Kitabı oku: «The Apaches of New York», sayfa 4

IV. – IKE THE BLOOD

Whenever the police were driven to deal with him officially, he called himself Charles Livin, albeit the opinion prevailed at headquarters that in thus spelling it, he left off a final ski. The police, in the wantonness of their ignorance, described him on their books as a burglar. This was foolishly wide. He should have been listed as a simple Strong-Arm, whose methods of divorcing other people from their money, while effective, were coarse. Also, it is perhaps proper to mention that his gallery number at the Central Office was 10,394.

It was during the supremacy of Monk Eastman that he broke out, and he had just passed his seventeenth birthday. Being out, he at once attached himself to the gang-fortunes of that chief; and it became no more than a question of weeks before his vast physical strength, the energy of his courage and a native ferocity of soul, won him his proud war-name of Ike the Blood. Compared with the herd about him, in what stark elements made the gangster important in his world, he shone out upon the eyes of folk like stars of a clear cold night.

Ike the Blood looked up to his chief, Monk Eastman, as sailors look up to the North Star, and it wrung his soul sorely when that gang captain went to Sing Sing. In the war over the succession and the baton of gang command, waged between Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, Ike the Blood was compelled to stand neutral. Powerless to take either side, liking both ambitious ones, the trusted friend of both, his hands were tied; and later – first Fitzpatrick and then Twist – he followed both to the grave, sorrow not only on his lips but in his heart.

It was one recent August day that I was granted an introduction to Ike the Blood. I was in the company of an intimate friend of mine – he holds high Central Office position in the police economy of New York. We were walking in Henry Street, in the near vicinity of that vigorous organization, the Ajax Club – so called, I take it, because its members are forever defying the lightnings of the law. My Central Office friend had mentioned Ike the Blood, speaking of him as a guiding light to such difficult ones as Little Karl, Whitey Louie, Benny Weiss, Kid Neumann, Tomahawk, Fritzie Rice, Dagley and the Lobster.

Even as the names were in his mouth, his keen Central Office glance went roving through the open doorway of a grogshop.

“There’s Ike the Blood now,” said he, and tossed a thumb, which had assisted in necking many a malefactor with tastes to be violent, towards the grogshop.

Since to consider such pillars of East Side Society was the great reason of my ramble, we entered the place. Ike the Blood was sitting in state at a table to the rear of the unclean bar, a dozen of his immediate followers – in the politics of gang life these formed a minor order of nobility – with him.

Being addressed by my friend, he arose and joined us; none the less he seemed reticent and a bit disturbed. This was due to the official character of my friend, plus the fact that the jealous eyes of those others were upon him. It is no advantage to a leader, like Ike the Blood, to be seen in converse with a detective. Should one of his adherents be arrested within a day or a week, the arrested one reverts to that conversation, and imagines vain things.

“Take a walk with us, Ike,” said my friend.

Ike the Blood was obviously reluctant. Sinking his voice, and giving a glance over his shoulder at his myrmidons – not ten feet away, and every eye upon him – he remonstrated.

“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.

“One t’ing youse can say of Ike,” observed Slimmy, wearing the while a look of virtue, “he never made no money off a woman.”

“Never in all his life took a dollar off a doll!” added Whitey, corroboratively.

Ike the Blood reappearing at this juncture, it was deemed best to cease – audibly, at least – all consideration of his merits. He might have regarded discussion, so personal to himself, with disfavor. Laughing lightly, he took his old place at the table, and beckoned the waiter. Compared with what had been its former cloudy expression, his face wore a look of relief.

“Say, I don’t mind tellin’ youse guys,” he said at last, breaking into an uneasy laugh, “but th’ fact is, I skinned round into Sixt’ Avenoo to a fortune teller – a dandy, she is – one that t’rows a fit, or goes into a trance, or some such t’ing.”

“A fortune teller!” said Slimmy, as though he’d never heard the word before.

“It’s on account of a dream. In all th’ years” – Ike spoke as might one who had put a century behind him – “in all th’ years I’ve been knockin’ about, an’ I’ve had me troubles, I never gets a notch on me gun, see? Not that I went lookin’ for any; not that I’m lookin’ for any now. But last night I had a dream: – I dreams I croaks a guy. Mebby it’s somet’in’ I’d been eatin’; mebby it’s because of me havin’ a pretty hot argument th’ mornin’ before; but anyhow it bothers me – that dream does. You see” – this to my friend – “I’m figgerin’ on openin’ a house over in Twenty-fift’ Street, an’ these West Side ducks is all for givin’ me th’ frozen face. They say I oughter stick down on th’ East Side, where I belongs, an’ not come chasin’ up here, cuttin’ in on their graft. Anyhow, I dreams I puts th’ foist notch on me gun – ”

“And so you consult a fortune teller,” laughed my friend, who was not superstitious, but practical.

“Wait till I tells you. As I says, I blows in on that trance party. I don’t wise her up about any dream, but comes t’rough wit’ th’ little old one buck she charges, an’ says: ‘There you be! Now roll your game for th’ limit!’”

“Which she proceeded to do,” broke in my friend.

“Listen! Th’ old dame – after coppin’ me dollar – stiffens back an’ shuts her eyes; an’ next, th’ foist flash out of th’ box she says – speakin’ like th’ wind in a keyhole: ‘You’re in th’ midst of trouble; a man is killed!’ Then she wakes up. ‘W’y didn’t youse go t’rough?’ I says; T want th’ rest. Who is it gets croaked, th’ other dub or me?’ Th’ old dame insists that to go back, an’ get th’ address of th’ party who’s been bumped off, she must have another dollar. Oh, they’re th’ birds, them fortune tellers, to grab th’ dough! But of course I can’t stop there, so I bucks up wit’ another bone. ‘There you be,’ I says; ‘now, is it me that gets it, or does he?”

“W’at he?” demanded Whitey.

“How do I know?” The tone and manner were impatient. “It’s th’ geek I’m havin’ trouble wit’.” Ike looked at me, as one who would understand and perhaps sympathize, and continued: “This time th’ old dame says th’ party who’s been cooked is some other guy; it ain’t me. T can see now that it ain’t you,’ she says. ‘You’re ridin’ away in a patrol wagon, wit’ a lot of harness bulls.’ That’s good so far. ‘So I gets th’ collar?’ I says. ‘How about th’ trial?’ She answers, ‘There ain’t no trial;’ an’ then she comes out of her trance, same as a diver comes up out o’ the water.”

“Is that all?” asked Slimmy.

“That’s where she lets me off.”

“W’y don’t youse dig for another dollar,” said Whitey, “an’ tell th’ old hag to put on her suit an’ go down ag’in for th’ rest?” Whitey had been impressed by that simile of the diver.

“W’at more is there to get? I ain’t killed; an’ I ain’t tried – that oughter do me. Th’ coroner t’rows me loose, most likely. Anyhow, I ain’t goin’ to sit there all day, skinnin’ me roll for that old sponge – a plunk a crack, too.”

“Talk of th’ cost of livin’!” remarked Slimmy, with a grin. “Ain’t it fierce, th’ way them fortune tellers’ll slim a guy’s bank-roll for him, once they has him hooked? They’ll get youse to goin’; an’ after that it’s like one of them stories w’at ends wit’ ‘Continued in our next.’ W’y, it’s like playin’ th’ horses, only woise. Th’ foist day you goes out to win; an’ after that, you keep goin’ back to get even.” Ike the Blood paid no heed to the pessimistic philosophy of Slimmy; he was too wholly wrapped up in what he had been told.

“Well,” he broke forth, following a ruminative pause, “anyhow, I’d sooner he gets it than me.”

“There you go ag’in about that ‘he,’” protested Whitey, and the manner of Whitey was querulous.

“Th’ guy she sees me hooked up wit’!” This came off a bit warmly. “You know w’at I mean.”

“Take it easy! – take it easy!” urged my friend. “What is there to get hot about? You don’t mean to say, Ike, you’re banking on that guff the old dame handed you?”

“Next week” – the shadow of a smile playing across his face – “I won’t believe it. But it sounds like th’ real t’ing now.”

The door of the Bal Tabarin opened to the advent of a weasel-eyed individual.

“Hello, Whitey!” exclaimed Weasel-eye cheerily, shaking hands with Whitey Dutch. “I just leaves a namesake of yours; an’ say, he’s in bad!”

“W’at namesake?”

“Whitey Louie. A bunch of them West Side guerrillas has him cornered, over in a dump at Twenty-seventh Street and Seventh Avenoo. It looks like there’d be somethin’ doin’; an’, as I don’t Avant no part of it, I screws out.”

At the name of Whitey Louie, Ike the Blood arose to his feet.

“Whitey Louie?” he questioned; “Seventh Avenoo an’ Twenty-seventh Street?”

“That’s th’ ticket,” replied Weasel-eye; “an’ youse can cash on it.”

Ike the Blood hurried out the door.

“Whitey Louie is Ike’s closest pal,” observed Whitey Dutch, explaining the hurried departure. “Will there be trouble?” I asked.

“I don’t t’ink so,” said Slimmy. “It’s four for one they’ll lay down to Ike.”

“Don’t put your swell bet on it!” came warningly from Whitey Dutch; “them Gophers are as tough a bunch as ever comes down the pike.”

“Tough nothin’!” returned Slimmy: “they’ll be duck soup to Ike.”

“Why don’t you look into it?” I asked, turning to my friend. As a taxpayer, I yearned for some return on that $16,000,000 a year which New York City pays for its police.

That ornament of the Central Office yawned, and motioned to the waiter to bring his bill.

“That sort of thing is up to the cop on the beat,” said he.

“Whitey an’ me ‘ud get in on it,” explained Slimmy – his expression was one of half apology – “only you see we belong at th’ other end of th’ alley. We’re Five Points; Ike an’ Whitey Louie are Eastmans; an’ in a clash between Eastmans an’ Gophers, it’s up to us to stand paws-off, see!”

“That’s straight talk,” coincided Whitey.

“Suppose, seeing it’s stopped raining, we drift over there,” said my friend, adjusting his Panama at the exact Central Office angle.

As we journeyed along, I noticed Slimmy and Whitey Dutch across the street. It was already written that Whitey Dutch, himself, would be shot to death in the Stag before the year was out; but the shadow of that impending taking-off was not apparent in his face. Indeed, from that face there shone forth only pleasure in anticipation, and a lively interest.

“They’d no more miss it than they’d miss a play at the theater,” remarked my friend, who saw where my glance was directed.

About a ginmill, on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Twenty-seventh Street, a crowd had collected. A patrol wagon was backing up.

An officer in uniform tossed a prisoner into the wagon, with no more ceremony than should attend the handling of a bag of bran.

“It’s Dubillier!” exclaimed Whitey Dutch, naming the prisoner.

The two Five Pointers had taken position on the edge of the crowd, directly in front of my friend and me.

“There’s Ike!” said Slimmy, as two policemen were seen pushing their way towards the patrol wagon, Ike the Blood between them. “Them bulls is holdin’ him up, too, an’ his face is as pale as paper! By thunder, they’ve nailed him!”

“I told you them Gophers were tough students,” was the comment of Whitey Dutch.

My friend began forcing his way forward. As he plowed through the crowd, Whitey Dutch and Slimmy, having advantage of his wake, kept close at his heels.

Slimmy threw me a whispered word: “Be th’ way th’ mob is actin’, I t’ink Ike copped one.” Slimmy, before the lapse of many minutes, was again at my side, attended by Whitey Dutch. The pair wore that manner of quick yet neutral appreciation which belongs – we’ll say – with such as English army officers visiting the battlefield of Santiago while the action between the Spaniards and the Americans is being waged. It wasn’t their fight, it was an Eastman-Gopher fight, but as fullblown Five Pointers it became them vastly to be present. Also, they might learn something.

“Ike dropped one,” nodded Whitey Dutch, answering the question in my eye. “It’s Ledwich.”

“What was the row about?” I asked.

“Whitey Louie. The Gophers was goin’ to hand it to him; but just then Ike comes through th’ door on th’ run, an’ wit’ that they outs wit’ their rods an’ goes to peggin’ at him. Then Ike gets to goin’ an’ cops Ledwich.”

“Th’ best th’ Gophers can get,” observed Slimmy – and his manner was as the manner of one balancing an account – “th’ best th’ Gophers can get is an even break; an’ to do that they’ll have to cash on Ike. Whitey Louie? He makes his get-away all right. Say, Whitey, let’s beat it round to the Tenderloin Station, an’ get th’ finish.”

The finish was soon told. Ike the Blood lay dead on the station house floor; a bullet had drilled its dull way through his lungs. An officer was just telephoning his people in Chrystie Street.

“Now do youse see?” said Whitey Dutch, correcting what he conceived to be Slimmy’s skepticism; “that fortune tellin’ skirt handed out th’ right dope. ‘One croaked! – Ike in th’ hurry-up wagon! – no trial!’ That’s th’ spiel she makes; an’ it falls true, see!”

“Ike oughter have dug down for another bone,” returned Slimmy, more than half convinced; “she’d have put him hep to that bullet in his breather, mebby.”

“W’at good ‘ud that have done?”

“Good? If he’d got th’ tip, he might have ducked – you can’t tell.”

“It’s a bad business,” I commented to my friend, who had rejoined me.

“It would be a good thing” – shrugging his cynical Central Office shoulders – “if, with a change of names, it could happen every day in the year. By the way, I forgot my umbrella; let’s go back to the Bal Tabarin.”