Through the usual street sources and the Italian social clubs, New York detectives found out about a Murder, Inc. contract on “Finnie Chapman.” The whispered explanation was of retribution for the poisoning of Joe Licata. The papers wrote extensively about: “The unfortunate death of the beloved Capt. George Maxwell and his men. A group of New York’s finest, led by the brave Captain of Detectives George Maxwell, were caught in the explosion of what appears to have been a Nazi bomb factory in lower Manhattan.” Rumors were circulating among the cops that Vito Genovese, still hiding out in Mussolini’s Italy, was the sponsor and that he was somehow hoping to return to the new world. Genovese was also said to be behind other killings, including the Scalise murder in 1939.
Willy Anderson interviewed Genovese’s ex-wife Anna Petillo Genovese with whom Don Vito was known to still be in friendly contact. The lady was adamant and had the nerve to repeat that that she barely knew her very own bodyguard Joe Licata. He was just a nice Italian man who drove her around once in a while: “We dated a little, in a friendly way but that was all…I’m sorry he had to go like that.” she commented. She had no recollection of anyone called Vincent Chapman and didn’t react when shown several pictures. She even claimed to know Maria Nicolosi only in passing, as “the lady who ran a very good Italian restaurant, but more of an acquaintance than a friend.” Mrs. Petillo couldn’t remember spending New Year’s Eve at the Isle of Capri in 1939 or the murder of Bruno Scalise register any reaction. “Bruno who?” she asked earnestly. “I must have been drunk by that time of night! My mind was on other things.” she said laughing. Anderson understood this was a dead end and dropped the Italian angle as a complete waste of time.
It was increasingly difficult to attribute the explosion on Great Jones Street to “an accident, or a gas leak” especially after the people living in the neighborhood saw and felt the sheer power of the blast. Reporters kept asking questions and writing about spies and saboteurs. Finally J.Edgar Hoover decided to cast a much wider net in the search for Fred Vickers-Vincent Chapman and ordered that local FBI offices actively look for the fugitive without publicizing his likeness. It was kept low key with small teams fanning out, showing sketches and asking questions. The likeness was distributed to policemen at most border crossings, and at hotels and boarding houses in major cities throughout the country.
After two weeks of knocking on doors a desk clerk at the Bourbon Street Hotel tentatively identified Fred Vickers as the man who spent the night of July 3 and left very early the next morning. He was positive because there were so few tourists that he easily remembered the lone civilian from a few weeks before. He had no information other than he left very early with several duffel bags. The reason he remembered it so well was because it was the Fourth of July and no one was around that early.
Both ONI and the FBI had orders to find “Fred Vickers/ Chapman” as quickly as possible but the trail went cold the moment he stepped out of the hotel; no other establishment remembered seeing anyone looking like him. Ten days had already past since he’d last been seen making the search all the more difficult. A local detective checked on ferry boat departures to the islands, including Cuba but no employee had any recollection of a man resembling Vickers. If he had sailed into the Gulf, ten days was more than enough time to disappear. Anderson was about to return to New York when agents checking on the smaller boats that had sailed out of New Orleans found only two recent departures: the Norbert on the morning of July 4th and the Andrew Jackson II on the 6th the latter having already returned with its passengers while no one remembered seeing the Norbert leaving the harbor early on Independence Day.
The Norbert moved slowly down the Gulf of Mexico, hugging the coast of Honduras and Nicaragua. By the time they reached Costa Rica both Horace Nelson and his son Eddy were feeling uneasy. Where did Alderman intend to catch fish? They kept navigating very close to the coastline heading south and Horace Nelson dared not interrupt Mr. Alderman who seemed to be interested only in a notebook he was writing in, with no interest in fishing. ‘The customer sets the course’, was Horace’s favorite saying and Mr. Alderman was fully paid up in good hard cash. By day thirteen the man was making him positively nervous and Horace decided to ask where he ultimately intended to go. Eddy was even more wary, repeating “the guy gives me the creeps, Pa!”
Fred knew that he’d soon have a problem and was prepared accordingly. He asked Horace for a map of the area and pointed to a spot about fifty nautical miles east of the border line between Panama and Costa Rica.
“That’s where we should stop overnight and wait until morning.” He told a puzzled Horace Nelson who was chewing nervously on his pipe.
“But … it might be best if we went to the nearest port. Look, we’re only about two hours from Limòn in Costa Rica, we could stay there for the night and load up on additional supplies.”
Fred understood that the time was at hand. He stood up and said:
“Fine Horace, but first let’s get to that spot I showed you. We wait there and do a little night fishing, if it doesn’t materialize we return to Limòn by morning.”
Horace Nelson smiled and chewed on his pipe as Fred went below deck to unpack one of his canvas bags. Forty five minutes later they reached the exact spot on the map. Fred quickly pulled out one of the lamps to disconnect the radio. Then he slipped his .45 revolver into his belt and returned on deck. Eddy was reading a comic book up front and Horace was busy preparing the evening dinner while the boat was at a standstill. This was the moment.
Fred drew his gun and shot Horace twice in the back of the head. As the man staggered and collapsed over the foodstuffs, Eddie turned around much too surprised to even utter a scream. Fred had time to aim and shoot him once in the forehead, the body collapsed jerking violently backward on the deck. In less than two minutes both Nelsons, father and son were dead just as the final rays of the Caribbean sun painted the red horizon. Fred quickly emptied their pockets and tightly wrapped each body in the duffel bags, weighing them down with heavy pieces of metal plate. Each body weighed over three hundred pounds once he was finished with it and he slipped one after the other into the deep. Then he quickly went about altering the name of the vessel, rubbing off the paint of the old Norbert to read Albert III. He swabbed the decks clean of blood, searched the papers and charts removing any trace of Horace Nelson Trumbull and his son Edward Horace.
Then finally he set a new course due south calculating that he would reach the vicinity of Maracaibo in less than twenty hours.