The Axeman’s Jazz

by Ray Celestin

  The tram arrived, splashing its way up the street, and as Ida boarded it she realized that it was no longer a case of simply wanting to be involved in an investigation; now she felt an obligation to be involved, an obligation to stop Morval once and for all.

  PART FOUR

  The Times–Picayune

  Thursday 8th May, 1919

  The Axeman Speaks!

  Yesterday morning a man claiming to be the Axeman that has been terrorizing our fair city these past months sent The Times–Picayune a letter. We reprint the letter here in full for the benefit of all our citizens. Will the city bow to this madman’s terrorizing and ‘jazz it up’ on the night in question? Only time will tell.

  Hell, May 6th, 1919

  Esteemed Mortal:

  They have never caught me and they never will. They have never seen me, for I am invisible, even as the ether that surrounds your earth. I am not a human being, but a spirit and a demon from the hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the Axeman.

  When I see fit, I shall come and claim other victims. I alone know whom they shall be. I shall leave no clue except my bloody axe, besmeared with blood and brains of he whom I have sent below to keep me company.

  If you wish you may tell the police to be careful not to rile me. Of course, I am a reasonable spirit. I take no offense at the way they have conducted their investigations in the past. In fact, they have been so utterly stupid as to not only amuse me, but His Satanic Majesty, Francis Josef, etc. But tell them to beware. Let them not try to discover what I am, for it were better that they were never born than to incur the wrath of the Axeman. I don’t think there is any need of such a warning, for I feel sure the police will always dodge me, as they have in the past. They are wise and know how to keep away from all harm.

  Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to. If I wished, I could pay a visit to your city every night. At will I could slay thousands of your best citizens, for I am in close relationship with the Angel of Death.

  Now, to be exact, at 12:15 (earthly time) on next Tuesday night, I am going to pass over New Orleans. In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little proposition to you people. Here it is:

  I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.

  Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus, and it is about time I leave your earthly home, I will cease my discourse. Hoping that thou wilt publish this, that it may go well with thee, I have been, am and will be the worst spirit that ever existed either in fact or realm of fancy.

  The Axeman

  37

  Mayor Behrman held a press conference early the next morning outside City Hall to announce the administration’s response to the letter. Underneath a tarpaulin canopy, on a squat podium, stood Captain McPherson, Michael, a cabal of mayoral employees and the mayor himself. Beyond them, on the lower steps and out on the street, a gaggle of reporters hunched unprotected in the rain, wet and irritated, writing in sodden notebooks.

  McPherson had told Michael he wouldn’t be required to speak, but his presence had been requested regardless, to ‘show a unified front’, in Mayor Behrman’s words. Michael only half-listened to the mayor’s booming voice as he read from a sheet of paper; his attention had been caught by the drooping canopy above him. Just after dawn, workers had hastily stretched the tarpaulin above the front steps of the building, and the groaning blue sheet had been collecting rain ever since. The weight of the water was dragging the tarpaulin’s bloated center towards the ground, making Michael feel like he was standing beneath a giant creature, looking up at the underbelly of a watchful Cerberus.

  He caught snippets of what he already knew – the administration thought the letter to be a hoax, but all police leave was cancelled regardless; a full presence on the streets for the night; plainclothes officers to mingle with the crowds; and a plea to all citizenry to be watchful and to stay indoors – the last causing an ironic, murmuring laugh from the reporters. Michael heard Behrman mention the possibility of deploying the National Guard. He frowned at McPherson when he heard this, and the captain shook his head almost imperceptibly. When Behrman finished his statement, he opened up the conference to the reporters, who launched forth a cavalcade of questions, shouted over the noise of the rain, which the mayor batted away with his usual sangfroid.

  Michael gazed across the tangle of faces in the crowd and noticed Riley milling around at the back of the huddle. He made eye contact with him and the reporter nodded and smiled. He appeared even more haggard than he normally did, and even at such a distance, Michael could see Riley’s hand shaking as he raised his cigarette to his mouth and took deep, heavy drags on it. Michael made a signal by moving his head sideways, and Riley seemed to get the gist of it. He nodded back at Michael and tapped the pocket watch in his palm.

  The conference wound down and Behrman and his entourage retreated to the warmth of their offices, McPherson returned to the precinct, and the crowd of reporters rushed back to their newsrooms to change their wet clothes and type up their copy. Michael stepped down into the street and over to Riley, who had procured two cups of coffee. He handed one to Michael and they moved to the cover of a doorway on the opposite side of the road. They each lit a cigarette and stared at City Hall. The gray slate steps were empty, reflecting the bright blue of the tarpaulin above them.

  ‘Be honest,’ said Michael. ‘You guys make it up?’

  Riley shook his head. ‘I picked the damn thing out the mailbox myself. Either the guy’s a lunatic or a very enterprising jazz musician.’

  Michael smiled and took a sip of his coffee.

  ‘Or a vet,’ added the reporter.

  Michael thought for a moment. ‘You mean the line about Franz Joseph?’

  Riley nodded.

  ‘Maybe,’ said Michael. ‘He spelt it in the German style.’

  Since the beginning of the year, New Orleans had been filling up with veterans returning from the war in Europe, and Michael had noticed a rise in the number of crimes involving former troops, those men who had returned but couldn’t readjust.

  ‘Either way it’s gonna upset the Italians,’ said Riley, and Michael peered at him quizzically.

  ‘The date in the letter,’ he explained, ‘it’s St Joseph’s day. The patron saint of dagos. The church parades are going to have to dodge around the jazz bands.’

  They both laughed before taking sips of their coffees.

  ‘You ain’t exactly been keen to chase up your debt,’ Michael said.

  Riley shrugged and stared into the street and Michael noticed an edginess in him. Riley had always been a furtive, jittery type, but now he had a distracted air to him as well – his mind was on distant things.

  ‘I’ve been busy,’ he said. ‘The Lombardi angle worked out then?’

  ‘Sure,’ Michael replied. ‘How’d you find out about him?’

  ‘Tell me your angle.’ said Riley. ‘I’ll level with you.’

  Michael sighed. ‘We traced Lombardi to a low-level enforcer called Pietro. Pietro gave Lombardi a list of victims to deliver to a hit-man out in the bayou somewhere. Bayou suggests an out-of-towner. Pietro’s looking to get made. My guess? This is all Black Hand stuff that got out of control.’

  Riley took a drag on his cigarette, exhaled and nodded.

  ‘Tallies with what I know,’ he said.

  ‘Good. Now you gonna tell me how you knew about Lom-bardi?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I meet a lot of people doing this job, Talbot,’ he said. ‘A few of them pretty high up. This Black Hand angle you’ve decided on – it might cause you trouble. A
fter you speak to Pietro, I’m gonna call in my debt.’

  The two men looked at each other and Michael nodded. Riley smiled and tipped his hat, then dashed his coffee onto the sidewalk and trudged out into the rain.

  Michael watched him go, shook his head, and leaned against the cove of the doorway while he finished his coffee and cigarette. He heard a groaning noise and fearful shouts and swung his gaze to the City Hall steps to see the ropes holding the tarpaulin to the sides of the building snap and break free. The tarpaulin and the rainwater it held dropped onto the steps with a crash, and the single body of water shattered into a million drops, flying like shrapnel.

  38

  Luca’s alarm clock drilled him awake at 4.30. He rose, felt his way through the darkness to the window, and moved the muslin in front of it back an inch. In the street below, a hundred yards down the block, a black sedan was parked in a spot that violated the local parking restrictions. If cops still conducted stakeouts the way they did when Luca was on the force, both the policemen in the car would be fast asleep, and they wouldn’t wake up till the dayshift came to relieve them.

  He moved from the window to the nightstand, removed his vest, and stared at himself in the mirror. The bruises and cuts had spread like a mold over his abdomen, a purple-and-ruby mildew. He pressed his hand against the skin where he thought the broken rib was and winced under the pain. Then he turned from the mirror to the jug on the nightstand, poured stale water into a basin and washed himself gently with a cloth and a bar of soap.

  He wrapped new bandages around the wounds, dressed and snuck out of the hotel, slipping into the night through the kitchen exit. He padded along an empty Canal Street, silent except for the rain, and skirted along the edge of Storyville. He turned onto Basin Street and entered the New Orleans Terminal Train Station through the towering neoclassical arch. He stopped at a newsstand and bought an early edition of the Picayune, quickly scanning the bizarre letter on the front page. The station interior was empty and dim except for a twenty-four-hour diner that spilled harsh yellow light onto the concourse with a prickling electric buzz.

  Luca took a booth, sliding into it slowly to save his injured body, and he laid the paper out flat on the table in front of him. The owner, a fat Greek in a white vest, with eyes puffy from years of nightshift work, ambled over with a jug of coffee.

  ‘Crazy, huh?’ he said, filling the cup on Luca’s table.

  Luca peered up at him blankly.

  ‘The letter from the Axeman,’ said the owner, shaking his head. ‘Crazy sonofabitch. I’ll tell you one thing, when that night does happen, every bar and club and restaurant gonna be full to bursting. Damn Axeman’s done more for our business than those crooks up in City Hall ever did.’

  Luca nodded, ordered eggs and toast, and watched the man saunter back to the kitchen half-asleep. He spent two hours in the diner, most of it whiled away with coffee and cigarettes.

  A half-hour before his train was due to leave he took a walk around the station. Daylight had arrived and the walkways and shops were busy with travelers. In the rafters high above a rustle of pigeons swooped about, dropping to the concourse occasionally to pick up scraps. He found some street kids shooting dice for nickels and dimes in an alley behind the Krauss Department Store and paid one of them a quarter to go to the ticket office and buy him a return to Lafourche Parish. He reached the train just as it was leaving, casting a final look around the station to make sure no one had followed him, before swinging onto the car by the handrail.

  He found a seat, sat himself down and spent the journey looking out of the window, still half-asleep despite the river of coffee he’d drunk.

  It was only a short walk from the station to Thibodaux’s main drag, a forlorn street of agricultural suppliers, grocers, saloons and a municipal building.

  The lady in the records hall, a frail, smiling woman who was clearly pleased to be talking to someone, explained the filing system to him. He looked up the Belle Terre Estate and found the folder relating to it. It had most of what he needed to fill in the blanks. A claim drawn up by Edvard Schneider had been filed in 1888 on behalf of the Tenebre Company. The company’s owner, Maria Tenebre, had died a few months later intestate. Care of the company was transferred to a board of trustees, who sold it a few months later at auction to the Thibodaux Venture Company. For half what Tenebre had paid for it. The company was still the owner of the estate. Luca wondered if the company had been registered in Thibodaux.

  He checked with the smiling woman, and she led him to the register of companies, where he found the right file for the venture company. The names of its directors were the ones he expected to find. He put the file back in its place, and went out onto the street, deciding to double check something while he was still in town.

  He got directions to the post office and used the payphone there to make a call to Jake Hatener. He waited a few minutes while the operator connected him, then Hatener’s voice crackled down the line.

  ‘Morning, Luca,’ he said, sounding concerned.

  ‘Jake, I need a favor. Can you call up Thibodaux and get them to run a check on a Maria Tenebre, deceased? Belle Terre Estate. Lafourche Parish.’

  The line fuzzed for a few seconds and Luca wondered if they had been disconnected, then he heard Hatener’s voice again.

  ‘Sure. Why you want it?’ the old man asked.

  ‘Take a guess,’ said Luca. ‘She owned a company called Tenebre Holdings back in eighty-eight, based out in Thibodaux.’

  ‘Tenebre? OK. Gimme an hour.’

  Luca put the receiver down and headed to one of the saloons he had passed on his way from the station. He stepped inside and a group of locals at the bar turned his way and frowned. He tipped his hat at the men and took a seat at an empty table, and the locals turned back to their beers and conversations.

  A stern-looking bartender approached and Luca ordered a steak, fried potato slices and green beans. When the food arrived the steak was tough and the green beans were boiled dry. For a moment he considered asking if they had any olive oil to pour over the greens, then thought better of it. He ate and then smoked a few cigarettes before he asked for the check, paid and headed back to the post office. He called Hatener back a few minutes early.

  ‘One record for a Maria Tenebre,’ said Hatener, his voice hushed. ‘Died in August 1888. You want the details?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Head injuries sustained after falling off a bridge. Seems she was drunk and on her way home at two in the morning. Took a tumble down a ditch.’

  Luca nodded and drummed his fingers as he thought.

  ‘No KAs,’ continued Hatener, ‘but a few raps. Sounds like she was the village lush. Three counts of public drunkenness between 1870 and 1888. All of them nolle prosequied. One charge stuck, though: she was caught in a saloon drinking liquor in 1885, twenty-dollar fine and three months’ detention.’

  Hatener’s voice grew silent for a moment, then returned in a ruffle of static.

  ‘You get what you wanted?’ he asked.

  ‘Pretty much. Thanks, Jake. ’Preciate it,’ said Luca.

  ‘No problem.’

  The line went quiet again before Hatener spoke.

  ‘I heard from Talbot’s boys you caught a beating,’ he said, his tone softer, concerned.

  ‘Nothing too bad.’

  ‘OK,’ said Hatener, not sounding entirely convinced. ‘You take care now.’

  Luca hung up and headed back to the records room. He took the file for the venture company out again and reread it, staring at the names once more. A series of events formed in his mind: a group of people wanted to get hold of an estate, so they used Maria Tenebre, the local drunk, as a proxy. She bought the estate. They waited a few months, then threw her off a bridge. They let ownership slide to a board of trustees who, with some greased palms, most probably, sold on the estate to the people who really wanted it. Schneider, the group’s lawyer, held all traces of the transactions, registering the Tenebre
Company in New Orleans and the venture company down in Thibodaux, hiding the documents in a box under his floorboards.

  The police hadn’t found the link because the only piece of paper to prove it all was in Luca’s hand, fetched from a dusty filing cabinet in a small town in the middle of nowhere. Luca stared at it again – the owners of the Belle Terre Estate were Mr Charles Cortimiglia, Mr Joseph Romano, Mr Steven Boca, Mr Michael Pepitone and Mr Joseph Maggio, all of Orleans Parish. The Axeman was killing the estate owners. One by one. Despite their doing everything in their power to hide the fact that they were the owners of the Estate. How and why did a group of greengrocers in New Orleans end up owning farmland in the middle of nowhere?

  Luca looked again at the piece of paper in his hand. He wondered if he should take it with him. If he left the paper here in Thibodaux, somebody else might come looking, might find it and piece things together, and that somebody would probably be Michael. He thought for a moment longer, then he put the files back in their place for a second time.

  39

  Ida and Lewis had spent the morning sitting at the worm-eaten bar of a Back o’ Town honky-tonk waiting for a friend of Lewis’s to arrive. The honky-tonk was a broken-bottle joint, a raggedy place with sawdust floors and a drinks menu that consisted solely of bathtub rye and high-strength lager. There was a smell of stale yeast to the place, of marijuana smoke, sweat and urine, and it was empty except for the bartender, Lewis and Ida, and three Negro men in their Sunday best who were sitting at a table loaded with empty glasses. The men must have been drinking all night and through past dawn, as they had been there when Ida and Lewis had arrived and they were all of them fast asleep. The bartender had set ‘Jazz Baby’ by Marion Harris to play on the bar’s Victrola, and the three men, their heads nodding and swaying as they slept, reminded Ida of a trio of dancers, moving to the music as if in a trance.