Part 12
Not that Butch altogether turned his back upon his old-time associates. The local Froissarts tell how he, himself, captained a score or so of choice spirits among the Eastmans, against the Humpty Jackson gang, beat them, took them prisoners and plundered them. This brilliant action occurred in that Fourteenth Street graveyard which was the common hang-out of the Humpty Jacksons. Also, Humpty Jackson commanded his partisans in person, and was captured and frisked with the rest. Butch gained much glory and some money; for the Jacksons--however it happened--chanced to be flush.
Butch, returning from Sing-Sing exile, did not return to his _schlam_ work. That trip up-the-river had shaken him. He became a Fagin, and taught boys of tender years to do his stealing for him.
Butch's mob of kids counted as many as twenty, all trained in pocket-picking to a feather-edge. As aiding their childish efforts, it was Butch's habit to mount a bicycle, and proceed slowly down the street, his fleet of kids going well abreast of him on the walks. Acting the part of some half-taught amateur of the wheel, Butch would bump into a man or a woman, preferably a woman. There would be cries and a scuffle. The woman would scold, Butch would expound and explain. Meanwhile the wren-head public packed itself ten deep about the center of excitement.
It was then that Butch's young adherents pushed their shrewd way in. Little hands went flying, to reap a very harvest of pokes. Butch began building up a bank account.
As an excuse for living, and to keep his mob together, Butch opened a pool parlor. This temple of enjoyment was in a basement in Willett Street near Stanton. The tariff was two-and-a-half cents a cue, and what Charley Bateses and Artful Dodgers worked for Butch were wont to refresh themselves at the game.
Butch made money with both hands. He took his share as a Fagin. Then, what fragmentary remnants of their stealings he allowed his young followers, was faithfully blown in by them across his pool tables.
Imagination rules the world. Butch, having imagination, extended himself. Already a Fagin, Butch became a _posser_ and bought stolen goods for himself. Often, too, he acted as a _melina_ and bought for others. Thus Butch had three strings to his business bow. He was getting rich and at the same time keeping out of the fingers of the bulls. This caused him to be much looked up to and envied, throughout the length and breadth of Gangland.
Butch was thus prosperous and prospering when it occurred to him to fall in love. Harry the Soldier was the Mark Antony of the Five Points, his Cleopatra the Darby Kid. There existed divers reasons for adoring the Darby Kid. There was her lustrous eyes, her coral mouth, her rounded cheek, her full figure, her gifts as a shop lifter. As a graceful crown to these attractions, the Darby Kid could pick a pocket with the best wire that ever touched a leather. In no wise had she been named the Darby Kid for nothing. Not even Mollie Squint was her superior at getting the bundle of a boob. They said, and with truth, that those soft, deep, lustrous eyes could look a sucker over, while yet that unconscious sucker was ten feet away, and locate the keck wherein he carried his roll. Is it astonishing then that the heart of Butch went down on its willing knees to the Darby Kid?
Another matter:--Wasn't the Darby Kid the chosen one of Harry the Soldier? Was not Harry a Five Pointer? Had not Butch, elbow to elbow, with his great chief, Eastman, fought the Five Pointers in the battle at Worth and Center? It was a triumph, indeed, to win the heart of the Darby Kid. It was twice a triumph to steal that heart away from Harry the Soldier.
The Darby Kid crossed over from Harry the Soldier to Butch, and brought her love along. Thereafter her smiles were for Butch, her caresses for Butch, her touches for Butch. Harry the Soldier was left desolate.
Harry the Soldier was a gon of merit and deserved eminence. That he had been an inmate not only of the House of Refuge but the Elmira Reformatory, should show you that he was a past-master at his art. His steady partner was Dopey Benny. With one to relieve the other in the exacting duties of stinger, and a couple of good stalls to put up an effective back, trust them, at fair or circus or theatre break, to make leathers, props and thimbles fly.
It was Gangland decision that for Butch to win the Darby Kid away from Harry the Soldier, even as Paris aforetime took the lovely Helen from her Menelaus, touched not alone the honor of Harry but the honor of the Five Points. Harry must revenge himself. Still more must he revenge the Five Points. It had become a case of Butch's life or his. On no milder terms could Harry sustain himself in Gangland first circles. His name else would be despised anywhere and everywhere that the fair and the brave were wont to come together and unbuckle socially.
Butch, tall and broad and strong, smooth of face, arched of nose, was a born hawk of battle. Harry the Soldier, dark, short, of no muscular power, was not the physical equal of Butch. Butch looked forward with confidence to the upcome.
“An' yet, Butch,” sweetly warned the Darby Kid, her arms about his neck, “you mustn't go to sleep at the switch. Harry'll nail you if youse do. It'll be a gun-fight, an' he's a dream wit' a gatt.”
“Never mind about that gatt thing! Do youse think, dearie, I'd let that Guinea cop a sneak on me?”
It was a cool evening in September. A dozen of Butch's young gons were knocking the balls about his pool tables. Butch himself was behind the bar. Outside in Willett Street a whistle sounded. Butch picked up a pistol off the drip-board, just in time to peg a shot at Harry the Soldier as that ill-used lover came through the front door. Dopey Benny, Jonathan to the other's David, was with Harry. Neither tried to shoot. Through a hail of lead from Butch's pistol, the two ran out the back door. No one killed; no one wounded. Butch had been shooting too high, as the bullet-raked ceiling made plain.
Butch explained his wretched gun play by saying that he was afraid of pinking some valued one among his boy scouts.
“At that,” he added, “it's just as well. Them wops 'll never come back. Now when they see I'm organized they'll stay away. There ain't no sand in them Sicilians.”
Butch was wrong. Harry, with Dopey Benny, was back the next night. This time there was no whistle. Harry had sent forward a force of skirmishers to do up those sentinels, with whom Butch had picketed Willett' Street. Butch's earliest intimation that there was something doing came when a bullet from the gun of Harry broke his back. Dopey Benny stood off the public, while Harry put three more bullets into Butch. The final three were superfluous, however, as was shown at the inquest next day.
The Darby Kid was abroad upon her professional duties as a gon-moll, when Harry hived Butch. Her absence was regretted by her former lover.
“Because,” said he, as he and Dopey Benny fled down Stanton Street, “I'd like to have made the play a double header, and downed the Kid along wit' Butch.”
It was not so written, however. Double headers, whatever the field of human effort, are the exception and not the rule of life.
It was whispered that Harry the Soldier and Dopey Benny remained three days in the Pell Street room of Big Mike Abrams before their get-away. They might have been at the bottom of the lower bay, for all the Central Office knew. Butch was buried, and the Darby Kid wept over his grave. After which she cheered up, and came back smiling. There is no good in grief. Besides, it's egotistical, and trenches upon conceit.
The Central Office declares that, equipped of the right papers, it will bring Harry the Soldier back from Africa. Also, it will go after Dopey Benny in Kanuckland, when his time is out. The chair--says the Central Office--shall yet have both.
Old Jimmy doesn't think there's a chance, while the jaundiced Wop openly scoffs. Neither believes in the police. Meanwhile dark suspicions hover cloudily over the Darby Kid. Did she rap? She says not, and offers to pawn her soul.
“Why should I?” asks the Darby Kid. “Of course I'd sooner it was Butch copped Harry. But it went the other way; an' why should I holler? Would beefin' bring Butch back?”
XI.--BIG MIKE ABRAMS
This was after Nigger Mike had gone into exile in cold and sorrowful Toronto, and while Tony Kelly did the moist honors at Number Twelve Pell. Nigger Mike, you will remember, hurried to his ruin on the combined currents of enthusiasm and many drinks, had registered a score or two of times; for he meditated casting full fifty votes at the coming election, in his own proper person, and said so to his friends.
As Mike registered those numerous times, the snap-shot hirelings of certain annoying reformers were busy popping him with their cameras. His friends informed him of this, and counselled going slow. But Mike was beyond counsel, and knew little or less of cameras--never having had his picture taken save officially, and by the rules of Bertillon. In the face of those who would have saved him, he continued to stagger in and out upon that multifarious registration, inviting destruction. The purists took the pictures to the District Attorney, their hirelings told their tales, and Mike perforce went into that sad Toronto exile. He is back now, however, safe, sober, clothed and in his right mind; but that is another story.
The day had been a sweltering July day for all of Chinatown. Now that night had come, the narrowness of Pell and Doyers and Mott Streets was choked with Chinamen, sitting along the curb, lolling in doorways, or slowly drifting up and down, making the most of the cool of the evening.
Over across from Number Twelve a sudden row broke out. There were smashings and crashings, loopholed, as it were, with shrill Mongolian shrieks. The guests about Tony's tables glanced up with dull, half-interested eyes.
“It's Big Mike Abrams tearin' th' packin' out of th' laundry across th' street,” said Tony.
Tony was at the front door when the war broke forth, and had come aft to explain. Otherwise those about his tables might have gone personally forth, seeking a solution of those yellings and smashings and crashings for themselves, and the flow of profitable beer been thereby interrupted. At Tony's explanation his guests sat back in their chairs, and ordered further beer. Which shows that Tony had a knowledge of his business.
“About them socialists,” resumed Sop Henry, taking up the talk where it had broken off; “Big Tom Foley tells me that they're gettin' something fierce. They cast more'n thirty thousand votes last Fall.”
“Say,” broke in the Nailer, “I can't understand about a socialist. He must be on the level at that; for one evenin', when they're holdin' a meetin' in the Bowery, a fleet of gons goes through a dozen of 'em, an', exceptin' for one who's an editor, and has pulled off a touch somewheres, there ain't street car fare in all their kecks. That shows there's nothin' in it for 'em. Th' editor has four bones on him--hardly enough for a round of drinks an' beef stews. Th' mob blows it in at Flynn's joint, down be th' corner.”
“I'm like you, Nailer,” agreed Sop Henry. “Them socialists have certainly got me goin'. I can't get onto their coives at all.”
“Lishten, then.” This came from the Irish Wop, who was nothing if not political. “Lishten to me. Yez can go to shleep on it, I know all about a socialist. There's ould Casey's son, Barney--ould Casey that med a killin' in ashphalt. Well, since his pah-pah got rich, young Casey's a socialist. On'y his name ain't Barney now, it's Berna-a-ard. There's slathers av thim sons av rich min turnin' socialists. They ain't strong enough to git a fall out av either av th' big pa-a-arties, so they rush off to th' socialists, where be payin' fer th' shpot light, they're allowed to break into th' picture. That's th' way wit' young Barney, ould Ashphalt Casey's son. Wan evenin' he dr-r-ives up to Lyon's wit' his pah-pah's broom, two bob-tailed horses that spint most av their time on their hind legs, an' th' Casey coat av arms on the broom dure, th' same bein' a shtick av dynamite rampant, wit' two shovels reversed on a field av p'tatoes. 'How ar-r-re ye?' he says. 'I want yez to jump in an' come wit' me to th' Crystal Palace. It's a socialist meet-in',' he says. 'Oh, it is?' says I; 'an' phwat's a socialist? Is it a game or a musical inshtrumint?' Wit' that he goes into p'ticulars. 'Well,' thinks I, 'there's th' ride, annyhow; an' I ain't had a carriage ride since Eat-'em-up-Jack packed in--saints rest him! So I goes out to th' broom; an' bechune th' restlessness av thim bob-tailed horses an' me not seein' a carriage fer so long, I nearly br-r-roke me two legs gettin' in. However, I wint. An' I sat on th' stage; an' I lishtened to th' wind-jammin'; an' not to go no further, a socialist is simply an anarchist who don't believe in bombs.”
There arose laughter and loud congratulatory sounds about the door. Next, broadly smiling, utterly complacent, Big Mike Abrams walked in.
“Did youse lobsters hear me handin' it to th' monkeys?” he asked, and his manner was the manner of him who doubts not the endorsement of men. “That chink, Low Foo, snakes two of me shirts. I sends him five, an' he on'y sends back three. So I caves in his block wit' a flatiron. You ought to pipe his joint! I leaves it lookin' like a poolroom that won't prodooce, after the wardman gets through.”
“An' Low Foo?” queried Tony, who had shirts of his own.
“Oh, a couple of monks carries him to his bunk out back. It'll take somethin' more'n a shell of hop to chase away his troubles!” Mike refreshed himself with a glass of beer, which he called suds. “Say,” he continued with much fervor, “I wisht I could get a job punchin' monks at a dollar a monk!”
Mike Abrams, _alias_ Big Mike, was a pillar of Chinatown, and added distinctly to the life of that quarter. He was nearly six feet tall, with shoulders as square as the foretopsail yard of a brig. His nervous arms were long and slingy, his bony hands the size of hams. Neither the Dropper nor yet Big Myerson could swap blows with him, and his hug--if it came to rough-and-tumble--was comparable only to the hug of Mersher the Strong Arm, who had out-hugged a bear for the drinks.
While he lived, Little Maxie greatly appreciated Big Mike. Little Maxie is dead now. He ranked in the eyes of Mulberry Street as the best tool that ever nailed a leather. To be allowed to join out with his mob was conclusive of one's cleverness as a gon. For Maxie would have no bunglers, no learners about him.
And, yet, as he himself said, Big Mike's value
Jay not in any deftness of fingers, but in his stout, unflinching heart, and a knock-down strength of fist like unto the blow of a maul.
“As a stall he's worse'n a dead one,” Maxie had said. “No one ever put up a worse back. But let a sucker raise a roar, or some galoot of a country sheriff start something--that's where Mike comes on. You know last summer, when I'm followin' Ringling's show? Stagger, Beansey an' Mike's wit' me as bunchers. Over at Patterson we had a rumble. I got a rube's ticker, a red one. He made me; an' wit' that youse could hear th' yell he lets out of him in Newark. A dozen of them special bulls which Ringling has on his staff makes a grab at us. Youse should have lamped Mike! Th' way he laid out them circus dicks was like a tune of music. It's done in a flash, an' every last guy of us makes his get-away. Hock your socks, it's Mike for me every time! I'd sooner he filled in wit' a mob of mine than th' best dip that ever pinched a poke.”
Big Mike had been a fixed star in the Gangland firmament for years. He knew he could slug, he knew he could stay; and he made the most of these virtues. When not working with Little Maxie, he took short trips into the country with an occasional select band of yeggs, out to crack a P. O. or a jug. At such times, Mike was the out-side man--ever a post of responsibility. The out-side man watches while the others blow the box. In case things take to looking queer or leary, he is to pass the whistle of warning to his pals. Should an officer show unexpectedly up, he must stand him off at the muzzle of his gatt, and if crowded, shoot and shoot to kill. He is to stand fast by his partners, busy with wedges, fuse and soup inside, and under no circumstances to desert them. Mike was that one of ten thousand, who had the nerve and could be relied upon to do and be these several iron things. Wherefore, he lived not without honor in the land, and never was there a fleet of yeggs or a mob of gons, but received him into its midst with joy and open hearts.
Mike made a deal of money. Not that it stuck to hum; for he was born with his hands open and spent it as fast as he made it. Also, he drank deeply and freely, and moreover hit the pipe. Nor could he, in the latter particular, be called a pleasure smoker nor a Saturday nighter. Mike had the habit.
At one time Mike ran an opium den at Coney Island, and again on the second floor of Number Twelve Pell. But the police--who had no sure way of gauging the profits of opium--demanded so much for the privilege that Mike was forced to close.
“Them bulls wanted all I made an' more,” complained Mike, recounting his wrongs to Beansey. “I had a 50-pipe joint that time in Pell, an' from the size of the rake-off the captain's wardman asks, you'd have thought that every pipe's a roulette-wheel.”
“Couldn't you do nothin' wit' 'em?” asked Bean-sey, sympathetically.
“Not a t'ing. I shows 'em that number-one hop is $87.50 a can, an' yen-chee or seconds not less'n $32. Nothin' doin'! It's either come across wit' five hundred bones th' foist of every month, or quit.”
Mike sighed over his fair prospects, blighted by the ignorant avarice of the police.
“W'at was youse chargin' a smoke?” inquired Beansey.
“Two bits a shell. Of course, that's for yen-chee. I couldn't give 'em number-one for two bits. After all, w'at I cares most for is me cats--two long-haired Persians.”
“Cats?” repeated Beansey, suspiciously. “W'at be youse handin' me?”
Beansey by the way, knew nothing of opium.
“W'at am I handin' youse?” said Mike. “I'm handin' you th' goods. Cats get th' habit same as people. My cats would plant be some party who's cookin' a pill, an' sniff th' hop an' get as happy as anybody. Take 'em off the pipe, an' it's th' same as if they're Christians. Dogs, too. Let 'em once get th' habit, an' then take 'em away from a pipe joint, an' they has pains in their stummicks, an' twists an' yowls till you think they're goin' mad. When th' cops shut down on me, I has to give me cats to th' monk who's runnin' th' opium dump on th' top floor. Sure t'ing! They'd have croaked if I hadn't. They're on'y half happy, though; for while they gets their hop they misses me. Them toms an' me has had many a good smoke.”
Folks often wondered at the intimacy between Mike and Little Maxie--not that it has anything to do with this story. Little Maxie--his name on the Central Office books was Maxie Fyne, _alias_ Maxie English, _alias_ Little Maxie, _alias_ Sharapatheck--was the opposite of Big Mike. He was small; he was weak; he didn't drink; he didn't hit the pipe. Also, at all times, and in cold blood, he was a professional thief. His wife, whom he called “My Kytie”--for Little Maxie was from Houndsditch, and now and then his accent showed it--was as good a thief as he, but on a different lay. Her specialty was robbing women. She worked alone, as all good gon-molls do, and because of her sure excellencies was known as the Golden Hand.
Little Maxie and his Golden Hand, otherwise his Kytie--her name was Kate--had a clean little house near Washington Square on the south. They owned a piano and a telephone--the latter was purely defensive--and their two children went to school, and sat book to book with the children of honest men and women.
The little quiet home, with its piano and defensive telephone, is gone now. Little Maxie died and his Golden Hand married again; for there's no false sentiment in Gangland. If a husband's dead he's dead, and there's nothing made by mourning. Likewise, what's most wanted in any husband is that he should be a live one.
Little Maxie died in a rather curious way. Some say he was drowned by his pals, Big Mike among them. The story runs that there was a quarrel over splitting up a touch, and the mob charged Little Maxie with holding out. Be that as it may, the certainty is that Little Maxie and his mob, being in Peekskill, got exceeding drunk--all but Little Maxie--and went out in a boat. Being out, Little Maxie went overboard abruptly, and never came up. Neither did anybody go after him. The mob returned to town to weep--crocodile tears, some said--into their beer, as they told and re-told their loss, and in due time Little Maxie's body drifted ashore and was buried. That was the end. Had it been some trust-thief of a millionaire, there would have been an investigation. But Little Maxie was only a pick-pocket.
Big Mike, like all strong characters, had his weakness. His weakness was punching Chinamen; fairly speaking, it grew to be his fad. It wasn't necessary that a Chinaman do anything; it was enough that he came within reach. Mike would knock him cold. In a single saunter through Pell Street, he had been known to leave as many as four senseless Chinamen behind him, fruits of his fist.
“For,” said Mike, in cheerful exposition of the motive which underlay that performance, “I do so like to beat them monks about! I'd sooner slam one of 'em ag'inst th' wall than smoke th' pipe.”
One time and another Mike punched two-thirds of all the pig-tailed heads in Chinatown. Commonly he confined himself to punching, though once or twice he went a step beyond. Lee Dok he nearly brained with a stool. But Lee Dok had been insultingly slow in getting out of Mike's way.
Mike was proud of his name and place as the Terror of Chinatown. Whether he walked in Mott or Pell or Doyers Street, every Chinaman who saw him coming went inside and locked his door.
Those who didn't see him and so go inside and dock their doors--and they were few--he promptly soaked. And if to see a Chinaman run was as incense to Mike's nose, to soak one became nothing less than a sweet morsel under his tongue. The wonder was that Mike didn't get shot or knifed, which miracle went not undiscussed at such centers as Tony's, Barney Flynn's, Jimmy Kelly's and the Chatham Club. But so it was; the pig-tailed population of Chinatown parted before Mike's rush like so much water.
One only had been known to resist--Sassy Sam, who with a dwarf's body possessed a giant's soul.
Sassy Sam was a hatchet-man of dread eminence, belonging to the Hip Sing Tong. Equipped of a Chinese sword, of singular yet murderous appearance, he chased Mike the length of Pell Street. Mike out-ran Sassy Sam, which was just as well. It took three shells of hop to calm Mike's perturbed spirit; for he confessed to a congenital horror of steel.
“That's straight,” said Mike, as with shaking fingers he filled his peanut-oil lamp, and made ready to cook himself a pill, “I never could stand for a chive. An' say”--he shuddered--“that monk has: one longer'n your arm.”
Sassy Sam and his snickersnee, however, did not cure Mike of his weakness for punching the Mongolian head. Nothing short of death could have done that.