Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933
- Автор: Day Stanley, Dunn J. Allan
- Год: 1933
- Язык: английский
- Год: Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933». Краткое содержание книги:
Meehan was a pioneer in the labor racket — a padrone extorting cash from men for the privilege of doing a day’s hard and honest toil.
Presently the large-headed newcomer in Bridge Street was peering in at the Loaders’ Club through a soot-streaked front window. Suddenly a thick, gruff voice churned the air.
“What’s the big idea, kid?”
Bill turned and faced a giant walloper. “Oh, I’m looking for work,” said Lovett.
The big fellow grunted derisively. “You, you looking for work in Shantytown? You better clear out before somebody puts a heavy heel into you and flattens you.” Then he eyed Bill’s white hands. “You’re up to trouble,” he went on. “You’re lying about wanting work around here. You couldn’t do a quarter of a man’s work with them hands. Where you belong? Who are you?” He moved closer to Bill, with a menacing scowl on his face.
“My name’s Lovett,” said Bill.
“You’re not a wop then?”
“I’m Irish.”
The giant scratched his shaggy head. “Irish, eh? Well, that ain’t so bad. But if it’s work you’re really after you’ll have to see the boss, Dinny Meehan. He’s inside, plunked in his big chair. But look out for the blatherskite. He’s a murderin’ sneak.”
Bill ventured into the club, while the shaggy-haired walloper stood outside awaiting the result of the encounter within. Lovett went straight up to the ogrish Meehan, but he got no chance to make his plea for a job. Meehan eyed him up and down, lifted himself out of his high-backed throne, seized the youth by the throat with both hands, carried him out and dumped him on the sidewalk.
“He wouldn’t let me get in a word,” Bill complained to the big dock walloper.
“He’s afraid of his life,” the giant explained. “The pig knows he’s hated from one end of the town to the other. He figured you was a stool pigeon. That’s why he threw you out. He’s a bloody coward. If you were a fighter he’d have shivered in his boots. He’s afraid of any man with a reputation.”
“He nearly pulled the head off me,” said Bill, twisting his lame neck. “I’d like to show him—”
“We’d all like to show him,” the walloper cut in. “But we dassn’t. He’d sick his guerillas on us. But he’s a coward in his black heart. If you want to get hunk with him go out and make yourself a reputation and then come back at him. Grab yourself some muscle, kid, then you can make him crawl.”
No doubt this advice was given in a kindly spirit tinged with the hatred which the big dock walloper felt against the murdering grafter who bossed him and took a major share of his daily pay. Bill took it deeply to heart. His hate for Meehan flamed. There was slight chance that he might squeeze himself in with the wallopers while he remained puny and white-handed. What he needed was to mingle with youths of his own age who were hard and tough; to be knocked about, roughened, put up against life in the raw where he could build himself a reputation. So his thoughts drifted to Peg Leg Lonergan. Peg Leg had developed into a skillful thief. He ranged with the Roof Birds, gangsters who lived in packing box shanties on rooftops and who thrived on pillage and mischief, terrorizing shopkeepers and battling the police.
Anna Lonergan had told Bill about Peg Leg’s pals — Cute Charley, whose real name was Charles Donnelly and who had gotten a reputation by biting off two of a cop’s fingers; Bill Raycraft — Battering Bill — who had once pushed over a brick chimney which buried and bruised a cop; Fiddler Frank Byrnes, who escaped from pursuers by tight-roping it on wires from roof to roof; and Frank Martin, a young heavyweight with prize ring aspirations who, as soon as the Lonergans moved into Brooklyn, began to pay court to the dark-eyed Anna. The members of this gang already had reputations, although the oldest one in the mob — Martin — was only twenty.
Bill was just past seventeen. He had no brawn, no reputation. But, in addition to his desire to acquire brawn and a ferocious name for himself, he had dreamed in his capacious head of making himself a ruler of other men.
When he sauntered out of Shantytown, after his first unhappy encounter with Dinny Meehan, he was on his way to find the Roof Birds.
Chapter III
Exit the Roof Birds
In the gathering dusk Lovett climbed a fire escape to the roof of the Lonergan tenement. Surveying the sweep of housetops in the block he saw smoke issuing from a blazing fire on a roof three houses away. He saw Peg Leg and his gang huddled about a tin bucket warming their hands.
He scrambled over the copings, but the instant Lonergan and his pals spotted him they leaped to their feet, alert to battle the newcomer whose face was obscured by the thickening darkness. Presently, however, Peg Leg recognized the ragged straw hat cocked on one side of Bill’s large head and he shouted him a rousing welcome and an invitation to join the gang at a supper of fried pork chops and baked potatoes which were already on the fire. Cute Charley and Raycraft joined in the welcome, but Fiddler Byrnes and Frank Martin were cool and sullen.
Bill asked Peg Leg about the Capones and was told that the three brothers had opened a dive in Coney Island, a combination dance hall and saloon which they were using as a lure to attract girls into their hands.
In a rattle of words Peg Leg told of the operations of the Roof Birds; how they robbed wagons and shops in the streets below and hoisted their plunder to the rooftops by means of ropes. They had just hauled up a quarter of pork and half a bag of potatoes which explained how they had come by the pork chops and spuds for supper. They had also hoisted a case of bottled beer and a jug of whiskey which they would put away after the meal; and, Peg Leg boasted, they would have a dozen bottles of milk for breakfast after the early morning milk man had been around to the doorsteps in the street below.
It wasn’t an impressive showing to Bill. His mind was on big things. Each of the four men around the fire was twice as heavy and far more robust than he, yet all they did was steal stuff to eat and drink. He remarked that he thought they were all pikers.
“Yeah,” Raycraft agreed. “We’re a bunch of punks. We take big chances just to grab a few pork chops and some spuds and enough booze to get drunk and fall asleep on. What we fellows need is a chief. A guy that can make us go out and do big stuff.”
“You’re talking a mouthful,” Peg Leg put in. “We need a boss.” His big mouth widened into a grin. “A guy like you, Bill.”
“What’s zat?” demanded Martin. “Me take orders from a lizzie-handed guy like Lovett? You’re crazy, Lonergan.”
Bill looked at Martin. “Lissen, you,” he said, “you been running with the boys a long time, but I don’t see you been leading them. It takes a little brains to lead any bunch of fellows. I guess you ain’t got any or you’d been the boss long ago.”
Martin shot up. “You punk,” he bellowed. “Who’d you ever lick?”
With little effort the giant Martin might have doubled the puny Lovett into a knot.
Bill’s voice came in a calm retort. “I haven’t licked anybody, up to now,” he said. “But, I could try out on you.”
Martin lunged at Lovett. The latter backed away a pace. “Just a second, Martin,” he called out. “Let’s make this battle worth something. If you lick me I’ll drag out of here and never show face around these parts. But, if I make you call quit, then I’m boss. How’s that?”
“Fair enough,” yelled Peg Leg. There was a chorus of approval from Cute Charley and Raycraft. Fiddler Byrnes cocked his small eyes at Lovett and felt sorry for the puny fool.