MARCH 21, 1919—THE IRISH CHANNEL—PRESS ROW
Capo ordered them to clean up an armed robbery in the Irish Channel, ten blocks out of their district. It turned out to be nothing, a few neighborhood kids holding up a tailor with a butter knife. Next he sent them to a murder in Gentilly, nowhere near their district. They arrived to discover it was an accidental suicide, a man cleaning a gun that he didn’t realize was loaded. In both cases, after the call had been neatly resolved and they returned to the station to draft their report, Bill could sense a slight irritation when Capo greeted them. “Back so soon?” he said after the Gentilly call, as if they’d traveled to Manchuria. Maybe it was all in his head—Bill’s head had been muddy lately—but it didn’t require professional detective instincts to figure out what was going on. Capo was treating him like an unreliable witness. An untrustable.
Capo immediately sent them out again, to an amateur laboratory in an attic on South Salcedo and Baudin. They encountered a clutter of hypodermic syringes, lancets, and vials blackened by human blood.
“You’re making a catastrophic error,” said the suspect. He called himself Dr. Rene Albert but could provide no evidence of a medical degree. He was doughy, middle-aged. Dark rings cradled his eyes, his hair stood stiff with grease, and the teeth were bad, streaked yellow. There were reports that Albert had injected influenza patients with blood from other sick patients. Exactly how many people he had killed in this fashion was a mystery.
“This is low business,” said Charlie. A few test tubes had cracked in their initial tussle with Albert and a pool of blood gathered along the edge of the specimen table. “Low-down evil business.”
“What you don’t realize,” said Albert, “is that I’ve discovered the cure.”
“How many people you shoot up?” said Charlie.
“As many as I could.”
Charlie shook his head. “This is exactly why we need to be on the street,” he said to Bill. “Not digging up the canal or canvassing grocery stores. The Axman has nothing on this monster.”
“I save lives.” Albert rubbed his jaw against his shoulder, testing the bruise, and grimaced.
The dizzy feeling had returned. It wasn’t the exposure to the infected blood, Bill didn’t think, the close air of the makeshift laboratory, the grating sound of Albert’s handcuffs scraping against the metal ventilation pipe, as unpleasant as all of that was. It must have been the odor. He had encountered it, coppery and acidic, on visits to the women’s ward at Charity. There were other similarities: blood and sputum were splattered on surfaces throughout the hospital ward too, as five months of influenza had made the staff exhausted and inattentive to all but the most pressing procedures. When Bill had visited Maze that morning before work, his relief at her stable condition—her fever had weakened, her color was higher—deflated at the sight of a stout brown rat capering brazenly between a dish of butter beans abandoned on the floor and an asterisk-shaped hole in the masonry. He tried to alert the nurse but she was busy suctioning pink foam from the mouth of a convulsing patient.
“Thirty of thirty-two patients have made a full recovery,” said Albert. “America must learn about my inoculation cure. Doctors are prescribing aspirin, salt of quinine, and Vicks VapoRub—useless, useless, useless!”
“You admit to shooting up thirty-two people.” Charlie wrote the figure on his notepad.
“I do not count those currently with symptoms. There might be another forty.”
Frowning, Charlie struck the figure and wrote a new one.
“My patients know the cure works. It’s the doctors and pharmacists who don’t. But they have an interest in not knowing. They want to keep their hospital beds full, the prescription notices coming.”
“Seventy-five people.” Charlie glanced at Bill. “You believe this?”
Bill shrugged.
“You appear beige,” said Charlie. “You need air?”
Bill shook his head. He intended to shake it only once but it continued to shake, back and forth, a windup toy wound too many times.
“Watch the foon. I’ll make the notes.” Charlie began to circulate around the room, writing observations in his pad.
“It’s amazing how many cures are out there,” Albert continued. “But the men in power don’t want us to know about them.”
“I bet they don’t.” Charlie sidled up to a table filled with medical journals and textbooks. He copied the titles.
“They got the cure for cancer in the rain forest,” said Albert. “They just haven’t hooked all the flowers up yet.”
“What,” said Charlie, “is ‘sub … cut … anywho’?”
Albert turned into Perl and said, You’re still alive, Bill. Stop and smell the flowers.
“Who’s ‘Sara Brell’?” said Charlie.
“They got the cure for syphilis in mushrooms. Syphilis is a moneymaker for Fowler’s and Donovan’s, however, and those men control the politicians, who control the medical boards.”
“I could use some air, to be honest,” said Bill.
“Arsenic isn’t an effective cure,” said Albert. “It’s expensive too. But mushrooms are free.”
“You don’t say,” said Charlie.
“Subcutaneous means ‘under the skin,’” said Albert. “Cerebral means ‘in the brain.’”
Charlie glowered at Albert. “Get some air, Billy. I’ll finish with this lunatic all by myself.”
“Mushrooms are free.” Albert spoke as if having to explain to a small child, for the hundredth time, how to tie his shoes. “Flowers are free. So is blood.”
“Keep talking,” said Charlie.
A glass syringe exploded beneath Bill’s boot as he stumbled to the door.
“The blood of a patient who has recovered from influenza will renew the blood of a sick man,” said Albert. “Rehabilitated blood is the most potent medicine we have. Our only medicine!”
From the street Bill heard the sound of Dr. Albert’s skull clanging off the ventilation pipe.
* * *
Once Bill took his first full draw of fresh air he decided he would not go home. He flagged a streetcar on Tulane Avenue and rode to Camp, where he walked the remaining two blocks to Press Row and the Times-Picayune building. The newsroom, on the second floor, resembled a hoarder’s attic: stacks of yellow copy paper sloping like snowdrifts, ashtrays invisible beneath smoldering butts, black candlestick telephones gesturing interrogatively. Across the room it was just possible, through the cigarette haze, to make out the sign: POSITIVELY NO SMOKING. A copyboy stationed at a toy desk rose to intercept him.
“Closed to officers, sir.” The copyboy had a faint mustache; he couldn’t have been more than sixteen.
“I have an active investigation.”
“Sir? It’s the rules.”
“The rules.” Bill pushed through the gate, pinning the boy behind it. “The rules say that no property in the city of New Orleans is closed to a police investigation.”
Behind the copyboy several newspapermen wearing green eyeshades clustered around a set of proofs; another, listening on a telephone, watched Bill with silvery suspicion. The boy rushed over to this man. He hung up and regarded the boy with heavy-lidded eyes. Bill waited patiently, cap in hands. The rules.
“What’s the matter, Officer?”
With each step the man kicked up shreds of the torn copy that papered the floor. There were wastebaskets but they were already stuffed to overflowing. On the scraps of newsprint bolded words stood out, disembodied from their headlines:
COTTON
DRYS
GERMANS
DREADNOUGHT
PANIC
“I’d like to speak to the editor.”
“I’m afraid this is a closed newsroom.”
“I’m here on city business.”
“Moore’s not in. I’m Croak—the daytime city editor. What do you need?”
“Moore. That’s who I need.”
The phone rang.
“Come back
at four.” Croak turned away from Bill and picked up the phone. “Yes,” Croak said into the phone. “No,” he said. “Yes,” he said.
“I’d like to see the Axman letter,” said Bill.
The man replaced the receiver. “I thought it was a hoax.”
That smarted. There had been no mention of a hoax at the station. Did Capo sincerely believe the letter was a hoax, or had he told this to the Times-Picayune to tamp public anxiety? Bill had last heard that Capo was conducting interviews with postal workers, but had no strong evidence of the author.
POTATOES
CANAL
VICTIMS
BOND
ATROCITY
Croak gave Bill a cold, glazed-over look: the professional-journalist glare.
“Sure it’s a hoax,” said Bill. “Still, we have to figure out what kind of degenerate would make up a hoax like that.”
“You should see the letters we get every day. You’d need another police force to investigate them all.”
“Yah. I don’t doubt it.”
“It’s a sick city.” Croak shook his head.
“That’s one word for it.”
“It’s the swamp gas, if you ask me.”
“I take it you’re not from here.”
“Philadelphia. Followed a girl.”
“She a degenerate too?” An old navy instinct: loosen up the witness with bawdry.
“I wish.” Croak chuckled. “Look, what’d you say your name was, Officer?”
Vicks came to mind. Donovan’s. “Fowlers.”
“I’d like to help, Officer Fowlers. But Moore is, shall we say, on assignment.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t investigate. You mind if I leave a note?”
Croak sighed. “Across the floor, take a right. Last office at the end of the hall. If it’s locked, you can slip a note beneath the door.”
Bill nodded. “Swamp gas.”
“Tell me about it.”
Bill started across the room, keeping his eyes down, the copy shuffling around his feet like sawdust.
DEATH
WETS
HORROR
U-BOATS
ENEMY
He felt the eyes of the copyboy on his nape until he cleared the corner. He passed two occupied offices. Neither man looked up. At the end of the hall, the editor’s door was locked. It was a simple lever-tumbler. Bill withdrew his pick—a four-and-a-half-inch piece of steel wire bent at one end into two right angles—and rotated the knob.
The editor’s desk was empty but for a mug, lamp, and a snow globe with two birch trees and a snowman. The drawers contained nothing but dead copy. Four filing cabinets, about eye-level high, lined the wall, on top of which were scattered loose papers, yellow, navy, and white. Bill pulled the top drawer on the nearest cabinet and was instantly overwhelmed. The files were not organized in any discernible way; many were unlabeled and most were overstuffed. He found handwritten notes, edited proofs, editorial correspondence, assessor’s files. The next drawer was more chaotic. It would take weeks to go through the cabinets. Bill opened another drawer at random, in a different cabinet, and found another farrago of paper. He tried to think. He squinted his mind. Where would an editor keep the Axman’s letter? Would he really file it away with all the other letters that came over the transom? But there was no time to puzzle over it—the copyboy or Croak or one of the other newsmen would soon come snooping.
At the doorway he took a final scan of the office. He closed the door. He opened the door. The navy-blue triangle of paper lying on top of the last cabinet—he recognized that particular shade of blue. He tugged and found it was the edge of a folder, the letters NOPD embossed on the cover. Inside, a short scrawled note from Capo (D.D.—Back to you—we’ve determined no threat.—Cap. Cap); behind that, the letter. It was written in florid script, the kind of writing you might see in an official government proclamation. Hell, March 13, 1919 … The torn envelope lay beneath it, postmarked March 13, New Orleans. He read, I am not a human being, but a spirit and a fell demon from hottest hell. He saw Perl, pressing red begonias into his face. It would’ve been better if I came as a phantom, returning from the after realm.
“Mr. Officer?” The lightly mustachioed copyboy stood in the doorway. “Did Mr. Moore permit you—”
“I don’t need permission.” Bill lifted the folder in the air. “Police property.”
The boy seemed at pains to muster the skepticism of the profession he sought to join. “What did you say your name was, Officer?”
He thought Donovan’s. He thought Fowler’s. “Vicks,” said Bill, brushing past the boy, barely able to suppress his laughter. “Officer Donovan F. Vicks.”
MARCH 22, 1919—THE BATTLEFIELD
“Shh. Don’t answer.”
“You think it’s him?”
The curtains were drawn. A single candle guttered on the far side of the room, faint enough that its glow might not suffuse the fabric. Isadore debated whether to blow it out. He’d have to get off the mattress, which would cause the pallets to creak, and walk across the room, which would cause the floorboards to creak.
“Stay put,” he whispered.
Orly nodded, her hand clutching her stomach. Her eyes were as big as tea saucers. “I think it’s happening.”
“Nothing’s happening. We’re fine.”
“I mean the baby.”
The knocking came more urgently.
Isadore glanced at the tin of Egyptienne Luxury cigars on the high shelf above the stove. Could he make it across the room and remove the tin from the shelf without causing too much noise? Then he remembered that the Webley & Scott revolver was no longer inside the tin. It was at the bottom of the Old Basin Canal, thanks to Dutt Ory.
“He’ll leave,” whispered Isadore. “We just have to wait.”
The door rattled in its frame.
“Ain anybody going to answer the damn door?” shouted Daisy from her bed.
“Shh.” Isadore raised himself, his finger to his lips.
“If y’all are too lazy—” She shook her head, muttering. “Make an old lady hit the cold floor in the middle of the night.”
“Mama!” said Orly. “Quiet!”
Isadore laughed with terror.
“I hear y’all in there,” came a familiar voice from outside. “Don’t foon me, Izzy!”
Isadore leaped to his feet. When he parted the curtain, every nerve in his body relaxed. He swung the door open so fast he didn’t realize he was wearing only his underwear.
“Damn, Izzy,” said Sore Dick. “I didn’t intend to interrupt.”
Izzy scanned Liberty Street. A phantom echo of the fear remained, but nothing was alive out there except for one of the roosters that lived with the Zurkes two doors down, moronically bobbing its head. In the damp night the moon turned the mist silver.
“Miss Orly.” Dick removed his hat. “Miss Daisy.”
“Who’s that?” Daisy sat up in bed.
“It’s all right, Mama. It’s just my friend Richard.”
Orly lifted the blanket up to her chin. “Why don’t you two parley in the kitchen?”
“What about the baby? Is it coming?”
“Baby’s coming?” said Daisy.
“Baby’s coming?” said Dick.
“I think we might have some time,” said Orly.
“Ma’am,” said Dick, “I’m sorry for jumping in like this—”
“C’mon,” said Isadore too loudly. The relief was high in him and he couldn’t modulate his voice. No news could be bigger than the news that it was not a white maniac hoisting an ax at the door but only Sore Dick. Isadore led him into the cubby that the house’s original owner might have used as a closet but they called a kitchen. Dick’s breath smothered him with gin.
“The Reverend Right Duplessis invited us for a gig.”
“All right.”
“You heard me?”
How could he not? Dick was speaking directly into Isadore’s mouth.
“I do
n’t know when I’m going to be able to play again. Baby’s about to arrive.”
“You ain even heard the details.”
“Dick, you came here after dark and terrified my wife, who is about to give birth—”
“Congratulations for that, by the way—”
“—just to tell me about a gig at the Funky Butt? A gig I won’t even be able to play?”
“Gig ain at the Butt. It’s at the Cosmo.” Sore Dick gave a meaningful look but the name meant nothing to Isadore. “The Cosmopolitan Hotel.” Dick pronounced each syllable as if Isadore were half-deaf.
“They don’t put on jazz.”
“Their advance man asked the Reverend for a recommendation. He said the Slim Izzy Quartet.” Dick slapped Isadore on the chest.
“You’re boiled. That doesn’t make sense in at least four different ways.”
“They said they want the real thing. This coming Friday.”
“You spoke to the Reverend?”
“Heard from the holy man directly. Now, they ain paying much.”
“I guess that’s to be expected.”
“Only eighty-five dollars.”
“Hell!” Isadore felt light-headed. Was it possible to get drunk off another man’s gin breath?
“They’re going to hold a showcase. Dipper, Buddie Petit, a few other guys.”
“Ah.”
“But we get top billing.”
“Eighty-five dollars? Hell!”
“Hell is right. Old Axman is taking care of us.”
“It’s not about him,” said Isadore, with a ferocity that surprised them both. “It’s about us.”
Dick winked. “It’s about eighty-five dollars that are going to line our pockets for a single evening of work.”
It was as if the kitchen had been slowly filling with water and now it reached their necks. Isadore floated. The water kept rising and he couldn’t breathe. But it was a pleasant breathlessness because the water was really gin. He could tell that Dick felt it too and they were swimming together like a pair of tadpoles.
“I feel like a damn tadpole,” said Isadore, shaking his head.
Dick cackled. “I feel like a megatherium. Or a mastodon. No—like a Smilodon!”
“Smilodon?”
They burst into insane laughter, laughter so loud that Isadore didn’t hear Orly when she screamed.
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