The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

The next day the Central Office knew all that the Darby Kid knew as to Harry the Soldier. But why say it was she who squealed? The Nailer and Mollie Squint were quite as well informed as herself, having read Harry's letter.

To begin at the foundation and go to the eaves—which is the only right way to build either a house or a story. Crazy Butch had reached his twenty-eighth year, when he died and was laid to rest in accordance with the ceremonial of his ancient church. He was a child of the East Side, and his vices out-topped his virtues upon a principle of sixteen to one.

The parents of Butch may be curtly dismissed as unimportant. They gave him neither care nor guidance, but left him to grow up, a moral straggler, in what tangled fashion he would. Never once did they show him the moral way in which he should go. Not that Butch would have taken it if they had.

To Butch, as to Gangland in general, morality was as so much lost motion. And, just as time-is money among honest folk, so was motion money with Butch and his predatory kind. Old Jimmy correctly laid down the Gangland position, which was Butch's position. Said old Jimmy:

“Morality is all to the excellent for geeks with dough to burn an' time to throw away. It's right into the mitts of W'ite Chokers, who gets paid for bein' good an' hire out to be virchuous for so much a year. But of what use is morality to a guy along the Bowery? You could take a cartload of it to Simpson's, an' you couldn't get a dollar on it.”

Not much was known of the childhood of Butch, albeit his vacuous lack of book knowledge assisted the theory that little or less of it had been passed in school. Nor was that childhood a lengthy one, for fame began early to collect upon Butch's scheming brow. He was about the green and unripe age of thirteen when he went abroad into the highways and byways of the upper city and stole a dog of the breed termed setter. This animal he named Rabbi, and trained as a thief.

Rabbi, for many months, was Butch's meal ticket. The method of their thievish procedure was simple but effective. Butch—Rabbi alertly at his godless heels—would stroll about the streets looking for prey. When some woman drifted by, equipped of a handbag of promise, Butch pointed out the same to the rascal notice of Rabbi. After which the discreet Butch withdrew, the rest of it—as he said—being up to Rabbi.

Rabbi followed the woman, his abandoned eye on the hand-bag. Watching his chance, Rabbi rushed the woman and dexterously whisked the handbag from out her horrified fingers. Before the woman realized her loss, Rabbi had raced around a nearest corner and was lost to all pursuit. Fifteen minutes later he would find Butch at Willett and Stanton Streets, and turn over the touch.

Rabbi hated a policeman like a Christian. The sight of one would send him into growling, snarling, hiding. None the less, like all great characters, Rabbi became known; and, in the end, through some fraud which was addressed to his softer side and wherein a canine Delilah performed, he Avas betrayed into the clutches of the law.

This mischance marked the close, as a hanger-snatcher, of the invaluable Rabbi's career. Not that the plain-clothes people who caught him affixed a period to his doggish days. Even a plains-clothes man isn't entirely hard. Rabbi's captors merely found him a home in the Catskills, where he spent his days in honor and his nights in sucking unsuspected eggs.