The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

“'Not youse, Frank,' he said; 'I ain't gunnin' for youse. It's Nigger Mike; he's th' guy I'm goin' to croak. He oughtn't to have let youse have th' money.' No, of course, he don't go after Mike; that's simply his crawl.

“Take it from me,” Frank concluded, “Louie wasn't th' goods. He'd run a bluff, but he never really hoited a guy in his whole life. As I says, he goes about frownin', an' glarin', an' givin' people th' fiery eye, an' t'rowin' a chest, an' lettin' it go broadcast that he's a hero. An' for a finish he's got w'at heroes get.”

Such was the word of Sardinia Frank.

When he fell with two bullets through his brain, and two more through his body, Louie had $170 in his pocket, $700 in his shoe, and $3,000 in the Bowery Bank. This prosperity needn't amaze. There was, for one thing, a racket reason to be hereinafter set forth. Besides, Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint both walked the streets in Louie's loved behalf, and brought him all in the way of riches that came to their lure. Either was sure for five dollars a day, and Mollie Squint, who could graft a little, once came in with $800. Both Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint most fiercely adored Louie, and well did he know how to play one loving heart against the other. Some say that of the pair he preferred Pretty Agnes. If so, he wasn't fool enough to let her find it out. She might have neglected her business to bask in his sweet society.

Besides, when it came to that, Louie's heart was really given to a blonde burlesquer, opulent of charm. This artiste snubbed and neglected Louie for the love of a stage manager. But she took and spent Louie's money, almost if not quite as fast as Pretty Agnes and Mollie Squint could bring it to him from the streets.

Louie never made any place his hangout long. There was no element of loyalty in him, whether for man or for woman, and he went from friend to friend and gang to gang. He would stay nowhere, remain with no one, after his supremacy had been challenged. And such hardy natures as Biff Ellison, Jimmy Kelly, Big Mike Abrams, Chick Tricker and Jack Sirocco were bound to challenge it. They had a way, too, of putting the acid on an individual, and unless his fighting heart were purest gold they'd surely find it out. And Louie never stood the test. Thus, beginning at Big Jack's in Chatham Square, Louie went from hangout to hangout, mob to mob, until, working through Nigger Mike's, the Chatham Club and Sharkey's, he came at last to pal in with the Humpty Jackson guerrillas.

These worthies had a stamping ground in a graveyard between First and Second Avenue, in the block bounded north and south by Twelfth and Thirteenth Streets. There Louie was wont to meet such select company as Monahokky, Nigger Ruhl, Candy Phil, the Lobster Kid, Maxie Hahn, and the Grabber. As they lolled idly among the tombstones, he would give them his adventures by flood and by field. Louie, besides being conceited, was gifted with an imagination and liked to hear himself talk. Not that he felt obliged to accuracy in these narrations. It was enough that he made them thrilling, and in their telling shed an effulgent ray upon himself.

While he could entertain with his stories, Louie was never popular. There was that doubt about his courage. Also, he was too frugal. No one had ever caught the color of his money. Save in the avaricious instance of the big blonde burlesquer, as hungry as false, he held by the selfish theology that it is more blessed to receive than to give.

Taking one reason and another, those about Louie at the finish were mainly the Humpty Jackson bunch. His best hangout of any fashion was the Hesper Club. Had Humpty Jackson remained with his own, Louie might have been driven, in search of comradeship, to go still further afield. Humpty was no weakling, and while on the surface a whining, wheedling, complaining cripple, owned his volcanic side, and had once shot it out, gun to gun and face to face, with no less a paladin than Jimmy Kelly. Louie would have found the same fault with Humpty that he had found with those others. Only Humpty didn't last long enough after Louie joined his forces. Some robbery came off, and a dull jury held Humpty responsible. With that, the judge sent him up for a long term of years, and there he sticks to-day. Humpty took the journey crying that he had been jobbed by the police. However that may have been, his going made it possible for Louie to remain with the Jacksons, and shine at those ghoulish, graveyard meetings, much longer than might otherwise have been the case.

While Louie had removed to the remote regions about Fourteenth Street and Third Avenue, and was seldom seen in Chatham Square or Chinatown, he was not forgotten in those latter precincts. Jew Yetta brought up his name one evening in the Chatham Club, and spoke scornfully of him in conjunction with the opulent blonde.