Louie, following some plan of relaxation, were themselves at Coney Island.
Pioggi had seated himself at a beer table in Ding Dong’s. Twist and Louie came in. Pioggi, being of the Five Points, was recognized as a foe by Twisty who lost no time in mentioning it.
Being in a facetious mood, and by way of expressing his contempt for that gentleman, Twist made Pioggi jump out of the window. It was no distance to the ground, and no physical harm could come. But to be compelled to leave Ding Dong’s by way of the window, rubbed wrongwise the fur of Pioggi’s feelings. To jump from a window stamps one with disgrace.
Twist and Louie – burly, muscular, strong as horses – were adepts of rough-and-tumble. Pioggi, little, light and weak, knew that any thought of physical conflict would have been preposterous. And yet he was no one to sit quietly down with his humiliation. That flight from Ding Dong’s window would be on every tongue in Gangland. The name of Pioggi would become a scorning; the tale would stain the Pioggi fame.
Louie and Twist sat down at the table in Ding Dong’s, from which Pioggi had been driven, and demanded refreshment in the guise of wine. Pioggi, rage-swollen as to heart, busied himself at a nearby telephone. Pioggi got the ear of a Higher Influence of his clan. He told of his abrupt dismissal from Ding Dong’s, and the then presence of Louie and Twist. The Higher Influence instructed Pioggi to keep the two in sight. The very flower of the Five Points should be at Coney Island as fast as trolley cars could carry them.
“Tail ‘em,” said the Higher Influence, referring to Twist and Louie; “an’ when the fleet gets there go in wit’ your cannisters an’ bump ‘em off.”
While waiting the advent of his promised forces, Pioggi, maintaining the while an eye on Twist and Louie to the end that they escape not and disappear, made arrangements for a getaway. He established a coupé, a fast horse between the shafts and a personal friend on the box, where he, Pioggi, could find it when his work was done.
By the time this was accomplished, Pioggi’s recruits had put in an appearance. They did not descend upon Coney Island in a body, with savage uproar and loud cries. Much too military were they for that. Rather they seemed to ooze into position around Pioggi, and they could not have made less noise had they been so many ghosts.
The campaign was soon laid out. Louie and Twist still sat over their wine at Ding Dong’s. Now and then they laughed, as though recalling the ignominious exit of Pioggi. Means must be employed to draw them into the street. That accomplished, the Five Points’ Danites were to drift up behind them, and at a signal from Pioggi, empty their pistols into their backs. Pioggi would fire a bullet into Twist; that was to be the signal. As Pioggi whispered his instructions, there shone a licking eagerness in the faces of those who listened. Nothing so exalts the gangster like blood in anticipation; nothing so pleases him as to shoot from behind.
Pioggi pitched upon one whose name and face were unknown to Twist and Louie. The unknown would be the bearer of a blind message – it purported to come from a dancer in one of the cheap theaters of the place – calculated to bring forth Twist and Louie.
“Stall ‘em up this way,” said Pioggi, indicating a spot within touching distance of that coupé. “It’s here we’ll put ‘em over the jump.”
The place pitched upon for the killing was crowded with people. It was this very thronged condition which had led to its selection. The crowd would serve as a cover to Five Points operations. It would prevent a premature recognition of their assailants by Twist and Louie; it would screen the slayers from identification by casual citizens looking on.
Pioggi’s messenger did well his work, and Twist and Louie moved magnificently albeit unsteadily into the open. They were sweeping the walk clear of lesser mortals, when the voice of Pioggi arrested their attention.
“Oh, there, Twist; look here!”
The voice came from the rear and to the right; Pioggi’s position was one calculated to place the enemy at a double disadvantage.
Twist turned his head. A bullet struck him above the eye! He staggered! The lead came in a storm! Twist went down; Louie fell across him! There were twelve bullets in Twist and eight in Louie. The coroner said that they were the deadest people of whom he owned official recollection.
As the forethoughtful Pioggi was dashing away in his coupé, a policeman gave chase. Pioggi drove a bullet through the helmet of the law. It stopped pursuit; but Gangland has ever held that the shot was an error. A little lower, and the policeman would have been killed. Also, the death of a policeman is apt to entail consequences.
Pioggi went into hiding in Greenwich, where the Five Points had a hold-out. There were pullings and haulings and whisperings in dark political corners. When conditions had been whispered and hauled and pulled into shape satisfactory, Pioggi sent word to a favorite officer to come and arrest him.
Pioggi explained to the court that his life had been threatened; he had shot only that he himself might live. His age was seventeen. Likewise there had been no public loss; the going of Twist and Louie had but raised the average of all respectability. The court pondered the business, and decided that justice would be fulfilled by sentencing Pioggi to the Elmira Reformatory.
The best fashion of the Five Points visited Pioggi in the Tombs on the morning of his departure.
“It’s only thirteen months, Kid,” came encouragingly from one. “You won’t mind it.”
“Mind it!” responded Pioggi, in disdain of the worst that Elmira might hold for him; “mind it! I could do it standin’ on me head.”
IV. – IKE THE BLOOD
Whenever the police were driven to deal with him officially, he called himself Charles Livin, albeit the opinion prevailed at headquarters that in thus spelling it, he left off a final ski. The police, in the wantonness of their ignorance, described him on their books as a burglar. This was foolishly wide. He should have been listed as a simple Strong-Arm, whose methods of divorcing other people from their money, while effective, were coarse. Also, it is perhaps proper to mention that his gallery number at the Central Office was 10,394.
It was during the supremacy of Monk Eastman that he broke out, and he had just passed his seventeenth birthday. Being out, he at once attached himself to the gang-fortunes of that chief; and it became no more than a question of weeks before his vast physical strength, the energy of his courage and a native ferocity of soul, won him his proud war-name of Ike the Blood. Compared with the herd about him, in what stark elements made the gangster important in his world, he shone out upon the eyes of folk like stars of a clear cold night.
Ike the Blood looked up to his chief, Monk Eastman, as sailors look up to the North Star, and it wrung his soul sorely when that gang captain went to Sing Sing. In the war over the succession and the baton of gang command, waged between Ritchie Fitzpatrick and Kid Twist, Ike the Blood was compelled to stand neutral. Powerless to take either side, liking both ambitious ones, the trusted friend of both, his hands were tied; and later – first Fitzpatrick and then Twist – he followed both to the grave, sorrow not only on his lips but in his heart.
It was one recent August day that I was granted an introduction to Ike the Blood. I was in the company of an intimate friend of mine – he holds high Central Office position in the police economy of New York. We were walking in Henry Street, in the near vicinity of that vigorous organization, the Ajax Club – so called, I take it, because its members are forever defying the lightnings of the law. My Central Office friend had mentioned Ike the Blood, speaking of him as a guiding light to such difficult ones as Little Karl, Whitey Louie, Benny Weiss, Kid Neumann, Tomahawk, Fritzie Rice, Dagley and the Lobster.
Even
