The Axeman’s Jazz

by Ray Celestin

  ‘He’s got a pad over in the Seventh Ward. A boarding house. That’s all I know. Why you looking for him?’

  ‘The usual. You notice him acting strange the last few days?’

  ‘Can’t say as I did. He always struck me as a little queer anyway, if you get my drift.’

  Michael nodded and handed O’Neil a contact card.

  ‘If he comes back – tell him we’re looking for him.’

  ‘Will do.’

  Michael tipped his hat at O’Neil and trudged out of the shop. Kerry smiled and followed him, taking a long last look at the Cadillac as he went.

  Night had settled on the alleyway outside, and as there were no streetlamps they made their way to the main road in darkness. Two people had mentioned Lombardi in connection with the Axeman, and two people had mentioned he had disappeared after shooting his mouth off. It was a tenuous lead, but something to show for the day’s work at least. If the Housing Department hadn’t come up with an address by tomorrow, Michael would have to go through all the boarding houses in the 7th Ward himself, or go hat in hand to Riley.

  They turned the corner onto Decatur Street and were suddenly surrounded by lights and noise and the evening rush. Factory workers and secretaries from the harbor-side businesses were heading home along the sidewalks or boarding streetcars bound for the suburbs. The commercial districts were emptying, just as the residential districts and pleasure quarters were beginning to fill. New Orleans was pumping people through its neighborhoods like a giant heart. But Michael didn’t feel like merging into the crowd just yet. He needed some time to unwind.

  ‘Spot you a drink, son,’ he said to Kerry.

  ‘I’d be much obliged.’

  Michael hailed a cab and they drove against the traffic towards Esplanade Avenue, then along Bourbon Street till they reached the intersection with Bienville. It was still raining and the wind had picked up, making the gas-lamps lining the French Quarter flicker in their glass boxes. Michael paid the driver and they got in front of an ancient, two-story building with a black wrought-iron balcony that was overflowing with ferns, hanging flower baskets and potted shrubs. The shutters and awnings had been painted a bright lime green, and the sign on the front declared it to be Jean Lafitte’s Old Absinthe House. Michael often came here, although he rarely ordered the absinthe. It was only every now and again he felt the urge for what the patrons of the Absinthe House liked to call the green muse.

  ‘Absinthe?’ Kerry was peering at the sign as they strode across the banquette towards the bar. ‘I thought it’s illegal.’

  ‘It was banned four years ago,’ Michael replied, smiling. ‘But that’s a very loose term in New Orleans.’

  He swung the door open and they stepped into a warm, intimate bar packed with workers who’d stopped in on their way home and out-of-towners who were already far too drunk. They sat at a table in the corner and the waitress came over and Michael ordered two glasses of green, the code word locals used to make themselves known. The waitress eyed Kerry’s uniform and was about to remark on it when a bartender who knew Michael nodded to the girl and she smiled and headed off to get their order.

  ‘Why’s there a pirate behind the bar?’ Kerry asked, nodding towards a giant papier-mâché bust that had been hung above the bar on a flimsy-looking wire.

  ‘It’s Jean Lafitte. From the Battle of New Orleans,’ said Michael, and Kerry looked at him blankly. ‘The British tried to invade New Orleans in 1815. We didn’t have enough defenses so we roped in Lafitte to help out. He was a pirate and a smuggler but he had guns and boats. He signed his agreement with General Jackson in the room upstairs.’ Michael gestured to a rickety-looking staircase that curved around itself and upwards to the second floor.

  ‘If it wasn’t for that pirate,’ he continued, ‘we might be speaking English now.’

  They both chuckled and Michael followed Kerry’s gaze to the bust – a swarthy French-looking man with a huge mustache, gold earrings and a red cap. The artist had done a bad job and the face had a garish, amateurish quality to it, making it look like a Mardi Gras mask.

  The waitress returned and placed two drinks on the table. The Absinthe House Frappe had been the bar’s specialty for decades, but in the last four years it could only be ordered covertly, mixed behind the bar and served in metal cups to hide its distinctive color. Before the ban the frappe was made in squat marble fountains that dripped water slowly onto the sugar cubes that sweetened the liquor. Now the liquor was prepared with the secrecy of an opium house.

  Kerry peered suspiciously at the green liquid over the brim of the cup, but when Michael lifted his own drink and toasted in Gaelic, Kerry responded and they both took long sips.

  ‘It’s sweet,’ Kerry said, and Michael nodded. He wondered if he would ever be able to sit in a bar with his own son this way, free from looks and worry and insinuations, and a guilty feeling came upon him, the notion that he might be using Kerry as a proxy.

  ‘Why New Orleans?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Most Irish go up to Boston or New York these days.’

  Kerry hesitated and peered into the cup in his hand.

  ‘Well, I didn’t really see the point of moving countries to go somewhere just as cold and shitty as Dublin.’

  Michael smiled, but he got the feeling the joke was forced. Kerry returned to studying his cup, lightly swilling the absinthe around itself. ‘Most Irish go where they got family,’ he added.

  ‘And you don’t?’ asked Michael.

  ‘I was raised by priests, sir,’ said Kerry, not meeting Michael’s gaze. A sadness seemed to descend on the boy, and he took a gulp of the drink as if to ward it off, and Michael suddenly understood that the fragility he had seen in Kerry had deep roots.

  ‘Must be tough not having a family,’ he said. Michael had himself lost all links to his own family a decade earlier, when his parents and siblings disowned him.

  ‘You don’t miss what you’ve never had,’ Kerry replied. ‘The orphanage was OK, but you’re out on your ear at eighteen. I didn’t fancy staying on and becoming a priest, so I got a job on a coal cart till I saved enough for a steamer ticket.’

  ‘You didn’t have the faith to become a priest?’

  ‘Sometimes I have faith,’ Kerry said, becoming easy with the subject. ‘I just didn’t wanna end up like the priests at the orphanage. Most of them had been orphans themselves and I guessed it worked out as a bad life. I don’t think there’s any joy in being a priest when you’ve been forced into it by poverty. What about you, sir?’ Kerry asked, perking up, forcing his voice to sound upbeat. ‘What brought you to New Orleans?’

  Michael slid his cigarette case from his pocket.

  ‘I was born here,’ he said, taking out a Virginia Bright and lighting it. ‘Though most of the time I wish I hadn’t been.’

  He inhaled deeply on the cigarette and looked towards one of the street entrances where he saw Patrolman Dawson and his impeccably starched uniform hurrying inside. He scanned the room, spotted Michael, and made directly for his table.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir,’ said Dawson, a little out of breath. ‘We’ve been looking all over town. Luca D’Andrea was arrested earlier this evening, breaking into Schneider’s office. He’s at the precinct now.’

  25

  Sheets of rain plummeted through the night sky and into the Mississippi, where a tramp steamer, the Dixie Belle, fought her way up the angry river. The boat’s beacons twinkled like fairy lights through the downpour, and over the noise of crashing water the sounds of a party emanated dully from her interior.

  In the main hall, underneath fixed chandeliers, men in evening dress and women in ball-gowns danced to the music of Fate Marable and his Jazz Maniacs, who were performing flat, tepid versions of the latest standards. The band looked uncomfortable and confined in their tuxedos, especially the youngest member, who was still recovering from the shock of the fight he had been in that afternoon.

  Lewis h
ad almost been barred from the stage by Captain Joe, the line’s owner, who took an unusual amount of interest in the musicians who entertained his guests. On seeing Lewis’s left eye – an unsightly purple cauliflower of a bruise – and the cut on the side of his cheek, he had remarked that the boy looked like a hoodlum, and hoodlums had no place on the stage of the Dixie Belle. But one of the stewardesses, a girl with ambitions to work as a makeup artist in one of the city’s theatres, had taken the matter in hand. She camouflaged the bruise with a dark powdery paste of her own concoction and covered the cut with camphor ice. Once Captain Joe saw that Lewis looked less like a ruffian, he was allowed to take his place with the other musicians.

  Like any New Orleans band worth its salt, the Jazz Maniacs were musical polyglots, able to play the same song in myriad ways, tailored for the varying tastes of whites, Creoles, Negroes and even for the crowds of poor, ratty types that thronged the city’s honky-tonks. Tonight they were taking it easy as Captain Joe wasn’t standing at the back of the hall as he usually did, staring at his stopwatch, checking to see if the band was hitting the right tempo – seventy beats per minute for foxtrots and ninety for one-steps. There was a rumor that Captain Joe had sacked bandleaders on the spot for getting the tempo off, but that night, Lewis assumed, he must have had business elsewhere.

  They finished the waltz they were playing – every fourth song was a waltz – and the audience applauded while the band sat, taking a break, and a fat, ruddy master of ceremonies in a swallowtail coat strolled onto the stage.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for braving the inclement weather to be with us tonight, in Captain Joe Streckfus’s beautiful paddle steamer, the Dixie Bell. It’s true when they say that nothing stops a New Orleans crowd from partying.’

  There was appreciative laughter and applause from the crowd, and the MC puffed himself up and continued.

  ‘We would like to extend a special thank-you to Mayor Martin Behrman for being with us tonight . . .’

  Another wave of applause rose up from the crowd, and at the very front of the hall the mayor acknowledged his mention with an awkward wave of the hand. Lewis had never seen the mayor before, and on any other night he would have been excited, ready to run home and tell Mayann. The mayor looked to Lewis a little smaller than a mayor ought to be, a little more plain and ordinary, his looks chiming more with those of a bank clerk than a man who had run the city for the past sixteen years.

  As the MC continued with his speech, the day’s events ran through Lewis’s mind. After the attack he had consoled Ida, taken her home and thanked God that her mother wasn’t in to see the bloodstains, and her ripped, muddy skirt. When he was sure she was OK he had made his way home, changed into his tux and made it to the boat. He had progressed from the brothels and honky-tonks of Back o’ Town to the Streckfuss Line steamboats and the New Orleans Country Club. He was supporting four members of his family, earning in a week what most laborers earned in a month, and still he could be attacked simply for being the wrong color in the wrong part of town. He loved New Orleans, but was under no illusion that the city was disgustingly segregated and prejudiced. He was playing on a steamboat for white folks, but there’d be gasps and anger if ever he stepped over the railing onto the dance floor.

  He played for another hour before the band took their first proper break. Lewis managed to sneak a coffee from one of the waiters and sipped it in the storeroom where the band was confined when not on stage. Marable and the others dug into complimentary beers, a bottle each, and leftover food from the dinner.

  Fate Marable’s Jazz Maniacs were seven men from differing backgrounds, some of them Negro, some of them Creole, a racial mix that was unheard of in any band just a few years previously. Like Lewis, they had all been handpicked from the music halls of New Orleans by Marable himself, a pianist and calliope player from Paducah, Kentucky. Marable was a red-haired Negro, light-skinned enough to pass as white, who when asked, lied about his origins and claimed he was an Orleanais Creole. He’d encountered jazz on one of his visits to the city a few years earlier and had convinced Captain Joe to allow him to play a watered-down version of the new sound in his ships. Marable had plans to take the music into the interior, to spread the gospel all along the Mississippi, a dangerous enterprise as the whites thereabouts were known to be scandalized by Negro music and were prone to starting riots.

  Lewis noticed Johnny Dodds peering at him from across the room. ‘Dots’ was the group’s clarinetist and the older brother of their drummer, Baby, and he looked out for Lewis in the same big-brotherly way he did for his sibling. He crossed the room and nodded at Lewis’s broken face.

  ‘How’d you catch the beating, Lil’ Lewis?’ he asked with a sideways smile.

  Lewis sighed, took a cigarette from his pack and offered one to Dots.

  ‘Got jumped by a few po’ whites out in the Irish Channel,’ Lewis said. Dots gave him a puzzled look and took a cigarette from the pack.

  ‘What the hell were you doing out there, boy?’ he asked. ‘Ain’t no good ever come of a black man going to the Irish Channel.’

  Lewis shook his head and made a face to suggest he didn’t want to talk about it. He lit the cigarettes with a lucifer and they both inhaled.

  ‘Hey, Dots, you ever heard of a cat called Morval?’ asked Lewis. ‘Cajun. Slings furs?’

  ‘Sure, everyone’s heard of Morval.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Lewis, and Dots grinned at him.

  ‘That’s because you’re not everyone,’ he replied, raising his eyebrows.

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means you’re a rare bird, Lewis,’ said Dots, and Lewis wasn’t sure if this was a compliment or an insult.

  ‘So what’s he like?’ asked Lewis.

  ‘He’s harder than a pawn-broker. Officially he’s a fur-trader. Got a line on every fur store in town. Unofficially, he used to be big in Storyville.’

  Lewis frowned. He hadn’t expected Morval to be mixed up with the sporting business. Ida had painted a picture of him as a corrupt businessman, someone with political and Mafia connections. The idea that he ran girls, too, seemed odd to Lewis.

  ‘But I heard he retired after the District got made illegal,’ continued Dots. ‘Why you asking, Lil’ Lewis? You fiending for a fur?’

  Lewis shrugged and shook his head.

  ‘Nah, no reason,’ he said. ‘I heard someone mention his name is all.’

  Dots gave him a look. He could spot very easily when Lewis was lying.

  ‘You get into any monkey-business with Morval and you’ll regret it, Lewis. Man’s a devil,’ he said.

  ‘Ain’t nothing,’ said Lewis, trying to act relaxed, smiling a little. If Morval was a pimp, Lewis knew exactly how to find out what he was up to.

  PART THREE

  26

  Kerry opened the door to the surveillance room and stepped inside, praying his presence wouldn’t be noticed. The surveillance room was a dimly lit airless box with wooden chairs scattered about it and a long one-way mirror that snooped into the interview room on its opposite side. The room had the murky, furtive atmosphere of a backstreet revue, and as it was packed with men from the graveyard shift, all excited at the distraction, the air was heavy with cigarettes, paper-cup coffee and sweat. Detective Hatener was there with two other detectives – Jones and Gregson, men Kerry had seen about the bureau, wise-cracking, wiry members of Hatener’s team. The three of them turned to look at Kerry as he pushed through the throng and made his way to the front of the room. He smiled at them, and they nodded coldly in response. Then they turned their attention back to the one-way and stared through it with the concerned expressions of demolition men before a blast.

  Kerry had heard the stories about D’Andrea, wistful stories about how he used to hold sway in the bureau, about a brilliant mind gone awry. The general consensus was that the bureau worked better under D’Andrea than it did now, that the men got paid on time, there were more kickbacks
to go around, and it was all Michael’s fault things had slid inexorably downhill since. Kerry gauged the atmosphere in the room and came to the conclusion that the men were universally rooting for D’Andrea. He found a spot near the mirror, pressed himself against the wall, and got his first glimpse of the man through the tinted glass.

  D’Andrea was sitting in the interview room alone, arms folded, leaning back in his chair. He was not what Kerry had been expecting – he was good-looking and there was a relaxed confidence, almost an arrogance, in the way he leaned back. But Kerry also noticed he looked weary, that beneath the reassured veneer there was something else, a deep-seated loneliness he couldn’t hide.

  D’Andrea was wearing a fisherman’s jumper and his hair was plastered against his face from the rain, and under the searing lights of the interview room he looked scruffy and lined, by no means the dapper tomcat of precinct folklore. Kerry noted that D’Andrea had no cuffs on, and on the table in front of him was a fresh packet of cigarettes and a coffee – the accoutrements of a man getting the royal treatment. There were no lawyers present, and Kerry thought it strange that D’Andrea hadn’t requested one. He stole a glance at Hatener and saw he was still staring at D’Andrea with the same fatherly concern, leaning forward with his forearm against the glass.

  Presently Michael and a stenographer entered the interview room, and everyone in the surveillance room quieted down and focused on the one-way with a hush like a cinema audience at the start of a feature bill. Michael moved briskly, papers in hand, sat opposite Luca and laid the papers out carefully on the table. It was only then that he looked up at D’Andrea and they made eye contact. When they looked at each other both their faces seemed suddenly wiped clean of emotion, as if by the cloth of an over-zealous maid. Michael nodded and D’Andrea nodded back, then Michael looked at the stenographer and the stenographer indicated with raised eyebrows that he was ready to start. The exchanges reminded Kerry of a tableau of miniature clockwork card-players he had once seen in a fairground diorama of a Wild West Saloon.