The Axeman of Storyville (4 page)

He hired a cab and got off at Lee Circle. It was another humid late spring in New Orleans, and the landscaping around the Circle bloomed with fragrant lilacs and roses. Miles's starched shirt under his coat stuck to his back.

He took a moment to gaze up at the colossal monument to General Robert E. Lee, perched atop a slender Doric column, almost sixty feet high. But to Miles, whose parents had known the bondage of slavery, and had himself been born in chains, Robert E. Lee offered no inspiration.

He turned away from it and made his way to the library on St. Charles Avenue.

The librarian left him in the research room with stacks of the
Times-Picayune
from 1918 and 1919, and he spent the next three hours there.

From April to August of '18, rarely did a week go by in the paper without some mention of the horrible Axeman of New Orleans. The mysterious killer struck with alarming frequency in that time, starting with an Italian grocer and his wife. Their throats were sliced open with a straight razor—the woman's so severely that her head was barely attached to her neck when they found her—and their heads bashed in with an axe. No robbery. No motive. No clues.

A little over a month later, another grocer—this one German—was attacked along with his mistress in the living quarters behind his shop. The attacker used the grocer's own hatchet to bludgeon the victims, but this time the victims survived. Their testimony was confused and contradictory, and while leading to several arrests, proved ultimately useless in finding the real attacker.

Another assault on a woman in early August had proved unsuccessful for the Axeman. But just a few days after that, he struck again.

An elderly Italian living with his two nieces was hacked with an axe as he lay in bed, the commotion drawing the attention of his nieces who ran to his aid. Both girls claimed to have seen the attacker leaving through the window, and described him as a dark, heavy man in a black coat and a slouch hat. The uncle died two days later from massive brain trauma.

The police had no solid leads, and the public howled for justice. The last murder set off a wave of hysteria in New Orleans with reported sightings of the Axeman flooding police headquarters and the entire populace gripped with a sort of frantic paranoia. A retired police detective speculated that the murderer could be the same man responsible for a string of similar murders in 1911, but no evidence of that theory ever presented itself.

As panic over the murders reached a fever pitch, the Axeman seemingly vanished.

Miles scanned the newspapers, looking for references to the killer, but as 1918 wore on, there were no new attacks, and gradually the Axeman dropped out of the headlines until March of 1919. Another Italian grocer, Charles Cortimiglia, along with his wife and two-year-old daughter, suffered a brutal attack in their beds. Cortimiglia and his wife survived, but the child was not so lucky.

The mother had been sleeping with the child in her arms when the attack came. The girl was killed instantly by an axe blow to the back of her neck. The mother suffered multiple skull fractures.

Cortimiglia himself was found in a pool of blood. A back panel on the door had been chiseled out. A bloody axe still rested on the back porch. Nothing was stolen.

Upon her recovery, Mrs. Cortimiglia accused their neighbors of the attack, despite her husband's protests. The neighbors, an elderly father and his hefty son, were arrested and tried, and the son was sentenced to death. Almost a year would go by before Mrs. Cortimiglia would retract her accusation, and the father and son set free.

And then came the letter, the infamous letter, sent to the newspapers on March 13.

It read, in part:

The Axeman

That night, it seemed not a single home or dance hall in New Orleans was quiet. Jazz music played from every doorway, every window, and night clubs were filled to capacity.

There were no murders that night.

A popular new tune swept the city shortly after. It was called "The Mysterious Axman's Jazz; or, Don't Scare Me Papa."

Two more attacks after that left both victims alive, but unable to offer investigators any useful information.

The final attack came on the night of October 27. The Axeman's last known victim was a man named Pepitone, head cleaved in by an axe, discovered by his wife, who was unable to tell police anything about the killer even though she saw him fleeing through an open window.

Miles placed the last newspaper on the towering stack of paper and leaned back in his chair. He rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed wearily.

Italian grocers. How odd that so many of the victims fit that description. But not all of them. Just enough to seem unusual, without being of any use as a clue to the killer's motive.

But if the victim's ethnicity had anything to do with their murders, it made the idea of the Axeman working for Matranga and the Black Hand more feasible. After all, weren't their fellow Italians the Black Hand's primary victims?

But the victims now were prostitutes. None of them being of Italian lineage.

It struck him interesting, and disheartening, that the papers now weren't reporting on the series of axe murders in Storyville. Three dead whores and no one cared.

Miles leafed through the papers again until he found the one dated March 13, 1919. He turned to the supposed Axeman's letter, read it again.

He tossed the newspaper on the floor, unmindful of it tearing, and stood up.

If this was indeed the same killer, whether he worked for the Black Hand or not, his days were numbered.
The worst spirit that ever existed
?

Well
, Miles thought.
We'll just have to see about that
.

Sal Ventucci was stocking the canned vegetables when the little bell over the door clanged and the three heavies came in. Matranga's boys. Again.

The one called Antonio had a black eye and a bandage on his jaw, and Sal wondered what sort of hard case could've done that to the big bastardo.

He stood up straight and wiped his trembling hands on his apron; happened every time these gangsters visited, he couldn't help it. He hated this display of fear, but his nerves betrayed him every time.

He thought of his guest, the strange young man staying in the stockroom in back, and, for some reason he couldn't quite grasp, the thought of Matranga's thugs meeting him filled Sal with dread.

"Sal," Antonio said, stepping into the store like he owned it. "We thought we'd just stop by."

It was late morning and there were no customers. Sal Ventucci and the thugs had the place to themselves. One of the goons, a mustachioed slick Sal knew as Petey, locked the door and pulled down the blind.

"Looks like you're closed," he said, in a tiny childish voice, at odds with his hulking frame.

Antonio smiled. A lower tooth was missing since the last time Sal had seen him. "We've come by, Sal, because Mr. Matranga himself is kinda shy."

"Shy? What ... what do you mean?"

"Just what I say. The boss is shy. He don't like to cause a fracas, you know."

"Fracas?"

"He tries to avoid direct conflict and all. So when it looks like there could be a fracas, a little confrontation, well ... he sends me and Petey and Fredrico in his stead."

The three of them started crowding in on Sal, so that the shop owner found himself forced back against the shelves. They boxed him in so close he could smell the aftershave and vague body odor from the thugs.

"See," Antonio said. "The three of us? We ain't shy."

"Now ... now, listen," Sal said. "I told you. I told you boys before. I appreciate the offer, I really do. But I can't afford it, I tell you. I just don't have the money for it."

Antonio shook his head. "I think I know what the problem is here, Sal. It's a communication problem, plain and simple. See, when Mr. Matranga says 'offer,' he doesn't mean quite the same thing you and I might mean. You understand, Sal?"

"I can't give you money I don't have! For God's sake!"

"You ain't thinking it through, Sal." Antonio pushed right up against him, chest to chest. Sal's spine pressed hard against the shelves. The thug never stopped smiling. It was the smile of a simple man, and it filled Sal with terror. Brute violence was nothing to a man like that.

Someone, a potential customer, rattled the door, and Antonio put a stinking hand over Sal's face. The customer rapped on the glass. The thugs waited a long moment before the customer gave up and went away.

Antonio removed his hand and Sal breathed. He felt tears of frustration and shame rolling down his cheeks, and thought again of his guest in the stockroom, the boy his cousin had sent over to stay with him. What would happen if Antonio or Petey or Fredrico discovered him in the store? Would they beat him? Would they kill him?

Antonio said, "Where were we? Oh, yeah. I was saying, Sal, you ain't thinking it through."

A sharp, cold blade pressed into Sal's face, right below his left eye. Antonio grinned at him, so close their noses almost touched.

"There's always more money, even when you think there ain't. And you know, you can't put a price on your wellbeing. I mean, what if something ... bad happened to you? What if ..."

He pushed the blade harder against Sal's flesh.

"... someone came along ..."

The blade edged up Sal's face, toward his eye, and blood dribbled down his jaw and plopped on his apron.

"... and just gouged out your eyeball? Eh, Sal? Then where would you be?"

The one called Fredrico spoke for the first time, a throaty, sibilant voice that made Sal want to piss himself. "Do it," he said. "Slice out his eyeball. I wanna see it."

"Should I, Sal?" Antonio said, smiling.

"Please," Sal said.

"Do it," Petey said in his little boy voice.

Antonio shrugged. "Give the people what they want," he said, and started to push the blade into the soft spot under Sal's eye.

A loud clatter came from the stockroom in back, like a bunch of pots and pans had been knocked over. All three of Matranga's men jumped, and Antonio jerked the blade away from Sal's face.

"What the hell was that?"

"Nothing," Sal said. "It's nothing."

"Someone else here, Sal, you neglect to mention?"

"It's nothing, please!"

Antonio started to say something, when the relative silence of the store was shattered by the loud scratching of a needle on wax, and the cacophonous sound of a hot jazz record blasted their eardrums.

"What the hell!" Antonio said. "Who's here, Sal?"

"A guest, only a guest!"

"Petey, go get 'em. And turn that goddamn racket off before my goddamn skull explodes!"

Petey nodded and started off for the stockroom.

Antonio turned his attention back to Sal. He had to raise his voice to be heard above the caterwauling music. "You should'a told us you had a visitor, Sal. Is it a frail? Maybe we'll have a little party."

"It's just a young man ... my cousin sent him over to stay for a few days, that's all!"

From the back, the needle scratched harshly on the record and the music came to a halt. Something thudded hard against a wall. The pots and pans clattered again, followed by another thud.

Then silence.

Antonio and Fredrico looked at each other.

Antonio called, "Petey?"

No answer.

"Petey, what's going on back there, you
cafone
?"

Still nothing. In a quieter voice, Antonio said, "Fredrico. You packing?"

Fredrico shook his head.

Antonio grimaced. He turned back to Sal. "You stay right where you are, Sal. You understand me? You move one inch and I'll gut you. Got it?"

Sal nodded, blood dripping from his face.

The two thugs headed for the back, Antonio leading. He held his knife in front of him, low, ready to use.

"Whoever's back there," he said. "Come out right now. If I have to come back there and get you, it won't be pretty."

There was no answer.

"You hear me, you
bastardo
? Come out now and I won't cut off your goddamn face!"

The silence from the storeroom was deafening. Matranga's men took another step toward it, and another.

Petey appeared in the doorway.

"Jesus Christ!" Antonio said.

Petey stumbled forward. Blood poured down his face from a gaping wound in his scalp. The bone of his skull gleamed in the dim electric light of the store. He staggered a step or two, looked at Antonio with dull eyes.

"Help ..."

A giant loomed in the doorway behind Petey, a giant with a wide, bland face and huge arms. He held an axe in both ham fists.