The Axman of New Orleans

by Chuck Hustmyre

  The cop's face was only inches away, his pale blue eyes boring into Emile's. "Did you not hear me, Mr. Reporter? I said, he's got nothing to say to you."

  Based strictly on size, the young cop wasn't intimidating. Emile topped him by a good four inches and outweighed him by twenty pounds, but something about the smaller man radiated menace. It took all of Emile's willpower not to take another step back. Knowing he was far better with his words than with his fists, Emile fell back on his one strength. "Patrolman ... I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name."

  "Farrell."

  Emile nodded. "Okay, Patrolman Ferrell, I'm sure that in the hour or so of police training you received before your political patron pinned that special officer's badge on your chest, you no doubt heard a vague reference to something called the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the one that guarantees a free press."

  Behind the young cop, the other cops were smiling.

  Emile continued, "Now, I'll wager that I've been a reporter a lot longer than you've been a supernumerary patrolman, so in case you don't know this already, let me explain something to you. What that amendment to the Constitution means to you and me is that you don't get to tell me who I can talk to."

  Patrolman Ferrell glanced over his shoulder at his colleagues, but they took a sudden interest in something behind them and turned away. Emile felt they were sending the cocky young patrolman a message: You got yourself into this mess. Now get yourself out.

  When Ferrell turned back to face Emile, the policeman's face was seething with anger. "Let me tell you something, smart guy. Not here, not now, but the next time we see each other, you're going to regret mouthing off to me." He jabbed his finger into Emile's chest for emphasis. "Count on it."

  Then he turned around and strutted away, leaving his fellow policemen behind.

  Emile felt his arms and legs trembling with the aftereffects of the confrontation, which he was sure had nearly turned violent. Still smarting over initially backing down from the young cop, Emile felt a little bravado was in order, so he shouted after Ferrell, who was already a good twenty yards away, "I look forward to it."

  Ferrell muttered something under his breath that Emile couldn't make out.

  CHAPTER 33

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1919

  3:00 P.M.

  While Mrs. Esther Pepitone was burying her husband, I broke into Salvatore Marcello's apartment.

  I knocked first in case someone was there. The door felt like cardboard. No one answered, so I drove my shoulder into it. The lock snapped off and fell into the hallway.

  Marcello's apartment was on the third floor of a four-story tenement in the 1600 block of North Rampart Street, two blocks north of the French Quarter. I pushed the door shut behind me and flicked on the overhead light, a bare bulb hanging from a wire in the middle of the ceiling. The room was a hovel, small, windowless, barely big enough to change clothes in.

  A cracked mirror hung on the wall above a filthy washbasin. I was close enough to see that the bowl was filled with brown water and whiskers. The narrow bed was unmade and a pile of dirty clothes lay on the floor beside it. A rickety wardrobe stood at the foot of the bed. I stepped over to the wardrobe and opened it.

  A wooden divider separated the inside of the wardrobe down the middle. A pair of coats hung from wooden hangers on the right side. On the left side were three shelves. The top two were bare. The bottom shelf held a pair of work shirts and a worn sweater.

  I knelt down and pulled open the drawer at the bottom. It was crammed with socks and undergarments. Everything stank. I pushed the clothes aside and found a Latin Bible and a set of rosary beads. Then a fat cockroach scurried out of a soiled undershirt and crawled across the back of my hand. I jumped back and flung the bug against the wall.

  Roaches gave me the creeps.

  I yanked out the drawer and turned it upside down. As the contents spilled out, I saw a glint of metal as a heavy palm-sized object thudded against the wooden floor. Then a stained pair of men's undershorts fell on top of it. Using my fingertips, I plucked off the undershorts and tossed them aside. A badge lay facedown on the floor.

  I picked it up.

  The shape was that of a shield. I had seen a similar one yesterday at Charity Hospital. Except this one wasn't a tin security cop's badge, it was a brass private detective's badge, the embossed lettering on the front of which read, O'MALLEY DETECTIVE AGENCY.

  Salvatore Marcello was a well-known Black Hand extortionist and thug who had served a stretch in Angola for shooting a man, so what was he doing with a private detective's badge?

  The apartment door banged open.

  I spun around as two men stepped into the room.

  "What are you doing here?" the bigger man said.

  Standing to face them, I slipped the private cop badge into my pocket. "I'm a police detective. Who are you?"

  "Cop or not," the smaller man said, "it's dangerous breaking into people's homes."

  Both men were dark complected, with black hair and dull brown eyes. They spoke with thick Sicilian accents and wore rough work clothes and flat caps.

  The smaller man's ferret eyes scanned the tiny room. "I thought cops always traveled in pairs."

  "My partner is nearby."

  The bigger man curled his top lip. "We didn't see nobody."

  "Maybe he didn't want you to see him," I said, turning my body, angling my left side toward the men and reaching under my coat with my right hand.

  The bigger man took a step closer.

  "You're making a mistake," I said.

  "You're the one who made the mistake," the smaller man said.

  The big man was close enough to the hanging lightbulb that I could see a jagged scar running from the top of his left cheek down to his chin. Behind him, his ferret-like friend pushed the door closed. When I looked back at the bigger man, there was a knife in his hand.

  He looked at me and grinned, but the sudden movement of my right hand drew his eyes down. Then he wasn't grinning anymore.

  My Colt .45 was leveled at his gut. "I told you my partner was nearby."

  The small man reached for something under his jacket.

  I swung my pistol at the lightbulb and shattered it. As the windowless room was plunged into darkness, I dove to my right and rolled until I slammed into a wall.

  A shot exploded near the door. In the muzzle flash, I saw the smaller man standing with a revolver in his hand. I shoved the muzzle of my pistol toward him and snapped the trigger twice. I knew I had missed because light streamed through the pair of holes I had blown in the door.

  Heavy boots stomped across the floor as the bigger man scrambled toward the door, spitting curses in Sicilian so fast I couldn't understand them. Then the door flew open and the small man dove out, followed fast by his companion. I heard their feet pounding down the hallway.

  I listened for half a minute to make sure they were gone. Then I hightailed it out of there.

  CHAPTER 34

  GRETNA ITALIANS LATEST VICTIMS OF AX MURDERER

  Grocery Keeper, Wife, And Child Attacked As They Slept. Little Girl Killed, Parents Near Death. New Victims Added To List of Six Attacked Since Last May.

  -The Daily Picayune

  MARCH 9, 1919

  9:45 A.M.

  Emile Denoux loitered behind a mob of reporters clustered around the front porch of the Cortimiglia grocery at the corner of Jefferson and Second streets in Gretna, a small town across the Mississippi River from New Orleans. Superintendent Frank Thompson was holding an impromptu press briefing. Standing on the porch beside the superintendent were Jefferson Parish Sheriff Lucien Marrero and Gretna Police Chief Peter Leson.

  Emile had thrown out a couple of questions, just for appearances sake, but Thompson ignored them. The Axman murders were no longer Emile's story, and everybody there knew it.

  Then from close behind him, Emile heard a familiar voice whisper, "Hey, you know where a fellow can get a drink around here?"
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  Emile spun around and found himself facing Colin Fitzgerald. At first Emile was too stunned to speak. He hadn't even been sure his friend was still alive. "You're back."

  "I am," Colin said.

  Emile hugged him and clapped him on the back. "Mon Dieu, it is so good to see you, my friend." But a groan of pain escaped from Colin and Emile pulled away. "What's wrong?"

  There was a grimace on Colin's face, and when he spoke he sounded short of breath. "I forgot to duck." He was dressed in his usual dark wool suit and fedora, but now, instead of fitting tight across his chest and shoulders, the jacket hung loose, almost swallowing him like a sack. The pants, too, were baggy.

  "I'm glad to see you're still in one piece," Emile said. "But you are thin as a rail. Did they not feed you over there?"

  "Sometimes," Colin said.

  "Well, now that you're back we need to fattened you up. Some gumbo, some shrimp etouffee, maybe some boudin, will put the meat back on your bones in no time. And plenty of beer. Don't forget the recuperative power of beer."

  "No, never forget the beer," Colin said with a smile, but the smile wasn't reflected in his eyes. The two old friends stood in silence for a moment as nearby the press briefing droned on. Then Colin said, "Thank you for ... going to Maria's funeral."

  Emile felt a sudden constriction in his throat and coughed to cover it. "It was an honor."

  Colin nodded and a few more seconds dragged by. "I heard you got stuck covering the docks."

  "Just a temporary reassignment," Emile said, although he no longer believed that. It had been seven months already.

  "Doesn't sound like your kind of beat," Colin said, his voice carrying a strange wheeze.

  Emile shrugged. "Comme ci, comme ca. I get by."

  "Who'd you piss off?"

  "My editor," Emile said. Then he nodded at Frank Thompson. "And your superintendent."

  Colin made an exaggerated show of looking around. "I don't see any ships here."

  Smiling, Emile pointed to the levee a block away. "The river is right there, and a ship could pass by any minute. But that doesn't explain why you're here. The last time I looked at a map Gretna was a separate city and outside of your jurisdiction."

  Colin shrugged. "I was curious."

  Emile nodded. "Me too."

  As a crime reporter, Emile was acquainted with the small municipalities surrounding New Orleans, their various police agencies and their court systems, and he occasionally wrote stories about crimes that took place in them, but he did not much care for those places, finding in most a sinister undercurrent beneath the façade of small-town cheerfulness and general bonhomie. New Orleans, as decadent as it was, was home. He knew her streets, her character, her secrets, and he preferred the flagrant corruption of the city to the veiled venality of the suburbs.

  Gretna was a good example. The town was the seat of government for Jefferson Parish, which adjoined Orleans Parish to the south and west, and was extolled by its fathers as a place to escape the congestion and crime of New Orleans. Yet, the town and its small Police Department were notoriously corrupt, as was the entire parish government. Jefferson Parish Sheriff Lucien Marrero was about as straight as a Louisiana elected official could be, meaning he only earned half of his income from kickbacks and crooked schemes, which might explain why Emile had heard that Gretna Police Chief Peter Leson was going to run against Marrero for sheriff in the fall.

  In January, Congress had ratified the Eighteenth Amendment. The Drys had won. Prohibition would become the law of the land in less than a year, making the manufacture, sale, or possession of liquor or beer illegal. Every barroom in the country had to shut down by January 16. Congress had already authorized the creation of the Bureau of Prohibition and the hiring of hundreds of gun-toting federal agents to enforce the new law.

  Rumor was that Chief Leson had promised Carlo Matranga that if he became sheriff, he would open up Jefferson Parish to anything Matranga wanted-booze, girls, gambling, even dope. All Leson wanted in return was Matranga's support during the campaign and, of course, a cut of the profits.

  Emile patted Colin's shoulder, relieved beyond words his friend had survived the war that had claimed the lives of so many millions. "You look good," Emile said. "When did you get home?"

  Colin laughed, but his laugh quickly became a wet, hacking cough. He pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his mouth. Emile saw a smear of blood on the white cloth.

  "You're a terrible liar," Colin said. "I look like hell and I know it." He took a short, rasping breath. "I got back two weeks ago. They promoted me to detective, but all I've done so far is sit around the squad room filing reports. When I heard about this attack, I hopped on the ferry." He nodded toward Thompson. "I didn't know the superintendent would be here."

  Emile extended his hand. "Congratulations on making detective."

  Colin shook Emile's hand. His grip was still firm.

  "I don't suppose you were able to follow the Axman case in France," Emile said.

  "No. But I got caught up since I've been back." He pointed at the grocery. "This was him. I know it. I've been pestering Thompson to give me all the Axman cases. I want to catch this son of a bitch." Colin coughed again into his handkerchief.

  "What's wrong?" Emile asked, pointing at the blood.

  "I lost a lung."

  "What?"

  Colin tapped one side of his chest. "It's still in there. It just doesn't work. But the doctor told me I could get by fine on just one."

  "How did it happen?"

  "Mustard gas," Colin said. "I got some in my other lung too, but that one is mostly okay. I was lucky."

  Emile nodded, but he wasn't sure lucky was the word he would use to describe what had happened to his friend. "I can't believe you're back at work."

  Colin shrugged. "With Maria gone ... I've got nothing else to do. Besides, if I spent all my time at home I'd go crazy."

  Emile didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.

  "Oh, that reminds me." Colin reached into his pants pocket. He pulled something out and opened his hand. In his palm lay the silver liberty head half-dollar with the hole drilled in the top edge, the one Emile had given him before he left for the war. "It was my good luck charm in France. I wore it around my neck with my dog tags." He extended his hand to Emile. "It might help you get back on the Axman case."

  Emile felt a lump rise in his throat as he picked up the coin.

  CHAPTER 35

  WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 29, 1919

  7:15 P.M.

  I dropped the private detective's badge on Emile's desk. "I found that in Salvatore Marcello's room."

  Emile stared at the badge. "Now do you believe me?"

  "I'm starting to," I said as I eased into the wooden chair in front of Emile's desk. The rest of the newsroom was deserted.

  He slid a newspaper clipping across the desk. "This was in the Picayune today."

  I looked down at the headline. "MURDER VICTIM NO STRANGER TO TROUBLE." Above the story was a photograph of Salvatore Marcello.

  Emile pointed to the picture. "I'm positive he was one of the men I saw bust up the Maggio funeral. I'm also positive that the man who drove them was Dominick O'Malley's bodyguard, Patrick Shea."

  I tapped a finger against O'Malley's name embossed on the badge. "Every time I turn around, I'm bumping into him or one of his goons."

  "That's because he and Carlo Matranga are thick as thieves, and they've got the Police Department in their pockets," Emile said. "You just refuse to believe it."

  "I'm not refusing to believe anything," I said. "I'm just not ready to condemn the entire Police Department."

  "That's because you don't want to admit that the corruption starts at the very top."

  "I'm no fan of Frank Thompson, you know that, but he only came over from the railroad two years ago."

  "Are you going to defend him now that he promoted you to detective?"

  I felt my face getting hot. "I'm not defending him."
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  Emile slid the private detective's badge across the desk toward me. "Then explain that."

  "I can't," I said. "Because I'm not sure what it means ... or if it even means anything at all."

  "It connects O'Malley with Matranga."

  "That's no secret," I said. "O'Malley has security contracts at all of Matranga's businesses, including the fruit docks where Marcello worked." I picked up the badge and shoved it in my coat pocket. "Maybe he found it on the docks."

  "I'm not talking about business contracts," Emile said. "I'm talking about a criminal conspiracy between Dominick O'Malley, Carlo Matranga, and the New Orleans Police Department."

  "That's a bit dramatic, don't you think?"

  Emile sighed and shook his head in frustration. "O'Malley runs everything on the surface, what's right in front of us, the so-called legitimate world of elections, city administration, and appointments to all the boards and commissions. Matranga runs everything below the surface, what's hidden from most of us, the so-called underworld of gambling houses, brothels, and extortion. And in the middle, between those two worlds and taking a piece of everything, is the Police Department."

  "The Axman case is about murder not corruption."

  Emile slapped his palms together and interlaced his fingers. "The two go hand in hand. The one is the inevitable consequence of the other."

  "That's speculation," I said. "Not evidence."

  Emile picked up the news clipping and shook it. "Marcello's murder was not a coincidence. If you check his yellow card, I'm sure you will find a connection to-"

  "His card disappeared."

  "Disappeared?" Emile said.

  I nodded. "Along with the cards for five of his criminal associates."

  Emile stared at me in disbelief. "And you still don't think the Police Department is involved in the cover-up?"

  "The yellow cards aren't the only things missing."

  "What else?"

  The chair groaned as I shifted in it. "I went to the records room this morning to get a case file. It wasn't there."