The Apaches of New York

Old Jimmy turned to Tony.

“Fill up th’ crockery. I’m talkin’ ‘way over th’ heads of these bums.”

“Ain’t he a wonder?” whispered Pretty Agnes to the Nailer.

“I should say as much,” responded the admiring Nailer. “He ought to be sellin’ gold bricks. He’s talked th’ Dropper an’ th’ Wop into a hard knot.”

The Dropper was not to be quelled, and insisted that Jimmy was conversing through his sou’wester.

“I don’t think so,” broke in Jew Yetta; “I strings wit’ Jimmy. Take a tumble to yourself, Dropper. If you was to marry one of them money dames, you’d have to go into high society. An’ then what? W’y, you’d look like a pig on a front porch.”

“Don’t youse bet on it,” declared the Dropper loftily. “There’s nothin’ in that high society stuff. A smart guy like me could learn his way t’rough in a week.”

“Could he?” said the Nailer, and his tones were tones of derision.

“That’s w’at I says!” replied the Dropper. Then, heatedly: “W’y, do you geeks think I’ve never been north of Fourteenth Street? Youse make me tired, Nailer. While you was up-th’-river, for toinin’ off that loft in Chambers Street, don’t I go to a shindy at th’ Demmycrat Club in honor of Sen’tor Depew? There was loidies there – th’ real thing, too. An’ wasn’t I another time at th’ Charlie Murphy dinner? Talk of high society! – if that ain’t high society, what is?”

Having squelched the Nailer, the Dropper proceeded more moderately.

“I remember th’ scare that’s t’run into me at the Depew racket. I’ve been put up ag’inst some hot propositions, but if ever I’m faded it’s then when, for th’ foist time, I lamps a full-blown dame in evenin’ dress. On th’ dead, I felt like yellin’ ‘Police!’”

“Phwat was it scared yez, Dropper?” asked the Wop.

“It ain’t that I’m so scared as rattled. There’s too much free-board to them evenin’ dresses.”

“An’ the Charlie Murphy banquet,” said Pretty Agnes, wistfully. “Didn’t yez get cold feet?”

“Naw, I don’t git cold feet. I admits I falls down, I don’t try to sidestep that; but it wasn’t my fault. Do it over again, an’ I’d go t’rough wit’ bells on.”

“How did youse fall down?”

“It’s be accident; I takes th’ wrong steer, that’s all. I makes it a point, knowin’ I’m none too wise, to plant meself when we pulls up to the feed opposite to a gilded old bunk, who looked like ready money. ‘Do as he does, Dropper’ I says to meself, ‘an’ you’re winner in a walk!’ So, when he plays a fork, I plays a fork; if he boards a chive, I boards a chive; from soup to birds I’m steerin’ be his wake. Then all of a sudden I cops a shock. We’ve just made some roast squabs look like five cents worth of lard in a paper bag, an’ slopped out a bunch of fizz to wash ‘em down, when what does that old Rube do but up an’ sink his hooks in a bowl of water. Honest, I like to ‘ve fell in a fit! There I’d been feelin’ as cunning as a pet fox, an’ me on a dead one from th’ jump!”

“Did any of them smart Alecks give youse th’ laugh?” asked the Nailer.

“Give me th’ laugh,” repeated the Dropper, disgustedly. “I’d have smashed whoever did in th’ eye.”

While beer and conversation were flowing in Number Twelve, a sophisticated eye would have noted divers outside matters which might or might not have had a meaning. On the heels of Big Mike’s laundry deeds of desolation and destruction at Low Foo’s, not a Chinaman was visible in Pell Street. It was the same when Mike came out of Tony’s and climbed the stairs to his room. Mike safely retired from the field, a handful of Four Brothers – all of them Lows and of the immediate clan of Low Foo – showed up, and took a slanteyed squint at what ruin had been wrought. They spoke not above a murmur, but as nearly as a white devil might gather a meaning, they were of the view that no monsoon could have more thoroughly scrap-heaped the belongings of Low Foo.

Other Chinamen began to gather, scores upon scores. These were Hip Sing Tongs, and they paid not the slightest heed to Low Foo’s laundry, or what was left of it. What Four Brothers were abroad did not mingle with the Hip Sing Tongs, although the two tribes lived in friendship. The Four Brothers quietly withdrew, each to his own den, and left the Hip Sing Tongs in possession of the street.

Being in possession, the Hip Sing Tongs did nothing beyond roost on the curb, or squat in doorways, or stand idly about. Now and then one smoked a cigarette.

About 11.20 o’clock, a Chinaman entered Pell Street from the Bowery. Every one of the Hip Sing Tongs looked at him; none of them spoke to him. Only, a place was made for him in the darkness of the darkest doorway. Had some brisk Central Office intelligence been there and consulted its watch, it might have occurred to such intelligence that had the newcomer arrived from Philadelphia over the B. & O. by latest train, he – assuming him to have taken the ferry with proper dispatch – would have come poking into Pell Street at precisely that hour.

Trinity struck midnight.

The bells sounded dim and far away. It was as though it were the ghost of some dead midnight being struck. At the sound, and as if he heard in it a signal, the mysterious Chinaman came out of the double darkness of the doorway in which he had been waiting, and crossed to the stairway that led up to the room of Mike. Not a whisper came from the waiting Hip Sing Tongs, who watched him with that blend of apathy and eagerness observable only in the Oriental. No one went with the mysterious Chinaman. Nor did the stairs creak – as with Big Mike – beneath his velvet shoes.

Five minutes passed.

The mysterious one emerged from Mike’s stairway as silently as he had entered it. He tossed a claw-like hand palm outward, toward the waiting, watching Hip Sing Tongs, and then went slippering towards the Bowery. Had that brisk Central Office intelligence been there to see, it might have reflected, recalling a time table, that by taking the Cortlandt Street ferry, the mysterious one would be in time for the 12.30 train to Philadelphia over the Pennsylvania.

Before the mysterious one had reached the Bowery, those scores of waiting, watching Hip Sing Tongs had vanished, and Pell Street was as empty as the promise of a politician.

“Now,” whispered Ching Lee to Sam Kum, who kept the chop suey shop, as they turned to go – “now he meet Ling Tchen, mebby so!”

One o’clock.

Tony began to think about locking his front door. This, out of respect for the law. Not that beer and revelry were to cease in Number Twelve, but because such was Tony’s understanding with the precinct skipper. Some reformer might come snooping else, and lodge complaint against that skipper with the Commissioner of Police.

Just as Tony, on bidding “Good-bye!” to Mrs. Vee and her purple fluttering flock, had been impressed by the crowded condition of Pell Street, so now, when he made ready to lock up, was he impressed by that causeway’s profound emptiness.

“Say,” he cried to his guests in the rear, “you stews come here! This is funny; there ain’t a chink in sight!”

“D’youse think th’ bulls are gettin’ ready for a raid?” asked Sop Henry. Sop, with the Nailer and the Wop, had joined Tony in the door. “Perhaps there’s somethin’ doin’ over at th’ Elizabeth Street station, an’ the wardman’s passed th’ monks th’ tip.”

“Nothin’ in that,” responded Tony, confidently. “Wouldn’t I be put wise, too?”

Marvelling much, Tony fastened his door, and joined old Jimmy, Pretty Agnes and the others in the rear room. When he got there, he found old Jimmy sniffing with suspicious nose, and swearing he smelled gas.

“One of your pipes is leakin’, Tony,” said Jimmy, “leakin’ for fair, too, or I’m a Dago!”

Tony, in refutation, called attention to a patent truth. He used electric light, not gas.

“But they use gas upstairs,” he added. Then, half-anxiously; “It can’t be some hop-head has blown out the gas?”

The thought was enough to start the Dropper, ever full of enterprise.

“Let’s have a look,” said he. “Nailer you an’ th’ Wop come wit’ me.”

Tony again opened the front door, and the Dropper, followed by the Wop and the Nailer, filed into the stairway that led to the floor above. They made noise enough, blundering and stumbling in the sudden hurry of spirit which had gripped them. As they reached the landing near Mike’s door, the odor of gas was even more pronounced than in Tony’s rear room.

The hall was blind black with the thick darkness that filled it.

“How about this?” queried the Dropper. “I thought a gas jet was always boinin’ in th’ hall.”

The Dropper, growing fearful, hung back. With that, the Wop pushed forward and took the lead. Only for a moment. Giving a cry, he sprang back with such sudden force that he sent the Dropper headlong down the stairs.

“Th’ Virgin save us!” exclaimed the Wop, “but I touched somethin’ soft!”

“What’s th’ row?” demanded Tony, coming to the foot of the stairs.

At the Dropper’s request, Tony brought a candle, used by him in excursions to those crypts wherein he kept his whiskey.

In a moment all was plain. That something soft which had so told upon the Wop was a rubber tube. There was a gas jet in the hall. One end of the rubber tube had been fastened over the gas jet, and the other stuffed into the keyhole of Mike’s door. Trap arranged, the gas had been set flowing full blast.

“Well, what do youse think of that?” exclaimed Tony, who understood at a glance.

With one swift move, Tony turned off the gas and tore away the rubber tube. There was no talk of keys. He placed his powerful shoulder against the door, and sent it crashing. The out-rush of gas drove them, choking and gasping, into the open air.

“Take it from me,” said the Dropper, as soon as he could get his breath, “they’ve croaked Mike.”

“But the window,” urged the Nailer; “mebbe Mike has the window open!”

“Not a chance!” retorted the Dropper. “No one has his window up while he hits th’ pipe. They don’t jibe, fresh air an’ dope.”

The Dropper was right. Big Mike, stark and still and yellow, lay dead in his bed – the last place his friends would have anticipated – poisoned by gas.

“Better notify th’ cops,” advised Jimmy, the practical.

“Who did it?” sobbed Pretty Agnes. “Mike never handed it to himself.”.

“Who did it?” repeated the Dropper, bitterly. “Th’ chinks did it. It’s for Low Foo’s laundry.”

“You’re down wrong, Dropper,” said old Jimmy. “It’s that Ling Tchen trick. I knew them Hip Sings would get Mike.”

XII. – THE GOING OF BIFF ELLISON

The jury returned a verdict of guilty. Thereupon the judge, fixing Ellison with hard and thoughtful eye, gave him “from eight to twenty years.” When a man gets “from eight to twenty years” he is worth writing about. He would be worth writing about, even though it had been for such crimes of the commonplace as poke-getting at a ferry or sticking up a drunken sailor. And Ellison was found guilty of manslaughter.

Razor Riley would have been sentenced along with Ellison, only he had conveniently died. When the Gophers gather themselves together, they give various versions of Razor Riley’s taking off. Some say he perished of pneumonia. Others lay it to a bullet in his careless mouth. In any case, he was dead, and therefore couldn’t, in the nature of things, accompany Ellison to Sing Sing.

Razor was a little one-hundred-and-ten-pound man, with weak muscles and a heart of fire. He had, razorwise, cut and slashed his way into much favorable mention, when that pneumonia or bullet – whichever it was – stopped short his career.

While the width of the city apart, he and Ellison were ever friends. They drank together, fought together, and held their foes as they held their money, in common.

When the jury said “Guilty,” it filled Ellison with resentful amazement. His angry wonder grew as the judge coldly mentioned that “from eight to-twenty years.” He couldn’t understand! The politicians had promised to save him. It was only upon such assurance that he had concluded to return. Safe in Baltimore, he could have safely continued in Baltimore. Lured by false lights, misled by spurious promises, he had come back to get “from eight to twenty years!” Cray and Savage rounded him up. All his life a cop-fighter, he would have given those Central Office stars a battle, had he realized what was in store for him and how like a rope of sand were the promises of politicians!

My own introduction to Ellison and Razor Riley was in the Jefferson Market court. That was several years ago. The day was the eighteenth of March, and Magistrate Corrigan had invited me to a seat on the bench. Ellison and Razor were arraigned for disorderly conduct. They had pushed in the door of a Sixth Avenue bird and animal store, kept by an agitated Italian, and in the language of the officer who made the collar, “didn’t do a thing to it.”

“They are guilty, your honor,” said their lawyer, manner deprecatory and full of conciliation, with a view to softening the magisterial heart – “they are guilty. And yet there is this in their defense. They had been celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day, over-celebrating it, perhaps, your honor, and they didn’t know what they were about. That’s the mere truth, your honor. Befuddled by too much and too fervently celebrating the glorious day, they really didn’t know what they were about.”

The lawyer waved a virtuous hand, as one who submitted affairs to the mercy of an enlightened court.

Magistrate Corrigan was about to impose sentence, when the agitated Italian broke forth.

“Don’t I get-a my chance, judge?” he called out. “Certainly,” returned Magistrate Corrigan, “what is it you want to say?”

“Judge, that-a guy” – pointing the finger of rebuttal at the lawyer – “he say theese mans don’t know what-a they do. One lie! They know what-a they do all right. I show you, judge. They smash-a th’ canaries, they knock-a th’ blocks off-a th’ monks, they tear-a th’ tails out of th’ macaws, but” – here his voice rose to a screech – “they nevair touch-a th’ bear.”

Magistrate Corrigan glanced at the policeman. The latter explained that, while Ellison and Razor had spread wreck and havoc among the monkeys and macaws, they had avoided even a remotest entanglement with a huge cinnamon bear, chained in the center of the room. They had prudently plowed ‘round the bear.

“Twenty-five and costs!” said Magistrate Corrigan, a smile touching the corners of his mouth. Then, raising a repressive palm towards the lawyer, who betrayed symptoms of further oratory: “Not a word. Your people get off very lightly. Upon the point you urge that these men didn’t know what they were about, the testimony of our Italian friend is highly convincing.”

When a gentleman goes to Sing Sing for longer than five years, it is Gangland good manners to speak of him in the past tense. Thus, then, shall I speak of Ellison. His name, properly laid down, was James Ellison. As, iron on wrists, a deputy at his elbow, he stepped aboard the train, he gave his age as thirty-nine.

His monaker of Biff came to him in the most natural way in the world. Gangland is ever ready to bestow a title. Therefore, when a recalcitrant customer of Fat Flynn’s, having quaffed that publican’s beer and then refused to pay for it, was floored as flat as a flounder by a round blow from Ellison’s fist, Gangland, commemorating the event, renamed him Biff.

Ellison was in his angular, awkward twenties when he made his initial appearance along the Bowery. He came from Maryland, no one knew why and a youthful greenness would have got him laughed at, had it not been for a look in his eye which suggested that while he might be green he might be game.

Having little education and no trade Ellison met existence by hiring out as bar-keeper to Fat Flynn, who kept a grog shop of singular vileness at 34 Bond. Its beer glasses were vulgarly large, its frequenters of the rough-neck school. But it was either work in Flynn’s or carry a hod, and Ellison, who was not fanatically fond of hard labor, and preferred to seek his bread along lines of least resistance, instantly and instinctively resolved on the side of Flynn’s.

Gangland is much more given to boxing gloves than books, and the conversation at Flynn’s, as it drifted across the bar to Ellison – busy drawing beer – was more calculated to help his hands than help his head. Now and then, to be sure, there would come one who, like Slimmy, had acquired a stir education, that is, a knowledge of books such as may be picked up in prison; but for the most those whom Ellison met, in the frothy course of business, were not the ones to feed his higher nature or elevate his soul. It was a society where the strong man was the best man, and only fist-right prevailed.

Ellison was young, husky, with length of reach and plenty of hitting power, and, as the interests of Flynn demanded, he bowed to his environment and beat up many a man. There were those abroad in Bond Street whom he could not have conquered. But, commonly sober and possessed besides of inborn gifts as a matchmaker, he had no trouble in avoiding these. The folks whom he hooked up with were of the genus cinch, species pushover, and proceeding carefully he built up in time a standing for valor throughout all the broad regions lying between Fourteenth Street and City Hall Park.

Let it be said that Ellison had courage. It was his prudence which taught him to hold aloof from the tough ones. Now and then, when a tough one did insist on war, Ellison never failed to bear himself with spirit. Only he preferred to win easily, with little exertion and no injury to his nose and eyes. For Ellison, proud of his appearance, was by Gangland’s crude standards the glass of fashion and the mould of form, and flourished the idol of the ladies. Also, a swollen nose or a discolored eye is of no avail in winning hearts.

Every dispenser of beer is by way of being a power in politics. Some soar higher, some with weaker wing – that is a question of genius. One sells beer and makes himself chief of Tammany Hall. Another rises on the tides of beer to a district leadership. Still others – and it is here that Ellison comes in – find their lower beery level as Tammany’s shoulder-hitting aides.

In the last rôle, Ellison was of value to Tammany Hall. Wherefore, whenever he fell into the fingers of the police – generally for assault – the machine cast over him the pinion of its prompt protection. As the strong-arm pet of the organization, he punched and slugged, knocked down and dragged out, and did all these in safety. Some soft-whispering politician was sure to show a magistrate – all ears – that the equities were on the side of Ellison, and what black eyes or broken noses had been distributed went where they truly belonged and would do the most Tammany good.

In his double role of beer dispenser and underthug of politics, Ellison stood high in Gangland opinion. From Flynn’s in Bond Street he went to Pickerelle’s in Chrystie Street. Then he became the presiding influence at a dive of more than usual disrepute kept by one Landt, which had flung open its dingy doors in Forsyth Street near Houston.

Ellison’ took an impressive upward step at this time. That is, he nearly killed a policeman. Nicely timing matters so that the officer was looking the other way, he broke a bottle over the blue-coat’s head. The blue-coat fell senseless to the floor. Once down and helpless, Ellison hoofed him after the rules of Gangland, which teach that only fools are fair, until the hoofed one was a pick-up for an ambulance.

The officer spent two weeks in a hospital cot, Ellison two hours in a station house cell. The politicians closed the officer’s mouth, and opened Ellison’s cell. The officer got well after a while, and he and Ellison grew to be good friends. The politicians said that there was nothing in it for either the officer or Ellison to remain at loggerheads. No man may write himself “politician” who does not combine the strength to prosecute a war, with the wisdom to conclude a peace. Hence, at the command of the politicians, Ellison and the smitten officer struck hands, and pooled their differences.

Ellison, smooth-faced, high-featured, well-dressed, a Gangland cavalier, never married. Or if he did he failed to mention it. He was not a moll-buzzer; no one could accuse him of taking money from a woman. He lived by the ballot and the bung-starter. In addition once a year he gave a racket, tinder the auspices of what he called the “Biff Ellison Association,” and as his fame increased his profits from a single racket were known to reach $2,000.

At one time Ellison challenged fortune as part proprietor of Paresis Hall, which sink of sin, as though for contrast, had been established within the very shadow of Cooper Union. Terminating his connection with Paresis Hall, he lived a life of leisure between Chick Tricker’s Park Row “store” and Nigger Mike’s at Number Twelve Pell.

Occasionally he so far unbuckled as to escort some lady to or from Sharkey’s in Fourteenth Street. Not as a lobbygow; not for any ill-odored fee of fifty cents. But as a gentleman might, and out of sheer politeness. The law, as enforced from Mulberry Street, was prone to take a narrow view of ladies who roamed alone the midnight streets. The gallant Ellison was pleasantly willing to save night-bound dames of his acquaintance from this annoyance. That was all.

Who has not heard of the celebrated Paul Kelly? Once upon a time, a good woman reading a newspaper saw reference to Paul Kelly in some interesting connection. She began to burn with curiosity; she wanted to meet Paul Kelly, and said so to her husband. Since her husband had been brought up to obey her in all things, he made no objection.

Guided by a pathfinder from the Central Office, the gentleman went forth to find Paul Kelly, his wife on his arm. They entered Lyon’s restaurant in the Bowery; the place was crowded. Room was made for them at a table by squeezing in three chairs. The lady looked about her. Across, stale and fat and gone to seed, sat an ex-eminent of the prize ring. At his elbow was a stocky person, with a visage full of wormwood and a chrysanthemum ear. He of the ear was given to misguided volubilities, more apt to startle than delight.

The woman who wanted to see Paul Kelly looked at the champion gone to sulky seed, listened to the misguided conversationist with the chrysanthemum ear, and wished she hadn’t come. She might have been driven from the field, had it not been for a small, dark personage, with black eyes and sallow cheeks, who sat next her on the left. His voice was low and not alarming; his manner bland but final. And he took quiet and quieting charge of the other two.

The dark, sallow little man led those two others in the wordy way they should go. When the talk of him of the unsatisfactory ear approached the Elizabethan so closely as to inspire terror, he put him softly yet sufficiently back in his hole. Also, when not thus employed, in holding down the conversational lid, he talked French to one man, Italian to another, English to all. Purringly polite, Chesterfield might have studied him with advantage.

The woman who wanted to see Paul Kelly was so taken with the little dark man’s easy mastery of the situation, that she forgot the object of the expedition. When she was again in the street, and had drawn a deep, clear breath or two of long relief, she expressed astonishment that one possessed of so much grace and fineness, so full of cultured elegancies, should be discovered in such coarse surroundings.

“Surely, he doesn’t belong there,” she said. “Who is he?”

“Who is he?” repeated the Central Office delegate in a discouraged tone. “I thought your hubby wised you up. That’s Paul Kelly.”

Paul Kelly owned the New Brighton in Great Jones Street. One evening, as the orchestra was tuning its fiddles for the final valse, a sudden but exhaustive bombardment then and there broke loose. In the hot midst of it, some cool hand turned off the lights. They were never again turned on. The guests departed through window and by way of door, and did not come back. It was the end of the New Brighton.

Gangland, which can talk betimes, can also keep a secret. Coax, cozen, cross-question as you will, you cannot worm from it the secret of that New Brighton bombardment. Ask, and every one is silent. There is a silence which is empty, there is a silence which is full. Those who will not tell why the New Brighton was shot up that night are silent with the silence which is full.

As usual, the Central Office is not without its theories. The Central Office is often without the criminal, but never without the explanation. One Mulberry Street whisper declared that it was a war over a woman, without saying which woman. Another whisper insisted that money lay at the roots of the business, without saying what money. Still another ran to the effect that it was one of those hit-or-miss mix-ups, in their sort extemporaneous, in their up-come inexplicable, the distinguishing mark of which is an utter lack of either rhyme or reason.