He took a good look around, gazed with a sparkling eye at bare, discolored walls, battered desk and chairs and dented cuspidors, typewritten pages of official orders tacked to the wall, and rogues' gallery pictures lying in the basket. My office at Police Headquarters was a lot different from his own downtown banking sanctum with deep, soft rugs and a spread of paintings on the walls. And I suppose that I, leaning back in my squeaky swivel chair, did not look the part of any dignified cashier or sleek teller. He was in novel surroundings, and it hit him right. He adjusted his dark-rimmed spectacles on his thin nose, handed me an expensive cigar from a leather case, and settled back with his dead white hands over the head of his walking stick. He was set to listen to something snappy.
"And now, Mr. Fiaschetti," he smiled like a school principal beaming on a pupil who has got off the class oration without balling it up entirely. "And now, Mr. Fiaschetti, tell me how you did it. How did you manage it?"
A couple of weeks previously his expensive apartment had been turned off and a lot of gilt-edged junk started on its way to the fences. The usual story — no clues, up against a blank wall, a mysterious case. It was in the papers a lot, a couple of arrests on suspicion, no evidence, prisoners released. But it was all over now. That morning I had collared the mob and locked them up in the Tombs. You couldn't blame the old gent for wondering how the seemingly insoluble case had been broken.
"Oh," I replied, "I got a little information and grabbed those guys."
I slurred over the word "information," passed it quickly and negligently. You often hear that same word "information" in police circles. Sometimes it is called the "tip." You find it constantly cropping up at critical places in stories of detective cases — in actual, real-life cases and not the kind you read in books. Ask any reporter who has covered Headquarters. I've never analyzed cigar ashes, but have often got a little information, often given attentive ear to a tip.
My million-dollar visitor did not notice the information part of it. His soul was not attuned to such prosy things, anyway. Detective meant to him something of the Sherlock Holmes order. He was bent on hearing a tale of ingenious unraveling, of subtle and brilliant sleuthing; a classic of how the detective gets his man. It beguiled him that so romantic a thing, as he supposed, had come within the placid circle of his existence.
"But," he persisted, "tell me all about it. What was the real detective work in the case?"
I chewed on the cigar he had given me — and a good stick of Havana it was — and then reeled off a few things that had happened in the hunt for the burglars.
"It was like this," I said. "I picked one of the mob and tailed him. Then my men covered the place where he lived. A couple of guys came to see him. We shadowed them. Pretty soon the three of them went to dicker with a fence, and we grabbed them."
I amused him with full details of this part of the case, an important part, but by no means the heart of the matter. It had taken sharp work and made an interesting story. The trailings and shadowings, the figuring things out, and the quick jumping in for the arrest — guns drawn and a short fight — were the kind of yarn my banker friend expected. He was satisfied.
"A fine piece of detective work, Mr. Fiaschetti," he put the O. K. on me. And later, when he arose to go, he repeated, patting me on the shoulder patronizingly, "A fine piece of detective work — you are quite a Sherlock Holmes."
I did not disclaim the praise, nor tell him to take his thanks to a certain vagued-eyed, loose-jawed hanger-on of an East Side pool room. That was the kind of thing you keep to yourself as a professional secret when you are a member of the detective staff of a police organization. You pass it off with a casual, indirect reference. The detective doesn't tell the public how he gets his man. But it was that vague-eyed, loose-jawed gangster who had given me the information, the tip. He was the stool pigeon.
I've got a grudge against Sherlock Holmes. Most actual, workaday detectives have. Conan Doyle's stories are all right as literature, I suppose, but then the John Laws, as a general thing, are not literary, and it's enough to knock you flat to see how much can be printed on a page that won't work out on the job.
In some ways Watson's needle-jabbing friend has done us a good turn. He has made our line of business quite a romance, made detectives romantic gents, like movie actors or daredevil heroes of war, almost as romantic as the crooks. Boys dream of becoming sleuths, and you often see a gleam in a girl's eye as she glances at some plain-clothes dick. I don't say anything against that. But Sherlock Holmes has made people expect weird, wall-eyed stunts of the real coppers.
You are stumped on a case.
"What's the matter?" somebody says. "Why doesn't he read the history of the crime by studying a footprint with a magnifying glass, or follow the criminals with the cigar ashes as a clue?"
Well, sometimes we do — but not often. The public blames us if we don't, and makes us out a lot of simps — which sometimes we are. All these later-day detective story writers follow the Sherlock Holmes tradition. It makes me tired to read how those bulls in books solve mysteries with their deductions — although deductions in their place are all right. Why doesn't somebody write a detective story with a stool pigeon in it? Why didn't Conan Doyle tell about Sherlock Holmes' stool pigeons? Holmes had stool pigeons? Of course he did. How could he break a case if he didn't?
In the honest-to-God story of how the detective gets his man, stool pigeon's the word. Clues, deductions, and even the green whiskers have their place, but nearly always as mere embroidery around a central theme. Take away information, the tip, the secret whisper of the stool pigeon, and the detection of crime would be paralyzed. The police organization of every city of the country, and of the world as well, would stand helpless and gaping.
I learned my lesson early, the A B Cs of the business. I should like to recommend it for the curricula of some of these detective schools you see advertising in the papers. It would go well in a correspondence course in the noble art of sleuthing.
I was a cop, a harness bull pounding the beat and swinging a night stick out in Williamsburg. I had got on the New York police force through Lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, the famous head of the Italian Squad, who was later killed by the Black Hand while on a mission in Naples. Petrosino was devoted to music — we Italians all are. He used to be a familiar figure around the Metropolitan Opera House, listening to Rigoletto or Butterfly. My father was a Roman bandmaster who came to America and toured the states at the head of a band. Petrosino was a friend of his. He was a regular visitor at our house, where my father was forever playing the piano or the guitar or clarinet — he could play anything. Petrosino used to sit for hours listening, the strength and shrewdness of his face softened and made dreamy by the old, well remembered tunes of the operas. In those hours of music he could forget all about the deadly woven web of the Black Hand, which was eventually to snare him.
I was just growing up, and naturally the great detective was a great hero in my eyes. I decided that I wanted to become a detective. Petrosino looked me over. I was big and strong. He encouraged me, and, when I became old enough, advised me to join the force. I would have to do my bit as a patrolman, but if I worked hard for the Detective Division I could make it. He would help me. I took his counsel, and presently found myself patrolling a beat out in the wilds of Williamsburg.
It was tiresome week after week. It's no fun flattening your feet on the pavements, especially in Williamsburg. How long would I have to endure this drudgery before I got a promotion to the Detective Division? I was getting sick of it. If only I could pick up a chance to distinguish myself, to pull something, to crash in on a holdup or stumble upon a trail that would lead to the solving of a crime — anything that would help me to get advancement. I wore out my shoe leather as diligently as a cop with a conscience should and got nearsighted looking for things, but never a holdup or a cunning trail did I spy.
In those days — twenty years ago — one of the favorite activities in Williamsburg was stealing horses. At the station house I saw a notice of a robbery: twenty horses had been stolen. It had occurred in our precinct. The animals were described, and patrolmen were told to be on the lookout for them.
I studied the descriptions carefully, and for the next day or so, as I pounded my beat, I kept my eyes going right and left. If I could only catch sight of one of those horses and grab it, a good mark, A-1, would be chalked down on my record. I thought my conscientious vigilance should surely be rewarded, but never a horse did I see that looked like one of those described.
One afternoon I sat in a little hole-in-the-wall grocery store, resting and talking with the proprietor. I had struck up a small acquaintance with him. He happened to pull the drawer of his cash register out rather far, and there, in the back, I saw a big .45 looking at me. He caught my glance, and seemed frightened, and I knew right off that he had no permit to have that chunk of artillery around.
"What are you doing with the gat?" I demanded.
"Oh, it ain't nothin'," he stuttered. "There's lots of robberies. I may need protection, I don't want nobody to rob me."
I knew him to be what is described as a law-abiding citizen, but it was my duty, strictly speaking, to place him under arrest for unlawful possession of firearms. It would have caused him trouble. Having weapons around was not so common then as now. I didn't want to haul him around to the station house, but thought a small lesson about keeping strictly within the law wouldn't hurt him. Being a new cop I felt exceedingly conscientious, and was, I suppose, a bit overimportant and officious.
I told that grocer that it was my business to lock him up, and he begged me not to. I explained to him that he was liable to fine and imprisonment, and he vowed he wouldn't do it again. I protested that I might get into trouble if I didn't make a pinch then and there, and he offered me money. I bawled him out for that. Briefly, I had him scared.
"But," I concluded, "I don't want to get you into trouble. You are a good fellow, and I am a friend of yours. I won't say anything about that gun, but get it out of the way or take out a permit to have it around, or somebody else will pick you up — and he won't be a friend of yours."
That took a load off the grocer's mind, and he was full of gratitude. In spite of what philosophers may say, I have found plenty of gratitude in men — and stool pigeons. And the majesty of the law is such that when a copper does you a good turn you appreciate it.
"Mr. Fiaschetti," the grocer cried eagerly, "if I can ever do anything for you, you just let me know!"
"Well," I responded, "I wish somebody would tell me a thing or two about those stolen horses."
I hadn't any particular purpose in starting out on that subject. It was just naturally on my mind. The grocer, though, thought I was hinting that he knew something about the nags — as he easily might, if I had thought about it. His shop was a meeting place for the neighborhood, a headquarters for gossip.
"If I could pick up those horses," I was thinking out loud, "it would mean a lot to me."
He seemed debating with himself. Squealing, in certain nooks and corners of this wide country, is not a healthy pastime. But he was grateful, and, besides, I had something on him. He must have known I didn't mean to lock him up for that gun, but when the cops have got something on you, there is a subtlety in it, a blind, reasonless compulsion. It holds you, and twists your thoughts and feelings around, and is liable to make you do things that would surprise you. It is a better persuader than a lawyer.
"I don't know who done the job," the grocer said thoughtfully. Then he came over to me and sat down on the chair beside me. "I'll tell you what I'll do for you, Mike." He spoke in a low voice. "I heard where those horses are." And he gave me the address of a stable.
I hot-footed it out of the place. Pretty soon I was at the stable. In the stalls were the twenty horses. I strutted around, a proud rookie, for the next few days.
My acquaintance with the grocer did not end there. It became considerably closer, in fact. I had more than ever on him now — the fact that he had given me the tip. It's a law of science: once a stool pigeon always a stool pigeon — with a few exceptions. The grocer was a regular source of information about all kinds of things, usually petty ones: about which kid it was that knocked the baseball through the plate glass window, or about the young fellow down the street who was running around with a bad mob in New York. I was enabled to make more than my share of arrests. In a very short time, at Petrosino's recommendation, I was transferred from the uniformed force to the Detective Division.
"So that's the way you do things," said I to myself. And the more I saw of the business, the more I found it was the way.
Lesson No. 2 — some more of the A B Cs. I was attached to a precinct over on New York's East Side. It was a tough neighborhood and things were always happening. You needed information all the time. I had my little stool pigeon net rigged up, and it worked pretty well. One night I walked up to a street corner far outside of the district. A man was waiting there.
"What's new?" I asked him.
"A couple of things."
We stood in a shadowed doorway and talked. He gave me a fact or two about an important case I was working on, and then went on to other things.
"There's going to be some trouble," he volunteered, "in that pool room upstairs at Grand and Mulberry."
"Yes?" I responded absently. I was thinking about the big case.
"Going to bump off a guy there," he went on as if discussing some matter-of-fact detail. "Dopey Joe's in wrong with the Orchard Street gang. Running a crap game with a couple of them, and he gypped them. They're all set to get him in that pool room Saturday night."
Somehow or other I didn't pay much attention to this. He talked a lot, and was likely to come around with exaggerated tales. And I suppose I was all taken up with the big case. Anyway, I didn't follow the lead or think about it afterward. I forgot it.
It happened that on the following Saturday night I was at dinner in a restaurant just down the street from the pool room at Grand and Mulberry. It was a warm summer evening. The door was open, and a pleasant breeze blew in. I was in the middle of a plate of ravioli, when — bang, bang, bang! — three shots!
"There it is!" I yelled. The telltale sound of shots, which came from up the street, brought back into my mind in a blazing flash the story the stool pigeon had told me. I nearly knocked the table over, getting out of the door. Up the street and up the stairs to the pool room, and I dashed in, pistol in hand. Too late. Dopey Joe lay dead on the floor, and the murderers had got away by the side entrance.
I felt like kicking myself all over the place. As I looked at the dead man, with his cocaine-haunted face white beneath the lights, it almost seemed as if I had killed him. I could have saved his life, although it was not much of a life, as lives go. I could have laid in wait and grabbed those guys as they came in on their vengeful mission. As it was, Dopey Joe was dead, and it turned out that we never did get the murderers right, could not build up a court case against them.
That small happening makes Lesson No. 2 read as follows: Take in everything a stool pigeon has to say, and look up every lead. You may think it mere vaporous gossip, but it may mean the difference between a pinch and a get-away. What's the use of having stool pigeons if you won't listen to a squeal? I listened after that experience.
For twelve years I was head of the Italian Squad, to which post I succeeded after Petrosino was killed. In addition to holding that special job, I did general detective work all over New York and the surrounding districts. In the course of this I built up one of the biggest stool pigeon organizations on record, a system that had its ramifications high and low, far and wide. You could learn more from it than from any library of books, and sometimes you could make those fiction detectives look cheap.
I'd like Sherlock Holmes to get out his magnifying glass and take a look at this one. Watson should have been around to mutter "Wonderful!" There wasn't any Watson, but there was a good crowd just the same, and what a crowd!
Talk about astonishing the natives — well, there weren't only natives to be astonished. In addition to half the neighborhood looking on, the gang from Headquarters was assembled in force. You never saw such an array of wise, hardboiled handcuff snappers. That was what I liked especially. Nothing like startling the professional talent.
In an olive oil, cheese, and macaroni store on Central Avenue, Brooklyn, two brothers, Salvaggio by name, who lived in the rear of the shop, were found shot to death in their beds. It was a weird-looking affair, and made quite a bit of stir — drama, grim mystery, and all that. There had been several prominent unsolved murders of late. The evening papers put the Central Avenue case in banners on their front pages, and orders from up above were to break the case at any cost. Men from Headquarters were rushed over, and the investigation was made in a big way.
I was busy with some other matters, and did not get over to the Central Avenue grocery store until midafternoon. A crowd was on the street and in the shop — lookers-on, reporters, photographers; and there must have been twenty plain-clothes men questioning people. They were in charge of Deputy Inspector Lahey. He was standing outside near the curb. I reported to him. He told me that nothing had been discovered, no clue or sign or anything to work on.
"It's a tough case, Mike," he said, "but we've got to break it."
I started through the rubbernecking mob to the store. In the crowd I saw a stool pigeon of mine. When he spotted me he began edging toward me. I gave him the eye and went into the store. He followed. I pretended to be busy examining something — as if snooping around for a clue, footprints or the cigar ashes. He came alongside, and managed to get a few words to me.
"Go to the municipal baths. You will find a big six-footer, Lillo Grillino. He's bathing there now. At his house you will find the gun and counterfeit money. It was a counterfeiting job. Those two who were killed gypped the others."
I went out and told the Deputy Inspector I thought I had something, and was going to follow it up.
A quick trip to the municipal baths, and sure enough I found the long, lank Lillo Grillino. He nearly fainted when I put him under arrest. I took him to his house, and there found a pistol and a stock of counterfeit money. I had him right, and he came through. Later he took a plea and got twenty years.
When I returned to the grocery store with the prisoner and his confession, the boys there opened their eyes. Those rhinoceros-hided dicks weren't usually astonished at anything, but in this case it certainly looked as if some of Sherlock Holmes' lightning deductions had been pulled.
"How did you do it, Mike?" they demanded, wondering. I gave them a chance to guess a while, puffed at my cigar, and made a remark or two that might indicate I had solved the mystery by some masterpiece of intellect beyond their comprehension. It's fun to swell around once in a while.
"How did you do it?" Inspector Lahey asked.
You don't try any monkey business or witty comedy with your superior officer.
"Inspector," I replied, "as I came in I saw a stool pigeon of mine in the crowd."
"Oh, yes, I see." He smiled. He didn't ask me another. There are things that even your superior officer doesn't pry into, and one of these is who your stool pigeons are.
I looked good in that case, I'll admit it. I wish I was as good as I looked.
It isn't pretty or elevating, that term "stool pigeon," but then, neither is crime. You've got to do it. That statement excuses a lot of things in this world, especially in police departments. You can't tie yourself up with delicate scruples in your dealings with the under-world, and if you aren't any rougher with the boys than getting tips from stool pigeons — they're lucky.
Take this as an axiom of the science of crime detection: a detective is as good as he is able to cultivate sources of information, as successful as he is able to line up stool pigeons.
I'll tell you how Sherlock Holmes really broke his cases. Being a great detective, Holmes was a master hand at making stool pigeons — that's a special art — and at keeping them on the job — and that's another special art. No, he didn't have any little black book with names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Suppose he lost it or somebody grabbed it on him or somehow the dope got around and got to the boys who were being squealed on — there might be a bit of bumping off in those neighborhoods.
Sherlock Holmes kept his sources of information deep inside of his noodle, and he never let them slip. You could not drag the name of a stool pigeon from him if you beat him to death or gave him ten thousand dollars.
The ordinary detective works for the most part in the limited world of his own precinct. There he organizes his little stool pigeon system. It is a small revolving part of a great whole, and the local detective is the cog that connects it with the general machine covering the entire underworld — and some parts that are not underworld. He drags his pond day in and day out, sifts out his catch. His net may not be large, but it snares strange fishes.
You know the old story of the needle in the haystack; well, Chicago is a pretty big haystack, and one man is a mighty small needle. Picking out a lone individual in a huge, crowded city is always one of the classical pieces of detective work. Suppose the man hunted is a stranger in the town, with no criminal connections. You might think the stool pigeon system would be unable to function in such a case.
A citizen of a small burg in Iowa became involved in some marital tangle. He got a bad case of jealousy aboard, hauled out a gun, and knocked off his best friend. He escaped, and, remembering that the best place to hide is in a crowd, went to Chicago, leaving no trail behind aim, and lost himself in teeming multitudes.
He kept his peace, and did not babble. He did not wander to any place where criminals might ordinarily be found. Yet the Chicago police picked him out. They had nothing more to go on than the usual circular, sent far and wide, asking for his arrest and giving a picture of him.
The fugitive overplayed his hand just a trifle. Wanting to get as far away as possible from parts where he might be sought, he reasoned that nobody would think of looking for him, a native American, in some foreign quarter. He picked a Polish neighborhood, and took a furnished room there. He stuck close to his retreat, and associated only with the Polish people of the vicinity.
The detectives of the local precinct had their sources of information, their stool pigeons. One of these, in the course of reporting desultory facts and fancies, told of the American who for no apparent reason had taken up residence among the Poles.
The tip didn't seem important, but the detective, an efficient worker, wasn't overlooking any tricks, however insignificant they might seem.
He gave his man the once-over, and compared him with pictures of sundry malefactors who were wanted all over the country. Sure enough, here was the fellow who had done the shooting in Iowa. Soon the culprit was on his way back to his native town to stand trial.
Moral: if the cops are looking for you, don't hide in a foreign quarter. Likewise, no matter where you go, you are exceedingly likely to be tipped off. The stool pigeons will get you sooner or later. Don't do anything to have the cops looking for you.
Did I say you were likely to be tipped off? You bet you are! You'd be surprised — knocked off your feet — to find who the stool pigeon may be.
He is very likely the last person you would suspect. Don't imagine that he is always the slinking sneak of the gang who has turned snitcher — although he often is. Maybe it isn't a he at all, but a she. That's one of the nifty phases of the game. And perhaps the information comes from someone who hasn't any idea it is going to the police.
There are complicated and unexpected channels through which the tip may circulate and finally slide into Headquarters.
Many a lad would think twice before starting something if he were at all wise to the stool pigeons' net into which he is sticking his head.
Publication Date: April 20, 1929