The Apaches of New York

by Alfred Henry Lewis

Tricker pointed to the younger of the two women—about eighteen, she was.

“Two years ago,” said Tricker, addressing the boiled barman, “I had her pinched an' turned over to the Aid Society. She's so young I thought mebby they could save her.”

“Save her!” repeated the boiled one in weary disgust. “Youse can't save 'em. I used to try that meself. That was long ago. Now”—tossing his hand with a resigned air—“now, whenever I see a skirt who's goin' to hell, I pay her fare.”

One of the three men was old and gray of hair. He used to be a gonoph, and had worked the rattlers and ferries in his youth. But he got settled a couple of times, and it broke his nerve. There is an age limit in pocket-picking. No pickpocket is good after he passes forty years; so far, Dr. Osier was right. Children from twelve to fourteen do the best work. Their hands are small and steady; their confidence has not been shaken by years in prison. There are twenty New York Fagins—the police use the Dickens name—training children to pick pockets. These Fagins have dummy subjects faked up, their garments covered with tiny bells. The pockets are filled—watch, purse, card-case, handkerchief, gloves. Not until a pupil can empty every pocket, without ringing a bell, is he fit to go out into the world and look for boobs.

“If Indian Louie shows up,” remarked Tricker to the boiled-lobster barman, as he made ready to go, “tell him to blow 'round tomorry evenin' to One Hundred and Twenty-eight.”

Working his careless way back to the Bowery, Tricker strolled north to where that historic thoroughfare merges into Third Avenue. In Great Jones Street, round the corner from Third Avenue, Paul Kelly kept the New Brighton. Tricker decided to look in casually upon this hall of mirth, and—as one interested—study trade conditions. True, there was a coolness between himself and Kelly, albeit, both being of the Five Points, they were of the same tribe. What then? As members of the gang nobility, had they not won the right to nurse a private feud? De Bracy and Bois Guilbert were both Crusaders, and yet there is no record of any lost love between them.

In the roll of gang honor Kelly's name was written high. Having been longer and more explosively before the public, his fame was even greater than Tricker's. There was, too, a profound background of politics to the New Brighton. It was strong with Tammany Hall, and, per incident, in right with the police. For these double reasons of Kelly's fame, and that atmosphere of final politics which invested it, the New Brighton was deeply popular. Every foot of dancing floor was in constant demand, while would-be merry-makers, crowded off for want of room, sat in a triple fringe about the walls.

Along one side of the dancing room was ranged a row of tables. A young person, just struggling into gang notice, relinquished his chair at one of these to Tricker. This was in respectful recognition of the exalted position in Gangland held by Tricker. Tricker unbent toward the young person in a tolerant nod, and accepted his submissive politeness as though doing him a favor. Tricker was right. His notice, even such as it was, graced and illustrated the polite young person in the eyes of all who beheld it, and identified him as one of whom the future would hear.

Every East Side dance hall has a sheriff, who acts as floor manager and settles difficult questions of propriety. It often happens that, in an excess of ardor and a paucity of room, two couples in their dancing seek to occupy the same space on the floor. He who makes two blades of grass grow where but one grew before, may help his race and doubtless does. The rule, however, stops with grass and does not reach to dancing. He who tries to make two couples dance, where only one had danced before, but lays the bed-plates of a riot. Where all the gentlemen are spirited, and the ladies even more so, the result is certain in its character, and in no wise hard to guess. Wherefore the dance hall sheriff is not without a mission. Likewise his honorable post is full of peril, and he must be of the stern ore from which heroes are forged.

The sheriff of the New Brighton was Eat-'Em-Up-Jack McManus. He had been a prize-fighter of more or less inconsequence, but a liking for mixed ale and a difficulty in getting to weight had long before cured him of that. He had won his nom de guerre on the battle-field, where good knights were wont to win their spurs. Meeting one of whose conduct he disapproved, he had criticized the offender with his teeth, and thereafter was everywhere hailed as Eat-'Em-Up-Jack.