The Apaches of New York

“There never is a ship in the navy named Atalanta.”

This declaration, delivered with emphasis, emanated from old Jimmy, who had a place by himself in East Side consideration. Old Jimmy was about sixty, with a hardwood-finish face and ‘possum-colored hair. He had been a river pirate in the old days, and roamed the midnight waters for what he might pick up. Those were times when he troubled the police, who made him trouble in return. But one day old Jimmy salvaged a rich man’s daughter, who – as though to make his fortune – had fallen overboard from a yacht, and bored her small hole in the water within a rod or two of Jimmy’s skiff. Certainly, he fished her out, and did it with a boat hook. More; he sagaciously laid her willowy form across a thwart, to the end that the river water flow more easily from her rosebud mouth. Relieved of the water, the rescued beauty thanked Jimmy profusely; and, for his generous part, her millionaire father proceeded to pension his child’s preserver for life. The pension was twenty-five dollars a week. Coming fresh and fresh with every Monday, Jimmy gave up his piracies and no longer haunted in the name of loot the nightly reaches of the river. Indeed, he became offensively idle and honest.

“No sir,” repeated old Jimmy; “there never is a ship in our navy named Atalanta.”

“All th’ same,” retorted the dropper, “I lamps a yacht once w’at’s called Atalanta.”

“An’ who says No?” demanded old Jimmy, testily. “I’m talkin’ about th’ United States Navy. But speakin’ of Louie, it ain’t no cinch he’s ever in th ‘navy. I’d sooner bet he’s been in jail.”

“An’ if he was,” said Jew Yetta, “there ain’t no one here who’s got anything on him.”

“W’at does Atalanta mean, anyway?” questioned the Dropper, who didn’t like the talk of jails. “Is it a place?”

“Nixie,” put in Slimmy, the erudite, ever ready to display his learning. “Atalanta’s the name of a skirt, who b’longs ‘way back. She’s some soon as a sprinter, too, an’ can run her one hundred yards in better than ten seconds. Every god on Olympus clocked this dame, an’ knew what she could do.”

“W’at’s her story?” asked the Dropper.

“It gets along, d’ye see, where Atalanta’s folks thinks she ought to get married. But she won’t have it; she’d sooner be a sprinter. With that, they crowd her hand; an’ to get shut of ‘em, she finally tacks it up on the bulletin board that she’ll chase to th’ altar only with some student who can beat her at a quarter mile dash. ‘No lobsters need apply!’ says she. Also, there’s conditions. Under the rules, if some chump calls th’ bluff, an’ can’t make good – if she lands him loses – her papa’s headsman will be on th’ job with his axe, an’ that beaten gink’ll get his block whacked off.”

“An’ does any one go against such a game?” queried Jew Yetta.

“Sure! A whole fleet of young Archibalds and Reginalds went up ag’inst it. They all lose; an’ his jiblets wit’ th’ cleaver chops off their youthful beans.

“But the luck turns. One day a sure-thing geek shows up whose monaker is Hippomenes. Hippy’s a fly Indian; there ain’t goin’ to be no headsman in his. Hippy’s hep to skirts, too, an’ knows where th’ board is off their fence. He organizes with three gold apples, see, an’ every time little Atalanta Shootin’ Star goes flashin’ by, he chucks down one of ‘em in front of her. She simply eats it up; she can’t get by not one; an’ she loses so much time grabbin’ for ‘em, Hippy noses in a winner.”

“Good boy!” broke forth the Dropper. “An’ do they hook up?”

“They’re married; but it don’t last. You see its Venus who shows Hippy how to crab Atalanta’s act an’ stakes him to th’ gold apples. An’ later, when he double-crosses Venus, that goddess changes him an’ his baby mine into a-couple of lions.”

The Irish Wop had been listening impatiently. It was when Governor Hughes flourished in Albany, and the race tracks were being threatened. The Wop, as a pool-room keeper, was vastly concerned.

“I see,” said the Wop, appealing directly to old Jimmy as the East Side Nestor, “that la-a-ad Hughes is makin’ it hot for Belmont an’ Keene an’ th’ rist av th’ racin’ gang. Phwat’s he so ha-a-ard on racin’ for? Do yez look on playin’ th’ ponies as a vice, Jimmy?”

“Well,” responded old Jimmy with a conservative air, “I don’t know as I’d call it a vice so much as a bonehead play.”

“They call it th’ shpo-r-rt av kings,” observed die Wop, loftily.

Old Jimmy snorted. “Sport of kings!” said he. “Sport of come-ons, rather. Them Sport-of-kings gezebos ‘ll go on, too, an’ give you a lot of guff about racin’ bein’ healthy. But they ain’t sayin’ a word concernin’ th’ mothers an’ youngones livin’ in hot two-room tenements, an’ jumpin’ sideways for grub, while th’ husbands and fathers is blowin’ in their bank-rolls in th’ bettin’ ring, an’ gettin’ healthy. An’ th’ little jocks, too – mere kids! I’ve wondered th’ Gerries didn’t get after ‘em. But I suppose th’ Gerries know who to pass up, an’ who to pinch, as well as th’ oldest skipper on th’ Force.”

“F’r all that,” contended the Wop, stubbornly, “thim la-a-ads that’s mixed up wit’ th’ racin’ game is good feltys.”

“Good fellows,” repeated old Jimmy with contempt. “I recollect seein’ a picture once, a picture of a girl – a young wife, she is – lyin’ with her head on an untouched dinner table – fallen asleep, poor thing! Th’ clock in the picture is pointin’ to midnight. There she’s been waitin’ with th’ dinner she’s cooked with her own little lovin’ mitts, for that souse of a husband to come home. Under th’ picture it says, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow!’”

“Somebody’d ought to have put a head on him!” quoth Jew Yetta, whose sympathies were both active and militant.

“Say,” went on Jimmy, “that picture gets on my nerves. A week later I’m down be th’ old Delmonico joint at Twenty-sixth an’ Broadway. It’s meb-by one o’clock in th’ mornin’. As I’m goin’ by th’ Twenty-sixt’ Street door, out floats a fleet of Willies, stewed to the gills, singin’ in honor of a dude who’s in th’ middle, ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’

“‘Who’s that galoot?’ I asks th’ dub who’s slammin’ carriage doors at the curb. ‘Is he a married man?’

“‘He’s married all right,” says th’ door-slammin’ dub.

“Wit that I tears into him. It’s a good while ago, an’ I could slug a little. Be th’ time th’ copper gets there, I’ve got that jolly good fellow lookin’ like he’d been caught whistlin’ Croppies Lie Down at Fiftieth Street an’ Fift’ Avenoo when th’ Cathedral lets out.”

“Well, I’m not married,” remarked the Wop, snappishly; – “I’m not married; I niver was married; an’ I niver will be married aloive.”

“Did youse notice?” remarked the Dropper, “how they gets a roar out of old Boss Croker? He’s for racin’ all right.”

“Naturally,” said old Jimmy. “Him ownin’ race horses, Croker’s for th’ race tracks. He don’t cut no ice.”

“How much do yez figger Croker had cleaned up, Jimmy, when he made his getaway for Ireland?” asked the Wop, licking an envious lip.

“Without comin’ down to book-keepin’,” returned old Jimmy, carelessly, “my understandin’ is that, be havin’ th’ whole wad changed into thousand dollar bills, he’s able to get it down to th’ dock on a dray.”

The Grabber came in. He beckoned Slimmy, and the two were at once immersed in serious whisperings.

“What are youse two stews chinnin’ about?” called out the Dropper lazily, from across the room. “Be youse thinkin’ of orderin’ th’ beer?”

“It’s about Indian Louie,” replied Slimmy, angrily. “Th’ Grabber here says Louie’s out to skin us.”

“Indian Louie,” remarked the Wop, with a gleam in his little gray eye. “That’s th’ labberick w’at’s goin’ to shti-i-ick up me poolroom f’r thim fifty bones. Anny wan that’d have annything to do wit’ a bum loike him ought to get skinned.”

“W’at’s he tryin’ to saw off on youse?” asked the Dropper.

“This is th’ proposition.” It was the Grabber now. “Me an’ Slimmy here goes in wit’ Louie to give that racket last week in Tammany Hall. Now Louie’s got th’ whole bundle, an’ he won’t split it. Me an’ Slimmy’s been t’run down for six hundred good iron dollars apiece.”

“An’ be yez goin’ to let him get away wit’ it?” demanded the Wop.

“W’at can we do?” asked the Grabber, disconsolately.

“It’s that big blonde,” declared Jew Yetta’ with acrimony. “She’s goin’ through Louie for every dollar. I wonder Mollie Squint an’ Pretty Agnes don’t put her on th’ fritz.”

The Hesper Club was in Second Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets. It was one o’clock in the morning when Indian Louie took his accustomed seat at the big table in the corner.

“How’s everybody?” he asked, easily. “I oversleeps meself, or I’d been here hours ago.”

“W’at tires you?” asked Candy Phil. Not that he cared, but merely by way of conversation.

“It’s th’ big feed last night at Terrace Garden. I’m two days trainin’ for it, an’ all day gettin’ over it. Them swell blowouts is something fierce!” and Louie assumed a wan and weary air, intended to be superior.

“So you was at Terrace Garden?” said Nigger Ruhl.

“Was I? Youse should have seen me! Patent leathers, white choker, and a diamond in th’ middle of me three-sheet big enough to trip a dog.”

“There’s nothin’ in them dress suits,” protested Maxie Hahn. “I’m ag’inst ‘em; they ain’t dimmycratic.”

“All th’ same, youse’ve got to wear ‘em at these swell feeds,” said Candy Phil. “They’d give youse th’ gate if you don’t. An’ as for not bein’ dimmycratic” – Candy Phil had his jocose side – “they make it so you can’t tell th’ high-guys from th’ waiters, an’ if that ain’t dimmycratic what is? Th’ only thing I know ag’inst ‘em is that youse can’t go to th’ floor wit’ a guy in ‘em. You’ve got to cut out th’ scrappin’, an’ live up to the suit, see?” The Grabber strolled in, careless and smiling. Louie fastened him with eyes of dark suspicion, while Maxie Hahn, the’ Lobster Kid and Candy Phil began pushing their chairs out of the line of possible fire. For they knew of those monetary differences.

“Not a chance, sports,” remarked the Grabber, reassuringly. “No one’s goin’ to start anything. Let’s take a drink,” and the Grabber beat upon the table as a sign of thirst. “I ain’t after no one here.”

“Be youse alludin’ to me, Grabber?” asked Louie, with a frown like a great cloud. “I don’t like them cracks about startin’ somethin’.”

“Keep your shoit on,” expostulated the Grabber, clinking down the change for the round of beers; “keep your shoit on, Louie. I ain’t alludin’ at nobody nor nothin’, least of all at youse. Besides, I just gets a message for you – only you don’t seem in no humor to receive it.”

“Who’s it from?” asked Louie.

“It’s Laura” – Laura was the opulent blonde – “Mollie Squint an’ Pretty Agnes runs up on her about an hour ago at Twelfth Street an’ Second Avenoo, an’ Mollie bounces a brick off her coco. A copper comes along an’ chases Mollie an’ Pretty Agnes. I gets there as they’re carry in’ Laura into that Dago’s joint be th’ corner. Laura asks me if I sees youse to tell w’at’s happened her; that’s all.”

“Was Mollie and Agnes sloughed in?” asked Louie, whose practical mind went first to his breadwinners.

“No, they faded into th’ next street. Th’ cop don’t want to pinch ‘em anyway.”

“About Laura; was she hoited much?”

“Ten stiches, an’ a week in Roosevelt Hospital; that’s the best she can get.”

“I must chase round an’ look her over,” was Louie’s anxious conclusion. “W’at’s that Dago joint she’s at?”

“It’s be th’ corner,” said the Grabber, “an’ up stairs. I forgets the wop’s monaker.” As Louie hesitated over these vague directions, the Grabber set down his glass. “Say, to show there’s no hard feelin’, I’ll go wit’ youse.”

As Louie and the Grabber disappeared through the door, Candy Phil threw up both hands as one astonished to the verge of nervous shock.

“Well, w’at do youse think of that?” he exclaimed. “I always figgered Louie had bats in his belfry; now I knows it. They’ll croak him sure!” Nigger Ruhl and the Lobster Kid arose as though to follow. At this, Candy Phil broke out fiercely.

“W’at’s wrong wit’ youse stews? Stick where you be!”

“But they’ll cook Louie!” expostulated the Lobster Kid.

“It ain’t no skin off your nose if they do. W’y should youse go buttin’ in?”

Louie and the Grabber were in Twelfth Street, hurrying towards Second Avenue. Not a soul, except themselves, was abroad. The Grabber walked on Louie’s right, which showed that either the latter was not the gunplayer he pretended, or the word from Laura had thrown him off his guard.

Suddenly, as the pair passed a dark hallway, the Grabber’s left arm stole round Louie’s neck.

“About that dough, Louie!” hissed the Grabber, at the same time tightening his left arm.

Louie half turned to free himself from the artful Grabber. As he did so, the Grabber’s ready right hand brought his pistol into action, and one bullet and then another flashed through Louie’s brain. A slim form rushed out of the dark hallway, and fired two bullets into Louie’s body. Louie was dead before he struck the pavement.

The Grabber, with his slim companion, darted through the dark hallway, out a rear door and over a back fence. Sixty seconds later they were quietly walking in Thirteenth Street, examples of law-abiding peace.

“It was th’ easiest ever, Slimmy!” whispered the Grabber, when he had recovered his breath. “I knew that stall about Laura’d fetch him.”

“Who was at th’ Hesper Club?”

“On’y Candy Phil, th’ Lobster Kid an’ two or three other blokes. Every one of ‘em’s a right guy. They won’t rap.”

“Thim la-a-ads,” remarked the Wop, judiciously, when he heard of Louie’s taking off – “thim la-a-ads musht ‘av lost their heads. There’s six or seven hundred bones on that bum, an’ they niver copped a splinter!”

The word came two ways to the Central Office. One report said “Indian Louie” and another “Johnny Spanish.” Detective O’Farrell invaded Chinatown, and dug up Big Mike Abrams, that the doubt might be removed.

“It’s Indian Louie, all right,” said Big Mike, following a moment’s silent survey of the rigid form. Then, in a most unlooked for vein of sentiment: “They all get here at last!”

“That’s no dream!” agreed the morgue attendant. “An’, say, Mike” – he liked his joke as well as any other – “I’ve been expectin’ you for some time.”

“Sure!” returned Big Mike, with a friendly grin; “I’ll come chasin’ along, feet foist, some mornin’. But don’t forget that while I’m waitin’ I’m workin’. I’ve sent two stiffs down here to youse already, to help keep you goin’ till I comes. Accordin’ to th’ chances, however, me own turn oughtn’t to be so very far away.”

Big Mike Abram’s turn was just three weeks away.

“Who were those two, Mike, you sent down here to the morgue?” asked O’Farrell, carelessly.

O’Farrell had a catlike fame for slyness.

“Say,” grinned Big Mike, derisively; “look me over! I ain’t wearin’ no medals, am I, for givin’ meself up to you bulls?”

VI. – HOW JACKEEN SLEW THE DOC

In person he was tall, languid, slender, as neat as a cat, and his sallow face – over which had settled the opium pallor – was not an ugly face. Also, there abode such weakness, some good, and no harm in him. His constitution was rickety. In the winter he coughed and invited pneumonia; in the summer, when the sun poured down, he trembled on the brink of a stroke. But neither pneumonia nor sunstroke ever quite killed him.

It was written that Jackeen would do that – Jackeen Dalton, alias Brady; and Jackeen did it with five bullets from an automatic-38. Some said that opium was at the bottom of it; others laid it to love. It is still greatly talked over in what pipe joints abound in Mott, Pell and Doyers, not to mention the wider Catherine Street, in the neighborhood of number Nineteen, where he had his flat and received his friends.

They called him the Doc. Twenty years ago the Doc studied dentistry with his father, who flourished reputably as a tooth surgeon at the Troy Dental Parlors in Roosevelt Street. The father died before the Doc had been given a diploma; and the Doc, having meanwhile picked up the opium habit, was never able afterwards to see the use. Why should he be examined or ask for a license? What foolishness! Magnanimously waving aside every thought of the sort, he plunged into the practice of his cheerless art among those who went in and out of Chinatown, and who lived precariously by pocket-picking, porch-climbing, safe-blowing and all-round strong-arm methods; and, careless of the statute in such case made and provided, he proceeded to file and drill and cap and fill and bridge and plug and pull their aching cuspids, bicuspids and molars, and all with as quick an instinct and as deft a touch as though his eyes were sharpened and his hand made steady by the dental sheepskins of a dozen colleges. That he was an outlaw among tooth-drawers served only to knit him more closely to the hearts of his patients – themselves merest outlaws among men.

The Doc kept his flat in Catherine Street as bright and burnished as the captain’s cabin of a man-of-war. There was no prodigious wealth of furniture, no avalanche of ornament to overwhelm the taste. Aside from an outfit of dental tools, the most expensive belongings appeared to be what lamps and pipes and kindred paraphernalia were required in the smoking of opium.

Those who visited the Doc were compelled to one formality. Before he would open his door, they must push the bell four times and four times tap on the panel. Thus did they prove their friendly identity. Lawful dentists, in their jealousy, had had the Doc arrested and fined, from time to time, for intromitting with the teeth of his fellow worms without a license. Hence that precautionary quartet of rings, followed by the quartet of taps, indicative that a friend and not a foe was at his gate.

The Doc had many callers who came to smoke opium. For these he did divers kindly offices, mostly in the letter-writing line. As they reclined and smoked, they dictated while the Doc transcribed, and many and weird were the epistles from Nineteen Catherine Street which found their way into the mails. For this service, as for his opium and dentistry, the Doc’s callers never failed to press upon him an honorarium. And so he lived.

Love, that flowerlike sentiment for which – as some jurist once remarked of justice – all places are palaces, all seasons summer, is not incompatible with either dentistry or opium. The Doc had a sweetheart named Lulu. Lulu was very beautiful and very jealous. Also, she was broadly popular. All Chinatown made songs to the deep glories of her eyes, which were supposed to have excited the defeated envy of many stars. The Doc, in what odd hours he could snatch from tooth-drawing and opium-smoking, worshipped at the shrine of Lulu; and Lulu was wrapped up in the Doc. Number Nineteen Catherine Street served as their Garden of Eden.

Now it is among the many defects of opium that it renders migratory the fancy. An ebon evidence of this was to be given at number Nineteen. The I love of the Doc became, as it were, pipe-deflected, and one day left Lulu, and, after a deal of fond circling, settled like some errant dove upon a rival belle called May.

Likewise, there was a dangerous side to this dulcet, new situation. The enchanting May, when the Doc chose her for his goddess, vice Lulu thrown down, could not be described as altogether disengaged. Was she not also the goddess of Jackeen? Had not that earnest safe-robber laid his heart at her feet?

Moreover, there were reasons even more substantial. The gentle May was in her way a breadwinner. When the fortunes of Jackeen were low, she became their mutual meal-ticket. May was the most expert shoplifter in all of broad New York. If not upon heart arguments, then upon arguments of the pocket, not to say stomach, Jackeen might be expected to fiercely resent any effort to win her love away.

Jackeen?

Not much is to be told by an appearance, although physiognomists have sung otherwise. The egg of the eagle is less impressive than the egg of: the goose. And yet it hotly houses in its heart an’ eagle. The egg of the nightingale shows but-meanly side by side with the egg of the crow. And: yet it hides within its modest bosom the limpid music of the moon.

So it is with men.

Jackeen was not an imposing personality. But neither is the tarantula. He was five feet and an inch in stunted stature, and weighed a mean shadow under one hundred and ten pounds. Like the Doc – who had stolen his love away – Jackeen’s hollow cheeks were of that pasty gray which speaks of opium. Also, from opium, the pupils of his vermin eyes had become as the points of two dull pins. Shrivelled, degenerate, a tattered rag of humanity, Jackeen was none the less a perilous spirit, and so the Doc – too late – would learn.

From that Eden at Nineteen Catherine Street, the fair Lulu had been put into the street. This was to make pleasant room for the visits of the fairer May. Jackeen was untroubled, knowing nothing about it. He was for the moment too wholly engaged, being in the throes of a campaign against the Savoy theatre safe, from which strongbox he looked forward to a harvest of thousands.

The desolate Lulu went everywhere seeking Jackeen, to tell him of his wrongs. Her search was vain; those plans touching the Savoy safe had withdrawn him from his accustomed haunts. One night, however, the safe was blown and plundered. Alas and alack! Jackeen’s share, from those hoped-for thousands, dwindled to a paltry sixty dollars – not enough for a single spree!

In his resentment, Jackeen, with the aid of a bevy of friends, hastily stuck-up a wayfarer, whom he met in Division Street. The wayfarer’s pockets proved empty. It was even more of a waterhaul than had been the Savoy safe. The double disappointment turned Jackeen’s mood to gall and it was while his humor was thus bilious that he one day walked into the Chatham Club.

There was a distinguished company gathered at the Chatham Club. Nannie Miller, Blinky the Lob-bygow, Dago Angelo, Roxie, Jimida, Johnny Rice, Stagger, Jimmy Foy, and St. Louis Bill – all were there. And these were but a handful of what high examples sat about the Chatham Club, and with calls for beer, and still more beer, kept Nigger Mike and his assistants on the joyful jump.

When Jackeen came in, Mike greeted him warmly, and placed a chair next to that of Johnny Rice. Conversation broke out concerning the dead and departed Kid Twist. While Twist was an Eastman and an enemy of Roxie – himself of the Five Points – the latter was no less moved to speak in highest terms of him. He defended this softness by remarking:

“Twist’s dead, see! An’ once a guy’s been put to bed wit’ a shovel, if youse can’t speak well of him youse had better can gabbin’ about him altogether. Them’s my sentiments.”

Dago Angelo, who had been a friend of the vanished Twist, applauded this, and ordered beer.

Twist – according to the veracious Roxie – had not been wanting in brilliancy as a Captain of Industry. He had showed himself ingenious when he took his poolroom into the Hatmakers’ Union, as a safeguard against raids by the police.

Upon another occasion, strictly commercial – so said Roxie – Twist had displayed a generalship which would have glorified a Rockefeller. Baby Flax, named for the soft innocuousness of his countenance, kept a grogshop in Houston Street. One quiet afternoon Twist abruptly broke that cherubic publican’s windows, mirrors, glasses, bottles.

Lighting a cigar, Twist stood in the midst of that ruin undismayed.

“What’s up?” demanded the policeman, who came hot-foot to the scene.

“Well,” vouchsafed Twist, between puffs, “there’s a party chases in, smashes things, an’ then beats it up the street wit’out sayin’ a woid.”

The policeman looked at Baby Flax.

“It’s straight,” chattered that ill-used proprietor, who, with the dangerous eye of Twist upon him, wouldn’t have told the truth for gold and precious stones.

“What started youse, Twist?” asked a friend.

“It’s this way,” explained Twist. “I’m introducin’ a celery bitters – because there’s cush in it. I goes into Baby Flax’s an’ asks him to buy. He hands me out a ‘No!’ So I ups an’ puts his joint on the bum. After this, when I come into a dump, they’ll buy me bitters, see! Sure, I cops an order for two cases from Flax before I leaves.”

Leaving Twist to sleep in peace, and by way of turning the laugh on that gentleman, Roxie related an adventure with Nigger Mike. It was when that sub-chief of the Eastmans kept at number Twelve Pell, by word of the vivacious Roxie, he, with certain roysterers belonging to the Five Points, had gone to Mike’s to drink beer. They were the foe. But no less he served them, as he was doing now, for such was and is the bland etiquette of the gangs.