The Axman of New Orleans

by Chuck Hustmyre

  He put his handkerchief away and resumed walking. Just ahead stood the recessed doorway to a shop of some kind. The alcove in front of the door was pitch black.

  When Emile was only a few feet from the doorway, two uniformed policemen stepped out of the alcove onto the sidewalk in front of him. Their sudden appearance, coming as it did as if they had materialized out of the darkness, made Emile jump.

  Slightly embarrassed, Emile nodded as he moved to step around them. "Good evening, officers," he said. But the two policemen didn't return his nod or speak, nor did they make room for him to pass. Instead, they stepped directly into his path, deliberately blocking him.

  Emile stared at the policemen. The stood side-by-side, one a full head taller than the other. He looked at their faces, but he could barely discern their features, hidden as they were under the shadows of their round garrison caps.

  "What's the trouble, officers?" Emile asked, noticing that his voice had a slight tremor.

  "No trouble," the shorter patrolman said as he cocked his cap back on his head.

  Emile recognized the rodent face of Jimmy Ferrell, and he felt his guts tighten. Glancing at the taller cop, Emile noticed that he also wore the badge of a supernumerary and that he kept his cap visor angled down, his face lost in shadow.

  "I told you last time," Ferrell said, "at that dago bitch's funeral, that the next time you saw me I'd make you sorry you mouthed off to me. Well, this is that time."

  The blow caught Emile by surprise, even though he was half expecting it. Ferrell's fist hit him just above the belt and doubled him over. For a small man Ferrell hit hard. Emile managed to stay on his feet, but he couldn't breathe. Then the second blow landed on the side of his jaw.

  When Emile opened his eyes he was flat on his back on the sidewalk, with Ferrell standing over him. He heard himself scream when Ferrell kicked him in his right kidney. He screamed again when Ferrell's heavy boot cracked his ribs. Then he rolled onto his side to try to protect himself. And the toe of the cop's boot smashed his face.

  As the vicious kicks continued up and down his body, Emile felt hot tears flowing down his cheeks. The realization that he was crying shamed him even more. He squeezed his eyes shut, but the tears wouldn't stop. The pain was terrible. He heard himself begging Ferrell to stop, promising through ragged breaths to do whatever the policeman wanted if he would just stop beating him.

  But the kicks continued.

  Hot liquid flowed between Emile's legs. He was pissing himself. Then a savage kick struck his lower spine, and he felt his sphincter turn loose. Seconds later the smell of his own feces reached his nostrils.

  "Son-of-a-bitch shit himself," Ferrell bawled.

  "That's enough," the big cop said. "You don't want to kill him."

  Emile opened his eyes and saw boots next to his face. One lifted off the ground. He closed his eyes again, expecting another kick. Instead, he felt the boot press the side of his head, crushing it into the sidewalk. "Who says I don't want to kill him?" Ferrell said.

  "Come on, knock it off," the big cop urged his partner. "Time to use the flask."

  Ferrell lifted his boot off Emile's head. Seconds passed. Nothing happened. Then he felt liquid spilling onto his head and face. He tried to look up, but the liquid splashed into his eyes. It burned. He recognized the smell. Whiskey.

  "Turn him over," the big cop said.

  A boot in his back rolled Emile onto his stomach. His hands were wrenched behind him. The pain made him cry out. He heard the rattle of handcuffs, felt the cold steel clamp over his wrists.

  "Go call a wagon," the big cop said. "He can't walk."

  Emile heard boots stomping down the sidewalk, getting farther away. He tasted blood in his mouth.

  Then everything went dark.

  CHAPTER 43

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1919

  10:15 P.M.

  I was half a block from home when I heard the mutt that had adopted me start barking his head off. My next-door neighbor worked at a noodle factory way out in Saint Rose and left every morning before dawn.

  "Shut up," I told the mutt.

  The dog stood on my porch and kept barking.

  I saw a light go on inside my neighbor's house.

  A bad end to a bad day.

  After dropping the money in the poor box this morning and attending Mass for the first time in a long time, I felt pretty good as I strolled to work. But as soon as I arrived at Central Station, I knew something was wrong. Emile's article had every detective in the squad room on edge.

  Other than a few perfunctory nods, I got little in the way of greeting from my colleagues as I took a seat at the long table in the middle of the room, in front of the stack I had made of the case files for all the Axman attacks. Starting with the very first attack, the July 4, 1911 murder of Joseph Davi and the wounding of his wife, I intended to scrutinize each file, reading every report, every note, every newspaper clipping, looking for patterns and connections between the cases.

  After half an hour of reading, I glanced up and found I was alone in the squad room. I buried my head back in the files and continued reading. A couple of hours later, Captain Bill Campo popped in and told me I had a new case, a killing at a bar on North Dorgenois at Saint Ann Street. "Man stabbed a prostitute," the captain said. "The bar owner has the killer in custody. You'll probably have to take him by Charity on your way to the jail. He needs stitching up."

  The investigation had been simple. Three witnesses had seen the man walk upstairs with the girl. Ten minutes later, he came running down the stairs covered in blood and made a break for an open pair of French doors. After a couple of hearty customers tackled the man, the bar owner found the nineteen-year-old prostitute lying dead on the floor of an upstairs room, three stab wounds in her throat.

  The man, who was tied to a chair when I arrived and who, during the course of being subdued, had suffered two black eyes, a broken tooth, and a deep scalp laceration, admitted to killing the girl. "She laughed at me," said the man, whose name turned out to be Jasper Sutton, a thick-shouldered bricklayer from the part of town called Central City.

  "What do you mean she laughed at you?" I had asked.

  Sutton shook his head to fling away blood that had trickled down to the end of his nose. "When I ... dropped my pants. No man ought to have to take that from a ... from a whore." He spat out the last word as if it were the vilest concept he could imagine, conveniently ignoring the fact that he had been in the process of paying the girl to have sex with him when he killed her.

  I found the knife upstairs under the bed.

  Mr. Sutton was a regular patron of the bar, according to the owner, and had never before caused a problem. It turned out he was married and had two children.

  At two o'clock in the afternoon, the coroner hauled away the dead girl. No one at the bar even knew her full name. The owner said she went by Crystal.

  I finished up at the crime scene an hour later. Just out of curiosity, on my way out the door I asked the bar owner what he was going to do next January when Prohibition took effect.

  He shrugged. "I guess I'll start selling rum from Central America."

  "How are you going to get rum?" I asked.

  He rubbed his index finger along the side of his nose, the sign that what he was about to say was on the sly. "Old Man Matranga is going to bring it up on the banana boats."

  Everybody had a plan for Prohibition.

  I led Jasper Sutton out in handcuffs. A crowd had gathered outside, waiting to catch a glimpse of the killer. While the onlookers had been waiting, they had bought drinks from a bar across the street. They started jeering as my prisoner and I stepped onto the sidewalk.

  After an hour and a half at Charity Hospital, where Sutton had received seventeen stitches, I booked him into the city jail on a charge of murder.

  "How long do you think I'll get?" Sutton had asked me as a deputy sheriff strip-searched him.

  "Five years," I said, "but you'll probably be back home
in less than three."

  He looked surprised. "For murder?"

  "You'll plead guilty to manslaughter and draw the five, but as a bricklayer you'll get a job as a trustee. That will cut your time in half."

  He nodded. "That's not so bad, huh?"

  I stared at him. "Not for you. For that girl you killed, it's not such a good deal. She'll still be dead."

  On the way back to Central Station I had stopped for supper, finally making it to the squad room about six o'clock. The paperwork on the stabbing took three hours. On my way home, I stopped at the Red Stag. Emile wasn't there, so I limited myself to one drink.

  Half a block from my house, I heard the dog start barking. When I stepped onto my front porch he was still barking. He sounded ferocious, so I decided right then to call him George, after the colonel I had met in the field hospital in France.

  "Shut up ... George," I said as I stood at the door, digging into my pocket for the key. By the time I found it, George had stopped barking, so I patted him on the head and gave him a good scratch behind his ears.

  Then he started barking again.

  Behind me a floorboard creaked.

  I dropped the key and turned, reaching under my coat for my pistol.

  The blow caught me full on the jaw. For an instant everything went black. Then a thousand lights exploded inside my head. As my knees crumpled, I reached out and grabbed two handfuls of the rough wool of a work jacket and clung to it like a drowning man clings to a life vest. I forced my eyes open and found myself staring into the square-jawed face of Dominick O'Malley's redheaded bodyguard and driver, Patrick Shea. He was smiling as he drove his big fist into my chest, knocking out what little breath I had left in my good lung.

  I dropped to my knees and toppled forward, barely reaching out in time to stop myself from falling flat on my face. Then I was on all fours, staring at a pair of shoes, black wingtips sprinkled with traces of mud. I raised my right hand off the rough wooden porch and reached for my forty-five, still holstered on my hip.

  Before I could reach the Colt, Shea kicked my left arm out from under me and stepped back as I fell face first onto the porch. I lay there for a minute, my head spinning, ears ringing, unable to draw breath, even my good lung feeling as if it had collapsed. White hot flashes of pain shot up both sides of my jaw, sliced through my ears, and slammed into my brain.

  I felt like I was going to throw up.

  The redhead laughed. "I've got to tell you, boyo, I expected more. The newspaper said you were some kind of war hero."

  I rolled onto my left side, my right hand crawling toward my pistol. Then a wingtip slammed into my stomach. I curled into a ball and vomited. A few more kicks landed. One struck my wounded left thigh so hard I thought the bone had been snapped in half. I screamed.

  The dog was somewhere behind me, still barking. Through the ringing in my ears, I heard his nails digging into the wooden porch. I turned my head and saw him lunge, and saw Shea crack him between the ears with a leather sap. George whimpered once and dropped to the floor.

  I rolled onto my back, my movements so slow it felt like I was swimming in syrup. Only a trickle of air was reaching my lung. My ears felt like they were bleeding. My skull hurt so bad I was sure it had split open. I thought I was dying. I just wanted to take this redheaded bastard with me. I dragged my hand toward my pistol.

  Something tugged at my hip. I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them and saw Patrick Shea down on one knee beside me. He had my forty-five in his hand. "Nice piece," he said.

  I opened my mouth and gagged on my own vomit.

  Shea dropped the magazine from my Colt and racked the slide back. The cartridge that had been in the firing chamber popped into the air. I heard it land on the porch and roll away. He threw the magazine aside. Then he took my right hand and pressed the checkered wooden grips of the forty-five into my palm. "Here you go," he said.

  There was another seven-round magazine in the pocket of my coat, but my left hand wouldn't move.

  He tapped the top of my head with the sap. "Save your strength, lad. You'll need it to drag yourself into the house."

  I fought to take a breath but felt only a sliver of air rattle its way down my throat. I was so utterly humiliated at my physical condition and my inability to strike even a symbolic blow in my own defense that I felt hot tears on my cheeks.

  Taking that as yet a further sign of my weakness, Shea laughed again. "They told me you were a real hard case. I guess they were wrong."

  When I tried to pull the forty-five closer, Shea pressed his knee down on my wrist. "I was told to give you a message," he said. "Stop sticking your nose into things that don't concern you."

  Then something slammed into the side of my head and everything went black.

  ***

  I woke up on my back, George licking my face. When I raised my head the world was spinning. I rolled over and crawled to the door. My key was where I had dropped it. Holding onto the doorknob, I hauled myself to my knees and unlocked the door. Then I threw up.

  I dragged myself inside and crawled down the hall to the kitchen. Using a chair to steady myself, I climbed to my feet and lifted the telephone earpiece off the hook. I leaned against the wall to keep from falling. When the operator came on the line, I told her to put me through to the City Club. The maître d' answered. A few minutes later, I heard the slightly slurred voice of Dr. Louis Delachaise.

  Twenty minutes later he was at my house.

  ***

  "You'll probably live," the doctor said after he finished his examination. He was sitting in a chair beside my bed. "Although I still think you should be in a hospital."

  I shook my head. Explosions went off inside my brain. "No hospitals," I said, my tongue as thick as my shoe. My forty-five lay on the nightstand, reloaded, the hammer cocked, the safety on.

  Delachaise glanced at the clock beside my pistol. It was a quarter past midnight. "In that case," he said, "I hope you have some whiskey."

  "Why?" I mumbled. "Do you think drinking is going to help me?"

  He shook his head. "It won't help you, but it'll certainly help me. Not only did you interrupt my evening, but since you refuse to go to the hospital, I have to keep you awake for a few more hours to make sure that concussion doesn't to kill you."

  "Look on the bright side," I said. "If it does, you get to cut my skull open and study the wound."

  He smiled. "Good point."

  CHAPTER 44

  AXMAN SIGHTINGS REPORTED ALL OVER CITY

  Still No Attacks Since Gretna Grocer's Family Nearly Six Weeks Ago.

  -The City News

  APRIL 19, 1919

  1:00 P.M.

  Emile Denoux glanced up from his bowl of watery, lukewarm gruel that an orderly had assured him was cream of potato soup and saw Colin Fitzgerald walking down the long center aisle of the hospital ward toward his bed.

  "Are they ever going to kick you out of here?" Colin bellowed, laying on the blarney. "Don't they know you're just faking?"

  "I stay for the food," Emile said, dropping the spoon into his bowl and setting it back on the serving tray.

  "I hear it's really good," Colin said, glancing at the nurse's station behind him to make sure she wasn't looking, then sticking his finger in his mouth and mimicking throwing up.

  Emile started to laugh, but a bolt of pain shot through his fractured ribs and stopped him.

  When Colin reached the bed, he patted Emile's shoulder. "How are you feeling, my friend?"

  "Not bad," Emile said. "The doctor says I can go home this week."

  "You look good," Colin said. "Or at least a damn sight better than when you first got here."

  Emile could not remember his trip to Charity Hospital. He learned later that his injuries had been too severe for the jail to accept custody of him when Patrolman James Ferrell and his partner tried to book him for public drunkenness. After Ferrell threatened to leave Emile in the street outside the jail, the ranking sheriff's deputy called
for an ambulance.

  At the hospital, doctors found that Emile had suffered a ruptured kidney, four broken ribs, a punctured lung, a bruised spine, a concussion, a busted ear drum, and two broken teeth, plus assorted bruises and abrasions. He had been in the hospital for a month. It was three weeks before he took his first steps.

  The last thing Emile remembered about that night on Frenchmen Street was looking up and seeing Ferrell pouring whiskey on him.

  The first few days in the hospital were a blur of pain. He recalled only snatches of the conversations he had with his doctor, with Colette, with Colin, and with his new editor, Raymond Schwartz, who was still upset about the damage to his motorcar. Emile had a vague recollection that his former editor, Gene Langenstein, had also come to see him.

  According to Colin, no charges had been filed against Emile. Ferrell's report claimed he and his partner had found Emile lying on the sidewalk, battered and drunk. He had no wallet and appeared to have been robbed. In his report, Ferrell had offered no explanation as to why he and his partner had been more than two miles from their assigned post when they stumbled across Emile.

  "Did you read the papers today?" Colin asked, pointing to a stack of them resting on a small stand beside the hospital bed.

  Emile shook his head. "I haven't read a newspaper since I got here.

  "Why not?"

  In the next bed, a man groaned and called for the nurse.

  Emile was still having trouble concentrating, with staying focused. It was as if his attention span had been significantly shortened. The doctor said it would pass. Emile hoped he was right. "Why not what?" he said.

  Colin pointed again to the stack of newspapers. "Why haven't you been reading?"

  Emile raised a hand to his forehead. "Reading gives me a headache." He lifted the food tray off his lap and held it out to Colin. "Can you get rid of this, please?"

  Colin set the tray on top of the newspapers. "People have been seeing the Axman around every corner. Central Station gets half a dozen calls a night. Every grocer in the city claims to have found strange footprints on his back porch. People are keeping their axes under their beds so the killer can't find them."