The Apaches of New York

The Apaches of New York
Alfred Lewis

Alfred Henry Lewis

The Apaches of New York

TO ARTHUR WEST LITTLE

These stories are true in name and time and place. None of them in its incident happened as far away as three years ago. They were written to show you how the other half live – in New York. I had them direct from the veracious lips of the police. The gangsters themselves contributed sundry details.

You will express amazement as you read that they carry so slight an element of Sing Sing and the Death Chair. Such should have been no doubt the very proper and lawful climax of more than one of them, and would were it not for what differences subsist between a moral and a legal certainty. The police know many things they cannot prove in court, the more when the question at bay concerns intimately, for life or death, a society where the “snitch” is an abomination and to “squeal” the single great offense.

Besides, you are not to forget the politician, who in defense of a valuable repeater palsies police effort with the cold finger of his interference. With apologies to that order, the three links of the Odd Fellows are an example of the policeman, the criminal and the politician. The latter is the middle link, and holds the other two together while keeping them apart.

    Alfred Henry Lewis. New York City, Dec. 22, 1911.

I. – EAT-’EM-UP JACK

Chick Tricker kept a house of call at One Hundred and Twenty-eight Park Row. There he sold strong drink, wine and beer, mostly beer, and the thirsty sat about at sloppy tables and enjoyed themselves. When night came there was music, and those who would – and could – arose and danced. One Hundred and Twenty-eight Park Row was in recent weeks abolished. The Committee of Fourteen, one of those restless moral influences so common in New York, complained to the Powers of Excise and had the license revoked.

It was a mild February evening. The day shift had gone off watch at One Hundred and Twenty-eight, leaving the night shift in charge, and – all things running smoothly – Tricker decided upon an evening out. It might have been ten o’clock when, in deference to that decision, he stepped into the street. It was commencing to snow – flakes as big and soft and clinging as a baby’s hand. Not that Tricker – hardy soul – much minded snow.

Tricker, having notions about meeting Indian Louie, swung across to Roosevelt Street. Dodging down five steps, he opened the door of a dingy wine-cellar. It was the nesting-place of a bevy of street musicians, a dozen of whom were scattered about, quaffing chianti. Their harps, fiddles and hand-organs had been chucked into corners, and a general air of relaxation pervaded the scene. The room was blue with smoke, rich in the odor of garlic, and, since the inmates all talked at once, there arose a prodigious racket.

Near where Tricker seated himself reposed a hand-organ. Crouched against it was a little, mouse-hued monkey, fast asleep. The day’s work had told on him. ‘Fatigued of much bowing and scraping for coppers, the diminutive monkey slept soundly. Not all the hubbub served to shake the serene profundity of his dreams.

Tricker idly gave the handle of the organ a twist. Perhaps three notes were elicited. It was enough. The little monkey was weary, but he knew the voice and heard in it a trumpet-call to duty. With the earliest squeak he sprang up – winking, blinking – and, doffing his small red hat, began begging for pennies. Tricker gave him a dime, not thinking it right to disturb his slumbers for nothing. The mouse-hued one tucked it away in some recondite pocket of his scanty jacket, and then, the organ having lapsed into silence, curled up for another snooze.

Tricker paid for his glass of wine, and – since he saw nothing of Indian Louie, and as a source of interest had exhausted the monkey – lounged off into the dark.

In Chatham Square Tricker met a big-chested policeman. Tricker knew the policeman, having encountered him officially. As the latter strutted along, a small, mustard-colored dog came crouching at his heels.

“What’s the dog for?” Tricker asked.

Being in an easy mood, the trivial possessed a charm.

The policeman bent upon the little dog a benign eye. The little dog glanced up shyly, wagging a wistful tail.

“He’s lost,” vouchsafed the policeman, “and he’s put it up to me to find out where he lives.” He explained that all lost dogs make hot-foot for the nearest policeman. “They know what a cop is for,” said the big-chested one. Then, to the little dog: “Come on, my son; we’ll land you all right yet.”

Tricker continued his stroll. At Doyers Street and the Bowery he entered Barney Flynn’s. There were forty customers hanging about. These loiterers were panhandlers of low degree; they were beneath the notice of Tricker, who was a purple patrician of the gangs. One of them could have lived all day on a quarter. It meant bed – ten cents – and three glasses of beer, each with a free lunch which would serve as a meal. Bowery beer is sold by the glass; but the glass holds a quart. The Bowery has refused to be pinched by the beer trust.

In Flynn’s was the eminent Chuck Connors, his head on his arm and his arm on a table. Intoxicated? Perish the thought! Merely taking his usual forty winks after dinner, which repast had consisted of four beef-stews. Tricker gave him a facetious thump on the back, but he woke in a bilious mood, full of haughtiness and cold reserve.

There is a notable feature in Flynn’s. The East Side is in its way artistic. Most of the places are embellished with pictures done on the walls, presumably by the old monsters of the Police News. On the rear wall of Flynn’s is a portrait of Washington on a violent white horse. The Father of his Country is in conventional blue and buff, waving a vehement blade.

“Who is it?” demanded Proprietor Flynn of the artist, when first brought to bay by the violent one on the horse.

“Who is it?” retorted the artist indignantly. “Who should it be but Washin’ton, the Father of his Country?”

“Washin’ton?” repeated Flynn. “Who’s Washin’ton?”

“Don’t you know who Washin’ton is? Say, you ought to go to night school! Washin’ton’s th’ duck who frees this country from th’ English.”

“An’ he bate th’ English, did he? I can well be-lave it! Yez can see be th’ face of him he’s a brave man.” Then, following a rapt silence: “Say, I’ll tell ye what! Paint me a dead Englishman right down there be his horse’s fut, an’ I’ll give ye foor dollars more.”

The generous offer was accepted, and the foreground enriched with a dead grenadier.

Coming out of Flynn’s, Tricker went briefly into the Chinese Theater. The pig-tailed audience, sitting on the backs of the chairs with their feet in the wooden seats, were enjoying the performance hugely. Tricker listened to the dialogue but a moment; it was unsatisfactory and sounded like a cat-fight.

In finding his way out of Doyers Street, Tricker stopped for a moment in a little doggery from which came the tump-tump of a piano and the scuffle of a dance. The room, not thirty feet long, was cut in two by a ramshackle partition. On the grimy wall hung a placard which carried this moderate warning:

The management seemed to be in the hands of a morose personage, as red as a boiled lobster, who acted behind the bar. The piano was of that flat, tin-pan tone which bespeaks the veteran. It was drummed upon by a bleary virtuoso, who at sight of Tricker – for whose favor he yearned – began banging forth a hurly-burly that must have set on edge the teeth of every piano in the vicinity. The darky who was dancing redoubled his exertions. Altogether, Tricker’s entrance was not without éclat. Not that he seemed impressed as, flinging himself into a chair, he listlessly called for apollinaris.

“What do youse pay him?” asked Tricker of the boiled barkeeper, indicating as he did so the hardworking colored person.

“Pad-money!” – with a slighting glance. “Pad-money; an’ it’s twict too much.”

Pad-money means pay for a bed.

“Well, I should say so!” coincided Tricker, with the weary yet lofty manner of one who is a judge.

In one corner were two women and a trio of men. The men were thieves of the cheap grade known as lush-workers. These beasts of prey lie about the East Side grog shops, and when some sailor ashore leaves a place, showing considerable slant, they tail him and take all he has. They will plunder their victim in sight of a whole street. No one will tell. The first lesson of Gangland is never to inform nor give evidence. One who does is called snitch; and the wages of the snitch is death. The lush-workers pay a percentage of their pillage, to what saloons they infest, for the privilege of lying in wait.

Tricker pointed to the younger of the two women – about eighteen, she was.

“Two years ago,” said Tricker, addressing the boiled barman, “I had her pinched an’ turned over to the Aid Society. She’s so young I thought mebby they could save her.”

“Save her!” repeated the boiled one in weary disgust. “Youse can’t save ‘em. I used to try that meself. That was long ago. Now” – tossing his hand with a resigned air – “now, whenever I see a skirt who’s goin’ to hell, I pay her fare.”

One of the three men was old and gray of hair. He used to be a gonoph, and had worked the rattlers and ferries in his youth. But he got settled a couple of times, and it broke his nerve. There is an age limit in pocket-picking. No pickpocket is good after he passes forty years; so far, Dr. Osier was right. Children from twelve to fourteen do the best work. Their hands are small and steady; their confidence has not been shaken by years in prison. There are twenty New York Fagins – the police use the Dickens name – training children to pick pockets. These Fagins have dummy subjects faked up, their garments covered with tiny bells. The pockets are filled – watch, purse, card-case, handkerchief, gloves. Not until a pupil can empty every pocket, without ringing a bell, is he fit to go out into the world and look for boobs.

“If Indian Louie shows up,” remarked Tricker to the boiled-lobster barman, as he made ready to go, “tell him to blow ‘round tomorry evenin’ to One Hundred and Twenty-eight.”

Working his careless way back to the Bowery, Tricker strolled north to where that historic thoroughfare merges into Third Avenue. In Great Jones Street, round the corner from Third Avenue, Paul Kelly kept the New Brighton. Tricker decided to look in casually upon this hall of mirth, and – as one interested – study trade conditions. True, there was a coolness between himself and Kelly, albeit, both being of the Five Points, they were of the same tribe. What then? As members of the gang nobility, had they not won the right to nurse a private feud? De Bracy and Bois Guilbert were both Crusaders, and yet there is no record of any lost love between them.

In the roll of gang honor Kelly’s name was written high. Having been longer and more explosively before the public, his fame was even greater than Tricker’s. There was, too, a profound background of politics to the New Brighton. It was strong with Tammany Hall, and, per incident, in right with the police. For these double reasons of Kelly’s fame, and that atmosphere of final politics which invested it, the New Brighton was deeply popular. Every foot of dancing floor was in constant demand, while would-be merry-makers, crowded off for want of room, sat in a triple fringe about the walls.

Along one side of the dancing room was ranged a row of tables. A young person, just struggling into gang notice, relinquished his chair at one of these to Tricker. This was in respectful recognition of the exalted position in Gangland held by Tricker. Tricker unbent toward the young person in a tolerant nod, and accepted his submissive politeness as though doing him a favor. Tricker was right. His notice, even such as it was, graced and illustrated the polite young person in the eyes of all who beheld it, and identified him as one of whom the future would hear.

Every East Side dance hall has a sheriff, who acts as floor manager and settles difficult questions of propriety. It often happens that, in an excess of ardor and a paucity of room, two couples in their dancing seek to occupy the same space on the floor. He who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, may help his race and doubtless does. The rule, however, stops with grass and does not reach to dancing. He who tries to make two couples dance, where only one had danced before, but lays the bed-plates of a riot. Where all the gentlemen are spirited, and the ladies even more so, the result is certain in its character, and in no wise hard to guess. Wherefore the dance hall sheriff is not without a mission. Likewise his honorable post is full of peril, and he must be of the stern ore from which heroes are forged.

The sheriff of the New Brighton was Eat-’Em-Up-Jack McManus. He had been a prize-fighter of more or less inconsequence, but a liking for mixed ale and a difficulty in getting to weight had long before cured him of that. He had won his nom de guerre on the battle-field, where good knights were wont to win their spurs. Meeting one of whose conduct he disapproved, he had criticized the offender with his teeth, and thereafter was everywhere hailed as Eat-’Em-Up-Jack.

Eat-’Em-Up-Jack wore his honors modestly, as great souls ever do, and there occurred nothing at the New Brighton to justify that re-baptism. There he preserved the proprieties with a black-jack, and never once brought his teeth into play. Did some boor transgress, Eat-’Em-Up-Jack collared him, and cast him into the outer darkness of Great Jones Street. If the delinquent foolishly resisted, Eat-’Em-Up-Jack emphasized that dismissal with his boot. In extreme instances he smote upon him with a black-jack – ever worn ready on his wrist, although delicately hidden, when not upon active service, in his coat sleeve.

Tricker, drinking seltzer and lemon, sat watching the dancers as they swept by. He himself was of too grave a cast to dance; it would have mismatched with his position.

Eat-’Em-Up-Jack, who could claim social elevation by virtue of his being sheriff, came and stood by Tricker’s table. The pair greeted one another. Their manner, while marked of a careful courtesy, was distant and owned nothing of warmth. The feuds of Kelly were the feuds of Eat-’Em-Up-Jack, and the latter knew that Tricker and Kelly stood not as brothers.