The Ford skidded to a stop near the funeral party, its tires raising a cloud of gravel dust that drifted past the car. The passenger doors flew open, and three Italian men sprang out. The driver stayed behind the wheel.
One of the men was young, early twenties, and about average size. Two other two were middle-aged, one short and thin, the second over six feet tall and broad shouldered. All three men wore long coats and had their hats pulled down low to hide their faces.
A name rippled through the crowd: Matranga.
Emile knew the Matranga brothers. Carlo was in his sixties, fat and suffering from gout. Tony was ten years younger and had a wooden leg, the result of the ongoing feud between the Matrangas and the Provenzanos. None of the men who had sprung from the motorcar were Carlo or Tony, but the Matrangas employed an army of dockworkers and other hard men who moonlighted as thugs for the brothers' more nefarious business ventures. Emile suspected these were some of those men.
Peter Provenzano was the leader of the Sicilian Benevolent Association, of which Joseph Maggio had been a member, and Emile had learned that the association was paying for the double funeral.
Nearly three decades ago, Peter Provenzano and his younger brother Gennaro had been two of the six men convicted and sentenced to life in prison for ambushing Tony Matranga and five of his dockworkers. But just weeks after sentences were handed down, Chief of Police David Hennessy had pressured the judge into granting the six men a new trial. Hennessy promised to present new evidence from the police in Palermo, Sicily, that would prove that the Matranga brothers, not the Provenzanos, were the leaders of the Mafia in New Orleans.
Two months later, near midnight on October 15, 1890, two days before the retrial of the Provenzano brothers and the four men convicted with them was scheduled to begin, Chief Hennessy was gunned down on Girod Street, half a block from his home.
Early the following year, Peter and Gennaro Provenzano and their four codefendants were acquitted at their second trial, even without Chief Hennessy's help. The vendetta between the Matranga and the Provenzano clans had continued ever since.
Emile knew that many of those attending the Maggio funeral were members of Peter Provenzano's Sicilian Benevolent Association. If the men from the Ford were indeed Matranga men, there was going to be trouble.
The three intruders cut across the grass, dodging between stone burial monuments as they strode toward the Maggio family vault, where Joseph and his wife were to be interned. Meanwhile, the six pallbearers marched slowly toward the vault, lugging the second coffin and keeping a wary eye on the approaching men.
Emile, still at the rear of the group of mourners, began edging toward the front in order to get a closer look at the strangers. As he did so, he saw Dantonio and Obitz doing the same thing.
The intruders intercepted the casket before it reached the vault. Emile saw them pull wooden truncheons from beneath their coats. They attacked the pallbearers, striking their unprotected faces and heads with the short, wicked clubs. The pallbearers had no choice but to drop the casket and try to ward off the vicious blows. The casket tumbled onto its side, the lid broke open, and the neatly dressed body of Joseph Maggio spilled out onto the ground.
A cry of horror swept through the mourners.
The biggest of the three assailants stood over a fallen pallbearer, pummeling him with strikes as he lay on his back, scalp split open and blood streaming down his face, cradling his head in his arms in a feeble attempt to protect himself. The other two were equally busy, swinging their clubs pell-mell and beating anyone within reach, man or woman.
The crowd had turned and was trying to escape the carnage. Men shouted. Women screamed. Several ladies in high heels stumbled and fell. Emile saw that Dantonio and Obitz had their revolvers in their hands, but the detectives couldn't push through the crowd to reach the hooligans.
Dantonio raised his revolver and fired a shot into the air. There were more screams, and several people dropped to the ground in case there was more gunfire. A gap opened in the crowd. Dantonio plowed through it and came up behind the biggest of the club-wielding thugs. The detective leveled his gun at the back of the man's head.
Emile stood thirty feet from the confrontation.
Dantonio shouted at the big man in Sicilian. The man stopped his merciless thrashing of the pallbearer and turned slowly around but kept a tight grip on his truncheon. The muzzle of the detective's revolver was two feet from his nose. Obitz, who had finally managed to wade through the terrified crowd, stood beside his partner, his revolver also aimed at the man.
Dantonio shouted at the man again.
The other two thugs stopped swinging their clubs. All six pallbearers and several other mourners lay on the ground, beaten and bloody. The crowd continued to scatter.
The big man smiled at Dantonio. Then said something to the detective in Sicilian.
Emile saw the revolver waver in Dantonio's hand. Obitz, who Emile knew didn't speak Sicilian, looked confused.
The big thug turned and shouted in Sicilian to his two companions. Then the three of them backed away from the detectives. When they were a dozen steps away, they turned and walked toward the waiting Ford, which had turned around on the gravel driveway and was facing the front gate.
The three hooligans strolled away. Dantonio and Obitz lowered their revolvers. Neither detective made any effort to stop them.
As the men climbed into the Ford, Emile ran across the grass to get ahead of the motorcar so he could see the men again as they passed. He really wished he had brought a photographer with him.
A moment later, Emile stepped out from behind a stone crypt near the driveway as the Model T roared by. He stood on the left side of the motorcar, where he got a good look at the driver and was surprised to see that the man wasn't Italian. He was fair skinned with red hair. Emile didn't know him by name, but he knew him by sight and by reputation. He was one of Dominick O'Malley's private detectives. But he was more than that. He was O'Malley's personal bodyguard and driver. You never saw O'Malley without the big redhead lurking nearby.
As Emile watched the Ford fishtail through the gate and turn right onto Esplanade Avenue amid a cloud of dust, he wondered what the hell Dominick O'Malley's man was doing spiriting away three Matranga thugs and why the Matranga brothers would want to ruin the funeral of a married couple murdered by the Axman.
***
An hour later, after the three most seriously wounded pallbearers had been taken by ambulance to Charity Hospital, and a few of Joseph Maggio's more intrepid friends had packed his body back into its casket, then reattached the lid and sealed him inside his family vault beside his wife, the dozen or so mourners who had stayed to see the funeral through to the bitter end finally lurched toward the cemetery gate.
Emile followed them and listened to the hushed tones of their conversations. Although they spoke mostly in Sicilian, he heard the word Doc repeated several times, as if it were someone's name instead of a title.
At the front gate, Emile found Detectives Dantonio and Obitz leaning against a brick gatepost smoking cigarettes. Both policemen looked shaken.
"Who's Doc?" Emile asked as he stopped to light his own cigarette.
Dantonio shot a glance at his partner. Then he said, "Where did you hear that name?"
Emile nodded down Esplanade toward the last of the funeral stragglers. "Some of them were talking about him."
Neither detective said anything.
"Who were the men with the clubs?" Emile asked.
"I don't know," Dantonio said. "I've never seen them before."
Emile swallowed his first impulse, which was to shout that Dantonio was a liar. As a nationally acknowledged expert on Italian criminals, Dantonio had testified in Mafia cases in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. If he didn't recognize three Italian thugs beating pallbearers at an Italian funeral in his own city, right in front of his eyes, then maybe he should think about finding another career. Emile didn't actually say any of that because t
he two men standing in front of him were police detectives, and there was only so far he could push them. They carried guns. He carried a pencil.
Instead, Emile said, "Why did you let them go?"
Obitz spoke up. "Because no one at the funeral would have testified, even the ones who got thumped."
"Three of them got more than thumped," Emile said. "They're in the hospital."
"If we had arrested those men," Dantonio said, "all we would have done was put more people in danger."
Emile felt his temper flare. "Why arrest anyone then? If you refuse to arrest criminals because their families or friends might retaliate against the victims, why bother building jails? Why bother having a police force at all."
"For a crime reporter, you're awfully naive," Dantonio said.
"For a policeman, you're awfully timid," Emile shot back.
Dantonio's dark eyes ignited as he lunged at Emile. The detective seized the collar of Emile's coat and shoved him against the gatepost. As Dantonio drew back his fist, Obitz jumped in and grabbed his partner's arm just as the blow was beginning to fall. "Easy," Obitz said. "He isn't the problem. You know that."
Dantonio shook himself out of his rage. After a couple of deep breaths, he nodded at Emile. "Sorry."
Emile nodded too. The detective's behavior wasn't typical. Dantonio was a good cop, one of just a handful in Emile's estimation. Dantonio didn't like reporters. He made that clear enough. But essentially he was a fair man and operated mostly within the rules. Clearly, something was bothering him.
"Why would Carlo Matranga send men to bust up the funeral of a murdered grocer and his wife?" Emile asked.
The detectives shared a knowing glance. Obitz answered. "No one said they worked for Matranga. We don't know who they were."
"Why was Dominick O'Malley's man driving them?"
This time, Theodore Obitz took a menacing step toward Emile. "Listen here, bud. I saw myself that the driver never got out of that motorcar, and it was too far away for you to have seen him clearly. So before you start making unfounded accusations, especially if they touch upon the name you just mentioned, you ought to think long and hard about how much you like being a reporter in this city."
"I was standing at the edge of the driveway," Emile said. "The car whipped right past me on its way out. The man behind the wheel was definitely O'Malley's bodyguard and driver. I don't know his name, but I intend to find out."
Dantonio shook his head. "Mr. Denoux, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I don't know what's going on, but I-"
"John," Obitz said as he laid a hand on his partner's shoulder, "that's enough."
Dantonio ignored him. "I don't know what it is, but I know it's big, and as you can see, it's dangerous." He nodded in the direction of the Maggio crypt, where the pallbearers had been beaten. "You would be wise to stay out of it."
Emile wasn't sure what to say. The city's best known and most respected police detective was telling a crime reporter that something big was going on in the Italian criminal underworld, yet with his next breath the detective was telling that same crime reporter to ignore it.
"Is Matranga behind the Axman killings?" Emile asked.
"Didn't you hear him?" Obitz said, the burly detective leaning uncomfortably close to Emile. "He just told you to keep your nose out of it if you know what's good for you."
"Is that a threat?" Emile demanded, hoping he sounded tougher than he felt.
"It's a warning," Dantonio said.
CHAPTER 21
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1919
11:45 A.M.
By the time I had walked three of the five blocks of Tulane Avenue that separated Central Station from Charity Hospital, the sky, which had threatened rain all morning, let loose a deluge that left me drenched and my leg throbbing.
Charity Hospital was a foreboding three-story fortress built of whitewashed brick. Set back from the street behind a pair of two-story annexes, the hospital's main building had a gabled façade topped by a bronze and glass cupola that loomed high above the palm trees lining Tulane Avenue.
With the rain coming down hard, I ducked between the annex buildings and limped along on my bad leg to the main entrance. As I shoved open one of the heavy glass doors, I pulled off my hat to shake the rain from it. In the one second that my hat blocked my vision, I ran smack into a uniformed security policeman who was stepping out through the same door.
"Excuse me," I said.
He mumbled something and pushed past me. As he did so, I noticed the tin badge pinned to his uniform coat. The badge was shaped like a shield and embossed with the words O'MALLEY PROTECTION POLICE.
As recently as a month ago, there had been another security company at the hospital, which meant that O'Malley had somehow wrestled the lucrative Charity Hospital contract away from the other company.
Dominick O'Malley owned a newspaper, he operated the biggest private detective and security agency in the city, he was rumored to be a silent partner in several bars, brothels, and gambling halls, he was a personal friend of Mayor Martin Beauchamp, and he was the mayor's campaign manager. The man had a lot going on, which made me wonder again why twice yesterday I had seen him parked outside the Pepitone grocery.
Inside the hospital, I took the central stairway down to the basement, where, within the catacomb of passageways and storage rooms, the coroner's office was buried. The office's battered wooden door had a frosted glass window on which had been stenciled in black letters, ORLEANS PARISH CORONER, DR. LOUIS DELACHAISE. Some of the letters were partially rubbed away.
I pushed open the door. Inside was a dingy reception area that reeked of formaldehyde and decomposition. The doctor's secretary sat behind the lone desk working a crossword puzzle. She was about forty, with mostly gray hair.
"Doctor in?" I asked.
She looked up from her crossword, peering at me over the tops of her glasses. A thin gold chain was looped around her neck and clipped to the sides of her glasses. She nodded toward a closed wooden door opposite the one I had just come through. Brass letters tacked to the wood spelled PRIVATE. "He just started a procedure," she said in a nasally voice.
I glanced down at the crossword puzzle in front of her. Most of the boxes were filled in. "Looks like you almost have that one beat."
She smiled. "Not quite. Believe it or not, I'm stuck on a seven-letter word for a dead body."
I thought for a minute. Corpse had just six letters. Carcass had the required seven letters, but it more accurately applied to a dead animal, not a person. "Cadaver," I said.
Her pencil touched each box as she spoke. "C-A-D-A-V-E-R." She looked up at me. "That's it. Thanks."
I crossed the small office and pulled open the door that led to the morgue. "Glad I could help."
Beyond the door lay a short corridor, the floor and walls of which were covered in light green tile, tile being an easy surface from which to wipe blood. At the end of the corridor stood a set of double doors that opened onto a ramp leading up to Gravier Street, which ran along the backside of the hospital. That was how the bodies came into the morgue.
Midway down the corridor were two doors, one on either side. The door on the left led to Dr. Delachaise's office. The other one led to the morgue. I peeked into the doctor's office, hoping to find him there and not across the hall, but the office was empty, except for the mess. Old newspapers, medical texts, reports, and overflowing ashtrays all fought for space on the doctor's battered wooden desk. Likewise, the bookshelf and credenza on either side of the desk were piled high with stacks of books, papers, and journals.
The door to the morgue was closed. I knocked on the frosted glass window. I got no answer. I knocked again.
From the other side, a raspy voice shouted, "Come in, for God's sake."
I took a deep breath and opened the door.
The room was big, much bigger than the cluttered office across the hall. Along the far wall were six examination tables. The top of each table was cast iron, painted white, wi
th a slightly concave shape, like a very shallow bathtub. Each tabletop sat on a waist-high platform of glazed brick, measuring seven feet long by three feet wide. The tops of the examination tables were set with a slight tilt so that gravity could pull the bodily fluids that were the inevitable byproduct of postmortem examinations toward a drain at one end.
On each table lay a body.
"Come in, Detective Fitzgerald," Dr. Delachaise said. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and he was elbow deep in the torso of a dead woman. When he spoke, his lips worked around the butt of the cigarette. "How is our city's most astute criminal investigator?"
The door behind me had a spring hinge and snapped shut.
"I don't feel very astute right now, Doctor. Just confused."
"Confused about what, my boy?"
As I stepped closer to the table where the doctor was working, I glanced at the dead woman and had to choke down a bit of bile that backed up in my throat. "Campo sent me over here to get the Pepitone autopsy report, as if he expects some kind of surprise."
The doctor crinkled his nose and bobbed his cigarette. "Can you get this?" The long tail of tobacco ash looked as though it were about to fall into the open sack of guts the doctor was probing.
I reached over and plucked the cigarette from between his lips. I thought about setting it on the examination table beside the dead woman, but the cigarette had burned down almost to the nub, so I dropped it on the floor alongside several others and ground it out with my shoe.
"Who was she?" I said, glancing down at the naked corpse. She was about twenty-five, with long blond hair, a slightly upturned nose, and a face the color of porcelain. She had once been pretty. But now her arms lay by her sides, palms turned up, exposing wide slashes across both wrists. The doctor had opened her torso with a Y-cut and a bone saw and was hacking away at her organs with a scalpel.
"A prostitute who couldn't tolerate the life anymore and decided to leave it," the doctor said. "But judging by the amount of undigested gin I found in her stomach, I'd say she got good and drunk first. Which is exactly what I would have done."
The Axman of New Orleans Page 12
