"Who?"
She shrugged. "Beats me, sweetie. I just work here." As she pushed the cart away, she said, "You might want to buy a good cane, though. You're going to have a limp."
"I already had one."
She laughed again. "I saw your scar. Just be glad you didn't get hit in your good leg."
***
Mrs. Pepitone came to see me that evening. She sat in a hard metal chair next to my bed. Her face was drawn and tired. After the shooting, the L.A. cops had grilled her for twelve hours.
"I told them I shot Monfre," she whispered.
"Why?" I demanded.
"Because I didn't want you to get into trouble."
"You could have gotten yourself into trouble, maybe even arrested."
She shook her head. "The police were nice, but the ... the district ..."
"The district attorney," I said.
She nodded. "The district attorney insisted you were the one who shot Monfre. I told him no, that it was me, that I shot him because he broke into my house with a gun and threatened my life. I said that when you tried to help me, he shot you."
"What about my holster?" Her story would have been an even tougher sell if the police had found an empty holster on my hip that happened to fit the Colt .45 Monfre had been shot with.
She smiled. "I pulled off your belt to tie it around your leg. If you had a holster it must have gotten lost."
"Thank you," I said.
She leaned toward me. "Thank you for saving me from that evil man."
There was a pitcher of water and a glass on a small stand beside my bed. I half-filled the glass and took a sip. Then I remembered the other man, the older heavyset man I had seen Monfre force into the car. "What happened to the man I saw at your house arguing with Monfre?"
She was quiet for a moment. "That was my husband. You met him in New Orleans, Mr. Angelo Albano."
"Your husband," I repeated.
"He has disappeared."
I told her what I had seen at the sidewalk café.
"Monfre said Angelo owed him five thousand dollars for land they bought together in Kenner," she explained. "If a certain man won the election and became the sheriff, they were going to build a gambling house. When Monfre went back to prison, Angelo sold the land and moved here."
"And you moved with him?"
She shook her head. Her hands were folded primly in her lap. "He wrote me letters. He said he was doing well in Los Angeles. He asked me to marry him. I moved here in January. We were married in September."
"Maybe with Monfre dead, the other men will release your husband."
"That is not the Mafia way," she said. Tears formed at the bottoms of her eyes. "Monfre came to our house Sunday morning and demanded that Angelo give him the five thousand dollars, the entire sales price for the land, not just his share. He wanted Angelo's share too.
"That afternoon, Angelo said he was going to the market, but he did not return. That night, I received a note from Monfre saying that if I did not pay him the money, he would kill Angelo.
"When Monfre came back the next day, I tried to tell him that I did not have access to my husband's money, that he kept it in a safe, and that I did not have the combination. He didn't believe me. He had a gun and made me take him to the safe. I took him to my husband's office. The safe is there, but also there was a gun in his desk.
"I shot at Monfre but I missed. Then I ran upstairs to get away. He chased me, so I shot again. I hit him, but he was not hurt too badly. He was going to kill me when you came in."
"I'm sorry you had to go through that."
She pointed toward the glass on the stand. "May I have some water, please?"
"Of course," I said, reaching for the glass to refill it.
She stopped me. "I'll do it. You rest." She poured more water from the pitcher and then took a long drink. I watched the undulating muscles of her throat as she swallowed. Despite all the hard work and tragedy she had been through, she was an attractive woman. And strong.
When she finished, she set down the glass.
"Did the police ask why I was at your house?" I said.
"I told them the truth, that I did not know why you were there. I said you are a policeman from New Orleans and you investigated the murder of my husband. I said you suspected Monfre of killing him and also of killing many others."
"I'm not a policeman anymore," I said.
She nodded. "I read about you in the newspapers before I left New Orleans. You are a very brave man."
"Some say a very foolish man."
She laid a hand on my arm. "All brave men are fools."
An awkward silence hung between us for a moment. Then she pulled her hand away.
I poured the last of the water into the glass and took a sip. I held the glass out to her, and she drank the rest of it.
***
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1921
The next morning, a couple of LAPD detectives came by to talk, but they had already made up their minds about the case and had helped the district attorney make up his. Monfre was a bad guy. No one was sorry to see him dead, and no one cared too much how he got that way.
Even way out in Los Angeles they had heard about the Axman murders. He was like Jack the Ripper, only worse.
"You're pretty sure Monfre was this Axman fella?" asked one of the detectives, a big, raw-boned kid no more than twenty-five years old, with sandy hair and a boxer's nose.
"Positive," I said. "Mrs. Pepitone-Mrs. Albano now-saw him murder her first husband with an ax. She's the one who put that gunpowder burn on his face."
"Funny thing about that gun she used," the other detective said. He was about forty, with straight black hair that hung down over his forehead.
"What's that?" I asked.
"All those forty-five slugs went right through him. Ripped apart organs, shattered bone, tore him up real good, but we found one bullet lodged in his gut. It was smashed up some, but it wasn't quite as big as the ones we dug out of the wall, and it didn't have the same copper jacket."
"That is strange," I agreed.
"If I didn't know better," the detective continued, "I'd think it was a forty-one caliber Remington. Same kind of bullet that might fit that empty derringer we found in a desk drawer downstairs."
I didn't say anything, just poured myself a glass of water.
The older detective eyed me. "Have a safe trip back to New Orleans."
***
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1921
The day the hospital released me, the dark-haired nurse, who, I must say, I had grown quite fond of, gave me a beautiful Irish blackthorn walking stick with a red ribbon tied around the handle. The wood was solid and heavy, almost unbreakable. "Given your dangerous lifestyle," she said with a smile, "I thought I'd give you something that could double as a weapon in case you got yourself into trouble again."
Mrs. Pepitone picked me up in a Packard and drove me to Union Station. She pulled up to the curb outside the passenger terminal. On the seat between us lay a canary yellow lady's hatbox. I had not asked about it on the drive from the hospital.
After setting the brake, she laid a hand on the hatbox. "This is for you."
I was already wearing the new gray suit, shirt, and tie she had bought me while I was in the hospital. I tugged at my lapel. "Will it match my suit?"
She opened the lid. The box was filled with crumpled newspaper. She lifted the top layer. Beneath it lay my holstered Colt .45 pistol. Mrs. Pepitone closed the box and handed it to me. "Be careful."
I nodded.
She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. "Goodbye, Detective."
"Goodbye, Mrs. Pepitone."
I climbed out of the Packard and watched her drive away. Then I limped toward the terminal, leaning on my Irish blackthorn walking stick and carrying my canary yellow lady's hatbox.
CODA
In the spring of 1922, Colin Fitzgerald invited the nurse from Los Angeles to visit him in New Orleans for Mardi Gras. She ended
up staying. They were married that June.
The following April they had a daughter, whom they named Sarah Cate.
On February 20, 1931, Colin was shot and killed as he stepped from a streetcar on Canal Street, one block from his Mid-City home. His killer was never apprehended.
Seventy-five years later, Colin's great-grandson, Sean Murphy, also a detective with the New Orleans Police Department, would solve another series of gruesome murders and rescue the mayor's daughter from a deranged killer who called himself the Lamb of God.
THE END
The Axman of New Orleans Page 36