The Axeman’s Jazz

by Ray Celestin

  29

  Ida waited until D’Andrea had left before sneaking a peak into Lefebvre’s office. He had the phone to his ear, drumming his chubby fingers on the desk, and Ida guessed he was waiting for an operator to connect him. She had heard snatches of the conversation between her boss and D’Andrea, including the name Schneider, and she guessed whoever Lefebvre was calling now was somehow involved in the thing. She approached her desk and hovered her hand over the phone, gunslinger-like, raising herself onto tiptoes so she could see Lefebvre’s form through the glass partition.

  ‘Monsieur Lefebvre?’ she called. She saw Lefebvre move the phone away from his ear, and Ida picked up the receiver at her end.

  ‘Yeah?’ he shouted.

  ‘I might go for lunch in a few minutes,’ she said, a little unconvincingly.

  ‘Sure,’ said Lefebvre, shaking his head and returning the phone to his ear.

  Ida sat at her desk and listened in while the operator connected him.

  ‘John? It’s Lefebvre,’ she heard him say through the phone.

  ‘Hello, Lefebvre.’

  Ida recognized the voice on the other end, and realized why the Pinkertons didn’t have any records on John Morval.

  ‘We need to talk,’ Lefebvre said, his tone brisk and businesslike. ‘I just had a visit from Luca D’Andrea.’

  There was silence for a moment, and in the background of the connection, Ida heard noises, typewriters, conversations, footsteps.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Take a guess,’ Lefebvre said sarcastically.

  The other man sighed. ‘Can you come to me?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ Lefebvre said. ‘Be there as soon as I can.’

  Ida waited till Lefebvre had put down the receiver at his end before she hung up. She grabbed her bag and coat, left the building and took up a position on the opposite side of the road where she hoped Lefebvre wouldn’t see her. Two businessmen walked past her in the rain, suited and smiling underneath their umbrellas. They turned to look at her with the same expression that had been worn by the man she now knew to be D’Andrea, when he’d sauntered into the office. Lefebvre hadn’t even noticed, he was too drunk, but now she raised a hand to the black eye and the cut disfiguring her face, as if to hide them from view. She was used to people staring at her, but not like this.

  The same repeating images of the attack flashed before her mind’s eye once more, and the terror of it all shook her nerves yet again. She remembered how frightened she had been, how she had picked up the rock instinctively but also with a searing anger, how she had hit the two boys, how they had lain like bloodied corpses in the muddy ditch. How seriously had she injured them? Would they seek her out? She felt once again the touch of her skirt as it slipped down her waist, her struggling uselessly as if in a nightmare, the weight of the rock in her hand. She remembered the abuse they had hurled at her and she wondered if they would still have attacked her had she been on her own, without Lewis.

  On top of everything else she felt like a fool, that the whole thing was her fault. She had been playing at being a detective, and she had dragged herself and Lewis into danger because of it. Maybe being a secretary was all she was good for, something to pretty up the office. Wasn’t that why Lefebvre had given her the job in the first place?

  And yet, when she’d realized earlier on what Lefebvre and D’Andrea were talking about, she hadn’t hesitated to listen in, or to snoop on Lefebvre’s phone call, or to come out here and spy on him, to follow him wherever he would take her. She got the feeling that while she was in her shocked state, something else had taken control and seen her through, and she realized she was more resilient than she had previously thought. This new awareness provided her with a new measure of confidence, and determination. She had no choice but to continue.

  Lefebvre emerged a few minutes later, blinking in the daylight. He slanted his hat onto his head and trudged up the street, his immense weight and the alcohol in his blood making him unsteady on his feet. Ida followed him through the rain until a few blocks later, he turned off the road and entered a towering office building.

  She hung about outside for a few minutes and when she was sure he had gone up to whatever floor Morval was on, she entered the reception area. She ignored the prim receptionist sitting behind a gold-trim counter and approached the building directory, which was pinned to a board by a dazzlingly green fern. There was an entry for a John Morval & Co Garment-Makers – which had leased the entirety of the fourth floor. Ida turned, nodded at the receptionist, and left the building.

  She waited on the opposite side of the road again, under a shop awning this time, to keep out of the rain. Lefebvre’s meeting lasted twenty minutes. He exited the building in a rush, looking anxious, and paced as quickly as he could up the street to a tram stop. Ida crossed back over to the same side of the road and waited. When Lefebvre’s tram arrived and he had gotten on, she hopped onto it via the entrance at the back, hoping he didn’t turn his head until she was seated. When she reached the partition screen that was moved backwards and forwards depending on how many Negroes happened to be in the designated places at the back, she slid into a seat, moving her body down the varnished wood until she was hidden from view.

  The tram rode out of the business district, heading southwest into the long green residential neighborhoods that sprawled out of the city in a farrago of well-tended gardens and tree-lined boulevards. They passed by the quads of Tulane University and skirted past Audubon Park, and when they reached Perrier Street, Lefebvre rang the bell and Ida watched him waddle off the tram. At the next stop, she descended too, and traced her way backwards, catching up with Lefebvre as he turned onto Henry Clay Avenue. She followed him as he crossed Coliseum Street and watched him enter an ominous, sprawling building that looked like some kind of bloated French château. Ida could tell by the building’s location, its size, the bars across the windows, and the fact that it was set behind a towering brick wall, that the place was a psychiatric hospital.

  Once she was sure he was inside, she approached the gates to the building, and read the sign outside: The Louisiana Retreat for the Feeble-Minded. She had heard of the place, a hospital used by New Orleans’s richest families. She watched people come and go through the main entrance, the nuns who ran the hospital dashing through the rainy courtyards with their hands to their veils. Ida walked around to the rear of the building, where she guessed the staff entrance would be. She found a gate giving onto the gardens, stepped inside and sat on a bench that was sheltered from the rain by a flimsy wooden pavilion.

  After half an hour or so, a Negro girl a couple of years younger than Ida exited the building and sat on the veranda that ran across the rear wall. She was chubby and wore a navy-blue maid’s uniform, her hair pulled back under a white cotton cap. She took a boudin sandwich from a metal lunchbox in her lap and ate it with slow, birdlike bites. Ida left the shelter of the pavilion and approached her. The girl frowned when she saw Ida nearing her. Ida smiled, noticing the sharp smell of disinfectant on the girl’s clothes.

  ‘Hey. You work here?’ Ida asked.

  The girl nodded and stared suspiciously at Ida’s bruised face. Ida sat next to her and smiled again.

  ‘You do me a favor, I’ll give you some cash,’ she said.

  The girl stopped eating and frowned at her.

  ‘What kinda favor?’ she asked in a heavy Uptown accent.

  ‘Man came in here about a half-hour ago called Lefebvre. You look in the visitor book and tell me who he went to see and I’ll give you a dollar.’

  The girl peered at Ida, weighing her up.

  ‘Why you wanna know?’ she asked, giving Ida the slant-eyed stare of a street-girl who knew something was afoot.

  ‘I can’t tell you that,’ Ida said, trying to sound regretful.

  The girl stayed silent and continued to stare at her.

  ‘Two dollars,’ she said eventually. ‘Gonna have to give one to the receptionist.’

&
nbsp; ‘OK,’ Ida said, knowing full well the girl was lying. The girl smiled for the first time, happy to have got one over on Ida. She returned her sandwich to the lunchbox, brushed the crumbs from her dress, and re-entered the building.

  Ten minutes later, Ida was on the return tram back to the city. Lefebvre had visited a patient called Samuel Kline Junior. Ida had heard the name before, but couldn’t quite remember where. After she finished work, she went to the library and searched for the name in the local newspapers. She found it in a weight of articles. Brigadier General Samuel Kline Junior was from an old-money family, a war hero who had fought in Cuba and the Philippines. He had returned from active duty and entered politics, becoming a member of the Behrman administration, overseeing the committee that administered licensing in Storyville. Most of the articles, though, concerned a court case a few years before; he had been accused of indecency with a minor. He’d stepped down, been diagnosed with a nervous disorder and sent to live in the sanatorium by a friendly judge. D’Andrea had been to see Lefebvre about the Axeman, and Lefebvre had then been to see a member of one of the oldest families in New Orleans. The people involved were getting more powerful and connected, and worryingly for Ida, her boss seemed to be at the heart of it all.

  30

  The rain had waterlogged the paths through the bayou, making each step a slow pull against the suction of the mud. Luca was a few minutes from Simone’s, in a desolate stretch of the trail, when he heard footsteps thumping behind him. He turned to see the heavy-set man from the tram stop charging towards him, knocking into him with his shoulder. Before he knew it, Luca was on the ground. Blows smashed into his face with the force of piston pumps, slamming into his jaw, shattering his teeth.

  ‘Eight years, motherfucker!’ screamed the man between blows, and Luca realized through his daze where he knew him from – a decade ago, an assault in a saloon. The man happened to be nearby and had previous convictions. Eight years in Angola on Luca’s falsified evidence.

  He knew there was no point in trying to fight back – all he could do was keep his guard up and try to ward off the blows. He was old, weak and tired and his assailant had every advantage. As the man struck him again and again, on his head and arms and torso, Luca became delirious, his thoughts scattering, and something inside him stirred, withdrawing him from the world. The punches became dull impacts, painless and distant, as if it was someone else being hit. He had a premonition of his fate – a descent into the dark warm waters of the bayou, a descent that was in some way also a return, a restoration – and somehow the vision made him feel calm. He let his arms drop to his sides and he closed his eyes. The man carried on pummeling him, his fists like blocks of cement. Then the flurry of punches petered out, dwindling to a stop like a switched-off engine. There was silence except for the rain, then Luca heard the man sobbing.

  ‘Eight years,’ mumbled the man, his voice choked with emotion. ‘Eight years.’ Luca felt the man pick him up and drag him to the edge of the path, and he opened his eyes briefly to see mud crumbling into the waters of the bayou. He felt himself being lifted up and guessed the man was about to hurl him in. He was never sure why he did it, possibly it was some kind of primordial impulse, but as the man threw him over the water, Luca grabbed hold of the man’s shirt, and they tumbled into the bayou together.

  Luca had heard about drowning people, how once they’d surrendered to their fate a beautiful peace descended on them. He had always wondered how it was possible for anyone to know this, and whether it was not just a tale told to soothe the hearts of drowned sailor’s widows. But now he felt himself succumbing to something, the descent of an eternal calm. He felt a kind of slime dissipate from his body, and his mind skittered back to images of church ceremonies, white-robed figures, heads dunked under water, the soothing lilt of hymns.

  He burst above the surface and gasped for air. The water suddenly felt cold, stinging his cuts and bruises. He saw he was not too far from the bank. He scrabbled about and his hands made purchase on the mud. He breathed heavily, feeling something sharp in his lungs each time he inhaled. He mustered everything he could and rolled himself onto the bank and breathed deep, exhausting breaths. The pain of the bruises, cuts and fractured bones materialized in his body like a warm glow. He stared at the rain clouds high above him, the edges of the trees, the leaves dancing in the raindrops, caressing the sky.

  He heard splashing and cries, and turned his head towards the water – the man was there, thrashing about, panic-stricken. He bobbed down under the water, broke the surface and screamed. Luca would be a fool to fish him out of the bayou, but he stumbled to his feet anyway, saw a low-hanging tree near the water and approached it. He had hardly any strength left, so he collapsed all his weight onto a branch where it forked off from the trunk. The other end of the branch dipped towards the water, and with a few thrashes the man reached it, got a hand on it, and pulled himself to safety.

  Luca stared at the man as he coughed water, bent double; then Luca closed his eyes, and after a moment, he collapsed.

  When he came to, the sky was darker and he was alone, folded up over the tree-branch. He searched about for the man but found no trace of him. With some effort he managed to get to his feet, and he limped in a daze towards Simone’s cabin. He could barely see through the blood in his eyes, but he managed to get there somehow, collapsing on the path in front of her shack, sending the chickens into a squawking frenzy.

  31

  Normanson’s factory was a draughty building of dark clammy wood perched on the very edge of the dock. Aside from a partitioned office by the entrance it was a colossal open-plan area with fifty or so tables spread across it in rows. At each table a worker in blood-smeared overalls and rubber boots processed barrels of fish.

  Kerry and Michael spoke to the duty manager, a serious type in a bow tie, a one-dollar suit from the Sears catalogue, and equally cheap Porkony shoes. They showed him the photograph they had found in Lombardi’s apartment and the man nodded solemnly in recognition. He led them across the floor, past the rows of tables, and explained the process to them: fish guts went to the slurry house; fillets to the canned-fish suppliers; oil to the apothecaries; and bones to the glue-makers. The factory was heavy with the oozy smell of brine and dead fish and Michael noticed Kerry was holding a hand to his nose to stop himself retching.

  They approached a table where a burly, good-looking Italian was cutting up fish with an over-sized knife, throwing the different parts into colored trays. There was a grace and speed to the man’s movements that didn’t really sit with his bulk, the blade dancing in and out of heads, trunks and tails with a mercurial, ruby shimmer.

  ‘Rocco, police is here to see you,’ the duty manager shouted over the clatter of a hundred knives echoing against the walls.

  Rocco looked up at them and nodded and Michael recognized his face from the photographs they had found. It was a stony face, hard and pitted, hollow under the cheekbones.

  ‘After they’re done, come by the office,’ the manager hissed in a suspicious tone.

  ‘Sure thing, boss.’ Rocco spoke dismissively, without looking the man in the eye or breaking his rhythm. The manager gave him a withering look, turned and snaked his way back through the tables.

  ‘Rocco, I’m Detective Talbot, this is Officer Kerry.’

  Rocco glanced at them, a flash of cobalt under thick, feminine lashes.

  ‘Whadaya want?’

  ‘We wanna talk to you about Lombardi. You hear what happened to him, right?’

  ‘No. What happened? He got killed?’ Rocco asked, wiping the sweat from his brow with a hefty forearm. The casual tone made Michael pause, and he wondered if he had misunderstood the relationship between the two men.

  ‘Yeah. He got killed,’ he said eventually, trying to deliver the news with some kind of sobriety.

  ‘I told him as much.’ Rocco sped up his cutting, driving through the fish in irate swipes.

  He picked up various pieces of bone and fles
h with the side of the knife and tossed them into the trays. Michael caught sight of a perfectly cleaned spine, shining yellow. Rocco wiped the cutting board with a brush, dropping entrails into the gut-bucket at his feet.

  ‘Well, it don’t look too good for you,’ Michael said.

  ‘Yeah, how so?’ Rocco had a hint of menace in his voice.

  ‘We know why Lombardi got killed, shooting his mouth off about the Axeman. If whoever killed him knew he was talking, then they probably knew he was talking to you.’

  For the first time in the encounter Rocco stopped working. He thought for a moment, the realization that he too might be in danger dawning slowly on his craggy features. He stared at them, then jabbed the point of the knife into the wooden table, where it quivered briefly on its blade. He picked up a rag from the side of the table, wiped his hands and nodded to a door in the far wall of the building.

  ‘Let’s talk outside.’

  He led them across the work area, past men and women still drudging away at their tables while casting sly glances at Rocco and the two police officers. They stepped out through a door onto a covered jetty suspended over the dock-water. The industrial clatter of the factory dimmed to nothing as the door closed behind them, and was replaced by the sound of rain on the river, the blasts of distant foghorns. There were a few chairs scattered about, covered by the mossy beams overhead, and a carpet of cigarette butts lay on the floor.

  They sat and Rocco stared out over the dock. ‘What do you wanna know?’ he said, taking a cigarette from a pack in his breast pocket and lighting it.