The Apaches of New York

“Where’s Mersher?” asked Spanish.

“Not here,” quoth Mersher’s brother.

“You’ll do,” returned Spanish. “Give me ten dollars out of the damper.”

Mersher’s brother held this proposal in finance to be foolishly impossible, and was explicit on that head. He insisted, not without scorn, that he was the last man in the world to give a casual caller ten dollars out of the damper or anything else.

“I’ll be back,” replied Spanish, “an’ I bet then you’ll give me that ten-spot.”

“That’s Johnny Spanish,” declared a bystander, when Spanish, muttering his discontent, had gone his threatening way.

Mersher’s brother doubted it. He had heard of Spanish, but had never seen him. It was his understanding that Spanish was not in town at all, having lammistered some time before.

“He’s wanted be th’ cops,” Mersher’s brother argued. “You don’t suppose he’s sucker enough to walk into their mitts? He wouldn’t dare show up in town.”

“Don’t con yourself,” replied the bystander, who had a working knowledge of Gangland and its notables. “That’s Spanish, all right. He was out of town, but not because of the bulls. It’s the Dropper he’s leary of; an’ now th’ Dropper’s in hock he’s chased back. You heard what he said about comin’ ‘round ag’in? Take my tip an’ rib yourself up wit’ a rod. That Spanish is a tough kid!”

The evening wore on at Mersher’s; one hour, two hours, three went peaceably by. The clock pointed to eleven.

Without warning a lowering figure appeared at the door.

“There he is!” exclaimed the learned bystander. Then he added with a note of pride, albeit shaky as to voice: “What did I tell youse?”

The figure in the doorway strode forward. It was Spanish. A second figure – hat over eyes – . followed hard on his heels. With a flourish, possible only to the close student of Mr. Beadle’s dime literature, Spanish drew two Colt’s pistols.

“Come through wit’ that ten!” said he to Mersher’s brother.

Mersher’s brother came through, and came through swiftly.

“I thought so!” sneered Spanish, showing his side teeth like a dog whose feelings have been hurt. “Now come through wit’ th’ rest!”

Mersher’s brother eagerly gave him the contents of the cash drawer – about eighty dollars.

Spanish, having pocketed the money, wheeled upon the little knot of customers, who, after the New York manner when crime is afoot, had stood motionless with no thought of interfering.

“Hands up! Faces to the wall!” cried Spanish. “Everybody’s dough looks good to me to-night!”

The customers, acting in such concert that it seemed as though they’d been rehearsed, hands held high, turned their faces to the wall.

“You keep them covered,” said Spanish to his dark companion in arms, “while I go through ‘em.”

The dark companion leveled his own pistol in a way calculated to do the most harm, and Spanish reaped an assortment of cheap watches and a handful of bills.

Spanish came round on Mersher’s brother. The latter had stooped down until his eyes were on a par with the bar.

“Now,” said Spanish to Mersher’s brother, “I might as well cook you. I’ve no use for barkeeps, anyway, an’ besides you’re built like a pig an’ I don’t like your looks!”

Spanish began to shoot, and Mersher’s brother began to dodge. Ducking and dodging, the latter ran the length of the bar, Spanish faithfully following with his bullets. There were two in the ice box, two through the mirror, five in the top of the bar. Each and all, they had been too late for Mersher’s brother, who, pale as a candle, emerged from the bombardment breathing heavily but untouched.

“An’ this,” cried Ikey the pawnbroker, ten minutes after Spanish had disappeared – Ikey was out a red watch and sixty dollars – “an’ this iss vat Mayor Gaynor calls ‘outvard order an’ decency’!”

It was upon the identification of the learned bystander that Dribben and Blum went to work, and it was for that stick-up in Mersher’s the two made the collar.

“It’s lucky for you guys,” said Spanish, his eye sparkling venomously like the eye of a snake – “it’s lucky for you guys that you got me wit’out me guns. I’d have croaked one of you bulls sure, an’ maybe both, an’ then took th’ Dutch way out me-self.”

The Dutch way out, with Spanish and his immediate circle, means suicide, it being a belief among them that the Dutch are a melancholy brood, and favor suicide as a means of relief when the burdens of life become more than they can bear.

Spanish, however, did not have his gun when he was pinched, and therefore did not croak Dribben and Blum, and do the Dutch act for himself. Dribben and Blum are about their daily duties as thief takers, as this is read, while Spanish is considering nature from between the Sing Sing bars. Dribben and Blum say that, even if Spanish had had his guns, he would neither have croaked them nor come near it, and in what bluffs he put up to that lethal effect he was talking through his hat. For myself, I say nothing, neither one way nor the other, except that Dribben and Blum are bold and enterprising officers, and Spanish is the very heart of quenchless desperation.

By word of my Central Office informant, Spanish has seen twenty-two years and wasted most of them. His people dwell somewhere in the wilds of Long Island, and are as respectable as folk can be on two dollars a day. Spanish did not live with his people, preferring the city, where he cut a figure in Suffolk, Norfolk, Forsyth, Hester, Grand, and other East Side avenues.

At one time Spanish had a gallery number, and his picture held an important place in Central Office regard. It was taken out during what years the inadequate Bingham prevailed as Commissioner of Police. A row arose over a youth named Duffy, who was esteemed by an eminent Judge. Duffy’s picture was in the gallery, and the judge demanded its removal. It being inconvenient to refuse the judge, young Duffy’s picture was taken out; and since to make fish of one while making flesh of others might have invited invidious comment, some hundreds of pictures – among them that of Spanish – were removed at the same time.

It pleased Spanish vastly when his mug came out of the gallery. Not that its presence there was calculated to hurt his standing; not but what it was bound to go back as a certain incident of his method of life. Its removal was a wound to police vanity; and, hating the police, he found joy in whatsoever served to wring their azure withers.

When, according to the rules of Bertillon, Spanish was thumb-printed, mugged and measured, the police described him on their books as Pickpocket and Fagin. The police affirmed that he not only worked the Broadway rattlers in his own improper person, but – paying a compliment to his genius for organization – that he had drawn about himself a group of children and taught them to steal for his sinful use. It is no more than truth to say, however, that never in New York City was Spanish convicted as either a Fagin or a pickpocket, and the police – as he charges – may have given him these titles as a cover for their ignorance, which some insist is of as deep an indigo as the hue of their own coats.

Spanish was about seventeen when he began making an East Side stir. He did not yearn to be respectable. He had borne witness to the hard working respectability of his father and mother, and remembered nothing as having come from it more than aching muscles and empty pockets. Their clothes were poor, their house was poor, their table poor. Why should he fret himself with ideals of the respectable?

Work?

It didn’t pay.

In his blood, too, flowed malignant cross-currents, which swept him towards idleness and all manner of violences.

Nor did the lesson of the hour train him in selfrestraint. All over New York City, in Fifth Avenue, at the Five Points, the single cry was, Get the Money! The rich were never called upon to explain their prosperity. The poor were forever being asked to give some legal reason for their poverty. Two men in a magistrate’s court are fined ten dollars each. One pays, and walks free; the other doesn’t, and goes to the Island. Spanish sees, and hears, and understands.

“Ah!” cries he, “that boob went to the Island not for what he did but for not having ten bones!”

And the lesson of that thunderous murmur – reaching from the Battery to Kingsbridge – of Get the Money! rushes upon him; and he makes up his mind to heed it. Also, there are uncounted scores like Spanish, and other uncounted scores with better coats than his, who are hearing and seeing and reasoning the same way.

Spanish stood but five feet three, and his place was among the lightweights. Such as the Dropper, who tilted the scales at 180, and whose name of Dropper had been conferred upon him because every time he hit a man he dropped him – such as Ike the Blood, as hard and heavy as the Dropper and whose title of the Blood had not been granted in any spirit of factitiousness – laughed at him. What matter that his heart was high, his courage proof? Physically, he could do nothing with these dangerous ones – as big as dangerous! And so, ferociously ready to even things up, he began packing a rod.

While Spanish, proceeding as best he might by his dim standards, was struggling for gang eminence and dollars, Alma, round, dark, vivacious, eyes as deep and soft and black as velvet, was the unchallenged belle of her Williamsburg set. Days she worked as a dressmaker, without getting rich. Nights she went to rackets, which are dances wide open and unfenced. Sundays she took in picnics, or rode up and down on the trolleys – those touring cars of the poor.

Spanish met Alma and worshipped her, for so was the world made. Being thus in love, while before he, Spanish, had only needed money, now he had to have it. For love’s price to a man is money, just as its price to a woman is tears.

Casting about for ways and means, Spanish’s money-hunting eye fell upon Jigger. Jigger owned a stuss-house in Forsyth Street, between Hester and Grand. Jigger was prosperous beyond the dreams of avarice. Multitudes, stabbing stuss, thronged his temple of chance. As a quick, sure way to amass riches, Spanish decided to become Jigger’s partner. Between them they would divide the harvest of Forsyth Street stuss.

The golden beauty of the thought lit up the dark face of Spanish with a smile that was like a splash of vicious sunshine. Alma, in the effulgence of her toilets, should overpower all rivalry! At rout and racket, he, Spanish, would lead the hard walk with her, and she should shine out upon Gangland fashion like a fire in a forest.

His soul having wallowed itself weary in these visions, Spanish sought Jigger as a step towards making the visions real. Spanish and his proposition met with obstruction. Jigger couldn’t see it, wouldn’t have it.

Spanish was neither astonished nor dismayed. He had foreseen the Jiggerian reluctance, and was organized to break it down. When Jigger declined his proffered partnership – in which he, Jigger, must furnish the capital while Spanish contributed only his avarice – and asked, “Why should I?” he, Spanish, was ready with an answer.

“Why should you?” and Spanish repeated Jigger’s question so that his reply might have double force. “Because, if you don’t, I’ll bump youse off.” Gangland is so much like Missouri that you must always be prepared to show it. Gangland takes nothing on trust. And, if you try to run a bluff, it calls you. Spanish wore a low-browed, sullen, sour look. But he had killed no one, owned no dread repute, and Jigger was used to sullen, sour, lowbrowed looks. Thus, when Spanish spoke of bumping Jigger off, that courtier of fortune, full of a case-hardened scepticism, laughed low and long and mockingly. He told the death-threatening Spanish to come a-running.

Spanish didn’t come a-running, but he came much nearer it than Jigger liked. Crossing up with the perverse Jigger the next evening, at the corner of Forsyth and Grand, he opened upon that obstinate stuss dealer with a Colt’s-38. Jigger managed to escape, but little Sadie Rotin, otat eight, was killed. Jigger, who was unarmed, could not return the fire. Spanish, confused and flurried, doubtless, by the poor result of his gun-play, betook himself to flight.

The police did not get Spanish; but in Gangland the incident did him little good. At the Ajax Club, and in other places where the best blood of the gangs was wont to unbuckle and give opinions, such sentiment-makers as the Dropper, Ike the Blood, Kid Kleiney, Little Beno, Fritzie Rice, Kid Strauss, the Humble Dutchman, Zamo, and the Irish Wop, held but one view. Such slovenly work was without precedent as without apology. To miss Jigger aroused ridicule. But to go farther, and kill a child playing in the street, spelled bald disgrace. Thereafter no self-respecting lady would drink with Spanish, no gentleman of gang position would return his nod. He would be given the frozen face at the rackets, the icy eye in the streets.

To be sure, his few friends, contending feebly, insisted that it wasn’t Spanish who had killed the little Rotin girl. When Spanish cracked off his rod at Jigger, others had caught the spirit. A half dozen guns – they said – had been set blazing; and it was some unknown practitioner who had shot down the little Rotin girl. What were the heart-feelings of father and mother Rotin, to see their baby killed, did not appeal as a question to either the friends or foes of Spanish. Gangland is interested only in dollars or war.

That contention of his friends did not restore Spanish in the general estimation. All must confess that at least he had missed Jigger. And Jigger without a rod! It crowded hard upon the unbelievable, and could be accounted for only upon the assumption that Spanish was rattled, which is worse than being scared. Mere fear might mean no more than an excess of prudence. To get rattled, everywhere and under all conditions, is the mean sure mark of weakness.

While discussion, like a pendulum, went swinging to and fro, Spanish – possibly a-smart from what biting things were being said in his disfavor – came to town, and grievously albeit casually shot an unknown. Following which feat he again disappeared. None knew where he had gone. His whereabouts was as much a mystery as the identity of the unknown whom he had shot, or the reason he had shot him. These two latter questions are still borne as puzzles upon the ridge of gang conjecture.

That this time he had hit his man, however, lifted Spanish somewhat from out those lower reputational depths into which missing Jigger had cast him. The unknown, to be sure, did not die; the hospital books showed that. But he had stopped a bullet. Which last proved that Spanish wasn’t always rattled when he pulled a gun. The incident, all things considered, became a trellis upon which the reputation of Spanish, before so prone and hopeless, began a little to climb.

The strenuous life doesn’t always blossom and bear good fruit. Balked in his intended partnership with Jigger, and subsequently missing Jigger – to say nothing of the business of the little Rotin girl, dead and down under the grass roots – Spanish not only failed to Get the Money! but succeeded in driving himself out of town. Many and vain were the gang guesses concerning him. Some said he was in Detroit, giving professional aid to a gifted booster. The latter was of the feminine gender, and, aside from her admitted genius for shoplifting, was acclaimed the quickest hand with a hanger – by which you are to understand that outside pendant purse wherewith women equip themselves as they go forth to shop – of all the gon-molls between the two oceans. Others insisted that Spanish was in Baltimore, and had joined out with a mob of poke-getters. The great, the disastrous thing, however – and to this all Gangland agreed – was that he had so bungled his destinies as to put himself out of New York.

“Detroit! Baltimore!” exclaimed the Dropper. “W’y, it’s woise’n bein’ in stir! A guy might as well be doin’ time as live in them burgs!”

The Dropper, in his iron-fisted way, was sincere in what he said. Later, he himself was given eighteen spaces in Sing Sing, which exile he might have missed had he fled New York in time. But he couldn’t, and didn’t. And so the Central Office got him, the District Attorney prosecuted him, the jury convicted him, and the judge sentenced him to that long captivity. Living in New York is not a preference, but an appetite – like drinking whiskey – and the Dropper had acquired the habit.

What was the Dropper settled for?

Robbery.

It’s too long to tell here, however, besides being another story. Some other day I may give it to you.

Spanish, having abandoned New York, could no longer bear Alma loving company at picnic, rout and racket. What was Alma to do? She lived for routs, reveled in rackets, joyed in picnics. Must these delights be swept away? She couldn’t go alone – it was too expensive. Besides, it would evince a lack of class.

Alma, as proud and as wedded to her social position as any silken member of the Purple and Fine Linen Gang that ever rolled down Fifth Avenue in her brougham, revolved these matters upon her wheel of thought. Also, she came to conclusions. She, an admitted belle, could not consent to social obliteration. Spanish had fled; she worshipped his black eyes, his high courage; she would keep a heart-corner vacant for him in case he came back. Pending his return, however, she would go into society; and, for those reasons of expense and class and form, she would not go alone.

Alma submitted her position to a beribboned jury of her peers. Their judgment ran abreast of her own.

“A goil would be a mutt,” they said, “to stay cocked up at home. An’ yet a goil couldn’t go chasin’ around be her lonesome. Alma” – this was their final word – “you must cop off another steady.”

“But what would Johnny say?” asked Alma; for she couldn’t keep her thoughts off Spanish, of whom she stood a little bit in fear.

“Johnny’s beat it, ain’t he?” returned the advisory jury of friends. “There ain’t no kick comin’ to a guy what’s beat it. He ain’t no longer in th’ picture.”

Alma, thus free to pick and choose by virtue of the absence of Spanish, picked the Dropper. The latter chieftain was flattered. Taking Alma proudly yet tenderly under his mighty arm, he led her to suppers such as she had never eaten, bought her drinks such as she had never tasted, revolved with her at rackets where tickets were a dollar a throw, the orchestra seven pieces, and the floor shone like glass. It was a cut or two above anything that Spanish had given her, and Alma, who thought it going some, failed not to say so.

Alma was proud of the Dropper; the Dropper was proud of her. She told her friends of the money he spent; and the friends warmed the cockles of her little heart by shrilly exclaiming at pleasant intervals:

“Ain’t he th’ swell guy!”

“Betcher boots he’s th’ swell guy,” Alma would rejoin; “an’ he’s got money to boin a wet dog! Th’ only t’ing that worries me,” Alma would conclude, “is Johnny. S’ppose he blows in some day, an’ lays for th’ Dropper?’

“Th’ Dropper could do him wit’ a wallop,” the friends would consolingly return. “He’d swing onct; an’ after that there wouldn’t be no Johnny Spanish.”

The Round Back Rangers – it was, I think, the Round Backs – gave an outdoor racket somewhere near Maspeth. The Dropper took Alma. Both were in high, exultant feather. They danced, they drank, they rode the wooden horses. No more gallant couple graced the grounds.

Cheese sandwiches, pig’s knuckles and beer brought them delicately to the banquet board. They were among their friends. The talk was always interesting, sometimes educational.

Ike the Blood complained that certain annoying purists were preaching a crusade against the Raines Law Hotels. Slimmy, celebrated not only for his slimness, but his erudition, declared that crusades had been the common curse of every age.

“W’at do youse know about it?” sourly propounded the Humble Dutchman, who envied Slimmy his book-fed wisdom.

“W’at do I know about it?” came heatedly from Slimmy. “Do youse think I ain’t got no education? Th’ last time I’m in stir, that time I goes up for four years, I reads all th’ books in th’ prison library. Ask th’ warden if I don’t. As to them crusades, it’s as I tells you. There’s always been crusades; it’s th’ way humanity’s gaited. Every sport, even if he don’t go ‘round blowin’ about it, has got it tucked somewhere away in his make-up that he, himself, is th’ real thing. Every dub who’s different from him he figgers is worse’n him. In two moves he’s out crusadin’. In th’ old days it’s religion; th’ Paynims was th’ fall guys. Now it’s rum, or racin’, or Raines Hotels, or some such stall. Once let a community get the crusade bug, an’ something’s got to go. There’s a village over in Joisey, an,’ there bein’ no grog shops an’ no vice mills to get busy wit’, they ups an’ bounces an old geezer out of th’ only church in town for pitchin’ horse-shoes.”

Slimmy called for more beer, with a virtuously superior air.

“But about them Paynims, Slimmy?” urged Alma.

“It’s hundreds of years ago,” Slimmy resumed. “Th’ Paynims hung out in Palestine. Bein’ they’re Paynims, the Christians is naturally sore on ‘em; an’ so, when they feels like huntin’ trouble, th’ crusade spirit’d flare up. Richard over in England would pass th’ woid to Philip in France, an’ th’ other lads wit’ crowns.

“‘How about it?’ he’d say. ‘Cast your regal peepers toward Palestine. D’you make them Paynims? Ain’t they th’ tough lot? They won’t eat pork; they toe in when they walk; they don’t drink nothin’ worse’n coffee; they’ve got brown skins. Also,’ says he, ‘we can lick ‘em for money, marbles or chalk. W’at d’youse say, me royal brothers? Let’s get our gangs, an’ hand them Paynims a swift soak in behalf of the troo faith.’

“Philip an’ the other crowned lads at this would agree wit’ Richard. ‘Them Paynims is certainly th’ worst ever!’ they’d say; an’ one woid’d borry another, until the crusade is on. Some afternoon you’d hear the newsies in th’ streets yellin’, ‘Wux-try!’ an’ there it’d be in big black type, ‘Richard, Philip an’ their gallant bands of Strong-Arms have landed in Palestine.’”

“An’ then w’at, Slimmy?” cooed Alma, who hung on every word.

“As far as I can see, th’ Christians always had it on th’ Paynims, always had ‘em shaded, when it comes to a scrap. Th’ Christian lads had th’ punch; an’ th’ Paynims must have been wise to it; for no sooner would Richard, Philip an’ their roly-boly boys hit th’ dock, than th’ Paynims would take it on th’ run for th’ hills. Their mullahs would try to rally ‘em, be tellin’ ‘em that whoever got downed fightin’ Christians, the prophet would punch his ticket through for paradise direct, an’ no stop-overs.

“‘That’s all right about the prophet!’ they’d say, givin’ th’ mullahs th’ laugh. An’ then they’d beat it for th’ next ridge.”

“Them Paynims must have been a bunch of dead ones,” commented the Dropper.

“Not bein’ able to get on a match,” continued Slimmy, without heeding the Dropper, “th’ Paynims declinin’ their game, th’ Christian hosts would rough house th’ country generally, an’ in a way of speakin’ stand th’ Holy Land on its head. Do what they would, however, they couldn’t coax th’ Paynims into th’ ring wit’ ‘em; an’ so after a while they decides that Palestine’s th’ bummest place they’d ever struck. Mebby, too, they’d begin havin’ woid from home that their wives was gettin’ a little gay, or their kids was goin’ round marryin’ th’ kids of their enemies, an’ that one way an’ another their domestic affairs was on th’ fritz. At this, Richard’d go loafin’ over to Philip’s tent, an’ say:

“‘Philly, me boy, I don’t know how this crusade strikes youse, but if I’m any judge of these great moral movements, it’s on th’ blink. An’ so,’ he’d go on, ‘Philly, it’s me for Merrie England be th’ night boat.’

“Wit’ that, they’d break for home; an’, when they got there, they’d mebby hand out a taste of th’ strap to mamma an’ th’ babies, just to teach ‘em not to go runnin’ out of form th’ next time father’s far away.”

“Youse don’t bank much on crusades, Slimmy?” Ike the Blood said.

The Blood had more than a passing interest in the movement, mention of which had started the discussion, being himself a part proprietor in one of those threatened Raines Law Hotels.

“Blood,” observed Slimmy, oracularly, “them moral movements is like a hornet; they stings onct an’ then they dies.”

Alma’s attention was drawn to Mollie Squint – so called because of an optical slant which gave her a vague though piquant look. Mollie Squint was motioning from the outskirts of the little group. Alma pointed to the Dropper. Should she bring him? Mollie Squint shook her head.