Humming under his breath, Doyle hurried into the café where Myra waited.
Behind the Green Lights
by Captain Cornelius W. Willemse[1]
Razors and stilettos in Minetta Street; the dog who loved his beer; a New Sergeant in the Gas House district...
A runaway boy from a well-to-do Dutch family jumped the ship he had come over in at Hoboken and found his way across the river to New York City and the Bowery. There he lived for a while off the free lunch counters, starved a good deal, put his brawn to work as a “bouncer,” and finally won a long cherished appointment to New York City’s police force. His adventures with crime began without preface. The boy was Cornelius W. Willemse. And now he tells the vivid story of an unforgettable past. Begin it here.
Chapter XXVI
The Minetta District War
In the spring of 1906, I was transferred from the Tenderloin to the Mercer Street station. Some of my superiors had taken a dislike to me; hence the shift. I was assigned to patrol duty on Minetta Lane, Minetta Street and Minetta Place, a post that called for every bit of police experience and nerve that I possessed.
In those days the Minettas had a mixed population — Italians and Negroes. The Negroes had been there first, but the Italians had started a residential invasion. The stiletto was matched against the razor. The stiletto, in a practiced hand, is more effective than a razor. As a result, the Negroes were moving out, slowly and grudgingly, as the Italians moved in. Of itself, a plentiful source of trouble. But that wasn’t all.
Thieves and street girls had made a haven of the section. On Third Street, Carmine Street and Minetta Street, all part of the Mercer Street District, were several Negro places running full blast. They were, cheap creep and panel joints, men being robbed in them every night. There was none of the glamour and bright lights that helped to gloss over the wide-open doings of the Tenderloin. Dark, squalid houses stood side by side. Men could shoot from doorways, or spring out with a stiletto, razor, or sandbag before a passer-by knew what was up. The saloons were dark, evil-looking places, the rendezvous for thieves and the lowest type of thugs.
There were good, hard-working folk among the Negroes. They were being driven from homes they had occupied for years, and I felt sorry for them. Among the Italian newcomers, too, were many splendid families, but the riff-raff ruled the district and the police were locked in a bitter war.
I was warned the night I appeared for duty. Sergeant Gilhooley had just been shot and murdered. Two patrolmen on the same post had been shot down when they rushed into a saloon to stop fights between Italians and Negroes. The same Negro, Jeff Sanders, had fired all three shots. He’d been discharged in court because the police lacked conclusive evidence. But he’d learned how the police treat tough guys in the station houses.
“Sanders is behaving himself now, but every bad man, white and Negro, thinks he’s a hero, and is out to knock off a cop,” the sergeant told me. “Keep your night stick and your gun handy every minute you’re on post. Have your eyes peeled and don’t pass any doorway without looking to see what’s there. We don’t want to lose any more men. Don’t be afraid to use your club. They don’t know what talking means down there.”
My first trip over the post convinced me that the advice was sound. If ever a spot looked ripe for trouble, it was Minetta Lane. As you walked along in the dark you could hear voices, Italian and Negro, but you couldn’t see the speakers or place the exact houses in which they were. It was the kind of a place where a cop finds every muscle in his body tense without knowing just why, and where his hand clutches his night stick grimly.
Paddy Gunn was my relief on post. A man feared for his courage, but more feared for his powerful work with the night stick. Paddy knew the district well and had been the victor in a dozen brawls. I talked things over with him and walked back to the station house, itching to run into some of those bad guys. Remember, I was young and strong and could swing the night stick, myself.
Trouble wasn’t long in coming. Reporting at the station house at night soon afterward, I found the sergeant waiting for me. He was excited.
“Hurry over to the Lane! Gunn’s been having trouble and may need help.”
I ran to the Lane, arriving just in time to see Gunn charging into a house. In that district there was just one thing to do. I took the next house and raced up the four flights of stairs. Then I stepped softly to the roof, prepared to give chase if Paddy’s man tried a getaway. Paddy, I knew, would stop to search each floor on the way up.
There was a faint light and I stole over to the adjoining roof. Then I spotted a man, a strapping Negro. He was trying no get-away. Instead, he was crouching in wait at the door through which Paddy would have to step to reach the roof. In his hands, lifted in readiness to strike, was a big ax.
It was a perfect spot for the murderous ambush the Negro had planned. I got to him just as my partner reached the door. The Negro’s ax flew out of his hands harmlessly as my night stick crushed down on his skull. Paddy took one look at the ax and the prisoner, a well-known Negro thief Paddy had been pursuing for a robbery.
“It’s lucky for me you came,” he growled. Then he turned his attention to the prisoner.
I know good work when I see it, and Paddy’s was good. If that Negro didn’t go straight ever afterward I miss my bet. Paddy knew where to hit to make it count the most.
To-day, Paddy is a lieutenant of police, but he’s never forgotten that particular close call. It put us both even more on our toes. It was another evidence of the risks every cop in the district had been running since the shootings.
My turn came next, on the night of July 4, at a time when I was least expecting trouble.
There were four old-fashioned houses on Minetta Place occupied by Italian mosaic workers and their families. All were hard workers and were happy in their new surroundings. The men had good jobs and on the summer nights the families would gather together on the stoops, drinking a little wine, and chatting to the music of guitars and mandolins. They asked nothing more.
I had become friendly with these four families. A good spaghetti dinner was waiting for me any time I was hungry, and a glass of Barbary wine if my throat was dry. I had a particular favorite, too; a little Italian girl about four years old — a black-eyed child who ran up to me every time I swung along the sidewalk, took my hand, and marched proudly by my side.
There was even more gayety than usual on the night of the holiday. Guitars and mandolins were strumming and women were singing on the stoops. I stopped in the shadow directly across the street from the houses and leaned back against a fence to listen to the music, something I had done before on nights of quiet in the district.
The bullet whipped through the fence alongside my head before I heard the report of the revolver from behind me. There was a scream from across the street as I turned to the fence. By the time I had climbed over, the gunman had disappeared in the darkness of the yard. I hurried back to find out who had screamed.
The bullet had struck the little girl, my favorite. The wound was in the thigh and she was bleeding and sobbing. Nothing fatal, I knew, but I was wild when I called the ambulance, and cried with rage when I lifted my little friend inside. If I could have found on that night the man who fired the shot, I’m afraid there would have been no need for a trial. My report about him probably would have read: “Killed resisting arrest.”