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.”