Once born, he went to work. Five days after the Schneider attack, as if summoned by public anxiety, he struck again. Two teenage sisters awoke at 3:00 a.m. on a Saturday to the dying groans of their uncle, Joseph Romano. An intruder—“tall, heavy-set”—stood in their doorway, body heaving, watching the children. The girls shrieked and he ran away, but only after dropping an ax on the kitchen floor.
The Romano, Recknagel, and LeBoeuf groceries stood within seven blocks of each other. Two were in Bill’s district. But Mooney, citing the public’s ungovernable panic, announced that he would investigate the attacks himself. It was typical Mooney. The Axman had, after all, become the biggest story in New Orleans—not even the final throes of the European war or the excavation of the Industrial Canal could compete. Mayor Behrman was in his fourth term and would be vulnerable in 1920. Some of the navies gossiped that Mooney was positioning himself to replace his boss but Bill didn’t believe it until he read what Mooney told reporters after the Romano killing.
“I am of the belief,” said Mooney, “that the murderer is a depraved criminal, a madman with no regard for human life.”
It wasn’t how a navy talked. It was how a politician talked.
Bill could only watch Mooney investigate the case from afar, like the rest of New Orleans. It didn’t particularly bother Bill. Since Leonard Perl’s death he had experienced everything from afar—his job, his marriage, his life. Everything was easier from afar.
Mooney’s speech achieved the desired effect: pandemonium. The epicenter of the paranoia was Bill’s back-of-town district. A night after the Romano murder, a teenager on White Street claimed she saw the Axman in her backyard as she was going to bed. Navies swarming the neighborhood found no suspect, though an old pensioner, boiled on home brew, and a blind carpenter both claimed that the Axman had escaped through their backyards. Nevertheless Superintendent Mooney declared he was “certain” it was the Axman. “He was probably going back to the stable,” he told a reporter, “to find an ax.”
As August melted into September there came reports of a female Axman, a cross-dressing Axman, and countless Negro Axmen. The weakness of Mooney’s strategy became conspicuous. Every public declaration only reminded terrified citizens that the Axman remained uncaptured. “We are going to get him,” Mooney insisted. “If only we could make our plans known, the public would appreciate what we are doing to bring to an end this series of ax cases.” He made dozens of arrests, mostly Negroes. None stuck. As the panic rose, shame yielded to ridicule. Advertisements began to appear in the Item:
Attention Mr. Mooney, and All Citizens of New Orleans!
THE AXMAN
Will Appear in This City on Saturday, August 24th
AT THE FOLLOWING PLACES:
No. 420 South Rampart Street
No. 4326 Magazine Street
No. 1936 Magazine Street, Cor. St. Andrew
He will ruthlessly use the “Piggly Wiggly” ax in cutting off the heads of all High-Priced Groceries. His weapon is wonderful, and his system is unique.
DON’T MISS SEEING HIM!
There were no attacks for a month, which only heightened the anxiety. Men stood guard with rifles on their doorsteps. Parents forbade children from going outside after dark. Children taunted each other with nursery rhymes:
Cross your hands and tie your shoes
The Axman is coming for you
Say your prayers and cross your chest
The Axman likes young ones the best
Brush your teeth and count your sheep
The Axman knows where you sleep
Cross your hands and tie your shoes
The Axman will chop your head in two
On September 15, a grocer at North Robertson and Marigny Streets named Paul Durel, Jr., awoke to discover that the oblong panel on his back door had been chiseled out. The intruder reached through, trying to turn the key, only to be denied by a pallet of canned tomatoes piled against the door.
“It undoubtedly was the Axman,” Superintendent Mooney told the Times-Picayune. “His method of work was the same as in the Maggio, the LeBoeuf, and the other cases.”
The hysteria might have continued unabated were it not for the arrival of the SS Harold Walker. Four crew members were brought off in an ambulance, which collided with a streetcar; the passengers of both vehicles were tossed together on the pavement. The Sick was out. Dozens fell ill the following week and local quarantines failed to arrest the disease’s galloping spread. The city was immersed in a panic far more intimate, and deadly, than that caused by the Axman’s grocery raids. Maze moved across the lake.
In November, Superintendent Mooney quietly paused the Axman investigation. Mayor Behrman charged him with enforcing quarantines, quelling public protests, and monitoring streetcars to make sure they did not overcrowd. Cops were granted paid furloughs. Bill did not accept one. In his mind the flu took the shape of Leonard Perl’s sneering grin. He knew it was only a matter of days, perhaps weeks, before it found him. He welcomed it. Maze would mourn, perhaps, but her grief would give way to relief. And Perl’s dying prayer would be answered.
Bill volunteered for extra shifts. He accepted a posting at Charity Hospital, which had dedicated seventeen of its wards to the influenza. But as the months passed and he failed to contract so much as a cough, he realized that the Spanish Death had played on him a trick crueler than death. It spared him. It forced him to live.
If anyone gave a thought to the Axman during the six months that followed the arrival of the Plague Ship, it was only to recall in a spirit of nostalgia that innocent time when a single man, and not a shapeless vast silent plague, could terrorize an entire city. For the Axman had vanished. He had either fled New Orleans or, more likely, been claimed by the Spanish Death. What other explanation could there be?
* * *
“If that kid been working two months by himself,” said Charlie, after they left the grocery, “why ain he been ripped off yet?”
“Funny, don’t you think?” Bill figured that Charlie, even in his compromised state, would be able to put it together.
“I’d speculate someone else is running the business.” One of Charlie’s hands rested absentmindedly on his stomach.
“I’d speculate you’re right.”
“We should go to the office and study Mooney’s Axman files.”
Bill shrugged. He was thinking of Maze in Abita Springs. Was she still hiding inside, avoiding the vapors? Had she grown tired of her parents? Did she speak to strangers? He tried to imagine her life but it came out blurry.
“What don’t pay,” said Charlie, “is the fact that the body ain barely decomposed.”
“It does not pay.”
“But the Axman ain even tried to break into a grocery since October—let alone commit a homicide.”
“Maybe one of those things isn’t true.”
Charlie took his head in both hands and rotated it from one side to the other. “I still don’t see how a man could find himself buried that deep underground.”
The kid dragged the olive basins inside Rosetta’s Grocery. He hung a signboard on the doornail: CLOSED.
As they walked back to the station, Bill kept returning to the image of the body in the canal, its mouth filled with mud. What would it feel like to be buried so far underground? What did the men at Rouge Bouquet feel? Would you feel as if you were being crushed? Or would it feel cozy, like being tucked into a well-made bed?
Charlie rotated his head again. “A thing buried that far underground,” he said, “don’t want to get found.”
MARCH 2, 1919—THE BATTLEFIELD—THE GRUNEWALD HOTEL
“Playing for the whores again?”
“I haven’t played the cribs for years.” Isadore tried to keep his voice level. “I play respected joints.”
Miss Daisy snorted. It had never been easy to be alone with his mother-in-law but Orly’s advancing condition had made it worse. Every conversation had a way of finding a tributary back to the main conve
rsation.
“I don’t know how a man that plays concerts at night can help take care of a newborn child.” There it was—even faster than usual. The interval was narrowing. The interval correlated inversely to the size of Orly’s stomach. He wanted to say, Would you prefer I go back to robbing people at gunpoint on the street? But he could only say what he always said.
“I’ll stop once the baby is born.” He expected he’d say it about three hundred more times in the next month. “I figure we better save as much money as we can before then.”
Daisy snorted.
“In fact,” he said, unable to resist, “I’m playing a luxury venue this very evening.”
“Luxury? What’s that supposed to mean? White?” She said it as if she were putting on airs.
“It means the Grunewald Hotel.”
Daisy sat in the creaky rocker in which she spent most of her days. It was set by the window so that she could keep an eye on the street. She only rose from the chair to use the privy, to go down the block to St. Augustine, or to refill with holy water the spirit glasses, one on every flat surface in the apartment. For the first time she turned to face him. “They pay more?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He broke away from her gaze so she couldn’t see that he was lying. Daisy might be half-blind but she knew him as well as anybody, after Orly. She was roommate, mother-in-law, and adopted mother all in one. Between them had grown a casual intimacy made of equal parts comfort, familiarity, love, irritation, and rage. Still she didn’t understand his heart—she couldn’t. A person who believed so fervently in the hereafter couldn’t understand the desire to make something that would live forever.
“You think jassy music is going to impress the toits at Hotel Grunewald?” she said. “I know that’s a lie and I haven’t left this room since the war.”
“The Civil War.”
Isadore knew better than to push it further. He knew also that she was right. Nobody cared about jazz, as they were now calling it, outside of a small group of people in the back of town. But if jazz had no future in New Orleans, Isadore had no future in New Orleans. This was a problem because he would not go North or West; he couldn’t bring himself to betray Orly and Miss Daisy. Beneath his mother-in-law’s irritation was a more profound grievance that, despite her volubility and general lack of inhibition, she had never put into words. Isadore was in danger of defaulting on their unspoken agreement. If it weren’t for Orly—if it weren’t for Daisy—he would’ve had to fend for himself after leaving the Waifs’ Home. He’d have been no different from Frank Bailey, cast into the streets with only his wits for armor. In exchange for adopting Isadore, and allowing him to marry Orly, Daisy made it understood that Isadore would support the three of them, plus any children that might follow. Apart from signing the marriage license, Isadore had not kept up his end of the bargain. They were already two months behind on rent and could be cast out at any time. It was her greatest terror, the prospect of becoming, as Isadore had once been, a ward of the state.
Isadore shut his cornet case and slipped into his jacket. He was half out the door when he was caught short by Daisy’s voice. It was too loud, too urgent, and he felt his stomach turn even before he could understand the meaning of the words.
“Do you believe in the redeeming power of art?”
She stood shakily, leaning on the bedpost for support. Her cataract-clouded eyes searched for his through the gloom. “Do you believe in the redeeming power of art? Do you believe music will bring eternal life?”
Isadore froze. “Times are turning, Mama,” he said at last. “You’re going to see.”
Daisy snorted. “Times change,” she said. “People don’t.”
* * *
Isadore had never been inside a cave. He’d never even been underground, unless you counted the Industrial Canal. But beneath the lobby of the Grunewald, he found himself dodging stalagmites and stalactites—he couldn’t remember which was which, but both were represented. The walls and ceilings appeared to have been slathered with melting vanilla ice cream. In recesses spaced along the wall stood pools fed by iridescent waterfalls, trickling at the rate of snowmelt. Plaster naiads dipped their toes in the water, gazing pensively into distant eternities. The air was dank, chill, poorly ventilated: ideal conditions for the Spanish Death. In a central pond, ringed with bright green ferns, a reclining nymph, her posterior arching out of the water, cast an inviting look over her shoulder. Isadore looked away out of instinct and told himself it was only a sculpture but still he didn’t look back. He could feel the weight of Mr. Stumpf’s gaze resting on him.
“I suspect you’re the Creole musician.” Stumpf had emerged from behind an elf. He was as Zutty had described: short, pink, bow-tied, a voice two octaves too high. “Zutty says you can read music.”
“Sir, I can play anything.” He was proud of this answer. It was important to display confidence, to prove he belonged.
According to Zutty, Stumpf paid a dollar to fill-ins, less even than what Countess Piazza paid at the Octoroon, but that was beside the point. If he earned Stumpf’s respect, he might win a gig for the Slim Izzy Quartet. Stumpf regularly featured Johnny DeDroit’s band. They were white and wore tuxedos but they did play something approximating jazz. Stumpf even gave a show to Armand Piron’s New Orleans Orchestra, the highest-paid Creole group in town, though they stuck to ragtime when they played the Cave. It was close enough. The Cave was the most advanced of the white venues. Mr. Stumpf didn’t look the part—he looked more like the red-haired watchman outside the Tiltons’ house—but he had hired Isadore, after all. He was open to change.
“You won’t need that,” said Stumpf, registering Isadore’s cornet case.
Isadore did not understand but he was not going to leave his cornet on the floor. He followed Stumpf, weaving around the nightclub’s glass-topped tables, and narrowly avoided tripping on a melting ice castle. Two waiters in the back, folding linen napkins into scallop shells, avoided Isadore’s eye. The cornet was a dead animal in his arms. What had Zutty told Stumpf? He could handle trumpet or trombone, but what if he was asked to play clarinet, or standing bass? What if Stumpf sat him at a piano? Did Stumpf not know that he was one of the best cornet players in New Orleans?
They mounted the bandstand, garlanded with ferns and rocky plinths and gnomes, and passed through to the practice room. Three white men with stubble-darkened cheeks sat around a small table, playing cards. A fourth lay facedown on the floor.
“What’s with him?” asked Stumpf.
The cardplayers glanced up balefully.
Stumpf’s voice became strained. “Does he have a fever?”
“He’s all right, boss. Still gassed from last night. He’ll be ready.”
Stumpf seemed unconvinced. “This here’s Izzy. Izzy, this is the Hans Marble Quintet.” He read Isadore’s confusion. “What, didn’t Zutty give you the details?”
“No, sir. He just told me when to show up.”
One of the cardplayers stood and extended his hand. “Hans Marble.” He had a small tidy mouth and brilliantined dark hair that reflected light. Isadore hesitated, thinking of the waiters setting the tables. But he wasn’t a waiter. He was a musician. He was an artist, like them. He shook the man’s hand.
“You got an hour before first supper service,” said Stumpf. “So start studying.”
“It won’t take but a minute,” said Marble, once Stumpf was gone. He appraised Isadore’s cornet case. “You a jasser or something?”
“That’s right.”
“We don’t play anything that complected. Only simple stuff. Tunes so old they got whiskers.”
Isadore forced a smile. His stomach went sour.
“Some light rag, some show tunes. ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon.’ ‘At the Darktown Strutters’ Ball.’ ‘Hello, Frisco!’”
Isadore tried to hide his disappointment. Though disappointment was a gentle word for it. Despair was more like it.
“It’s an easy gig,” said Marbl
e. “You can split the tips.”
One of the cardplayers glanced up from his hand.
“It’s only fair,” said Marble.
Frowning, the musician resumed studying his cards.
“Mr. Stumpf said something about not needing my cornet.”
“He’s right. That’s all you’ll need.” Marble pointed to the card table, which Isadore now realized was a bass drum laid on its side.
“I never really played percussion,” he heard himself say.
“Can you keep a tempo?”
Isadore nodded. He felt as if he might be sick.
“That’s all we need. A nice, easy tempo.”
The man on the floor groaned.
“Don’t go too close to him,” said Marble. “He’s suffering an ague fit. Just look at his tongue. Or don’t, actually.”
For the next four hours Isadore sat at the back of the bandstand, in the shadow of a plaster grotto, beside a petrified mermaid, tapping a 4/4 beat. Each beat was a tap on his shoulder, telling him that his time as a professional musician was running out. The audience seemed largely oblivious of the Hans Marble Quintet, but there wasn’t much audience, mostly drunks mistaking the plaster nymphs for former wives—it was Sunday, after all, and who wanted to be in the dank Cave when the influenza was about? The bassist, the one with the fever, retreated backstage halfway through the set, but nobody, onstage or off, seemed to notice. So much for jazz. So much for impressing Mr. Stumpf. So much for the Cave. So much for New Orleans. For all the bluster about its sophistication and grandeur—“the American Paris,” “the Metropolis of the South,” and poised, upon completion of the Industrial Canal, to be a “city of the future”—there was no escaping that it was run by water-brained bureaucrats and unreconstructed bigots who couldn’t make it in St. Louis or Cincinnati, let alone New York City. What did it say that King Oliver had to supplement his income by working as a butler in the Garden District, before the shame forced him to flee for Chicago? That Buddy Bolden was locked away at the State Insane Asylum? The kings knew New Orleans was dead. To believe otherwise, that it was possible to nurse a fledgling career in this misbegotten music, was delusional coming on insane.
King Zeno Page 17