The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

His monaker of Biff came to him in the most natural way in the world. Gangland is ever ready to bestow a title. Therefore, when a recalcitrant customer of Fat Flynn's, having quaffed that publican's beer and then refused to pay for it, was floored as flat as a flounder by a round blow from Ellison's fist, Gangland, commemorating the event, renamed him Biff.

Ellison was in his angular, awkward twenties when he made his initial appearance along the Bowery. He came from Maryland, no one knew why and a youthful greenness would have got him laughed at, had it not been for a look in his eye which suggested that while he might be green he might be game.

Having little education and no trade Ellison met existence by hiring out as bar-keeper to Fat Flynn, who kept a grog shop of singular vileness at 34 Bond. Its beer glasses were vulgarly large, its frequenters of the rough-neck school. But it was either work in Flynn's or carry a hod, and Ellison, who was not fanatically fond of hard labor, and preferred to seek his bread along lines of least resistance, instantly and instinctively resolved on the side of Flynn's.

Gangland is much more given to boxing gloves than books, and the conversation at Flynn's, as it drifted across the bar to Ellison—busy drawing beer—was more calculated to help his hands than help his head. Now and then, to be sure, there would come one who, like Slimmy, had acquired a stir education, that is, a knowledge of books such as may be picked up in prison; but for the most those whom Ellison met, in the frothy course of business, were not the ones to feed his higher nature or elevate his soul. It was a society where the strong man was the best man, and only fist-right prevailed.

Ellison was young, husky, with length of reach and plenty of hitting power, and, as the interests of Flynn demanded, he bowed to his environment and beat up many a man. There were those abroad in Bond Street whom he could not have conquered. But, commonly sober and possessed besides of inborn gifts as a matchmaker, he had no trouble in avoiding these. The folks whom he hooked up with were of the genus cinch, species pushover, and proceeding carefully he built up in time a standing for valor throughout all the broad regions lying between Fourteenth Street and City Hall Park.

Let it be said that Ellison had courage. It was his prudence which taught him to hold aloof from the tough ones. Now and then, when a tough one did insist on war, Ellison never failed to bear himself with spirit. Only he preferred to win easily, with little exertion and no injury to his nose and eyes. For Ellison, proud of his appearance, was by Gangland's crude standards the glass of fashion and the mould of form, and flourished the idol of the ladies. Also, a swollen nose or a discolored eye is of no avail in winning hearts.

Every dispenser of beer is by way of being a power in politics. Some soar higher, some with weaker wing—that is a question of genius. One sells beer and makes himself chief of Tammany Hall. Another rises on the tides of beer to a district leadership. Still others—and it is here that Ellison comes in—find their lower beery level as Tammany's shoulder-hitting aides.

In the last rôle, Ellison was of value to Tammany Hall. Wherefore, whenever he fell into the fingers of the police—generally for assault—the machine cast over him the pinion of its prompt protection. As the strong-arm pet of the organization, he punched and slugged, knocked down and dragged out, and did all these in safety. Some soft-whispering politician was sure to show a magistrate—all ears—that the equities were on the side of Ellison, and what black eyes or broken noses had been distributed went where they truly belonged and would do the most Tammany good.

In his double role of beer dispenser and underthug of politics, Ellison stood high in Gangland opinion. From Flynn's in Bond Street he went to Pickerelle's in Chrystie Street. Then he became the presiding influence at a dive of more than usual disrepute kept by one Landt, which had flung open its dingy doors in Forsyth Street near Houston.

Ellison' took an impressive upward step at this time. That is, he nearly killed a policeman. Nicely timing matters so that the officer was looking the other way, he broke a bottle over the blue-coat's head. The blue-coat fell senseless to the floor. Once down and helpless, Ellison hoofed him after the rules of Gangland, which teach that only fools are fair, until the hoofed one was a pick-up for an ambulance.