The Apaches of New York

VIII. THE WAGES OF THE SNITCH

Knowledge is power, and power is a good thing, as you yourself well know. Since Eve opened the way, and she and Adam paid the price – a high one, I sometimes think – you are entitled to every kind of knowledge. Also, you are entitled to all that you can get.

But having acquired knowledge, you are not entitled to peddle it out in secret to Central Office bulls, at a cost of liberty and often life to other men. When you do that you are a snitch, and have thrown away your right to live. Anyone is free to kill you out of hand, having regard only to his own safety. For such is the common law of Gangland.

Let me ladle out a cautionary spoonful.

As you go about accumulating knowledge, you should fix your eye upon one or two great truths. You must never forget that when you are close enough to see a man you are close enough to be seen. It is likewise foolish, weakly foolish, to assume that you are the only gas jet in the chandelier, the only pebble on the beach, or possess the only kodak throughout the entire length of the boardwalk. Bear ever in mind that while you are getting the picture of some other fellow, he in all human chance is snapping yours.

This last is not so much by virtue of any law of Gangland as by a law of nature. Its purpose is to preserve that equilibrium, wanting which, the universe itself would slip into chaos and the music of the spheres become but the rawest tuning of the elemental instruments. The stars would no longer sing together, but shriek together, and space itself would be driven to stop its ears. Folk who fail to carry these grave matters upon the constant shoulder of their regard, get into trouble.

At Gouverneur hospital, where he died, the register gave his name as “Samuel Wendell,” and let it go at that. The Central Office, which finds its profit in amplification, said, “Samuel Wendell, alias Kid Unger, alias the Ghost,” and further identified him as “brother to Johnny the Mock.”

Samuel Wendell, alias Kid Unger, alias the Ghost, brother to Johnny the Mock, was not the original Ghost. Until less than two years ago the title was honorably worn by Mashier, who got twenty spaces for a night trick he turned in Brooklyn. Since Mashier could not use the name in Sing Sing, Wendell, alias Kid Unger, brother to Johnny the Mock, adopted it for his own. It fitted well with his midnight methods and noiseless, gliding, skulking ways. Moreover, since it was upon his own sly rap to the bulls, who made the collar, that Mashier got pinched, he may have felt himself entitled to the name as part of his reward. The Indian scalps his victim, and upon a similar principle Wendell, alias Unger, brother to Johnny the Mock, when Mashier was handed that breath-taking twenty years, may have decided to call himself the Ghost.

It will never be precisely known how and why and by whose hand the Ghost was killed, although it is common opinion that Pretty Agnes had much to do with it. Also, common opinion is more often right than many might believe. In view of that possible connection with the bumping off of the Ghost, Pretty Agnes is worth a word. She could not have been called old. When upon a certain Saturday evening, not remote, she stepped into Jack Sirocco’s in Chatham Square, her years counted fewer than nineteen. Still, she had seen a good deal – or a bad deal – whichever you prefer.

Pretty Agnes’ father, a longshoreman, had found his bread along the docks. None better ever-shaped for a boss stevedore, or trotted up a gangplank with a 280-pound sack of sugar on his back. One day he fell between the side of a moored ship and the stringpiece of the wharf; and the ship, being at that moment ground against the wharf by the swell from a passing steamer, he was crushed. Those who looked on called him a fool for having been killed in so poor a way. He was too dead to resent the criticism, and after that his widow, the mother of Pretty Agnes, took in washing.

Her mother washed, and Pretty Agnes carried home the clothes. This went on for three years. One wind-blown afternoon, as the mother was hanging out clothes on the roof – a high one – and refreshing her energies with intermittent gin from the bottle of her neighbor, the generous Mrs. Callahan, she stepped backward down an airshaft. She struck the flags ten stories below, and left Pretty Agnes to look out for herself.

Looking out for herself, Pretty Agnes worked in a sweatshop in Division Street. Here she made three dollars a week and needed five. The sweatshop owner – for she was a dream of loveliness, with a fog of blue-black hair and deep brown eyes – offered to make up the lacking two, and was accepted.

Round, ripe, willowy, Pretty Agnes graduated from the Division Street sweatshop to a store in Twenty-third Street. There she served as a cloak model, making fourteen dollars a week while needing twenty. The manager of the cloak store was as generous as had been the owner of the sweatshop, and benevolently made up the absent six.

For Pretty Agnes was lovelier than ever.

All work and no play, makes Jack a dull boy. Also, it has the same effect on Jill. Pretty Agnes – she had a trunkful of good clothes and yearned to show them – went three nights a week to one of those dancing academies wherewith the East Side was and is rife. As she danced she met Indian Louie, and lost no time in loving him.

Having advantage of her love, that seeker after doubtful dollars showed Pretty Agnes where and how she could make more money than would come to her as a cloak model in any Twenty-third Street store. Besides, he jealously disapproved of the benevolent manager, though, all things considered, it is hard to say why.

Pretty Agnes, who had grown weary of the manager and to whom Louie’s word was law, threw over both the manager and her cloak-model position. After which she walked the streets for Louie – as likewise did Mollie Squint – and, since he often beat her, continued to love him from the bottom of her heart.

Between Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint, Louie lived sumptuously. Nor could they themselves be said to have altogether suffered; for each knew how to lick her fingers as a good cook should. Perhaps Louie was aware that his darlings held out on him, but regarded it as just an investment. He must have known that to dress well stood first among the demands of their difficult profession, which was ancient and had been honorable, albeit in latter days ill spoken of.

Louie died, and was mourned roundly by Pretty Agnes for eight weeks. Then she gave her love to Sammy Hart, who was out-on-the-safe. Charlie Lennard, alias Big Head, worked pal to Sammy Hart, and the Ghost went with them as outside man and to help in carrying the tools.

Commonly Sammy and Big Head tackled only inferior safes, in cracking which nothing nobler nor more recondite than a can-opener was demanded. Now and then, however, when a first-class box had to be blown and soup was an absolute requirement, the Ghost came in exceeding handy. No yegg who ever swung under and traveled from town to town without a ticket, knew better than did the Ghost how to make soup.

The soup-making process, while ticklish, ought to be worth reading about. A cake of dynamite is placed in the cold bottom of a kettle. Warm water is added, and the kettle set a-simmer over a benzine lamp. As the water heats, the dynamite melts into oil, and the oil – being lighter – rises to the top of the water.

The oil is drawn softly off with a syringe, and as softly discharged into a bottle half filled with alcohol. The alcohol is to prevent explosion by jarring. Soup, half oil, half alcohol, can be fired with a fuse, but will sustain quite a jolt without resenting it.

This was not true in an elder day, before our box workers discovered that golden alcoholic secret. There was a yegg once who was half in, half out, of the window of a P. O. Pie had the bottle of soup in his hip pocket. The sash fell, struck the consignment of hip-pocket soup, and all that was found of the yegg were the soles of his shoes. Nothing so disconcerting would have happened had the Ghost made the soup.

The Ghost, while believed in by Big Head and Sammy, was distrusted by Pretty Agnes. She distrusted him because of his bad repute as a snitch. She called Sammy’s attention to what tales were abroad to the black effect that the Ghost was a copper in his mildewed soul, and one time and another had served stoolpigeon to many dicks.

Sammy took no stock in these reports, and told Pretty Agnes so.

“Th’ Ghost’s all right,” he said; “he’s been wit’ me an’ Big Head when we toins off twenty joints.”

“He may go wit’ you,” retorted Pretty Agnes, “for twenty more tricks, an’ never rap. But mark me woids, Sammy; in th’ end he’ll make a present of youse to th’ bulls.”

Sammy only laughed, holding that the feminine intelligence, while suspicious, was not a strong intelligence.

“Well,” said Sammy, when he had ceased laughing, “if th’ Ghost does double-cross me, w’at’ll youse do?”

“W’at’ll I do? As sure as my monaker is Pretty Agnes, I’ll have him cooked.”

“Good goil!” said Sammy Hart.

Gangland discusses things social, commercial, political, and freely forms and gives opinions. From a panic in Wall Street to the making of a President, nothing comes or goes uncommented upon and unticketed in Gangland. Even the fashions are threshed out, and sage judgments rendered concerning frocks and hats and all the latest hints from Paris. This you can test for yourself, on any evening, at such hubs of popular interest as Sirocco’s, Tony’s, Jimmy Kelly’s or the Chatham Club.

Sirocco’s was a-swarm with life that Saturday evening when Pretty Agnes dropped in so casually. At old Jimmy’s table they were considering the steel trust investigation, then proceeding – ex-President Roosevelt had that day testified – and old Jimmy and the Irish Wop voiced their views, and gave their feelings vent. Across at Slimmy’s the dread doings of a brace of fair ones, who had excited Coney Island by descending upon that lively suburb in harem skirts, was under discussion.

Speaking of the steel trust investigation and its developments, old Jimmy was unbelting after this wise. Said he, bringing down his hairy fist with a whack that startled every beer glass on the table into an upward jump of full three inches:

“Th’ more I read of th’ doin’s of them rich guys, th’ more I begin to think that th’ makin’ of a mutt lurks in every million dollars. Say, Wop, they don’t know how to pick up a hand an’ play it, after it’s been dealt ‘em. Take ‘em off Wall Street an’ mix ‘em up wit’ anything except stocks, an’ they can’t tell a fire plug from a song an’ dance soubrette. If some ordinary skate was to go crabbin’ his own personal game th’ way they do theirs, th’ next you’d hear that stew would be in Blooming-dale.”

“Phwat’s eatin’ yez now, Jimmy?” inquired the Wop, carelessly. “Is it that steel trusht thing th’ pa-a-apers is so full of?”

“That an’ th’ way Morgan an’ th’ balance of that fur-lined push fall over themselves. Th’ big thing they’re shy on is diplomacy. When it comes to diplomacy, they’re a lot of dead ones.”

“An’ phwat’s diplom’cy?”

The Wop didn’t like big words; his feeling was to first question, then resent them.

“Phwat’s diplom’cy?” he repeated.

“Diplomacy,” said old Jimmy, “is any cunnin’ move that lands th’ trick. You wake up an’ hear a noise; an’ you think it’s some porch-climber, like th’ Nailer here, turnin’ off th’ joint. At that, not knowin’ but he’s framed up with a gun, you don’t feel like goin’ to th’ mat with him. What do you do? Well, you use diplomacy. You tosses mebby a dumbbell over th’ bannisters, an’ lets it go bumpin’ along from step to step, makin’ more row than some geezer failin’ down stairs with a kitchen stove. Th’ racket throws a scare into th’ Nailer, an’ he beats it, see?”

“An’ that’s diplom’cy!” said the Wop.

“Also, it’s exactly what them Wall Streeters ain’t got. Look at th’ way they’re always fightin’ Roosevelt. For twenty-five years they’ve been roustin’ Teddy; an’ for twenty-five years they’ve done nothin’ but keep him on th’ map. When Teddy was in Mulberry Street th’ Tammany ducks gets along with him as peaceful as a basketful of pups. Diplomacy does it; that, an’ payin’ strict attention to Teddy’s blind side. ‘What’s th’ use of kickin’ in th’ gate,’ says they, ‘when we knows where a picket’s off th’ fence?’ You remember Big Florrie Sullivan puttin’ young Brady on th’ Force? Teddy’s in Mulberry Street then. Do you think Big Florrie goes queerin’ th’ chances, be tellin’ Teddy how Brady passes th’ cush box in Father Curry’s church? Not on your life! It wouldn’t have been diplomacy; Teddy wouldn’t have paid no attention. Big Florrie gets in his work like this: