Alfred Lewis - The Apaches of New York

These stories are true in name and time and place. None of them in its incident happened as far away as three years ago. They were written to show you how the other half live – in New York. I had them direct from the veracious lips of the police. The gangsters themselves contributed sundry details.

You will express amazement as you read that they carry so slight an element of Sing Sing and the Death Chair. Such should have been no doubt the very proper and lawful climax of more than one of them, and would were it not for what differences subsist between a moral and a legal certainty. The police know many things they cannot prove in court, the more when the question at bay concerns intimately, for life or death, a society where the “snitch” is an abomination and to “squeal” the single great offense.

Besides, you are not to forget the politician, who in defense of a valuable repeater palsies police effort with the cold finger of his interference. With apologies to that order, the three links of the Odd Fellows are an example of the policeman, the criminal and the politician. The latter is the middle link, and holds the other two together while keeping them apart.

Chick Tricker kept a house of call at One Hundred and Twenty-eight Park Row. There he sold strong drink, wine and beer, mostly beer, and the thirsty sat about at sloppy tables and enjoyed themselves. When night came there was music, and those who would – and could – arose and danced. One Hundred and Twenty-eight Park Row was in recent weeks abolished. The Committee of Fourteen, one of those restless moral influences so common in New York, complained to the Powers of Excise and had the license revoked.

It was a mild February evening. The day shift had gone off watch at One Hundred and Twenty-eight, leaving the night shift in charge, and – all things running smoothly – Tricker decided upon an evening out. It might have been ten o’clock when, in deference to that decision, he stepped into the street. It was commencing to snow – flakes as big and soft and clinging as a baby’s hand. Not that Tricker – hardy soul – much minded snow.

Tricker, having notions about meeting Indian Louie, swung across to Roosevelt Street. Dodging down five steps, he opened the door of a dingy wine-cellar. It was the nesting-place of a bevy of street musicians, a dozen of whom were scattered about, quaffing chianti. Their harps, fiddles and hand-organs had been chucked into corners, and a general air of relaxation pervaded the scene. The room was blue with smoke, rich in the odor of garlic, and, since the inmates all talked at once, there arose a prodigious racket.

Near where Tricker seated himself reposed a hand-organ. Crouched against it was a little, mouse-hued monkey, fast asleep. The day’s work had told on him. ‘Fatigued of much bowing and scraping for coppers, the diminutive monkey slept soundly. Not all the hubbub served to shake the serene profundity of his dreams.

Tricker idly gave the handle of the organ a twist. Perhaps three notes were elicited. It was enough. The little monkey was weary, but he knew the voice and heard in it a trumpet-call to duty. With the earliest squeak he sprang up – winking, blinking – and, doffing his small red hat, began begging for pennies. Tricker gave him a dime, not thinking it right to disturb his slumbers for nothing. The mouse-hued one tucked it away in some recondite pocket of his scanty jacket, and then, the organ having lapsed into silence, curled up for another snooze.

Tricker paid for his glass of wine, and – since he saw nothing of Indian Louie, and as a source of interest had exhausted the monkey – lounged off into the dark.

In Chatham Square Tricker met a big-chested policeman. Tricker knew the policeman, having encountered him officially. As the latter strutted along, a small, mustard-colored dog came crouching at his heels.

“What’s the dog for?” Tricker asked.

Being in an easy mood, the trivial possessed a charm.

The policeman bent upon the little dog a benign eye. The little dog glanced up shyly, wagging a wistful tail.

“He’s lost,” vouchsafed the policeman, “and he’s put it up to me to find out where he lives.” He explained that all lost dogs make hot-foot for the nearest policeman. “They know what a cop is for,” said the big-chested one. Then, to the little dog: “Come on, my son; we’ll land you all right yet.”

Tricker continued his stroll. At Doyers Street and the Bowery he entered Barney Flynn’s. There were forty customers hanging about. These loiterers were panhandlers of low degree; they were beneath the notice of Tricker, who was a purple patrician of the gangs. One of them could have lived all day on a quarter. It meant bed – ten cents – and three glasses of beer, each with a free lunch which would serve as a meal. Bowery beer is sold by the glass; but the glass holds a quart. The Bowery has refused to be pinched by the beer trust.

In Flynn’s was the eminent Chuck Connors, his head on his arm and his arm on a table. Intoxicated? Perish the thought! Merely taking his usual forty winks after dinner, which repast had consisted of four beef-stews. Tricker gave him a facetious thump on the back, but he woke in a bilious mood, full of haughtiness and cold reserve.

There is a notable feature in Flynn’s. The East Side is in its way artistic. Most of the places are embellished with pictures done on the walls, presumably by the old monsters of the Police News . On the rear wall of Flynn’s is a portrait of Washington on a violent white horse. The Father of his Country is in conventional blue and buff, waving a vehement blade.

“Who is it?” demanded Proprietor Flynn of the artist, when first brought to bay by the violent one on the horse.

“Who is it?” retorted the artist indignantly. “Who should it be but Washin’ton, the Father of his Country?”

“Washin’ton?” repeated Flynn. “Who’s Washin’ton?”

“Don’t you know who Washin’ton is? Say, you ought to go to night school! Washin’ton’s th’ duck who frees this country from th’ English.”

“An’ he bate th’ English, did he? I can well be-lave it! Yez can see be th’ face of him he’s a brave man.” Then, following a rapt silence: “Say, I’ll tell ye what! Paint me a dead Englishman right down there be his horse’s fut, an’ I’ll give ye foor dollars more.”

The generous offer was accepted, and the foreground enriched with a dead grenadier.

Coming out of Flynn’s, Tricker went briefly into the Chinese Theater. The pig-tailed audience, sitting on the backs of the chairs with their feet in the wooden seats, were enjoying the performance hugely. Tricker listened to the dialogue but a moment; it was unsatisfactory and sounded like a cat-fight.

In finding his way out of Doyers Street, Tricker stopped for a moment in a little doggery from which came the tump-tump of a piano and the scuffle of a dance. The room, not thirty feet long, was cut in two by a ramshackle partition. On the grimy wall hung a placard which carried this moderate warning:

The management seemed to be in the hands of a morose personage, as red as a boiled lobster, who acted behind the bar. The piano was of that flat, tin-pan tone which bespeaks the veteran. It was drummed upon by a bleary virtuoso, who at sight of Tricker – for whose favor he yearned – began banging forth a hurly-burly that must have set on edge the teeth of every piano in the vicinity. The darky who was dancing redoubled his exertions. Altogether, Tricker’s entrance was not without éclat . Not that he seemed impressed as, flinging himself into a chair, he listlessly called for apollinaris.