"So he's a crook, is he? How old is the boy?"
"Oh, 'round fourteen! He's as smart as lightning and as crooked as he is smart. He turned up here when he was a little kid, with a woman who may or may not have been his mother. She lived with a Dago down in Minetta Lane. Guess the boy mighta been six years old when she died and Luigi took him on. We were all kind of proud of him at first. Teachers in school all said he was a wonder. But for two or three years he's been going wrong, stealing and gambling, and now this fellow Luigi's started a den on his second floor that we gotta clean out soon. His rag-picking's a stall. And he's using Nucky like a kid oughtn't to be used."
"Why don't you people have him taken away from the Italian and a proper guardian appointed?"
"Well, he's smart and we kinda hoped he'd pull up himself. We got a settlement worker interested in him and we got jobs for him, but nothing works. Judge Harmon swears he's out of patience with him and'll send him to reform school at his next offense. That'll end Nucky. He'll be a gunman by the time he's twenty."
"You seem fond of the boy in spite of his criminal tendencies," said
Seaton.
"Aw, we all have criminal tendencies, far as that goes," growled Foley; "you and I and all of us. Don't know as I'm what you'd call fond of the kid. Maybe it's his name. Yes, I guess it's his name. Now what is your wildest guess for that little devil's name, Mr. Seaton?"
The gray-hatred man shook his head. "Pat Donahue, by his hair."
"But not by his face, if you could see it. His name is Enoch
Huntingdon. Yes, sir, Enoch Huntingdon! What do you think of that?"
The astonishment expressed in Seaton's eyes was all that the officer could desire.
"Enoch Huntingdon! Why, man, that gutter rat has real blood in him, if he didn't steal the name."