The Axman of New Orleans

by Chuck Hustmyre

I looked at the round Sicilian. "Mr. Albano, I understand what Mrs. Pepitone is going through, and I am truly sorry for her loss. But my visit here has nothing to do with you, so mind your own business."

  "You are upsetting my sister-in-law and that is my-"

  "Be quiet," I snapped. Then I turned back to Mrs. Pepitone. "Give me the gun."

  Her dark eyes shifted to her brother-in-law, then back to me. "I don't have it."

  "What do you mean you don't have it?" I said. "It was here yesterday."

  "With my husband ... gone, I don't want a gun in my house. Not with my children here."

  "She gave it to me," Albano said.

  I turned to him. "Where is it?"

  He didn't answer.

  "In an hour I can have a search warrant and a squad of detectives at your house."

  "I have a lawyer," he said.

  "I don't care about your lawyer. I'll throw you and your lawyer in jail for withholding evidence." It was a bluff, and I could push it only so far. While it was true that I could get a search warrant, and maybe a squad of detectives, doing either would take a lot longer than an hour. As for throwing Albano's lawyer in jail, that was pure nonsense.

  I looked at Mrs. Pepitone. She was staring at the floor, her hands clutched. "I need your husband's pistol," I said.

  She looked up at me, tears in her eyes. "Why?"

  "You know why."

  Albano cleared his throat again. "Detective, we were on our way out the door when you knocked. We are going to the funeral parlor to make the arrangements. If there is nothing more ..."

  I brushed past the two of them as I strode toward the master bedroom.

  "Wait ... stop," Albano sputtered behind me.

  Little had changed in the bedroom since my visit last night. The bedframe was still empty, and the outline of the bloodstain on the wooden floor was still visible. Mrs. Pepitone had probably spent the night in her children's room. I went to the nightstand on the far side of the bed and pulled open the drawer. The Bible was there. And the stack of letters tied with a red ribbon. But the revolver was gone.

  I stepped over the bedframe to the nightstand nearest the door and found the same things I had discovered early yesterday morning: ointment, lip balm, patent medicine pills, a man's billfold, a jar of pennies. But no revolver.

  "I told you it wasn't here," Mrs. Pepitone said from the doorway. "I gave it to Mr. Albano."

  I turned toward her, kicking myself for not looking for the revolver last night when I had come back. "What side of the bed did your husband sleep on?"

  Her brow furrowed. "Why do you ask?"

  "Answer my question."

  She pointed to the near side of the bedframe.

  With a man's protective instincts, Michael Pepitone had slept between his wife and any danger that might come through the door, and he had kept his personal belongings in the nightstand on his side of the bed. Except I had found the revolver stuffed into the drawer on the other side of the bed, on her side, with her keepsakes, her Bible and her letters from home.

  Mrs. Pepitone stepped into the room. "Why did you accuse my husband of killing ... that man?"

  "Salvatore Marcello. And you know exactly who he is, Mrs. Pepitone, because he was one of the men who came into the store Sunday afternoon and argued with your husband."

  "I told you I don't know those men."

  I glanced at the bullet hole in the door casement above her head. "How many shots did you fire at the man who was attacking your husband?"

  She held my gaze but said nothing.

  "How many shots?"

  She glanced away. When she answered her voice was low. "I don't know."

  "You fired two shots." I pointed to the hole in the casement. "There." Then to the one on the opposite side of the hall. "And there. Both missed. But they were enough to scare him away."

  "Why is it so important how many times I shot at the man who killed my husband?"

  I stared into her dark eyes. "Because you only fired twice. But there were four empty shells in your husband's revolver."

  She shook her head. "I don't remember how many ... shots. Maybe I fired more. He was killing my husband."

  "Where was the gun?"

  "In the nightstand."

  "Which nightstand?"

  She pointed to the nearest one. "My husband's."

  I pointed to the other one, farthest from the door. "I found it there, next to your Bible and your letters."

  "I put it there ... after."

  "But that's not where you got it?"

  "No," she said. "I told you. It is my husband's gun, but I knew where he kept it, in the drawer on his side of the bed."

  "So when you woke up and saw the man attacking your husband, you picked up the gun and fired it at him."

  "Yes."

  "And you were able to reach over your husband, with his attacker standing above him, striking him with an ax, able to reach past them both, open the drawer on your husband's side of the bed, pull out his revolver, and fire it at least twice at the intruder."

  She stared at me until tears spilled down her cheeks.

  "Is that true?" I asked. "Is that how it happened? Because I don't think it is."

  "Enough," Angelo Albano said from the doorway. "Leave her alone. She has been through too much already."

  I gave him a look that kept him in the hall. Then I turned back to Mrs. Pepitone. "Did you also have time to close the drawer?

  "What do you mean?" she said in a choked voice.

  I pointed to her husband's nightstand. "When I got here yesterday morning that drawer was closed."

  She glanced at the drawer, then opened her mouth to speak but said nothing.

  "Where was the gun?" I asked.

  She looked at her brother-in-law. I looked at him too. He seemed like he was about to say something. I pointed at him. "You, keep your mouth shut."

  He swallowed whatever he had intended to say.

  I looked back at Mrs. Pepitone. "What time did your husband get home last night?"

  "We closed the store at eleven."

  "That's not what I asked. He went out late. What time did he get back?"

  "My husband did not go out."

  "I know he went out because he killed Salvatore Marcello at midnight."

  "That is a slanderous accusation," Albano said, his voice full of as much indignation as he could muster from the hallway. "We have had enough of this. I am calling my lawyer." He turned toward the kitchen, where I knew there was a telephone.

  Even with my bum leg, I was quicker than the little fat man and caught him halfway to the kitchen, pulling him up short by the back of his coat. He spun around to face me, and I said, "You touch that phone, I'll break your arm."

  His face turned white and his Adam's apple bobbed in his throat.

  I pointed the other way, toward the grocery. "Go wait up front until I'm finished talking to Mrs. Pepitone."

  He glanced past me, and I could tell she was standing in the hallway behind me. "Go," she said. And the little man scurried toward the grocery.

  I faced her. "Your husband was still dressed at two o'clock in the morning because he had just gotten home."

  She stared at me, her eyes hard. But she didn't speak.

  "Why did your husband kill Salvatore Marcello?"

  After a long minute, she said, "My husband was a good man."

  "I know your husband was a good man. And I know Salvatore Marcello was a bad man. An extortionist for the Black Hand, who served time in prison for shooting a man."

  She nodded.

  "So why was he here?"

  When Mrs. Pepitone spoke her voice was a whisper. "I don't know. They argued. My husband and those two men. Afterward, he was upset, but he wouldn't tell me why."

  "Who was the man with Marcello?"

  "I don't know his name," she said. "I swear it."

  "But you have seen him before."

  "Yes."

  "Where is your husband's revolver?"

&
nbsp; From the grocery, Angelo Albano called out, "I have the revolver, but I will not give it to you without a court order. And I want my attorney there."

  With Albano's attorney involved, I might never get a search warrant or the revolver. Legally, I was on thin ice. And as my own captain had pointed out to me more than once, the Marcello case wasn't mine.

  My mind flashed back to the morgue, to the conversation I had with Dr. Delachaise. To match a bullet dug from a corpse to the murder weapon, you had to have the gun to fire a comparison bullet. "Although, logically speaking," the doctor had said, "you could, of course, also base a match on the comparison of two bullets that were already known to have been fired from the same gun."

  In my trouser pocket I carried an Army jackknife with a pair of folding blades, a can opener, and a leather punch. I pulled out the knife and snapped open the longer of the two blades. When I stepped toward Mrs. Pepitone, she let out a cry of alarm and backed away.

  "Is everything all right?" Mr. Albano shouted from the grocery.

  "Everything is fine," I yelled back.

  I stepped into the bedroom and used the blade to pry off the top piece of the door casement, the piece with the bullet hole through it. Beneath the strip of molding, I found where the bullet had entered the wall.

  "What are you doing?" Mrs. Pepitone asked.

  I ignored her and worked the tip of the blade into the hole until I heard the faint click of metal on metal. I had found the bullet. I pried it out of the hole as carefully as I could and dropped it into my hand.

  The .38 caliber slug was dented at the nose and bulging in the middle, but even without a magnifying lens, I could see the tiny marks etched into the lead surface.

  CHAPTER 26

  ANOTHER AX MYSTERY; MAN AND WOMAN NEAR DEATH

  Woman Said Man Not Her Husband, Claimed He Is German Spy. Dying Declaration Not Signed.

  -The Daily Picayune

  JUNE 28, 1918

  11:00 A.M.

  Police Superintendent Frank Thompson stepped behind the lectern. He was exactly on time. Just like the trains he had managed for thirty years. As Thompson cleared his throat, the two dozen reporters crowded together in the lobby of Central Station got quiet. Chief of Detectives William Campo stood beside the superintendent.

  Emile Denoux lingered at the rear of the phalanx of reporters, pencil and notepad in hand.

  Thompson began to read from a prepared statement. "This morning at nine a.m., Captain Campo and I arrested Louis Besozzi for the fiendish murder of his ... housekeeper, Miss Harriet Lowe, who died late last night after undergoing surgery at Charity Hospital.

  "Miss Lowe suffered a fractured skull caused by a severe blow to her head with the blunt side of an ax. Doctors thought that by removing a piece of her skull they could minimize the damage caused by the swelling of her brain. However, despite the best efforts of a team of surgeons, Miss Lowe died just before midnight, six hours after the operation.

  "Before she died, Miss Lowe gave a formal statement to Detectives Tobias Conrad and Mike Detmar concerning the events leading up to her attack early Friday morning."

  The superintendent paused.

  Emile stopped writing, his pencil poised over his notepad. The superintendent knew how to create suspense. The reporters attending the briefing already knew what had happened: the police had arrested fifty-nine-year-old Louis Besozzi for murdering his twenty-nine-year-old housekeeper, which everyone understood meant mistress, but what they did not know was why Besozzi had killed her.

  Thompson laid his forearms across the top of the lectern and gripped the front edge with his meaty hands. "Late last night, Miss Lowe told us that Mr. Besozzi attacked her with an ax. She said she had been in his employ for close to a year and in January had moved here with him from Jacksonville, Florida.

  "Miss Lowe told us she recently discovered a false bottom in a steamer trunk belonging to Mr. Besozzi. Beneath that false bottom, she found several journals and letters written in a foreign language. She also found an envelope stuffed with German currency. According to Miss Lowe, Mr. Besozzi has traveled extensively in Europe and speaks five languages. Mr. Besozzi's father was Italian and his mother was German. When Miss Lowe questioned Mr. Besozzi about the contents of the trunk, he confessed to her that he was working as a spy for Germany."

  A murmur rippled through the clutch of reporters.

  A German spy.

  Emile had followed closely the wire stories from France about the war and knew that the Germans were turning his ancestral home into a wasteland. He was quietly thankful that Germany's renewal of its campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare-the cowardly attacks against civilian shipping that had sunk the British passenger liner RMS Lusitania-had caused President Wilson to abandon his re-election campaign promise to keep the United States out of what some called Europe's war.

  Since America had entered the conflict, German U-boats operating off the East Coast had attacked several civilian ships, including small fishing boats. Although the presence of U-boats had not yet been confirmed in the Gulf of Mexico, the unexplained sinking of a mid-sized freighter near the mouth of the Mississippi River in February was universally blamed on a German submarine.

  Now, right here in New Orleans, according to the police superintendent, the police had captured a German spy, whose assignment no doubt had been to keep tabs on ships moving down the Mississippi River toward the Gulf of Mexico.

  Although Emile was a staunch supporter of the war and certainly no friend of the Germans-what true Frenchman was?-there was something about Thompson's claim, linking what clearly appeared to be another Axman attack to a German spy scandal, that sounded a bit contrived.

  The threat of German U-boats was real. In recent weeks, Emile had taken several reports off the wire services and put them on the front page of The Daily Picayune. He had also helped edit the stories and remembered well the bold headlines.

  U-BOAT TAKES SECOND VICTIM IN 24 HOURS

  Small Unarmed American Steamer Sunk Off North Carolina.

  AMERICAN SCHOONER SUNK OFF CAPE HATTERAS

  Captain And Eight-Man Crew Survive.

  GERMAN SUB SINKS NANTUCKET FISHING BOAT

  Two Crewmen Killed; Three Survivors Rescued.

  Superintendent Thompson continued reading. "In her statement, Miss Lowe said that when she threatened to expose Mr. Besozzi's espionage activities, he attacked her with an ax. She said his first blow struck her in the head and must have knocked her senseless because she doesn't remember anything after that."

  When the superintendent paused, Emile raised his hand. Thompson pointed to him. "Mr. Denoux."

  "If Mr. Besozzi attacked Miss Lowe and knocked her unconscious almost immediately, how do you account for his injuries?"

  Thompson glanced at Captain Campo, who leaned forward to answer Emile's question. "Self-inflicted."

  "I understand he suffered several blows to the head," Emile said. "Can you tell us what his condition is now?"

  Thompson took this one. "Besozzi is still at Charity Hospital under guard. Doctors say he will have to remain there several days for treatment." The superintendent scanned the room. Several reporters had their hands up.

  Emile spoke up before Thompson picked another reporter. "Superintendent, wouldn't you consider Mr. Besozzi's injuries rather severe for having been self-inflicted? Initial reports are that he has a fractured skull."

  Thompson glared at Emile. "As a German secret agent, Besozzi would have been trained to endure all kinds of physical torments in the event of capture. The doctors have assured me that because his wounds are to the head and involved a lot of superficial bleeding, they appear more serious than they really are."

  Emile wasn't sure where Thompson got his information about the training of German secret agents, but he wasn't going to let it go. As the superintendent was pointing his finger at another reporter, Emile shouted, "But if he were a trained German spy, wouldn't it have made more sense for him to kill his housekeeper and disp
ose of her body rather than chop himself up with an ax? He could have simply claimed she quit her post and moved back home."

  Thompson's face turned red. "Mr. Denoux, I don't have time to stand up here and speculate on what course of action Mr. Besozzi should have taken. All I've got to say on the matter is-"

  Emile interrupted. "And even if he decided to cover up his crime by feigning to be a victim himself, wouldn't he have made sure Miss Lowe was dead before fracturing his own skull?"

  Thompson ignored Emile and pointed to a reporter from The Times-Democrat.

  "Superintendent, how long has Besozzi owned that grocery?" the reporter asked.

  Thompson looked happy for a simple question that had a simple answer. "About three months," he said.

  Another reporter chimed in. This one from Dominick O'Malley's pro-Ring newspaper, The Daily Item. "Superintendent Thompson, do you think Mr. Besozzi might be connected to other Axman attacks?"

  Thompson nodded sagely. "We are investigating that right now, but I'll tell you what, it seems like a strong possibility."

  Over the superintendent's shoulder, Captain Campo was nodding too.

  Ridiculous, Emile thought. Miss Lowe's statement made it clear that Besozzi had not arrived in New Orleans until this past January. The Axman cases stretched all the way back to 1911. In fact, there had been only two Axman attacks in the last six years: the non-fatal attack on Edward Andollina and his two teenage sons just before Christmas last year and the Maggio double murder last month.

  Emile didn't bother to raise his hand. He just blurted out his next question, interrupting another reporter in mid-sentence. "Isn't it quite a stretch to believe that Louis Besozzi is a German spy and the Axman, especially given that he has only lived here for a few months?" Without bothering to wait for an answer, Emile continued, "It's also my understanding that spies try to maintain a low profile, something that doesn't seem consistent with breaking into people's homes and murdering them with an ax."

  Superintendent Thompson looked at Captain Campo. The chief of detectives stepped forward. "I think it would be best if you left the detective work to us, Mr. Denoux." Campo pointed to another reporter who had his hand up. "Mr. Silverstein, do you have a question?"