You Can't Win - free ebook by Jack Black

YOU CAN’T WIN

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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This book is dedicated to Fremont Older, to Judge Frank H. Dunne, to the unnamed friend who sawed me out of the San Francisco jail and to that dirty, drunken, disreputable, crippled beggar, “Sticks” Sullivan, who picked the buckshot out of my back—under the bridge—at Baraboo, Wisconsin. The Author....

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FOREWORD

The revelations of a thief or of a prostitute are rightfully suspected by the normal citizen of having been dressed for publicity, either sensational or sentimental or both. An unstable emotionalism in the subject, perhaps psychopathic, induces a melodramatic and unreal treatment of past experience. The tale is told not as it happened but rather as the subject likes, in reverie, to think it happened or as he believes the reader would like to have had it happen. There is nothing of that sort in J

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CHAPTER I

I am now librarian of the San Francisco Call . Do I look like one? I turn my chair so I can look in the mirror. I don’t see the face of a librarian. There is no smooth, high, white forehead. I do not see the calm, placid, composed countenance of the student. The forehead I see is high enough, but it is lined with furrows that look like knife scars. There are two vertical furrows between my eyes that make me appear to be wearing a continual scowl. My eyes are wide enough apart and not small, but

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CHAPTER II

I was a problem to my father, running loose about the hotel while he was at work, and finally he took me to a Catholic school one hundred miles away. On that short trip my father and I got to be good friends, and I think I was closer to him that day than on any other of our lives. Father left that evening and told me to be good, mind the Sisters, and study hard. I fell into my groove in the school with other boys of my age. Our days were passed pleasantly with our small studies, many prayers, an

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CHAPTER III

At last the day came for me to go home, for I had passed my fourteenth birthday and was too old to stay at the Sisters’ School. I wanted to kiss my favorite teacher good-by, but didn’t quite dare do it. So I rode down to the station with Tommy, who bought me a fifty-cent knife, out of his salary, only twelve dollars a month, and went away to join my father. Father took me back to the same hotel, to the same room. He had occupied it during the three years I had been away, and the only change was

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CHAPTER IV

In his new position father was forced to travel much, often leaving me to my own devices for weeks and sometimes months. I was put up at a small boarding house kept by a widow, who had two children. She was over-worked, sickly, and cranky. She had half a dozen boarders. Before he left, father gave me the money I had saved up, and told me to look about for a job. There was nobody at the hotel that interested me. The widow was always whining and I kept away from her. Her children were too small fo

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CHAPTER V

“ Give me a name, any name you like,” said the madam as we went downstairs. “I want you to meet my girls. They’ll all be glad to see you again.” I had but one name then, so I gave her that, and was introduced to the girls who were waiting in the dining room, the same six girls that had been arrested. If they noticed my embarrassment they did not show it. Two or three of them nodded, looked at me half curiously, half amused; the others, excepting Julia, did not even glance at me. She came over to

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CHAPTER VI

As we walked to our boarding house I told my father the whole story of my job in the cigar store, my collecting for the milkman, my arrest, and our rescue of Julia. He listened without comment, and when I was done, said: “Well, John, you’ll be what you’ll be, and I cannot help or hinder you. Go back to your job in the morning if you like.” Those were his last words to me. They were kind, and I have always remembered them and their ring of fatality. I never saw him again. I learned later that he

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CHAPTER VII

I was taken downstairs and locked in a cell; I saw no more of the “bull pen” where I spent the night. My cellmate was a handsome, smiling young fellow about twenty-two or twenty-three. He looked like a country boy, rugged, red-cheeked, blue-eyed, sandy-haired. He seemed to be well acquainted in the jail. Some one sang out, “Who’s the fresh fish, ‘Smiler’?” “Another vag,” he answered. “Fifteen days.” I told him about my case at once. I felt outraged. “Forget it, kid. Your fifteen days will be in

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CHAPTER VIII

There was a legend on the road that the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City was a veritable storehouse of gold, silver, and precious stones and it was this that lured Smiler back to that city. At that time a high adobe wall surrounded the block on which stood the Tabernacle and the then unfinished Mormon Temple. We looked it over for several days and nights but could get nothing tangible to work on. Sunday we attended services and the plate was to be seen, silver and gold; more than we could car

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CHAPTER IX

To say I was shocked, stunned, or humiliated on entering the penitentiary would not be the truth. It would not be true in nine cases out of any ten. It would be true if a man were picked up on the street and taken directly to a penitentiary, but that isn’t done. He is first thrown into a dirty, lousy, foul-smelling cell in some city prison, sometimes with an awful beating in the bargain, and after two or three days of that nothing in the world can shock, stun, or humiliate him. He is actually ha

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CHAPTER X

An apprentice to a mob of yeggs has to do the rough, unskilled work just as if he were learning a trade from any craftsman. I was sent out to get dynamite, caps, and fuse at a railroad construction camp, and returned with them safely. My next job was to go out and buy a number of twist drills. Johnnie hired a horse, bought a couple of blankets and a pair of overalls, and set off to look over the general store. The dynamite and drills were to be left near the store so they would be available in c

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CHAPTER XI

We arrived in San Francisco safely and without incident. The first thing was to get rooms. My experience in the matter of Smiler inclined me toward a room by myself. Sanc, always cautious, decided it would be safest to have separate rooms. I found a nice, quiet German hotel in the Mission where I located, and Sanc found himself a place downtown. After getting settled, Sanc took our paper money to a bank and got gold for it. At that time storekeepers hesitated about taking paper. Many of them did

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CHAPTER XII

During Sanc’s absence I worked industriously, bettering his instructions by renting two rooms a day and making the duplicate keys. In most instances the clerks returned my money when I told them I was called away and could not occupy the rooms. My days were well filled with work, renting two rooms, making two keys, trying to get my room money refunded and visiting the safety box twice a day, sometimes following a depositor out and around the streets to see what he did with his money. My evenings

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CHAPTER XIII

Having plenty of time and spending money I visited San Jose, towns down the peninsula, and across the bay—always with an eye to business. Jewelry-store windows are fascinating to the thief. He must stop and look over the sparkling plunder. Even in these days of my regeneration I stop occasionally from habit at a jewelry-store window. Usually there are others looking, too! I paused before a jewelry-store window in Oakland one evening, just at closing time. The clerks were clearing it out for the

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CHAPTER XIV

George smiled and took a better grip on my hand. “Yes, I remember you, young fellow. You’ve grown some. Have you gathered any wisdom?” “I’ve gathered enough to know that you are entitled to any part of this,” I said, producing my small bankroll. “This is payable to-morrow night,” he said, taking twenty dollars. The money was returned promptly and a bond of friendship and confidence was formed that remains unbroken. I came to know him as “Rebel George,” prince of bunko men, the man who developed

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CHAPTER XV

During my stay in San Francisco I lived at the Reno House, a small workingman’s lodgings in Sacramento Street. It was owned by a man named Rolkin, a carpenter, who invested his small savings in it knowing nothing about the hotel business. He had a “crazy notion” that he could put clean linen on every bed every day in this cheap place and survive. His competitors said he was insane. He persisted, however, and on that “crazy idea” he built a string of fine hotels that he counts to-day like a baref

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CHAPTER XVI

Summer came and the memorable World’s Fair. I saw it all, but it put an awful dent in my bankroll and winter was coming. I heard wonderful tales of New York City and its opportunities, told by the hop smokers in California Jack’s, and had almost made up my mind to go there for the winter when I met an intelligent young chap who knew all about it. He advised me to stay away from New York. “It’s the toughest town in the United States for an outsider to get by in,” he said in answer to my questions

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CHAPTER XVII

When spring came, my Chinese “tillicum,” which is Chinook for friend, and I were the only felony prisoners in the “skookum house,” or jail. The two half-breeds had finished their time and a couple of others had been brought in to take their places, four prisoners in all. The Indians watched us and we watched them. The tough end of our job was not to beat the jail or the drunken jailer, but the watchful trusties, our fellow prisoners. I decided to cut the bars in the daytime and have my cellmate

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CHAPTER XVIII

Discarding my cinder-burnt clothes for a new outfit the next day, I bought a ticket for Victoria, B.C. On my way to the boat that evening I dropped the fat pocketbook into a mail box, where I knew it would be found, then examined, and returned to the loser. When I first began stealing I had but a dim realization of its wrong. I accepted it as the thing to do because it was done by the people I was with; besides, it was adventurous and thrilling. Later it became an everyday, cold-blooded business

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CHAPTER XIX

At last I was sent for by the prison tailor to be fitted into a discharge suit, and knew that I hadn’t more than a week or ten days to do. A day or two later the same guards took me to the same room, where I found the doctor, the deputy warden, the flogging master, and the triangle all ready for me. I saw I was in for it. The atmosphere was a little more “official” than on the former occasion. Mr. Burr’s beard bristled more, and his eye was a little harder. The doctor looked me over with more in

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CHAPTER XX

Spring came. For me that meant moving, and while I was trying to decide where to go I made by chance the acquaintance of a coal miner who had worked in a small mine in one of the middle-west provinces of Canada. In the course of our talks I learned by asking a few casual questions that the mine worked between thirty and forty men; that it was on a short branch road off the Canadian Pacific; that the pay-off was in cash, on or about the first of every month, and that the money was shipped by expr

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CHAPTER XXI

This strange coincidence of the marked piece of silver more than ever convinced me of the necessity for keeping something ahead so I wouldn’t be forced to go out and take long chances for short money. With enough in my pocket now to last me a month, I gave the town a thorough canvassing for something worth while. I found many places that appeared to be advertising for a burglar, and the most promising was the big general store. It was packed to the roof with merchandise, and the owners, to save

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CHAPTER XXII

The young fellow that helped me dispose of the stones was the wayward son of a fine family and it would not be right to them to use his name. I will call him “Spokane,” the monoger he was known by among his associates. He had been in San Francisco for years and was familiar with an underworld that I had seen very little of. Most of my life had been spent on the road or roughing it in out-of-the-way places, broken by a few months now and then in city slums. He introduced me into the elegant hop j

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CHAPTER XXIII

My first few months in the county jail were put in hard enough. About all I did was hate Irish Annie, and plan ways and means to revenge myself on her. I kept close track of her through friends and learned that her punishment began the day she got back to Canada. Her girls left her establishment when they saw her turn copper; her friends in the Tenderloin shunned her as if she had the leprosy. Finding herself cast out by these outcasts, she gathered up what she could and joined the gold rush to

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CHAPTER XXIV

I had money enough to last some little time, long enough to get my strength back, perhaps. I paid the landlady a month’s rent and told her I was a sick man and would be in my room all the time and not to disturb me. In this way I hoped to account for never stirring out of doors, which I did not dare do. I certainly was a sick man, and looked it. This landlady was very good-hearted, and, sympathizing with my illness, she did not leave me alone two hours in succession. She sent a Chinese boy every

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