The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

Back to my labors of politics I went, with a fiercer heat than ever. My life, begun in politics, must end in politics. Still, there was a mighty change. I was not to look upon that strangling mark and escape the scar of it. I settled to a savage melancholy; I saw no pleasant moment. Constantly I ran before the hound-pack of my own thoughts, a fugitive, flying from myself.

Also, there came the signs visible, and my hair was to turn and lose its color, until within a year it went as white as milk. Men, in the idleness of their curiosity, would notice this, and ask the cause. They were not to know; nor did Blossom ever learn how, led by Anne, I had crept upon her secret. It was a sorrow without a door, that sorrow of the hangman’s mark; and because we may not remedy it, we will leave it, never again to be referred to until it raps for notice of its own black will.

The death of the Widow Van Flange did not remove from before me the question of young Van Flange and his degenerate destinies. The Reverend Bronson took up the business where it fell from the nerveless fingers of his mother on that day she died.

“Not that I believe he can be saved,” observed the Reverend Bronson; “for if I am to judge, the boy is already lost beyond recall. But there is such goods as a pious vengeance – an anger of righteousness! – and I find it in my heart to destroy with the law, those rogues who against the law destroy others. That Barclay Street nest of adders must be burned out; and I come to you for the fire.”

In a sober, set-faced way, I was amused by the dominie’s extravagance. And yet I felt a call to be on my guard with him. Suppose he were to dislodge a stone which in its rolling should crash into and crush the plans of the machine! The town had been lost before, and oftener than once, as the result of beginnings no more grave. Aside from my liking for the good man, I was warned by the perils of my place to speak him softly.

“Well,” said I, trying for a humorous complexion, “if you are bound for a wrestle with those blacklegs, I will see that you have fair play.”

“If that be true,” returned the Reverend Bronson, promptly, “give me Inspector McCue.”

“And why Inspector McCue?” I asked. The suggestion had its baffling side. Inspector McCue was that honest one urged long ago upon Big Kennedy by Father Considine. I did not know Inspector McCue; there might lurk danger in the man. “Why McCue?” I repeated. “The business of arresting gamblers belongs more with the uniformed police. Gothecore is your proper officer.”

“Gothecore is not an honest man,” said the Reverend Bronson, with sententious frankness. “McCue, on the other hand, is an oasis in the Sahara of the police. He can be trusted. If you support him he will collect the facts and enforce the law.”

“Very well,” said I, “you shall take McCue. I have no official control in the matter, being but a private man like yourself. But I will speak to the Chief of Police, and doubtless he will grant my request.”

“There is, at least, reason to think so,” retorted the Reverend Bronson in a dry tone.

Before I went about an order to send Inspector McCue to the Reverend Bronson, I resolved to ask a question concerning him. Gothecore should be a well-head of information on that point; I would send for Gothecore. Also it might be wise to let him hear what was afoot for his precinct. He would need to be upon his defense, and to put others interested upon theirs.

Melting Moses, who still stood warder at my portals, I dispatched upon some errand. The sight of Gothecore would set him mad. I felt sorrow rather than affection for Melting Moses. There was something unsettled and mentally askew with the boy. He was queer of feature, with the twisted fantastic face one sees carved on the far end of a fiddle. Commonly, he was light of heart, and his laugh would have been comic had it not been for a note of the weird which rang in it. I had not asked him, on the day when he went backing for a spring at the throat of Gothecore, the reason of his hate. His exclamation, “He killed me mudder!” told the story. Besides, I could have done no good. Melting Moses would have given me no reply. The boy, true to his faith of Cherry Hill, would fight out his feuds for himself; he would accept no one’s help, and regarded the term “squealer” as an epithet of measureless disgrace.

When Gothecore came in, I caught him at the first of it glowering furtively about, as though seeking someone.

“Where is that Melting Moses?” he inquired, when he saw how I observed him to be searching the place with his eye.

“And why?” said I.

“I thought I’d look him over, if you didn’t mind. I can’t move about my precinct of nights but he’s behind me, playin’ th’ shadow. I want to know why he pipes me off, an’ who sets him to it.”

“Well then,” said I, a bit impatiently, “I should have thought a full-grown Captain of Police was above fearing a boy.”

Without giving Gothecore further opening, I told him the story of the Reverend Bronson, and that campaign of purity he would be about.

“And as to young Van Flange,” said I. “Does he still lose his money in Barclay Street?”

“They’ve cleaned him up,” returned Gothecore. “Billy Van Flange is gone, hook, line, and sinker. He’s on his uppers, goin’ about panhandlin’ old chums for a five-dollar bill.”

“They made quick work of him,” was my comment.

“He would have it,” said Gothecore. “When his mother died th’ boy got his bridle off. Th’ property – about two hundred thousand dollars – was in paper an’ th’ way he turned it into money didn’t bother him a bit. He came into Barclay Street, simply padded with th’ long green – one-thousand-dollar bills, an’ all that – an’ them gams took it off him so fast he caught cold. He’s dead broke; th’ only difference between him an’ a hobo, right now, is a trunk full of clothes.”

“The Reverend Bronson,” said I, “has asked for Inspector McCue. What sort of a man is McCue?” Gothecore wrinkled his face into an expression of profound disgust.

“Who’s McCue?” he repeated. “He’s one of them mugwump pets. He makes a bluff about bein’ honest, too, does McCue. I think he’d join a church, if he took a notion it would stiffen his pull.”

“But is he a man of strength? Can he make trouble?”

“Trouble?” This with contempt. “When it comes to makin’ trouble, he’s a false alarm.”

“Well,” said I, in conclusion, “McCue and the dominie are going into your precinct.”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” returned Gothecore, his face clouding up, “I think it’s that same Reverend Bronson who gives Melting Moses th’ office to dog me. I’ll put Mr. Whitechoker onto my opinion of th’ racket, one of these days.”

“You’d better keep your muzzle on,” I retorted. “Your mouth will get you into trouble yet.”

Gothecore went away grumbling, and much disposed to call himself ill-used.

During the next few days I was to receive frequent visits from the Reverend Bronson. His mission was to enlist me in his crusade against the gamblers. I put him aside on that point.

“You should remember,” said I, as pleasantly as I well could, “that I am a politician, not a policeman. I shall think of my party, and engage in no unusual moral exploits of the sort you suggest. The town doesn’t want it done.”

“The question,” responded the Reverend Bronson warmly, “is one of law and morality, and not of the town’s desires. You say you are a politician, and not a policeman. If it comes to that, I am a preacher, and not a policeman. Still, I no less esteem it my duty to interfere for right. I see no difference between your position and my own.”

“But I do. To raid gamblers, and to denounce them, make for your success in your profession. With me, it would be all the other way. It is quite easy for you to adopt the path you do. Now I am not so fortunately placed.”

“You are the head of Tammany Hall,” said the Reverend Bronson solemnly. “It is a position which loads you with responsibility, since your power for good or bad in the town is absolute. You have but to point your finger at those gambling dens, and they would wither from the earth.”

“Now you do me too much compliment,” said I. “The Chief of Tammany is a much weaker man than you think. Moreover, I shall not regard myself as responsible for the morals of the town.”

“Take young Van Flange,” went on the Reverend Bronson, disregarding my remark. “They’ve ruined the boy; and you might have saved him.”

“And there you are mistaken,” I replied. “But if it were so, why should I be held for his ruin? ‘I am not my brother’s keeper.’”

“And so Cain said,” responded the Reverend Bronson. Then, as he was departing: “I do not blame you too much, for I can see that you are the slave of your position. But do not shield yourself with the word that you are not your brother’s keeper. You may be made grievously to feel that your brother’s welfare is your welfare, and that in his destruction your own destruction is also to be found.”

Men have rallied me as superstitious, and it may be that some grains of truth lie buried in that charge. Sure it is, that this last from the Reverend Bronson was not without its uncomfortable effect. It pressed upon me in a manner vaguely dark, and when he was gone, I caught myself regretting the “cleaning up,” as Gothecore expressed it, of the dissolute young Van Flange.

And yet, why should one feel sympathy for him who, by his resolute viciousness, struck down his own mother? If ever rascal deserved ruin, it was he who had destroyed the hopes of one who loved him before all! The more I considered, the less tender for the young Van Flange I grew. And as to his destruction carrying personal scathe for me, it might indeed do, as a flourish of the pulpit, to say so, but it was a thought too far fetched, as either a warning or a prophecy, to justify one in transacting by its light his own existence, or the affairs of a great organization of politics. The end of it was that I smiled over a weakness that permitted me to be disturbed by mournful forebodes, born of those accusing preachments of the Reverend Bronson.

For all that my reverend mentor was right; the sequel proved how those flames which licked up young Van Flange were to set consuming fire to my own last hope.

It would seem that young Van Flange, as a topic, was in everybody’s mouth. Morton, having traction occasion for calling on me, began to talk of him at once.

“Really!” observed Morton, discussing young Van Flange, “while he’s a deuced bad lot, don’t y’ know, and not at all likely to do Mulberry credit, I couldn’t see him starve, if only for his family. So I set him to work, as far from the company’s money as I could put him, and on the soberish stipend of nine hundred dollars a year. I look for the best effects from those nine hundred dollars; a chap can’t live a double life on that; he can’t, really!”

“And you call him a bad lot,” said I.

“The worst in the world,” returned Morton. “You see young Van Flange is such a weakling; really, there’s nothing to tie to. All men are vicious; but there are some who are strong enough to save themselves. This fellow isn’t.”

“His family is one of the best,” said I.

For myself, I’ve a sincere respect for blood, and some glimpse of it must have found display in my face.

“My dear boy,” cried Morton, “there’s no more empty claptrap than this claptrap of family.” Here Morton adorned his high nose with the eyeglass that meant so much with him, and surveyed me as from a height. “There’s nothing in a breed when it comes to a man.”

“Would you say the same of a horse or a dog?”

“By no means, old chap; but a dog or a horse is prodigiously a different thing, don’t y’ know. The dominant traits of either of those noble creatures are honesty, courage, loyalty – they’re the home of the virtues. Now a man is another matter. He’s an evil beggar, is a man; and, like a monkey, he has virtues only so far as you force him to adopt them. As Machiavelli says: ‘We’re born evil, and become good only by compulsion.’ Now to improve a breed, as the phrase is, makes simply for the promotion of what are the dominant traits of the creature one has in hand. Thus, to refine or emphasize the horse and the dog, increases them in honesty, loyalty, and courage since such are top-traits with those animals. With a monkey or a man, and by similar argument, the more you refine him, the more abandoned he becomes. Really,” and here Morton restored himself with a cigarette, “I shouldn’t want these views to find their way to my club. It would cause the greatest row ever in our set; it would, really! I am made quite ill to only think of it.”

“What would you call a gentleman, then?” I asked.

Morton’s theories, while I in no manner subscribed to them, entertained me.

“What should I call a gentleman? Why I should call him the caricature of a man, don’t y’ know.”

The Reverend Bronson had been abroad in his campaign against those sharpers of Barclay Street for perhaps four weeks. I understood, without paying much heed to the subject, that he was seeking the evidence of their crimes, with a final purpose of having them before a court. There had been no public stir; the papers had said nothing. What steps had been taken were taken without noise. I doubted not that the investigation would, in the finish, die out. The hunted ones of Barclay Street were folk well used to the rôle of fugitive, and since Gothecore kept them informed of the enemy’s strategy, I could not think they would offer the Reverend Bronson and his ally, McCue, any too much margin.

As yet, I had never seen this McCue. By that, I knew him to be an honest man. Not that one is to understand how none save a rogue would come to me. I need hardly explain, however, that every policeman of dark-lantern methods was eagerly prone to make my acquaintance. It was a merest instinct of caution; the storm might break and he require a friend. Now this McCue had never sought to know me, and so I argued that his record was pure white.

This did not please me; I preferred men upon whom one might have some hold. These folk of a smooth honesty go through one’s fingers like water, and no more of a grip to be obtained upon one of them than upon the Hudson. I made up my mind that I would see this McCue.

Still I did not send for him; it was no part of my policy to exhibit concern in one with whom I was strange, and who later might open his mouth to quote it against me. McCue, however, was so much inclined to humor my desire, that one afternoon he walked into my presence of his own free will.

“My name is McCue,” said he, “Inspector McCue.” I motioned him to a chair. “I’ve been told to collect evidence against certain parties in Barclay Street,” he added. Then he came to a full stop.

While I waited for him to proceed in his own way and time, I studied Inspector McCue. He was a square-shouldered man, cautious, keen, resolute; and yet practical, and not one to throw himself away in the jaws of the impossible. What he had come to say, presently proved my estimate of him. On the whole, I didn’t like the looks of Inspector McCue.

“What is your purpose?” I asked at last. “I need not tell you that I have no official interest in what you may be about. Still less have I a personal concern.”

Inspector McCue’s only retort was a grimace that did not add to his popularity. Next he went boldly to the object of his call.

“What I want to say is this,” said he. “I’ve collected the evidence I was sent after; I can lay my hands on the parties involved as keepers and dealers in that Barclay Street den. But I’m old enough to know that all the evidence in the world won’t convict these crooks unless the machine is willing. I’m ready to go ahead and take my chances. But I’m not ready to run against a stone wall in the dark. I’d be crazy, where no good can come, to throw myself away.”

“Now this is doubtless of interest to you,” I replied, putting some impression of distance into my tones, “but what have I to do with the matter?”

“Only this,” returned McCue. “I’d like to have you tell me flat, whether or no you want these parties pinched.”

“Inspector McCue,” said I, “if that be your name and title, it sticks in my head that you are making a mistake. You ask me a question which you might better put to your chief.”

“We won’t dispute about it,” returned my caller; “and I’m not here to give offense. I am willing to do my duty; but, as I’ve tried to explain, I don’t care to sacrifice myself if the game’s been settled against me in advance. You speak of my going to the chief. If arrests are to be made, he’s the last man I ought to get my orders from.”

“If you will be so good as to explain?” said I.

“Because, if I am to go on, I must begin by collaring the chief. He’s the principal owner of that Barclay Street joint.”

This was indeed news, and I had no difficulty in looking grave.

“Captain Gothecore is in it, too; but his end is with the restaurant keeper. That check-cashing racket was a case of flam; there was a hold-out went with that play. The boy, Van Flange, was always drunk, and the best he ever got for, say a five-hundred-dollar check, was three hundred dollars. Gothecore was in on the difference. There’s the lay-out. Not a pleasant outlook, certainly; and not worth attempting arrests about unless I know that the machine is at my back.”

“You keep using the term ‘machine,’” said I coldly. “If by that you mean Tammany Hall, I may tell you, sir, that the ‘machine’ has no concern in the affair. You will do your duty as you see it.”

Inspector McCue sat biting his lips. After a moment, he got upon his feet to go.

“I think it would have been better,” said he, “if you had met me frankly. However, I’ve showed you my hand; now I’ll tell you what my course will be. This is Wednesday. I must, as you’ve said yourself, do my duty. If – mark you, I say ‘If’ – if I am in charge of this case on Saturday, I shall make the arrests I’ve indicated.”

“Did you ever see such gall!” exclaimed the Chief of Police, when I recounted my conversation with Inspector McCue. Then, holding up his pudgy hands in a manner of pathetic remonstrance: “It shows what I told you long ago. One honest man will put th’ whole force on th’ bum!”

Inspector McCue, on the day after his visit, was removed from his place, and ordered to a precinct in the drear far regions of the Bronx. The order was hardly dry on the paper when there descended upon me the Reverend Bronson, his eyes glittering with indignation, and a protest against this Siberia for Inspector McCue apparent in his face.

“And this,” cried the Reverend Bronson, as he came through the door, “and this is what comes to an officer who is willing to do his duty!”

“Sit down, Doctor,” said I soothingly, at the same time placing a chair; “sit down.”

CHAPTER XXII – THE MAN OF THE KNIFE

WHEN the first gust was over, the Reverend Bronson seemed sad rather than enraged. He reproached the machine for the failure of his effort against that gambling den.

“But why do you call yourself defeated?” I asked. It was no part of my purpose to concede, even by my silence, that either I or Tammany was opposed to the Reverend Bronson. “You should put the matter to the test of a trial before you say that.”

“What can I do without Inspector McCue? and he has been removed from the affair. I talked with him concerning it; he told me himself there was no hope.”

“Now, what were his words?” said I, for I was willing to discover how far Inspector McCue had used my name.

“Why, then,” returned the Reverend Bronson, with a faint smile at the recollection, “if I am to give you the precise words, our talk ran somewhat like this:

“‘Doctor, what’s the use?’ said Inspector McCue. ‘We’re up against it; we can’t move a wheel.’

“‘There’s such a word as law,’ said I, advancing much, the argument you have just now given me; ‘and such a thing as justice.’

“‘Not in the face of the machine,’ responded Inspector McCue. ‘The will of the machine stands for all the law and all the justice that we’re likely to get. The machine has the courts, the juries, the prosecuting officers, and the police. Every force we need is in its hands. Personally, of course, they couldn’t touch you; but if I were to so much as lift a finger, I’d be destroyed. Some day I, myself, may be chief; and if I am, for once in a way, I’ll guarantee the decent people of this town a run for their money.’

“‘And yet,’ said I, ‘we prate of liberty!’

“‘Liberty!’ cried he. ‘Doctor, our liberties are in hock to the politicians, and we’ve lost the ticket.’”

It was in my mind to presently have the stripes and buttons off the loquacious, honest Inspector McCue. The Reverend Bronson must have caught some gleam of it in my eye; he remonstrated with a gentle hand upon my arm.

“Promise me that no more harm shall come to McCue,” he said. “I ought not to have repeated his words. He has been banished to the Bronx; isn’t that punishment enough for doing right?”

“Yes,” I returned, after a pause; “I give you my word, your friend is in no further peril. You should tell him, however, to forget the name, ‘machine.’ Also, he has too many opinions for a policeman.”

The longer I considered, the more it was clear that it would not be a cautious policy to cashier McCue. It would make an uproar which I did not care to court when so near hand to an election. It was not difficult, therefore, to give the Reverend Bronson that promise, and I did it with a good grace.

Encouraged by my compliance, the Reverend Bronson pushed into an argument, the object of which was to bring me to his side for the town’s reform.

“Doctor,” said I, when he had set forth what he conceived to be my duty to the premises, “even if I were disposed to go with you, I would have to go alone. I could no more take Tammany Hall in the direction you describe, than I could take the East River. As I told you once before, you should consider our positions. It is the old quarrel of theory and practice. You proceed upon a theory that men are what they should be; I must practice existence upon the fact of men as they are.”

“There is a debt you owe Above!” returned the Reverend Bronson, the preacher within him beginning to struggle.

“And what debt should that be?” I cried, for my mind, on the moment, ran gloomily to Blossom. “What debt should I owe there? – I, who am the most unhappy man in the world!”

There came a look into the eyes of the Reverend Bronson that was at once sharp with interrogation and soft with sympathy. He saw that I had been hard wounded, although he could not know by what; and he owned the kindly tact to change the course of his remarks.

“There is one point, sure,” resumed the Reverend Bronson, going backward in his trend of thought, “and of that I warn you. I shall not give up this fight. I began with an attack upon those robbers, and I’ve been withstood by ones who should have strengthened my hands. I shall now assail, not alone the lawbreakers, but their protectors. I shall attack the machine and the police. I shall take this story into every paper that will print it; I shall summon the pulpits to my aid; I shall arouse the people, if they be not deaf or dead, to wage war on those who protect such vultures in their rapine for a share of its returns. There shall be a moral awakening; and you may yet conclude, when you sit down in the midst of defeat, that honesty is after all the best policy, and that virtue has its reward.”

The Reverend Bronson, in the heat of feeling, had risen from the chair, and declaimed rather than said this, while striding up and down. To him it was as though my floor were a rostrum, and the private office of Tammany’s Chief, a lecture room. I am afraid I smiled a bit cynically at his ardor and optimism, for he took me in sharp hand, “Oh! I shall not lack recruits,” said he, “and some will come from corners you might least suspect. I met your great orator, Mr. Gutterglory, but a moment ago; he gave me his hand, and promised his eloquence to the cause of reform.”

“Nor does that surprise me,” said I. Then, with a flush of wrath: “You may say to orator Gutterglory that I shall have something to remind him of when he takes the stump in your support.”

My anger over Gutterglory owned a certain propriety of foundation. He was that sodden Cicero who marred the scene when, long before, I called on Big Kennedy, with the reputable old gentleman and Morton, to consult over the Gas Company’s injunction antics touching Mulberry Traction. By some wonderful chance, Gutterglory had turned into sober walks. Big Kennedy, while he lived, and afterward I, myself, had upheld him, and put him in the way of money. He paid us with eloquence in conventions and campaigns, and on show occasions when Tammany would celebrate a holiday or a victory. From low he soared to high, and surely none was more pleased thereby than I. On every chance I thrust him forward; and I was sedulous to see that always a stream of dollar-profit went running his way.