Michael M. O'Malley, political boss, held his court, that next
morning, in the back room of Ludwig Schleger's saloon on Second
Avenue, and, because it was to be a busy day and there were many
pleas to be made and many petitions to be received, he came early to
his post.
As he swung majestically up the street toward his destination, his
carefully pressed light gray suit flapping in the warm breeze about a
figure so tall and so thin that any suit approaching "a fit" would
have achieved only a caricature, his progress was almost regal.
Pedestrians stepped to one side as if the bulk of his unseen dignity
demanded a far wider strip of the paved channel than was required by
his visible physique. Workingmen touched their grimy caps, the
overseers of the street-repairing gangs bowed respectfully, children
on their way to school bobbed their heads, and, at a corner, Officer
Riley, concluding a substitute week "on the day turn," offered his
best military salute. The keeper of every news-stand received a nod;
the bootblacks outside of each saloon were given a brief word of
greeting; there was not a beggar but got some largess, and of the
several men that hurried up with a request, hinted or expressed, all
were permitted to walk a few steps in the august presence, all
received a brief, civil phrase of agreement, postponement, or
consideration.
"Trouble about your place?" It was thus that O'Malley interrupted
the voluble plea of a saloon-keeper that approached him. "I'll have
that cop, Conners, looked into. His eyes are too new; they see
more'n they're paid to see. Who's tendin' day-bar for you? Johnny
Mager? All right, if they take the thing up front, I'll see that you
get your license transferred in his name. Keep your shirt on an'
leave it to me."
He had not paused in his walk; he had not raised his quiet voice or
quickened his slow speech; but the suppliant retired satisfied,
reassured.
Indeed, O'Malley's face was one that, if it would not inspire
confidence in a stranger unacquainted with the man's reputation for
guarding the interests of his dependents, at least bore the
unmistakable stamp of that knowledge of life which is power. It was
sallow and long, with a long thin nose and long thin lips, and cold
eyes that thrust as swiftly and as deeply as the stilettos of Mr.
O'Malley's Italian constituents. He smiled often and his smile was
bitter; he spoke little and his words were short; but his servants
had early learned that he was as sure to keep his promise as he was
ready to give it, and that, so long as his tasks were well done, he
was an indulgent master.
He entered "Schleger's place" with the air of an owner, nodded to the
white-jacketed man behind the polished counter and before the
polished mirror, and gave a quick, firm pressure to the plump,
outstretched hand of the fat and grinning proprietor.
"All well with the family?" he asked, smiling his wry smile.
Ludwig Schleger beamed assent.
"Anything doing last night?"
"Nothin'," replied Ludwig. "'Ceptin' Mr. Dyker called you on the
telephone. Wouldn't say what he wanted."
"I know that. Haven't had any more roughhousing?"
"No," grinned Schleger, wisely; "the boys are all got wise that they
can't meddle with my new night-man."
"I see. Name's Hermann Hoffmann, ain't it?"
"That's right."
"Hum. Well, he may be useful. You must get him to move into this
precinct, or else register him from here. Votes right, of course?"
"I ain't asked him yet."
"Do it to-night."
O'Malley walked to the dimly lighted back-room, hung with racing
prints and framed lithographs advertising a wide variety of whiskeys.
He drew a wicker-bottomed chair to a stained round table, and sat
down.
The proprietor brought him a glass and a syphon of seltzer--the
boss's only drink--and disappeared. The bar-keeper came with a
handful of black cigars for which O'Malley paid with a bill, refusing
the change, and also disappeared. Then the door of communication was
shut and guarded, admission being denied to all persons not properly
accredited, and the quiet, thin man in the light gray suit, now
sipping his seltzer, now reflectively adjusting his bright blue tie,
which bore a brilliant diamond pin, and always slowly smoking, began
his conference with such callers as he had granted appointments.
They came in force--alone and in groups--all manner of men by the
main entrance and a woman or two ushered through a side door. This
one was promised a reward for duty to be done, that one assigned to
the performance of a delicate piece of diplomacy. Now and then a
short, sharp, cold reprimand for negligence or failure sent away a
caller whipped, penitent, trembling; and here and there release was
promised for a wayward son sent to "The Island," or a line of credit
written for use at a grocer's shop.
Wesley Dyker came early. He paused at the bar for a drink to stiffen
his courage, lingered a little longer until a predecessor had been
dismissed, and then, his lids lowered, entered, alone, with a
succinct account of Rose's attempt to play a double game.
When he had finished the narrative, O'Malley sat for a while gazing
unconcernedly at the blackened ceiling, and smoking quietly.
"Well?" he said at last, and turned the sharp thrust of his gaze upon
his caller.
Dyker, who was sitting opposite and who had been served with a drink
of whiskey, tossed off the liquor in order to gain time to muster an
answer for this unexpected query.
"Well," he at length replied, annoyed at thus being put into a
position where he must make his proposition in the form of a request,
"are you going to stand for that sort of thing?"
"I dunno."
"_I_ wouldn't stand for it," said Dyker.
"If you had my job you might have to."
There was another pause. The long fingers of O'Malley tapped gently
on the table. Dyker shifted uneasily in his seat.
"I wouldn't stand for it a minute!" he at last broke forth. "And
what's more, you can have her up for something worse than the
disorderly-house charge. She has one kidnapped girl in her house
now, and I've got another that escaped from her, and who's ready to
testify."
An instant later he was sorry that he had spoken so readily.
O'Malley tilted back against the wall until the front legs of his
chair rose six inches from the floor. He blew an easy ring of smoke.
"You seem to have come here with your case all prepared," he remarked.
Wesley flushed and stammered.
"You see," he began, "I mean that I got hot at this, and I said to
myself that it was only right to let you know this woman wasn't to be
depended upon."
The forward legs of O'Malley's chair came down with a loud thump.
Wesley started, but the boss only impaled him with another cold
glance.
"See here," said he, "before we can do business we'd better
altogether understand each other. Just what is it you want?"
"I--I think I've made that clear."
"_I_ think not."
"I want this Légère woman pinched for running a white-slave place. I
want to see her taught a lesson that the other women down her way
will profit by."
"Of course you do. But what do you want for yourself?"
The issue was too conclusively joined to permit of further evasion.
Wesley took his courage in his hands.
"Why, I've not made any secret of that," he said, "and neither has
headquarters. I want the next election for magistrate. I told you
that long ago."
He launched his declaration with the bravado of weakness at bay, and
then breathlessly awaited the answer.
Michael O'Malley leaned back again in his chair, clasped his hands
behind his head, and closed his keen eyes, reflecting.
His was an hereditary office, but, unlike most men that inherit
power, he had inherited also the abilities that had gained the power.
His father, who had begun life as a policeman, had been a great
exemplar of the political uses of an element fully realized only by
the expert politician: the human element. The name of O'Malley had
now for a generation been, south of Fourteenth Street, a magic title.
To a legion of men, women, and children, it stood for a sort of
substitute, and very near and practical, Providence. It implied
contact, fellow-feeling, the personal relation. Acting upon the
politician's axiom that whatever is acquired is right, the elder
O'Malley had risen from the street force until, after zealous
party-work, he had been promoted, in the palmy days of policy and the
pool-rooms, to the "Gambling Squad," where he had performed the
astounding financial feat of saving eight times his monthly salary,
had retired, and grown annually richer and stronger through politics,
without once losing the esteem of his voting underlings, or once
seeming to cease being one of them. Since his father's death, now
that gambling had declined and prostitution had risen as political
material, Michael, who had been brought up to the business, had
filled the place of that genuinely mourned parent. Without any
publicly acknowledged means of support, even with no headquarters
save the daily shifted back-rooms of saloons, he had extended and
increased the power and the fortune that had been left to him. He
was known as the friend of the distressed; he was recognized as
benefiting with his left hand the poor whom he unimpededly robbed
with his right. To those who were without money or without
assistance he was always accessible. He made festival with the merry
and was readily sympathetic with them that mourned. By small gifts
at all times and large gifts in days of emergency, by acting as the
adviser, the employment-agent, the defender, from the law, of the
people whom he exploited and upon whose weaknesses and vices he
throve, he won and held fast both the tribute and the allegiance of
the vicious and the weak.
It was a mighty position and yet one that, in moments like the
present, was inherently delicate, one in which the fortunate man must
move warily lest in gaining a new friend he lose an old. It is all
very well to be temperate and profit by drunkenness, to be abstemious
and take money from prostitution; it is easy to give presents at
Christmas and picnics in summer when the giving is in reality only
paying a small rebate to wives for drunken husbands, to mothers for
daughters stolen. It is easy to find a place in the municipal
government for the man that stuffs a ballot-box for you, or the
procurer that registers your fraudulent votes from the houses of his
customers; but it is fatal to punish, for what may be a passing
disloyalty, anyone that your world, perhaps ignorant that offense has
been committed, regards as having been placed by a careless Heaven
under your protecting wing,--fatal, that is to say, unless you
acquire something more than you throw away.
Of all this, though scarcely with such frankness of phrase, Michael
O'Malley made thought before he gave Dyker the reply for which that
clever young lawyer was waiting. Behind his closed eyes he weighed
the chances carefully: the things to be gained against the things
that might be lost.
Then he thoughtfully lit another black cigar.
"You've got to keep out of personal relations with these women," he
yawned.
Dyker bit his lip.
"I don't have them," he replied.
"Yes, you do. Cut 'em out. Understand?"
Surprisedly, angrily, Dyker found himself bowing obedience, like a
school-urchin detected in some breach of academic discipline.
"A woman with a past," continued O'Malley, "is all right for the
present, but a slow mare in the futurity."
"I dare say you're correct," said Wesley Dyker. With a single blow
of the whip, the master had demonstrated his mastery.
O'Malley smoked a while longer in silence.
"Now then," he at last pursued, "about this magistracy. You think
the boys'll stand for you?"
"I think they will," Wesley replied, with humble mien, but rising
assurance. "And I think it ought to make the ticket look better to
the uptown people to have--if you will pardon my saying so--my sort
of name on it."
O'Malley grunted.
"Don't you worry about the looks of the ticket, or the value of your
sort of a name," he said. "The kid-glove game is played out; it's
only the monkey who's always hopping about on his family-tree."
Dyker's courage ebbed again, but he knew that to stand upon his
dignity was to be overthrown.
"At all events," he persisted, "I am pretty well known hereabouts by
this time, and I think honestly that I am pretty well liked."
O'Malley nodded. He knew more about that than Dyker knew. Dyker
had, with more or less direct assistance from O'Malley's own
headquarters, already won some prominence for himself, and had been
of some use to the organization, in that sort of legal-practice which
is a highly specialized branch of the profession on the lower East
Side. The purpose of that branch is simply the protection of the
criminal, especially the criminal engaged in the procuring or
confining of slave-girls, but its methods, far from being unusual,
are merely a daring extension of the methods that, within the last
decade, have increased in popularity among the seemingly more
respectable practitioners. Evidence is manufactured or destroyed,
according to immediate needs; favorable witnesses are taught
favorable testimony; postponements are secured until a politically
indebted judge is on the bench. There follows a formal bellowing
against what are called invasions of inalienable personal rights, and
then there comes a matter-of-course acquittal. With Dyker's ability
in this sort of work O'Malley was thoroughly familiar; for this man's
party-services he was sufficiently grateful, and with the chance of
the lawyer's rise to a popularity that would be of still further help
he was well satisfied.
"If you'd be elected," he at length reflectively remarked, "you'd
have a mighty responsible position, Dyker."
"I know that."
"There would be a good many ways"--O'Malley knocked, with great
deliberation, the ash from his cigar--"a good many ways in which you
could help the party--if you'd be elected."
He seemed to be discussing, disinterestedly, a purely abstract
question; but Dyker did not miss his meaning.
"I shouldn't overlook them," he said.
"And, _if you'd be elected_, there'd be a lot of ways in which you
might hurt--the party."
"I scarcely think you have any just cause for apprehension upon that
score, Mr. O'Malley. I think that my record speaks for itself. My
record is regular; it is an open book to the whole city----"
"Never mind that, Dyker; it's an open book to me, anyhow."
"I'm aware of it; but then----"
"All I want to know is two things."
"And they are, Mr. O'Malley?"
"First, are you the kind that lose their head over a good thing and
land in jail?"
"Does my law-practice seem to indicate that I should be likely to
overstep legal limits?"
"No, I guess it don't. But you can't always tell; we can't afford no
hogs; and that sort of a man gives all his friends a black eye."
"But I say to you----"
"And next, I want to know, Mr. Dyker, whether you're the kind of a
man that don't forget them that put him where he's at."
The low, slow spoken sentence ended with a sudden click of Mr.
O'Malley's long, vulpine jaws. He leaned quickly forward across the
table and fixed Wesley with the stiletto of his eyes.
Dyker met that gaze steadily. He leaned, in his turn, toward
O'Malley, and his own voice dropped to a whisper. There was an
exchange of a dozen sentences, and the two men had arrived at a
perfect understanding: Dyker was as good as elected.
O'Malley pressed the call-button.
"Billy," he said to the bar-keeper, "have somebody run out and bring
in Larry Riley off his beat. I want to see him."
As the bar-keeper nodded and disappeared, Dyker started to rise.
"I don't know whether Riley had better see me here," he said.
"Rose's house is on his regular beat."
"All the more reason to sit tight," replied the comprehending
O'Malley. "What's the use of gettin' square with a person unless the
person knows who done it?"
"But I am not sure that Riley would be a safe man to confide this to.
He's naturally a friend of Rose's."
"He's more of a friend of mine."
The officer entered a minute later, his flushed face gravely
attentive, his helmet in his hand.
"Riley," said O'Malley, "you know this Légère woman."
"I do that, Mr. O'Malley, sir."
"Well, she's been gettin' too gay. When you go off duty, you tell
Jim to have her place pinched to-night."
Riley's cheeks became a shade less red.
"It's sorry I am to hear, sir, that she's been misbehavin' of
herself," he murmured.
"Sure you're sorry. Tell Jim to get there early: we don't want
nobody but the women."
"What"--Riley wet his dry lips--"What's the charge?"
"Runnin' a white-slave joint. You're to be sure to get a girl she
has in the third floor back."
O'Malley's tone had been conclusive; it indicated that the interview
was at an end; but the big officer stood twirling his helmet between
his large hands.
"Mr. O'Malley, sir?" he began.
"What is it, Riley?"
"There's nothin' else?"
"Nuthin'."
"An'--there ain't no other way out of it for Mrs. Légère?"
"No, there ain't. But you can report her house and get the credit
yourself, Riley."
"Thank ye kindly, sir; but if ye don't mind, sir, I think I'd rather
let someone get it as nades it more. Ye see, Mr. O'Malley, sir, this
here Mrs. Légère has been powerful kind to me, an'----"
"All right, have it your own way."
"I--I can't do nothin' for her, Mr. O'Malley?"
"Not this time. That's all, Riley.--And, Riley----"
The thin boss stood up and crossed to the bulky policeman. His voice
was still low and soft.
"Yis, Mr. O'Malley?"
"If that woman gets wind of this an' makes a getaway, I'll have your
uniform off you so God damned quick you'll wish I'd skinned you
alive."
"Yis, Mr. O'Malley, sir," said the officer. "No fear of that, sir."
But he left the audience-chamber with a heavy heart. He lived the
life that he was compelled to live, and he did what he was ordered to
do, but he could not without compunction turn upon one that had
bought a right to his own and his superior's protection.
There was not a little silent bitterness in his heart as, later,
returning to the station-house, he thought upon these things. He
remembered the days when he had been new upon the force. Those were
the days when the popular tide had turned against gambling and, amid
the raids that meant the breaking of steel doors, the pursuit of
offenders through secret passages and across steep roofs, it was for
a while possible for a policeman to retain his ideals. But he
remembered also how, when the ruling powers had thus been forced to
destroy the nests where once they had gathered golden eggs, the long
arm of necessity swung slowly backward until it paused at the point
where it had since remained and, because the eggs must be gathered
somewhere, the police were expected to gather them from the aeries of
the vultures that preyed upon women.
Riley had not minded, every pay-day, handing over to the appointed
heeler the five dollars wherefor he received a receipt for a dollar
and a half as dues to the political club to which he was expected to
belong. For quite some time he had been content with closing his
eyes to saloons that were opened on Sundays by proprietors that were
powerful, and with allowing others to profit by the rewards of his
voluntary blindness. But at last there came the first baby in the
Riley home, and then the second, and the wife's long illness; and
then assessments were increased and, finally, after many a broad hint
from the men higher up, he was given plainly to understand that he
must either hand over a goodly portion of money, every week, from the
offending women on his beat, or else lose his usefulness to the force.
After that, he took what he must and kept what he could. He had no
trade on which to fall back; his domestic and political expenses grew
annually, and, as an evasion of the former meant financial ruin, so
the shirking of the latter meant a charge lodged at headquarters, a
speedy hearing, and an automatic dismissal. Even when a non-partisan
man was put at the head of the department, that official's practical
power was nullified by the fact that the mayor, a party-man, was
behind him and could remove him at a moment's notice, and that behind
the mayor was the organization that had made and could break the
mayor. No individual, so far as Officer Riley could see, was
personally to blame, was himself a free agent; but the whole
collection of individuals were the irresponsible parts of a gigantic
machine--from the inner council of Tammany to their spies in every
municipal department--which, if ever broken by the recognized party
of opposition, must be so thoroughly rebuilt and so precisely
operated in accordance with mechanical lines that the change would
signify only the casting out of the irresponsible parts and their
replacement by parts equally irresponsible. Riley could look no
farther, and, even could he have seen that the remedy must be a
remedy of conditions, he could have done nothing to free himself.
At the station-house he delivered the commands that O'Malley had
given him. There his words produced consternation, but no thought of
disaffection. The patrol-wagon was ordered to be in its stable,
ready to leave at the given hour, and Riley, as the officer regularly
assigned to night-work on the beat in which stood Rose's house, was
forced to remain to accompany it.
"An' see here, you men,"--these were the words with which the brief
instructions were concluded--"you see to it nobody gets ahead of you.
This is O'Malley's job, an' it's got to be done right."
In the underworld of every city, news, however, travels even while it
is in the making, and in no direction does it travel more swiftly,
just as in no other does it travel more indirectly, than, when the
slave-trade is concerned, it travels to the traders. Riley was
careful to remain in full view of the sergeant's desk from the moment
the arrangements were made until the time of execution--he would not
have dared to communicate with the friends that had thus swiftly
become the enemy--none of the wagon-crew were seen to leave the
stable, to use the telephone, or to speak to a passerby, and yet,
shortly before the appointed time, through a certain club-room over a
not far distant saloon--a club-room much affected by young men in Max
Grossman's profession--there soon spread the definite tidings that
Rosie Légère had just been "piped off."
The swarthy and brilliant Rafael Angelelli heard the word, and
straightway, beyond all doubting, confirmed it. With the unheeded
easy evening breeze tumbling his uncovered oily locks, he ran to the
nearest booth-telephone, and hurriedly called Rose upon the wire.
"Eet ees comin'!" he whispered excitedly into the transmitter.
Rose's voice replied with stolid assurance.
"What's comin'?" she asked.
"_Poliziotti_--cops," replied the Italian, finding more and more
difficulty with his English as his panic increased. "Eet ees Angel
talkin'.--I jus' getta da _nuova_.--They maka da pinch!"
"Quit your kiddin'."
"Naw. _Veraménte. Crêdi tu!_ Queeck!"
His fright hit the mark.
"How'd it happen?" demanded Rose. "Who's back of it?"
"Dees Meest' Dyker."
"You fool Dago"--her voice grew shrill with fear and anger--"can't
you do nothin'?"
"Naw. 'E's been to O'Malley."
"You're a hell of a help! How about Riley an' the rest?"
"Naw. O'Malley maka them do thees."
"It's that slut Violet, that's who it is! That's gratitude for you.
I've been half expectin' trouble since she got loose last night.--How
long have I?"
"I don' know. Maybe five min'; maybe one."
"My Gawd!"
"Don' hang up! Leesten: firs' t'eeng you do getta da new girl out.
Eef they getta dees new girl you go----"
But there came a quick click from the other end of the wire. Rose
had ended the conversation.
Angel, still hatless, hurried through the few intervening streets and
darted into that street to which he had just been speaking.
Already the early New York twilight had descended, and the block
seemed, at first glance, to have turned to slumber. One distant,
spluttering arc-light succeeded only in accentuating the gloom. From
the patch of darkening sky into which the roofs blended, a bare
handful of pale stars twinkled weakly, and on both sides, from corner
to corner, the uniform, narrow houses rose in somber repetition, each
with its brief, abrupt flight of steps, each with its shuttered
windows, each silent behind its mask.
All this the Italian saw with accustomed eyes, and then he darted
into the shadow of an areaway, because he saw also that, brief as had
been his journey, Riley had arrived before him.
In a little knot of wise children, a patrol wagon, its sophisticated
horses unconcernedly dozing, stood before Rose's house. An officer
was in the doorway; hurried lights shifted from behind one bowed
shutter to another, and gradually Angel became conscious that, all
along the street, frightened faces were peeping from stealthily
lifted blinds.
For quite some time the watcher waited. At last the big figure of
Riley and a companion appeared in the open doorway and spoke to
someone in the wagon. Through the evening quiet their voices came
distinctly.
"Ready?" asked Riley.
"All ready," came the answer.
"We've got the madam an' the nigger, an' the four of thim, but I
belave they must have turned the new girl loose before we got here."
This time the reply came from within the house, and it came in the
tones of Rose, raised high in anger and in blasphemy:
"You're a dirty liar, Larry Riley! There never was another one, an'
you know that as well as I do! Just you wait till I tell the judge
what you do know, you damned, low, double-crossin' sneak! You
bastard, you!"
Riley and his companions turned and ran into the vestibule.
"Just you wait," the cry continued. "Just you wait, you thief,
you----"
The voice stopped as suddenly as it had started.
There was another pause, a longer one, and then Angel, bending as far
as he dared from his hidden corner, saw the two officers come quickly
out with their hands upon the arms of two cloaked women, whom they
helped into the dark recesses of the patrol-wagon. They went back
and returned with one more. A fourth followed; then a fifth, and a
sixth. Two policemen appeared, evidently from positions that they
had been guarding in the rear of the house. The man on the steps
closed the door and locked it. All the policemen climbed to the
wagon. The driver gathered up the reins. The tittering children
scattered wildly. The horses woke up and started away at a brisk
trot.
Impartial Justice was beginning her task.