The Axman of New Orleans

by Chuck Hustmyre

  The Second Shooter

  By Chuck Hustmyre

  Published by

  Salvo Press

  www.salvopress.com

  Copyright © 2016 by Chuck Hustmyre

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 (five) years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  E ISBN: 978-1-68299-458-0

  Print ISBN: 978-1-68299-459-7

  Credits

  Cover Artist: Kelly Martin

  Editor: Miranda McLeod

  Printed in the United States of America

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Author's Note

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Epilogue

  Coda

  "For a long time New Orleans was

  particularly favored by Italian cutthroats."

  -John S. Kendall, "The Mafia in New Orleans,"

  The Daily Picayune, October 1, 1911

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would like to express my gratitude to my former neighbor, Mr. Vincent Dispenza, for his help with the Sicilian translations, and to his wife, Mary, for all her kindness. Any mistakes in the reproduction of those translations are solely my responsibility.

  Rest in peace, Vincent and Mary.

  I would also like to express my appreciation to retired ATF Special Agent Bill Kingman for his research help.

  And to my wife, Kristie, my "research princess."

  One additional note: readers will likely observe that some of the words in newspaper headlines quoted in the book are spelled differently than we commonly spell them today, but those spellings were taken directly from the newspapers of the time, before the advent of the Associated Press Stylebook.

  -Chuck Hustmyre

  AUTHOR'S NOTE

  Several years ago while working in New Orleans, I rented a small house in Mid-City. One night I heard a loud commotion coming from my attic. Armed with a flashlight, I crawled into the dark, cramped space and found a large opossum scurrying about. While chasing away my uninvited visitor, I tripped over an old wooden box. Later, when I opened the box, which turned out to have once contained sticks of Hercules dynamite, I found a small bundle wrapped in oilcloth and secured with twine.

  I carried the box into the kitchen and unwrapped the bundle. Inside the oilcloth, I found a leather-bound journal, the author of which was a former police detective named Colin Fitzgerald, who had served with the New Orleans Police Department in the early 1900s.

  The journal focuses almost exclusively on a single, spectacular case, with only a few references to Fitzgerald's personal life, which was, judging by the narrative, a tragic one, filled with pain and personal loss. But nowhere in his writing does Fitzgerald lament the misfortunes that befell him. He was a man imbued with quiet strength, whose character was defined by his stoic acceptance of hardship.

  Fitzgerald's last journal entry was dated December 19, 1921, two weeks after he was wounded during a gunfight in Los Angeles. Fitzgerald was working as a private detective at the time, having left the New Orleans Police Department two years earlier.

  After reading Colin Fitzgerald's journal, I became consumed with curiosity about this obscure detective. It took weeks of searching through archived public records and microfilmed copies of old newspapers, but I finally unearthed more details about the case that was the focus of his journal. I retell that story here, in its entirety, with the only caveat to its veracity being that I have taken the liberty of changing a few of the participants' names in order to spare the feelings of their descendants.

  History has certainly done a disservice to Colin Fitzgerald, something I hope to correct in my own small way with this memoir, for while we remember many famous lawmen of the past-Allan Pinkerton, Wyatt Earp, Pat Garrett, Eliot Ness, and Melvin Purvis, to name just a few-Colin Fitzgerald has been forgotten. Yet he merits an equal place on that roll of honor for his relentless, and ultimately successful, pursuit of one of the most heinous villains in the history of American crime: the cold-blooded killer who terrorized an entire city for nearly ten years and who left two dozen victims in his bloody wake, the killer whom the newspapers of the day called THE AXMAN OF NEW ORLEANS.

  PROLOGUE

  LOS ANGELES

  MONDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1921

  12:05 P.M.

  I watched the tall man with the yellow shirt and the gunpowder burn on his cheek standing outside the front door of a tan two-story house on East 36th Street, arguing with someone inside. I couldn't see the other person because the door was only open a few inches. Nor could I hear what they were saying. What I could hear, though, was the anger in the man's voice. This was the third time in two days I had followed him to that same house.

  Yesterday morning he had stood at the front door quarreling with an older heavyset gentleman dressed in church clothes. Last night he had gone back and slipped an envelope through the mail slot, then knocked on the door and hurried away before anyone had time to answer.

  Now here he was again.

  I was standing half a block away, beneath the shaded side entrance of a corner grocery, sipping a bottle of root beer and watching the man's gestures become more agitated as the argument escalated. Then the tall man pulled a revolver from beneath his shirt and pointed it at the person inside. The door swung open and he stepped through, and just before it slammed shut, I saw a dark-haired woman backing away from him. There was something familiar about her.

  I dr
ained the last of my root beer and tossed the bottle into a trashcan, then started walking down 36th Street, intending to pass the house and take up a position on the next corner, where I would have a better angle when the front door opened again.

  I made it halfway and was directly across the street from the house when I heard the first gunshot. It was just a muffled pop. Then silence. The eerie kind of silence that always seems to follow violence.

  I turned toward the house.

  There was hardly any traffic in the neighborhood, just a few cars chugging along South San Pedro Street at one end of the block, and a woman pushing a stroller at the other end. None of the neighbors seemed to be reacting to the gunshot. To an inexperienced ear, it had probably sounded like a car backfiring.

  But not to my ear. I knew better. So I reached under my jacket and snatched the Colt .45 automatic from the holster on my hip. I thumbed down the safety and ran across the street. I vaulted the low iron fence that traversed the front of the small yard, but when I landed on the other side a sharp pain stabbed through my left leg. I stumbled and barely managed to keep my balance.

  Limping slightly, I approached the front door at an angle, my pistol thrust out, my eyes sweeping back and forth from the door to the front windows.

  POP!

  Another gunshot and this time I saw a faint flash behind an upstairs window. I reached the front door. It was sturdy and made of thick wood, with a fan-shaped window set too high for me to see through. I turned the knob but the door was bolted. To my right, I saw the bottom step of an exterior stairwell that ran up the side of the house to a small landing and a door on the second floor.

  I scrambled up the first few steps, but by the time I reached the middle of the stairwell I had to slow down and grab the guardrail for support. Already my breathing was labored from pushing my one working lung beyond its capacity. A twenty-yard sprint and a half-flight of stairs were almost more than I could handle. The ex-soldier inside me burned with shame.

  Dragging myself up the last few steps, I reached the landing. The door was windowless. I twisted the knob but it was locked. Panting and unable to catch my breath, I knew I didn't have the strength to kick the door open, so I shoved the muzzle of my forty-five against the latch and squeezed the trigger. The lock exploded and the door swung back on its hinges.

  I stumbled inside.

  And found myself in a dining room with a long wooden table surrounded by half a dozen chairs. The tall man with the gunpowder-burned cheek stood ten feet to my left, at the far end of the table. A hole in the front of his yellow shirt was leaking blood. He had been gut shot and seemed to be teetering on the edge of falling down. His arms dangled at his sides, but I couldn't see his hands because the table was shielding them.

  Gray smoke and the smell of burnt gunpowder hung in the air.

  At the near end of the table, no more than five feet from me, stood the woman I had caught a glimpse of downstairs. She was pointing a nickel-plated two-shot derringer at the man.

  I lowered my pistol.

  I knew her. I had met her in New Orleans two years ago, the day her husband was murdered.

  The tall man raised his right hand.

  I had been gazing at the woman in astonishment and only saw the man's movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned to face him, I found myself staring down the barrel of a revolver.

  My forty-five was pointed at the floor. Useless, because the man's bullet would pass through my brain long before I could get off a shot.

  CLICK.

  The woman had pulled the trigger on her derringer, but the shell inside the chamber was spent. Hands shaking, she yanked back the hammer and squeezed the trigger again.

  CLICK.

  Both chambers were empty.

  The tall man turned to her and grinned.

  CHAPTER 1

  NEW ORLEANS

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1919

  2:00 A.M.

  A hard ran beat down on the city and unleashed explosions of lightning and thunder. It was exactly the kind of night the killer liked. The rain obscured sight and the heavy rain-drenched air absorbed sound. Screams were muffled and mostly went unnoticed.

  The house stood on the corner and had a fenced backyard. The killer scrambled over the wooden fence and dropped onto the sodden grass. The back of the house was dark. He stepped onto the cluttered porch. In a flash of lightning, he found what he was looking for, a long-handled ax leaning beside the back door. Almost every household had one.

  The killer picked up the ax and kicked open the door. His height gave him a long stride that allowed him to move quickly. He bounded across the kitchen in three steps.

  Advancing down the hall, he saw a ribbon of light under the second door. He rammed his shoulder into the door and smashed his way into a bedroom. In the faint light from the single candle that was burning, the killer saw a man standing beside the bed getting undressed. The man's wife was in her night clothes but sitting up in the bed as if they had been talking. The mosquito net was raised. Both of them turned toward him.

  A revolver lay on the bed.

  The man reached for it.

  The killer swung the ax.

  The man raised his right arm in a pathetic attempt to ward off the blow. The blade of the ax cut deep, almost severing the man's arm. He fell onto the bed. His wife screamed. Outside, lightning flashed and thunder shook the house. The killer raised the ax and struck again. Then again. Then again. The edge bit deep into the man's head, face, and neck. Blood spewed from the wounds. The blade flung blood on the walls and ceiling each time the killer raised it.

  He had been ignoring the woman. But something she did drew his attention. She had the revolver in her hand. The ax was buried in her husband's skull. The killer jerked it free. He wanted to hit her with it, to split her skull just like he had her husband's. She pointed the revolver at him. The muzzle was a foot from his face. He didn't have time to raise the ax for another blow. She turned her head as she fired. That's all that saved him. Light exploded in front of his left eye. He felt the bullet rip the air as it passed his ear. The flash burned his face. He could see nothing out of his left eye and only swirling shadows with his right eye. His ears rang.

  The killer turned and ran from the room. He heard a second shot behind him. Then he was bumping his way down the hall and stumbling through the darkened kitchen to the back door. He dropped the ax on the porch and kept running. A flash of lightning burst over the backyard. He clambered over the fence and dropped onto the street. The storm was still in its full fury and his ears were ringing from the gunshot, yet he heard the man's wife scream inside the house. It was the sound of pain and horror and anguish.

  And it made him smile.

  ***

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 27, 1919

  4:00 A.M.

  A sharp knocking jolted me out of my nightmare. The same one I always had.

  The exploding German artillery, the crack of machine guns, the wet smack of bullets striking flesh, the cries of the wounded, the stench of the dirty yellow gas. Then my own screams as the gas scalded my throat and burned my lungs.

  I lifted my head from the sweat-soaked pillow as the knocking continued. Someone very determined was pounding on my front door. And it was still dark outside.

  Only half awake, I reached across the bed and felt nothing but damp sheets. The other side of the bed was empty. My wife wasn't there. She hadn't been there with me in a long time. I shook my head to clear it and crawled out from beneath the mosquito netting.

  More knocking.

  I found my watch on the nightstand and checked the time. Who knocks on your door at four o'clock in the morning?

  One of my slippers was missing. No doubt John Jameson had hidden it from me, so I stumbled through the house in my nightshirt and bare feet. The movement made my head hurt. Something else I could blame on Mr. Jameson, him and his damned son.

  When I yanked open my front door I found a police messenger standing on the porch. The teena
ger was breathing hard and sweating. His wool uniform was wet. His bicycle lay on its side at the curb, just on the other side of the rain-filled gutter that ran past my house and down Dauphine Street. The thunderstorm that had hit a few hours ago had slackened to a drizzle, but one look at the heavy black clouds south of the city told me that a new storm was coming.

  "Are you Detective Colin Fitzgerald?" the boy asked in a brogue even stronger than my own and no more than a generation removed from County Kerry.

  I nodded in the affirmative and a wave of pain shot through my skull. "I am," I said with breath that tasted like whiskey.

  The boy held out a small yellow envelope, the kind the superintendent dispatched from Police Headquarters.

  I took the envelope from his hand. "Why didn't the night man call me on the telephone?" After I got back from the war, I had a telephone installed in my kitchen, but the thing hadn't rung more than five or six times in the ten months I'd been home, so it was turning out not to be worth the dollar a month I paid for it.

  The boy shrugged. "Maybe the lines are down."

  I glanced up again at the dark clouds just as a bolt of lightning flashed across the river. Six seconds later, I heard the crack of thunder. Sound travels at five seconds per mile, so you can count the time from when you see the flash to when you hear the bang and calculate how far away the storm was. I had learned that in the Army, and it worked the same for lightning as it did for artillery. The new storm was close.

  The boy shuffled his wet boots. "Or maybe the superintendent didn't want the operator to tip off the newspapermen."

  "Tip them off about what?"

  "About the murder."

  "Where are you from?" I asked.

  "My parents are from Killarney, but I was born here."

  "Do you want to be a policeman?"

  He stuck out his chest. "I want to be a detective."

  "What's your name?"

  "Kevin, sir. Kevin O'Donnell."

  "Wait here, lad," I said, then turned around and shambled back into the dark house.

  On the nightstand next to my bed, beside the nearly empty bottle of Jameson, I fished through an ashtray holding several coins. Then I walked back to the front door, where the boy was standing halfway at attention. I handed him a quarter and pointed to the clouds rolling across the river. "Find a dry spot to ride out this next storm, then get yourself some breakfast. A good policeman never gets cold, never gets wet, and never goes hungry."