The Gangs of New York

by Herbert Asbury

  After much discussion it was agreed that the issue of supremacy should be decided by a prize fight between Kelly and Eastman, the loser to accept the overlordship of the victor and be content to remain strictly within his own domain. On the appointed night the gang chieftains, each accompanied by fifty of his best fighters, repaired to an old barn in the farthest reaches of The Bronx. Because of his early experience in the professional prize ring, Kelly possessed superior science, but it was offset by Eastman’s weight and greater ferocity. They fought for two hours without either gaining an advantage, and at length, after they had collapsed and lay one across the other still trying feebly to strike, their followers loaded them into carriages and hauled them to the East Side and the Five Points. The bout was pronounced a draw, and as soon as they had recovered from their wounds the gang chieftains marshalled their resources and prepared for war to the finish, despite the protests of the poUticians.

  There were a few unimportant skirmishes, but the end of Monk Eastman’s rule was in sight, and great trouble was also brewing in the pot for Paul Kelly. Eastman’s downfall came first.

  At three o’clock in the morning of February 2,1904, he and Chris Wallace, having gone far afield to Sixth avenue and Forty-second street to blackjack a man who had annoyed one of the gang leader’s cUents, saw a well-dressed young man staggering uncertainly down the street. Behind him, at a distance of some few yards, was a roughly dressed man who the gangsters thought was a lush worker waiting for his victim to fall. Eastman and Wallace promptly held up the young man, but it developed that he was a member of a rich family, and that the rough-looking man was a Pinkerton detective hired to protect him while he sowed his wild oats. The Pinkerton method has always been to shoot first and then ask questions of criminals, and as soon as Eastman and Wallace had poked their revolvers under the young man’s nose and begun to slip their nimble fingers into his pockets, the detective promptly shot at them. The surprised gangsters returned the fire, and then fled down Forty-second street, turning occasionally to send a warning bullet in the direction of the pursuing Pinkerton. But at Broadway and Forty-second street, in front of the Hotel Knickerbocker, they ran into the arms of a policeman. Wallace escaped, but the patrolman knocked Eastman down with his nightstick, and when the gang leader regained consciousness he was in a cell in the West Thirtieth street station, and had been booked on charges of highway robbery and felonious assault. Indictments were promptly procured, and although at first Eastman laughed at the efforts of the District Attorney to bring him to trial, he became frantic when Tammany Hall ignored his appeals for aid. He was abandoned by his erstwhile friends, and almost before he knew what had happened to him he had been tried, convicted and was on his way to Sing Sing Prison under a ten-year sentence. Paul Kelly professed profound grief when he heard of his rival’s misfortune. “Monk was a soft, easy-going fellow,” said Kelly. “He had a gang of cowards behind him, second story men, yeggs, flat robbers and moll-buzzers. But he was a game fellow. He fought everyone’s battles. I’d give ten thousand dollars to see him out of prison.” The politicians, however, would not give ten cents, and so Eastman donned the stripes, and was never more a power in the underworld.

  The harassed East Side hoped that with Eastman imprisoned there would be peace among the gangs, and the police and politicians exerted every effort to bring about such a desirable condition. Paul Kelly was amenable to reason, for the political powers had told him flatly that a continuation of the trouble would find him in very hot water; they threatened, among other things, to close his New Brighton dive, which was not only a source of much revenue but the pride of his heart as well. For a year or so there were very few outbreaks, for the downfall of Eastman had demoralized his gang, and his chief lieutenants. Kid Twist and Richie

  Fitzpatrick, were busy trying to hold the gangsters together. They succeeded to a very large extent, but inevitably became jealous of each other, and were soon at sword’s points over the succession, each claiming the right to Monk’s throne. There was little to choose between them as thugs. Kid Twist, whose real name was Max Zweibach, or Zwerbach, had killed six men and had been entrusted by Eastman with many important enterprises, but Richie Fitzpatrick was also a killer, and was not disposed to be the satellite of any star of a lesser magnitude than the great Monk himself.

  Kid Twist finally proposed a conference to settle all differences and determine definitely who was to rule the gang, and Fitzpatrick foolishly assented, although he well knew Twist’s treacherous nature. The pair met late at night in the back room of a Chrystie street dive, but scarcely had the conference begun when the lights were suddenly extinguished and a revolver blazed. When the police arrived the room was vacant except for Richie Fitzpatrick, who lay stretched upon the floor with a bullet in his heart and his arms carefully folded across his chest. The detectives came into possession of manufactured evidence implicating Kid Dahl, a warm friend of Kid Twist’s, and Dahl was promptly arrested. But he was as quickly released, for he produced an iron-bound alibi, and obviously had played no part in the murder. Twist sent flowers to Fitzpatrick’s funeral and adorned his sleeve with a mourning band, both of which were regarded in the underworld as very graceful gestures, and then assumed unquestioned dominion over the Eastman gang. It was necessary to reward Kid Dahl for his fortitude in submitting to arrest, and Kid Twist cast an envious eye upon the stuss game operated in Suffolk street by the Bottler, a Five Pointer whose sobriquet aptly described him. The Bottler was no fighter, but he was a genius at cheating, and his game was one of the most prosperous on the East Side. Paul Kelly had guaranteed him protection in return for frequent contributions to the war chest of the Five Pointers.

  Twist and Dahl called upon the Bottler one hot summer evening, and the latter was informed that thereafter Kid Dahl would be his partner in the stuss game, and that all profits were to be equally divided. The Bottler protested, but perforce consented to the arrangement, for the alternative was death, and he knew that he would be defunct long before Paul Kelly could send his legions to the rescue. For several weeks the Bottler and Kid Dahl shared in the earnings of the game, and then Kid Twist sent word to the Bottler that his share of the stuss game had been allotted to the Nailer, who had performed some slight service for the gang leader and deserved reward. The Bottler was invited to seek new pastures immediately, but with the courage of desperation he barricaded his house and swore that he would defend himself and his stuss game against Kid Twist and all his minions. The indignant Kid Dahl immediately besieged the place, but as he strode back and forth waving his revolver and angrily inviting the Bottler to come forth and die, a detective interfered, and the next day he was fined five dollars for disturbing the peace. A similar fine was imposed upon the Bottler for being the cause of the disturbance.

  Twist and his councillors now gave serious thought to the Bottler, and it was decided that only blood could wipe out the affront to the gang and the challenge to the chieftain’s authority. But the police were aware of all the circumstances, and it was inevitable that there would be considerable danger should either Kid Twist or Kid Dahl attend in person to the Bottler’s demise. In the emergency Kid Twist sent to Brooklyn for Vach Lewis, otherwise Cyclone Louie, a professional strong man who occasionally appeared at Coney Island side shows and thrilled the tourists by bending iron bars around his neck and twisting them about his arms. Cyclone Louie agreed to kill the Bottler out of friendship for Kid Twist and Kid Dahl, and the time for the murder was fixed at nine o’clock of a certain evening. At that hour Kid Twist was in the Delancey street police station arguing with the desk sergeant about the release of a gangster who had brought about his own arrest for just such a purpose, while Kid Dahl was in a Houston street restaurant, quarrelling with the proprietor over the time. And while alibis were thus being arranged, a man with his hat drawn down over his eyes entered the stuss game, walked up to the Bottler and shot him twice through the heart in the presence of twenty men. But when the police came there was only the d
ead Bottler. A few days later the game reopened with Kid Dahl and the Nailer in charge. Kid Dahl loudly bemoaned the unfortunate death of his partner, and hung crêpe on the door of the stuss house.

  While Kid Twist was concerned with the affairs of the Bottler, and was otherwise consolidating his position as successor to Monk Eastman, the fates were shuffling the cards for Paul Kelly, and finally chose Razor Riley and Biff Ellison as the instruments wherewith to accomplish the downfall of the king of the Five Pointers. Ellison’s first appearance in New York gang circles had been as bouncer in Fat Flynn’s resort in Bond street, where he earned his sobriquet. Later he became sheriff of a Chrystie street resort, and attracted much favorable attention by knocking a policeman unconscious with a beer bottle and then stamping him. The cause of the enmity which in time arose between Kelly and Ellison was never known, although some of the detectives believed that it may have been Kelly’s reputed refusal to bestow upon Ellison the honorable post of Sheriff of the New Brighton, made vacant when Eat ’Em Up Jack McManus was tapped on the head with a piece of lead pipe.

  But whatever the cause, the undoing of Paul Kelly became an obsession with Biff Ellison, and Razor Riley saw eye to eye with him in his hatred, for Riley had once been ejected from the New Brighton by Paul Kelly in person, and never forgot the indignity. Also, as a Gopher of distinction, Riley was at all times prepared to undertake any project which might disturb or demoralize another gang. So there came at length a winter’s night when Ellison and Riley, both half drunk, sat at a table in Nigger Mike Salter’s place in Pell street and debated the feasibiUty of a raid upon the New Brighton. The more they drank the more attractive the enterprise appeared, for they conjectured that they might be able not only to kill Paul Kelly, but to win great renown in gangland by such a daring adventure. About half an hour before midnight they left Nigger Mike’s and went northward through the softly falling snow along the Bowery to Great Jones street, and so to the New Brighton, where the flower and chivalry of the gangs were assembled in their nightly revels.

  When EUison and Razor Riley strode into the resort, Paul Kelly sat at a table in the rear, talking to Bill Harrington, Rough House Hogan, and Harrington’s sweetheart, who was variously known as Goldie Cora and Cora the Blonde. For a moment the raiders stood just inside the doorway, and then, each hand clutching a revolver, they rushed upon the dance floor, while the music ceased abruptly and the dancers spread out before them hke a fan, for there was murder in their hard eyes and in the cold glint of the guns. Harrington cried a warning when they were yet twenty feet from Paul Kelly, whereat Razor Riley turned and shot him through the brain. A bullet from Ellison’s revolver ripped through Paul Kelly’s coat sleeve, and the gang leader promptly dived under the table, coming up on the other side with a revolver in each hand, and with both guns spitting bullets at the onrushing Ellison and Riley. The next instant someone switched out the lights, and for five minutes revolvers blazed in the darkness, and the gangsters and their ladies who were not concerned in the fighting left the New Brighton by doorway and window. It was half an hour later that a policeman wandered in, and the dive which only a little while before had blazed with light and merriment was now dark, and deserted save for the dead body of Harrington sprawled upon the floor.

  Neither Riley nor Ellison was injured, but three bullets had crashed into Paul Kelly’s body, and he was carried by his friends into the street, and hurried northward into Harlem. There he lay in seclusion for a month, while political wires were pulled and arrangements made for his safety. He then surrendered to the police, but was never brought to trial, for his plea of self-defense was accepted. Razor Riley fled into the fastnesses of Hell’s Kitchen, and died of pneumonia before the police could search him out, while Biff Ellison went to Baltimore. He was not caught until

  1911, when he ventured into New York. He was promptly convicted and sent to Sing Sing for from eight to twenty years, but long before he had completed his sentence he was a mental and physical wreck.

  The New Brighton was never reopened after the raid by Ellison and Razor Riley, but when he had recovered from his wounds

  Paul Kelly started another place in Great Jones street which he called Little Naples. Misfortune, however, had marked him for its own, and the new venture came under the displeasure of the reform elements and was closed during the latter part of 1906. Thereafter the Five Pointers dwindled in membership and in prestige and Kelly’s power gradually declined, although for several years he retained under his leadership some of the hardiest thugs and the quickest shooting gunmen of the underworld, all of whom were eager to find favor in his eyes and carve for themselves permanent niches in gangland’s hall of fame. And not the least ambitious was Louis Pioggi, better known as Louie the Lump, who joined the Five Pointers in 1906 as a dapper, undersized youth of seventeen, and two years later became an important figure because it fell to his lot to avenge the unfortunate Bottler and complete the breakup of the old Monk Eastman gang.

  It was the custom of the gang leaders and their more important followers to take their ease in the drinking and dancing places of Coney Island during the early part of a summer evening, returning later to the dives of Chinatown and the Bowery. On the night of May 14,1908, both Kid Twist and Louie the Lump decided to grace the Island with their presence, neither knowing that the other was to be there. Louie the Lump wandered about the resort for a while, and then went to the dance hall where Carroll Terry, a lovely dancing girl, was employed, although she had already given him to understand that she preferred the attentions of the more illustrious Kid Twist. He danced with her, and after much pleading induced her to promise that she would return to Manhattan with him after her night’s work had ended. Half an hour later Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie entered the dance hall and sat at a table, where Carroll Terry joined them. They were drinking beer when Louie the Lump passed some time later. He looked in and saw them, and went away with rage and jealousy in his heart, for he knew that the girl would not go with him now that Kid Twist had arrived. He wandered off Surf avenue into a saloon, and there began to drink straight whiskey as rapidly as he could pour it down his throat. But he had not been thus engaged more than a few minutes when Kid Twist and

  Cyclone Louie came in. They joined him, despite his glowering frown and his very evident distaste for their company.

  “I just seen Carroll, Louie,” said Twist, with a grin, “an’ she says youse is the biggest bum she knows.”

  Louie the Lump writhed in agony, but said never a word.

  “She says you was an active little cuss,” Twist continued, “always jumpin’ aroun’. Let’s see how active youse is, kid. Take a jump out of the window!”

  Louie the Lump hesitated, and Kid Twist’s hand crept menacingly toward his pocket. So Louie jumped. He landed on all fours, and scrambling to his feet stood for a moment beneath the window listening to the boisterous merriment of Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie. Then he went to a telephone. He called a man high up in the councils of the Five Pointers and stated his case. He had to kill Kid Twist and he had to kill him immediately, for by all the standards of gangland, he had been outrageously insulted and humiliated.

  “I got to cook him,” said Louie the Lump.

  “Sure you got to cook him,” agreed the man higher up. “You tail these birds and I’ll send a fleet down. When the boys get there you get these bums into the street and open up wi’ your cannis-ters. The boys’ll take care of Twist’s mob an’ the bulls.”

  Half a dozen Five Pointers hurried to Coney Island as rapidly as the trolley cars would carry them. When they reached the resort from which Louie the Lump had made such an inglorious exit they found Kid Twist and Cyclone Louie still sitting at a table chuckling over the tale which would ring up and down the Bowery on the morrow. Louie the Lump, white hot anger blazing from his dark eyes, lounged in an ancient coupé which had been drawn up at the curb. The leader of the Five Pointers spoke briefly to the driver of the vehicle, money changed hands, and a gangster mounted.
the box and took the reins, while the owner of the coupé vanished in the crowd. A few minutes later a thug unknown to Kid Twist walked into the dive and timidly approached the gang leader.

  “Say, Kid,” he said, “Carroll Terry wants to see you outside a minute.”

  “Sure,” replied Twist. “I’ll be right out. Come on, Louie.”

  They stepped into the street and a voice cried:

  “Over this way. Kid!”

  Twist turned and saw enemies on all sides of him. But before he could draw a revolver Louie the Lump crashed a bullet through his brain, and then shot him in the heart as he toppled to the sidewalk. Cyclone Louie started to run, but the guns of the Five Pointers blazed and cracked, and the strong man fell across the body of his chieftain, shot through and through. Carroll Terry, on her way to meet Kid Twist, reached the scene just in time to receive a bullet through her shoulder from the spitting gun of Louie the Lump. She too, fell across the dead body of the gang leader.

  These things happened within a few seconds, and with their victims lying upon the sidewalk, the Five Pointers scattered. Louie the Lump leaped into the coupé, sent a bullet through the helmet of an inquisitive policeman, and having thus discouraged pursuit, set out for Matihattan. There he remained in hiding until certain political movements had been made, and then he went into court and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. He was sentenced to eleven months in the reformatory at Elmira, but he was not impressed.