A PO-LICE-MAN
By Lincoln Steffens
“Chief,” said Mickey Sweeney, police reporter, to the Chief of Police, “my paper wants th’ goods to prove whether that red-headed crook, Captain Mahoney, is a crook or an honest man.”
The Chief was about to light a cigar. He blew out the match and turned an anxious face to Mickey. Twice the reporter had saved his official life. There was nothing he would not tell him, if he really wanted to know it, nothing. He looked at the boy darkly, then he looked away, off across the humming restaurant, off across the humming years, and the Chief’s face cleared.
“Mickey,” he said, “when I was young, younger than you, and a green cop, greener than you, I was posted on Sixth Avenue, east side, between Twenty-eighth Street and Thirty-three. The heart of the Tenderloin. And my beat beat with the beat of the blood of it; an th’ life; an’ th’ death. One night, one of my first nights, a fly cabman—one of them nighthawks that picked up drunks to take ’em home and took ’em instead to th’ Park and robbed ’em; I wasn’t onto th’ game then, but because of th’ tips they give th’ police about other crooks, we let them operate—well, this night-hawk drives up close to th’ curb by me, and says:
“‘Hey, Bill,’ he whispers, hoarse, ‘there’s murder an’ riot in th’ Half Shell.’
“I hot-footed to th’ oyster house. Empty; not a head in sight. But I listened, and underneath, hell was boiling: yells, curses, thuds. And I piped at th’ end of th’ counter, a bit back, a trapdoor with th’ lid off. I dropped in.
“I come down on them. One of my feet scraped down th’ face of some bloke, and he cussed. My other leg got across a feller’s shoulder and stuck so I went down on my head, and my hands touched th’ murdered body; they was all blood. Which helped me up; that, an’ hearing near me a call, low an’ quick; ‘A cop!’ and the chorus singing: ‘Kill him!’
“So I come up standin’, an’ striking out, blind, with th’ stick. But I began to look around, careful, to get th’ lay. There was one gas-jet, rear. By it I made out th’ feller that did th’ murder. He was being fought over; some, th’ friends o’ th’ dead man, desirous to kill him: others, his friends, to save him. I made for him. He was at the back, under the light, at th’ tip end of th’ two twisted strings of crazy-mad fighters. I had to go along between ’em, but that wasn’t so hard. In th’ surprise of my arrival, the clinch had broke, and that let me pass; that an’ my stick on their faces. So I got through, grabbed my man by th’ collar of all th’ shirts and coats he had on, and I threw him up back o’ me onto an old poker table that stood in th’ corner.
“So far I enjoyed it, but th’ mob rallied. The two fighting sides joined, and all together come for me.
“Ever see a mob mad to murder, Mickey? It scares ye. It’s a beast; looks like a beast, smells like a beast. I was scared. I hit out, first with my stick, then when th’ mob jammed me against th’ table, I hopped up on it and kicked with both legs. An’ I floored ’em; lots of ’em. But they come up again, and again, and th’ mass of ’em bent me back on th’ prisoner. I had to hold him, you see, and he rolled an’ pitched an’ kicked; that’s what give me only one hand. And, by and by, I had only one leg. He—or somebody—drove an oyster knife through my ankle, in between th’ tendon an’ th’ bone, and nailed me to th’ table.
“I was done for, I guess. I was hit all over—fists, knives, chairs, legs of tables. I was sore; weak. Mike, I was all in when I seen a red-headed cop dive into th’ hole. That’s how it looked to me, like a dive head-first. Maybe it was because I noticed first, and so particular, th’ red head on that uniform, an’ th’ red face, an’ th’ red eyes; and because they looked so good to me.
“‘Hold ’em, Brother,’ he calls to me, quiet-like an’ sure. ‘Easy does it.’
“And up he turns on his feet, an’ begins to cut a swathe up to me through that mess o’ men. It was beautiful. That’s when I learned to use a stick right, watchin’ him. He held it high, so as when it landed on a head, it come down level, exactly on th’ crown. Seems to shoot th’ ’lectricity down th’ spine, through all th’ nerves to all th’ joints, plumb to th’ toes. He hit no head twice. Every man he fanned closed up like a knife, and click, click, click—slow, regular, nice, he laid ’em down like a corduroy road on which he walked to me.
“His red eyes was looking every which way, and they didn’t miss a thing. I saw ’em see th’ knife that spiked me to th’ table, but they was looking at somethin’ else when his left hand pulled that knife, one jerk, and, in the same stroke, drove it into a bloke that was pounding my face, and left it in him.
“‘Baby between us,’ he says, an’ he grabs th’ prisoner, yanks him to his feet, and when I, obeying him, took th’ other side, he says:
“‘Forward, march!’
“And we marched. We stumbled some, an’ slipped—off the bodies on th’ floor. They was coming to, and moved; and some was getting up; enough to keep our sticks busy. But we marched, us three, like a battalion, to—under the hole.
“‘Up we go,’ he says to me, and with my good foot in his two hands, he shoots me up and out like a lady mounting a horse in th’ Park.
“‘Now, you,’ he says to th’ prisoner, and up th’ prisoner came to me.
“And then he turns, belts th’ two nearest heads two good last belts, and he bows. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says to th’ mob, ‘good-night.’
“He hands me his hand and comes out, closes th’ trap-door down careful and stands on th’ lid.
“‘Now, then,’ he says to me, ‘you take your baby to th’ station; send me th’ off-platoon, with th’ wagon; and—don’t hurry. I like it here. And that old oyster knife left rust in your left ankle. ’Tend to it.’”
The Chief lit the cigar he had been handling as a club. When it was burning perfectly, he said:
“Sweeney, I wish you wouldn’t ask me nothing about Mahoney. He’s a po-lice-man.”