The Apaches of New York
“Stall ‘em up this way,” said Pioggi, indicating a spot within touching distance of that coupé. “It’s here we’ll put ‘em over the jump.”
The place pitched upon for the killing was crowded with people. It was this very thronged condition which had led to its selection. The crowd would serve as a cover to Five Points operations. It would prevent a premature recognition of their assailants by Twist and Louie; it would screen the slayers from identification by casual citizens looking on.
Pioggi’s messenger did well his work, and Twist and Louie moved magnificently albeit unsteadily into the open. They were sweeping the walk clear of lesser mortals, when the voice of Pioggi arrested their attention.
“Oh, there, Twist; look here!”
The voice came from the rear and to the right; Pioggi’s position was one calculated to place the enemy at a double disadvantage.
Twist turned his head. A bullet struck him above the eye! He staggered! The lead came in a storm! Twist went down; Louie fell across him! There were twelve bullets in Twist and eight in Louie. The coroner said that they were the deadest people of whom he owned official recollection.
As the forethoughtful Pioggi was dashing away in his coupé, a policeman gave chase. Pioggi drove a bullet through the helmet of the law. It stopped pursuit; but Gangland has ever held that the shot was an error. A little lower, and the policeman would have been killed. Also, the death of a policeman is apt to entail consequences.
Pioggi went into hiding in Greenwich, where the Five Points had a hold-out. There were pullings and haulings and whisperings in dark political corners. When conditions had been whispered and hauled and pulled into shape satisfactory, Pioggi sent word to a favorite officer to come and arrest him.
Pioggi explained to the court that his life had been threatened; he had shot only that he himself might live. His age was seventeen. Likewise there had been no public loss; the going of Twist and Louie had but raised the average of all respectability. The court pondered the business, and decided that justice would be fulfilled by sentencing Pioggi to the Elmira Reformatory.
The best fashion of the Five Points visited Pioggi in the Tombs on the morning of his departure.
“It’s only thirteen months, Kid,” came encouragingly from one. “You won’t mind it.”
“Mind it!” responded Pioggi, in disdain of the worst that Elmira might hold for him; “mind it! I could do it standin’ on me head.”
IV. – IKE THE BLOOD
Whenever the police were driven to deal with him officially, he called himself Charles Livin, albeit the opinion prevailed at headquarters that in thus spelling it, he left off a final ski. The police, in the wantonness of their ignorance, described him on their books as a burglar. This was foolishly wide. He should have been listed as a simple Strong-Arm, whose methods of divorcing other people from their money, while effective, were coarse. Also, it is perhaps proper to mention that his gallery number at the Central Office was 10,394.
It was during the supremacy of Monk Eastman that he broke out, and he had just passed his seventeenth birthday. Being out, he at once attached himself to the gang-fortunes of that chief; and it became no more than a question of weeks before his vast physical strength, the energy of his courage and a native ferocity of soul, won him his proud war-name of Ike the Blood. Compared with the herd about him, in what stark elements made the gangster important in his world, he shone out upon the eyes of folk like stars of a clear cold night.
Ike the Blood looked up to his chief, Monk Eastman, as sailors look up to the North Star, and it wrung his soul sorely when that gang captain went to Sing Sing. In the war over the succession and the baton of gang command, waged between Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, Ike the Blood was compelled to stand neutral. Powerless to take either side, liking both ambitious ones, the trusted friend of both, his hands were tied; and later – first Fitzpatrick and then Twist – he followed both to the grave, sorrow not only on his lips but in his heart.
It was one recent August day that I was granted an introduction to Ike the Blood. I was in the company of an intimate friend of mine – he holds high Central Office position in the police economy of New York. We were walking in Henry Street, in the near vicinity of that vigorous organization, the Ajax Club – so called, I take it, because its members are forever defying the lightnings of the law. My Central Office friend had mentioned Ike the Blood, speaking of him as a guiding light to such difficult ones as Little Karl, Whitey Louie, Benny Weiss, Kid Neumann, Tomahawk, Fritzie Rice, Dagley and the Lobster.
Even as the names were in his mouth, his keen Central Office glance went roving through the open doorway of a grogshop.
“There’s Ike the Blood now,” said he, and tossed a thumb, which had assisted in necking many a malefactor with tastes to be violent, towards the grogshop.
Since to consider such pillars of East Side Society was the great reason of my ramble, we entered the place. Ike the Blood was sitting in state at a table to the rear of the unclean bar, a dozen of his immediate followers – in the politics of gang life these formed a minor order of nobility – with him.
Being addressed by my friend, he arose and joined us; none the less he seemed reticent and a bit disturbed. This was due to the official character of my friend, plus the fact that the jealous eyes of those others were upon him. It is no advantage to a leader, like Ike the Blood, to be seen in converse with a detective. Should one of his adherents be arrested within a day or a week, the arrested one reverts to that conversation, and imagines vain things.
“Take a walk with us, Ike,” said my friend.
Ike the Blood was obviously reluctant. Sinking his voice, and giving a glance over his shoulder at his myrmidons – not ten feet away, and every eye upon him – he remonstrated.
“Say, I don’t want to leave th’ push settin’ here, to go chasin’ off wit’ a bull. Fix it so I can come uptown sometime.”
“Very well,” returned my friend, relenting; “I don’t want to put you in Dutch with your fleet.”
There was a whispered brief word or two, and an arrangement for a meet was made; after which Ike the Blood lapsed into the uneasy circle he had quitted. As we left the grogshop, we could hear him loudly calling for beer. Possibly the Central Office nearness of my friend had rendered him thirsty. Or it may have been that the beer was meant to wet down and allay whatever of sprouting suspicion had been engendered in the trustless breasts of his followers.
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