"I can generally count on about fifteen or twenty for myself. Us girls that has backers make a lot more money than the girls that hasn't. They're always getting pinched too—though they're careful never to speak first to a man. We can go right up and brace men with the cops looking on. A cop that'd touch us would get broke—unless we got too gay or robbed somebody with a pull. But none of our class of girls do any robbing. There's nothing in it. You get caught sooner or later, and then you're down and out."
While Susan was having two more drinks Maud talked about Freddie. She seemed to know little about him, though he was evidently one of the conspicuous figures. He had started in the lower East Side—had been leader of one of those gangs that infest tenement districts—the young men who refuse to submit to the common lot of stupid and badly paid toil and try to fight their way out by the quick methods of violence instead of the slower but surer methods of robbing the poor through a store of some kind. These gangs were thieves, blackmailers, kidnapers of young girls for houses of prostitution, repeaters. Most of them graduated into habitual jailbirds, a few—the cleverest—became saloon-keepers and politicians and high-class professional gamblers and race track men.
Freddie, Maud explained, was not much over twenty-five, yet was already well up toward the place where successful gang leaders crossed over into the respectable class—that is, grafted in "big figures." He was a great reader, said Maud, and had taken courses at some college. "They say he and his gang used to kill somebody nearly every night. Then he got a lot of money out of one of his jobs—some say it was a bank robbery and some say they killed a miner who was drunk with a big roll on him. Anyhow, Freddie got next to Finnegan—he's worth several millions that he made out of policy shops and poolrooms, and contracts and such political things. So he's in right—and he's got the brains. He's a good one for working out schemes for making people work hard and bring him their money. And everybody's afraid of him because he won't stop at nothing and is too slick to get caught."
Maud broke off abruptly and rose, warned by the glazed look in Susan's eyes. Susan was so far gone that she had difficulty in not staggering and did not dare speak lest her uncertain tongue should betray her. Maud walked her up and down the block several times to give the fresh air a chance, then led her up to a man who had looked at them in passing and had paused to look back. "Want to go have a good time, sweetheart?" said Maud to the man. He was well dressed, middle-aged, with a full beard and spectacles, looked as if he might be a banker, or perhaps a professor in some college.
"How much?" asked he.
"Five for a little while. Come along, sporty. Take me or my lady friend."
"How much for both of you?"
"Ten. We don't cut rates. Take us both, dearie. I know a hotel where it'd be all right."
"No. I guess I'll take your lady friend." He had been peering at Susan through his glasses. "And if she treats me well, I'll take her again. You're sure you're all right? I'm a married man."
"We've both been home visiting for a month, and walking the chalk. My, but ma's strict! We got back tonight," said Maud glibly. "Go ahead, Queenie. I'll be chasing up and down here, waiting." In a lower tone: "Get through with him quick. Strike him for five more after you get the first five. He's a blob."