"Why?"
"Because Captain Long told me that if I didn't write it up just the way he wanted, I'd never be allowed at another crime scene."
"That sounds like him."
The coroner's men came back through the saloon carrying the same stretcher they had used to take away Joseph Maggio. The thick canvas was stained with his blood. The men set the stretcher down on the bedroom floor and set about the task of loading Catherine Maggio onto it.
Emile shifted uncomfortably. The shame he felt at allowing himself to be used to defame the Sciambras still burned. He was just glad his father hadn't lived to see it. Henri Denoux had been a man who believed in the sanctity of the press. If he made a mistake in a story, he corrected it in the very next edition, and he didn't bury the correction on a back page under a pile of advertisements and public notices. He admitted his mistake on the front page. So far, Emile had not corrected what he had written about Anthony and Johanna Sciambra.
"Captain Long told me something Mrs. Sciambra said before the ambulance took her away, and it's stuck with me all these years."
"What was that?"
"When he asked her if she or her husband had any association with Black Hand gangs or the Mafia, she said they weren't that kind of Italians. That they were the Greek kind." Emile turned to Dantonio. "What does that mean?"
"The so-called Mafia started on the western side of Sicily, around Palermo," Dantonio said. "A lot of people on the eastern side of the island are descended from the Greeks. They built the great city of Syracuse hundreds of years before the Roman Empire was founded. Even today, a lot of people on the eastern side think of themselves as more Greek than Italian, and they have nothing to do with the Mafia."
Emile felt sick. Mrs. Sciambra, covered in the blood of her murdered husband and mortally wounded herself, had told Captain Long that they were not involved with criminal gangs. Still, Emile had let the chief of detectives push him into writing that the Sciambras and the other Italians killed or wounded during the series of attacks that began with Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Davi in the summer of 1911 were exactly that kind of Italians, the kind that would be mixed up with the Mafia.
The two coroner's men lumbered out of the bedroom carrying Catherine Maggio, a bloodstained sheet covering her body. Emile and Dantonio again removed their hats, and the detective crossed himself as the body passed by them. Once the coroner's attendants had wriggled the stretcher through the door into the front room, Emile set his hat back on his head and turned to Dantonio. "Do you really think either of Maggio's brothers had anything to do with this?"
Dantonio put his hat back on. "No."
"Who do you think wrote that message about Mrs. Tony?"
"The killer."
"Is it the same man," Emile asked, "going all the way back to the Davi case seven years ago?
"Are you asking me what I think, or what I can prove?"
"I'm asking what the evidence, the circumstances, and your instincts tell you."
Dantonio was quiet for so long that Emile didn't think he was going to answer. Then he said, "Yes, it's the same man."
***
Sitting on the porch on the other side of the Maggios' double shotgun house, the side where Mr. Maggio's two brothers lived, the brothers who were now in police custody and no doubt undergoing a harsh interrogation, Emile gazed up at the blue sky. This spring had been unusually wet and cold. A storm had come through late last night and had lasted until early this morning, but the sun was shining now, there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the temperature was climbing.
It made Emile wonder what the weather was like in France and what his friend was doing at this very moment. He pulled an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket. It bore the special stamp and postmark of the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. He had read the letter twice since it arrived in the mail yesterday. It was the first letter he had received from Colin Fitzgerald since the pig-headed Irishman had left for the Army the day after Christmas. Emile slipped out the single sheet of stationary, unfolded it on his knee, and read the letter again.
April 29, 1918
Dear Emile:
Our company intelligence officer insists that we not reveal our location in case our letters home are intercepted, though I don't think our position is any great secret to the Germans, who shell us like clockwork every morning and evening. Suffice it to say that I have arrived in France, though it is not quite as glamorous as you made it out to be.
Training was hard, and although I imaged it was great preparation for what lay ahead, having actually been in the trenches for a few days now, I can honestly say that nothing can prepare you for the reality of life at the front-and I haven't even seen any action yet!
We live, eat, and sleep in mud. Already my body has become host to a platoon of lice. The rats outnumber us in the trenches three-to-one. I have seen two men suffocate when their dugouts collapsed under German artillery shells. To raise your head above the parapet during daylight is to have it shot off by a German sniper.
When we arrived, General Pershing himself greeted us. "Black Jack" Pershing they call him. He is a man of no more than average height and build, though he seems much larger due to his impressive bearing and disposition. Under his leadership, I have no doubt of eventual victory.
I hope all is well with you, my friend. Please check in on Maria and her parents occasionally for me.
I will write as often as possible, though I expect to be busy soon stomping the hell out of the Boche.
Your friend,
Colin
Emile slid the letter back into the envelope and returned it to his pocket. He would take Colette with him this Sunday, and they would call on Maria, and Mr. and Mrs. Palmisano.
He hoped his friend would be all right.
CHAPTER 19
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1919
10:00 A.M.
I stood in front of the stout wooden cabinet on the second floor of Central Station. We called it the card file. It was the kind of cabinet libraries used to house their card catalogues. The cabinet contained thousands, maybe tens of thousands-I'm sure no one kept count-of index cards arranged in small drawers. Fifty drawers total, ten across and five down. Affixed to the front of each drawer was a brass frame holding a small placard.
Each drawer held a series of bright yellow, three-inch by five-inch cards, each one labeled with a single name and alphabetized by last name. One card for every criminal, victim, and witness listed in a police report since the founding of the modern New Orleans Police Department just after the Civil War.
The placard on the first drawer, on the top left, read Aa-Ak. The second drawer, immediately to its right, was labeled Al-Az. And so on, down the alphabet to the last drawer on the bottom right, labeled Za-Zz.
I opened the drawer marked Ma-Me and dug through the cards until I found the one I was looking for. The card read:
MARCELLO, Salvatore, Ital. Male, Born Aprx. 1882
Add.: 1611 N. Rampart St., New Orleans, Louis.
Typed beneath Salvatore Marcello's last known address was a list of dates, each followed by a single-line notation, a police file number, and a single-letter code.
The single-letter codes, used on all yellow cards, indicated how the person was involved in the case identified by that file number: an "A" meant the person had been arrested, "V" stood for victim, and "W" denoted a witness.
Although there were no V's or W's on Marcello's yellow card, there was a string of A's. Before his untimely demise Sunday at midnight, Salvatore Marcello had not been one of the city's most upstanding citizens. His half-dozen arrests stretched back ten years. Marcello was thirty-seven years old when he died, but because his criminal history went back only ten years, and I doubted he had waited until his twenty-seventh birthday to start a life of crime, I suspected that he had only been in the United States for ten years. The police in Palermo probably had a thicker file on him.
According to his yellow card, Marcello's first arrest had be
en for theft in 1909. The next year he was picked up twice, first for theft and later for extortion. In 1911, he was again arrested for extortion, but he was also charged with carrying a concealed weapon, aggravated assault, and aggravated battery.
In 1912, he was arrested for attempted murder. He wasn't arrested again until 1918, which to me meant that he had served time for the attempted murder. Captain Campo had mentioned that Marcello had done time for shooting a fellow Italian. The 1918 arrest, his last, had once again been for extortion.
Stapled behind Marcello's yellow card was a card labeled CRIMINAL ASSOCIATES.
Midway down the front of the card cabinet was a row of recessed writing tables. I pulled one out and laid my notebook and the stapled cards on it. Then I dug a pencil out of my coat pocket.
Marcello had five criminal associates. Although some policemen tossed that tag around rather liberally, most of the time a criminal associate was someone who had been arrested with the person identified on the main card. I jotted down the names of Marcello's criminal associates: Paul Di Christina, Graziano Bandini, Joseph Monfre, Guillio Di Martini, and Lazzaro Rapino.
In small penciled-in letters, someone, most likely a clerk, had printed "a.k.a. Paolo Marchese" above the typed name Paul Di Christina. The same hand had also written "Edward" above the first name of Guillio Di Martini. I had no idea if the handwritten names had been added because they were aliases the two men had used, or if they were their real names and the original typed names were aliases. I copied down the notations.
Someone else-the handwriting appeared to be different-had penciled another note above the typewritten words CRIMINAL ASSOCIATES. The notation read: "Matranga?"
This note was less of a mystery to me. I knew the name well.
The Matrangas were a Sicilian family that had lived in New Orleans for at least three decades. The patriarch was Carlo Matranga. Most people called him Old Man Carlo, though I'm not sure anyone called him that to his face. I had seen him out on the town a few times. He was in his sixties, fat, with a round face and cheeks the color of raw hamburger. The newspapers described him as a flashy dresser. The last time I saw him he was wearing a red cravat with a diamond stickpin. He was either liked or feared by everyone who knew him.
Carlo Matranga was also a ruthless criminal.
His younger brother Tony had lost a leg many years ago in a shootout with the rival Provenzano family over who was going to control the fruit docks. But the Matranga brothers eventually won.
In 1891, Carlo Matranga was one of nineteen Sicilians indicted for murder in connection with the assassination of Police Superintendent David Hennessy. Hennessy had been a hard-charging reformer, who tried to change the largely incompetent, laissez-faire culture of the New Orleans Police Department and bring the rule of law to a city administration that was mired in corruption. To help him, Hennessy had promoted my father to chief of detectives.
Four months after Chief Hennessy was killed, Carlo Matranga and eight of his alleged co-conspirators went on trial. Two weeks later, the jury acquitted six of the defendants, including Carlo Matranga, and could not reach a verdict on the other three. Without giving his reasons, the judge, instead of releasing the six men who had been found not guilty, ordered them and the three men the jury could not reach a decision on sent back to the Parish Prison, where the other ten indicted Sicilians were also being held as they awaited their turn in the dock.
The next day, March 14, 1891, the day I was born, a mob of thousands of angry white residents stormed the Parish Prison and killed eleven of the nineteen Sicilians who had been charged with Chief Hennessy's murder. In the confusion, Carlo Matranga managed to escape the prison and the mob.
Ten days after the riot, when the storm of white anger had abated, Carlo Matranga resurfaced in the French Quarter and received a hero's welcome from his fellow Sicilians. The way my father, and after his death, my mother, told the story, the welcome home celebration was not for surviving the riot, but for killing the chief of police.
I was never certain if my parents' version of the story was entirely accurate. My father's, and therefore my good Irish mother's, view of the world was distinctly one sided.
One thing was certain, however, and that was that in the nearly thirty years since the Hennessy assassination, Carlo Matranga and his one-legged brother had prospered. Today, they ruled the lucrative underbelly of New Orleans, controlling not only the docks, but also the distribution of fresh produce throughout the city. They also owned bars, brothels, and gambling joints.
After writing the names of Salvatore Marcello's criminal associates in my notebook, I replaced the stapled cards in the drawer. I was about to start pulling the yellow cards on Marcello's associates when I heard heavy footsteps behind me.
Before I could turn around, a voice boomed, "Fitzgerald, you're just the man I've been looking for."
When I turned, I saw Captain Bill Campo striding toward me.
"I need you to go to Charity Hospital and tell Dr. Delachaise to get a move on it with the Pepitone autopsy," Campo said, stopping a couple of feet from me. "Tell him to forget Blanchard's dead dago and concentrate on Pepitone. Make sure he understands that the Axman case is the Police Department's highest priority."
"I'll call him right now."
Campo shook his head. "I don't want you to call him. I want you to go down there personally and see to it. Make him put Pepitone on the slab and start cutting. Don't come back until he's finished and you have his report in your hand."
"Michael Pepitone had his skull split open with an ax," I said. "The autopsy isn't going to tell us anything we don't already know, and sheepherding Dr. Delachaise is just as likely to make him slow down as it is to make him speed up. You know how he is, Captain."
Campo's face hardened and his eyes narrowed. "Detective, this isn't a request. It's an order. I want you to go to Charity Hospital immediately, and I don't want you to come back until you have that autopsy report." He jabbed a finger at me. "Do I make myself clear?"
I nodded. "Yes, sir. I'm on my way, but I don't think Dr. Delachaise is going to understand the urgency since all of the recent Axman victims have-"
"I don't care what you think, Detective. I care what the doctor thinks. And if he doesn't understand the urgency, then you make him understand."
This time I kept my mouth shut and nodded again.
Campo's eyes darted behind me to the card file and my open notebook lying on top of the writing table. "What are you doing?"
"Research."
He arched his eyebrows. "In the yellow cards?"
"I'm looking up the records of everyone associated with the case."
"The Pepitone case?"
"That and some related cases."
Campo stared at me for a long time. Then he said, "Did you not understand what I just told you? The Axman case is this department's highest priority. That means it's your only priority."
I returned his stare but didn't say anything. Most often when you've dug yourself into a hole, the smartest thing you can do is to simply stop digging.
The captain glanced again at my open notebook. The names I had jotted down, the five Italians identified as Salvatore Marcello's criminal associates, were clearly visible. Campo looked back at me, his eyes boring into mine. "Quit wasting time on cases that don't concern you. Stick to your own cases, or you'll find yourself back walking a beat on the night shift."
"Yes, sir," I said. Then I turned around to get my notebook. I moved slowly, hoping Campo would return to his office at the other end of the hall, satisfied that I was on my way to Charity Hospital, to Dr. Delachaise's basement abattoir to see to the dissection of Michael Pepitone. But the captain didn't move. He stood where he was and waited for me leave.
Had the captain left me alone at the card file for another minute more, I intended to pull the yellow cards for Marcello's five associates and take them with me to the hospital. Although policemen were never supposed to remove cards from the cabinet, I didn't thi
nk it likely that Bernie Blanchard was going to need those five cards anytime soon. Once I had copied them into my notebook, I could slip them back into place when I returned from the hospital.
But with Captain Campo still staring at me, apparently counting down the seconds until I complied with his order to leave the building, there was nothing more I could do. I would have to pull the cards later. So I shoved my notebook into my jacket pocket and slid the writing table back into its slot inside the cabinet. When I turned around Campo was still looking at me.
"Are you ready, Detective?" he said.
I nodded.
Campo walked down the hallway beside me to the stairs. Then he stood on the top landing and watched me until I reached the ground floor. As I left the building and walked down Common Street in the direction of Charity Hospital, I had the feeling he was staring at me through one of the big second-floor windows.
CHAPTER 20
MAGGIO DOUBLE FUNERAL MARRED BY BRAWL
Italian Trio Disrupts Solemn Services. Mysterious Non-Italian Driver Spirits Away Hooligans.
-The Daily Picayune
MAY 24, 1918
12:45 P.M.
Emile Denoux followed the crowd of mourners that accompanied the black horse-drawn carriage bearing the caskets of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Maggio to the burial vault at Saint Louis Cemetery No. 3 on Esplanade Avenue. Also following the crowd were Detectives John Dantonio and Theodore Obitz.
After the carriage stopped, Emile watched as six pallbearers in dark suits and black armbands embroidered with the initials of the Sicilian Benevolent Association unloaded the caskets, each piled high with flowers, and carried them one at a time from the carriage to the marble vault. The women wailed at the sight of the caskets.
Then a sudden movement caught Emile's eye. He turned and saw a Ford Model T barreling down the gravel driveway that wound through the cemetery. Many of the mourners turned to watch the car, the speed of which seemed disrespectful under the circumstances.
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