The Axman of New Orleans

by Chuck Hustmyre

  "Just one more question, Captain," Emile said.

  Campo ignored him. "Go ahead, Mr. Silverstein."

  Before Bob Silverstein could get his question out, Emile shouted, "Since Miss Lowe is dead and can't testify, can you use her statement against Mr. Besozzi at trial?"

  Campo turned to Emile. He paused, then took a deep breath. "Unfortunately, Miss Lowe died before she had a chance to sign her transcribed statement."

  Several reporters groaned.

  "Doesn't that mean the statement is inadmissible in court?" Emile asked.

  Campo looked like he was chewing nails. "Yes, it does, Mr. Denoux."

  Most of the reporters in the room were scribbling in their notebooks.

  "What other evidence do you have?" Emile asked.

  Campo stared at him. The room got quiet. The reputation the chief of detectives had for quick-tempered fury was well known. Emile noticed the other reporters edging away from him.

  Finally, the captain broke eye contact with Emile and glanced around the room. "That's all the questions we have time for, gentlemen. We will brief you as the situation develops."

  There was general grumbling from the reporters as they closed their notebooks and drifted toward the door. Thompson and Campo remained at the lectern and held a whispered conversation.

  Emile stood where he was. Once some of the space between him and the two police officials opened up, he said in a loud voice, "Superintendent Thompson, is there some reason you don't want to catch the Axman?"

  Every reporter in the room stopped dead in his tracks as the twin daggers of Campo's eyes fixed on Emile. The chief of detectives was quiet for several long seconds. When he finally spoke, his voice was low and restrained. "This press conference is over, Mr. Denoux. You need to leave."

  CHAPTER 27

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1919

  4:35 P.M.

  I found Dr. Delachaise still in the morgue, washing his hands in a white sink stained with blood. He turned to look at me. "Two visits in one day. If you're looking for a job, I could use a good investigator."

  I glanced at the gutted bodies on the examination tables, one of which had belonged to the late Michael Pepitone. The long Y-cuts that had been carved into their bare torsos were now roughly stitched together with thick black sutures. "You did them all in four hours?"

  The doctor turned off the tap with his elbow and dried his hands on a towel so dirty that I couldn't determine its original color. "I work faster if I don't have someone to drink with. No written reports, though. For that you'll have to wait until tomorrow. I'll write up Mr. Pepitone's first since I know you're in a hurry to get it. Say by ten o'clock. But I'm afraid you and your captain are going to be disappointed if you were hoping for any surprises." He flung the filthy towel on the counter beside the sink. "Where did you run off to?"

  I held up a piece of torn notebook paper I had folded into a makeshift envelope. "I found two bullets fired from the gun that I believe was used to kill Salvatore Marcello."

  Dr. Delachaise arched his eyebrows in surprise. "My, my, you do learn fast. A few hours ago you had not even heard of the science of ballistics." He glanced up at the clock over the door. "I'll be happy to conduct a comparison for you first thing in the morning. In fact, I'll be looking forward to it. Just understand, though, that I won't be able to get you that autopsy report until later."

  I looked at the clock. It was 4:40. Almost the cocktail hour. "I need the comparison done today."

  The doctor pulled his jacket from a coat tree and slipped an arm through one sleeve. "I'm afraid that's not possible. I have a ... prior engagement."

  "At the City Club?"

  He shot a stern look my way. "That's none of your concern."

  "Doctor, if I can confirm that Michael Pepitone killed Salvatore Marcello, this investigation will split wide open."

  Delachaise's jacket hung from his shoulder. "How so?"

  "Marcello was a Black Hand man, and, according to ... several witnesses, he and another Italian were at the Pepitone grocery arguing with Michael Pepitone a few hours before Marcello and Pepitone both wound up dead."

  The doctor stared at the row of bodies lying on the blood-splattered tables. He gave me a skeptical look. "And you think Pepitone, a grocery clerk, set out to kill these two Mafia men because he didn't want to pay the extortion money?"

  "I think Pepitone got to Marcello but not to the other man. Not in time. Not before someone killed him first."

  "And you think that someone was the other man, the Italian who was with Marcello at the grocery?"

  I nodded. "It's a theory."

  "It certainly is that," Dr. Delachaise said. "But whoever killed Michael Pepitone killed him with an ax, the signature modus operandi of the so-called Axman."

  "Exactly."

  The doctor glanced up at the ceiling for a few seconds, putting the puzzle pieces together in his mind. Then he looked at me. "So you believe this other man-the Italian with Marcello-is the Axman?"

  "Maybe," I said. And maybe he's also a policeman. But I didn't say that.

  "Have you considered that Mr. Pepitone was killed by someone who wanted the murder to look like it was committed by the Axman?"

  "I have," I said. "But I don't think that's the case. This murder is too similar to the others to be a simple imitation."

  "The newspapers say the Axman is a degenerate, bloodthirsty maniac, not a Black Hand extortionist."

  "Because that's what Superintendent Thompson keeps telling everyone."

  Dr. Delachaise shook his head. "I've never heard of the Mafia killing women, certainly not a child like that little girl across the river."

  "Let's find out," I said. "Compare the bullets."

  "And if they don't match?"

  "Then Salvatore Marcello's murder was just a coincidence."

  The doctor sighed and shrugged off his jacket. He hung it back on the coat tree. "Let me guess, you don't believe in coincidences."

  "No good detective does."

  I followed the doctor to a cluttered workbench tucked into a corner of the morgue. He switched on an electric lamp. "Damn things are annoying as hell. The bulbs keep blowing out, but they give off a lot more light than kerosene."

  He set his gold-rimmed spectacles on his nose and hooked the curved ends around his ears. "It's here somewhere," he said absently as he pawed through the jumble of autopsy reports, medical tools, pipe cleaners, discarded tobacco pouches, wound sketches, and horse racing sheets. "Here it is."

  The doctor pulled a magnifying glass the size of a dessert plate from under a stack of newspapers. He held out his other hand. "Give me those slugs, will you?"

  I unfolded the piece of notebook paper and dropped the two bullets into his palm.

  He shoved enough debris out of the way to clear a spot on the workbench and gently placed the bullets down on the rough wooden surface. After sliding the electric lamp closer, Dr. Delachaise held the magnifying lens over the bullets and bent his eye to the glass.

  For a full minute he studied the deformed projectiles in silence, staring at them through the powerful lens from a variety of angles. Then he rolled them over and continued to stare. Another minute passed. Finally, he used his index finger to push one of the bullets aside. Then he tapped his finger next to the remaining projectile. "This one has the clearest striae. I'll compare it to the one I recovered from Mr. Marcello's cranium."

  It took the doctor several minutes of rooting through the drawers under his workbench before he found the small buff-colored evidence envelope into which he had put the Marcello bullet. The envelope had the dead man's name scrawled on the outside. "Damned evidence keeps backing up on me," Delachaise mumbled, raking his fingers through a pile of similar envelopes. "I've got to get this stuff to Central Station." He fixed his slightly-bloodshot eyes on me. "Could you take it with you when you go back? Quid pro quo?"

  "Certainly."

  Delachaise smiled. "You're a gentleman and a scholar." Then he opened the e
nvelope and dumped the Marcello bullet onto the workbench. From another drawer, he pulled a pair of tweezers.

  He lined up the bullets side-by-side and peered at them through the thick lens. He rolled them around and studied the different sides, then moved the glass in an arc to look at the projectiles from different angles. Finally, he rolled the bullets back into their original positions and stared at them for several more seconds.

  "It's a match," he said, exhaling loudly as he put down the big lens.

  Realizing I had also been holding my breath, I let it out. "Are you sure?"

  His eyes narrowed behind his spectacles. "Of course, I'm sure."

  I nodded.

  The doctor swept the bullet from Salvatore Marcello's skull back into the envelope, which he handed to me, along with the two bullets from the grocery. "I'm turning these over to you. Plus ..." He nodded toward the drawer packed with evidence. "I'm late for an appointment."

  "Thank you, Doctor," I said as I picked up an empty box from the floor beside the workbench and dumped the evidence envelopes into it.

  He walked to the coat tree and slipped on his jacket. "You should be careful."

  I turned toward him and saw a strange look on his face. "Why do you say that?"

  "I'm not sure that you and your bosses have the same objective."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The Police Department has been chasing the so-called Axman for how long?"

  "Eight years."

  Dr. Delachaise buttoned his jacket. "The department's top detectives-including Messieurs Obitz and Dantonio-have investigated these killings for all those years, yet after just a few months as lead investigator, you may be on the verge of cracking the most baffling case in this city's history."

  "Are you forgetting that just this morning you called me the department's most astute criminal investigator?"

  He grinned. "That title fell to you by default after Obitz's death and Dantonio's retirement, but you misunderstand me if you think I have suddenly begun to doubt your investigative abilities. I just wonder if there might be something else afoot."

  "Like what?"

  He shrugged and crammed his homburg on his head as he headed for the door. "Just be careful."

  CHAPTER 28

  POLICE BELIEVE AX-MAN MAY BE ACTIVE IN CITY

  Vincent Romano Second Victim In Three Days. Thompson Says Killer A 'Madman'

  -The Daily Picayune

  AUGUST 7, 1918

  6:10 A.M.

  Emile Denoux watched as a police messenger delivered a note to Superintendent Frank Thompson, who stood surrounded by reporters inside the front room of Joseph Romano's house at the corner of Gravier and Tonti streets. The superintendent's face clouded as he read the note.

  Thompson folded the note and shoved it into his coat pocket. "Gentlemen, I have just been given the sad news that Mr. Vincent Romano died not more than a half-hour ago at Charity Hospital."

  Several reporters blurted questions at the same time.

  Emile stood back from this colleagues, leaning against a wall and keeping quiet. The superintendent was unlikely to answer a question from him anyway.

  The Romano home was the second Axman crime scene Emile had been to in forty-eight hours. Two days ago, Mrs. Edward Sarrano, twenty-eight years old and eight months pregnant, was attacked in the early morning hours in her home on Elmira Street while her husband, a breadmaker, was out making deliveries. The couple also owned the adjoining half of the two-family home, which they rented to Mrs. Sarrano's sister.

  Mrs. Sarrano escaped with scalp lacerations, two teeth knocked out, and a deep gash on her forearm. A moment before the attack, Mrs. Sarrano's sister saw a man scale the back fence of the Sarranos' home, so she dashed next door to warn her sister. It was evidently her fierce knocking that frightened away the attacker.

  This morning about three o'clock, Vincent Romano, who operated a barbershop in the front room of his home and owned the grocery on the other side of the double shotgun house, had been attacked while his teenage nieces slept in the next room. The older niece saw the killer as he fled down the hall toward the back door.

  Emile flipped to the previous page in his notebook and reread the niece's description of the attacker. "He was a tall, heavy-set man. He wore a dark suit and a black slouch hat."

  More than a month had passed since the attacks on Louis Besozzi and Harriet Lowe. Besozzi was still being held in the Parish Prison on a charge of murder, despite the lack of any usable evidence, and his injuries, it turned out, were far more serious than Superintendent Thompson had suggested. It was not until two weeks after the attacks that doctors finally agreed to transfer Besozzi from Charity hospital to the infirmary at the Parish Prison. Mr. Besozzi had a fractured skull and several deep gashes on his face and head. One of his eyes was so badly damaged doctors doubted he would ever see out of it again. Not exactly the kind of self-inflicted injuries one would expect from a man who was only pretending to have been attacked.

  German spy school must be one tough place, Emile thought.

  Agents from the Justice Department and the War Department had come to New Orleans to interview Besozzi. They also translated the foreign journals and letters found hidden in his steamer trunk. The agents departed town after only a few days and left the alleged German spy in the custody of the sheriff, something Emile doubted they would have done had they confirmed Besozzi was indeed an enemy agent.

  Still, Thompson and the district attorney were pressing forward with the murder charge.

  Nothing about the Besozzi situation made sense to Emile. If the police were trying to frame someone for the Axman attacks, why choose a man who had not even lived in the area when most of the crimes were committed? Then again, why try to frame anyone at all? Why not just concentrate on finding the real killer?

  No frame job, not even a well-constructed one, could work if the real killer continued to attack people while the scapegoat was in jail. Therefore, the police must have had reason to believe that the attacks were over. Yet, how could they think that unless they knew the killer's identity? But if they knew who he was, why not arrest him? Why frame anyone at all?

  Emile's head spun with possibilities, from the plausible to the fanciful. Perhaps the police had discovered that the Axman was an important member of the social elite or that he held a powerful political post. Rumors of both possibilities had swirled around London's Jack the Ripper case. Maybe the killer was a member of the Bavarian Illuminati or the Italian Knights of the Apocalypse, a Freemason or a Knight Templar. Emile realized that the longer he stretched his list, the more ludicrous it became.

  Enough, he thought. In his experience, the simplest answer was almost always the best answer. He believed in the principle of Ockham's razor. He also believed in the dull-wittedness of most policemen, his friend Colin Fitzgerald being a rare exception. For the most part, policemen weren't clever enough to concoct a complex conspiracy.

  If it were true that Thompson and Campo were trying to pin blame for the Axman murders on Louis Besozzi, who inarguably was an odd sort of fellow, given his propensity for exotic travel and his penchant for languages, then they must be doing it out of sheer desperation.

  In the weeks since Harriet Lowe's death, Emile had put his lifetime of acquired reporting skills to work and found out as much as he could about the mysterious Mr. Louis Besozzi.

  It was true that Besozzi's mother had been German, and German was one of the five languages he spoke, the others being English, Italian, Spanish, and Serbian. His fluency in the latter language was one more damning piece of evidence that he was an enemy spy, at least in the minds of his accusers.

  Most newspaper editors and world leaders agreed that the spark that had ignited the Great War in Europe was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria by Yugoslav nationalists in Sarajevo. And what language did they speak in Sarajevo? Serbian.

  Emile also discovered that Besozzi had a wife living in Cincinnati, whom he had abandoned two yea
rs ago. Emile had received a telegram from her yesterday, in which she told him that she was en route to New Orleans to try to arrange bail for her estranged husband. Besozzi was reportedly quite wealthy, which, Emile thought, might explain his alienated wife's devotion.

  With Besozzi locked away in jail, the police could twist the facts as they needed, even invent new ones. They could say that Besozzi had lived in New Orleans much longer than anyone suspected, perhaps under an alias. Or they could claim that the strange, enigmatic foreigner had resided somewhere else but had traveled regularly to New Orleans, the dates of his visits neatly coinciding with those of the Axman slayings.

  The framing of Besozzi, however, had to be contingent on the murders stopping after his arrest, but they had not stopped. Thus the real Axman had spoiled the frame-up, if that was what was going on.

  Emile's reasoning then circled back around to where it had begun. Top police officials knew who the Axman was, but he was too important to arrest. Still, they thought they could stop the attacks and pin the blame on someone else. They were wrong. With the attack two days ago on Mrs. Edward Sarrano and the murder this morning of Vincent Romano, Louis Besozzi no longer fit the narrative. They couldn't stop the Axman, so what could they do?

  Concoct a story about a lunatic.

  Frank Thompson's voice jerked Emile from his reverie. The superintendent was explaining to the gathered reporters, eager for scintillating headline copy, his assessment of the Axman case. "The Mafia is still at the center of one investigative theory," Thompson said. "Some type of Italian vendetta. But we are no longer following that one as strongly."

  "What's your other theory?" a dutiful reporter asked.

  Thompson cleared his throat. "I am of the belief that the murderer is a depraved criminal, a madman with no regard for human life."

  Emile was struck by a sense of déjà vu, as if only a few minutes ago he had been reading the superintendent's mind. It wasn't clairvoyance, though. Emile knew that. It was nothing more than a simple but clear understanding of the bureaucratic mind, whether that mind ran a railroad or a police department.