Detective Fiction Weekly. Vol. 75, No. 4, April 15, 1933

“Gun?” said Bill on the witness stand. “I never carried one in my life. Do I look like a gunman? And as for robbing the dock as I’m charged, do I look like a thief?”

The magistrate was favorably impressed. Moreover the police had no evidence against Lovett on the robbery score and he walked out of the courtroom completely exonerated. The judge couldn’t believe that the meek-mannered, well-spoken youth on the witness stand was the thief and ruffian the police had described.

Meehan was nowhere in evidence around the court. He let the police do all the work while he remained at safe vantage in the Loaders’ Club, flanked by a bodyguard of stalwarts consisting of four of the toughest and biggest wallopers on the docks. Meehan feared retaliation from Wild Bill, but the leader of the White Hands was more concerned with Fiddler Byrnes. Directly from court Lovett went to a saloon, where he found Byrnes. The instant Lovett showed his face, Byrnes pulled a gun.

“Aw, put that away,” Bill sneered. “You rat, you know I never pack a gun. And if you did use it on me you know damned well Peg Leg or one of the boys’d get you for it. All I want to do is tell you something. Never show up again around where I am, and don’t ever poke your nose in the affairs of the White Hands. Understand?”

Apparently Byrnes understood. He knew what was meant by White Hand muscle. He dropped the gun into his pocket and Wild Bill walked off.

Bill was making his way along the docks towards a boathouse where his gang gathered when an automatic pumped five times and Wild Bill staggered to a doorstep, two bullets in his chest. He was rushed to a hospital. Detectives tried to force him to name his assailant. “I didn’t see who it was, man or woman,” he insisted. “I could guess who it was, but I’m not guessing anybody into your hands.”

He left the hospital with one bullet in his chest. He had not seen the man who had tried to pick him off. It might have been Byrnes or Frank Martin who had fired at him, but the man back of the shooting was Dinny Meehan. Lovett was certain it must-have been Meehan.

The shooting had an instantaneous effect upon the fortunes of the White Hands. It helped to magnify Lovett’s importance as a gang chief. When Wild Bill got out of the hospital, thugs from all over Brooklyn and from across the East River crowded into his gang. The White Hand grew to impressive proportions, pillaged right and left, attacked other gangs and broke them up, swept into dance halls, saloons and clubs, wrecked the places and played havoc at will. Men and women were held up, cops were beaten. Newspapers and preachers began to demand the extermination of the gang.

The police centered their attention upon Wild Bill, the brains of the mob. They had no trouble picking him up. He seemed to take a special delight in being yanked in. He actually invited the police to arrest him, but, when he was hauled into court, he managed, either by a pose of innocence, or an alibi, to escape conviction. During 1914 he was picked up twenty-one times, but each time he walked out of court with the rap beaten.

Cute Charley Donnelly was also singled out for special police attention. He was arrested fourteen times and succeeded in beating each rap. He boasted openly that, although cops had hauled him in more than 100 times in four years and had third degreed him on each occasion, they had never gotten a word out of him.

When a major robbery was reported to the police or a gangster was found murdered, the police asserted that Wild Bill was responsible. He made no remonstrance against the free and easy way all crimes were credited to him. He merely grinned slyly, raised no howl, and quietly explained to his men that all the pick-ups recorded against him, and all the crimes credited to him by the police, built up his reputation. What he had acquired was muscle; not brawn but a reputation for savagery which was sufficient to make men fear him.

Suddenly war flamed in Europe. Allied ships crowded Brooklyn docks to load ammunition and food for Allied forces. A great demand for dock wallopers arose and Meehan met it. Wages went skyrocketing. But the increase meant little to the dock wallopers. Meehan took a lion’s share of the higher wages, leaving his men little better off than they had been before. Moreover, the pot-bellied despot admitted Italians into the docks and imported Sicilian guerillas from Navy Street to keep both Irish and Italian workers in line. The Irish wallopers complained; some became rebellious. But Meehan sent his imported guerillas against them and beat them into submission. Disgruntled wallopers carried their tales of woe to Wild Bill and implored him to go in and drive out Meehan and assume leadership of the dock workers.

Bill sent Meehan an ultimatum to quit. He believed that he and his mob had acquired sufficient muscle to frighten Meehan from his throne and end his rule without bloodshed. Meehan sent back word that Wild Bill and his mob could “go plumb to Hell.” Lovett took the retort calmly, although his hate for Meehan was at white heat. Day by day the United States was being drawn into the great conflict raging across the water. Meehan was growingrich on the graft extorted from his men. Finally the United States declared war against Germany and its allies. In this news Wild Bill glimpsed his opportunity.