The superintendent continued, "Regardless of who this murderer is, regardless of his motives, we are going to get him. If we could make our plans known, the public would appreciate what we are doing to bring an end to these gruesome attacks. As I said, my men are working on the cases from every angle. Some are still considering that it might be a Mafia affair, others entertain a robbery motive, and some think the slayer is a Negro."
One thing Emile was sure of, Negroes had nothing to do with the Axman murders. He also knew that immediately after each attack, the police had rounded up any Negroes unfortunate enough to have been in the vicinity and carted them off to the nearest precinct station house, where they were questioned for hours, sometimes days, before being released. Rounding up innocent blacks was a favorite tactic of the police, one that gave the semblance of action while accomplishing nothing.
As Superintendent Thompson droned on answering reporters' questions, the glib, condescending tone and mannerisms he affected began to grate on Emile's nerves. Finally, Emile interrupted one of the superintendent's more facile answers. "Superintendent, are you quite sure that Louis Besozzi has not escaped from the Parish Prison?"
Thompson turned and stared past the other reporters, his eyes focusing on Emile, who was still leaning against the wall. "Of course he hasn't escaped, Mr. Denoux. Why do you ask?"
Emile pushed himself up straight and cocked his hat back. "Because it was only five weeks ago that you suggested Mr. Besozzi might be the Axman, so I'm wondering how he could have murdered Mr. Romano while he was incarcerated at the Parish Prison."
A groan went through the tight knot of reporters.
Although Thompson's pasty complexion suddenly turned scarlet, he managed to keep his voice under control. "You're exaggerating my comments, Mr. Denoux. I did not say that Mr. Besozzi was the Axman. I said we were trying to establish if it was possible he may have committed other assaults in addition to the murder of Miss Lowe."
Emile was undaunted. "If Mr. Besozzi's wounds were self-inflicted, as you said five weeks ago, then how do you account for the fact that he was found unconscious in his bedroom, lying alongside Miss Lowe, and the bloody ax was found in the backyard?"
The superintendent glared at Emile. "Mr. Denoux, if you have a serious question, I'll be happy to entertain it. Otherwise, you're just wasting everyone's time."
"Okay, then. Here's a serious question. Mr. Romano's niece described the killer as a tall heavyset man. Other witnesses have likewise described him as big and powerful."
"What is your question?"
"How do you reconcile those descriptions of the killer with the physical characteristics of Louis Besozzi, who is fifty-nine years old, of no more than average height, and rather frail?"
The superintendent looked past Emile and snapped his fingers at two policemen standing post outside the front door. One of them peeked inside. Thompson pointed to Emile. "Get him out of here."
The two patrolmen stepped into the room as a wisecracking reporter shouted, "Uh-oh." Then the burly policemen grabbed Emile by both arms and dragged him toward the door.
Emile tried to pull away but couldn't. The patrolmen were too strong. He leaned back and stuck out his feet, skidding along on his heels. "Who is the Axman?" he shouted over his shoulder at Thompson. "And why were you trying to frame an innocent man? What are you hiding, Superintendent Thompson? Who are you protecting?"
The policemen stopped at the door and threw Emile off the porch and down the steps. He landed hard on the sidewalk. Behind him, he heard Thompson say, "I was just about to answer his questions, but I guess he had another appointment."
Several reporters laughed.
CHAPTER 29
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1919
6:15 P.M.
I knocked at the door to Captain Bill Campo's office. The frosted glass door was already half open. I could see him sitting behind his desk reading a report. He didn't respond or even look up to see who was knocking. Just kept reading the report. Thirty seconds dragged by while I cooled my heels in the corridor.
Finally, he laid the report on his desk and barked, "Enter."
I pushed the door open the rest of the way and stepped inside. I was carrying Dr. Delachaise's delinquent evidence envelopes stuffed inside the old box I had found in the morgue.
"What's that?" Campo asked.
"Evidence from the coroner."
Campo motioned toward a chair against the wall. "Leave it there."
I set the box down and stood in front of the captain's desk.
"Is that it?" he said.
"Sir?"
He nodded toward the box. "Was that all you needed?"
"You ordered me to go to the coroner's office and report back to you on the results of the Pepitone autopsy."
"Okay," he said, almost as if he had forgotten about what he had earlier in the day described to me as an urgent assignment. "So what were they?"
"Dr. Delachaise hasn't finished his written report yet, but he promised to have it ready by no latter-"
"What were the cause and manner of Mr. Pepitone's death?"
"Severe trauma to the head, most likely caused by the ax found on the scene, and consistent with homicide."
"So just what we expected."
"Yes, sir."
Captain Campo picked up a pen and scrawled his name on the signature line at the bottom of the report he had been reading, then dropped it into his wooden outbox and plucked another report from the adjacent inbox. He started reading the new report, then looked up at me. "Is there something else?"
I cleared my throat. "Well, sir ..."
"What is it, Detective?" Clearly, he was getting annoyed.
"Sir, this morning you said it was urgent that we get these autopsy results as soon as possible."
"Yes, I did."
"Almost as if you expected ... something different."
The captain shook his head. "I just like to be thorough."
I kept my mouth shut.
"Now, if there is nothing else," Campo said, "I have work to do."
"Nothing else, sir." I turned around and walked out of his office, trying to hide my limp. My leg was still hurting.
A minute later and at the opposite end of the corridor from the captain's office, I stood in front of the big wooden cabinet that housed the card file. I opened my notebook and flipped to the names of Salvatore Marcello's criminal associates: Paul Di Christina, a.k.a. Paolo Marchese; Graziano Bandini; Joseph Monfre; Guillio Di Martini, a.k.a. Edward Di Martini; and Lazzaro Rapino.
New Orleans Police Department protocol required that anyone listed as a criminal associate on someone else's yellow card had to have a card of his own, even if the card contained nothing but a name.
I opened the drawer labeled Ba-Bi and thumbed through the cards looking for one on Graziano Bandini. I didn't find one. It should have been near the front. There weren't that many names beginning with Ba. I found a Baar, a Babbin, two Babcocks, a Babers, a Babicz, three Babineauxs, a Bachelor, a Bagnato, and a Banducci.
No Bandini.
My first thought was that it had been misfiled. I kept going, finally reaching the last card, for a man named Bizzle.
Still no Graziano Bandini.
Although detectives weren't supposed to remove the cards from the cabinet, sometimes it happened. I had done it myself when I was in a hurry. Maybe a detective had taken the card, intending to get it back by morning.
I glanced at the closed door of the Records Office. The frosted glass window was dark. The clerks took cards from the cabinet all the time to update them. However, at the end of the day they were supposed to put them all back, even the ones they had not yet updated. The purpose of the card file was to give policemen access to basic criminal records twenty-four hours a day.
I pulled my watch from my pocket. It was half past six. The Records Office had been closed for two hours. I stepped over and tried the door, on the off chance that the senior clerk had forgotten to lock it. No such luck.
>
Returning to the card file, I shoved the Ba-Bi drawer closed and pulled open the drawer containing cards for the last names beginning with the letters Da to Di. I started near the back, looking for Di Christina and Di Martini. I didn't find either one. I went to the first card, for one Benjamin Daboub, who had been arrested for urinating in pubic in 1901. I picked through each card all the way to the last one: Nancy Dizon, who had witnessed a murder in 1875.
Still no Paul Di Christina or Guillio Di Martini.
I looked at my notebook again. Paul Di Christina was also known as Paolo Marchese, so I searched the drawer labeled Ma-Me. When I didn't find a card for Paolo Marchese where I expected, I went to the first card in the drawer and thumbed through them all until I reached the last one, a card for a five-year-old child named Albert Mezler, who had been found drowned in a bathtub. It was then I realized that not only had I not found a card for Paolo Marchese, but I had not seen the card for Salvatore Marcello, which I knew had been there this morning.
I searched the drawer again, going through every card from first to last. Marcello's yellow card was gone.
Hurriedly, I searched the appropriate drawers for the last two names on my list, Joseph Monfre and Lazzaro Rapino. I found neither.
As a teenager, I had read the exploits of a fictional English detective named Sherlock Holmes, who had said something that stuck with me through the years, so much so that I had incorporated it into my own real-life detective work: Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Even though the axiom had sprung from the mouth of a fictional character, it seemed an obvious truth. Before jumping to conclusions about the missing yellow cards, I had to eliminate the more mundane possibilities for their disappearance.
Aside from me, the only other person I could think of with a strong interest in Salvatore Marcello and his associates was Bernie Blanchard, the detective investigating Marcello's murder. I closed the last of the card drawers and walked down the hall to the squad room.
Blanchard was at his desk gnawing on an apple.
"Bernie," I said just as he took a big bite.
He looked at me, his mouth full.
"I need to see the yellow cards you pulled on Salvatore Marcello and his criminal associates."
Blanchard choked down the hunk of apple. "I don't have Marcello's card," he sputtered. "I figured you had it because when I went to pull it this afternoon it was gone."
"I looked at his yellow card this morning, but I didn't take it."
"Who did then?"
"I don't know, Bernie. That's why I asked you for it."
He didn't say anything, just glanced down at the half-chewed apple in his hand.
"The cards for all five of his criminal associates are gone too," I said.
Blanchard looked up at me. "Jeez, that's strange."
I knew right then that even if there were some kind of cover-up or conspiracy involving the Axman killings, Bernie Blanchard wasn't part of it. He was too stupid. "Why did you wait until this afternoon to look for your victim's yellow card?" I said. "You caught the case Sunday night."
"I've been busy," he said.
"You didn't mention Marcello's criminal history in your initial report?"
Blanchard shook his head.
"Or that he was a Black Hand man?"
"He was?"
"Jesus, Bernie, don't you know anything about your victim?"
"Why do you think I was trying to pull his yellow card?"
I watched as Blanchard took another bite of his apple. He seemed unconcerned that in the last few hours his victim's yellow card had disappeared, along with those of five other Italian criminals known to be associated with him. "I'll check with Mrs. Thibodeaux in the morning," I said. "If you find the missing cards, let me know."
Blanchard nodded as he chewed.
I turned away and headed for my own desk.
Behind me, Blanchard's chomping stopped. Through a mouthful of apple, he said, "I wasn't even supposed to catch that case. I wasn't up."
The Detective Division worked on the "up" system. We were assigned cases based on the squad roster. When the man ahead of me caught a case, I was next up-hence the name, the "up" system-and I got whatever case came along, whether it was a theft, a robbery, an assault, or a murder. The next detective on the roster caught the next case and so on.
Every detective was expected to help out everyone else on the squad, particularly at a murder scene, but ultimately each case was the responsibility of the primary detective, the one who caught it.
I turned around. "How did you catch it then if you weren't up?"
"Captain Campo assigned it to me."
"Did he say why?"
Blanchard shook his head.
"Who was it supposed to go to?" I asked.
"You."
I stared at Blanchard. Most detectives planned their off-duty time around the roster rotation, scheduling poker nights, ballgames, and family outings when they were far enough down the list so as not to get called out in the middle of the night or on a Sunday. Not me. I had no life left other than the job, so getting called out wasn't an inconvenience to me. Sometimes it was a blessing, saving me from my nightmares. I barely kept up with the roster. When a messenger boy knocked on my door, I went.
Blanchard cleared his throat. "I figured the captain pulled you out of the rotation because of the Axman case."
"Not that I know of," I said, and right then I felt a tingling at the back of my neck, a feeling that an old Army sergeant had once told me meant that a Jerry had you in his sights.
Why would the captain give Blanchard-who everybody knew was the weakest detective on the squad-the Marcello case, which had Mafia vendetta written all over it, when it wasn't even his turn in the barrel? Then just a couple of hours later, when I was still next up in the rotation, there just happened to be another Axman murder.
Maybe it was a coincidence.
CHAPTER 30
AX-MAN IS REAL-LIFE JEKYLL AND HYDE
Retired Detective Dantonio Believes Killer Is The Same Man Who Committed Similar Deeds Several Years Ago.
-The Daily Item
AUGUST 11, 1918
11:00 A.M.
Emile Denoux threw the Sunday edition of Dominick O'Malley's rag of a newspaper, The Daily Item, on the floor next to his desk. He fumed for a couple of minutes, then picked up the newspaper again and reread the article, the blood pounding in his ears.
Is the axman who has been terrorizing New Orleans for the past few months the same man who committed a similar series of crimes here several years ago? Is he a real-life "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"
John Dantonio, retired Italian detective, believes he is.
"I am convinced the man is of a dual personality," Mr. Dantonio said. "And it is very probable he is the man we tried so hard to get back in nineteen eleven, when a series of ax murders was committed within a few months."
"Bullshit!" Emile shouted to the empty second-floor newsroom of The Daily Picayune. "That's not what you told me three months ago after the Maggios were killed. And that's not what Captain Long told me six years ago after the Sciambras were killed."
Across the newsroom, the door to the editor's office flew open and Gene Langenstein sprang out. "What the Sam Hell is going on out here? Who the devil are you yelling at?"
Emile's wooden chair creaked as he swiveled to face his boss. "I'm yelling at The Daily Item. It's crap, Gene, nothing but pro-Ring crap."
The editor marched over in his shirtsleeves and frayed waistcoat, a pair of half-moon reading glasses perched midway down his long nose. "I read it this morning. Every paper in town is carrying a story just like it. Every paper except us."
"Listen to this," Emile said, turning his attention back to the article. "This is John Dantonio they're quoting. 'My opinion is based on experience and a study of criminology. Students of crime have established that a criminal of the dual personality type may be a respectable, law-
abiding citizen when his normal self. Then suddenly the impulse to kill comes upon him and he must obey it. It has been further proved that such unfortunates remain normal for months, even years, without being seized with the affliction. The axman of seven years ago, after being normal all these years, might have broken out again.'"
Emile dropped the newspaper on his desk. "How do you like that?"
"What's wrong with it?" Langenstein said. "It seems reasonable to me, a lot more reasonable than your absurd notion that the police know who the Axman is but refuse to arrest him."
Emile looked up at his editor. "Don't you think it's a little too convenient that after Thompson tries to pin the ax murders on Louis Besozzi-"
"Thompson wasn't trying to pin anything on Besozzi. He was answering a question from a reporter."
"A planted question from Dominick O'Malley."
Langenstein pulled off his reading glasses and aimed them at Emile. "Regardless of where the question came from, someone asked the superintendent a question and he answered it. He said it was possible that Besozzi might be connected to other Axman attacks. Possible. Not certain. Do you understand the distinction?" Before Emile could answer, Langenstein continued, "It would have been irresponsible for him not to have considered it, particularly given Mr. Besozzi's strange background."
"Besozzi wasn't even in New Orleans when most of the attacks happened."
"But no one knew that then," the editor said, his voice growing sharper. "You're losing your objectivity, Emile. You're becoming a laughing stock. Worse, you're making this newspaper a laughing stock. You're making the same mistake as ..."
Emile glared at the editor. "Same mistake as whom?"
Langenstein took a deep breath. "As your father. You're making the same mistake as your father."
"My father was right," Emile said. "The Ring has been cheating, intimidating, and brutalizing the decent people of this city for fifty years, and my father was the only one who had the courage to stand up to them."
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