The Axman of New Orleans

by Chuck Hustmyre

"No," Emile said. "That's not what he believes, not at all. But he's creating this elaborate myth about a maniac to make it easier for the public to later accept the fact that the Axman was never caught, that he simply faded away. Why do you think Thompson has been making those references to Jack the Ripper?"

  "That was Dantonio who mentioned the Ripper case," Langenstein said.

  "They're working together. Dantonio was the department's expert on Italian crime. If he says the attacks aren't the work of the Mafia, then that's what people will believe."

  "Who is he then?" Langenstein insisted, his frustration showing. "Who is the Axman?"

  Emile took a deep breath. "I don't know. But I'm sure he's not a ..." Emile jerked the newspaper back from Langenstein and scanned the front-page article, then quoted Thompson's description of the killer, "... bloodthirsty maniac, filled with a passion for human slaughter. Whoever the Axman is, he's someone the police can't arrest. Or don't want to arrest. Either because of who he is, or who he's connected to. And in my book, that means the Ring."

  "Your job is to report the news," Langenstein said, his voice sounding wearier with each word. "But instead of simply doing that, you've spent most of your time trying to prove that Thompson and his detectives are wrong about the Axman. You've lost your objectivity."

  "You can't be objective about the slaughter of innocent people," Emile said.

  Langenstein looked away for a moment, and when he turned back to face Emile he seemed to be carrying a great weight. "Thompson came to see me yesterday."

  The pit of Emile's stomach tightened. "About what?"

  "He said you were in Gretna, at the Cortimiglia crime scene."

  Emile leaned back in his chair. "It was my day off."

  "You interrupted his press briefing."

  "I asked one or two questions, but he ignored me."

  "When I put you on the shipping news, I told you to leave the Axman story alone."

  Emile's intuition was screaming. He realized Langenstein had been building up to something all along, that he had been steering the conversation toward this moment.

  "What are you trying to say, Gene?"

  Langenstein pulled his watch from his waistcoat, but he didn't open the cover. He just looked at the engraved gold lid then put it back in his pocket. "Thompson also talked to Mr. Phelps."

  Brandon Phelps owned The Daily Picayune.

  "And?" Emile asked, though he knew what was coming.

  Langenstein took a deep breath. "Your services are no longer needed at this newspaper."

  The words fell like a hard blow. Emile had been with The Daily Picayune for ten years, since his father's La Fois d'Orleans had shut down. "You're firing me?"

  Langenstein nodded.

  CHAPTER 37

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30, 1919

  7:00 A.M.

  I got off the streetcar at Louisiana Avenue and walked along Magazine Street to a big blue house with a wide front porch.

  Superintendent Frank M. Thompson's wife answered the door.

  I showed her my badge. "I need to see the superintendent."

  She nodded toward a wooden porch swing. "I'll see if he's available." Then she closed the door.

  I sat down and waited. A stream of people walked past on the sidewalk, men headed to work, women to the markets, children on their way to school. Three boys kicked a ball up the street, dodging motorcars and wagons. I watched them until they were out of sight.

  The door sprang open and the gruff voice of Frank Thompson barked, "You better have a damned good explanation for this intrusion, Detective."

  He was dressed in dark trousers and a white undershirt, his suspenders dangling from his waist. He wore no shoes, just a pair of black socks. His mustache bristled, having not yet had wax applied to it. In his left hand he clutched a copy of this morning's Daily Picayune.

  "Superintendent, I have something important I need to discuss with you," I said.

  "Why couldn't this wait until I got into the office?" He glanced over his shoulder at the table where his wife was setting a plate. "I haven't even eaten breakfast yet."

  "It's not something we can discuss at Central Station."

  "Why the blazes not?"

  I looked at Mrs. Thompson and then back at the superintendent. "It's ... sensitive, sir."

  The superintendent shook his head and let out an exasperated sigh. Then he motioned me inside. His wife handed him a mug of coffee as I followed him past the table, past a plate heaped with steaming scrambled eggs and sausages. No one offered me coffee.

  He led me through the sitting room to a small study beneath the stairs. Inside, a writing desk was pushed up against the far wall. Stacks of police reports, correspondence, and old newspapers cluttered the desktop. Thompson tossed the newspaper he was carrying on top of the jumble and lowered himself into a padded rolling chair behind the desk. He swiveled the chair around to face me, then motioned me to a hard wooden chair in the corner.

  The superintendent wasted no time on pleasantries. "What is it?" he said, raising the white china coffee mug to his lips.

  Since leaving my house an hour ago, I had been trying to figure out the best way to tell the superintendent what I needed to tell him. I had considered and rejected a number of approaches. Now, face to face with the man, my mind floundered and I could not recall even one of the approaches I had considered, any one of which would have been better than staring dumbly at the man who held my career in his hands.

  "I think the Axman killer is a policeman," I blurted.

  The superintendent coughed up coffee all over his undershirt and trousers. "Goddamnit!" he said, lurching to his feet and yanking a handkerchief from his back pocket. "What the Sam Hell are you talking about, Fitzgerald?" he said as he dabbed at the wet brown splotches on his white shirt.

  This wasn't going well. I waited for him to sit down. When he did, he glared at me. "A policeman?" he said. "Have you taken leave of your senses? The Axman is a lunatic, a bloodthirsty fiend. Everyone knows that."

  I shifted uncomfortably in the hard chair. "No, sir, he's not. These murders weren't committed by a madman. This is method masquerading as madness."

  The superintendent shook his head. "I put you on this case against the advice of ... certain ranking members of the department. I can see now that was a mistake. I think your injuries during the war have affected your judgment. Perhaps I can reassign you to something less-"

  "I found a button from a police raincoat at the Pepitone murder scene."

  He frowned.

  "I think it belonged to the killer," I said.

  "There were a dozen policemen in that house, all of them wearing raincoats. Don't you remember the storm we had? That button could have come from any one of them."

  "Not with a single drop of blood on it."

  "What are you talking about? There was blood all over that room. The floor was sticky with it. It was splashed on the walls. Some clumsy patrolman probably bumped up against a bit of blood then snagged his coat and tore off a button."

  "If that had happened there would have been a smear of blood, not a lone drop."

  "You can't know that."

  "Did you get any drops of blood on your clothes?"

  Thompson waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "You're more of a lunatic than the killer."

  "Records connected to the Axman case are missing."

  "What records?"

  "Six yellow cards and at least one murder file."

  "Pepitone doesn't have a yellow card. I told you that."

  "Salvatore Marcello did. Now it's gone, along with all of his criminal associates."

  Thompson jabbed a finger at me. "That's not your case."

  "The Pepitone and Marcello murders are connected."

  "Don't be ridiculous. Marcello was a common criminal. Mr. Pepitone was a respected businessman."

  "So was Joseph Maggio."

  "You're not telling me anything I don't know."

  "Marcello was one of the three
goons who busted up the Maggio funeral last year."

  The superintendent shook his head. "Those men got away. No one was ever able to identify them."

  "Later that night, one of those men killed Teddy Obitz."

  "Hold on just a minute," Thompson bellowed. "You're getting your information from that muckraker Emile Denoux."

  "Denoux was at the funeral," I said.

  "Denoux is a dunderhead."

  "He saw Marcello with his own eyes." I pointed to the newspaper Thompson had just tossed on his desk. "Marcello's photograph was in The Daily Picayune yesterday. There were several people at the Maggio funeral who were not Sicilian. I'll show every one of them that photograph, and one them will confirm it."

  The superintendent's eyes bored into mine. He was trying to take my measure. He must have seen that I wasn't going to back down. "Maybe Marcello was there," he said. "Maybe Joseph Maggio had enemies we don't know about. That doesn't mean the fight at his funeral had anything to do his murder."

  "You can't really believe that."

  Thompson's face was hard. "Yes, I do believe it, because things like that happen. Coincidence doesn't equal conspiracy."

  "But if you accept that Denoux was right about Marcello being one of the goons at the Maggio funeral, then why can't you accept that he saw another one of those same goons later that night engaged in a running gunfight with Teddy Obitz and John Dantonio?"

  The superintendent leaned forward in his chair. His neck was red. "Because I have the statement of a decorated detective that says Obitz was shot by a Negro."

  "Denoux heard the gunman speaking to Dantonio in Sicilian."

  "Denoux is French. He doesn't know Sicilian from Siamese. It was dark, bullets were flying, everything was confused. He can't be sure what he saw or heard." Thompson relaxed. He rolled his chair closer and laid a hand on my knee in a fatherly gesture. "Do yourself a favor, Fitzgerald. Don't put any stock in that man's harebrained ideas. He sank his own reputation and his career. Don't let him do the same to yours."

  The superintendent was near enough so that I could see myself reflected in his eyes. Identical twin images of the present that my imagination split into two possible futures: in one I was still a detective; in the other I was a patrolman walking a night beat in Algiers, a tiny sliver of the city on the far side of the Mississippi River. But I had come too far to turn back.

  "O'Malley's bodyguard, Patrick Shea, the big redhead, drove the three Matranga goons to the Maggio funeral," I said, "and sat in the car while they beat up a dozen people."

  Thompson straightened. "That's absurd."

  I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out the private detective's badge. "This belonged to Salvatore Marcello."

  The superintendent rolled his chair back. "Where did you get that?"

  "Marcello's apartment."

  "He probably stole it," Thompson said.

  I leaned toward the superintendent. "He was with O'Malley's driver at the Maggio funeral." I hefted the brass badge. "He had this in his apartment. His record shows he did Black Hand work for Matranga. What do you think he did for O'Malley?"

  Thompson shook his head. "You still haven't made your point. You said the Marcello and Pepitone murders were connected, but so far all you've done is establish a tenuous link between Marcello and Joseph Maggio. Maybe our investigation missed something between those two, but that doesn't prove a connection between Marcello and Michael Pepitone. So far, the only connection I see is that they both happened to be killed on the same night."

  The superintendent stared at me, waiting for my answer. I met his eyes dead on. "Michael Pepitone killed Salvatore Marcello," I said.

  "What?"

  "Pepitone shot him with the same revolver I found in his nightstand."

  "How could you possibly know that?"

  "I dug the bullets that Mrs. Pepitone fired at her husband's killer out of the wall of her house."

  "And?"

  "Dr. Delachaise matched one of them to the bullet that killed Marcello."

  "What do you mean he matched it?" Thompson snorted through his thick mustache. "There is no legal basis for that."

  "Not in Louisiana, not yet, but several states have-"

  "The last time I checked, New Orleans was in Louisiana."

  "Yes, sir, but the technique is based on scientific-"

  "There are no buts in the law, Detective. Dr. Delachaise is a drunk whose so-called scientific experiments have made him the laughing stock of this city. I wouldn't be surprised if he tried to reanimate the dead so he could talk to them. He's our own Dr. Frankenstein."

  "Dominick O'Malley is connected to the Axman murders."

  "That's preposterous!" Thompson said.

  "Why?" I demanded, my temper overtaking my senses. "Because he's president of the Choctaw Club? Because he's on the Police Board?"

  "Because he's a respected citizen of this city," Thompson said, his face flushed.

  "Bullshit," I said.

  Thompson lumbered to his feet. "I will not sit here and let you insult a pillar of this community."

  I stood up. "Dominick O'Malley is a criminal. Everybody knows that. Even you."

  Thompson slammed his palm on his desk, sending a pile of newspapers tumbling to the floor. "That's slander."

  "Why was O'Malley at the Pepitone murder scene?"

  The superintendent hesitated. "He happened to be driving by. He saw my car, so he stopped to see what was going on."

  "Dominick O'Malley just happened to be driving by the corner of Ulloa and South Scott at five o'clock in the morning?"

  "You have no idea what schedule he keeps," Thompson said. "And neither do I."

  At that moment, I knew I had been wrong about Superintendent Thompson. That he was a Ring lackey was a certainty. No one who wasn't a lickspittle had been appointed police superintendent in more than thirty years, not since David Hennessy, but I had still held out hope that Thompson was basically an honest man, that he knew right from wrong, or at least good from evil, and that he would not condone evil. "What about later that night?" I asked.

  "What about it?"

  "I saw O'Malley and his redheaded goon back at the Pepitone house at ten o'clock."

  The superintendent took a deep breath. "Detective Fitzgerald, I suggest you focus your attention on the Axman case and stop sticking your nose into things that don't concern you."

  I opened my mouth to say something, but before I could get the words out, Thompson jabbed a finger at the door. "You need to leave, Detective. You need to leave right now."

  I turned and walked out.

  CHAPTER 38

  LOUIS BESOZZI RELEASED FROM JAIL

  Murder Charges Dropped Against Sixty-Year-Old German-Italian Once Accused Of Being Enemy Agent.

  -The City News

  MARCH 16, 1919

  10:15 A.M.

  "I got fired," Emile Denoux said as he dropped into a chair across the table from Colin Fitzgerald in the luxurious dining room of the Grunewald Hotel.

  Colin choked on his coffee. "You what?" he said, sputtering and wiping his mouth with a linen napkin.

  Emile laid a copy of that morning's Daily Picayune on the table. "Gene said my services were no longer needed."

  "Why?"

  "Politics," Emile said. "Your boss put pressure on my boss."

  "Thompson?"

  Emile nodded as he picked up the sterling silver pot from the table and poured himself a cup of coffee.

  "But I don't understand," Colin said. "Why would Thompson do that?"

  "Because he's furious at me for having the audacity to challenge his pronouncement that the Axman is a bloodthirsty maniac, filled with a passion for human slaughter, as he so eloquently put it."

  "What are you going to do?"

  Emile dropped three cubes of sugar into his coffee and stirred them in. "I start tomorrow at The City News."

  "That's great," Colin said.

  "I had to call in a favor," Emile said. "All of my favors, act
ually, but I'm going to be writing about the Axman again."

  Colin raised his cup in salute. "So long to the shipping news, then."

  Emile raised his own cup and they sipped their coffees.

  "What about you?" Emile asked. "Have you managed to get yourself assigned to the Axman case?"

  "Not yet," Colin said. "But I'm working on it."

  A waiter approached the table and took their breakfast order: a croissant and half a dozen oysters Bienville for Emile, a steak smothered in mushrooms with a side of scrambled eggs for Colin, another pot of black coffee, and a bottle of Champagne, because it was Emile's strongly held conviction that no civilized Sunday brunch was complete without at least one bottle of Champagne.

  "I see you're getting your appetite back," Emile said.

  Colin nodded. "I'm feeling better."

  When the waiter left, Emile opened the newspaper and pointed to a two-column story on page seven. "Have you seen this?"

  "No," Colin said as he looked at the headline.

  MYSTERIOUS NOTE ADDRESSED FROM 'HELL,' SIGNED 'AXMAN'

  Letter Promises Immunity For All Families Who Have Jazz Music Playing In Their Homes When "Fell Demon From Hottest Hell" Flies Over City.

  "A letter?" Colin asked.

  "The Daily Picayune received a letter from someone claiming to be the Axman," Emile said. "He says he's a demon from hell and that he will kill again Tuesday night at a quarter past midnight, but he will spare anyone playing jazz music in their home."

  Emile traced a finger down the first column until he found the passage he was looking for. "The letter says, 'I am not a human being but a spirit and a fell demon from hottest hell. I am what you Orleanians and your foolish police call the axman.'"

  Emile moved his finger to the second column. "Here he says, 'Well, as I am cold and crave the warmth of my native Tartarus ...'"

  Colin leaned forward to read the newsprint. "What's Tartarus?"

  "In Greek mythology it was a dark pit below Hades, somewhat equivalent to the Christian hell."

  "How would this murderer know that?"

  "He wouldn't," Emile said. "Unless he studied classical literature."

  "Doesn't seem likely."