The Bottler was round, inoffensive, well-dressed, affable. He was also generous, as the East Side employs the term. Any one could touch him for a quarter upon a plea of beef stew, and if plaintively a bed were mentioned, for as much as fifty cents. For the Bottler was a money-maker, and had Suffolk Street position as among its richest capitalists.
What bridge whist is to Fifth Avenue so is stuss to the East Side. No one save the dealer wins at stuss, and yet the device possesses an alluring feature. When the victim gets up from the table, the bank under the descriptive of viggresh returns him one-tenth of his losings. No one ever leaves a stuss game broke, and that final ray of sure sunshine forms indubitably the strong attraction. Stuss licks up as with a tongue of fire a round full fifth of all the East Side earns, and to viggresh should be given the black glory thereof.
The Bottler owned talents to make money. Morally careless, liking the easy way, with, over all, that bent for speculation which sets some folk to dealing in stocks and others to dealing cards, those moneymaking talents found expression in stuss. Not that the Bottler was so weak-minded as to buck the game. Wise, prudent, solvent, he went the other way about it, his theater of operations being 135 Suffolk. Also, expanding liberally, the Bottler endowed his victims, as—stripped of their last dollar—they shoved back their hopeless chairs, with not ten, but fifteen per cent, of what sums they had changed in. This rendered 135 Suffolk a most popular resort, and the foolish stood four deep about the Bottler's tables every night in the week.
The Bottler lacked utterly the war-heart, and was in no wise a fighter. He had the brawn, but not the soul, and this heart-sallowness would have threatened his standing save for those easy generosities. Gangland is not dull, and will overlook even a want of courage in one who, for bed and beef stews, freely places his purse at its disposal.
There are two great gangs on the East Side. These are the Five Points and the Monk Eastmans. There are smaller gangs, but each owes allegiance to either the one or the other of the two great gangs, and fights round its standard in event of general gang war.
There is danger in belonging to either of these gangs. But there is greater danger in not. I speak of folk of the Bottler's ways and walks. The Five Points and Eastmans are at feud with one another, and the fires of their warfare are never permitted to die out. Membership in one means that it will buckler you against the other while you live, and avenge you should you fall. Membership in neither means that you will be raided and rough-housed and robbed by both.
The Bottler's stuss house was—like every other of its kind—a Castle Dangerous. To the end that the peril of his days and nights be reduced to minimum, he united himself with the Five Points. True, he could not be counted upon as a shtocker or strong-arm; but he had money and would part with it, and gang war like all war demands treasure. Bonds must be given; fines paid; the Bottler would have his uses. Wherefore the Five Points opened their arms and their hearts to receive him.
The Eastmans had suffered a disorganizing setback when the chief, who gave the sept its name, went up the river for ten years. On the heels of that sorrowful retirement, it became a case of York and Lancaster; two claimants for the throne stood forth. These were Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, both valorous, both with reputations of having killed, both with clouds of followers at their backs.
Twist, in whom abode the rudiments of a savage diplomacy, proposed a conference. Fitzpatrick at that conference was shot to death, and Kid Dahl, a near friend of Twist, stood for the collar. Dahl was thus complacent because Fitzpatrick had not died by his hand.
The police, the gangs and the politicians are not without a sinister wisdom. When life has been taken, and to punish the slayer would be an inconvenience, some one who didn't do the killing submits to arrest. This covers the retreat of the guilty. Also, the public is appeased. Later, when the public's memory sleeps, the arrested one—for lack of evidence—is set at liberty.
When Fitzpatrick was killed, to clear the path to gang leadership before the aspiring feet of Twist, the police took Dahl, who all but volunteered for the sacrifice. Dahl went smilingly to jail, while the real murderer of Fitzpatrick attended that dead personage's wake, and later appeared at the funeral. This last, however, by the nicer tastes of Gangland, was complained of as bordering upon vulgarity.
Fitzpatrick was buried with a lily in his hand, and Twist was hailed chief of the Eastmans. Dahl remained in the Tombs a reasonable number of weeks, and then resumed his position in society. It was but natural, and to the glory of stumbling human nature, that Dahl should dwell warmly in the grateful regard of Twist.
Twist, now chief of the Eastmans, cast about to establish Dahl. There was the Bottler, with his stuss Golconda in Suffolk Street. Were not his affiliations with the Five Points? Was he not therefore the enemy? The Bottler was an Egyptian, and Twist resolved to spoil him in the interest of Dahl.
Twist, with Dahl, waited upon the Bottler. Argument was short and to the point. Said Twist: “Bottler, the Kid”—indicating the expectant Dahl—“is in wit' your stuss graft from now on. It's to be an even break.”
The news almost checked the beating of the Bottler's heart. Not that he was astonished. What the puissant Twist proposed was a commonest step in Gangland commerce—Gangland, where the Scotch proverb of “Take what you may; keep what you can!” retains a pristine force. For all that, the Bottler felt dismay. The more since he had hoped that his hooking up with the Five Points would have kept him against such rapine.
Following the Twist fulmination, the Bottler stood wrapped in thought. The dangerous chief of the Eastmans lit a cigar and waited. The poor Bottler's cogitations ran off in this manner. Twist had killed six men. Also, he had spared no pains in carrying out those homicides, and could laugh at the law, which his prudence left bankrupt of evidence. Dahl, too, possessed a past as red as Twist's. Both could be relied upon to kill. To refuse Dahl as a partner spelled death. To acquiesce called for half his profits. His friends of the Five Points, to be sure, could come at his call. That, however, would not save his game and might not save his life. Twist's demand showed that he had resolved, so far as he, the Bottler, was concerned, to rule or ruin. The latter was easy. Any dozen of the Eastmans, picking some unguarded night, could fall upon his establishment, confiscate his bankroll, and pitch both him and his belongings into the street. The Five Points couldn't be forever at his threatened elbow. They would avenge him, certainly; but vengeance, however sweet, comes always over-late, and possesses besides no value in dollars and cents. Thus reasoned the Bottler, while Twist frowningly paused. The finish came when, with a sickly smile, the Bottler bowed to the inevitable and accepted Dahl.
All Suffolk Street, to say nothing of the thoroughfares roundabout, knew what had taken place. The event and the method thereof did not provoke the shrugging of a shoulder, the arching of a brow. What should there be in the usual to invite amazement?
For six weeks the Bottler and Dahl settled up, fifty-and-fifty, with the close of each stuss day. Then came a fresh surprise. Dahl presented his friend, the Nailer, to the Bottler with this terse remark:
“Bottler, youse can beat it. The Nailer is goin' to be me partner now. Which lets you out, see?”
The Bottler was at bay. He owned no stomach for battle, but the sentiment of desperation, which the announcement of Dahl provoked, drove him to make a stand. To lose one-half had been bad. To lose all—to be wholly wiped out in the annals of Suffolk Street stuss—was more than even his meekness might bear. No, the Bottler did not dream of going to the police. That would have been to squeal; and even his friends of the Five Points had only faces of flint for such tactics of disgrace.
The harassed Bottler barred his doors against Dahl. He would defend his castle, and get word to the Five Points. The Bottler's doors having been barred, Dahl for his side at once instituted a siege, despatching the Nailer, meanwhile, to the nearest knot of Eastmans to bring reinforcements.
At this crisis O'Farrell of the Central Office strolled into the equation. He himself was hunting a loft-worker; of more than common industry, and had no thought of either the Bottler or Dahl. Happening, however, upon a situation, whereof the elemental features were Dahl outside with a gun and the Bottler inside with a gun, he so far recalled his oath of office as to interfere.
“Better an egg to-day than a hen to-morrow,” philosophized O'Farrell, and putting aside for the moment his search for the loft-worker, he devoted himself to the Bottler and Dahl.
With the sure instinct of his Mulberry Street caste, O'Farrell opened negotiations with Dahl. He knew the latter to be the dangerous angle, and began by placing the muzzle of his own pistol against that marauder's back.
“Make a move,” said he, “and I'll shoot you in two.”
The sophisticated Dahl, realizing fate, moved not, and with that the painstaking O'Farrell collected his armament.
Next the Bottler was ordered to come forth. The Bottler obeyed in a sweat and a tremble. He surrendered his pistol at word of the law, and O'Farrell led both off to jail. The two were charged with Disturbance.
In the station house, and on the way, Dahl ceased not to threaten the Bottler's life.
“This pinch'll cost a fine of five dollars,” said Dahl, glaring round O'Farrell at the shaking Bottler. “I'll pay it, an' then I'll get square wit' youse. Once we're footloose, you won't last as long as a drink of whiskey!”
The judge yawningly listened, while O'Farrell told his tale of that disturbance.
“Five an' costs!” quoth the judge, and called the next case.
The Bottler returned to Suffolk Street, Dahl sought Twist, while O'Farrell again took the trail of the loft-worker.
Dahl talked things over with Twist. There was but one way: the Bottler must die. Anything short 'of blood would unsettle popular respect for Twist, and without that his leadership of the Eastmans was a farce.
The Bottler's killing, however, must be managed with a decent care for the conventionalities. For either Twist or Dahl to walk in upon that offender and shoot him to death, while feasible, would be foolish. The coarse extravagance of such a piece of work would serve only to pile needless difficulties in the pathway of what politicians must come to the rescue. It was impertinences of that character which had sent Monk Eastman to Sing Sing. Eastman had so far failed as to the proprieties, when as a supplement to highway robbery he emptied his six-shooter up and down Forty-second Street, that the politicians could not save him without burning their fingers. And so they let him go. Twist had justified the course of the politicians upon that occasion. He would not now, by lack of caution and a reasonable finesse, force them into similar peril. They must and would defend him; but it was not for him to render their labors too up-hill and too hard.
Twist sent to Williamsburg for his friend and ally, Cyclone Louie. The latter was a bull-necked, highly muscled individual, who was a professional strong man—so far as he was professionally anything—and earned occasional side-show money at Coney Island by bending iron bars about his neck and twisting pokers into corkscrews about his brawny arms.
Louie, Twist and Dahl went into council over mutual beer, and Twist explained the imperative call for the Bottler's extermination. Also, he laid bare the delicate position of both himself and Dahl.
In country regions neighbors aid one another in bearing the burdens of an agricultural day by changing work. The custom is not without what one might call gang imitation and respect. Only in the gang instance the work is not innocent, but bloody. Louie, having an appreciation of what was due a friend, could not do less than come to the relief of Twist and Dahl. Were positions reversed, would they not journey to Williamsburg and do as much for him? Louie did not hesitate, but placed himself at the disposal of Twist and Dahl. The Bottler should die; he, Louie, would see to that.
“But when?”
Twist, replying, felt that the thing should be done at once, and mentioned the following evening, nine o'clock. The place should be the Bottler's establishment in Suffolk Street. Louie, of whom the Bottler was unafraid and ignorant, should experience no difficulty in approaching his man. There would be others present; but, practiced in gang moralities, slaves to gang etiquette, no one would open his mouth. Or, if he did, it would be only to pour forth perjuries, and say that he had seen nothing, heard nothing.
Having adjusted details, Louie, Twist and Dahl compared watches. Watches? Certainly. Louie, Twist and Dahl were all most fashionably attired and—as became members of a gang nobility—singularly full and accurate in the important element of a front, videlicet, that list of personal adornments which included scarf pin, ring and watch. Louie, Dahl and Twist saw to it that their timepieces agreed. This was so that Dahl and Twist might arrange their alibis.
It was the next evening. At 8.55 o'clock Twist was obtrusively in the Delancey Street police station, wrangling with the desk sergeant over the release of a follower who had carefully brought about his own arrest.
“Come,” urged Twist to the sergeant, “it's next to nine o'clock now. Fix up the bond; I've got a date over in East Broadway at nine-thirty.”
While Twist stood thus enforcing his whereabouts and the hour upon the attention of the desk sergeant, Dahl was eating a beefsteak in a Houston street restaurant.
“What time have youse got?” demanded Dahl of the German who kept the place.
“Five minutes to nine,” returned the German, glancing up at the clock.
“Oh, t'aint no such time as that,” retorted Dahl peevishly. “That clock's drunk! Call up the telephone people, and find out for sure.”
“The 'phone people say it's nine o'clock,” reported the German, hanging up the receiver.
“Hully gee! I didn't think it was more'n halfpast eight!” and Dahl looked virtuously corrected.
While these fragments of talk were taking place, the Bottler was attending to his stuss interests. He looked pale and frightened, and his hunted eyes roved here and there. Five minutes went by. The clock pointed to nine. A slouch-hat stranger entered. As the clock struck the hour, he placed the muzzle of a pistol against the Bottler's breast, and fired twice. Both bullets pierced the heart, and the Bottler fell—dead without a word. There were twenty people in the room. When the police arrived they found only the dead Bottler.
O'Farrell recalled those trade differences which had culminated in the charge of disturbance, and arrested Dahl.
“You ain't got me right,” scoffed Dahl.
And O'Farrell hadn't.
There came the inquest, and Dahl was set free. The Bottler was buried, and Twist and Dahl sent flowers and rode to the grave.
The law slept, a bat-eyed constabulary went its way, but the gangs knew. In the whispered gossip of Gangland every step of the Bottler's murder was talked over and remembered. He must have been minus ears and eyes and understanding who did not know the story. The glance of Gangland turned towards the Five Points. What would be their action? They were bound to avenge. If not for the Bottler's sake, then for their own. For the Bottler had been under the shadow of their protection, and gang honor was involved. On the Five Points' part there was no stumbling of the spirit. For the death of the Bottler the Five Points would exact the penalty of blood.
Distinguished among the chivalry of the Five Points was Kid Pioggi. Only a paucity of years—he was under eighteen—withheld Pioggi from topmost honors. Pioggi was not specifically assigned to avenge the departed Bottler. Ambitious and gallantly anxious of advancement, however, he of his own motion carried the enterprise in the stomach of his thoughts.
The winter's snow melted into spring, spring lapsed into early summer. It was a brilliant evening, and Pioggi was disporting himself at Coney Island. Also Twist and Cyclone Louie, following some plan of relaxation, were themselves at Coney Island.
Pioggi had seated himself at a beer table in Ding Dong's. Twist and Louie came in. Pioggi, being of the Five Points, was recognized as a foe by Twisty who lost no time in mentioning it.
Being in a facetious mood, and by way of expressing his contempt for that gentleman, Twist made Pioggi jump out of the window. It was no distance to the ground, and no physical harm could come. But to be compelled to leave Ding Dong's by way of the window, rubbed wrongwise the fur of Pioggi's feelings. To jump from a window stamps one with disgrace.
Twist and Louie—burly, muscular, strong as horses—were adepts of rough-and-tumble. Pioggi, little, light and weak, knew that any thought of physical conflict would have been preposterous. And yet he was no one to sit quietly down with his humiliation. That flight from Ding Dong's window would be on every tongue in Gangland. The name of Pioggi would become a scorning; the tale would stain the Pioggi fame.
Louie and Twist sat down at the table in Ding Dong's, from which Pioggi had been driven, and demanded refreshment in the guise of wine. Pioggi, rage-swollen as to heart, busied himself at a nearby telephone. Pioggi got the ear of a Higher Influence of his clan. He told of his abrupt dismissal from Ding Dong's, and the then presence of Louie and Twist. The Higher Influence instructed Pioggi to keep the two in sight. The very flower of the Five Points should be at Coney Island as fast as trolley cars could carry them.
“Tail 'em,” said the Higher Influence, referring to Twist and Louie; “an' when the fleet gets there go in wit' your cannisters an' bump 'em off.”
While waiting the advent of his promised forces, Pioggi, maintaining the while an eye on Twist and Louie to the end that they escape not and disappear, made arrangements for a getaway. He established a coupé, a fast horse between the shafts and a personal friend on the box, where he, Pioggi, could find it when his work was done.
By the time this was accomplished, Pioggi's recruits had put in an appearance. They did not descend upon Coney Island in a body, with savage uproar and loud cries. Much too military were they for that. Rather they seemed to ooze into position around Pioggi, and they could not have made less noise had they been so many ghosts.
The campaign was soon laid out. Louie and Twist still sat over their wine at Ding Dong's. Now and then they laughed, as though recalling the ignominious exit of Pioggi. Means must be employed to draw them into the street. That accomplished, the Five Points' Danites were to drift up behind them, and at a signal from Pioggi, empty their pistols into their backs. Pioggi would fire a bullet into Twist; that was to be the signal. As Pioggi whispered his instructions, there shone a licking eagerness in the faces of those who listened. Nothing so exalts the gangster like blood in anticipation; nothing so pleases him as to shoot from behind.
Pioggi pitched upon one whose name and face were unknown to Twist and Louie. The unknown would be the bearer of a blind message—it purported to come from a dancer in one of the cheap theaters of the place—calculated to bring forth Twist and Louie.
“Stall 'em up this way,” said Pioggi, indicating a spot within touching distance of that coupé. “It's here we'll put 'em over the jump.”
The place pitched upon for the killing was crowded with people. It was this very thronged condition which had led to its selection. The crowd would serve as a cover to Five Points operations. It would prevent a premature recognition of their assailants by Twist and Louie; it would screen the slayers from identification by casual citizens looking on.
Pioggi's messenger did well his work, and Twist and Louie moved magnificently albeit unsteadily into the open. They were sweeping the walk clear of lesser mortals, when the voice of Pioggi arrested their attention.
“Oh, there, Twist; look here!”
The voice came from the rear and to the right; Pioggi's position was one calculated to place the enemy at a double disadvantage.
Twist turned his head. A bullet struck him above the eye! He staggered! The lead came in a storm! Twist went down; Louie fell across him! There were twelve bullets in Twist and eight in Louie. The coroner said that they were the deadest people of whom he owned official recollection.
As the forethoughtful Pioggi was dashing away in his coupé, a policeman gave chase. Pioggi drove a bullet through the helmet of the law. It stopped pursuit; but Gangland has ever held that the shot was an error. A little lower, and the policeman would have been killed. Also, the death of a policeman is apt to entail consequences.
Pioggi went into hiding in Greenwich, where the Five Points had a hold-out. There were pullings and haulings and whisperings in dark political corners. When conditions had been whispered and hauled and pulled into shape satisfactory, Pioggi sent word to a favorite officer to come and arrest him.
Pioggi explained to the court that his life had been threatened; he had shot only that he himself might live. His age was seventeen. Likewise there had been no public loss; the going of Twist and Louie had but raised the average of all respectability. The court pondered the business, and decided that justice would be fulfilled by sentencing Pioggi to the Elmira Reformatory.
The best fashion of the Five Points visited Pioggi in the Tombs on the morning of his departure.
“It's only thirteen months, Kid,” came encouragingly from one. “You won't mind it.”
“Mind it!” responded Pioggi, in disdain of the worst that Elmira might hold for him; “mind it! I could do it standin' on me head.”
Whenever the police were driven to deal with him officially, he called himself Charles Livin, albeit the opinion prevailed at headquarters that in thus spelling it, he left off a final ski. The police, in the wantonness of their ignorance, described him on their books as a burglar. This was foolishly wide. He should have been listed as a simple Strong-Arm, whose methods of divorcing other people from their money, while effective, were coarse. Also, it is perhaps proper to mention that his gallery number at the Central Office was 10,394.
It was during the supremacy of Monk Eastman that he broke out, and he had just passed his seventeenth birthday. Being out, he at once attached himself to the gang-fortunes of that chief; and it became no more than a question of weeks before his vast physical strength, the energy of his courage and a native ferocity of soul, won him his proud war-name of Ike the Blood. Compared with the herd about him, in what stark elements made the gangster important in his world, he shone out upon the eyes of folk like stars of a clear cold night.
Ike the Blood looked up to his chief, Monk Eastman, as sailors look up to the North Star, and it wrung his soul sorely when that gang captain went to Sing Sing. In the war over the succession and the baton of gang command, waged between Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, Ike the Blood was compelled to stand neutral. Powerless to take either side, liking both ambitious ones, the trusted friend of both, his hands were tied; and later—first Fitzpatrick and then Twist—he followed both to the grave, sorrow not only on his lips but in his heart.
It was one recent August day that I was granted an introduction to Ike the Blood. I was in the company of an intimate friend of mine—he holds high Central Office position in the police economy of New York. We were walking in Henry Street, in the near vicinity of that vigorous organization, the Ajax Club—so called, I take it, because its members are forever defying the lightnings of the law. My Central Office friend had mentioned Ike the Blood, speaking of him as a guiding light to such difficult ones as Little Karl, Whitey Louie, Benny Weiss, Kid Neumann, Tomahawk, Fritzie Rice, Dagley and the Lobster.
Even as the names were in his mouth, his keen Central Office glance went roving through the open doorway of a grogshop.
“There's Ike the Blood now,” said he, and tossed a thumb, which had assisted in necking many a malefactor with tastes to be violent, towards the grogshop.
Since to consider such pillars of East Side Society was the great reason of my ramble, we entered the place. Ike the Blood was sitting in state at a table to the rear of the unclean bar, a dozen of his immediate followers—in the politics of gang life these formed a minor order of nobility—with him.
Being addressed by my friend, he arose and joined us; none the less he seemed reticent and a bit disturbed. This was due to the official character of my friend, plus the fact that the jealous eyes of those others were upon him. It is no advantage to a leader, like Ike the Blood, to be seen in converse with a detective. Should one of his adherents be arrested within a day or a week, the arrested one reverts to that conversation, and imagines vain things.
“Take a walk with us, Ike,” said my friend.
Ike the Blood was obviously reluctant. Sinking his voice, and giving a glance over his shoulder at his myrmidons—not ten feet away, and every eye upon him—he remonstrated.
“Say, I don't want to leave th' push settin' here, to go chasin' off wit' a bull. Fix it so I can come uptown sometime.”
“Very well,” returned my friend, relenting; “I don't want to put you in Dutch with your fleet.”
There was a whispered brief word or two, and an arrangement for a meet was made; after which Ike the Blood lapsed into the uneasy circle he had quitted. As we left the grogshop, we could hear him loudly calling for beer. Possibly the Central Office nearness of my friend had rendered him thirsty. Or it may have been that the beer was meant to wet down and allay whatever of sprouting suspicion had been engendered in the trustless breasts of his followers.
It was a week later.
The day, dark and showery, was—to be exact—the eighth of August. Faithful to that whispered Henry Street arrangement, Ike the Blood sat awaiting the coming of my friend and myself in the Bal Tabarin. He had spoken of the stuss house of Phil Casey and Paper Box Johnny, in Twenty-ninth Street, but my friend entered a protest. There was his Central Office character to be remembered. A natural embarrassment must ensue were he brought face to face with stuss in a state of activity. Stuss was a crime, by surest word of law, and he had taken an oath of office. He did not care to pinch either Paper Box or Casey, and therefore preferred not to be drawn into a situation where the only alternative would be to either pull their joint or lay the bedplates of complaint against himself.
“It's no good time to be up on charges,” remonstrated my friend, “for the commish that's over us now would sooner grab a copper than a crook.”
Thus instructed, and feeling the delicacy of my friend's position, Ike the Blood had shifted suggestion to the Bal Tabarin. The latter house of entertainment, in Twenty-eighth Street, was innocent of stuss and indeed cards in any form. Kept by Sam Paul, it possessed a deserved popularity with Ike and the more select of his acquaintances.
Ike the Blood appeared to better advantage in the Bal Tabarin than on that other, Henry Street, grogshop occasion. Those suspicious ones, of lowering eye and doubtful brow, had been left behind, and their absence contributed to his relief, and therefore to his looks. Not that he had been sitting in the midst of loneliness at the Bal Tabarin; Whitey Dutch and Slimmy were with him, and who should have been better company than they? Also, their presence was of itself an honor, since they were of his own high caste, and many layers above a mere gang peasantry. They would take part in the conversation, too, and, if to talk and touch glasses with a Central Office bull were an offense, it would leave them as deep in the police mud as was he in the police mire.
Ike the Blood received us gracefully, if not enthusiastically, and was so polite as to put me on a friendly footing with his companions. Greetings over, and settled to something like our ease, I engaged myself mentally in taking Ike's picture. His forehead narrow, back-sloping at that lively angle identified by carpenters as a quarter-pitch, was not the forehead of a philosopher. I got the impression, too, that his small brown eyes, sad rather than malignant, would in any heat of anger blaze like twin balls of brown fire. Cheek-bones high; nose beaky, predatory—such a nose as Napoleon loved in his marshals; mouth coarsely sensitive, suggesting temperament; the broad, bony jaw giving promise of what staying qualities constitute the stock in trade of a bulldog; no mustache, no beard; a careless liberality of ear—that should complete the portrait. Fairly given, it was the picture of one who acted more than he thought, and whose atmosphere above all else conveyed the feeling of relentless force—the picture of one who under different circumstances might have been a Murat or a Massena.
My friend managed the conversation, and did it with Central Office tact. Knowing what I was after, he brought up Gangland and the gangs, upon which topics Whitey Dutch, seeing no reasons for silence, spoke instructively. Aside from the great gangs, the Eastmans and the Five Points, I learned that other smaller yet independent gangs existed. Also, from Whitey's discourse, it was made clear that just as countries had frontiers, so also were there frontiers to the countries of the gangs. The Five Points, with fifteen hundred on its puissant muster rolls, was supreme—he said—between Broadway and the Bowery, Fourteenth Street and City Hall Park. The Eastmans, with one thousand warriors, flourished between Monroe and Fourteenth Streets, the Bowery and the East River. The Gas House Gang, with only two hundred in its nose count, was at home along Third Avenue between Eleventh and Eighteenth Streets. The vivacious Gophers were altogether heroes of the West Side. They numbered full five hundred, each a holy terror, and ranged the region bounded by Seventh Avenue, Fourteenth Street, Tenth Avenue and Forty-second Street. The Gophers owned a rock-bottom fame for their fighting qualities, and, speaking in the sense militant, neither the Eastmans nor the Five Points would care to mingle with them on slighter terms than two to one. The fulness of Whitey Dutch, himself of the Five Points, in what justice he did the Gophers, marked his splendid breadth of soul.
Ike the Blood, overhung by some cloud of moodiness, devoted himself moderately to beer, taking little or less part in the talk. Evidently there was something bearing him down.
“I ain't feelin' gay,” he remarked; “an' at that, if youse was to ast me, I couldn't tell youse why.”
As though a thought had been suggested, he arose and started for the door.
“I won't be away ten minutes,” he said.
Slimmy looked curiously at Whitey Dutch.
“He's chased off to one of them fortune-tellers,” said Whitey.
“Do youse take any stock in them ginks who claims they can skin a deck of cards, or cock their eye into a teacup, an' then put you next to everyt'ing that'll happen to you in a year?”
Slimmy aimed this at me.
Upon my assurance, given with emphasis, that I attached no weight to so-called seers and fortunetellers, he was so magnanimous as to indorse my position.
“They're a bunch of cheap bunks,” he declared. “I've gone ag'inst 'em time an' time, an' there's nothin' in it. One of 'em gives me his woid—after me comin' across wit' fifty cents—th' time Belfast Danny's in trouble, that Danny'll be toined out all right. Two days later Danny gets settled for five years.”
“Ike's stuck on 'em,” remarked Whitey.
Slimmy and Whitey Dutch, speaking freely and I think veraciously, told me many things. Whitey explained that, while he and Slimmy were shining lights of the Five Points, yet to be found fraternizing with Ike the Blood—an Eastman—was in perfect keeping with gang proprieties. For, as he pointed out, there was momentary truce between the Eastmans and the Five Points. Among the gangs, in seasons of gang peace, the nobles—by word of Whitey—were expected to make stately calls of ceremony and good fellowship upon one another, as had been the wont among Highland chieftains in the days of Bruce and Wallace.
“Speaking of the Gas House Gang: how do they live?” I asked.
“Stickin' up lushes mostly.”
“How much of this stick-up work goes on?”
“Well”—thoughtfully—“they'll pull off as many as twenty-five stick-ups to-night.”
“There's no such number of squeals coming in at headquarters.”
The contradiction emanated from my Central Office friend, who felt criticized by inference.
“Squeals!” exclaimed Whitey Dutch with warmth, “w'y should they squeal? The Gas House push'd cook 'em if they squealed. Suppose right now I was to go out an' get put in th' air; do you think I'd squeal? Well, I should say not; I'm no mutt! They'd about come gallopin' 'round tomorry wit' bale-sticks, an' break me arms an' legs, or mebby knock me block off. W'y, not a week ago, three Gas House shtockers stands me up in Riving-ton Street, an' takes me clock—a red one wit' two doors. Then they pinches a fiver out of me keck. They even takes me bank-book.
“W'at license has a stiff like youse got to have $375 in th' bank?' they says—like that.
“Next night they comes bluffin' round for me three hundred and seventy-five dollar plant—w'at do you t'ink of that? But I'm there wit' a gatt me-self that time, an' ready to give 'em an argument. W'en they sees I'm framed up, they gets cold feet. But you can bet I don't do no squealin'!”
“Did you get back your watch?”
“How could I get it back?” peevishly. “No, I don't get back me watch. All the same, I'll lay for them babies. Some day I'll get 'em right, an' trim 'em to the queen's taste.”
My friend, leading conversation in his specious Central Office way, spoke of Ike the Blood's iron fame, and slanted talk in that direction.
“Ike can certainly go some!” observed Slimmy meditatively. “Take it from me, there ain't any of 'em, even th' toughest ever, wants his game.” Turning to Whitey: “Don't youse remember, Whitey, when he tears into Humpty Jackson an' two of his mob, over in Thirteenth Street, that time? There's nothin' to it! Ike simply makes 'em jump t'rough a hoop! Every lobster of 'em has his rod wit' him, too.”
“They wouldn't have had the nerve to fire 'em if they'd pulled 'em,” sneered Whitey. “Ike'd have made 'em eat th' guttaperchy all off th' handles, too. Say, I don't t'ink much of that Gas House fleet. They talk strong; but they don't bring home th' goods, see!”
It appeared that, in spite of his sanguinary title, Ike the Blood had never killed his man.
“He's tried,” explained Slimmy, who felt as though the absent one, in his blood-guiltlessness, required defense; “but he all th' time misses. Ike's th' woist shot wit' a rod in th' woild.”
“Sure, Mike!”—from Whitey Dutch, his nose in his drink; “he couldn't hit th' Singer Buildin'.” '“How does he make his money?” I asked.
“Loft worker,” broke in my friend.
The remark was calculated to explode the others into fresh confidences.
“Don't youse believe it!” came in vigorous denial from Whitey Dutch. “Ike never cracked a bin in his life. You bulls”—this was pointed especially at my friend—“say he's a dip, too. W'y, it's a laugh! Ike couldn't pick th' pocket of a dead man—couldn't put his hand into a swimmin' tank! That's how fly he is.”
“Now don't try to string me,” retorted my friend, severely. “Didn't Ike fill in with Little Maxie and his mob, when they worked the Jersey fairs?”
“But that was only to do the strong-arm work, in case there's a scrap,” protested Whitey. “On th' level, Ike is woise than Big Abrams. He can't even stall. An' as for gettin' a leather or a watch, gettin' a perfecto out of a cigar box would be about his limit.”
“That Joisey's a bum place; youse can go there for t'ree cents.”
The last was interjected by Slimmy—who had a fine wit of his own—with the hopeful notion of diverting discussion to less exciting questions than pocket-picking at the New Jersey fairs.
It developed that while Ike the Blood had now and then held up a stuss game for its bank-roll, during some desperate ebb-tide of his fortunes, he drew his big income from a yearly ball.
“He gives a racket,” declared Whitey Dutch; “that's how Ike gets his dough. Th' last one he pulls off nets him about twenty-five hundred plunks.”
“What price were the tickets?” I inquired. Twenty-five hundred dollars sounded large.
“Th' tickets is fifty cents,” returned Whitey, “but that's got nothin' to do wit' it. A guy t'rows down say a ten-spot at th' box-office, like that”—and Whitey made a motion with his hand, which was royal in its generous openness. “'Gimme a pasteboard!' he says; an' that ends it; he ain't lookin' for no change back. Every sport does th' same. Some t'rows in five, some ten, some guy even changes in a twenty if he's pulled off a trick an' is feelin' flush. It's all right; there's nothin' in bein' a piker. Ike himself sells th' tickets; an' th' more you planks down th' more he knows you like him.” It was becoming plain. A gentleman of gang prominence gives a ball—a racket—and coins, so to speak, his disrepute. He of sternest and most bloody past takes in the most money. To discover one's status in Gangland, one has but to give a racket.. The measure of the box-receipts will be the dread measure of one's reputation.
“One t'ing youse can say of Ike,” observed Slimmy, wearing the while a look of virtue, “he never made no money off a woman.”
“Never in all his life took a dollar off a doll!” added Whitey, corroboratively.
Ike the Blood reappearing at this juncture, it was deemed best to cease—audibly, at least—all consideration of his merits. He might have regarded discussion, so personal to himself, with disfavor. Laughing lightly, he took his old place at the table, and beckoned the waiter. Compared with what had been its former cloudy expression, his face wore a look of relief.
“Say, I don't mind tellin' youse guys,” he said at last, breaking into an uneasy laugh, “but th' fact is, I skinned round into Sixt' Avenoo to a fortune teller—a dandy, she is—one that t'rows a fit, or goes into a trance, or some such t'ing.”
“A fortune teller!” said Slimmy, as though he'd never heard the word before.
“It's on account of a dream. In all th' years”—Ike spoke as might one who had put a century behind him—“in all th' years I've been knockin' about, an' I've had me troubles, I never gets a notch on me gun, see? Not that I went lookin' for any; not that I'm lookin' for any now. But last night I had a dream:—I dreams I croaks a guy. Mebby it's somet'in' I'd been eatin'; mebby it's because of me havin' a pretty hot argument th' mornin' before; but anyhow it bothers me—that dream does. You see”—this to my friend—“I'm figgerin' on openin' a house over in Twenty-fift' Street, an' these West Side ducks is all for givin' me th' frozen face. They say I oughter stick down on th' East Side, where I belongs, an' not come chasin' up here, cuttin' in on their graft. Anyhow, I dreams I puts th' foist notch on me gun———-”
“And so you consult a fortune teller,” laughed my friend, who was not superstitious, but practical.
“Wait till I tells you. As I says, I blows in on that trance party. I don't wise her up about any dream, but comes t'rough wit' th' little old one buck she charges, an' says: 'There you be! Now roll your game for th' limit!'”
“Which she proceeded to do,” broke in my friend.
“Listen! Th' old dame—after coppin' me dollar—stiffens back an' shuts her eyes; an' next, th' foist flash out of th' box she says—speakin' like th' wind in a keyhole: 'You're in th' midst of trouble; a man is killed!' Then she wakes up. 'W'y didn't youse go t'rough?' I says; T want th' rest. Who is it gets croaked, th' other dub or me?' Th' old dame insists that to go back, an' get th' address of th' party who's been bumped off, she must have another dollar. Oh, they're th' birds, them fortune tellers, to grab th' dough! But of course I can't stop there, so I bucks up wit' another bone. 'There you be,' I says; 'now, is it me that gets it, or does he?”
“W'at he?” demanded Whitey.
“How do I know?” The tone and manner were impatient. “It's th' geek I'm havin' trouble wit'.” Ike looked at me, as one who would understand and perhaps sympathize, and continued: “This time th' old dame says th' party who's been cooked is some other guy; it ain't me. T can see now that it ain't you,' she says. 'You're ridin' away in a patrol wagon, wit' a lot of harness bulls.' That's good so far. 'So I gets th' collar?' I says. 'How about th' trial?' She answers, 'There ain't no trial;' an' then she comes out of her trance, same as a diver comes up out o' the water.”
“Is that all?” asked Slimmy.
“That's where she lets me off.”
“W'y don't youse dig for another dollar,” said Whitey, “an' tell th' old hag to put on her suit an' go down ag'in for th' rest?” Whitey had been impressed by that simile of the diver.
“W'at more is there to get? I ain't killed; an' I ain't tried—that oughter do me. Th' coroner t'rows me loose, most likely. Anyhow, I ain't goin' to sit there all day, skinnin' me roll for that old sponge—a plunk a crack, too.”
“Talk of th' cost of livin'!” remarked Slimmy, with a grin. “Ain't it fierce, th' way them fortune tellers'll slim a guy's bank-roll for him, once they has him hooked? They'll get youse to goin'; an' after that it's like one of them stories w'at ends wit' 'Continued in our next.' W'y, it's like playin' th' horses, only woise. Th' foist day you goes out to win; an' after that, you keep goin' back to get even.” Ike the Blood paid no heed to the pessimistic philosophy of Slimmy; he was too wholly wrapped up in what he had been told.
“Well,” he broke forth, following a ruminative pause, “anyhow, I'd sooner he gets it than me.”
“There you go ag'in about that 'he,'” protested Whitey, and the manner of Whitey was querulous.
“Th' guy she sees me hooked up wit'!” This came off a bit warmly. “You know w'at I mean.”
“Take it easy!—take it easy!” urged my friend. “What is there to get hot about? You don't mean to say, Ike, you're banking on that guff the old dame handed you?”
“Next week”—the shadow of a smile playing across his face—“I won't believe it. But it sounds like th' real t'ing now.”
The door of the Bal Tabarin opened to the advent of a weasel-eyed individual.
“Hello, Whitey!” exclaimed Weasel-eye cheerily, shaking hands with Whitey Dutch. “I just leaves a namesake of yours; an' say, he's in bad!”
“W'at namesake?”
“Whitey Louie. A bunch of them West Side guerrillas has him cornered, over in a dump at Twenty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenoo. It looks like there'd be somethin' doin'; an', as I don't Avant no part of it, I screws out.”
At the name of Whitey Louie, Ike the Blood arose to his feet.
“Whitey Louie?” he questioned; “Seventh Avenoo an' Twenty-seventh Street?”
“That's th' ticket,” replied Weasel-eye; “an' youse can cash on it.”
Ike the Blood hurried out the door.
“Whitey Louie is Ike's closest pal,” observed Whitey Dutch, explaining the hurried departure. “Will there be trouble?” I asked.
“I don't t'ink so,” said Slimmy. “It's four for one they'll lay down to Ike.”
“Don't put your swell bet on it!” came warningly from Whitey Dutch; “them Gophers are as tough a bunch as ever comes down the pike.”
“Tough nothin'!” returned Slimmy: “they'll be duck soup to Ike.”
“Why don't you look into it?” I asked, turning to my friend. As a taxpayer, I yearned for some return on that $16,000,000 a year which New York City pays for its police.
That ornament of the Central Office yawned, and motioned to the waiter to bring his bill.
“That sort of thing is up to the cop on the beat,” said he.
“Whitey an' me 'ud get in on it,” explained Slimmy—his expression was one of half apology—“only you see we belong at th' other end of th' alley. We're Five Points; Ike an' Whitey Louie are Eastmans; an' in a clash between Eastmans an' Gophers, it's up to us to stand paws-off, see!”
“That's straight talk,” coincided Whitey.
“Suppose, seeing it's stopped raining, we drift over there,” said my friend, adjusting his Panama at the exact Central Office angle.
As we journeyed along, I noticed Slimmy and Whitey Dutch across the street. It was already written that Whitey Dutch, himself, would be shot to death in the Stag before the year was out; but the shadow of that impending taking-off was not apparent in his face. Indeed, from that face there shone forth only pleasure in anticipation, and a lively interest.
“They'd no more miss it than they'd miss a play at the theater,” remarked my friend, who saw where my glance was directed.
About a ginmill, on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, a crowd had collected. A patrol wagon was backing up.
An officer in uniform tossed a prisoner into the wagon, with no more ceremony than should attend the handling of a bag of bran.
“It's Dubillier!” exclaimed Whitey Dutch, naming the prisoner.
The two Five Pointers had taken position on the edge of the crowd, directly in front of my friend and me.
“There's Ike!” said Slimmy, as two policemen were seen pushing their way towards the patrol wagon, Ike the Blood between them. “Them bulls is holdin' him up, too, an' his face is as pale as paper! By thunder, they've nailed him!”
“I told you them Gophers were tough students,” was the comment of Whitey Dutch.
My friend began forcing his way forward. As he plowed through the crowd, Whitey Dutch and Slimmy, having advantage of his wake, kept close at his heels.
Slimmy threw me a whispered word: “Be th' way th' mob is actin', I t'ink Ike copped one.” Slimmy, before the lapse of many minutes, was again at my side, attended by Whitey Dutch. The pair wore that manner of quick yet neutral appreciation which belongs—we'll say—with such as English army officers visiting the battlefield of Santiago while the action between the Spaniards and the Americans is being waged. It wasn't their fight, it was an Eastman-Gopher fight, but as fullblown Five Pointers it became them vastly to be present. Also, they might learn something.
“Ike dropped one,” nodded Whitey Dutch, answering the question in my eye. “It's Ledwich.”
“What was the row about?” I asked.
“Whitey Louie. The Gophers was goin' to hand it to him; but just then Ike comes through th' door on th' run, an' wit' that they outs wit' their rods an' goes to peggin' at him. Then Ike gets to goin' an' cops Ledwich.”
“Th' best th' Gophers can get,” observed Slimmy—and his manner was as the manner of one balancing an account—“th' best th' Gophers can get is an even break; an' to do that they'll have to cash on Ike. Whitey Louie? He makes his get-away all right. Say, Whitey, let's beat it round to the Tenderloin Station, an' get th' finish.”
The finish was soon told. Ike the Blood lay dead on the station house floor; a bullet had drilled its dull way through his lungs. An officer was just telephoning his people in Chrystie Street.
“Now do youse see?” said Whitey Dutch, correcting what he conceived to be Slimmy's skepticism; “that fortune tellin' skirt handed out th' right dope. 'One croaked!—Ike in th' hurry-up wagon!—no trial!' That's th' spiel she makes; an' it falls true, see!”
“Ike oughter have dug down for another bone,” returned Slimmy, more than half convinced; “she'd have put him hep to that bullet in his breather, mebby.”
“W'at good 'ud that have done?”
“Good? If he'd got th' tip, he might have ducked—you can't tell.”
“It's a bad business,” I commented to my friend, who had rejoined me.
“It would be a good thing”—shrugging his cynical Central Office shoulders—“if, with a change of names, it could happen every day in the year. By the way, I forgot my umbrella; let's go back to the Bal Tabarin.”