I stepped out of the stairwell onto the fourth floor. The layout was identical to the first floor. A long central corridor with a lobby midway down. A secretary sat at a reception desk facing the elevator. I approached her from behind. "Excuse me," I said as I walked around to the front of her desk. My sudden appearance made her jump. She was a middle-aged woman with short blond hair and fading looks.
"Where did you come from?" she snapped.
I nodded down the corridor. "The stairs."
She frowned. "We have an electric elevator."
"Too cramped."
"What can I do for you?"
"I'm here to see Mr. O'Malley."
She sighed as she looked down at an appointment book on her desk, tracing a pearl-colored fingernail along a printed list of times broken down into half-hour increments. "Is he expecting you?"
A frosted door to my left had Dominick O'Malley's name stenciled on it, under which were the words PRIVATE OFFICE. I turned away from the desk and walked toward the door.
"You can't go in there!" the secretary said.
I ignored her and reached for the brass doorknob with my left hand. At the same time, I dug my right hand into my jacket pocket and palmed the roll of quarters I had bought at the front desk of the Hotel Monteleone.
O'Malley sat behind a big desk, his back to a picture widow that looked out over a block of tenements. A huge dog lay sprawled on a rug beside the desk. To my left, Patrick Shea was stretched out on a leather sofa. Shea sprang to his feet when I came through the door, his big hands clinching into fists. But O'Malley barely moved. He just looked up at me from under his bushy white eyebrows.
I pushed the door shut and strode up to the desk, stopping between a pair of leather chairs.
"Detective Fitzgerald," O'Malley said in his thick brogue. Then he glanced at a ship's clock hung on the wall. It was 8:20. "I think we can still call you detective, at least for a little while longer. What can I do for you?"
I heard the big redhead creeping up behind me. I ignored him and kept my eyes focused on O'Malley, but I did flex my knees just a bit to get some spring in them. Then I waited, my right hand down by my side, fingers curled around the roll of quarters. "Dominick O'Malley, I'm here to-"
Shea reached for me. I spun to my left and drove my right fist straight up, like a piston aimed at the ceiling. The instant before it made contact, I saw the redhead's lips curl back, saw the glint of the silver cuspid with the diamond inset, saw the tip of his tongue. Then my knuckles crashed against the underside of his chin. His teeth smashed together and a small pink lump flew from his mouth. His head snapped back. Then he crumpled to the floor, unconscious, mouth hanging open and blood streaming down his chin.
O'Malley didn't move. Neither did the dog. I dropped my right hand to my side, next to the pistol under my borrowed jacket. I felt a tremble in my legs. My breath was short and ragged.
"That was quite impressive," O'Malley said. Then he stood up to peer over his desk at his collapsed driver. His padded wooden chair rolled back slightly on its casters. "But I think when Patrick wakes up he's not going to be too happy."
"He had it coming," I said, slipping the roll of quarters back into my pocket. Then I pointed to the bloody hunk of tongue that had landed on O'Malley's desk. "Make sure you give that to him. Maybe a good doctor can sew it back on."
O'Malley nodded at the unconscious man. "He might press charges. He is a duly authorized private detective, and you are about to be an out-of-work ex-policeman."
I glanced over my shoulder at the clock. "I've got another hour and a half."
"What do you plan to do with the rest of your career?"
"Make the biggest criminal case in the history of this city."
His mouth laughed but not his eyes. I saw them dart toward the drawer beside his right knee. "Just how do you plan to do that?"
"I'm going to arrest a notorious murderer."
"That would be impressive, especially on your last day, but I think your suspect is already in custody and out of your grasp."
I shook my head. "No, he's not."
O'Malley's eyes narrowed in confusion. "Where is he?"
"Standing right in front of me."
O'Malley laughed again, but his gin-blossomed cheeks turned redder. "You think I'm the Axman?"
"I didn't say anything about the Axman."
"What murders are you talking about then?"
On the floor beside me, the redhead groaned. Blood gurgled in his throat, and he coughed it up.
I kept my eyes focused on O'Malley. His suit coat was off. I had seen it hanging on a coat tree next to the door when I walked in. He wore shirtsleeves and a white silk waistcoat. His balled fists rested on his hips. He wasn't carrying a gun, but I knew there must be a gun in the drawer.
"Dominick O'Malley, you are under arrest for the murders of Police Superintendent David Hennessy and Chief of Detectives Connor Fitzgerald."
He wasn't laughing anymore. His blue eyes burned with hatred.
"Put your hands on the desk," I said. "I don't have any handcuffs. They burned up along with the rest of my possessions when your man Monfre threw a dynamite bomb into my house. But since this is a private detective agency, I'm sure you have handcuffs I can borrow. I promise I'll return them."
O'Malley didn't move. "Are you just daft, boyo? Or are you absolutely crazy? You're talking about murders that happened decades ago. What possible evidence could you have against me?"
I bumped the borrowed jacket with my elbow enough so he could hear the crinkle of paper from the inside pocket. "An affidavit now and witnesses later."
He waved a hand at me. "Bollocks."
"You'll see it all in court." I pushed the jacket back and laid a hand on my Colt. "Now put your hands on the desk."
Behind me something scuffed the floor. I glanced around at the sound. Shea was up on one elbow. He lunged at me and wrapped his arms around my knees. His weight bowled me over and as I fell I jerked my Colt from its holster and raised it over my head. When I hit to the floor, I smashed the long barrel down on the crown of Shea's skull. He grunted once and collapsed, blood pouring from a gash in his scalp.
Above me, I heard wood sliding across wood, the sound of a drawer being yanked open. I crawled up on one knee and aimed my pistol over the top of O'Malley's desk. His hand was deep inside the drawer. I could have warned him. Maybe I should have. But I didn't. I just waited. His hand came up over the desk clutching a chrome revolver. He aimed the muzzle at my face. I snapped off three quick shots-BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!
My bullets ripped through O'Malley's chest and shattered the window behind him. He fell into his chair and pitched over backward.
I pulled myself to my feet and stared across the desk.
O'Malley was sitting in the overturned chair, three black holes in the front of his white waistcoat. His eyes were open and staring at the ceiling. His legs were bent at the knees and draped over the front of the seat. A thin stream of blood was leaking from beneath his back.
Dominick O'Malley was dead.
CHAPTER 59
NOVEMBER 7, 1919-DECEMBER 5, 1921
The Police Board fired me two hours after I killed Dominick O'Malley. For a few weeks there was talk of charging me with his murder, but since I was technically still a policeman and trying to effect a lawful arrest at the moment I fired my weapon, the district attorney decided not to pursue an indictment. I heard that the Republican state attorney general had helped him make that decision.
The Parole Board sent Joseph Monfre back to Angola for two years for violating his parole.
At 12:01 a.m. on January 17, 1920, Prohibition became the law of the land across the United States. At that exact moment, speakeasies across New Orleans opened for business, every one of them stocked exclusively with Matranga booze. Not much changed at the Red Stag, except for the prices. They went up. A few months later, a young man named Eliot Ness wrote to me and offered me a job with the Treasury Department's Bureau of Prohibitio
n in Chicago. I wrote him back and thanked him for his offer, explaining that while I was honored to be considered for such a post, I had to decline. Chicago was too cold, I wrote, and I drank too much to be a Prohibition agent.
I opened up my own private detective agency. I didn't have many clients. Just one, in fact. I became the house detective at the Hotel Monteleone.
John Dantonio died in April 1920. He was a good man. I went to his funeral. There were a lot of policemen there. Not one of them spoke to me.
In September 1920, there was a political earthquake in New Orleans when reform candidate Andrew McShane defeated longtime incumbent, and Ring stooge, Mayor Martin Beauchamp. Without O'Malley at the helm, the Ring foundered. At least for a while.
On November 12, 1921, the warden at Angola, for whom I had done a couple of favors, sent me a telegram informing me that Joseph Monfre was going to be released the following day. The next night, I tailed Monfre from the train station on Rampart Street to the Pontalba Apartments.
He still had that gunpowder burn on his left cheek.
Over the next couple of weeks, whenever I wasn't working at the Monteleone, I was Monfre's shadow. He was a career criminal, and I didn't think it would take long before he went back to his old ways.
On the evening of November 30, I followed him to the train station. He was carrying a grip and boarded a train bound for Los Angeles. All I had were the clothes on my back and a little money in my pocket.
The trip took three and a half days.
We pulled into Los Angeles on Saturday morning, December 3. Monfre checked into a cold-water flophouse. I got a room one floor below him, near the stairs.
Early the next morning, Monfre caught a Yellow Line trolley. I hopped on behind him and stayed in the back of the car. When he got off, I followed him to a tan two-story stucco house on East 36th Street. A short iron fence stood in front of the house, and a brick walkway led to the door.
In answer to Monfre's knock, an older heavyset man answered the door. I was a hundred yards away, but even at that distance it was clear to me that the man was none too happy to see Joseph Monfre.
Dressed in Sunday church clothes, the man blocked the doorway and refused to let Monfre into the house. They argued for several minutes. All the while, the man kept glancing over his shoulder as if he didn't want someone inside the house to know who was at the door. Eventually, Monfre stormed off. He caught another trolley, but I was too slow and missed it. I found him again at one o'clock that afternoon when he returned to the hotel.
An hour later, he left again. I tailed him to a sidewalk café and watched him from a doorway across the street. He sat at a small table off to the side and ordered coffee. He had a newspaper with him. At three o'clock, the heavyset man from the house on East 36th Street showed up and sat down with Monfre.
They continued their argument.
Near Monfre's table, a narrow alley ran between the café and the building next door. As Monfre and the other man's argument dragged on, a beat-up black Ford with two Italians in it pulled out of the alley and jerked to a stop beside the table. As the passenger jumped out, Monfre stood and raised the folded newspaper. From the way he held his hand inside the paper, I knew he had a gun.
The passenger yanked open the rear door of the Ford, and Monfre prodded the heavyset man into the back seat, then slid in beside him. The passenger hopped in the front seat and the Ford peeled away, joining a sea of other black Fords out for a Sunday drive.
The kidnapping was done so smoothly no one even noticed.
I didn't see Monfre again until that evening at the hotel. I was in my room at half-past six, sitting in a chair and looking out through a crack I had left in my door when I saw him climbing the stairs. Thirty minutes later he passed me again on his way down, and I saw him shove a small revolver under his yellow linen shirt.
He took the trolley back out to the house on East 36th Street. This time he slipped an envelope through the mail slot. Then he beat on the door a couple of times and hurried away. I followed him to the trolley stop and boarded without him noticing me. He rode the trolley to an Italian section of the city where my pale skin stuck out like an infected boil on the tip of someone's nose. After he got off, I stayed on the trolley for a few more stops, then transferred to another line that took me back to the hotel.
I spent the rest of the night with my butt in a hard wooden chair and my face pressed to the crack in the door. The last thing I remembered was looking at my watch at 3 a.m.
The morning sun was in my window when I woke up on the floor at a quarter past eight. I had no idea if Monfre was in his room or not. My stomach was stuck to my ribs, so I walked over to the café across the street from the hotel and ate breakfast.
I had not yet had time to check in with the Los Angeles Police Department. My private cop badge from New Orleans wasn't worth a plugged nickel in L.A., not unless I checked in with the local cops and got a courtesy card from them. Carrying a pistol without the card could land me in jail. The sentence in California was up to a year.
By 10:30, I had not seen Monfre. My eyelids were drooping. I needed to move around. At the nearest Yellow Line stop, I caught a trolley headed toward East 36th Street.
I took up a surveillance post at the side entrance of a grocery store on the corner of East 36th and South San Pedro, half a block from the tan house. If Monfre came back by the same route, I would see him walking toward me from the far end of the street. I sipped a root beer while I waited.
Five minutes before noon, I saw Monfre strolling along the sidewalk across the street from the tan house. As he got closer, he crossed the street and continued up the near sidewalk until he reached the short iron gate in front of the house. He opened the gate and walked up the brick path to the front door.
When he knocked no one answered. He knocked again. The door opened a crack. I glimpsed a face framed in dark hair. For a few minutes, Monfre argued with whomever was behind the door. Then he pulled the revolver from beneath his shirt and pointed it at the person inside.
The door swung open and Monfre stepped inside. For an instant, I saw a dark-haired woman backing away from him. She looked to be in her early thirties. There was something familiar about her. Then the door slammed shut.
A few minutes later, I heard a gunshot inside the house.
EPILOGUE
LOS ANGELES
MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1921
12:10 P.M.
I dragged myself up the exterior stairs on the side of the house. A second gunshot had been fired from up there. The door at the top of the stairwell was locked. My breathing was ragged. My leg throbbed. I didn't have the strength to smash open the door, so I fired a blast from my Colt into the latch. The lock exploded. The door swung back on its hinges.
I stumbled inside.
And found myself in a dining room with a long wooden table surrounded by half a dozen chairs. Monfre stood ten feet to my left, at the far end of the table. A hole in the front of his yellow shirt leaked blood.
He had been gut shot and seemed to be teetering on the edge of falling down. His arms dangled at his sides, but I couldn't see his hands because the table was shielding them.
Gray smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder hung in the air.
In front of me, at the near end of the table, no more than five feet away, stood Mrs. Esther Pepitone, pointing a nickel-plated two-shot derringer across the table at Monfre. I was astounded. Other than a handwritten note left at the front desk of the Hotel Monteleone thanking me for investigating her husband's murder, I had not heard from Mrs. Pepitone in two years.
Monfre raised his right hand.
I had been gazing at Mrs. Pepitone in astonishment and only saw Monfre's movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned my head to face him, I found myself staring down the barrel of his revolver.
My forty-five was pointed at the floor. Useless, because Monfre's bullet would pass through my brain long before I could get off a shot.
Then I
heard a sharp metal click, the sound of the derringer's hammer falling on a spent shell. Hands shaking, Mrs. Pepitone yanked back the hammer and squeezed the trigger again.
I heard another click.
Monfre turned to her and grinned.
I raised my Colt and fired. The hardball ammunition ripped through Monfre's chest and neck and blew holes in the wall behind him. I kept pulling the trigger until the slide locked back on an empty chamber.
My left leg hurt. I looked down at it. Blood was squirting from a hole in my thigh. Monfre had gotten off at least one shot.
I glanced at Mrs. Pepitone. "I told him I would see him die."
Then I fell down.
***
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1921
I woke up in a twenty-bed hospital ward, an I.V. bottle hanging from a hook above my bed and a tube running down into my arm. As my eyes focused, I saw sunlight filtering through a window at the far end of the ward.
"You lost a lot of blood, soldier."
I raised my head and saw a dark-haired nurse in a starched white uniform pushing a metal cart past the foot of my bed. "How did you know?"
She stopped. "That you were a soldier?"
I nodded. My throat felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
"I served in the Army Nurse Corps in France."
"What day is it?"
"What's the last day you remember?" she asked.
I had to think about that. "Monday."
"Today's Thursday."
"I've been out for three days?"
"You didn't miss much." She smiled. "In fact, you're about the most exciting thing that's happened around here all week."
I reached under the thin sheet and felt for my left leg.
"It's still there," she said, then laughed. "Along with everything else."
I couldn't help but smile back at her. "That's a relief."
"The bullet nicked your femoral artery, but somebody had sense enough to wrap a tourniquet around your leg before you got here."
The Axman of New Orleans Page 35
