Criminals -- Fiction; New York (State) -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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