No one knew his real name, not even the police, and the police, let me
tell you, know much more than they can prove. The Central Office never
once had the pleasure of mugging and measuring and parading him at the
morning bawling out, and the Mulberry Street records to the last were
barren concerning him. For one brief space and only one did Mulberry
Street nourish hopes. That was when he himself let it be thought that
somewhere, sometime, somehow, he had taken some one's life. At this,
Mulberry Street fairly shook the wide earth like a tablecloth in search
of proof, but got not so much as one poor crumb of confirmation.
It was at Big Jack's in Chatham Square that local history first laid
eyes on him. Big Jack is gone now; the Committee of Fourteen decided
upon him virtuously as an immoralist, handed him the fatal blue paper,
and he perished. Jack Sirocco--who was himself blue-papered in a Park
Row hour--keeps the place now.
Starting from Big Jack's, he soon began to be known in Flynn's, and
Nigger Mike's, and about the Chatham Club. When his pals spoke to him
they called him Louie. When they spoke of him they called him Indian
Louie, or Spanish Louie, to the end that he be identified among the
hosts of East Side Louies, who were and are as many as the leaves on a
large tree.
Rumor made Indian Louie a native of South America, and his dark skin,
black eyes, thin lips, high cheek-bones and high curved nose helped
rumor out in this. Also, he was supposed to be of Spanish or Portuguese
extraction.
When Louie was buried, this latter assumption received a jolt. His
funeral, conducted by a rabbi, was according to strictest Hebrew
ceremonial.
Two pieces of porcelain were laid upon his eyes, as intimating that he
had seen enough. A feather, which a breath would have disturbed,
was placed upon his upper lip. This was to evidence him as fully and
conclusively dead, although on that point, in all conscience, the
coroner's finding should have been enough. The flowers, which Gangland
sent to prove its grief, were put aside because too gay and pleasant.
The body was laid upon straw. A would-be pallbearer, since his name was
Cohen, had to be excluded from the rites, as any orthodox Jew could have
told him must be the case. For death and the dead are unclean; and a
Cohen, who by virtue of his name is of the high-priest caste--Aaron was
a Cohen--and tends the altars, must touch nothing, approach nothing,
that is unclean. The funeral was scrupulously held before the second
sun went down, and had to be hurried a little, because the morgue
authorities, hobbled of red tape, move as slowly as the sea itself in
giving up the dead. The coffin--of poorest pine--was knocked to pieces
in the grave, before the clods of earth were shoveled in and the
doomsday sods laid on. The garments of him who acted as principal
mourner were faithfully torn; that is to say, the rabbi cut a careful
slit in the lapel of that mourner's waistcoat where it wouldn't show.
You will see from this, that every detail was holy by most ancient
Jewish prescription. And the business led to talk. Those about Flynn's,
Nigger Mike's and the Chatham Club, to say naught of members of the
Humpty Jackson gang, and others who in his latter days had been near
if not dear to him, confessed that it went far in contradiction of any
Spanish or Portuguese ancestry for Louie.
Louie was a mystery, and studied to be so. And to be a mystery is as
difficult as being a hypocrite. One wrong word, one moment off your
guard, and lo, a flood of light! The mystery vanishes, the hypocrisy is
laid bare. You are no longer a riddle. Or, if so, then a riddle that has
been solved. And he who was a riddle, but has been solved, is everywhere
scoffed at and despised.
Louie must have possessed a genius for mystery, since not once did he
fall down in that difficult rôle. He denied nothing, confirmed nothing,
of the many tales told about him. A waif-word wagged that he had been in
the army, without pointing to any regiment; and that he had been in the
navy, without indicating what boat. Louie, it is to be thought, somewhat
fostered this confusion. It deepened him as a mystery, and made him more
impressive.
Louie was careful, also, that his costume should assist. He made up
all in black--black shoes, black trousers, black coat, black hat of
semi-sombrero type. Even in what may be spoken of as the matter of
linen--although there was no linen about it--he adhered to that funereal
hue, and in lieu of a shirt wore a sweater, collar close up to the
chin, and all as black as his coat. As he walked the streets, black eyes
challenging, threatening, from underneath the black, wide-rimmed hat, he
showed not from top to toe a fleck of white.
Among what tales went here and there concerning Louie, there was one
which described him as the deadest of dead shots. This he accentuated by
a brace of big Colt's pistols, which bore him constant company, daylight
and dark. There was no evidence of his having used this artillery, no
word of any killing to his perilous glory. Indeed, he couldn't have
pointed to so much as one wounded man.
Only once did those pistols come into play. Valenski's stuss house, in
Third Avenue near Fourteenth Street, was put in the air. The hold-ups
descended upon Valenski's, grabbed $80 which was on the table, and sent
Valenski into his safe for $300 more. While this went on, Louie stood
in the door, a gun in each fist, defying the gaping, staring, pop-eyed
public to interfere. He ran no risk, as everyone well knew. The East
Side, while valorous, never volunteers. There was no more chance of
outside interference to save Valenski from being plundered, than of
outside contributions to make him up another roll.
The incident might have helped in building up for Louie a reputation,
had it not been that all that was starkly heroic therein melted when,
two days later, the ravished $380 was privily restored to Valenski, with
the assurance that the entire business was a jest. Valenski knew
nothing humorous had been intended, and that his bundle was returned in
deference only to the orders of one high in politics and power. Also, it
was the common feeling, a feeling no less cogent for not being put into
words, that had Louie been of the wood from which champions are carved,
the $380 would never have come back. To refrain from some intended
stick-up upon grave orders given, might mean no more than prudence and
a right discipline. But to send back money, once in actual hand and when
the risk and work of which it stood the harvest had been encountered
and performed, was to fly in the face of gang ethics. An order to that
effect, however eminent its source, should have been met with stony
refusal.
There was one tale which should go, perhaps, to the right side of the
reputational ledger, as indicating that Louie had nerve. Crazy Charlie
was found dead in the mouth of a passageway, which opened off Mulberry
Street near the Bowery. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. No one
of sense supposed Louie did that throat slashing.
Crazy Charlie was a hop-head, without a dollar in his jeans, and Louie
never did anything except for money. He would no more have gone about a
profitless killing, than he would have wasted time and effort by fishing
in a bathtub.
For all that, on the whispered hint of the Ghost--who himself was killed
finally as a snitch--two plain-clothes men from the Eldridge Street
station grabbed Louie. They did not tell him the reason of the pinch.
Neither did they spread it on the books. The police have a habit of
protecting themselves from the consequences of a foolish collar by a
specious system of concealment, and put nothing on the blotter until
sure.
When searched at the desk, Louie's guns were discovered. Also, from
inside his waistcoat was taken a seven-inch knife, which, as said the
police sergeant, might have slit the windpipe of Crazy Charlie or any
other bug. But, as anyone with eyes might see, the knife was as purely
virginal as when it came from a final emery wheel in its far-off
Sheffield home. It had slit nothing.
Still, those plain-clothes dicks did not despair. They hoped to startle
Louie into a confession. With a view to his moral and physical stampede,
they conveyed Louie in a closed patrol wagon, at mirk midnight, to the
morgue. He hadn't been told what he was charged with; he didn't know
where he was going.
The wagon backed up to the morgue door. Louie had never visited the
morgue before, though fated in the end to appear there officially. The
plainclothes men, one at each shoulder, steered him inside. All was
thick blackness; you couldn't have seen your own nose. Feeling their
wordless way, the painstaking plain-clothes folk manhandled Louie into
position.
Then they flashed on a flood of electric light.
There, within two feet of Louie, and squarely beneath his eyes, lay the
dead Crazy Charlie, posed so as to show effectively that gruesome slash
across the throat. Louie neither started nor exclaimed. Gazing down on
the dead Charlie, he searched forth a cigarette and turned to one of his
plain-clothes escorts for a match.
“Do you see this?” demanded the plain-clothes man, slewing round the
dead head until that throat-gash yawned like some horrid mouth.
The plain-clothes man was wroth to think he should have worked so hard
to achieve so little.
“Yes,” retorted Louie, as cold as a wedge. “Also, I'll tell you bulls
another thing. You think to rattle me. Say, for ten cents I'd sit on
this stiff all night an' smoke a pipe.”
Those plain-clothes artists gave Louie up. They turned him loose at the
morgue door.
The affair worked round, and helped Louie to a better position in the
minds of all fair men. It fell in lucky, too, since it more than stood
off a setback which overtook him about the same time. Louie had called
upon the Irish Wop, at the latter's poolroom in Fourth Avenue. This
emigrant from Mayo was thin and slight and sickly, and Louie argued
that he might bully him out of a handful of money. Putting on a darkest
frown, he demanded fifty dollars, and intimated that dire indeed would
be the consequences of refusal.
“Because,” said Louie, “when I go out for anything I get it, see?”
The Wop coughed timidly and made a suggestion. “Come round in half an
hour,” said he, “when the last race from New Orleans is in; I'll have
the cush ready for yez.”
Louie withdrew, and the Wop shoved the poker into the blazing
big-bellied stove.
An hour later, that New Orleans race having been run, Louie returned.
The poker being by this time white-hot, the Wop drew it forth from the
stove. There were no stage waits. Applying the poker to the shrinking
rear of Louie, the Wop compelled that yearner after fifty dollars to
leap screechingly from a second-storey window.
“That's phwy I puts th' windy up,” explained the Wop; “I didn't want
that chape skate to bre-a-ak th' glassh. Indian Louie! Spanish Louie!”
he repeated with measureless contempt. “Let me tell youse ginks wan
thing.” This to a circle who had beheld the flight of Louie. “If ever
that bum shows up here ag'in, I'll put him out av business altogether.
Does he think a two-cint Guinea from Sout' Ameriky can bluff a
full-blown Mick?”
Louie's flight through the Wop's window, as had his steadiness at the
morgue, went the gossipy rounds. It didn't injure him as much as you
might think.
“For who,” said the general voice, “would face and fight a white-hot
poker?”
On the whole, public sentiment was inclined to sustain Louie in that
second-storey jump.
From what has been written, it will not astonish you to hear that, upon
the important matter of courage, Louie's place in society had not been
absolutely fixed. Some said one thing, some another. There are game men
in Gangland; and there exist others who aren't the real thing. Sardinia
Frame believes, with the Irish Wop, that Louie belonged in the latter
class. Also, Sardinia Frank is entitled to an opinion. For he was born
in Mulberry Bend, and has himself been tried twice on charges of murder.
It was Sardinia Frank, by the way, who smote upon Eat-'em-up Jack with
that effective lead pipe, albeit, there being no proof, he was never
arrested for it. No, he doesn't admit it, even among intimates and where
such admission would be respected as sacred. But when joked concerning
it, he has ever worn a cheerful, satisfied look--like the pictures
of the cat that ate the canary--and while careful not to accept, was
equally careful not to reject, the compliment implied. Moreover, when
the dead Eat-'em-up-Jack was picked up, the lead pipe used to break his
skull had been tucked jocosely under his arm. It was clear to knowing
ones that none except Sardinia Frank would have thought of such a jest.
To him it would have come readily enough, since death always appealed to
his sense of humor.
Clad in a Tuxedo and an open-face suit, Sardinia Frank, at the time
I questioned him, was officiating as peace-preserver in the Normandie
rathskeller. By way of opener, I spoke of his mission on the rathskeller
earth.
“I'm here to keep out everybody I know,” said he simply.
There was a pathetic side to this which, in his ingenuousness, Frank
failed wholly to remark.
“About Indian Louie?” I at last said.
It was within an hour after Louie had been killed.
“I'll tell youse about Louie,” returned Frank. “Of course, he's dead,
an' lyin' on a slab in th' morgue right now. They 'phoned me woid ten
minutes ago. But that don't make no difference. He was a bluff; he
wasn't th' goods. He went around wit' his hat over his eyes, bulldozin'
everybody he could, an' lettin' on to be a hero. An' he's got what
heroes get.”
“Did you ever get tangled up with him?” I asked.
“Let me show you,” and Frank became confidential. “This'll give youse a
line. One time he's got two hundred bones. Mollie Squint climbs into a
yap-wagon an' touches a rube for it. Louie takes it, an' plants it wit'
Nigger Mike. That's about six months ago. Th' next night, me bein' wise
to it, I chases to Mike an' says, 'Louie's over to Jigger's, pointin'
stuss, an' he wants th' two hundred.' So Mike hands me th' dough. I
splits it five ways wit' th' gang who's along, each of us gettin' his
little old bit of forty dollars apiece.
“Louie, when he finds out next day, makes an awful beef. He tells
everybody he's goin' to hand it to me--goin' to cook me on sight, see? I
hears of it, an' I hunts Louie up in Jack Sirocco's.
“'Say, Louie,' I says, 'about that cookin' me. Th' bully way would be to
come right now over to Hoboken, an' bump me off to-night. I'll go wit'
youse. An' there won't be no hang-over, see; 'cause no one in Joisey'll
care, an' no one in New York'll know.'
“Do youse think Louie'll come? Not on your necktie! He didn't want me
game--just wanted to talk, that's all.
“'Not youse, Frank,' he said; 'I ain't gunnin' for youse. It's Nigger
Mike; he's th' guy I'm goin' to croak. He oughtn't to have let youse
have th' money.' No, of course, he don't go after Mike; that's simply
his crawl.
“Take it from me,” Frank concluded, “Louie wasn't th' goods. He'd run a
bluff, but he never really hoited a guy in his whole life. As I says, he
goes about frownin', an' glarin', an' givin' people th' fiery eye, an'
t'rowin' a chest, an' lettin' it go broadcast that he's a hero. An' for
a finish he's got w'at heroes get.”
Such was the word of Sardinia Frank.
When he fell with two bullets through his brain, and two more through
his body, Louie had $170 in his pocket, $700 in his shoe, and $3,000
in the Bowery Bank. This prosperity needn't amaze. There was, for one
thing, a racket reason to be hereinafter set forth. Besides, Pretty
Agnes and Mollie Squint both walked the streets in Louie's loved behalf,
and brought him all in the way of riches that came to their lure. Either
was sure for five dollars a day, and Mollie Squint, who could graft a
little, once came in with $800. Both Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint most
fiercely adored Louie, and well did he know how to play one loving heart
against the other. Some say that of the pair he preferred Pretty Agnes.
If so, he wasn't fool enough to let her find it out. She might have
neglected her business to bask in his sweet society.
Besides, when it came to that, Louie's heart was really given to
a blonde burlesquer, opulent of charm. This _artiste_ snubbed and
neglected Louie for the love of a stage manager. But she took and spent
Louie's money, almost if not quite as fast as Pretty Agnes and Mollie
Squint could bring it to him from the streets.
Louie never made any place his hangout long. There was no element of
loyalty in him, whether for man or for woman, and he went from friend
to friend and gang to gang. He would stay nowhere, remain with no one,
after his supremacy had been challenged. And such hardy natures as Biff
Ellison, Jimmy Kelly, Big Mike Abrams, Chick Tricker and Jack Sirocco
were bound to challenge it. They had a way, too, of putting the acid on
an individual, and unless his fighting heart were purest gold they'd
surely find it out. And Louie never stood the test. Thus, beginning at
Big Jack's in Chatham Square, Louie went from hangout to hangout, mob to
mob, until, working through Nigger Mike's, the Chatham Club and
Sharkey's, he came at last to pal in with the Humpty Jackson guerrillas.
These worthies had a stamping ground in a graveyard between First and
Second Avenue, in the block bounded north and south by Twelfth and
Thirteenth Streets. There Louie was wont to meet such select company as
Monahokky, Nigger Ruhl, Candy Phil, the Lobster Kid, Maxie Hahn, and the
Grabber. As they lolled idly among the tombstones, he would give them
his adventures by flood and by field. Louie, besides being conceited,
was gifted with an imagination and liked to hear himself talk. Not that
he felt obliged to accuracy in these narrations. It was enough that he
made them thrilling, and in their telling shed an effulgent ray upon
himself.
While he could entertain with his stories, Louie was never popular.
There was that doubt about his courage. Also, he was too frugal. No one
had ever caught the color of his money. Save in the avaricious instance
of the big blonde burlesquer, as hungry as false, he held by the selfish
theology that it is more blessed to receive than to give.
Taking one reason and another, those about Louie at the finish were
mainly the Humpty Jackson bunch. His best hangout of any fashion was the
Hesper Club. Had Humpty Jackson remained with his own, Louie might
have been driven, in search of comradeship, to go still further afield.
Humpty was no weakling, and while on the surface a whining, wheedling,
complaining cripple, owned his volcanic side, and had once shot it out,
gun to gun and face to face, with no less a paladin than Jimmy Kelly.
Louie would have found the same fault with Humpty that he had found with
those others. Only Humpty didn't last long enough after Louie joined his
forces. Some robbery came off, and a dull jury held Humpty responsible.
With that, the judge sent him up for a long term of years, and there he
sticks to-day. Humpty took the journey crying that he had been jobbed by
the police. However that may have been, his going made it possible
for Louie to remain with the Jacksons, and shine at those ghoulish,
graveyard meetings, much longer than might otherwise have been the case.
While Louie had removed to the remote regions about Fourteenth Street
and Third Avenue, and was seldom seen in Chatham Square or Chinatown,
he was not forgotten in those latter precincts. Jew Yetta brought up
his name one evening in the Chatham Club, and spoke scornfully of him in
conjunction with the opulent blonde.
“That doll's makin' a farmer of Louie,” was the view of Jew Yetta.
“At that,” remarked the Dropper--for this was in the days of his liberty
and before he had been put away--“farmer or no farmer, it's comin'
easier for him now than when he was in the navy, eatin' sow-belly out of
a harness cask an' drinkin' bilge. W'at's that ship he says he's sailin'
in, Nailer?” continued the Dropper. “Ain't it a tub called _Atalanta?_”
“There never is a ship in the navy named _Atalanta_.”
This declaration, delivered with emphasis, emanated from old Jimmy, who
had a place by himself in East Side consideration. Old Jimmy was about
sixty, with a hardwood-finish face and 'possum-colored hair. He had been
a river pirate in the old days, and roamed the midnight waters for what
he might pick up. Those were times when he troubled the police, who
made him trouble in return. But one day old Jimmy salvaged a rich man's
daughter, who--as though to make his fortune--had fallen overboard from
a yacht, and bored her small hole in the water within a rod or two of
Jimmy's skiff. Certainly, he fished her out, and did it with a boat
hook. More; he sagaciously laid her willowy form across a thwart, to
the end that the river water flow more easily from her rosebud mouth.
Relieved of the water, the rescued beauty thanked Jimmy profusely; and,
for his generous part, her millionaire father proceeded to pension his
child's preserver for life. The pension was twenty-five dollars a week.
Coming fresh and fresh with every Monday, Jimmy gave up his piracies and
no longer haunted in the name of loot the nightly reaches of the river.
Indeed, he became offensively idle and honest.
“No sir,” repeated old Jimmy; “there never is a ship in our navy named
_Atalanta_.”
“All th' same,” retorted the dropper, “I lamps a yacht once w'at's
called _Atalanta_.”
“An' who says No?” demanded old Jimmy, testily. “I'm talkin' about th'
United States Navy. But speakin' of Louie, it ain't no cinch he's ever
in th 'navy. I'd sooner bet he's been in jail.”
“An' if he was,” said Jew Yetta, “there ain't no one here who's got
anything on him.”
“W'at does Atalanta mean, anyway?” questioned the Dropper, who didn't
like the talk of jails. “Is it a place?”
“Nixie,” put in Slimmy, the erudite, ever ready to display his learning.
“Atalanta's the name of a skirt, who b'longs 'way back. She's some soon
as a sprinter, too, an' can run her one hundred yards in better than ten
seconds. Every god on Olympus clocked this dame, an' knew what she could
do.”
“W'at's her story?” asked the Dropper.
“It gets along, d'ye see, where Atalanta's folks thinks she ought to get
married. But she won't have it; she'd sooner be a sprinter. With that,
they crowd her hand; an' to get shut of 'em, she finally tacks it up on
the bulletin board that she'll chase to th' altar only with some student
who can beat her at a quarter mile dash. 'No lobsters need apply!' says
she. Also, there's conditions. Under the rules, if some chump calls th'
bluff, an' can't make good--if she lands him loses--her papa's headsman
will be on th' job with his axe, an' that beaten gink'll get his block
whacked off.”
“An' does any one go against such a game?” queried Jew Yetta.
“Sure! A whole fleet of young Archibalds and Reginalds went up ag'inst
it. They all lose; an' his jiblets wit' th' cleaver chops off their
youthful beans.
“But the luck turns. One day a sure-thing geek shows up whose monaker is
Hippomenes. Hippy's a fly Indian; there ain't goin' to be no headsman in
his. Hippy's hep to skirts, too, an' knows where th' board is off their
fence. He organizes with three gold apples, see, an' every time little
Atalanta Shootin' Star goes flashin' by, he chucks down one of 'em in
front of her. She simply eats it up; she can't get by not one; an' she
loses so much time grabbin' for 'em, Hippy noses in a winner.”
“Good boy!” broke forth the Dropper. “An' do they hook up?”
“They're married; but it don't last. You see its Venus who shows Hippy
how to crab Atalanta's act an' stakes him to th' gold apples. An' later,
when he double-crosses Venus, that goddess changes him an' his baby mine
into a-couple of lions.”
The Irish Wop had been listening impatiently. It was when Governor
Hughes flourished in Albany, and the race tracks were being threatened.
The Wop, as a pool-room keeper, was vastly concerned.
“I see,” said the Wop, appealing directly to old Jimmy as the East Side
Nestor, “that la-a-ad Hughes is makin' it hot for Belmont an' Keene an'
th' rist av th' racin' gang. Phwat's he so ha-a-ard on racin' for? Do
yez look on playin' th' ponies as a vice, Jimmy?”
“Well,” responded old Jimmy with a conservative air, “I don't know as
I'd call it a vice so much as a bonehead play.”
“They call it th' shpo-r-rt av kings,” observed die Wop, loftily.
Old Jimmy snorted. “Sport of kings!” said he. “Sport of come-ons,
rather. Them Sport-of-kings gezebos 'll go on, too, an' give you a
lot of guff about racin' bein' healthy. But they ain't sayin' a word
concernin' th' mothers an' youngones livin' in hot two-room tenements,
an' jumpin' sideways for grub, while th' husbands and fathers is blowin'
in their bank-rolls in th' bettin' ring, an' gettin' healthy. An' th'
little jocks, too--mere kids! I've wondered th' Gerries didn't get after
'em. But I suppose th' Gerries know who to pass up, an' who to pinch, as
well as th' oldest skipper on th' Force.”
“F'r all that,” contended the Wop, stubbornly, “thim la-a-ads that's
mixed up wit' th' racin' game is good feltys.”
“Good fellows,” repeated old Jimmy with contempt. “I recollect seein' a
picture once, a picture of a girl--a young wife, she is--lyin' with her
head on an untouched dinner table--fallen asleep, poor thing! Th' clock
in the picture is pointin' to midnight. There she's been waitin' with
th' dinner she's cooked with her own little lovin' mitts, for that souse
of a husband to come home. Under th' picture it says, 'For he's a jolly
good fellow!'”
“Somebody'd ought to have put a head on him!” quoth Jew Yetta, whose
sympathies were both active and militant.
“Say,” went on Jimmy, “that picture gets on my nerves. A week later
I'm down be th' old Delmonico joint at Twenty-sixth an' Broadway. It's
meb-by one o'clock in th' mornin'. As I'm goin' by th' Twenty-sixt'
Street door, out floats a fleet of Willies, stewed to the gills, singin'
in honor of a dude who's in th' middle, 'For he's a jolly good fellow.'
“'Who's that galoot?' I asks th' dub who's slammin' carriage doors at
the curb. 'Is he a married man?'
“'He's married all right,” says th' door-slammin' dub.
“Wit that I tears into him. It's a good while ago, an' I could slug
a little. Be th' time th' copper gets there, I've got that jolly good
fellow lookin' like he'd been caught whistlin' _Croppies Lie Down_ at
Fiftieth Street an' Fift' Avenoo when th' Cathedral lets out.”
“Well, I'm not married,” remarked the Wop, snappishly;--“I'm not
married; I niver was married; an' I niver will be married aloive.”
“Did youse notice?” remarked the Dropper, “how they gets a roar out of
old Boss Croker? He's for racin' all right.”
“Naturally,” said old Jimmy. “Him ownin' race horses, Croker's for th'
race tracks. He don't cut no ice.”
“How much do yez figger Croker had cleaned up, Jimmy, when he made his
getaway for Ireland?” asked the Wop, licking an envious lip.
“Without comin' down to book-keepin',” returned old Jimmy, carelessly,
“my understandin' is that, be havin' th' whole wad changed into thousand
dollar bills, he's able to get it down to th' dock on a dray.”
The Grabber came in. He beckoned Slimmy, and the two were at once
immersed in serious whisperings.
“What are youse two stews chinnin' about?” called out the Dropper
lazily, from across the room. “Be youse thinkin' of orderin' th' beer?”
“It's about Indian Louie,” replied Slimmy, angrily. “Th' Grabber here
says Louie's out to skin us.”
“Indian Louie,” remarked the Wop, with a gleam in his little gray eye.
“That's th' labberick w'at's goin' to shti-i-ick up me poolroom f'r thim
fifty bones. Anny wan that'd have annything to do wit' a bum loike him
ought to get skinned.”
“W'at's he tryin' to saw off on youse?” asked the Dropper.
“This is th' proposition.” It was the Grabber now. “Me an' Slimmy here
goes in wit' Louie to give that racket last week in Tammany Hall. Now
Louie's got th' whole bundle, an' he won't split it. Me an' Slimmy's
been t'run down for six hundred good iron dollars apiece.”
“An' be yez goin' to let him get away wit' it?” demanded the Wop.
“W'at can we do?” asked the Grabber, disconsolately.
“It's that big blonde,” declared Jew Yetta' with acrimony. “She's goin'
through Louie for every dollar. I wonder Mollie Squint an' Pretty Agnes
don't put her on th' fritz.”
The Hesper Club was in Second Avenue between Sixth and Seventh Streets.
It was one o'clock in the morning when Indian Louie took his accustomed
seat at the big table in the corner.
“How's everybody?” he asked, easily. “I oversleeps meself, or I'd been
here hours ago.”
“W'at tires you?” asked Candy Phil. Not that he cared, but merely by way
of conversation.
“It's th' big feed last night at Terrace Garden. I'm two days trainin'
for it, an' all day gettin' over it. Them swell blowouts is something
fierce!” and Louie assumed a wan and weary air, intended to be superior.
“So you was at Terrace Garden?” said Nigger Ruhl.
“Was I? Youse should have seen me! Patent leathers, white choker, and a
diamond in th' middle of me three-sheet big enough to trip a dog.”
“There's nothin' in them dress suits,” protested Maxie Hahn. “I'm
ag'inst 'em; they ain't dimmycratic.”
“All th' same, youse've got to wear 'em at these swell feeds,” said
Candy Phil. “They'd give youse th' gate if you don't. An' as for not
bein' dimmycratic”--Candy Phil had his jocose side--“they make it so you
can't tell th' high-guys from th' waiters, an' if that ain't dimmycratic
what is? Th' only thing I know ag'inst 'em is that youse can't go to th'
floor wit' a guy in 'em. You've got to cut out th' scrappin', an' live
up to the suit, see?” The Grabber strolled in, careless and smiling.
Louie fastened him with eyes of dark suspicion, while Maxie Hahn, the'
Lobster Kid and Candy Phil began pushing their chairs out of the line of
possible fire. For they knew of those monetary differences.
“Not a chance, sports,” remarked the Grabber, reassuringly. “No one's
goin' to start anything. Let's take a drink,” and the Grabber beat upon
the table as a sign of thirst. “I ain't after no one here.”
“Be youse alludin' to me, Grabber?” asked Louie, with a frown like a
great cloud. “I don't like them cracks about startin' somethin'.”
“Keep your shoit on,” expostulated the Grabber, clinking down the change
for the round of beers; “keep your shoit on, Louie. I ain't alludin'
at nobody nor nothin', least of all at youse. Besides, I just gets a
message for you--only you don't seem in no humor to receive it.”
“Who's it from?” asked Louie.
“It's Laura”--Laura was the opulent blonde--“Mollie Squint an' Pretty
Agnes runs up on her about an hour ago at Twelfth Street an' Second
Avenoo, an' Mollie bounces a brick off her coco. A copper comes along
an' chases Mollie an' Pretty Agnes. I gets there as they're carry in'
Laura into that Dago's joint be th' corner. Laura asks me if I sees
youse to tell w'at's happened her; that's all.”
“Was Mollie and Agnes sloughed in?” asked Louie, whose practical mind
went first to his breadwinners.
“No, they faded into th' next street. Th' cop don't want to pinch 'em
anyway.”
“About Laura; was she hoited much?”
“Ten stiches, an' a week in Roosevelt Hospital; that's the best she can
get.”
“I must chase round an' look her over,” was Louie's anxious conclusion.
“W'at's that Dago joint she's at?”
“It's be th' corner,” said the Grabber, “an' up stairs. I forgets the
wop's monaker.” As Louie hesitated over these vague directions, the
Grabber set down his glass. “Say, to show there's no hard feelin', I'll
go wit' youse.”
As Louie and the Grabber disappeared through the door, Candy Phil threw
up both hands as one astonished to the verge of nervous shock.
“Well, w'at do youse think of that?” he exclaimed. “I always figgered
Louie had bats in his belfry; now I knows it. They'll croak him sure!”
Nigger Ruhl and the Lobster Kid arose as though to follow. At this,
Candy Phil broke out fiercely.
“W'at's wrong wit' youse stews? Stick where you be!”
“But they'll cook Louie!” expostulated the Lobster Kid.
“It ain't no skin off your nose if they do. W'y should youse go buttin'
in?”
Louie and the Grabber were in Twelfth Street, hurrying towards Second
Avenue. Not a soul, except themselves, was abroad. The Grabber walked on
Louie's right, which showed that either the latter was not the gunplayer
he pretended, or the word from Laura had thrown him off his guard.
Suddenly, as the pair passed a dark hallway, the Grabber's left arm
stole round Louie's neck.
“About that dough, Louie!” hissed the Grabber, at the same time
tightening his left arm.
Louie half turned to free himself from the artful Grabber. As he did so,
the Grabber's ready right hand brought his pistol into action, and
one bullet and then another flashed through Louie's brain. A slim form
rushed out of the dark hallway, and fired two bullets into Louie's body.
Louie was dead before he struck the pavement.
The Grabber, with his slim companion, darted through the dark hallway,
out a rear door and over a back fence. Sixty seconds later they were
quietly walking in Thirteenth Street, examples of law-abiding peace.
“It was th' easiest ever, Slimmy!” whispered the Grabber, when he had
recovered his breath. “I knew that stall about Laura'd fetch him.”
“Who was at th' Hesper Club?”
“On'y Candy Phil, th' Lobster Kid an' two or three other blokes. Every
one of 'em's a right guy. They won't rap.”
“Thim la-a-ads,” remarked the Wop, judiciously, when he heard of Louie's
taking off--“thim la-a-ads musht 'av lost their heads. There's six or
seven hundred bones on that bum, an' they niver copped a splinter!”
The word came two ways to the Central Office. One report said “Indian
Louie” and another “Johnny Spanish.” Detective O'Farrell invaded
Chinatown, and dug up Big Mike Abrams, that the doubt might be removed.
“It's Indian Louie, all right,” said Big Mike, following a moment's
silent survey of the rigid form. Then, in a most unlooked for vein of
sentiment: “They all get here at last!”
“That's no dream!” agreed the morgue attendant. “An', say, Mike”--he
liked his joke as well as any other--“I've been expectin' you for some
time.”
“Sure!” returned Big Mike, with a friendly grin; “I'll come chasin'
along, feet foist, some mornin'. But don't forget that while I'm waitin'
I'm workin'. I've sent two stiffs down here to youse already, to help
keep you goin' till I comes. Accordin' to th' chances, however, me own
turn oughtn't to be so very far away.”
Big Mike Abram's turn was just three weeks away.
“Who were those two, Mike, you sent down here to the morgue?” asked
O'Farrell, carelessly.
O'Farrell had a catlike fame for slyness.
“Say,” grinned Big Mike, derisively; “look me over! I ain't wearin' no
medals, am I, for givin' meself up to you bulls?”