Kitabı oku: «My Life», sayfa 19

"So that day, the jay was allowed to win a hundred and fifty, and had a joyous time of it with the mob. At about midnight, Peck and the whole bunch were pinched, and think how they felt when the country cop threw back his coat and flashed a State detective badge! It cost the mob down to their shirt buttons to get out of the mess."

"How is the wire game in New York?" I queried.

"Never better, pal!" was the instant reply. "Everything is smooth with the Front Office, and the suckers are so thick that we can't attend to 'em."

"We?" I said.

Robins laughed. "I'm saying nothing. I'm a respectable business man with offices – here's my card."

With that we parted.

You can find a moral in all this – and you're welcome to it.

CHAPTER XXVI
HONOR AMONG THIEVES SO CALLED

I have often wondered whence and wherefore that queer – what shall I call it, satisfaction, pride? – which I think a good many of us feel at being on nodding or talking terms with notorious characters. Please remember that I am now speaking as Josiah Flynt, the respectable citizen, and not as Josiah Flynt, the man of the Under World.

My capacity "for to see and to admire," as Mr. Kipling says, was fairly active in the most depressing days of my speckled past. The "seeing and admiring" is the privilege of the spectator who, because he is such, may be near the crowd and not of it. So, in a sense, I stood aloof, my insatiable curiosity often prompting me simply to observe where otherwise I might have freely partaken. This curiosity was one of my few saving graces, although it is only recently that I have become aware of its being so.

But this – may I call it philosophic? – habit of observation, and the making of many incidental and disreputable friendships, is or was, a totally distinct thing from the prideful zest with which John Brown, father, taxpayer, and pew-renter turns to James Jones, ditto, ditto, and ditto, and says:

"Notice that chap who nodded to me? That's 'Corky Bunch,' who fought and nearly killed Jimmy Upcut out in Colorado last year. He rents his flat from us."

Or it may be that James Jones will say something like this:

"That's 'Billy the Biff' who just said 'morning' to me. You know – leader of the Redfire gang. Said to have killed nine men. But they can't send him to the chair because he does all the thug work round election time for Barney O'Brill, the 'teenth ward boss. Ain't such a bad looker, is he? Swell dresser, too. Buys his shirts at our store." And Jones, who is as law-abiding a citizen as ever lived, turns to his friend a face which is pink with satisfaction.

Again – not long after my last return to New York, I made the acquaintance of a nice old gentleman who is the senior partner of a wholesale stationery concern, father of a fine family, deacon of a Harlem church, member of a citizens' committee, and much more of that sort of thing. Likewise, and for certain reasons which are not important enough to explain, I was introduced to him under another name than my own. He had been to New York's Chinatown once or twice in tow of a professional guide, who, knowing what was expected of him, had filled his patron with amazing stories of the quarter and its residents. The guide had, furthermore, introduced his charge to the fake opium joints, the fan-tan games and alleged highbinder clubs which are in turn arranged for the reception and the mulcting of visitors. Therefore the old fellow felt fully capable of playing leader himself the next time a collection of country cousins visited town, and I was invited to join the party.

"You needn't hesitate to come along," gurgled the ancient, cheerfully. "When you are with any one that knows Chinatown as well as I do, there isn't a bit of danger, believe me. It's only strangers to the place that are likely to get into trouble."

And this to me!

However, I went, and the large glee with which he pointed out, as hatchet-men and gamblers and lottery keepers and opium-joint proprietors and members of various tongs and of this society and that guild, inoffensive Chinese, who were in reality shopkeepers or laundry-men who had come down to Pell or Mott streets in order to have a night off, was a sight to see. It vouched for the industrious imagination of the professional guide, and when it was all over, and we were on our way uptown again, he beamingly remarked that unless people mixed with all sorts and conditions of folk they – the people – were likely to get very narrow. In other words, you could only round out your life by rubbing shoulders with disreputables.

I have already offered, or rather suggested, one explanation of this social phenomenon, and now another occurs to me. Haven't you, when a youngster, thrust your toes out under the blankets on a winter's morning for the express purpose of accentuating the comfort of the bed when you drew them back again? I guess you have. And so, I think, respectable people like to emphasize their respectability by bringing it into close, if temporary, contact with its antithesis. A shudderful joy results, no small part of which arises from the conviction that we are not like unto the other men.

Something like that which I have just set down came to me on the second day of my return to New York, while riding downtown on a Sixth Avenue car. It was Monday morning, and three-fourths of the passengers were bargain-hunting women, judging by their conversation. On the rear platform were two "moll-buzzers," or pickpockets, who make a specialty of robbing the fair sex, and sitting near the front door was a stylish, "well-groomed," reserved woman, whom I at once recognized as "Angeles Sal," or Sarah Danby, one of the cleverest women who ever stole a purse. There came to me a thrill of the feeling of which I have been speaking. I felt a pleasant glow of superiority in that I, alone, of all the people in the car, was so well versed in the affairs of the Under World that I knew that some of the dwellers therein were on board. I awaited the things which I felt sure were soon to happen.

They came somewhat more quickly than I had imagined.

At Herald Square the car stopped to let a half dozen of the women alight. Besides the "moll-buzzers," there were two or three other men on the rear platform, which was, in consequence, somewhat crowded. This was precisely as the pickpockets desired. Scarcely had the last woman gotten into the street when there came a loud shriek from one of them.

She turned, grabbed the hand-rail of the car that by this time had begun to move, and yelling, "I've been robbed!" ran along with it without loosening her grip. Naturally, every remaining passenger jumped to his feet, and I saw "Angeles Sal" press into a group that were clustered at the windows.

Events followed with surprising celerity. The car halted with a jerk, one of the "moll-buzzers" – the "stall," by the way – opened the near platform gate, jumped into the roadway, and disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed him. The other seemed to vanish into thin air and simultaneously a police officer appeared at both front and rear doors.

Instinctively my eyes sought Sal. She was in the act of getting out from among the others, and by a single swift movement stood in front of me. Then she made a scarcely audible sound with her lips – something like the ghost of a kiss – and as her right hand passed to the left, apparently for the purpose of opening a hand-bag which was hanging from her left wrist, I felt something drop into the folds of a newspaper which I was carrying in an upright fashion between my hands, its lower edges resting on my knee. The woman had recognized me as of the Under World, had given me the thief's call for help and caution, and had planted her "swag" on me without further parley. Indeed, there wasn't time for talk, only time for action. The next instant, the excited little woman who had been "touched," burst into the car, accompanied by a third policeman.

"Now, madam," said the detective, brusquely, "is there anybody here whom you think lifted your purse? If so, pick the person out and we will go to the station house." The woman hesitated, glancing from face to face.

"This is infamous," said Sal, in a tone of well-bred anger to a lady who was standing by her side. "We are all of us, so it seems, practically accused of theft." And she moved toward the front door.

"You will excuse me, lady," said the officer on guard, "but you will please stop in the car until this party has said her say out."

Sal flushed indignantly, and drew herself up with magnificent haughtiness. Then she pulled out her cardcase.

"If you don't know me, my good man," she remarked, quietly, "I suppose you have heard of my husband?" And she passed him a pasteboard.

The detective simply wilted as he glanced at the card.

"I beg your pardon, madam," he said. "No offense meant; line of duty, you know, madam." And, mumbling more apologies, he helped her off the car and made way for her through the crowd that had gathered.

Later I learned that Sal had "sized up" the detective as unknown to her. She had the audacity to make it appear – on her cards – that she was the wife of a certain member of the judiciary who was the owner of an international reputation.

It should be added that the cards stood her in good stead on several occasions. But when the shining light of the bench began to get polite notes from department stores in which he was requested to be good enough to ask his wife to be somewhat more discreet in her methods of "obtaining expensive goods, inasmuch as some of our assistants to whom Mrs. – is not known, may cause her inconvenience," he began to investigate. These communications meant that she had been caught shoplifting and had only squeezed out of the scrapes by her grande dame manner and her visiting cards.

In the meantime I had been sitting with Sal's swag "fiddled," or concealed, in my newspaper and expecting a squeal from the "touched" one every instant.

The squeal didn't come off, however. Neither did the excited little woman identify her despoiler. So the police departed and the car went on. I took an early opportunity of disembarking, and in a convenient place examined that which the newspaper contained – I don't mean the news.

Sal's graft proved to be a small gold or gilt purse, which contained a few bills and a couple of valuable rings, which were evidently on their way to a jeweler's for repairs. One was a cluster ring of diamonds and rubies that had had its hoop broken. The other had two big, white stones, set gypsy fashion – it was a man's ring, or rather the stones were so set. But one of the diamonds having loosened had been removed and sewed up in a bit of muslin which, in turn, was secured to the ring itself. The purse evidently belonged to a woman.

Now, you would have thought that the moment that the cry of "thief" was raised, the owner of the rings would have assured herself that the valuables were all right, and would remain so. That thought by the same token would mark you as a denizen of the Over instead of the Under World.

Angeles Sal was not only an expert with her hands, but also a student of human nature. For that matter most "guns" are those whose graft is somewhat out of the ordinary. So, when the "squeal" was put up, she kept a keen eye on the women passengers and saw most of them slap their hands on that part of their persons where their valuables were hidden. The action was involuntary, as it always is in such cases. It told Sal all she wanted to know.

She selected to "touch" a woman who was carrying a suede hand-bag, the fastenings of which were of the dumb-bell order. This woman had, when the outcry was raised, spasmodically touched the lower part of the bag, felt it a moment, and, satisfied, turned her attention to the crowd outside. This was Sal's cue, and it was an easy matter for her to "teaze" the bag open, extract the purse, and re-shut the former. Her knowledge of everyday people's nature had taught her that if the idea of the rings being safe was once fixed in their owner's mind the latter would, in consequence, be safer to "touch" than she would be under ordinary circumstances.

This reminds me that a good many of the successful "get-aways" of the Powers that Prey are due to an insight into the workings of the human mentality rather than to agile fingers or elaborate kits of tools. If you know what the other man is going to do next, he is yours, or rather his belongings are. This is an aphorism that is always in order in the Under World. So it is that "guns" are always studying the art of forecasting. So well are most "plants" arranged, in consequence, that, for the most part, when they fail it is on account of the interposition of the unexpected rather than from any defects in the plan of campaign.

If the foregoing story interests you at all it will probably be on the score of its being an illustration of the so-called "honor among thieves." In other words, you will have come to the conclusion that Sal, thinking that she recognized in me a member of the Under World, threw herself and her "swag" on my presumed "honor," trusting to luck for us to meet again and "divvy" on the usual terms that exist between pal and pal; for, in all cases of a "touch," the parties to it share alike. Now, as a matter of fact, Sal's motive was of an entirely different kind. She knew that she was in a tight place, saw one chance of saving her booty, and took it. That was all that it amounted to, and, from her point of view, she did perfectly right. Newspapers and cheap novels are responsible for a whole lot of romantic humbug in regard to pickpockets and their doings, from the time of Robin Hood down, including the "thieves' honor" proposition.

It is proper for me to add that I advertised the purse and the rings as being "found," and they were, in due time, restored to their owner.

I have often been asked as to whether "honor among thieves" is fact or fiction. The question is not easy to answer. In the first place, honor is a relative term, its interpretation, so it seems to me, depending on place, person and circumstance. Those casuists of the cynical sort who affirm that all human motive is based on selfishness, will hardly except the attribute in question from their generalization.

However open to criticism this same generalization is, so far as it applies to the average citizen, I am certainly inclined to accept it when the crook is concerned. The business of attaching to yourself things that don't belong to you is plainly of a very selfish nature. It has its inception as well as its execution in a desire to get as much possible pleasure with as little possible trouble as may be, and that, too, while ignoring the incidental rights of anybody and everybody.

This statement, as I take it, is a pretty fair definition of selfishness of any and every description. As most motives take color from the acts from which they spring or to which they relate, it follows that the "honor" which we are pleased to think of as existing between rogues, is in reality a something which is prompted by a due regard for the persons or the purses of the self-same individuals. This distinguishes the honor that obtains in the Under World from that which is mostly in evidence in the Over World. In the latter instance the factor of one's good name or character is involved; it is absent in the former. From this characterization you will infer, as I intend you shall, that the "honor" of the Powers that Prey is but a poor sort of a thing after all, and is, as I have intimated, but personal interest more or less thinly disguised.

Still, sometimes the disguise is so clever that it looks like the real thing – to the outsider; but "wise" people rarely fail in tracing the reasons which prompt a rogue to refuse to give away a pal. Even when his doing so means a long term in prison as against immunity if he would only use his tongue to "peach" on his associate and therefore cause that person's conviction.

In such cases the newspapers, so I've noticed, are apt to give the mum one a species of glorification which is never deserved. I want the words set up in italics; they deserve that distinction. Let me repeat, the crook who cannot be got to "flash" on his gang, either by the third degree at the "Front Office" – the often brutal inquisition at police headquarters – the prison chaplain, or the district attorney's staff, is never dumb because his "honor" prompts him to remain so. It is his self-interest that bids him keep his mouth shut.

Some seven years ago, a bank in a little New Jersey town, about fifty miles due west of New York, was one night "done up" in good shape. The "peter-men," of whom there were four, secured something like eighteen thousand dollars in greenbacks, to say nothing of a bunch of negotiable papers and a couple of small jewel safes, weighing about a hundred pounds each. The rich residents of the locality used to store their sunbursts, tiaras and rings in these safes, which, by the way, were kept in the main safe of the bank. This was known to the gang who turned the trick, and the big safe proving easy, the little ones "fell" in consequence.

The "guns" who were on the job hailed from the West, and had been working together for some years. They were all "good people," as the detective phrase is for clever crooks. There was "Bandy" Schwarz, an old-timer, who had seen the inside of every "stir and jug" west of the Missouri; "Ike" Mindin, otherwise "Beak," an expert with the drills and levers; "Sandy" Hope, a notorious cracksman of Chicago birth and criminal reputation, who, at the time of the New Jersey "plant," was wanted in Kansas City in connection with the shooting of a watchman of a dry goods store; and another man who shall be nameless, so far as I am concerned. I may add, however, that at this writing he is living in New York, and has a fairly prosperous undertaking business (of all things!), having "squared it" for a half dozen or more years. If he should happen to read this, he will know that the small, weazen-faced chap who used to be about a good deal with Pete Dolby's gang in the old days in Chicago, isn't ungrateful. Following the breaking up of Dolby's crowd, through the stool-pigeon, "Dutch Joe," I would many a time have had to "carry the banner," or walk the streets all night if it hadn't been for this man, who was always ready to give up a bed or a cup of coffee.

As I've said before, the "get-away" – that is, the method of escaping with the "swag" – is always carefully worked out by the framers of a "plant," or proposed robbery. In this case it was of a rather elaborate sort. The safe was to be drilled and jimmied instead of being blown, because of the proximity of houses to the bank. Then the plunder was to be loaded into a buggy, the wheels of which were rubber-tired, while the horses' hoofs were wrapped in cloth to deaden their sound. The buggy was then to be driven to an appointed spot near South Amboy, where a cat-boat in charge of Sandy would be in waiting, to which the articles were to be transferred. Then the craft was to be rowed off to a fishing-ground, where the day was to be spent, and as night fell, was to head for Gravesend Bay, where it was believed that the valuables could be gotten on shore without suspicion, either as fish or as the outfit of a fishing party.

But the unexpected happened. The "getaway" was begun all right, but a couple of miles from the bank the buggy broke down under the weight of the two safes. This was about four-thirty and in June. Now, it so happened that the cashier of the bank was to take his vacation during the following week, and in consequence he was getting to his work ahead of time, and on this particular morning reached the bank at five-thirty o'clock. Fifteen minutes later, the local police and population were scouring the surrounding country, the "Front Offices" of New York, Philadelphia and other big cities were being notified, and a net, so to speak, was drawn tightly around the scene of the "touch" from which there was no escape. It all ended by Bandy and Mindin being caught while trying to "cache" the safes in a wood near to the scene of the breakdown. The third man had disappeared with the currency. Mindin tried to scare the pursuing Jerseymen by shooting, but got filled with buckshot in consequence.

Bandy absolutely refused to "peach" on his pals. He was bullied, coaxed, threatened, prayed over, offered immunity and in other ways tempted to tell. It turned out afterwards that the cause of all this effort on the part of the police was that somehow or other they had got a hint that Sandy Hope was mixed up with the job, and they wanted him the worst way on account of the Kansas City affair. In other words, they were willing to let a "peter-man" go for the sake of getting a man-killer. Bandy stood it out, though, and was finally sentenced to seven years in prison.

Not long before I last left for Europe, I happened into a prosperous, hybrid sort of store in a pretty town about an hour's ride from New York. It was one of those shops where you can buy nearly everything, from stationery to Japanese ware, with tobacco, candy and dress goods in between. Behind the counter, with a blue apron covering his comfortable paunch and the capital O legs, from which he got his "monacher," was Bandy himself.

Now, the etiquette of the Under World doesn't permit of one pal even recognizing another in the everyday world unless the "office" is given and such a recognition is desired – and safe. Hence, while I knew that Bandy knew me and he knew that I knew it, I gave no sign of that fact. Yet as he passed me the pack of cigarettes for which I had asked, my forefinger tapped the back of his hand twice, which, in the sign language of the Under World, is equivalent to "I want to chin with you." Bandy coughed a slight, guttural cough and gave a hardly noticeable jerk of his head toward the rear of the store. He had replied that he was willing to "chin" and that the room at the back was all right for that purpose. Whither we went when the other customer in the place had been served and had departed.

I needn't tell about the reminiscences we exchanged. I will come direct to that part of our conversation which had to do with his exhibition of crook "honor" on the lines related.

"You certainly wouldn't 'beef,'" I said tentatively. "Many a man fixed like you were would have let his clapper loose all right. And the newspapers did you proud. 'Twas a fine front you put up, and the gang ought to be proud of you."

"Proud nothing!" said the reformed crook, impatiently. "And seems to me, Cig., that you've caught the patter of those nutty newspaper guys who is always stinging the dear public about guys who never go back on pals, because they're built that way and all the rest of such guff."

He stopped disgustedly.

"Here's the straight of it. Up to the time that we frisked a joint in Chi that happened to be owned by the brother of a cop, we – the four of us – was doing well and had a lot of fall money [large reserve sum for use in case of emergencies]. Well, the gang agreed that if one of us was copped out, the others would look out for his piece of fall money, and, what was more, while he was put away, he should get a share of one-eighth of all touches, which same could be sent to his wife or kids, as the case might be. That was good enough, wasn't it?"

I nodded and Bandy went on.

"That was the reason why I didn't turn mouthpiece. Another was," he smiled grimly, "that it was quite clearly understood that any one of us who opened his mouth to the police once, wouldn't do so twice. Sandy Hope, I mind me, was fond of announcing this fact in a kind of casual way. Not that we mistrusted each other, but it was well for everybody to know that the man who tried any stalling off would have his light put out just as soon as it could be arranged."

"But," I said, "supposing that the crowd didn't keep its word – got away with the fall-money and the percentage on the touches while you were in jail?"

"In that case," answered Bandy, without a moment's hesitation, "all bets would be off. The gentleman in custody would make a cry that would be heard in every detective bureau in America. There would be an immediate decrease in the population of crooks. Why, I know enough about Sandy to get his neck – " he stopped suddenly.

"And was this, too, understood by the gang?"

Bandy shifted uneasily on his seat.

"You make me weary – honest you do, Cig. What's the matter with you? You know just as well as I do that every gang of crooks knows just what I've been telling you. If it weren't true, what's to keep them from squealing every time they get arrested?"

In this last sentence Bandy summed up the whole question of honor among thieves, and for this reason I have told the foregoing at some length. The repentance of a thief rarely, if ever, includes restitution. This statement anyhow applies to the veterans. With the younger men it is somewhat otherwise, and then usually through the administrations of the prison chaplain. But after having served a prison term for the first time the young crook adopts the sophistry and cynicism of his elders in crime. The only time that a thief feels regret for his misdeeds is when the latter has been fruitless, or when the proceeds have been lost to him.

What I have said about crooks not peaching on each other does not apply to the professional stool-pigeon, or "mouthpiece," who, by the way, is part and parcel of every police force in every city and town in this country and abroad. But these fellows can hardly be classed as genuine crooks, at least in the great majority of instances. They are rather the Pariahs of the Under World – hated, despised and tolerated for precisely the same reason that curs are allowed to roam through the streets.

It goes without saying that as long as the "mouthpiece" forms an integral part of the police system of civilization, so long will there be a real, although not admitted, alliance between the Powers that Prey and the Powers that Rule, with an incidental weakening and demoralization of the latter.

Finally, there are times and seasons in which the Under World of its own volition gives up an offender. But these occasions are rare, and only when it is felt that the individual must be sacrificed for the good of the community. Usually there is a political pact in these rare happenings.