"I know about the rum coming up from Costa Rica," I said. "I know Matranga is secretly forcing the sale of grocery stores all over the city to turn into speakeasies. I know the Axman is an ex-cop named Joseph Monfre. And I know you're protecting him."
I stood up. "More importantly, I can prove it. All of it. I have witnesses who will testify in court in Baton Rouge in front of a real judge, not the three-ring circus clowns we have down here. I'm taking this case to the attorney general. And to the governor. You're going to prison, Superintendent."
Thompson's face was rigid. "You're not taking anything to anybody."
"How are you going to stop me? The money you shoved under my door, the beating I took from O'Malley's butt-boy, even blowing up my house and murdering my friend didn't work. What are you going to do next? Send Monfre after me? You already tried that." I fingered my torn scalp. "And he missed."
I slid my Colt from my waistband and flicked off the safety. The hammer was already cocked. A couple of policemen standing near Thompson stepped out of the way. "Maybe this time he can come at me face-to-face, like a man. Not toss dynamite through my bedroom window while I'm sleeping."
Thompson shook his head. "You just don't get it, do you?"
"I guess not," I said, knowing that everything I had just told him was true but that I couldn't actually prove any of it. Mrs. Pepitone would never testify, especially not now, and with Emile dead, ex-detective Tobias Conrad would probably disappear again.
Thompson took a step toward me, eyeing the pistol in my hand. "Why don't you put that thing away."
"I think I'll hold on to it. It makes me feel better."
He nodded, stepping even closer. When he spoke his voice was low. "I didn't invent this city's politics. It's been like this since Reconstruction. All I am is an appointed police chief. I serve at the pleasure of the mayor and with the consent of the Police Board. If three of the five board members don't like the job I'm doing, they can fire me. Since I've been here, we have nearly doubled the number of arrests. I've re-staffed the precincts, gotten rid of most of the old deadhead captains and replaced them with younger, more aggressive commanders. We're building a fleet of motorcars and modernizing the entire department."
"And you're allowing a man to murder innocent people so someone else can buy their stores and turn them into bars."
Thompson leaned toward me and whispered, "I don't know all the details because I don't want to know them. This city is filled with criminals, and we catch a lot of them. I'm proud of the work we do. I'm also smart enough to know that no matter how hard we work some of the scofflaws are bound to get away."
"You're not going to get away," I said. "I'm going to catch Joseph Monfre. And then I'm going to arrest you and Dominick O'Malley."
When Thompson spoke, he was so close he blew his breath in my face. It smelled like coffee and cigarettes. "You're not going to arrest anybody," he said. "You're on suspension, remember?" He held out his hand. "I'll have your commission and your badge."
I grinned and nodded toward the charred wreck of my house. "They're in there. You'll have to get them yourself."
He glanced at my Colt.
"It's mine," I said.
"I could have it taken from you."
"You could," I said. "But there would be some shooting, and you might catch one of the bullets."
The superintendent's eyes narrowed to slits. "I'm bringing you up before the board. I'll see you fired for insubordination."
By city ordinance, Thompson couldn't fire me without a hearing. Years ago, during the administration of reform Mayor Joseph Shakspeare, the Ring had stripped the mayor's appointed police superintendent of the power to hire and fire police officers by creating the five-man Police Board, which had to approve all personnel decisions.
I savored the irony that the Ring's own ordinance now prevented its handpicked police superintendent from firing me on the spot, but I knew the stay of execution was only temporary. With Dominick O'Malley sitting on the Police Board, its decision was a foregone conclusion. The ordinance did buy me some time, though. The Police Board only met on Fridays, which meant I had two days left of my police career.
CHAPTER 54
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1919
5:00 P.M.
"Do you know Joseph Monfre?" I asked Frank Monteleone, who was sitting next to me at the bar in the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter.
"You mean Doc Monfre?" asked Frank, who in his forties and had inherited the hotel that his father, Antonio, had bought more than thirty years ago. In the decades since, the Monteleone had become one of the finest hotels in the city.
I nodded.
"Sure I know him," Frank said. "Everybody knows Doc Monfre. Anybody with any sense is afraid of him."
"Including you?"
Frank showed me his hands. They were thick and layered with calluses. "I can build and fix almost anything." He curled his hands into fists. "And I've been in my share of scrapes, believe me. But Doc Monfre, he's an animal."
"What do you know about him?"
"I remember when his family came here from Napoli there were rumors that his father was with the Camorra."
"Was it true?"
"Yes," Frank said. "And later, there were rumors about Joseph. They said he killed cats and dogs. A couple of years later, we heard he killed a little girl."
"Do you think that was true?"
"Everybody in the neighborhood was sure he did it," Frank said. "That was the kind of boy he was. Then later, when he became a policeman ... that was like-how you say?-putting the fox in the henhouse. Did you work with him?"
"He was before my time," I said. "I joined the department in 1911."
Frank stared at me before picking up his glass of wine. "I heard you fought in the war."
There was a half-full glass of Jameson on the bar in front of me. I took a long sip. When I finished, the glass was empty. I didn't want to talk about the war.
"I recognized your name in the register," Frank said. "I knew you were the detective trying to find the man who murdered my sister and her husband."
Frank's younger sister was Johanna Monteleone, who married Tony Sciambra. On May 16, 1912, the Sciambras were shot in their bed in the residence behind their grocery. Tony died immediately. Johanna lingered for ten days. Neighbors reported seeing Joseph Monfre hanging around the store before the murders. I remembered reading in the case file that the Sciambras' infant son was sleeping in the bed with them when they were shot. Everyone considered it a miracle that none of the six bullets the killer fired had struck the baby.
"How's the baby?" I asked.
Frank's face broke into a grin. "My nephew is not a baby anymore. He's eight now, big and strong. Eating my wife and me out of our home."
"The two of you are raising him?"
He nodded. "He's like a son to us."
"That's good to hear."
The bar was nearly empty. I gazed through the big window onto Royal Street. The rain had stopped about mid-morning and the sun had come out. Evening shadows now lined the street as people passed by on their way home from work.
"Why do people call him Doc?" I asked.
"After he got fired from the Police Department, Monfre started selling patent medicines, liver pills and such, but he didn't sell them himself. He would pick a store in each neighborhood and drop by with a box of pills and tell the owner to sell them. If the owner refused, Monfre threatened him. If the owner refused again, Monfre beat him. If the owner still refused, Monfre blew up his store with dynamite."
I thought back to what Emile had told me. Perhaps Monfre's patent medicine racket was why he blew up the grocery on Palmyra Street instead of attacking the owner with an ax. By that time, there had already been three Axman attacks, plus the shooting of Tony and Johanna Sciambra. In a report about the Sciambra case, John Dantonio had speculated that the intruder probably would have used the victim's ax, as he had in the other attacks, except that the handle of Mr. Sciambra's ax was bro
ken. Maybe Monfre only used an ax when he was killing for Carlo Matranga. Maybe the ax was Matranga's signature, not Monfre's.
"Did Doc Monfre kill my sister?" Frank asked.
I looked him in the eye. "I think so."
Frank drained the rest of his wine. The bartender looked over. He was a thin man in his sixties with a shriveled face. Frank nodded and held up two fingers. The bartender poured more wine and more Jameson.
I rose from my stool enough to dig into my pocket for a quarter. My fingertips touched a coin. I felt the hole drilled through its edge. The liberty head half-dollar. A knot formed in my throat. I found a quarter and tossed it on the bar.
Frank waved it away. "The drink is on me."
I shook my head. "Thank you, but I'm working on your sister's case, and I ... can't accept."
He smiled. "First, you turned down the free room I offered. Now, you turn down a free drink. What kind of policeman are you?"
"The unemployed kind, probably."
He looked concerned. "What do you mean?"
"Nothing," I said. "Just some trouble at work."
"Is there anything I can do?"
"No, but thank you."
We tasted our fresh drinks.
"Why an ax?" I said. "I know the killer carries a pistol. He used one ... in your sister's case. And again when he attacked Edward Andollina and his sons. But the ax seems to be his first choice."
Frank was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "In Sicily, guns and knives are for killing people. Axes are for slaughtering animals, like chickens and pigs. To die by the gun or the knife is honorable. To die by the ax is ... brutto."
Frank took another sip of wine. I knew he was thinking about his sister, maybe taking some small solace in the fact that she and her husband had not died under an ax. I was thinking the same about my friend. So I said a silent prayer for Emile and for Maria and for my son. Then I raised my glass. "To those we've lost." Frank raised his glass to touch mine and we drank.
"I'm going to get him," I said. "No matter how long it takes."
Frank shook my hand. "Thank you."
Later, I picked up a copy of The City News at the front desk. Emile's story about Tobias Conrad's accusations against Superintendent Thompson and Captain Campo was not in it. I was pretty sure someone had gotten to the editor, Raymond Schwartz, and forced him to pull the story. I was also pretty sure that someone was Dominick O'Malley.
CHAPTER 55
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1919
8:35 A.M.
Frank Monteleone had a cousin who worked as a bookkeeper at the Edison Electric Company. I was with Frank in his office at the hotel when his cousin called back with an address for Joseph Monfre. Frank jotted the address on a pad. When he hung up the telephone, he looked at me. "What are you going to do?"
"Arrest him," I said, "for the murder of Emile Denoux."
"What about all the others? What about my sister?"
"He's going to pay for every one of them."
Frank tore the sheet of paper from the pad. "Are you going alone?"
I nodded. "There's no one I trust at the Police Department."
"I could go with you."
"I appreciate that," I said. "But this is police business."
He stared at me for a moment, and I think I saw a hint of relief in his eyes. He handed me the address. "Be careful."
Five minutes later, I left the Hotel Monteleone and walked down Royal Street toward the Pontalba Apartments. I barely noticed the pain in my leg.
Built by the Baroness de Pontalba in the 1850s, the Pontalba Apartments were a pair of red brick, three-story buildings that sat on opposite sides of Jackson Square. For several decades they were home to some of the city's wealthiest residents.
Not anymore.
The once elegant twin buildings were tenements now, filled mostly with poor Sicilian immigrants packed six or eight to a room. The only other residents were criminals and vagrants. According to Frank Monteleone's cousin, Joseph Monfre had a room on the third floor. Six months ago, he put down a two-dollar deposit to insure the payment of his monthly light bill. The deposit was still credited to his account, so there was a good chance he still lived there.
I had wanted to get an early start, but Edison Electric's business office didn't open until 7:30, so even though Frank had telephoned his cousin at home to let her know what he wanted, she wasn't able to call back with the information until she got to work and searched the files.
The delay probably wouldn't matter. In my experience, criminals stayed out late and slept in late. That was especially true during the cooler months when it wasn't so hot inside. I hoped to catch Monfre still in bed.
Standing on the corner of Chartres and Saint Peter, I looked down the front of the long apartment building. The morning was cool and crisp and the sky clear. Balconies with wrought-iron railings ran along the second and third floors, and more than a dozen women were stringing laundry up to dry.
As I walked down the brick sidewalk along Saint Peter Street under the second-floor balcony, I passed several Sicilian men leaning against the wall smoking cigarettes. Most of them appeared to be in their twenties or early thirties. Working-aged men who were clearly not working. One of them, a young tough no more than twenty, pushed away from the wall just in time to bump into me. I saw it coming and had time to lean into him. He wasn't expecting it, and I outweighed him, so he stumbled back against the brick wall.
The tough's hand darted into his jacket pocket, probably for a knife, but the older man next to him mumbled, "Sbirri," Sicilian gutter slang for a policeman.
The building's double front door was in the middle of the block. Four punks lounging outside the door gave me hard stares when I passed them, but otherwise they left me alone.
As I stepped through the door, the transition from the bright sunlight outside to the dark interior was immediate. I stopped in the foyer for a moment to let my eyes adjust. The wooden floor was streaked with dirt and littered with crumpled food wrappers, bits of burlap packing, and pages torn from newspapers. Still feeling the punks' eyes on my back, I kept walking.
The foyer ended twenty feet into the building at an intersecting hallway. I turned right and walked toward the stairs that I knew from previous visits to the Pontalba were at the end of the hallway. As I walked, I noticed that only about half of the apartment doors had numbers on them.
At the foot of the stairs, two young men sat shoulder to shoulder on the second step, blocking my way. They were smoking cigarettes and passing a bottle of rye. As I stepped close to them, they didn't move. I reached for my badge and then realized I didn't have it. It was lost somewhere in the rubble of my house, along with almost everything else I owned.
The two toughs glared at me.
"Pulizia," I said.
The punk with the bottle handed it to his friend and then spit on the floor.
I kicked him in the stomach, driving the toe of my shoe deep into the soft spot just below his ribcage. He doubled over and rolled down the last step to the floor.
The other one dropped the bottle and lurched up, but when he got to his feet he found the muzzle of my forty-five pressed against his forehead, my thumb resting on the safety. I flicked it off. The sound echoed down the hallway. He bent down and grabbed the overturned bottle. Then he took hold of his friend's jacket and dragged him out of my way. I started climbing the stairs.
I had never come to the Pontalba Apartments alone. Always, there had been at least one other policeman with me, sometimes more. The residents didn't like the police, and getting out of the Pontalba could be even harder than getting into it.
By the time I made it to the second-floor landing, I was breathing hard and my leg was throbbing. I leaned against the banister to rest.
My plan, if I could call it that, was a bit sketchy. I didn't have enough evidence to convict Joseph Monfre of any of the Axman murders, but I could testify that I saw him murder Emile Denoux. I just couldn't testify to that in New Orleans. No on
e would listen. Which was why I intended to arrest him and take him straight to Baton Rouge on the 11 o'clock train. Once I got Monfre to Baton Rouge, I was going to frog-march him to the State Capitol, right up to the attorney general himself.
I started climbing the stairs again.
In the third-floor hallway, three young boys and a young girl were kicking around a wooden bocce ball. As they scampered past me, I reached out and patted one of the boys on the head. He looked about eight and had a scar under his nose that curled his top lip. He spun around and shot me a dirty look. Then he spit out something in Sicilian. I didn't know the word, but it didn't sound nice.
More than half of the doors along the hallway stood open. As I walked past the open apartments, I caught glimpses of women cleaning house and tending to children. I heard babies crying. I smelled food cooking. Behind me, I heard the bocce ball rolling along the rough wooden floor and the four children chasing it.
Monfre's apartment was two-thirds of the way down the hallway on the left. The door was closed. His neighbor's door, the one just beyond Monfre's, was open. Through it I heard something frying in a skillet and smelled sizzling vegetables. Standing outside Monfre's apartment, I drew my Colt pistol and reached for doorknob.
You can overplan things. I knew what I had to do, and I knew how to do it. Monfre was a dangerous man, perhaps the most dangerous I had ever faced, but he was still just a man. What I lacked in planning and backup, I intended to make up for with surprise and aggressive action.
In the field hospital in France, I had asked Colonel Patton what he thought the Allied commanders should do after a bloody three-week offensive had resulted in yet another stalemate, with nothing to show for it but tens of thousands of dead and wounded, and the German and American armies again staring at each other across the moonscape of no man's land. The colonel looked at me and said, "There is only one thing to do: attack and attack and attack some more."
I twisted the doorknob and shoved. The door didn't budge. The deadbolt was locked. I stepped to the side, out of the line of fire in case Monfre shot through the door. Then I pounded on it with my fist. The thin wood shook under the blows.
The Axman of New Orleans Page 32
