McClure's Magazine/Volume 38/Number 4/Flanagan's Stool-Pigeon

by Frederick R. Bechdolt

FLANAGAN'S STOOL-PIGEON

By Frederick R. Bechdolt

 

RED POWERS was crowding his way toward the door of the smoking-car, his long fingers in the pocket of the fat farmer in front of him. Reform had been Red's one idea for two years past, but the instinct which guided the hand to the wallet was as old as he, perhaps older.

Two years in prison had given him plenty of time for introspection. In that period he had made up his mind that he was meant to obey the law. It had also given him long, dreary hours in which to think of others than himself. Of these there were two: his dead wife and their baby. Like Red, the woman had been a thief; he had loved her none the less for that. But with the baby it was different. She was the only live being for whom he cherished any affection; and in those long, sleepless nights with which prison terms are replete, her face was constantly before him. All these things had brought the resolution. He had left the warden's office, that morning, a different man than had entered.

Different, too, in other ways than determination to reform. Prison had worked changes which he did not know. He feared it, who had never feared before. Riding homeward in the train, engrossed in plans for a life of hard work in the city which he had once regarded as his plunder-ground,—the city where the baby was living with the mother's parents,—he shrank within himself at memories of what he had left. At length he pressed his face to the cold window-pane and saw the city's lights loom up in an incandescent blur, then resolve themselves into pin-points of radiance. He was nearly home, where he had tasted deep of life, where he would live anew.

A farmer in the seat ahead of him rose, got his grips together, and blocked the aisle. Red stood behind him as the train slowed for its final stop; and suddenly, with a jerk, his thoughts came back from the future to the present—to the present and the things about; to the farmer and to something in the farmer's hand. The man was standing there among his grips, fumbling at a long leather wallet, opening it. Several yellow-backed bills revealed themselves. Red's eyes grew small and bright; they centered on the pocket-book; they hung upon the bills. In the moment that followed—when the farmer had just restored the wallet to his breast pocket—some one behind shoved Red. At once the thing happened as it always had in days gone by: he lurched against the farmer, the fingers sank to their goal, and it was done.

Not until the wallet lay stuffed beneath his own waist-band, and he was standing on the platform in the cold air of a December evening, did Red fully realize what had happened. The city's multitudinous noises roared about him and the cold air fanned his brow. He cursed himself earnestly and thoroughly; for he knew that plain-clothes men were watching the crowd for such as he. He had planned to tell them what he intended doing. Now it was different; things had changed mightily. He was hurrying toward the gate, his eyes flitting from side to side, his ears strained, walking almost on his toes, when he saw, just ahead, two enormous shoulders.

He knew the back as well as he had known the face; it was Flanagan's. As an alley policeman the man had been famous for a thick head and brutal methods. Now he was in plain clothes. Red's teeth came sharply together as he realized that this was the enemy whom he must dodge. He edged at once toward the farther side of the double line of passengers, and he saw the back begin to turn. He bent forward, coughing violently; he held his hand over the lower part of his face—a trick that had shielded his well-known features from many a detective in days gone by. He was almost past the officer when a big hand fell on his shoulder, twisting him half around. A man close by cried out at the apparent brutality of the thing. Red shook with a paroxysm of coughs.

"What's the matter, young feller?" Flanagan grinned sourly as he tore the hand from the white face. "Got a terrible cold, ain't ye? Come over here; I want to talk wit' ye."

Red's thin frame shrank until the great hand seemed to crumple up the back and shoulders. "I got a nasty cough," he said.

"Yes, I know. Ye brought that back from the pen. What made ye come here fer? Ye know ye're due fer a pinch as soon as ye land."

Behind a laden baggage-truck, out of view of the crowd, Flanagan halted. Red's eyes roved for an instant to the red face with its fiery, bristling mustache; they dropped at once. "What 're yo' pinchin' me for? I ain't doing anything." He had never cringed in other years as he did now; his voice was almost a whine.

"What am I pinchin' ye fer?. Why, to t'row ye in jail; that's why. Ye're a thief an' an ex-con. What's on ye, annyhow?" Flanagan laughed grimly as he prepared to make the search.

It was now or never with Red. "I'm just out," he pleaded. "O' course you know it; so does every one. You don't think I'd be fool enough to turn a trick here, do you? I got folks here: my kid, I come to see her. Let me be; I'll get out first thing in the morning. Sure I will!"

Flanagan made no answer; he was engrossed in holding his prisoner and searching his pockets at the same time. He had gone through them all, and he was slipping his hand down the trousers legs, when he felt the bulge of the wallet beneath the waist-band. His breath came with a gasp of pure delight as he hauled forth the evidence of guilt.

"Oh, no! Ye'd never turn a trick comin' here!" he cried. "I guess ye fergot them things while ye was in the mill. Ye will lie to me!" And the big, hairy hand menaced the averted face.

What shreds of nerve Red's prison term had left him vanished now with the prospect of return to its gray stone walls. Flanagan heard Red sobbing. "Cut that out," he growled. "That stall don't go wit' me."

"I'm not stalling," cried Red. "God knows, I can't go back to jail. I got to see my people. I can't go back! I ain't seen my kid yet. Ain't there any way on God's earth to square this?"

Red was begging from sheer desperation, and Flanagan, looking down into that upturned face, white, set with despair, saw suddenly a chance for which he had long been waiting. For Flanagan was in straits. His place in the front office was in jeopardy; political pull was strong against him; burglaries had been coming thick and fast in the district where he worked. He had to catch that thief or go back to the hated "harness," and all his efforts had been futile. He belonged to that class of officers who do not get their own evidence, but use informants, certain members of the under-world, pariahs among their kind—in the parlance of the stews, "stool-pigeons." From such shifty-eyed aides he had been able to get no help; the new thief worked alone, and was unknown to criminals at large. But here—in his hands—was a man who had climbed high, who must know many, could know whom he pleased. It was an opportunity. Flanagan looked at Red, a look which the latter did not understand.

"I got ye dead to rights." He paused to let the words sink in; he bent his eyes into the evasive eyes before him. "Dead to rights," he repeated slowly. "Ye ain't got a livin' show to slip out o' this, Mr. Powers. I c'n put ye back in stir inside of a week." He gripped the shoulder until his fingers sank in. "Do ye want to go?" he demanded. "Well, if ye don't, just listen now to me." He told what he wanted; it did not take him long; he used plain words. Listening, Red felt his blood running colder. He stiffened.

Then his eyes met Flanagan's squarely as he cried hotly: "A stool-pigeon! I'll never be a stool-pigeon!"

"Ye won't? All right. Come on, now, to the station. Ye c'n tell them where ye got that leather—an' how."

The light died from Red's eyes, and the eyes shifted to the ground as the prison-curse gripped him again. "I can't—" he was beginning.

"Come on," said Flanagan. "The box is at the corner." He took the first step, and Red sobbed for him to stop.

Five minutes later they parted, with the definite understanding that they meet again the next afternoon. "An' don't try to lose me," said Flanagan; "for if ye make one bad move I'll get ye an' I'll send ye back." Leaving the depot, Red's head whirled with a dozen plans to escape from the city the next day. His lips curled down at the corners as he thought of that appointment.

He was hurrying toward a goal whither his mind had flitted many times in the past two years. As he walked along the crowded streets—the streets that he had trodden in the arrogance of wanton success before—his mind gradually centered itself upon that objective point. And he began to smile more kindly to himself.

At length he came to streets where lights were few and sidewalks narrow. Small cottages lined these thoroughfares on either side. Red hurried on until, among these little dwellings, he came to one which showed neatness beyond its neighbors. He halted and surveyed it. The blinds were drawn; beneath one he saw a narrow streak of light. Stealing to this window, he peeped in; the room was without occupant; its few plain articles of furniture stood just as he had last seen them; over a chair hung several diminutive garments. The baby had been put to bed.

Red went to the front door and knocked. A low tread made the floor boards creak; the door opened; he faced his father-in-law. No greeting showed in the old eyes; the lips were tight as when one faces an ordeal.

"We've been lookin' for ye," he said, in reply to Red's salutation. "We were afraid ye'd be comin' back here." He looked keenly into the wan face; it had never been a prepossessing face at best; now it looked worse than it had in former years. "Ye can't come in," he went on slowly, without inflection. "I may as well tell ye now. Ye come here fresh from the prison, and ye want to touch that baby!"

For a moment Red failed to find the words he wanted. Mary's parents had never known her real vocation; he hesitated lest he let slip something that would reveal it. The hesitation fanned his rage. Finally he broke into curses. "We'll see about the kid," he cried. "She's mine; I'm goin' to have her."

The last words went against the closed door; the click of the turned key punctuated them. Red stared in silence before him; then his head sank and he went slowly away. It seemed to him that the hand of every man was against him. That self-pity which criminals feel more strongly than other men fed the growing bitterness. He vowed that he would stay in town in spite of Flanagan and the whole police force; that he would get the child in spite of all of them. His lips grew ugly as the thought of his previous intentions recurred to him. Reform! He asked himself what use it was to waste his time in trying.

As he drifted back into the crowded street, instinct combined with loneliness to guide his feet. The longing for companionship, for faces he had known and familiar voices, led him to thoroughfares where lamps burn late. He made his way straight to a well-known saloon, a resort of thieves and go-betweens.

The place was ablaze with light, and the noise of a hundred voices filled the room as Red slunk in. He looked at the long line before the bar,—the line of gamblers, heelers, and parasites, the well-groomed, bepolished crowd whom he had often called to drink with him,—and he felt strangely out of place. There was not one who looked up at his approach. He waited silently to catch the bartender's eye. The white-aproned servitor, busy in half a dozen places at once, saw him standing there, then beckoned him to the office by the door.

"Cohen wants to see you," the bartender said tersely, in that undertone which is habitual to the wise. "He's at the old joint. You'd better find him right now, an' not be seen round here."

 

Cohen, in stocking-feet and shirt-sleeves, answered Red's knock. He was known as "Slant-Eyed" Cohen, and his black hair was patched with gray, as if age had begun to break out suddenly, like a disease. By all odds the cleverest fence in the city, he was reputed among the wise to maintain his opium-joint and dispose of stolen goods by occasionally betraying a petty criminal or enemy to the police. Trustworthy or not, however, he was the only man who had sent any word of greeting to Red, who now shook hands with him behind the barred door and sniffed eagerly at the opium smoke.

The room was heavy with the fumes; they wound in lazy spirals from a broad couch, spread and made a thick blue fog. Through the haze Red saw two half-dressed men, busy at their pipes. His eyes flashed swift inquiry to Cohen's.

"Stiffs," the latter whispered; "leave them be." He motioned his visitor to a chair beside a table in the far corner of the room, and took a seat opposite him. "They'll be off directly," he said quietly.

Red nodded. The old familiar smell,—a smell he had loved,—the Jew's face bent across the table toward his, the warmth, the heavy-barred door—these things recalled memories of a hectic life; he lived with them again. For the moment he was his former self, silent, keen, alert. He listened while Cohen told him current news of the under-world. Occasionally he answered a question as to some of the more famous denizens of the penitentiary. He began to feel his fingers itch. Accompanying the low tones of his host, he heard the smoke drone and rattle in the bamboo stems; it thickened about him, and he breathed it deep. He was forgetting the evening's event; the visit to the cottage came to him only occasionally, like the stabbing of a sleeping wound. At length the smoking ended; the men departed; and Cohen, talking in his habitual undertone, began to find freer words.

"You're broke." He put it as an assertion rather than a query. Red flushed, realizing how patent was the fact to this inquisitor. He who had been his own master, working alone in other days, felt resentment as the Fence went on: "O' course you want to make a piece of Christmas money." The anger passed then as Cohen, apparently apropos of nothing, diverted his talk again to current happenings—the history of the new burglar whom Flanagan and the others were seeking. Red's curiosity was mingled with a certain spirit of emulation as he listened. The man had no friends to betray him; he got rich plunder; he was bold and swift. Cohen seemed to know many details—told them circumstantially. Reasoning, as crooks do, with flashlike quickness, Red made four from two and two before most men would have got their premises: Cohen knew this burglar, and wanted him, too, to know the crook. Then, as suddenly, recalling Flanagan's leniency at the depot,—this was the thief whom the officer wanted him to betray.

"What a team you two would make!" the Fence was saying. Red smiled, a hard, thin smile, as he reflected on these anxieties of different men toward using him. After all, better Cohen than Flanagan, he reflected. "A swift team," Cohen said again. "This guy has no head; he needs a wise one like you with him."

The flattery, obvious as it was, eased the smart which Red felt, from his last encounter with respectability.

"I'd like to meet him," he volunteered.

Cohen smiled meaningly. "He might come here," said he; then fell at once to talking about police politics. He was in the midst of a dissertation on the general hardness of the times when a knock sounded. He rose with a peculiar glance at Red—a widening of the eyes, then lowered lids. Enlightened by this, Red waited quietly for his return, and he knew that the bullet-headed guest who followed was the burglar.

Bull Collins was his name. The introduction and a few generalities over, Cohen jerked his thumb toward Red. "This is the party I told you of," he said. Red frowned—that must have been while he still lay in prison. After all, he had to take what he could get just now. He listened as Cohen plunged into business.

"These little grocery stores," said the Fence, "are makin' heavy plants these nights. I got the lay of one on First just off Yesler." He went on to describe the place: the details of the building; the habits of the policeman; the spot where the proprietor hid the cash before locking up. Collins hearkened, his round gray eyes shifting so that a hard light played upon them, his thick jaw set. Red watched him with a certain aversion. "You c'n stall outside, Red," said Cohen. "Give Bull a leg over the transom. An easy trick an' a big chunk o' Christmas money."

"Cut three ways." Red's voice carried something of his rebellion.

"Cut three ways," said Cohen decisively. "Who got the lay but me?"

Bull Collins said nothing. His hard eyes were studying Red.

Little more was said between them. When Collins had left, Cohen turned to Red. "You c'n sleep over there," he said pointing to a couch in the corner; he began busying himself with one of the opium layouts.

As Red was lying down, the Fence brought the little tray on its stand over to him, lighted the peanut-oil lamp, and fitted a pipe-bowl on a bamboo stem. Nothing was said. Red was reaching out to take the pipe, when he saw Cohen's face. The mouth was curling down at the corners; the face looked satisfied. Red's hand halted, barely perceptibly. Cohen looked away, still holding the pipe. The hand resumed its movement; Red took the pipe. He dipped a needle into the can of opium and cooked a pellet.

Red was sick in mind and body when he awoke the next afternoon. That heavy depression which comes before breakfast weighed him down; he loathed the odor of stale opium fumes with which the walls reeked. The night before he had been battered from experience to experience with dizzying swiftness; he had hardly realized the changes as they had come. Now, as he drew on his clothes, he looked at things from cold perspective, and he pondered. While he was thinking, Cohen slipped into the room and handed him a coin.

"Go out an' buy some breakfast," said the Fence, "an' don't show yourself around here till you an' Collins has turned that trick. This place 'll be full till late."

Red glanced at the coin; it was a half dollar. Conquering a brief impulse to throw it into Cohen's face, he gripped it tight and hurried out. So this was it: Cohen's tool; and half a dollar. In his day, he would have scorned to give less than that to a crippled beggar. It all came back to him—the plans laid without consultation with him, the cool assumption that he would obey. He swore that he would never climb those rickety lodging-house stairs again. And as for Flanagan, let Flanagan find him if he could. He would leave town that night, and get his start; when he came back he would be beyond reach of any of them.

The streets were crowded with bundle-laden shoppers; store windows were already beginning to flare with early lluminations. Red was attracted by one brighter than those about. He stared into and he saw that it as all bedecked with tinsel and hung with holly wreaths. A tree laden with presents reminded him that this was the day before Christmas. He stood for some time regarding it, fingering the half dollar in his pocket. His eyes lingered on one of the presents, a big doll. His lips relaxed a little, and his face lightened as he smiled. Turning over the half dollar for the last time, he entered the store.

Floor-walkers watched him narrowly as he made his way to a counter that was heaped with dolls. They were divided off in bins, and every bin was surmounted by a placard telling the price. He came to one whose sign read:

THIS LOT 50 CENTS EACH.

He selected a doll with sawdust-stuffed body and china head. He paid over the coin which Cohen had given him, and hurried away. It was freezing hard. The damp cold crept through his thin clothing and took hold of his limbs. His stomach was empty; his face was pinched and blue. But he was not thinking of these physical discomforts.

The old man opened the cottage door to Red's knock; then started to close it in his visitor's face. But the visitor had foreseen such a procedure, and was too quick with his foot. He was able to proffer the gift, which he had unwrapped for this emergency. Proffering it, he saw through the aperture a little figure whose hair was the same color as his own; his eyes stayed fastened upon her as he spoke: "You c'n put this in her stocking an' tell her that papa told Santa Claus to bring it."

But the old man shook his head. "I'll do nothin' of the kind," he said. "Ye've got to show yerself a different man before ye have aught to do with her. I'll give ye that chanct—an' that only because the ould woman's stood fer ut. Ye c'n thank her fer that; an' if it's in ye, ye'll take ut. Go out an' make an honest livin'; an' when ye c'n show us that ye're doin' that, then ye can come back. But, mind ye, don't come near the place till then."

Red slipped back his foot and watched the door close. As he went away he forgot self-pity in the ray of hope that the words had brought, and in the memory of that glimpse of the baby. He walked slowly, planning; he went many blocks. Once more his mind was busy with the future, living in it. He did not see the things about him. A heavy hand on his shoulder brought him back to himself. He looked up into the face of Flanagan.

"Come on," said the big officer; "I guess ye want to explain where ye got that leather. Ye're gettin' a trifle careless about yer app'intments, Mister Powers."

Red looked oddly at Flanagan—and surely. He saw his way clear now. He beckoned the plain-clothes man off to a side street. "I couldn't come," he said; "I was up against the wrong kind of people."

Flanagan was drawn on by something in the tone. "I suppose," he sneered, "ye're mighty wise, now that ye've been in town twenty-four hours. What d'ye know, annyhow? Mebbe ye c'n spill something that'll make it wort' while standin' bechune you an' the chief."

"I do," Red said boldly.

Flanagan laughed. "That's what they all say," he retorted.

"Look here," said Red. "All I want is to stay in town an' mind my own business, I tell you, I'm goin' to turn square. I got people here, an' I got to be decent now. Give me a chance, an' I'll put you wise to a man you all want to get."

"Who is it ye're talkin' about?" Flanagan was far from feeling the indifference which he strove to put into his voice.

Red bent close to him, speaking in an undertone. "That prowler that's tearing downtown wide open," he said. "I c'n give him to you to-night. An,' what's more, I c'n turn him up dead to rights."

"Look here, young feller; don't think ye c'n hand me a steer an' then make good on ut." Flanagan's growl carried grim menace, but he could not hide the exultation as he went on. "If you give me that crook, I'll let ye alone, an' see that others do ut, as long as ye behave."

"I'll give him to you, all right. I tell you, I'm through with crooked graft. I'm lookin' to make my own way now; an' any of that old gang would give me the worst of it if they got the chance." Red spoke savagely, looking Flanagan in the eye. "You go to Siegel's grocery on First off Yesler to-night before he closes, an' stay there. I told you I was up against some wise people. Well, this prowler's to make the transom about two in the morning. And I'm to stall on the outside. All you got to do is wait there for him, an' take him. I'll get away while you are doin' it." He hesitated a moment, then went on vindictively: "You shadow Slant-Eyed Cohen then. He's fencin' for the other guy."

Flanagan's face was apoplectic now. So impressed was he that, when Red turned to leave, he called him back and slipped a quarter into his hand. "Go an' buy yerself a drink," he said. "Ye look cold."

Ten minutes later Red was seated on a high stool in a cheap restaurant, devastating a plate of beans. When he had impaled the last bean on his fork, he hunted out a tobacco-stand and bought chop cut and brown papers. Then he made his way to a saloon and took possession of a warm corner near the stove, to enjoy that unequaled luxury that comes from tobacco smoke and a full stomach.

 

When Bull Collins went to meet Red on the stroke of two the next morning, it was with feelings that might be called tumultuous. Experience had taught him that it was wise to do things a little differently than he agreed; and he had gone early to watch Siegel's grocery. Hidden in the entrance of a building across the street, his round gray eyes hardened suddenly as he saw two big plain-clothes men enter the place—Flanagan and his partner. He waited until the proprietor had closed the store, and he saw that the pair did not emerge. Whiling away the time between the closing and his rendezvous with Red, he planned with much deliberation. Thieves love poetic justice; and Collins was no exception to the rule.

He greeted Red quietly, and as they walked to the scene of the prospective crime he kept his hand close to his revolver butt. The two of them watched the block. When the blue-coated policeman was well on his way to the corner, they slunk into the grocery entrance. There Collins slipped. He drew in a whistling breath and leaned on Red's shoulder. "Twisted my ankle," said he. "You'll have to do the inside work, Red."

Red drew back, white-faced. Then he saw that Collins' hand was on his revolver butt and that the muzzle of the weapon beneath the owner's overcoat was held in line with his own ribs. Collins' jaw was set, his hard eyes glittered.

"Go ahead," he snarled savagely. "We can't stay here all night. What's the matter? Lost your nerve?"

Red felt his knees growing weak. He must climb that transom, risking Flanagan's not recognizing him; or he must turn on this man, who held his revolver ready to shoot. Once in, he could turn the spring lock, and the chances were even, if things went right, that the officers might overtake their quarry. Then it would be he who laughed. "Gimme,a leg, an' quick," he whispered. He went up easily. He balanced on the door's top. He dropped to the floor. He turned quickly to the latch, and Flanagan's revolver rang out.

The big plain-clothes man leaped across the counter and almost bumped heads with his partner over Red's prostrate form. He bent low, flashed his bulb lantern into the face; then he fought with the night latch and threw open the door. The beat of Collins' feet sounded a block away.

"This ain't the main guy," said Flanagan. "But we got one, anyhow."

Things were unusually quiet at the station. The wagon had just gone out on a hurry call, and the lull following its departure seemed very quiet. The captain and desk sergeant were gossiping lazily, when the door opened and an old man stepped up to the wicket.

"I'm lookin' fer Frank Powers," he said, "my son-in-law. He's just out of prison. Ye might remember him?"

The captain did remember. Red's name was still well known. But that was all. "I'm blessed if I know where he would be," he said. "Didn't he look you up?"

"He came back." The old man's voice was not so steady now as it had been when he talked to Red. He and his wife had been discussing the matter a great deal since then, and the old woman had dropped many tears. "He came back. He wanted to see his little girl—she's livin' wit' us. An' I turned him away. I sent him aff—an' it Christmas eve! An' the ould woman's set on havin' me find him. D'ye think anny of the min know aught of him?"

The clang of the patrol-wagon gong cut in on his words. The vehicle had drawn up at the rear door, which meant a hospital case. Captain and sergeant hurried from the room, leaving the old man alone. He turned to go. His head was bowed and his shoulders were drooping a little more than was their wont. Passing through the long squad-room, he heard some one call his son-in-law's name. He hurried to the rear room whence the voice had come.

A little group of officers and reporters stood about a long table. He caught a glimpse of a ragged coat sleeve.

"I got him dead to rights, just as he was reachin' fer his gun," Flanagan was announcing loudly for the benefit of the reporters. As the old man stepped across the threshold, the big detective bent over the rigid form upon the table and grasped the arm.

"We'll just take a luk at that gun now," he said, and drew the hand away, plunging his own into the tattered coat pocket. His heavy jaw fell and he took a step backward. He dropped on the table, not the revolver he had expected, but a cheap doll, with sawdust-stuffed body and eyes staring upward, wide and dull like those of the chalk-white face beside it.