The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Louie was a mystery, and studied to be so. And to be a mystery is as difficult as being a hypocrite. One wrong word, one moment off your guard, and lo, a flood of light! The mystery vanishes, the hypocrisy is laid bare. You are no longer a riddle. Or, if so, then a riddle that has been solved. And he who was a riddle, but has been solved, is everywhere scoffed at and despised.

Louie must have possessed a genius for mystery, since not once did he fall down in that difficult rôle. He denied nothing, confirmed nothing, of the many tales told about him. A waif-word wagged that he had been in the army, without pointing to any regiment; and that he had been in the navy, without indicating what boat. Louie, it is to be thought, somewhat fostered this confusion. It deepened him as a mystery, and made him more impressive.

Louie was careful, also, that his costume should assist. He made up all in black—black shoes, black trousers, black coat, black hat of semi-sombrero type. Even in what may be spoken of as the matter of linen—although there was no linen about it—he adhered to that funereal hue, and in lieu of a shirt wore a sweater, collar close up to the chin, and all as black as his coat. As he walked the streets, black eyes challenging, threatening, from underneath the black, wide-rimmed hat, he showed not from top to toe a fleck of white.

Among what tales went here and there concerning Louie, there was one which described him as the deadest of dead shots. This he accentuated by a brace of big Colt's pistols, which bore him constant company, daylight and dark. There was no evidence of his having used this artillery, no word of any killing to his perilous glory. Indeed, he couldn't have pointed to so much as one wounded man.

Only once did those pistols come into play. Valenski's stuss house, in Third Avenue near Fourteenth Street, was put in the air. The hold-ups descended upon Valenski's, grabbed $80 which was on the table, and sent Valenski into his safe for $300 more. While this went on, Louie stood in the door, a gun in each fist, defying the gaping, staring, pop-eyed public to interfere. He ran no risk, as everyone well knew. The East Side, while valorous, never volunteers. There was no more chance of outside interference to save Valenski from being plundered, than of outside contributions to make him up another roll.

The incident might have helped in building up for Louie a reputation, had it not been that all that was starkly heroic therein melted when, two days later, the ravished $380 was privily restored to Valenski, with the assurance that the entire business was a jest. Valenski knew nothing humorous had been intended, and that his bundle was returned in deference only to the orders of one high in politics and power. Also, it was the common feeling, a feeling no less cogent for not being put into words, that had Louie been of the wood from which champions are carved, the $380 would never have come back. To refrain from some intended stick-up upon grave orders given, might mean no more than prudence and a right discipline. But to send back money, once in actual hand and when the risk and work of which it stood the harvest had been encountered and performed, was to fly in the face of gang ethics. An order to that effect, however eminent its source, should have been met with stony refusal.

There was one tale which should go, perhaps, to the right side of the reputational ledger, as indicating that Louie had nerve. Crazy Charlie was found dead in the mouth of a passageway, which opened off Mulberry Street near the Bowery. His throat had been cut from ear to ear. No one of sense supposed Louie did that throat slashing.

Crazy Charlie was a hop-head, without a dollar in his jeans, and Louie never did anything except for money. He would no more have gone about a profitless killing, than he would have wasted time and effort by fishing in a bathtub.

For all that, on the whispered hint of the Ghost—who himself was killed finally as a snitch—two plain-clothes men from the Eldridge Street station grabbed Louie. They did not tell him the reason of the pinch. Neither did they spread it on the books. The police have a habit of protecting themselves from the consequences of a foolish collar by a specious system of concealment, and put nothing on the blotter until sure.

When searched at the desk, Louie's guns were discovered. Also, from inside his waistcoat was taken a seven-inch knife, which, as said the police sergeant, might have slit the windpipe of Crazy Charlie or any other bug. But, as anyone with eyes might see, the knife was as purely virginal as when it came from a final emery wheel in its far-off Sheffield home. It had slit nothing.