"PUT ON THE SPOT"

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 25, Issue 3760, 25 May 1936, Page 6

"PUT ON THE SPOT"

GANGSTERS AND GRAFT. MAN WHO WALKED IN TERROR. ’ An American ex-detective wrote this startling story of the months when he went in fear of the consequences of “graft.” Even now he admits he is in some danger though he has returned to his native Yorkshire.

Southampton! The great docks shrouded in mist—good English mist. How splendid it looked to me. My arm about my wife’s waist tightened. I gently stroked the hair of my youngest child, and into my heart came a great thankfulness. At last I was safe, secure against a menace that had threatened not only my life, but those of my loved ones.

As I stepped ashore on to British soil I knew that I had walked through the valley of the shadow of death. For months I had never left my house without my fingers curling grimly about the butt of my automatic. Every street corner had hidden a potential assassin. My children dare not leave our home, and every night as I put them to bed I feared the bomb that might come crashing through the nursery window.

Had these things happened I would have died; my sole hope would have been to have taken a few of the cowardly assassins with me into the beyond. That was all I prayed for those days. “Give me the power to get my killers.” It seems strange to you in peaceful British lands that these things can be in a civilised country, a member of one of the greatest nations on earth—the United States. And yet it was so, and I knew what it was to be “put on the spot”—to be sought by a deadly gang of drug-crazed killers.

When first I became a private detective, and swore fidelity to the State as a sheriff, I meant to do my duty. While my gun hand remained strong, and my eye good, I would shoot it out with the gangsters who terrorised the city. I would be true to the trust State and public had imposed in me. Bill Seddon, my chief, laughed when I told him this. He told me things, made me realise that in that city I was doomed unless I became a grafter. “Son,” he told me, “you can’t get away with it. What do the clients care if you’re filled with lead? They know that they’ll have to go on paying just the same. You’re in the graft now, and there’s only one way out.” I knew what he meant. Our small agency was engaged by reputable city business folk to protect them against the depredations of gangsters. We received big remuneration for this, and the gangsters left our clients alone, so long as we paid them a handsome percentage of What we earned. They would get all they wanted out of the businesses that did not subscribe to us. Actually we were little more than agents for the

gangsters. I was born in England (not ten miles from York as a matter of fact), and all this went against the grain, but I knew that I could not fight. If I did I was as likely to be bumped off by my own fellows as by gangsters. They didn’t want any reformers in their crowd. The graft was too big. For months I took my share of the plunder. It was big money, but unlike my colleagues I had the sense to hoard a bit against bad times. Something told me this could not go on for ever, and I had my family to think about.

Many stores, warehouses and barbers’ shops in the city paid tribute to the Bierson Agency (that is not its correct name), and through them to Stan Rocco, the gang chief who held the town in the hollow of his hand. Stan’s men ran liquor into town, and often drugs, but they did not attempt extortion. That was left to us.

If a store-owner did not pay up, Stan’s men bombed his premises. If this failed his children disappeared, and came back again when he joined the clientele of the Bierson Agency. Business people knew that it was no use applying to the city police. Roceo held them powerless. Patrolmen on 100 dollars a month bought their wives 500-dollar furcoats and limousines. That was how things were in that town. Then like a bolt from the blue Pete O’Rourke came to town. Rocco warned him that it was his town, and that he would fight if the big Irish gangster tried to “muscle-in” on his territory. Big Pete laughed in his face, and the same night ma-chine-gunned Rocco’s first lieutenant and four of his best gunmen.

Three days later the red-haired giant Came to Bierson. I was in the office at the time. Behind O’Rourke were two men with their hands in their pockets, and we knew it wasn’t their thumbs sticking out under the cloth.

“Boys,” said Pete in his pleasant Irish drawl, “are you coming in with me, or sticking with Rocco ? I’m staying in this town.” Bierson’s thick lips twitched. “I don’t want any trouble, O’Rourke,” he answered slowly. “I can’t afford to cross Rocco, and you ain’t in yet. Gimme a break.”

“You’ve had your break, Bierson,” snapped back Pete. “From now on it’s war and I’m fighting you with Rocco.”

Bierson tried to get around the Irishman, but all he got was lead. Two Bierson operatives were bumped off, and no one cared. Day and night I walked through the streets with fear in my heart. Twice I was shot at, but wounded only once and then very slightly. My wife knew what was wrong and begged me to leave the town.

Travelling with great stealth we managed to get away from America on a British tramp steamer.