The crowded club had a murky reddish tint, like a subterranean cave lit by boiling lava. It was an effect of the plush maroon wallpaper, the cirrus clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke, the golden light of the ornate crystal chandeliers. Spaced between the chandeliers, ceiling fans rotated lazily, powerless to dissipate the heat of the bodies pressed against the bar and tightly gathered around the circular tables. The bodies close together in the murky room brought back sensory memories of the dugout in the Forest of Purroy, the stench of the men, the warm clamminess of the air, the cheerful anxiety of imminent death. Sweat dampened his collar, which responded by tightening its grip. Just as he thought to ask the maître d’ to lower the lights, the chandeliers did begin to dim and he felt some relief. But when he blinked the lights brightened again and he couldn’t tell whether something was wrong with the lights or with him.
If only he had solved it sooner; if only Maze hadn’t fallen ill. If Peter Davis’s mother hadn’t died of the flu in Atlanta over the weekend, Davis would not have left on Monday morning for the funeral, at about the same time Bill was visiting Mary Eager at Sophie Newcomb. When Davis returned on Thursday, Bill was there to greet him at Union Station. Davis, exhausted, did not put up a fight when Bill suggested a visit to the orphanage. The files at the Colored Waifs’ Home were poorly organized and a comprehensive list of former students was impossible to find. Davis went patiently through the rolls. On a notepad he copied the names of the students that he had taught and the names of other boys he recalled teaching who did not appear on the lists. He crossed off the names of two boys who had died and another three who he was certain had left the state. Bill counted the remaining names. He got to fifty-six.
“You taught all of these boys how to write?”
“I taught them the Spencerian method, yes.”
“Does anyone else teach penmanship at the home?”
“Just me.”
“I’ll need addresses. Occupations.”
“We are not a correctional facility. Most of our boys are guilty of nothing more than losing their parents.”
Fifty-six suspects … it was possible Bill would get lucky but more likely that a search would drag for weeks.
“Even the boys we accept from the juvenile court we do not believe are capable of sin. A boy under the majority is too young to know his own soul. We help him to find it.”
“I see,” said Bill, but he did not see anything. Fifty-six suspects, most without permanent addresses. One author of the Axman letter.
“We give a boy direction and teach him to become a leader of men. We educate him in a trade: woodworking, industrial labor, automobile driving, musicianship, tailoring—”
“The only trade Frank Bailey knows is highway robbery.”
“That’s not true, sir. He also played the bass guitar.”
“He’s a musician?”
“He played in our jazz band. He wasn’t so bad.”
“He wasn’t so bad at sticking up people either. But not good enough.”
“I thought he would continue to pursue music. But that’s what I’m trying to explain—he is an exception to the rule. We turn wayward boys into upstanding men. Bailey was a disappointment. But I would be quite surprised if one of our students descended to the level of serial homicide.”
“Frank Bailey was a jazzist?”
“He was. Many of our boys are.”
“Are there boys on this list—boys you taught to write—who were in the band with Bailey?”
Davis nodded. He went down the list, underlining names. Beside each of the underlined names he wrote additional words in the margin.
“‘Family Haircut’—what’s that supposed to mean?”
“These are the names they go by in the street. Musician names.”
In the margin Davis wrote:
SIDE PORCH
FAMILY HAIRCUT
SEEFUS
GATEFACE
DIPPERMOUTH
TWO ROOMS AND A KITCHEN
GRAND JURY
SLIM IZZY
NICODEMUS
REDHEAD HAPPY
FAT SLOP
The winnowed list was eleven names long. Back at the station, scanning prison and morgue records, Bill narrowed it further. Three of the men besides Bailey were locked away. Another had been in custody during the Besemer and Schneider attacks. A fifth, unbeknownst to Davis, had died. That left six.
Bill took the list to Perdido Street that night and canvassed the honky-tonks. What had seemed like a long shot began to assume the substance of a real theory. He could not believe that the letter’s author was motivated only to sell jazz tickets. Miss Eager had said that the writer was imaginative but also deliberate—as a killer such as the Axman would have to be. The further Bill went down this path, the stronger his instinct pulled him. It told him that the letter writer was a murderer and that Bill was getting close.
A few bartenders recognized the names. “Grand Jury” Sam Lamothe had moved a year earlier to Los Angeles to play with his cousin Ferd Morton. “Family Haircut” Henry Rene was a drunk who stood outside clubs hoping for a handout from his old musician friends. Louis “Dippermouth” Armstrong was playing on Fate Marable’s steamer and rarely passed through. “Nicodemus” Hubbard unloaded bananas at the Pauline Street Wharf. Isaac “Redhead Happy” Ingram had given up his horn a few years ago and worked as a plumber on the West Bank. That left a single musician. And he was playing a big show the next night.
* * *
The Axman might have been clever but Bill was clever too. He knew that it would be foolish to ask blindly around the club for Izzy Zeno, lest someone pass word to the murderer that a wild-eyed man was looking for him. (That was another thing Maze had said: that his eyes were wild. He laughed it off but when he caught his reflection in the mirror behind the bar he noticed that his pupils did have a larger aspect than normal and that he was blinking with an unusual rapidity that he couldn’t control.) When the performance began, he would have his suspect, but it would be imprudent to jump onstage and make the arrest in front of a packed house. Better to wait until the set was finished and shuttle him out of the club before his absence was noted by the mob. Best of all, however, would be to arrest the killer before the show began.
Bill slid between the crowded tables, careful to avoid nudging the waiters with their trays overburdened by martinis and highballs, scanning the crowd for a clue. Instinct had brought him this far and it would have to bring him the rest of the way home. He scrutinized each brown face, questioning the men in his mind and questioning his own questioning. It wasn’t easy—there were a lot of brown faces. The Cosmopolitan, in a gesture of fair-mindedness or whimsy, had made tickets for its jazz night available to Negroes at a twenty-cent markup. But all Bill could detect in their faces was the anxious merriment that preceded a momentous public happening. It was more complex than good cheer. In their faces danced something as heavy and as light as hope.
“Sir?” A hand gripped Bill’s forearm. The man wore a double-breasted red velvet jacket with twin columns of brass buttons shining down its length; on the lapel the name of the club was written in gold string. “May I show you to your table?”
“I don’t know that I have a table.” Bill wondered if it was the suit. Could the maître d’ tell that it was only a twenty-dollar Styleplus?
“I’m afraid we’re booked. I’d offer you a place at the bar, but as you can see—”
“Is there no option for standing? With a drink, of course.”
“The show is fully reserved. The first two acts have already played. Perhaps we’ll hold another jazz night next week. There is demand, apparently.”
The lights fluttered. Should he show his badge? Impossible. Tell a lie? Already four Negro men at a nearby table had noticed the confrontation and pretended not to watch. At a more distant table sat William Drain, Art Hegney, John Legall, Jr., and other members of the 69th Regiment—not quite dead but not quite alive either. No seats were left at their table. B
ill had to figure some way to remain through the rest of the show. It was no good to wait on the street, when Zeno might leave through the back. And if Bill waited in the back—but he was being led by his elbow out of the club.
“Detective?”
A man in a top hat by the door was waving. The maître d’hôtel halted.
“I guess you don’t recognize me without my monkey suit,” said Captain Capo.
He shared a table with three women, none of them his wife, and an enormous man. The giant looked familiar but Bill could not immediately place him. His total recall, his greatest talent, was failing him. The giant reminded him of Leonard Perl. They didn’t look anything alike physically, for this man was nearly twice Perl’s size. Still something in his face or behind his face was familiar, ghoulish.
“I didn’t realize you were a jazzist, Cap,” Bill heard himself say, as if from across the room.
“I like hot music as much as the next toit. Where’s the lovely Maisie?”
“I was leaving, actually.” Bill gestured to the maître d’. “Forgot to make a reservation.”
Captain Capo screwed up his mouth. “That’s absurd. Join us! We have an uneven number anyway.” He winked. The women were obviously prostitutes. Expensive ones, you could tell from the tulle and velvet gowns. Nobody wore those materials since the war except sporting women.
“I’m afraid every chair in the house is claimed, Captain,” said the maître d’.
“Bring that one,” said the giant heavily. He pointed to a chair one table away that had been occupied seconds earlier by a Negro patron who was on his way to the restroom. The maître d’ nodded several times and did as he was told. Two of the smiling women, eyes brimming with invitation, made space between them.
Bill wiped his brow with his handkerchief, then his temples and neck. The cloth came away damp and gray. The throbbing in his head told him that Capo was onto him. Had Capo seen the bulge under Bill’s jacket? Had he organized this evening to entrap Bill? But Capo soon ignored him and his anxiety lightened. They drank Pernod frappés; Capo already had two empty glasses before him. His eyes were on the brunette sitting beside him. She playfully fondled his purple liver spot. His hand was in her lap.
The giant was also distracted. But not by a woman. He appeared to be one of those new white jazz fanatics. He stared longingly at the stage, waiting for the final band to come on. Bill had given up any hope of apprehending the murderer before the show but at least now he would be able to follow Zeno off the stage. For once, he thought, his headache subsiding, he had come into luck.
A waiter brought another round. Bill ordered a rye. Pernod muddied the brain; rye had clarifying properties. Maze said that he wasn’t thinking clearly and maybe she was right but his mind was clear enough to know that it wasn’t clear enough. A finger or two of rye might really do the trick.
“You’re not thinking right,” she’d said. “I regain my sanity, you lose yours.”
He knew he was supposed to be honest with her and he wanted to be honest with her but how could he explain what he was doing?
“I know that you don’t care one way or another whether I capture this ax maniac.”
“The only maniac I care about is you.”
“We won’t be safe unless this man is caught or dead.”
“I thought he doesn’t know who you are. How could you be in danger?”
“Not that kind of danger. He does not know me. But I know him and if I let the killing continue, I won’t forgive myself.”
“You mean for what happened with Perl?”
“What happened with Perl cannot be undone.”
“I forgive you,” she said. “Isn’t that enough?”
“That’s a lot. But it’s not everything.”
There was no explaining to Maze, not in words. Perl said he had seen Maze in the river. Now Maze was out of the river and on dry land. If the Axman continued to kill, she would fall back into the river and he would follow her there and they would drown together.
“On the top level,” he’d said, “I’m conducting a police investigation. But there is a level underneath that.”
“I’m completely lost.”
He thought, Lost in a Maze. “Let me try again. On the underneath level there is an evil that has unbalanced everything—unbalanced me and unbalanced the city and maybe thrown the whole business into unbalance.”
“The whole business?”
“The whole rotten business. If I don’t stop that evil then really I am part of it.”
“Slow down, Bill.”
Lost in a blaze of word haze. “Captain Cap doesn’t understand it. Mooney is incapable. I’m the only one who can stop it.”
Maze began rifling through the bag that contained the pills and papers she had been given when she checked out of the hospital.
He could not quite explain to her that it was on the underneath level where, if he stopped the Axman, he would drown the part of himself that in the Forest of Purroy had climbed over his comrades and out of the hole in the ground when he thought only of saving his own life. He would drown that part of himself not in the Mississippi River where Perl had drowned on the top level, but in the underground river that had no tributary or outlet. There are forests buried under forests, Perl had said. There are towns within towns. There are rivers that run down and run back up too.
“You could say I’m trying to reverse the flow of the river. I thought that Perl’s death would do it. But that only made the river flow faster.”
She produced a thermometer. “Darling? Put this in your mouth.”
Lost in a dazed blaze with Maze. Crazed and malaised. He chuckled.
“What is it?”
“I don’t think you’re listening.” But he couldn’t elaborate because the cold glass stem was clinking against his teeth and squirming like an anole on his tongue.
“Hold it one minute. One minute, Billy.”
The show had already begun. He didn’t have a minute. He plucked the thermometer from his mouth.
“Bill!”
“It will end tonight,” he said. “Give me this night and we can go back to how things were.”
“I don’t want to go back to that!”
“You’re right.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “We’ll go forward. Together.”
“You look strange,” she said. “Your eyes are wild.”
They were dancing in circles: a crazy polonaise. He laughed again. “You’re supposed to be in bed. Remember what the doctor said.”
“I had visions too, when I was coming down with it. But that’s all they are: visions.”
“I love you, Maze.” Unfazed Maze.
“You’re stretched out too thin. You’re going to snap.”
Bastrop couldn’t help himself: he snapped his fingers.
“Don’t think you’re doing this for us,” said Maze.
“I don’t. It’s for me.”
Lost in a daze of Maze, on a hazy crazy malaisey Friday.
She made a move to block the door but she was slow and uncoordinated from her week in bed. He was easily past her and outside, running down Tchoupitoulas toward the Vieux Carré.
* * *
Bill had tried to put Maze out of his head, but it was impossible once he noticed that Leonard Perl had joined Captain Capo’s table at the Cosmopolitan Club. Bill had a strong sense that Perl had been sitting there for some time, two seats away, and he was disappointed with himself that he had not made the observation sooner. The sight of Perl induced in him a great and sudden fatigue, a reminder of a grim duty that with great effort he had managed to put out of mind. Perl was engaged in earnest conversation with one of the whores. She listened with a patient smile. She seemed not to notice the gash in his neck and the purple bruises on his face, or she was being polite and feigning indifference. It was clever of Perl to pretend to be so deeply engaged in conversation with the prostitute but Bill knew that Perl was secretly watching him. Perl didn’t need to have his eyes on Bill
to watch him. He was watching on the underneath level where human eyes had no use. A movement on the stage distracted Bill and when he looked back, Perl was gone. He had been replaced by the giant, who had picked up the conversation with the prostitute. It was clever of Perl, to appear and disappear like that, though Bill would not be intimidated by Perl tonight. He was there for the Axman and would not be deterred.
The atmosphere inside the club was undergoing a transformation. The ceiling fans whirled more quickly and Bill became cold. The sweat went clammy on his neck and under his arms. The chandeliers again dimmed but this time he was certain it wasn’t his imagination because the sound in the room abruptly diminished. Voices dearticulated into excited whispers: the show was about to start. In the dim ruby light he realized why he recognized the giant man. He recognized him from the Axman investigation, he was certain, but could not immediately place how. The man was not Mr. Schneider of Hibernia Bank, nor the grocers Recknagel or LeBoeuf, nor the barber Andrew Maggio, who said that in New Orleans there were towns within towns. Nor was he a laborer at the Industrial Canal. But he had been at the canal anyway, Bill was sure of it.
It came to him. He wasn’t sure if it was the colder air or the rye or the dimming lights that brought him clarity, but it came to him. The Vizzini boy. Of course: the overseer of the dig and Beatrice Vizzini’s son. But Bill couldn’t let himself get distracted because now Slim Izzy, the Axman himself, was striding onto the stage.
MARCH 28, 1919—THE FRENCH QUARTER—THE INDUSTRIAL CANAL
They were wrong to call it the devil’s music. It didn’t come from below but from above—at least the way he played it. Sure there was deep feeling in it, subterranean fears and hopes that could only be voiced through wordless music, but when Isadore played he felt himself reaching higher, beyond the planet and even the heavens, into outer space. He would write a “Black Moon Blues,” a “Saturn Stomp,” a “Red Planet Rag.” He would be pied piper to the empyrean. He was close too. The Van Benthuysen Mansion show was one thing, but playing at the Cosmopolitan was playing in front of all New Orleans. Once the people heard his music, they would follow him, honking and singing, dancing the Extra-Terrestrial Trot and the Interstellar Itch, to the end of the galaxy.
King Zeno Page 33