They could be every bit as coldblooded, like the unforgettable Kate from “Blood Thirst” (Gangland Stories, June-July 1930):
Suddenly, from below, came the sound of a heavy door slammed back on its hinges. Kate leaned far over the rail... The lolling men at the tables below were on their feet, their necks thrust forward toward the entrance, their hands bristling with guns.
“At ’em, boys!” yelled Kate, but her voice was lost in the volley of shots that came from the doorway. Instantly, the room below was a hell of shattering sound. Kate swung her body far out over the railing, striving to peer through the curling smoke of guns that cut the blue haze of tobacco.
“They’ve dropped,” she screamed, “four of ’em, at the door! At ’em, boys!” She was shrieking now, heedless of the man beside her, heedless of everything but the smell and sound of battle...
Her face was burning with mounting blood, her painted lips loose, her white bosom heaving.
Violence, of course, was a large part of the bargain. Sometimes it was the all-out mayhem of machine guns blasting from speeding automobiles. At other times, the violence was personal and psychopathic:
“Go back to Fat’s place and you’ll find him all tied up like you left him — but I slit his throat, the big stoolie. You’ll find your fuzztailed guard beside him. He ain’t so damn pretty neither. I moved the front of his face back an inch or two with a piece of pipe.”
Sometimes the stories built toward a violent confrontation, then delivered it with brief, and oddly poetic, passages:
With a quick jerk of his right wrist [Eddie the Dope] swung an ugly looking automatic into view. Before Big Red or Floss could make a move to stop him the automatic went into action. The crashing slug tore straight into the Italian’s head. The wop went down. Eddie the Dope did a dance of rage, pumping slug after slug into the body at his feet.
Ace squirmed past the gear shifting lever into the seat Mike had vacated. Even before he could voice a protest... there came the terrifying realization that the business end of the automatic in Mike’s steady hand was aimed at his heart. Ace saw the flash, felt the cruel stabbing pain of death.
His face livid with fear, he flung himself at her and she pressed the trigger twice. His body fell against her, almost knocking her from her feet, and there were twin holes in the center of his forehead.
Gangsters needed equipment to conduct business; for starters, a high-performance automobile:
The roaring sedan avoided a fireplug, scraped an iron railing, swerved with its right wheels on the sidewalk, tore off the bumper of the truck, and spun the corner at full speed.
Weapons of all sorts came in handy: sawed-off shotguns, Tommy guns; handguns, often referred to as “rods” or “gats.” High-performance was an issue here, too:
In a flash a grim, blunt nosed automatic appeared in his hands. There was a terrific roar; another, coming so suddenly on the first it seemed but an echo, two piercing flashes of orange flame, and then the acrid smell of burnt powder.
Machine guns thrust their blunt, ominous nozzles from the windows of the cars and splattered a murderous rain of hail into the middle ranks of the gangsters.
A central theme of the stories was revenge. It’s a convenient way of introducing murderous intent into the proceedings. It’s also inherent in the gang structure: to kill one gang member is to invite response from the entire gang. A number of the stories advertised the theme upfront in their titles: “Gangster’s Revenge,” “Racketeer Revenge.” Revenge was treated with such solemnity, it became a near-religious experience:
...in back of Sam’s chow house the men of the mob sat assembled, in expressions that conveyed but one message to the on-looker — the insatiable desire for revenge, and the need, the overwhelming need for action.
Red was at the wheel, driving fast. The moon was full, and the road lighted by its reflection flashed by swiftly. There was little talk in the car. Each man concentrated grimly on their single motive. Revenge.
A half hour later a weird and terrible scene was being enacted in a dirty, musty room of Little Hymie’s warehouse. The three rats had been strung up by their wrists to a raftered beam in the ceiling and their ankles manacled together. Then the terrible revenge of the underworld began!
A critical element, present in every story, and also the source of much amusement today, was the heavy use of gangland lingo.
“Fade before the bulls come.”
“Geese, do you take me for a sap?” Tony wanted to know. “Cripes! your checks are too damn gummy to suit me. Wait up! No hard feelings, bozo. This is business!”
“You think you’ve got something on her. You’ve been out to get something on her ever since she turned you down for me.
Let’s have your little rat tale. I don’t want to seem impolite to an acquaintance of the old days, but the perfume you slather on yourself is abominable.”
“Maybe you’re right, Chimp, but there’s enough lads going for one way rides without sacrificing a lot of our best guns just because the Big Noise in Chicago thinks he’s fast enough to cut in here. Damn it all! For a plugged nickel I’d hop a rattler for Chicago tonight, hunt this troublemaker up and shoot it out with him on his own dunghill.”
Needless to say, these randomly selected samples barely scratch the surface.
Some of the lingo found a foothold in the wider language, as this excerpt from a syndicated editorial reveals:
In this [new, violent] literature there is a hint of what the public attitude of the new generation is toward law and order. The jargon of the gangster and the racketeer is on the lips of... youngsters... The high school class of today who wants a pineapple sweet at a soda fountain asks for a Chicago sundae because everybody knows that a pineapple is a bomb.