The Axeman’s Jazz Read online

  ‘You been in America long?’ he asked.

  ‘Six weeks, sir. I came over from Dublin.’

  Michael nodded. ‘My mother was from Dublin.’ He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his desk, turning the butt methodically before emptying the ashtray into the wastebasket by his feet.

  ‘So you thought you’d come to America and be a policeman?’

  ‘To be honest, sir, I never saw myself as a cop, but . . . you were the only ones hiring Paddies.’

  The boy grinned at the joke, or maybe at the truth of the situation, and Michael smiled back at him.

  ‘Why are you bringing me these?’

  ‘They’re three unsolved murders, sir, from 1911. I thought they matched the Axeman murders.’

  Michael studied the pages, flicking through them at speed. He noted the descriptions of the victims, their addresses, the means by which they had been killed, and his mind began to conjure up reasons for an eight-year hiatus.

  ‘You found these in the records room?’ he asked. ‘In the basement?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ mumbled Kerry.

  ‘And what were you doing in the basement?’

  ‘Well . . .’ An embarrassed expression descended onto Kerry’s face. ‘Lodgings are hard to come by at the moment.’

  Michael gave him a look, half-pitying, half-confused. Why wasn’t he living with the other new recruits in the patrolmen’s dormitories? And why was he spending his spare time going through old police reports?

  ‘Thank you for bringing these to my attention,’ Michael said.

  ‘Thank you, sir. The supervising officer was Detective Hatener. I thought maybe—’

  ‘Hatener?’ repeated Michael, and he flicked back through the reports.

  ‘I thought maybe—’ But before the boy could finish Michael had risen from his desk and was marching across the bureau floor.

  6

  Luca D’Andrea tramped down the grand avenue of Canal Street in the midday sun. Trams, carriages and the occasional motorcar rattled past him in the middle of the street, and on the banquettes people bustled about the shops and stalls. He trudged past department stores, restaurants and diners, past praline-sellers and coffee-cart men. He breathed in the aromas wafting through the city, chicory and spices, cologne, manure, chartreuse and gumbo, exhaust fumes and sweat. When he passed the boys outside the saloons hawking newspapers in whiney yelps, his head began to ring. The cascade of people, the sights and the noises, made him feel queasy, and he wondered if he was feverish from the long walk or the lack of food.

  He put a hand to his head and slowed his pace. It all seemed too much – the billboards, the glare of the sun, the eyes of the people rushing past, the buildings crowding together street after street. The things of the world in all their forms loomed into his mind, making him feverish and weak. He felt that everything was wrong in some indefinable way – that the world he’d been thrown back into was unfamiliar, malevolent. Claustrophobia rushed over him and the banquette swirled beneath his feet. He lurched backwards, reeling into the storefront of an oyster saloon, sending waves rippling dangerously across the sheet-glass window.

  He struggled for breath and felt his heart rushing, a cold sweat breaking out across his chest. He closed his eyes and amid the darkness, an image shimmered into his mind – the lonesome, calming fields of Angola, the bulrushes swaying in the wind.

  He breathed as deeply as he could and snapped his eyes open. The world blurred in and out of focus, rolling and sharp, and came to rest on a little girl, standing on the street in front of him. She wore a summer dress of deep-blue cotton, and her mimosa-gold hair was held in place by rhinestone barrettes that glinted in the sunlight. She frowned, green eyes sparkling up at him.

  ‘You OK, mister?’ she asked, curious and concerned.

  Luca heaved air into his lungs and nodded.

  ‘Anna!’ A man shouted in a hawkish voice, and Luca looked up to see a broad-chested Cajun standing a little further down the street, scowling at them. The girl gave Luca a last sympathetic smile, turned on the balls of her feet, and skittered off up the road.

  Luca bent double and caught his breath. He wondered what the hell had happened to him – a palpitation, sunstroke, nerves? When he felt his heart beat a little slower, he pushed himself off the storefront, regained his balance, and stumbled on, perspiration dripping from his brow. The crowds eased as he reached the poorer end of the street, and the feeling of suffocation receded a touch. As he continued his journey, the shops lining the street became dingier and more decayed, the apartments above them sporting red velvet curtains and placards with gaudy adverts drawn on them for the ‘voodou priestesses’ whose parlors were housed within.

  Luca remembered arresting a Haitian woman in one of those apartments years before. The woman had kicked and screamed and even bitten one of Luca’s team in the neck, sending a blast of blood fountaining into the air. Luca had to hit her with his nightstick to restrain her, and the woman had spat in his face and cursed him. A voodou curse, the woman had sneered. At the time Luca had laughed, but now, as he returned to New Orleans, he wondered about the power of curses.

  He turned left off Canal Street, slowly regaining his composure, the panic leaving his body, and he made his way southwards down the quieter back alleys beyond. The tall stone-clad department stores gave way to low-lying tenements and gloomy shops, all packed into narrow, shady streets. After a while, Little Italy crept up on him, along with a wistful nostalgia, the lonely kind, where the sadness of losing the past outweighs the consolation of memory.

  He had returned to a city that considered him a pariah, and he realized with regret that he was hurtling towards old age with nothing to show for all his years – not a career, nor a family, nor any friends he could trust, nor even a penny in the bank. He had as much in the world as he did when he had first arrived at Carlo’s thirty years before. He felt the anxiety from earlier return in a lesser form, but he breathed deeply and pushed hard to keep it out of his mind, and he surprised himself by managing to suppress it.

  He carried on walking for a few minutes more and arrived at his destination, a three-story building set behind a sprawling walled garden. He knocked on a dark wooden gate and waited, and after a few seconds a panel in the gate slid open and a face peered out at him.

  ‘Luca! Luca, sei tornato!’ said a hoary voice, and the gate swung open.

  He was back where he had started.

  A few minutes later, Luca was sitting in a sparsely decorated reception room that had hardly changed in the five years since he’d last been in it. Old wood furniture and whitewashed walls, bare except for the occasional picture or photograph of a forebear. Light was slanting in from a row of windows on one side, beyond which was a meticulously tended vegetable garden.

  In the stillness his mind drifted back to the first time he’d ever been in the house. Luca had arrived in New Orleans at the age of fourteen with his parents, two peasants from Monreale in northwestern Sicily. Within a few months of their arrival both parents had died in a cholera epidemic and Luca was left penniless and completely alone. He did what all immigrants do when they are in need and have no one to call on: he sought out his countrymen, and managed to land work as an errand-boy for Carlo Matranga’s family.

  When he reached his eighteenth birthday, he was urged to join the police force, being one of the few Family employees who didn’t yet have a criminal record. Luca worked his way into the detective bureau, and while solving crimes legitimately, he also helped out Carlo and the rest of the Matrangas. He leaked information, made evidence disappear, coerced his colleagues into taking bribes, and worst of all, framed innocent people for the Family’s crimes. When Luca was indicted on Michael’s evidence, the Family paid off the judge to ensure he was given the most lenient sentence possible. The last time Luca had seen Carlo was just before the trial, in this very room, where the two of them had eaten lunch with the judge.

  Luca stood and paced the room. He noticed a maho
gany table in a corner by the windows and approached it. On the table was a gramophone, the box made of cherry wood inlaid with pearl, the tulip-shaped horn painted sky blue and gold. Luca turned the disc on the platter and read the label – ‘The Victor Talking Machine Company Presents Titta Ruffo & Enrico Caruso Singing Verdi’s Otello’.

  He smiled. He had heard Carlo play the record a hundred times. He thought about winding up the gramophone, putting the silver nautilus shell that housed the needle onto the record and listening to the bittersweet music. He had heard music while he was in Angola, the work-songs of the men, hard songs tinged with gospels and sweat and the clang of chains, but he hadn’t heard real music, with violins and clarinets and the sonorous voices of his countrymen. He was about to wind up the machine when the door opened and Carlo hobbled in.

  ‘Don Carlo,’ said Luca, bowing his head. Carlo approached and Luca bent to kiss his hand, but before he had a chance the old man caught him in a hug. He smelled the washing powder on Carlo’s clothes, the tang of aftershave on his neck, and for some reason, a little of his nausea returned. They broke apart and smiled at each other. Carlo Matranga was a slight man, with a soft, grandfatherly face and close-cropped hair that had turned a creamy white. Luca noticed with a pang of sadness that Carlo’s dark, piercing eyes had dimmed, becoming milky and glazed, as if adjusting themselves already to the world beyond.

  They sat on a pair of wicker chairs by the windows and a maid brought them water and wine and small plates of anchovies, olives and cheese, the richness of it all turning Luca’s stomach. They spoke of Luca’s time in prison and Carlo asked him what his plans were. Luca tried to gauge whether the old man was taking it for granted that he wanted to return to his old way of life, and Carlo, always astute, picked up on Luca’s hesitation.

  ‘You are welcome to come back and work for us,’ said Carlo, ‘if you want, that is.’ There was no rising intonation to the remark, but Luca recognized it as a question, and he smiled awkwardly. He dreaded the idea of going back to the life he had previously lived. When he had lain on his bunk in Angola at night and thought of all the hurt he had caused, nervous pains seared through his gut, a folding over of his intestines that kept him awake. He thought of the phrase ‘a broken man’, and could not deny its appropriateness. He could admit none of this to his padrino, of course – he had obligations, dues to pay, expectations to fulfill. Extricating himself would be a delicate, fragile process.

  ‘I had all my money in the bank,’ said Luca, trying not to sound self-pitying, and Carlo nodded knowingly.

  Before he had been convicted, Luca had liquidated all his assets and entrusted the money into the care of Ciro Poidomani, a corpulent old Neapolitan who acted as an under-the-counter banker for the city’s criminal element. A few weeks before Luca was released, he discovered through the prison grapevine that Ciro had been arrested. Luca’s life savings, as well as the money of half the criminals in New Orleans, had been seized by the police, with Ciro facing a string of money-laundering charges. If Luca had been let out just a few weeks earlier, he would still have his life’s savings – something, at least, to show for all his years.

  ‘Would you like money?’ asked Carlo, studying Luca with an eagle ’s stare.

  Luca shook his head. ‘I’d like a job. Temporarily,’ he said, ‘I want to return to Monreale.’

  Carlo paused for a moment, staring at Luca, then he laughed softly, indulgently.

  ‘This is your home, Luca,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing for you in Monreale. What would you do there?’

  Luca shrugged. ‘I could open a café, run a shop . . .’ he said, suddenly feeling foolish.

  Carlo peered at him, and realizing Luca’s feelings were sincere, he softened his tone.

  ‘You’re a man of the world, you could never be a shopkeeper,’ he said, shaking his head, as if admitting an unarguable truth.

  Luca smiled. ‘I don’t want to die in America,’ he said. ‘If you can give me a job, I’ll save enough for a ticket and to start a business when I get there.’

  Carlo eyed him with something Luca guessed was disappointment, and he prepared himself for a refusal, to be reminded of the debt he owed the Family.

  ‘After everything you have done for us,’ Carlo said, ‘I will give you this money. You don’t have to work for it.’

  Luca wondered if the old man was being sincere, or if his offer was a test. He smiled and shook his head.

  ‘If you give me the money, then I’m nothing more than a beggar.’

  Carlo nodded slowly. ‘Always so proud,’ he muttered, before turning to stare at Luca with a searching expression. ‘And what of the unfinished business?’ he asked.

  Before Luca had gone to Angola, there was talk of retribution against Michael. It wouldn’t have saved Luca from prison, but it was thought it should be done for the honor of the thing – the execution of traitors was expected. But Luca had vetoed the idea, saying that revenge was his to take alone, that he would deal with the matter on his return. The truth was he still cared about Michael.

  ‘I think it can wait,’ he said.

  Carlo sighed and nodded, and Luca wondered again if the old man was disappointed in him.

  ‘There is a job you can do for me,’ Carlo said, and he motioned towards the garden.

  Luca was not expecting him to acquiesce so readily and he wondered if he had made his terms clear. They stood and the old man put his sallow, flecked hand on Luca’s shoulder. ‘Come. We’ll talk outside,’ said Carlo. ‘Tell me, Luca, have you heard of the Axeman?’

  7

  Ida left the wake a little after one and returned to the office on foot, journeying westwards through the Vieux Carré. The French Quarter was the postcard section of New Orleans, the part the tourists came to see, ancient buildings, shadowy courtyards, balconies of wrought iron finer than lace. With the deftness of a big-city dweller, she dodged the sightseers staring up at the buildings, and skirted past the hawkers that flooded into New Orleans daily, the fruit-sellers, the colporteurs, the rags-bottles-and-bones men, and the thousand and one other shades of huckster who sold their wares on the streets and announced themselves with ditties of their own invention, half-shouted, half-sung.

  ‘My horse is white, my face is black, I sells my charcoal two bits a sack.’

  Ahead of her the banquette was obstructed by an oyster-seller filling a bucket with his wares. Many of the houses in the quarter had buckets attached to their balconies. The buckets could be lowered to the street via a rope, so the ladies of the house could conduct business with the hawkers without ever leaving their apartments. Ida watched as the oysterman called out to a woman three stories above him and the bucket began to sway its way upwards. Ida crossed the street, aware that a slip of the woman’s hand could result in a rain of seafood.

  She turned a corner and entered the French Market. Rows of Negro women sat along the edge of the banquette, dressed in dazzlingly colored tignons, starched white aprons and skirts of blue calico, with fichus of intricate needlework draped over their shoulders. They sold breads and cakes and pralines from trays they placed on the street in front of them, fanning their wares with palmetto fans and joking with each other. In the center of the market the farmer’s stalls were busy with customers, it being the middle of the lunch hour, and in the far distance an advertising wagon for a furniture sale made its way along an avenue, a jazz ensemble on the flatbed blaring out music to draw a crowd.

  The music of the jazz band mingled with the songs of the hawkers and Ida wondered if other cities were like this, music forever making itself heard, either up close and brash, or soft and distant, haunting the streets. She thought of gumbo ya-ya, the Creole expression – gumbo meaning a mix, and ya-ya meaning ‘to talk’, the two words together meaning ‘everybody talks at once’.

  She passed the last of the market stalls, veered around the advertising wagon and its cargo of raggedy musicians, and trotted up the front steps of a tall, nondescript office building. She made her w
ay to the third story and, traversing a long, echoing corridor, approached a glass-paneled door with the words Pinkerton National Detective Agency stenciled on it in faux-gold paint with black trim.

  She opened the door gently and entered the lobby with soft, ballet-shoe steps. The blinds were down and the room was smothered in an inky blue half-light that caught the motes of dust suspended in the air. She tiptoed along the floorboards, past her desk, and snuck up to the opaque glass partition that separated the reception area from Lefebvre’s office. She pressed her face against the frosted glass and peered into the room beyond. Lefebvre was where she expected him to be; in his chair, asleep, a solitary tumbler and an empty bottle of rye on the desk in front of him.

  She crept towards the tabular wooden filing cabinets in the reception area, took some files out and returned with them to her desk. She sat and read through them, squinting in the darkness, copying information into a notebook. She looked up every few minutes, through the frosted glass, to make sure Lefebvre’s broken image hadn’t moved. Making copies of agency information was a sacking offence – not that Ida thought Lefebvre had it in him to get rid of her. The New Orleans bureau of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency only had two employees. Sacking Ida would have reduced the workforce by half, and hiring a replacement required time and effort, both of which would have got in the way of Lefebvre’s drinking. And not even business got in the way of Lefebvre’s drinking. So much so, that by the time Ida had been appointed, he had let the bureau slide into a terminal decline.

  The Pinkertons had never really had much business in the South to begin with – during the War Between the States, they were employed by Lincoln as a de facto state security agency, and the connection still tainted their reputation. Although the lack of work had its advantages, Ida couldn’t help but get frustrated at times. She had never really wanted to work for the Pinkertons; she’d wanted to join the police force, but she was doubly excluded, firstly on account of her sex, and secondly, under the only-one-drop rule, on account of her race as well. So the Pinkertons were her only viable option – she could lie about her race if she needed to, and her sex didn’t matter, because the Pinkertons, unlike other agencies, employed females in detective roles. Ida had learned of this, years before, in one of the pulp detective magazines she collected assiduously.