone?

  He thought of McPherson’s threat, too. Despite the fatherly advice, McPherson was hanging him out to dry. The whole department was making hay while the killer was at large – warrants had been made easier to obtain and the mayor had called for extra police on the streets, which meant overtime pay. Police squads had been raiding gambling joints, safe-houses, brothels, opium dens, stash-points – and all the while using the killings as a flimsy excuse for the crackdown. As long as Michael was failing, the rest of the department had what it needed to keep arrest rat
es at an all-time high. And that was the reason they wouldn’t accept a resignation – the higher-ups had already picked Michael for their fall guy. His name would get dragged through the mud, then he’d be shipped out with a pat on the back and sad regrets.

  Michael had to find the killer before McPherson and the higher-ups decided it was time to cut him off. If he failed, the twenty years he’d spent on the force would end in public humiliation and disgrace. And for a man in Michael’s situation, it would be hard to find a job in New Orleans after being let go from the police. Failure could well lead to penury, and if what McPherson had hinted at came to pass, failure could possibly lead to prison. Michael couldn’t help but feel it might all be punishment for his part in Luca’s downfall, that the world was coming full circle.

  He leaned back in his chair, fished the silver case from his coat, and lit a much-needed cigarette. He took a drag and spotted someone approaching his desk – a spindly, red-haired cadet in his late teens. As the boy made his way through the bustling floor, Michael saw he had been assigned a beat-cop’s uniform too large for him, a mismatch which made him look awkward, a little clownish even. He reached Michael’s desk, cleared his throat and spoke in a thick Irish brogue.

  ‘Excuse me, sir. I know you’re in charge o’ the Axeman case,’ he said, tumbling over his words. ‘I found these in the records room. I thought they might be useful.’

  He held out some tattered, dusty reports. Michael frowned, took them out of the boy’s hand and motioned to the chair on the other side of the desk. He sat and Michael flicked through the reports – moldy pages and murder-scene photographs.

  ‘What’s your name, kid?’ said Michael, scanning the files.

  ‘Kerry, sir.’

  Michael offered his cigarette case to the boy, who smiled and shook his head. He noticed the boy’s pallid skin, a sea-sick tint of green he had seen in countless new arrivals. He had often wondered on the cause – the ocean-liner food, the lack of sunlight in the holds, the unhealthy air of the countries left behind, or simply the interminable rolling and pitching of the ships.