Bowery Murder, page 14
“So I set to work on the places we knew, but they didn’t turn up Dixie or Ratkowsky. I had had a tip about two weeks before that there was a new hop joint opened up at Mulberry Street close to Chinatown but hadn’t been able to get the goods on it. I put a couple of flat-feet on the job watching the street and, about the time I had finished a look over the known places, one of the flat-feet comes to me and says he thinks he’s got the place located at 38 Mulberry Street We take about ten men along the night before I interviewed Lila and surround the place.
“It was a fairly new tenement house and seemed above suspicion. I put a man on each floor and then started to look in on every flat in the place. On the first floor lived a Jew and his wife. He seemed a bit scared when he opened the door and saw me—not scared in the usual way of expecting a traffic summons or something like that when a cop rings your doorbell, but really afraid. I looked around his flat and found nothing suspicious except that he has some pretty good soft carpets on the floor and a couple of locks on the door. Our raid was made sudden; there wasn’t a chance for any of the cops to tip the dive off.
“After looking the place over I decided to continue through the house, but I left a sergeant on guard with his gun out watching the Jew and his frau. I told them not to move a step from the chairs they were sitting in and for the sergeant to keep his back to the wall. Then I took a quick look around upstairs and came back to the first floor with three cops. We walked in soft, but they were big men and must of looked like a police parade to the Jew. His eyes opens wide, especially when I instruct one of my biggest bruisers to take his leather billy out of his pocket and go over to the Jew.
“‘Now you come across with some information,’ I yelled at him, ‘or you’ll wish you was back in Russia being mishandled by some of the Czar’s old secret police. We don’t use any machine guns, but a leather billy can make a nasty bit of pulp out of your face.’
“Of course that was all bluff on my part, but how could he know that? In fact, how can any crook know it? A lot of them get beat up pretty bad when we make an arrest. You don’t take any chances using sofa cushions on a guy whose got a gun secreted away somewhere in his clothes. When a crook who has resisted arrest and got smashed about a bit appears in court in bandages, why all his friends think that he was done up in the police station. That gives us a bad reputation with the gangster and with the public too, but it enables us to get a lot of information by simply threatening to do something.
“The Jew begins to mumble in Yiddish, and I cut him short.
‘“You can talk English just as well now as you could five minutes ago when I came in,’ I told him. ‘Give him a wallop,’ I said to a cop. He raises back his hand, and the woman cracks up.
“‘In dere, de kitchen,’ she yells.
“So we take a look at the kitchen. There’s a back door, a door leading to the cellar, and a door opening into a closet full of pots and pans. Too much kitchenware, I figure, for just two people, and I investigate. Sure enough, the pots and pans are fastened tight to the back wall but there’s a handle hid behind a big skillet. I pull the handle quickly, give it a twist, and a door opens up into the next building, and there’s a Chink standing there with a gat as big as a howitzer in his hand.
“I had a gun in my mit. I never open strange doors without poking my rod in first. The Chink pulls the trigger as I duck, and I never had a closer shave. I fired at the same time and got him right through the heart. I didn’t stop to pick him up. At the shot the cops are all in the kitchen with me and in through the pantry door. There is a little hallway and then another door that looked as solid as that rock the insurance company advertises. A peephole goes shut, and I know that we were up against a real joint, because I figure the door opens onto another house that in turn had an inside entrance somewhere in Chinatown. I don’t understand yet how that pantry door come to be unlocked. Perhaps the Chink was afraid to push the bolts with me in the kitchen.
“Now I knew Chinatown in those days like a kid knows Mother Goose. I used to be a lieutenant in charge of that district when it was bad, and I had kept an eye on it ever since. I took a quick look in the direction of the hall and figured out just how the house behind that closed door was situated. It seemed to me that its back entrance must come out the back side of a Chinese curio shop on Mott Street run by a high-up tong man—Charlie Whango, one of Ratkowsky’s pals. I don’t know his real name, but that’s what we called him.
“I yelled to my men to watch the passage and to start to work on the door in about three minutes—which was time enough for me to get around to Charlie’s. I didn’t want to get them inside too much excited until I was ready. I then ran out, taking two men with me, and we did the fastest hundred yards of my career, getting around to the curio shop. You should have seen the Chinks fall out of the way as we rushed around Park Street to get onto Mott. A tong war wouldn’t have caused more excitement. Charlie was sitting in the doorway as bland as a clam when we come pelting up, guns in hand, like the marines at Château-Thierry. We sure caused a sensation in Chinatown. A dozen chinks dodged into one cellar and got all jammed up in a heap. Charlie jumps up to stop me from going into his place, and I banged him one on the face with the muzzle of the gun, and he turns a triple somersault through a case of teacups and chinaware. He yelled loud enough to be heard on Fourteenth Street, and that together with the crash of the dishes sounded louder to me than an Al Smith for President celebration.
“In through the shop I go, followed by three cops, through the back partition into a back room, and there, coming out through a door in the wall is Ratkowsky and Dixie Blake!
“Sure, it was a new place he had taken over within a week. The Jew was simply a sort of front-door man. I had guessed right in figuring that the Mulberry Street flat eventually had a back way through Charlie Whango’s.
“Ratkowsky gave a grunt of surprise, and it was hard to surprise that Bolshevik. Dixie yelled. He has a foreign automatic in his hand, but I have the trigger on my gun half squeezed before he can swing his gun up, and he gets a .38 slug through the arm. I could have killed him easy, but all I wanted to do was to disarm him. At that I thought he was going to shoot after I hit him. He tried to pull his arm up despite the slug but couldn’t, and the gun dropped. We arrested him and Dixie and about four more that was in the joint and took them all down to the station. And what a surprise we got there I But that comes along later. Let me finish about Dixie.
“God only knows what she figured I wanted her for, probably a half-dozen crimes she had committed that we never knew about, but when she got the fact that we only wanted to find out some details of the story she gave to the paper you could see relief come over her face like a floodlight on a stage. She then tells me the story you’ve got a chapter or two back. We didn’t give it all to the papers, because Howard did not want to tip McDermott too much information.
“The principal things in Dixie’s story, though, outside of it proving good evidence against the two women, was this. Dixie watched that corner—and Ah Soy, whom we picked up easy enough, checked on this—till after one o’clock. Neither Lila nor Irene came out of the saloon up to then. Neither did she see young Gordon go in through the side door, as was claimed by O’Neil and the others. Nor did she see Rose O ’Neil go in either. Several customers went into the Bowery Bar through the front entrance, but Dixie thought none of them was Gordon and none were women.
“Dixie talked free enough when she found we didn’t want her for anything but her story. She was sure of the time. There’s a jewellery-store clock down the street, and she could see that. She arrived about twelve-fifteen and kept standing in front of the place on one corner or another till five minutes after one, when she beat it because of the detectives going by.
“‘A guy hurried in through the side door a little before one,’ she tells me. ‘They let him in. He had a bag in his hand. I don’t know where he came from. I didn’t see anybody brought out before I left, like O’Neil said.’
“Now that was something pretty definite. I began to wonder if Woodward was killed at twelve-forty-five, as everybody had been saying.
“Dixie gave me something else, too. It didn’t amount to much at the time. She said,
‘“About a quarter to one a taxicab drives up and stands on Bayard Street alongside the bar with its engine running loud. Somebody comes along then and says “hello” to me, and I didn’t pay much attention to it, except, when I looked up again, the cab was going away pretty fast. There might have been a man in it, I couldn’t see very well.’
“‘Not either of the girls?’ I asked her.
“‘No, I looked for that reason. It looked like maybe a man if anybody. He was ’way back in the corner.’
“‘Did anybody get out?’ I asked her. She said no, she didn’t see anyone because she was talking to this guy who said, “Hello.”’
“‘Who was he?’ I asked.
“She didn’t seem to know. I knew she was lying then, but the point didn’t seem worth while pushing. She said:
“‘Oh, some bird I didn’t know at all, but he knew me. He asked me if staying out that late was good for beauty sleep. Offered me a drink out of a flask. He seemed O. K., so I took it.’
“The evidence we had had was that Woodward’s body was carried out of the bar before one o’clock, about five minutes after he was shot. Either Dixie was lying, or she had gone to sleep, or Woodward wasn’t taken over to Solburger’s then. We had positive evidence that it was actually there later when removed to Shropshire’s.
“Kelly, you know, said there were two customers talking to Tim when the shooting happened. Tim said he didn’t know who they were and that Kelly was the only one who heard the shots because he was close to the door. We hadn’t been able to locate those two customers. And Dixie said she hadn’t noticed them come out. She described one man as going in about twelve-fifteen who might have been McDermott. She wasn’t positive.
“Dixie had another witness as to her being on the corner. A jane by the name of Gertie Felding had passed about twelve-thirty and said ‘helio’ to her. Gertie we knew and checked this fact with her. Gertie and Dixie chinned for about five minutes or more. I would have liked to get the bird who gave her a drink and figured that Dixie might let his name out, that is if she knew it, some time later when I talked to her again.
“With Dude, then, and Ah Soy as witnesses and this jane who had talked to Dixie, I decided to see Miss Lila.
“We got a-hold of her the next afternoon. All the Dixie business had happened late at night, and I was dog tired. I knew Lila wouldn’t disappear, because we had a man watching her. She denied ever being at the Bowery Bar at first, but then when I began to show her we had the goods she finally decided to admit the fact, first calling in her lawyer. She never took a breath without some Jew attorney advising her first. She told an easy story, and I didn’t know just what to do about it. I thought I’d better talk to Howard first, so I jollied Lila along and made her believe that we accepted her denial of the fact that she was there till one o’clock anyway, and indicated that we thought Dixie was mistaken.
“I left her then and went back to headquarters. Then she thought she was safe and went out and swore a warrant against Irene. I understand her lawyer tried to talk her out of that, but she was sore as three boils over losing her diamond headlight. I knew when I was talking to her that it was gone, and I knew where it was, but she never brought up the subject to me, and I let it alone. I wondered like hell, too, why she hadn’t squawked about it. That warrant of Lila’s almost broke the case. Irene got sore and talked, and I’ve always wondered why the truth didn’t come out then. I think McDermott or O’Neil got to the two women and told them to shut up.
“I talked to Howard, and we decided to arrest Lila. Not that we had very much against her at the time, but there’s nothing like an arrest to stir things up and bring out a lot of new facts. Before Howard and me got through with our conference the news comes in that Lila has gone after Irene, and fifteen minutes later in comes Irene and tells us her tale of woe, accusing Lila. That was all we needed, and I went out and put Lila officially in the case as an accomplice. Of course, I figured that Irene’s story was a lot of apple sauce. It was her gun all right, there was no doubt of that, but it gave us a good alibi for pulling Lila in.
“Now about Ratkowsky. I held him under arrest on three counts—running a hop joint, resisting an officer, and grand larceny. When we searched him down at headquarters after I had arrested him in Charlie Whango’s we found stowed away in his vest a big hard lump of something all done up in tissue paper, and when it was unwrapped there was Lila’s ten-ton sparkler—emeralds and all!”
CHAPTER VII
Compiler’s Note
Just why Lila never told the truth at the time of her arrest concerning her participation in the murder of Woodward—particularly since Irene had made a pretty good case against her—I don’t know. Most women would have broken down and confessed, particularly as the truth would have been a severe blow to Irene’s prestige. Lila was made of unyielding material. Any woman who can take five rich men to the altar, legally in each case—assuming, of course, Paris and Reno divorces are considered legal—does not lose her head when she becomes entangled with the law. Had she spoken up it would have helped her own case, but proof of her story would have involved her in a lot of things which she probably hoped would not come out. Perhaps, too, she had been warned to keep quiet.
She did make one false step in publicly accusing Irene of taking her diamond. Lila, I understand, really believed that Irene had stolen the stone from her, but she should have gone about the matter less publicly. Her warrant for Irene was a bit of absolute foolishness and was the result of Irene’s speaking too freely the night before concerning the relations between Lila and Woodward.
Irene had intimated that her rival had been given the air and that Rose O’Neil had taken Lila’s place in Woodward’s affections. Lila learned of this within an hour or two and, already suspecting Irene, swore out the warrant. Her lawyer, I was told, almost died of apoplexy when he learned of it, because it laid his client open to tremendous damages for false arrest in case the charge could not be proved.
Carr’s surprise when he found the stone on Ratkowsky can hardly be visualized in cold type. And he was not easily surprised. Up to that time he really believed that Irene had the diamond. But the finding of it on the dive keeper did not prove Irene’s innocence. It did, however, result in Lila’s giving an almost true story to the police later.
The question of the diamond, however, as important as it seemed at the time, lost its importance in the face of succeeding events. The first of these, a story concerning an unknown witness, was not taken very seriously by Carr.
“These newspaper boys have to make a living for their bosses, I guess, and they think up a new story every day,” Carr said. “I looked up this bird who saw the great mysterious unknown witness. He is an old guy and lives down on Bayard Street (name’s Goldmann). His story was about the same as the paper had, but when I began to question him he wasn’t so sure about hearing the shots or the time exactly. If he had taken the taxi licence O. K., why then we’d have something to work on. It’s a clue that we’re looking into, but the person guilty of that Bowery Bar job was in the back room, not outside. I’ve got four or five witnesses already and don’t need any new ones, provided I get one of these to talk and tell the truth.
“This checks up, though, with Dixie’s story about a cab stopping on Bayard Street. I thought maybe one of the women got away in it, but apparently not. You go and find this unknown, I’m too busy.”
From the Tabloid News, Friday, April 27, 1928
UNKNOWN WITNESS SAW WOODWARD KILLING
Mysterious Visitor to Bar Looked in Side Door As Shots Were Fired
Somewhere in New York, unless he has left the city and the country, is the man, unknown and mysterious, who can tell the story of who killed Thomas Woodward and how he was killed. He is described as an elderly man of medium height, dressed shabbily, without a collar, and with slippers on his feet. When seen at the Bowery Bar side door he had a hat pulled well down over his face so that his features could not be recognized.
ARRIVED IN TAXI
This unidentified man came to the side entrance of the Bowery Bar and looked in the door at the very moment that Woodward was killed. He had arrived in a taxicab, which waited on the corner. As soon as the shots were fired that ended Woodward’s notorious career this man hurried back to the cab, gave some direction to the driver, and the cab quickly disappeared.
As he approached the side door he put his hand into his coat pocket. He actually opened the door part way, at the same moment that the witness who was watching him heard shots inside the bar. This witness’s story is appearing exclusively in the Tabloid News. The licence number of the cab was not taken by the witness, but he stated he could recognize the cab by its dented rear fenders.
TIME OF MURDER CHECKS
The News’s informant places the time as about twelve-forty-five in the morning, as has been previously reported by the police. He heard several shots, all very close together. They were muffled by the noise of the taxicab’s engine, which was running free at the time, and by the noise of a passing truck.
A woman on the corner, drinking out of a flask with a man, did not hear the shots, although the woman looked at the taxicab. The Tabloid News’s informant did not stay to get further information. Fearing that he might be arrested, he quickly turned from the scene, and his account presented here is the first that he has given. He expressed willingness to be interviewed by the police, and his name has been turned over to them.
(Read to-morrow’s pink and other editions of the “Tabloid News” for exclusive stories of the famous Bowery Bar Murder.)
In the foregoing news item the Tabloid News scored on its two rivals. However, an hour after the story appeared the Graphoid was out on the streets, its boys calling raucously, “Bowery Bar Murder Reward. Uxtry! Uxtry!”
