Jay not in any deftness of fingers, but in his stout, unflinching heart, and a knock-down strength of fist like unto the blow of a maul.
“As a stall he's worse'n a dead one,” Maxie had said. “No one ever put up a worse back. But let a sucker raise a roar, or some galoot of a country sheriff start something—that's where Mike comes on. You know last summer, when I'm followin' Ringling's show? Stagger, Beansey an' Mike's wit' me as bunchers. Over at Patterson we had a rumble. I got a rube's ticker, a red one. He made me; an' wit' that youse could hear th' yell he lets out of him in Newark. A dozen of them special bulls which Ringling has on his staff makes a grab at us. Youse should have lamped Mike! Th' way he laid out them circus dicks was like a tune of music. It's done in a flash, an' every last guy of us makes his get-away. Hock your socks, it's Mike for me every time! I'd sooner he filled in wit' a mob of mine than th' best dip that ever pinched a poke.”
Big Mike had been a fixed star in the Gangland firmament for years. He knew he could slug, he knew he could stay; and he made the most of these virtues. When not working with Little Maxie, he took short trips into the country with an occasional select band of yeggs, out to crack a P. O. or a jug. At such times, Mike was the out-side man—ever a post of responsibility. The out-side man watches while the others blow the box. In case things take to looking queer or leary, he is to pass the whistle of warning to his pals. Should an officer show unexpectedly up, he must stand him off at the muzzle of his gatt, and if crowded, shoot and shoot to kill. He is to stand fast by his partners, busy with wedges, fuse and soup inside, and under no circumstances to desert them. Mike was that one of ten thousand, who had the nerve and could be relied upon to do and be these several iron things. Wherefore, he lived not without honor in the land, and never was there a fleet of yeggs or a mob of gons, but received him into its midst with joy and open hearts.
Mike made a deal of money. Not that it stuck to hum; for he was born with his hands open and spent it as fast as he made it. Also, he drank deeply and freely, and moreover hit the pipe. Nor could he, in the latter particular, be called a pleasure smoker nor a Saturday nighter. Mike had the habit.
At one time Mike ran an opium den at Coney Island, and again on the second floor of Number Twelve Pell. But the police—who had no sure way of gauging the profits of opium—demanded so much for the privilege that Mike was forced to close.
“Them bulls wanted all I made an' more,” complained Mike, recounting his wrongs to Beansey. “I had a 50-pipe joint that time in Pell, an' from the size of the rake-off the captain's wardman asks, you'd have thought that every pipe's a roulette-wheel.”
“Couldn't you do nothin' wit' 'em?” asked Bean-sey, sympathetically.
“Not a t'ing. I shows 'em that number-one hop is $87.50 a can, an' yen-chee or seconds not less'n $32. Nothin' doin'! It's either come across wit' five hundred bones th' foist of every month, or quit.”
Mike sighed over his fair prospects, blighted by the ignorant avarice of the police.
“W'at was youse chargin' a smoke?” inquired Beansey.