“You can’t make much out of a case of that kind,” he said. “We couldn’t print it if you did; the public wouldn’t stand for it. And if you attack the police for concealing it then they’ll be down on us. He ought to be exposed, I suppose, but—well——Write it out and I’ll see.”
I therefore wrote it up in a wary and guarded way, telling what had happened and how the police had not entered the charge, but the story never appeared. Somehow, I was rather glad of it, although I thought the man should be punished.
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WHILE I was on the _Globe-Democrat_ there was a sort of race-track tout, gambler, amateur detective and political and police hanger-on generally, who was a purveyor of news not only to our police and political men but to the sporting and other editors, a sort of Jack-of-all-news or tipster. To me he was both ridiculous and disgusting, loud, bold, uncouth, the kind of creature that begins as bootblack or newsboy and winds up as the president of a racing association or ball team. He claimed to be Irish, having a freckled face, red hair, gray eyes, and rather large hands and feet. In reality he was one of those South Russian Jews who looked so much like the Irish as to be frequently mistaken for them. He had the wit to see that it would be of more advantage to him to be thought Irish than Jewish, and so had changed his name of Shapirowitz to Galvin—“Red” Galvin. One of the most offensive things about him was that his clothes were loud, just such clothes as touts and gamblers affect, hard, bright-checked suits, bright yellow shoes, ties of the most radiant hues, hats of a clashing sonorousness, and rings and pins and cuff-links glistening with diamonds or rubies—the kind of man who is convinced that clothes and a little money make the man, as they quite do in such instances.
Galvin had the social and moral point of view of both the hawk and the buzzard. According to Wood, who early made friends with him quite as he did with the Chinese and others for purposes of study, he was identified with some houses of prostitution in which he had a small financial interest, as well as various political schemes then being locally fostered by one and another group of low politicians who were constantly getting up one scheme and another to mulct the city in some underhanded way. He was a species of political and social grafter, having all the high ideals of a bagnio detective: he began to interest Mr. Tobias Mitchell, who was a creature of an allied if slightly higher type, and the pair became reasonably good friends. Mitchell used him as an assistant to Hazard, Bellairs, Bennett, Hartung and myself: he supplied the paper with stories which we would rewrite. I used to laugh at him, more or less to his face, as being a freak, which of course generated only the kindliest of feelings between us. He always suggested to me the type of detective or plain-clothes man who would take money from street-girls, prey on them, as indeed I suspected him of doing.