The Axeman’s Jazz

by Ray Celestin

  Wednesday 21st May, 1919

  Local News

  Clean-Up Progresses as Mayor Promises Change

  At a press conference, City Hall, yesterday, Mayor Martin Behrman reported on the administration’s clean-up efforts in the wake of the storm that ripped through the city last Wednesday night.

  The Mayor stated that power and communication lines had been restored to most neighborhoods, although work had still to begin on fixing the city’s broken pump systems and levees. With over three hundred coal barges sunk during the storm, the Mayor also outlined the city’s plans for leasing space on barges from outside the parish to bring much-needed fuel to residents.

  Also among the outlined plans was a plea to Washington for financial aid to help rehouse the many people left homeless after the storm. The Mayor stated that he would be asking Congress to extend the funds made available to the city under the Ransdell-Humphreys Flood Control Act of 1917 to help with levee reconstruction, and that he was in consultation to issue a series of municipal bonds to help with the reconstruction of the various railway lines and landmarks in the city that were destroyed, notably the collapsed Presbyterian Church on Lafayette Street and the collapsed St Anna’s Episcopal Church on Esplanade Avenue.

  The Mayor finished his report by promising residents that this type of disaster would never befall New Orleans again.

  After the Mayor, George Earl, General Superintendent of the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans, spoke on possible causes of the flooding. He stated that members of his Board who had been out checking damage to the city’s infrastructure were theorizing that the storm caused an overflow of water from Lake Pontchartrain back into municipal drainage canals, which, combined with localized power failures, caused the pump systems in the center of the city to fail. Although he hastened to add that the above should be treated as supposition until the release of the Board’s official report.

  The Mayor concluded the press conference by praising the city’s residents for the fortitude they had shown during these trying times.

  STATEMENT

  Statement:

  Miss Ida Davis

  Date:

  Wed. 14th May, 1919

  Location:

  Offices of D. F. Webb, Att., Lafayette Str., N.O.

  The following statement is written in my own hand and has been placed for safekeeping in the care of Donald Webb, attorney, who assisted in its drafting. In the event of my death I have instructed Mr Webb to forward this statement, and facsimiles of it, to the New Orleans Police Department and local newspapers to do with as they see fit.

  My suppositions are as follows:

  1) The series of murders committed by the ‘Axeman’ in New Orleans these last few months were orchestrated by John Morval, who himself worked on the instructions of Mayor Martin Behrman

  2) The aim of these murders was to destabilize Carlo Matranga as the head of the Matranga crime family so that Sam ‘Slyvestro’ Carolla would succeed him

  3) The seed of this plan was the falling out of Carlo Matranga and Martin Behrman in the lead-up to, and aftermath of, the ordinance that de-licensed the Storyville pleasure district

  4) John Morval was also personally responsible for the murder of Carmelita Smith of 1503 Robertson Street

  For the avoidance of doubt:

  I, Ida Davis, employee of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, have spent the last few weeks investigating the Axeman murders, and although I have nothing but circumstantial evidence at present, I am certain, after speaking to some of the people involved, that the above is true. It is a well-known fact that before the Storyville district was closed down it was overseen for the most part by the Matranga crime family, with the blessing of the mayor. After the District was made illegal, the Matrangas carried on running their operations in the District, and this brought pressure to bear on the mayor from the War Commission. Unable to force the Matrangas to stop their business in the area, and facing censure from Washington if he failed to make them stop, Mayor Behrman employed John Morval to get rid of Carlo Matranga as head of the Family and install his number two, Sam Carolla, as head. Carolla agreed to close down the Family’s business interests in the District in return for being installed as Family head with the mayor’s protection.

  John Morval hired a former soldier to kill people who paid protection money to the Matranga family to create a situation whereby Carlo Matranga would be forced to step down. The killer, who lived in the backwaters to the north of the city, was known to Morval from Morval’s days as a trader buying furs from the trappers that lived in the swamps. At some point during the man’s military service, Morval had lost contact with him, and had to track him down again, with the help of the Veterans Association partly run by former Brigadier General Samuel Kline Junior – a man Morval had previously blackmailed over his indiscretions. Kline was coerced into taking part in the scheme by Morval, who employed John Lefebvre, also an employee of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, as his intermediary.

  In return for his involvement, Morval had been promised the mayor’s protection in relocating Storyville brothels to other locations around the city when the District was finally put out of business. To this end, Morval has already started buying properties in various citywide locations.

  If any firsthand evidence is needed of the above, Samuel Kline Junior is available to testify to some of its truth. Having spoken to the same recently, I can confirm that he is willing to speak as to the veracity of these statements. In addition it may be worthwhile to seek out one Daniel Johnson, an employee of John Morval’s, who was tasked with cleaning up evidence of the victims’ involvement with the Matrangas from the crime scenes. Lastly, it may be worth investigating John Morval’s whereabouts on the night Carmelita Smith was murdered.

  Ida Davis,

  Wednesday 14th May, 1919

  Mrs George Campbell,

  3520 Salome Avenue,

  Kenwood Springs,

  St. Louis County,

  Missouri

  Patrolman Kerry Behan,

  First Precinct Police Station,

  Tulane Avenue & Saratoga Street,

  New Orleans

  May 8th, 1919

  Dear Kerry,

  I hope this finds you well. Needless to say your letter caused me great shock and joy. To know that you are so close by, and you undertook such endeavors to find me, fills me with upmost happiness. The offer of a place within our family is still open. Please arrange to visit at your earliest convenience – I will prepare a room for you straightaway.

  I am glad that you have found work in the police force and I am glad you used the resources at your disposal there to trace us to our new home. We have been living in Missouri for two years now, and we find it a much more pleasant situation than New Orleans. I wonder why you had such difficulty tracing us; I left a forwarding address at our old residence for just such an eventuality; perhaps the old house changed hands more than once before you arrived?

  I enclose a photograph of the family and me, and a photograph of our new house. To reach Kenwood Springs from St. Louis take any car to Wellston or Suburban Garden, then change to the car marked ‘Ferguson’. It is just a three minutes’ ride from Suburban Garden to our house.

  Please let me know when you plan to arrive, any weekend is suitable.

  Your ever-loving mother,

  Mrs George Campbell

  59

  Michael had found the letter among Kerry’s personal effects, in the green canvas sack the nightshift captain had given to him after the boy’s death, remnants of a life, collected from Kerry’s locker in the basement. Michael put the letter down after reading it and rubbed his temples. Along with the entries in Kerry’s journal, Michael was able to reconstruct the story. His mother had given him up to the orphanage to save her family from some kind of scandal. Years later she had moved to America, and sent him a letter on his eighteenth birthday, telling him he was welcome at her new home if he wished to live there. The boy ha
d spent his spare time in the records room trying to track her down.

  Michael drummed his fingers on the desk and wondered why Kerry had never confided in him. He had been as fatherly to the boy as he knew how, and the revelation that he had lied clouded his memory of their friendship. But then Michael remembered he had not been honest with Kerry regarding his own family situation, and he guessed there were understandable reasons on both sides. He’d have to change trains in St Louis, on the way up to Chicago – a two-hour stopover, and he wondered if it was enough time to deliver Kerry’s things personally. He shook his head as he thought how brokenhearted the woman would be when he told her what had happened. He put the letter back in the canvas bag with the rest of Kerry’s possessions, put the bag in the cardboard box on his desk, and tied the box up with string.

  Michael had handed in his letter of resignation the day after the attack on his home, and worked his notice from his desk, filing the reports, collating the evidence. He had gone to Hatener’s funeral and had been asked to give a speech, where he praised the old man for saving his life, and going beyond the call of duty. He wasn’t surprised Luca was absent. The men tailing him had lost track of him the night before the storm, and Michael guessed he had taken the opportunity to skip town.

  The days passed easily, but during that time he hadn’t had the heart to go through Kerry’s things. It was only now, on his final day, when he had to clean out his desk, that he forced himself to sift through it all.

  There had been a presentation by McPherson on the bureau floor. The other detectives gathered round and clapped politely on cue and Michael was given a carriage clock as a goodbye present. He smiled and McPherson gave him some fatherly advice, and the rest of the detectives joked with him a little as they tucked into the goodbye cake. He’d be back in New Orleans in a few months for the court hearings, but that was a long way off, and when it happened he wouldn’t be an Orleanais anymore, just another visitor to the city.

  In the days after the storm Michael, Gregson and Jones had filed reports and explained what happened in the most transparent terms; Carolla had been behind the Axeman killings; he had ambushed Michael on the night of the storm; Michael had killed Carolla in the shoot-out that followed, the shoot-out which had cost Detective Jake Hatener his life, the fifth policeman to die that night. The District Attorney had read their reports, listened to them eagerly, then ignored everything they’d had to say about Carolla’s link to the Axeman killings, hinting that the mayor wanted an immediate end to the whole episode, for reasons unknown. The Captain had explained to Michael that if Carolla had been in charge of the killings, and he was dead, there was no point making the whole thing public and causing a Mafia war. Michael knew McPherson was right, but he also knew how the city worked, how corrupt it was, and in his spare moments Michael wondered just how high the corruption went. McPherson and the rest of the heavyweights at City Hall clearly knew more than they were letting on, but Michael didn’t pursue the hunch – he’d be leaving the city soon, and the machinations of its hierarchy seemed less important than ever.

  Since the hurricane no one had seen or heard anything from the Axeman, and with counting the victims of the storm, and the reconstruction efforts, the public had more pressing matters at hand. As Carolla was out of the picture, and the city authorities wanted so eagerly to draw a line under the matter, Michael guessed they’d never hear from the killer again. The Axeman had gone, washed out of New Orleans on the floodwaters, like so much other debris.

  After the presentation, Michael said his goodbyes, picked up the box with his belongings in it and left the precinct. The Illinois Central Railroad was calling. He wasn’t sure what he’d do in Chicago – he’d never been further north than Kansas City – but he felt happy about the idea of living where no one knew his name. He could maybe get a job with the Pinkertons, some kind of managerial position, if he was lucky. He didn’t think about it too much; he had his family, and in Chicago they’d be safer than they were in New Orleans.

  He trotted down the front steps of the building, a smile playing on his lips. Summertime was coming to the city, and the sun was beating down onto the street from a tender sky. He turned around and took a final look at the precinct looming up behind him, the stone glistening in the sunshine. He scanned the blank facade and the rows of dark windows. He felt no sadness for leaving it all behind. If anything, he felt like a weight had been lifted from him. He smiled to himself, until he passed the spot where Kerry had died and he suddenly felt guilty for his happiness, that he was somehow letting the boy down by enjoying his new beginning. He stared at the cracked steps where the bullets had hit and a sense of loss welled up inside him. He shifted the cardboard box and crossed himself. He hoped somewhere the boy was watching him and that he understood.

  He took a moment, then stepped into the street, where he bumped into a chubby Negro boy rushing the other way. The box Michael was carrying fell to the floor, as did a gift-wrapped book the boy was carrying.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir.’

  ‘No problem. My fault,’ said Michael, aware that he hadn’t been looking in front of him. ‘Got my mind on other things,’ he muttered.

  They smiled at each other and bent down to pick up their possessions. As they were kneeling down, Michael noticed Annette and the children approaching from the other side of the street, holding their luggage, dressed in their Sunday best. Annette smiled and Michael righted himself. The Negro boy looked from Michael to Annette and back again and Michael could tell what he was thinking. Then the boy smiled, tipped his hat and disappeared into the crowded street.

  60

  Ida heard footsteps echoing along the ward, and looked up to see the blue curtain around her bed pulled aside and Lewis being ushered in by a nurse.

  ‘How’s tricks?’ he asked, smiling, and Ida grimaced. She had been reading the Picayune and she held it up for Lewis to see – a front-page headline about the mayor’s attempt to secure reconstruction funds from Washington.

  Lewis nodded sheepishly and sat in the chair next to her bed, and Ida guessed from his expression that he didn’t want to discuss things yet again. In the days she had spent convalescing they had been over what had happened repeatedly, and what courses of action were open to them. Lewis wanted to let things lie, but Ida had wanted to see things through. In her mind she pursued every possible angle that presented itself to her, calculating its permutations like a chess player, trying to find a scenario that ended with the mayor being brought to justice. But eventually, when she had realized that all her options would result in dead-ends, she had come to agree with Lewis; short of going hunting through the swamps for the killer, there was nothing they could do. With Morval dead and no real evidence to link him to the murders, creating a case against the mayor would be all but impossible. The realization had made Ida feel powerless, and now the whole investigation felt hollow. There was no sense of victory, she hadn’t put the world to rights. She was left with the feeling that all she’d done was prove to herself just how tightly the lines of power were drawn across the city, how strong the authorities’ hold really was.

  She noticed Lewis staring at the bandages wrapped around the side of her face.

  ‘You look a lot better,’ he said.

  She curled her lip at him, knowing she was still bruised and swollen, and that her unsightliness was further increased by the fact that she was pale and hollow-eyed due to sleeplessness and morphine. Every night she dreamt of the storm, of Morval’s factory. Her mind made her relive the events over and over. The weight of the knife in her hand, the resistance of the blade as it punctured his body, the smoothness of the metal sliding into place, the look in his eyes. In quiet moments, when there was nothing to anchor her mind to the present, the memories would float into her head and haunt her thoughts, making her heart race. Worse yet were those occasions when she didn’t relive the events exactly as they happened – when the knife didn’t connect, when the ropes around her hands didn’t break apart, and M
orval was allowed to continue with his cutting for as long as he wanted. That was when she woke up screaming and couldn’t get back to sleep, and the nurse gave her an extra dose of morphine to help her drift back off.

  ‘Anything about Morval?’ asked Lewis, nodding towards the paper. She shook her head. She had been checking the papers every day but had found no mention of him. Lots of the buildings on the dockside had been destroyed by the storm, Morval’s included, and as far as they could tell, he had been counted among the missing. Eventually the authorities would clear the remains of the warehouse and find his body, but that was for another day.

  They sat in silence for a while, then Ida turned to Lewis, a frown creasing her brow. ‘The whole thing was for nothing,’ she said, gesturing towards the article about the mayor.

  ‘I dunno,’ said Lewis, ‘we stopped Morval. World’s gotta be better for that.’

  She shrugged. He’d made the point before and she guessed he was right, but it didn’t make her feel any better.

  ‘Chance put in our way a most singular and whimsical problem,’ Lewis quoted with a grin, ‘and its solution was its own reward.’

  Ida brightened up and returned the grin. ‘You’ve been reading,’ she said.

  ‘Yup. I figured I couldn’t keep making up stories for Clarence, so I popped down to the bookshop.’

  Ida nodded at him. ‘It’s a nice quote, but I ain’t too sure about the “whimsical”,’ she said.

  ‘No, me neither,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘While I was there, I thought I’d get you a present.’ He took a gift-wrapped book from his pocket and passed it to her.

  Ida smiled, took the parcel and removed the wrapping to reveal a hardback volume – His Last Bow: The Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes.

  ‘It’s the new one,’ said Lewis. ‘Just came out last month.’