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

by MICHAEL ZAROCOSTAS

  “Aw, save it for the Salvation Army.” Izzy’s mouth contorted as if he’d swallowed a castor bean, talking like a Bowery tough instead of the son of a music teacher and cantor. “I got more coin than my ma and pop’ll ever clink. I can take in forty bucks a day, sixty on a Saturday night at Coney.”

  “Taking out your anger on the billfolds in the City?” Petrosino kicked Izzy’s suitcase. The foot of a fine silk stocking was caught in the closure. “What’s that? You a fence now, too?”

  “I ain’t no fence. I’m a salesman, and those are my wares. I take the money I make during the day and buy goods at a discount and resell for a profit. It’s a bona fide trade.”

  “Nuts.” Petrosino reached for the suitcase.

  Izzy tried to shoved him away, saying, “That ain’t why I wanted to talk to you, Joe!”

  “Then why’d you bring me down here in all this horseshit?”

  Izzy was squirming and pushing until Petrosino stepped back from the suitcase. “Because I saw in the papers that youse working that barrel murder and I mighta heard something. About the victim, see. And I might tell youse for the right price. But I ain’t no stoolie. I don’t want no one to think that I’m a lowdown stoolie. I gotta maintain a repute-”

  Petrosino took the kid by the throat. “Listen, punk. There’s a dead man on the Morgue slab right now, his throat’s slashed to bits and his cock and balls chopped clean off. Now I aim to find the bastard who did it. So I’ll put the idea right in front of your little nose, and I’ll even put handles on it so you can get a good grasp: If you don’t sing, I’ll put the word out on the street that you’re a first-class stool pigeon that don’t know when to shut up. Capisce?”

  Izzy got a wise look on his face and started crooning, “My sweet Marie from sunny Italy. Oh how I do love you. Say that you’ll love me, love me, too-”

  “Not that kind of singing, you rube.” Petrosino hesistated, thinking that the kid sang pretty good. “You ain’t half bad, kid. Where’d you get that tune?”

  “Made it up from scratch. Now lemme go, you shit-”

  Petrosino choked him again.

  “Okay, wait,” Izzy choked out, eyes gleaming wet. “The dead bastard’s kin to an Italian by the name of . . . Giuseppe De Priemo. He’s up the river now.”

  Petrosino loosened his stranglehold when he recognized the name. “What’s the barrel victim’s name? Is it De Priemo, too?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean? How did you hear about this inmate from Sing Sing? How’s he related to the victim? Don’t make me squash it out of you, Izzy.”

  “I betcha’d like to mash my brains in. What’s it to youse anyhow, the way I heard?”

  “What’s it to me? I’m the guy who’s trailing it all the way to the killers. Whoever told you heard it from someone else, who maybe heard it from the ones who did it. So spill.”

  “Last night,” Izzy spat out bitterly, “I heard the man in the barrel ‘got his’ because of De Priemo. But I was drinking whiskey at Nigger Mike’s all night, and I don’t remember nothing about who said which or how. Just the name and thought it was worth something to youse. I won’t crack wise again, Joe, just lemme go.”

  “They let a kid your age drink at that Russian Jew’s place?” Petrosino cocked his head and held the kid’s face. “And that’s all you know?”

  “I swear, Joe. I told youse everything I remember. Now, youse gonna treat me on the square or gimme more of the Third Degree? Ain’t that how youse cops get your confessions? Thump, thump, thump on the noggin? Bet youse beat your own kids, huh?”

  “Izzy, if I had a son like you, he’d be a bass drum.” Petrosino let him go and walked out of the stall, fanning away bottle green horse flies. He couldn’t wait to go to Sing Sing.

  “Say,” Izzy called after him, “youse didn’t give me nothing for my trouble!”

  Petrosino felt inside his coat pocket, thumbed his wallet. “Sure I did. If you’d dipped my billfold too, then I would’ve broken your fingers.”

  Izzy smiled and flashed the dollar. “You’re right, Joe, this is all I took.”

  Chapter 21

  He rode the first car of the Hudson River Railroad to Ossining, gazing at the silver ribbon of the river. He sat as calmly as he could, knowing that a potential murder witness was waiting in a pitch black three-by-seven cell, thirty miles north. Giuseppe Di Priemo. A few months ago, he’d helped Flynn and the Secret Service put Di Priemo away for counterfeiting in Yonkers.

  The one baggage car and five passenger cars emerged from the city’s tunnel and roared along the tracks at twenty-five miles an hour. The train passed into the rough terrain of the northern suburbs toward Yonkers, the steel wheels beating out a monotonous rhythm. Petrosino pulled his derby low and leaned back in the oily weave of canvas upholstery, snug in his overcoat. He watched the passing landscape through the window. The train seemed to glide just above the Hudson River, its limestone currents jagged and cold. Scrub clung to the rocky edge like straggling children, and the treeline on the other side of the river was in the midst of transforming from russet to green. Some of the trees hadn’t survived the winter, and their coal black skeletons were bent over in the harsh sunlight and shriveled like old men given up.

  He saw his glum reflection in the glass and tried not to think of the barrel victim’s face or the men who had threatened him at the soda fountain. He closed his eyes and later woke to the sound of brakes screeching and the engineer’s voice, passing through the car, yelling at the flagman: “Hurry up your cakes! We got another train twelve minutes behind us.”

  Passengers filed off, and Petrosino straightened his derby and descended to the platform. Spring crackled through the trees like the sound of newspapers rustling. He took in the smell of chickory and turned south toward the prison. The massive stone fortress with its basin docks sat on the low ground near the Hudson. The Big House was six tiers of cells, about forty feet wide, five hundred feet long, and shaped like a barn. A man in a prison keeper uniform came up the train platform, hunched over and craggy: Keeper Shoemaker.

  “Detective Bet-ye-see-no, sir, ain’t seen you in a while.” Shoemaker shook hands. “Let me conduct ye down to the Big House. Sorry if I’m late, just took head count.”

  Shoemaker led him to a sparkly motorcar that looked like a marriage between an ornate leather sofa and a small open carriage. There were two oil-burning lanterns on the glossy black frame, and shiny rubber tires that put the Police Scorcher Squad’s bicycles to shame. Petrosino hopped up the step plates and into the wide seat. Shoemaker turned the start crank and jumped in. He steered the tiller and gunned forward.

  “This here’s the Warden’s new curved dash Olds runabout,” Shoemaker said proudly as they sputtered south down a makeshift road called Durston. “Got more power than a team of horses and pneumatic tires that can’t be punctured no way, no how.”

  They hit a rock the size of a watermelon, and both were thrown a foot off their seats.

  “Try to get us there alive, Shoe.”

  Shoemaker grinned. They traveled past the freight depot, the prison cemetery, and the twenty-foot wall and cell house. Shoemaker parked the motorcar at the end of the road in the prison barn. The familiar smells drowned Petrosino’s senses. The stone walls were two feet thick, keeping everything inside festering without air and light, and the inmates’ “night buckets” had recently been dumped in an open channel carved into the walkways.

  Shoemaker led him to the front steps and neatly groomed lawn, inside the gate, and into the foyer. The gate slammed shut and locked behind them. A pair of guards loitered laconically on either side. Shoemaker politely asked if Petrosino would hand over his service revolver for storage in the prison magazine. Shoemaker then gave him a cup of coffee and led him to a beautifully carved cherry table in the visiting room. The table had ornate flowers and exotic birds that must have taken one of the inmates weeks to chisel in the prison workshop.

  “I’ll get him for ye,
” Shoemaker said, “he’s awaitin’ in the key house.”

  Petrosino never got over how eerie the silence was with twelve hundred inmates there. The walls were sweating green mold. It felt like a mausoleum, he thought, as De Priemo ambled in handcuffed and shackled with Shoemaker prodding him.

  Giuseppe De Priemo’s face looked like a parched white road that had cracked and hardened under a merciless wind. A film coated his grey expressionless eyes, and his mouth was as tight and shriveled as a raisin. The prison’s barber school kept his hair cropped and his face clean-shaven. Still, he looked two decades older than his twenty-eight years. His hobnailed boots clacked across the floor, and when he sat down, a smell filled the room like a dank sack of onions and cheese. His cap and uniform hung loosely and should have been white, but they were the hue of a dingy pigeon. The uniform was decorated with just one set of black stripes. First offenders wore single stripes, two-time offenders had double, and the persistent felons had triple. Quadruple stripes were the mark of an incorrigible prisoner they called a “zebra” in Sing Sing.

  De Priemo was chained to a chair beneath a string of electric fixtures that all pointed down on his head. If he were frightened or nervous, his face didn’t show it. There was apathy in him and little else. Petrosino looked down at the man’s Sing Sing criminal record. De Priemo’s previous occupation was listed as “gardener,” which Petrosino thought could be true if it meant cultivating “greenbacks.” De Priemo was single, could not read or write, and he was listed as five feet five and a half inches tall and one hundred eighty-two pounds. It looked as though he had already lost twenty-five pounds in Sing Sing.

  “Take off your cap, Number 5-4-0-8-8,” Shoemaker said from the light’s edge.

  De Priemo reached his hand up, but the chains stopped his arm short.

  Shoemaker knocked the cap onto the table.

  “That’s enough, Shoe,” Petrosino said. “Let him be.” Petrosino looked at De Priemo who still hadn’t met his eyes. “My name is Petrosino. I’m a detective from the city, and I want to ask you some questions. I need to identify a man, and I think you might be able to help.”

  De Priemo said nothing.

  “Maybe, there’ll be something in it for you.”

  A sneer crossed De Priemo’s pruned mouth.

  “Yer welcome to throttle him a little,” Shoemaker said, “if ye like.”

  Petrosino looked up at Shoemaker. “Let us alone for a few minutes?”

  Shoemaker patted a fist against an open palm, winked. He went out and shut the door.

  “You have four years on this sentence. With ‘good time,’ the best you could do is April 14, 1906. I can get you time outside. More than just a march to the workshops. Looks like you could use the fresh air.” Petrosino took the envelope out of his coat pocket and removed the first photograph. It was the best the Coroner’s photographer could do with the barrel victim’s face, which looked waxen and thin but not quite dead. And nothing like the ghoul in Petrosino’s nightmares. The linen collar and tie had been dressed up beneath the chin. The picture was a profile view, taken close enough to disguise the fact that the head was propped up on the Coroner’s table at the Morgue. The victim’s eyelids were half open. Petrosino slid the picture across the table, and De Priemo leaned forward as best he could in the restraining chair.

  “You look familiar,” De Priemo said and looked down to focus on the photograph.

  “Do you know the man in the picture?”

  Flecks of aquamarine sparkled in the grey void of De Priemos’ eyes. “Is he sick?”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Looks like Nitto. My sister’s husband in Buffalo.”

  Buffalo! Petrosino wanted to shout. That’s where the victim’s gloves were from. He felt his pulse beating in his fingertips as he held onto a second photograph. “What’s his full name? And does he still have kin in Buffalo, your sister maybe?”

  “Benedetto Madonnia. My sister’s there.”

  “Is her family name the same?”

  “She’s a Madonnnia, but the eldest boy is Sagliabeni. Salvatore Sagliabeni. They both live at 47 Trenton Avenue. Tell me, what’s the matter with my brother-in-law?”

  “Take a good look.” Petrosino felt the air deflating from his chest. He felt guilty because he had played a part in painting De Priemo as a squealer. And now De Priemo’s brother-in-law had paid the ultimate price. “Are you sure it’s him?”

  De Priemo pointed with his chin at the photograph. “See that scar, the one on his cheek. Nitto got that from a fall in a quarry. Nitto’s a stonemason, but he’s been troubled with rheumatism and hasn’t worked in months. Is he sick?”

  “He’s dead.” Petrosino handed over the second photograph. It showed the head and torso of Benedetto Madonnia, the gaping wounds to the throat vividly centered in the frame.

  De Priemo looked down again, and sweat beaded up shiny on his forehead. “They massacred him!” his voice roared like a storm tearing down a pigeon coop. The color in his face ran out, and he looked as if he’d faint. Petrosino reached across and slapped him, and De Priemo sat up and muttered, “Those sons of bitches. I should have never-” De Priemo silenced himself, saliva frothing on his lips, the wheels of his mind turning. “I don’t want to see any more.”

  “They put him in a barrel, Guiseppe, with his balls in his mouth. In the middle of the street for everyone to see. And you know who they are, don’t you?” Petrosino said in Sicilian, “Cu avi dinari e amicizia teni ‘nculu la giustiza. He who has money and friends holds justice in contempt. I don’t think you have either one anymore, Giuseppe. I’d wager Crocevera doesn’t even look at you in here, does he? Except to give you the evil eye?”

  “I told Nitto to come here.”

  “Where? Benedetto visited you here in prison?”

  De Priemo nodded as tears traveled down the grooves of his weathered cheekbone.

  Petrosino took out Madonnia’s necklace and crucifix. “Are these his?”

  “Yes. So this is what I get for my share? They said they would get me a lawyer.”

  “Who?” Petrosino held up the watch chain. “At least tell me what his watch looked like.”

  De Priemo quickly wiped his cheek against the shoulder of his uniform. And when his head lifted up again, the grey film had returned to blanket his eyes.

  “Will you sign a statement saying that the man in the photograph is your brother-in-law?”

  “I’m done talking.”

  “The D.A. will call you as a witness. We have Morello and Inzerillo and the others, all of them in a jail in New York as we speak. They thought you snitched to the Secret Service, and they handed you a rotten deal. It was when you were arrested on New Year’s.”

  De Priemo clamped his chin to his chest, holding his lower lip between his teeth, mute.

  “Did they go after your brother, because they couldn’t get to you?” Petrosino leaned in, whispering, “They deserve justice, Giuseppe. Let me deliver it for you.”

  “You got it all wrong. This is my business now. I’ll make my own justice.”

  “If you help me, I’ll give you a square deal in return. Maybe transfer you closer to Bufffalo and your sister? Ask around about me. I never break my word.”

  De Priemo nodded pensively. “Let me think on it.”

  Chapter 22

  “Chief, we got a positive ID,” Petrosino said. “The victim’s name is Benedetto Madonnia, an Italian from Buffalo.”

  Schmittberger added, “I guess we got the Midas touch after all, huh?”

  “Sit down,” McClusky said, brooding behind a barricade of objects on his desk. A brass lamp, an Upright telephone, a glossy humidor, and a tray of soda bottles. In the leather lounger to McClusky’s left sat William J. Flynn, thumbs hooked into his vest, appearing thoroughly blasé or drunk or both. A fog of smoke clung to the yellow walls, and the room needed a window thrown open. Petrosino and Schmittberger sat.

  “I’ve been talking to Agent Flynn here, before yo
u two came in,” McClusky said, “and it’s opened my eyes to a great many things. The Secret Service is delegating full responsibility to me from now on.” McClusky cut two Puerto Rican cigars, offering a fat one to Flynn. Flynn took it, and McClusky struck a match on his desk and leaned over to light Flynn’s butt. Through the ribbons of sulphur, McClusky looked moodily at Petrosino, his face the color of a lizard’s belly in the lamp’s glow. “So how’d you catch this break?”

  “An informant gave me the name of a prisoner in Sing Sing,” Petrosino said. “Giuseppe De Priemo. He’s a counterfeiter I ran across with Agent Flynn a few months ago.”

  “Sing Sing?” McClusky’s jowls quivered like chicken fat. “What the hell’s that got to do with this murder?”

  “De Priemo?” Flynn sat up, unhooked his thumb from his vest, and snicked ashes into a water glass. “Was it that case from Yonkers?”

  “What case is that?” McClusky said.

  “In late December of last year, we caught three men in Yonkers with counterfeit five-dollar bills from the National Iron Bank. They were in Morello’s gang, and we believed the paper they used for the bills was imported from Italy by Morello himself.”

  “De Priemo was one of the three you pinched?”

  “That’s right.” Flynn puffed his cigar. “When we brought them in for questioning, I asked Joseph to pose as a suspect and listen in on De Priemo, Isadoro Crocevera, and Salvatore Romano. Joseph was disguised in handcuffs and sat down in the waiting area next to them, to see if they talked amongst themselves. I got Crocevera in my office first and spent about ten minutes with him. Not a word rolled off his tongue. Then I had Joseph come in my office to see how the others were reacting, and he had a brilliant idea. Tell him, Joseph.”

  “When I went into Flynn’s office,” Petrosino said, “I thought the first interrogation was too quick and that the other suspects knew Crocevera hadn’t squealed. So I thought Bill should bring in the next one and let him stew in the chair for a couple of hours, even if he was mute as a monk. To let the others think he was squealing. The next one in was De Priemo.”