“You’re going to have to back up.”
“Right. Hibernia. There’s one ax crime that doesn’t match the others.”
“Mrs. Schneider. She’s not Italian. Not a grocer. Lives at home with her kids.”
“But her husband works as an auditor at a bank.”
“Let me guess.”
“I know—it’s rickety.”
“Hibernia is what, the second-largest bank in New Orleans?”
“It’s enough to get you thinking.”
Capo smiled. With visible effort, he pressed down on the desk and hoisted himself out of the wicker chair. The chair and the desk groaned in mutual sympathy. Capo walked past Bill, toward the doorway. Bill took this to mean that the conversation was over.
But Capo closed the door and flipped the lock. “There is a problem with your story.”
“Mrs. Schneider?”
Capo shook his head—slowly. Everything he did was slow. He moved through honey instead of air. “You said the attacks were ‘nearly identical in method.’”
Bill was surprised by Capo’s recall. He had appeared to be half-asleep during that part of the conversation. But Capo was not half-asleep anymore. He eyes bored out of his head.
“So how do you explain the body in the canal?”
“I was working up to that. Charlie and I have a theory.”
“An Italian?”
Bill nodded. “A Sicilian grocer. Ernesto Rosetta.”
Capo returned to his chair and collapsed into it. The chair groaned. The floorboards groaned. Capo groaned.
“Why haven’t I heard about this?”
“Nobody reported him missing.”
“Is he married?”
“She’s missing too.”
Capo reached for the stack labeled AX, then withdrew his hand. “Explain.”
“There’s a boy running Rosetta’s Grocery—a child. He said Rosetta told him to look after the shop while they went to Sicily.”
“Let me make sure I get this: Rosetta put a kid in charge of his store and he went on a vacation.”
“Some vacation.”
“Nobody claimed the body.”
“The corpse had a note from the grocery in his pocket.”
Capo leaned back. There came the sound of splintering wicker. “Anything else?”
Bill wondered about Maze. Was she back across the lake, preparing supper for her parents? Did she think of him?
“Captain, with respect—I thought you’d have a little more enthusiasm. The case has been dead six months. And now these new incidents. Some journalist will make the connection.”
“The journalists in this town…”
“The point is that the killer is back. The panic is back too.” The line surprised Bill and he decided he liked it. The panic is back. If Capo didn’t understand the urgency of the situation, Bill would keep reminding him.
“You’re rather energized.”
“It’s right in front of us.”
Capo pulled open a desk drawer and removed two log-size cigars. He produced a matchbook from his breast pocket.
“Smoke?”
“I wouldn’t want you to waste one on me.”
Capo shrugged and returned one of the cigars to the box. The other he inserted into a silver cutter mounted to his desk. He lit a match. Bill tried to tell whether the cigar lighting was an act of celebration or deferral.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Capo said at last, exhaling. “I’m glad to see you excited. But I’ve been working this job a little longer than you.”
“Yes, sir.” The smoke smelled delicious: sweet, with a shadow of cinnamon. It had been a mistake not to accept. His demurral had given Capo an advantage.
“I don’t mean to patronize. It’s just that I don’t get excited until I hear something that sounds like evidence. That at least rhymes with evidence.”
“Here’s another thing.”
Capo sighed smoke.
“The construction company running the dig? Hercules? The owner is Beatrice Vizzini. Widow of one Sal Vizzini.”
“Vizzini was a nothing,” said Capo through smoke. Out the window two officers brought the preacher a mug of coffee. The preacher blessed the officers, who laughed.
“I checked his file,” said Bill. “He protected grocery stores. Ten, fifteen years ago. There were a few charges but nothing stuck.”
“You don’t have to tell me about the old reports. I wrote those reports. Vizzini has been dead nearly a decade.”
Capo sucked his cigar thoughtfully. Bill wanted to grab him. It was true Bill’s instincts were imperfect. But he wasn’t one easily carried away in speculation. Just that morning he had imagined telling Maze all about it. She would be awed, proud. Her eyes would get big as he told her about the child running Rosetta’s Grocery, Andrew Maggio’s strange declaration—but then came Eloise Obitz and the image shattered.
“Let’s review.” Capo held up one of his meaty hands, as if to forestall any interruptions. “The brother of one victim says something cryptic and probably nonsensical. He sells his brother’s grocery to the bank. The same bank, one of the city’s largest, employs a man who is the husband of victim two. We have no evidence linking the two attacks. A third victim, Besemer, on trial for murder, claims innocence. A fourth victim is found in the canal. Again, no evidence linking that crime to the others. You believe that John Doe is in fact a grocer who, according to his closest associates, has traveled to Italy. For all we know the grocer did travel to Italy. What was the last one?”
“The canal,” Bill heard himself say. Capo appeared to gain energy with each recited doubt. And each dealt Bill a wound. None was mortal in itself, but his theory was dying from blood loss.
“Right,” said Capo. “John Doe’s burial site. The construction company is owned by the wife of a man who once ran a small protection business for grocers. Which makes him one of about a dozen Italians who did the same. And he’s been dead for years!”
Bill knew not to take it personally. But the case had become personal. It was personal because his interest had nothing to do with the Axman. It had to do with Maze, and with himself. Solving the case and winning back Maze were entangled in his mind. It made no sense. It was irrational. Even so, hearing Capo ridicule his theory, he began to suspect that he had lost Maze forever.
“Besides,” Capo was saying, “why would the killer dump the body of a grocer in the canal? The other bodies were found in the groceries. What would make the killer drag the body across the city and bury it twenty-five feet underground?”
Bill shook his head. “I guess I hadn’t considered that, boss.”
“Look, Bill. You’ve had a lot to absorb this year.”
Bill began to see what this was all about.
“It’s no easy thing coming home from war and going straight back to work. I know that. Then the scene with your old comrade—”
“The man was deranged.”
“Furthermore,” said Capo, addressing the glowing tip of his cigar, “though I don’t like to mention it, I understand that things aren’t going well at home. It’s a lot of burden for one man to carry.”
So he had become himself an unreliable witness. He didn’t realize his behavior had been that transparent.
“Hand over your files.” Capo crushed his cigar against the desk. “Maybe I’ll come to see it your way.”
“Thanks, Cap,” Bill said woodenly.
Capo sprang from his seat, suddenly as light as a pillow, and rested his arm on Bill’s shoulder. “That’s what I’m here for. To consider it all. We’ll solve this. Don’t crack up.”
Capo’s voice had taken on an avuncular tone, the kind you might use with an impaired relative who was not strong enough to face the truth. “Take this for gospel: We’re going to get him. I’m going to do everything in human power to run down this maniac.” Capo opened the door. “Oh, and Bill?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t forget to bring me your reports. Especially the Obitz f
ile. I need it all.”
Capo’s words were still ringing in Bill’s head when he arrived home to discover a note wedged under his door. He recognized immediately the handwriting. Under his name, she had written the words Urgent: Deliver By Hand. His heart leaped, before plunging a much greater distance, as he flipped the envelope and read the words printed on the back:
CHARITY HOSPITAL
NEW ORLEANS
And stamped over that, in red ink:
DISINFECTED
MARCH 12, 1919—CENTRAL BUSINESS DISTRICT—ESPLANADE RIDGE
“‘I am convinced,’” read Hugs Davenport, “‘that the murders are the work of an ax-wielding degenerate who has no robbery motive, but who has taken small sums to throw the police off the track.’” He glanced up from the paper, peering narrowly over his spectacles—a new addition to his toilet, the spectacles, like his wispy blond mustache, could only be explained as a strategy to make himself look older. When he read the newspaper he looked below the lenses at the text, so that he was always looking above or under the lenses, never through them. “Mooney continues, ‘I am likewise convinced that he is a sadist, a man whose obsession is to hack people with an ax.’”
“That is quite enough.” Beatrice reminded herself to sit still, to avoid playing with her rings, to take normal, shallow breaths—to eliminate any manifestation of the alarm that caused her vision to turn purple at the edges. “That is beyond enough.”
Hugs ruffled the paper at her in a way that she considered profoundly unprofessional. “You hadn’t heard about this?”
“I have been too busy this week to keep up on the local press.” It was a lie, but no version of the truth was remotely possible.
“The Axman has returned.”
“You asked me here to discuss business.”
Hugs glared over his spectacles. He had perfected his uncle’s demeanor: skeptical, exacting, supercilious. She doubted that he dared to assume this attitude with his colleagues, but now he flung at her the full weight of his disdain. “Exactly. Business.”
He slid the States across the table. It contained nothing that surprised her. She had read it, as well as similar accounts in the Item and the Times-Picayune. But dutifully, gamely, trying to preserve the last particle of her sanity, she forced her eyes to advance through the text. It was like trudging through a pit of mud:
GRETNA ITALIANS LATEST VICTIMS OF AX MURDERER
Keeper of Grocery, His Wife and Child Attacked as They Slept
LITTLE GIRL KILLED, MAN FATALLY HURT
An axman murderer, who laid his plans with fiendish cunning and executed them with revolting brutality, chose Charles Cortimiglia, his wife, and their 2-year-old daughter, Mary, Second and Jefferson streets, Gretna, for his victims early Sunday morning.
The child was killed outright, the father was in a dying condition Sunday night in the Charity Hospital, and the mother unconscious and piteously crying, “Mary, Mary,” the name of her murdered child, was fighting for her life with five wounds in her head and a depressed fracture of the skull just over the left ear. She may recover.
Meantime the police of New Orleans and Gretna were without a clue to the identity of the murderer.
FIFTH AXMAN MURDER
This Gretna murder is the fifth perpetrated in New Orleans and vicinity by an axman murderer since last May. In every case except one the victims have lived back of corner groceries, their homes have been entered in early morning hours, entrances have been effected by removing a panel from rear doors and an ax has been the weapon.
While the police have put forth every effort to bring the murderer to justice, they admit themselves baffled and without any satisfactory clue.
The murderer who attacked the Cortimiglia family while they slept in the early hours of Sunday worked with all the cunning of a degenerate maniac. The child, sleeping in her mother’s arms, apparently was killed first, the mother next was attacked, and the condition of the room indicated that the father, roused from sleep, had battled the fiend until he fell unconscious beneath blows from the ax which crushed his skull. The murder was done in a tiny room, where pictures of the Crucifixion, the Virgin and her Child and a Sister of Mercy at prayers looked down upon the scene.
“A two-year-old child!” exclaimed Hugs, as if just absorbing the fact.
Giorgio at two: fat, languorous, refusing to be weaned, a bear cub who did not know his own strength. At two he told his first lie: that he hadn’t eaten an Elmer’s Mint Bublet from the candy jar. He said so through lips flaked with chocolate. She had indulged him, laughing.
“My uncle—” Hugs could not bear to complete the sentence. “We have endured tremendous scrutiny since the bond issue.”
“It’s a sad story. But I don’t see the connection.”
“Don’t you really?”
“I do not. Now. You were going to provide an update on the progression of the Texas dredge.”
Hugs was examining his nails very closely.
She tried again: “How many yards did it advance last week?”
Hugs peered over his spectacles at Beatrice. “I had hoped you would not compel me to spell it out.”
“I am afraid,” she said, as calmly as she could manage, aware of a slight tremor of her lower lip, “that you will have to.”
“We had a major delay one week ago. Perhaps you recall? The Texas dredge was not designed to digest human skeletons.”
“I remember.”
“If it weren’t for my uncle’s intercession with his friends at the States, Item, and the Times-Picayune, the story would be everywhere.”
“A dead laborer. A shame. Likely he did not take the proper precautions. Is there any problem with insurance?”
“The papers reported it was a dead laborer. But he was not a laborer.”
“A machinist? A truck driver?”
“A grocer.”
She did not know whether she responded. Her mind was elsewhere.
“An Italian grocer.”
Beatrice thought about this for a while. “What was he doing at the canal?”
“His murderer buried him there.”
“A murderer? Why a murderer?” She felt herself on the verge of falling to pieces. She must avoid that. She must keep all the pieces attached as long as possible. Once unstuck, she would not be able to put herself back together.
“The autopsy found that his wounds were not inflicted by the Texas. The wounds, I quote, were ‘consistent with the profile of a large chopping implement, such as a hatchet, or ax.’”
Beatrice redoubled her barricade of placid indifference. It was a last-ditch defense, but as in the case of all last-ditch defenses, it was the only one available to her.
“That I suspect your son may be responsible is irrelevant. The problem for you is that my uncle thinks so too.”
“My son?” The outrage in her voice startled her. But it was real, the outrage. That much was not an act. She was outraged.
“If we know, how long before the police discover the truth?”
“I must speak with Mr. Denzler immediately.”
“We have no interest in your family’s business—at least the aspects that do not relate to the canal. But the police are asking questions.”
“What police?”
“The New Orleans Police Department.”
The police, she thought inanely. The police.
“My uncle is scheduling meetings with other contracting companies.”
Denzler was not an idiot; he understood, perhaps better than Hugs, that the fates of Hercules and Hibernia were entwined; no investigation would fail to uncover that awkward fact. Still Hibernia could try to dilute their union, hiring rival competitors to assume much of the work. She rose abruptly, knocking her knee against the table. She tried not to show pain.
“Where is he, your uncle? I demand to see him.”
“He is not working in the bank today. I do not know his whereabouts.”
“Has Hercules let you down in any way? P
rofessionally?”
“A corpse in the work site? I’d judge that a letdown.”
“Hercules, despite your lurid fantasies, has nothing to do with that. The police will reach the same conclusion.”
“I hope so.” Hugs’s voice was impassive, polite, dull.
“I was speaking about the dig. Have we not been as efficient as possible, given the circumstances?”
“Efficiency is not our concern. Our concern is that the carelessness of your methods may undo the great work we’ve begun.”
It was a reasonable concern. It was her concern too, after all. “Please advise Mr. Denzler,” she said with what remaining authority she was able to muster, “to cancel any meetings he’s made with our competitors.”
Hugs laughed. “I can convey the message.”
“Convey this: Hercules will finish the canal. That is written in our contract. And it is binding.”
“I don’t know that it is binding.”
“I am telling you. It is binding.”
* * *
The police.
No one answered the door at DeSoto Street, but when she tried the knob, it was unlocked. A muted arpeggio of laughter came from one of the rooms. She called out Rosie’s name—once, twice, a third time.
“Rosie ain here!” A bedroom door opened. A plump woman in a semitranslucent white slip appeared, red faced, breathless, a thick curl of greasy black hair dangling over one of her eyes. Her areolas—brown, diffuse—were visible through the sheer fabric. “Rosie ain here.”
“Where is she?”
From inside the room, a male voice: “Mamma?”
The prostitute turned in wonder.
“Mamma, is that you?”
“Giorgio?”
“One minute, Mamma.”
The prostitute, shaking her head in disgust, retreated from sight.
There came a creak of mattress springs, followed by a creak of floorboards. Giorgio appeared in the door: vast, muscular, grinning. His neck was slick with perspiration. He wore his navy trench coat. She could not tell whether anything was underneath it.
“Let’s parley in the parlor.” He giggled slightly and indicated the way with a gallant sweep of his hand.
“I don’t want to sit. Where’s Rosie?”
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