THE BARREL MURDER - a Detective Joe Petrosino case (based on true events)

by MICHAEL ZAROCOSTAS

  THE BARREL MURDER

  a Detective Joe Petrosino case

  based on true events

  Michael Zarocostas

  The Barrel Murder © Michael Zarocostas, All rights reserved, MMXIII

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced by any means without the written permission of the author.

  Cover design by Michael Zarocostas

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  I: The Lunatic Doctor

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  II: The Morello Gang

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  III: The Syndicate Boss

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  The darkest places in hell are reserved for those

  who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.

  Dante Alighieri

  Note to the reader:

  This novel is based on an actual murder that occurred in New York City in 1903 and the criminal investigation that followed. Several of the main characters are real persons or inspired by real persons. Joe Petrosino, the central character, was the first Italian-American detective in the NYPD’s Central Bureau appointed in 1895 by Teddy Roosevelt (then President of the Board of New York City Police Commissoners). Petrosino and a few other brave men protected the immigrant masses and fought against the most feared criminals in the city’s history. Their story begins here.

  Prologue

  The East River lapped at the foot of 11th Street where a dock rose and fell on black water. The rain had swelled the river until it seeped into the street and onto the steps of a tenement on Avenue D. Frances Conners came out of the tenement, shielding herself with a shawl from the rain. She was dreading the thought of cleaning the saloon on Fourth Street. Her empty stomach burned as she walked through the muck, watching a soiled diaper float next to her in the gutter. She passed a pile of lumber left out for seasoning in front of the New York Mallet and Handle Works. Then a large barrel on the curb. One of its hoops was missing, as if it had just fallen off a delivery wagon.

  Some Long Island farmer dropped it, she thought, in a hurry from the ferry.

  The barrel bulged with the promise of something large inside. She moved closer and saw an overcoat covering the lid.

  “What are you looking at, darlin’?” a man’s voice said. She could smell the whiskey on his breath before she saw his big smiling teeth.

  He nudged her away from the barrel and blocked her path.

  “No time for it, McCafferty, you hear? I’ve got real work to do.”

  “No time for extra silver?” He jingled coins in his pocket and licked his lips.

  “Not even sun-up and you’re soused.” She looked around the empty street. “Right here?”

  “Right here.” He opened his trousers and exposed himself. Already excited.

  “You bastard,” she said, glancing up and down the street through the rain. “Make it fast.”

  She moved behind the pile of lumber and tried to pull up her worn petticoat, but he was already yanking it down. He pressed her up against the barrel and grunted in her ear. He went fast, and she snickered mockingly at him and counted panes in the Mallet Works windows until he finally convulsed and slumped against her.

  “A flash in the pan as usual, McCafferty.” She pushed him off and pulled up her petticoat, glancing around again. “Let’s have the money quick. You made me late now.”

  “You got all you’re getting from me, whore.” He brushed off his trousers.

  “Why, you no-good bastard.” She grabbed his lapels. “Maybe your Chief would like to hear what you’re doing in the wee hours?”

  He grinned and shoved her hard, backwards. She fell against the barrel and toppled over. A hand jutted out to her. She reached for it, planning to pull McCafferty down in the muck with her, but the hand was rigid. She let go and saw that the hand came from a body crumpled inside the barrel, folded in half, the head dangling from the torso.

  She heard herself shrieking as she pushed her heels into the mud, trying to move away. She tried to stand and yelled at McCafferty to help her, but he was nowhere in sight.

  A distant police whistle pierced the air.

  Then a watchman ran up to her. His eyes fixated on the barrel as he covered his mouth, whispering, “It’s the devil’s work.”

  The police whistles grew louder and carried in the wind. She covered her ears and made the mistake of looking at the face. The eyes were open, and the mouth was stuffed with something bloody. Entrails or worse.

  She recognized the familiar shape and retched a string of liquid from her empty stomach.

  I

  THE LUNATIC DOCTOR

  Chapter 1

  Petrosino had been staring out his window all morning. The night sky had turned a rusted blue, and the rain tapped on the glass as he sighed and looked down at the corner of Lafayette and Spring. Rain fell in silver arrows on Adelina’s black dress as she dragged an ash barrel to the curb in front of Vincenzo Saulino’s Ristorante. Wet tendrils of hair curled at her lips as she glanced up at his window, then slipped inside. He sighed again and sipped from the bottle of wine they had opened the night before.

  As the sun shouldered through the clouds, Petrosino checked his pocket watch and finished the rest of the wine in one long tilt. He had bathed and shaved and doused his hair with tonic, but he could still smell her. He fought off the urge to yawn and doused the lamps as sunlight sifted through the rainfall and the windows, leaving a grey pall on the furniture.

  He put on a derby and an overcoat and took out a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson. He looked for a shadow beneath his front door, pressed his ear against the wood, and gently turned the lock. He cracked open the door. The stairwell was empty. He pocketed the gun and descended the three flights back to earth.

  Petrosino tried not to look at Saulino’s as he walked into a wind that howled like a she-wolf. The wine was roving through his veins, staving off the cool air. He took a deep breath of New York as the peddlers rolled pushcarts down the street, jockeying for position along the rainy sidewalks, and the headscarves and shawls of the women fluttered black, violet, red, and indigo in the misty breeze. A lazy rooster crowed late, and newspaper boys sang out morning headlines in Italian and English. Bootblacks lugged shine boxes with brass footplates, their skinny fingers permanently stained shades of black and ox-blood. He watched some of the boys head south towards City Hall Park and thought about how little he used to charge when he was a kid. Now it was a small fortune, a nickel for a spit shine and a dime for an oil p
olish. He felt footsteps closing and looked around for anyone suspicious. More boys ran by him, in the same northern direction he was going.

  He scanned familiar faces on the streets, making quick eye contact. His network included young and old, and, in exchange for their ears on the streets, he would give them anything from gumdrops to a handful of coin to his solemn promise to personally handle a family affair. The lines of communication were like the strings of a violin, and he had become a maestro at strumming the right ones to make them sing.

  He approached a banana seller. The stool pigeon’s unshaven face was so full of grime that only the gleam of his eyes and a country pipe were visible. As poor and honest as an Augustinian friar, Petrosino thought. If the banana seller had the goods, he would tap the clay pipe. No signal. Petrosino kept walking, winking subtly at a White Wing in his ivory duck suit. The young street cleaner leaned over his shovel and three-wheeled cart full of brooms and water cans. A quick shake of the head. No news.

  Then he saw the familiar face of an elfin fourteen-year-old boy, Izzy, one of his stool pigeons who could never keep his hands still, fidgeting and flying around. Izzy was busking for a couple of older toughs, who smiled at each other and encouraged him. The older ones looked about sixteen years old, Italian boys he’d seen before in the neighborhood. Petrosino could see their game coming a mile away.

  “A nickel if youse sing that song for us,” one of the toughs said to Izzy and grinned at his friend. “Listen to dis little bum croak like a toad.”

  Izzy sighed in resignation, then sucked in a deep breath. He exhaled a Yiddish song that Petrosino didn’t understand, but had heard a hundred times before on the East Side. The toughs clapped and nudged Izzy, making him dance while he sang. A few passers-by stopped and listened to Izzy’s lilting lament. When Izzy finished, he bowed, and the pair of older boys laughed.

  “You got your tune, fellas.” Izzy patted them amiably. “Now where’s my nickel?”

  “Nickel? I’ll give youse a nickel, you dirty Yid!”

  The smaller tough held Izzy, and the bigger one spat in Izzy’s face.

  “Let him alone!” Petrosino shoved the older boys onto a patch of horseshit and gave the bigger one a hard kick in the pants. “You make me ashamed to be Italian, you shitbirds. Get outta here or I’ll break your ass.”

  The pair ran off, flipping Petrosino the finger.

  “What the hell’d ya do that for, Joe?” Izzy wiped spit from his forehead. “You scared em off for good!”

  “Don’t you want them to let you alone?”

  Izzy’s sweet face turned impish. “I want them bums to rough me up a little. Lets me get closer to ‘em, see?” Izzy reached into his pockets and showed Petrosino a handful of loose change. “The schmucks didn’t even know I was sneakin’ ‘em. Now who’s laughin’?”

  Petrosino bit his tongue at the trick. “Clever, kid. But what makes you think I’m gonna let you get away with it? I’m the law, aren’t I? So now you gotta pay tax. Tell me what you’ve heard today.” Petrosino halfheartedly grabbed Izzy’s collar and gently shook the boy.

  “Say, take the paws off, Joe. I got my ears to the ground, I can hear trains coming.”

  “What?”

  Izzy pushed away from Petrosino and straightened his collar. “You don’t read nuttin’, do you, ya big dope? It’s in them Western novels. The Injuns put their ears on the ground, and they can hear a cowboy fart from ten miles out!”

  Petrosino snorted. “So then, who broke wind today on the East Side?”

  Izzy looked up and down the street, then whispered dramatically, “While you were snorin’ your head off, some louse got snuffed out. They found the body on Avenue D. I heard they stole the innerds to make a curse. They say. . .” Izzy swallowed hard. “They say it was the devil’s work.”

  “Devil’s work, he says.” Petrosino chuckled. “What else you hear, kid?”

  “That’s all. The rest is on interest.” Izzy rubbed his fingers together.

  “Nuts. If I see you snatching purses, I’ll show you the devil’s work myself. Now scram.”

  Izzy gave him the Bronx cheer and sauntered off.

  At Elm and Prince, Petrosino turned right, past two ragpicker’s carts piled high with moldy sacks of clothes. On the corner of Mott and Prince, Father LaValle was sweeping the entrance of Old St. Pat’s. Petrosino walked up the front steps and embraced LaValle, then dipped his finger in a marble bowl of holy water, making the sign of the cross. The cold water evaporated on his forehead, and he felt suddenly alone as he prayed to St. Michael.

  When he left Old St. Pat’s, Petrosino realized that a man across the street was shadowing him. The shadow was reading a newspaper, and Petrosino could only see the upper half of his face: gold spectacles, fret lines in his forehead, and a thinning tuft of brown hair. The shadow wore an expensive blue suit and white spats over new shoes. Not like the usual crook from the Rogues’ Gallery, Petrosino thought, but then crooks were dressing more like dandies these days, so it was hard to tell. The shadow made Petrosino think of T.R. When he was Commissioner, T.R. would always brag about what he would do if an assassin ambushed him in the streets of New York. “Stab him right in the heart, that’s what I’d do!” T.R. had said, pretending to strike with an invisible dirk.

  Petrosino smiled now and glanced once more behind him, convincing himself that no crook worth worrying about would wear white spats in a storm. He quickened his pace through the stinging pricks of rain until 300 Mulberry Street stood before him. Police Headquarters was called the Marble Palace. Four stories of ragged window awnings and American flags with forty-five stars fluttering wet with rain. Petrosino walked up the Palace’s high stoop and through the anteroom, where the desk sergeant slurped coffee and an old doorman waved excitedly.

  Petrosino nodded and walked past the railing.

  He unlocked his cubbyhole of an office and hung his derby and overcoat on a rack next to a picture of President Roosevelt. He sat down at his blotter, a basket of reports, and a stack of letters. He yanked open a musty drawer with cold fingers fidgeting in anticipation of a warm Cuban cigar. He slipped one in his mouth to forget the taste of Adelina’s lips.

  The old doorman hobbled through the open door, saluting anxiously.

  “Morning, Strauss,” Petrosino said, not looking up.

  “Don’t bother sittin’, Detective. The Chief’s on his way from Union Market and wants to see ye. Wants to see all the Central Bureau dicks. Some kind of madman went on a rampage on the East Side. Gutted a man like a fish.”

  “I’ll be damned, the kid was right.” Petrosino bit off the end of his cigar and spat it into the brass spittoon on the floor. “Let’s go see what’s doing.”

  Chapter 2

  “All right, listen good, this is what we know so far,” Chief Inspector “Gentleman George” McClusky said, playing with his braided vest and a gold watch chain with hanging jeweled trinkets. “At 5:30 this morning, a scrubwoman found a dead man stuffed into a barrel on East 11th and Avenue D. The witness’s name is Frances Conners. She came out of her tenement on 160 Avenue D near the Mallet and Handle Works building at number 743 East 11th. When she passed the sawmill, she noticed a pile of lumber left out in the yard. Then she saw a large barrel that caught her eye. She mentioned a ferry. . .”

  McClusky paused and glanced down at a report, lips moving silently.

  Petrosino licked his pencil, scribbling down notes. Word had been traveling as quickly as the telephone switchboard operators could gossip, and he and a dozen other dicks were stuffed in McClusky’s office, huddled around his neat desk, listening intently to what the new Chief had to say. The office had Roman busts, Oriental rugs, and oil paintings of the Chief and his family. Adjacent to the Chief’s desk was the museum or “cold chamber” displaying artifacts taken from captured crooks during their confessions. McClusky looked up as the heavy footsteps of dozens of reserves from three stationhouses shuffled outside his door in the outer office and hall, waiting for
their marching orders.

  “That’s right,” McClusky continued, “she said it looked to her like some Long Island farmer must’ve dropped the barrel from his truck in a hurry from the 10th Street ferry. She thought it might have something valuable inside. Probably a thief herself. When she got closer, she saw an old overcoat covering it. She was going to take the coat with the notion of making a scrub rag. But, when she pulled the coat aside, she slipped in the rain and knocked the barrel over. Out came a mutilated corpse.” McClusky grimaced and shifted in his lumpy leather chair beneath an Irish flag and an oil portrait of himself in full parade uniform. He had aged poorly since the portrait was painted. His once rugged chin and cheekbones sagged with loose skin the color of a potato, and his jagged teeth were yellow from tobacco.

  Petrosino hadn’t trusted McClusky since his first day as Chief Inspector. McClusky was mean-spirited and morose. The opposite of T.R. Whether T.R. was down-dressing a police captain or needling a reporter or simply reading a book in his office, there was always a broad smile on T.R.’s face. The gift of the gods to Theodore Roosevelt was joy.

  McClusky was saying, “The dead man’s body had been jammed inside the barrel, folded in half. The head was twisted severely at the neck, gashed and bleeding all to hell. And this is the worst part, boys: the mouth was stuffed with the son of a bitch’s own cock and balls.”

  The detectives in the room eyed each other, and someone whistled in disgust.

  “She also said the coat and the barrel were hardly wet, even though it had been raining all night and morning. Patrolman O’Dell was the first on the scene. Detective McCafferty was next, and he summoned an ambulance surgeon from Bellevue. They packed the body on ice and took it to Union Market. They say the victim is respectable looking, could be a merchant or a banker, a citizen in good stead. So I want all our ears pricked up.