The Apaches of New York

“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.