American Mobsters – The Gang Battle for the Affections of Ida “The Goose”

Ida “The Goose” Burger was a strikingly beautiful ballroom girl and sometimes prostitute who was the favorite of several members of the gang of five hundred Gophers, who controlled the Hell’s Kitchen area of ​​New York, which operated on the west side of Manhattan, from Fourteenth Street to Fifty-seventh Street. The Gophers passed Ida the Goose from boss to boss, and even low-level members of her gang. But make no mistake, Ida belonged to the treacherous Gophers and anyone who thought otherwise would be dealt with harshly.

Jack Tricker was a saloonkeeper/gangster who, after Monk Eastman was sent to prison for armed robbery, headed a faction of Eastman’s mob on the Lower East Side. Tricker owned a bar on Park Row in midtown Manhattan, but after it was shut down by the authorities for basically being a den of iniquity, Tricker decided to leave the Lower East Side and go into Hell’s Kitchen. He decided that maybe because of the internal battles of the Gophers, they weren’t so tough anymore. In an act of defiance, he bought the Old Stag Bar on West 28th Street, smack in the middle of Gopher territory, and renamed it the Maryland Café.

One of Tricker’s men somehow won the affections of Ida the Goose, and spit in the Gophers’ faces, by taking Ida away from an influential Gopher and taking her to the Café Maryland, where she was installed as the main attraction; the “Belle of The Ball”, so to speak. The Gophers immediately sent an emissary to Tricker, demanding the return of Ida the Goose. Tricker told the emissary that he would not get involved, one way or another, and that it was their problem, not his. Immediately, threats poured from the Gophers to Tricker’s gang, who heavily armed themselves in anticipation of war. But after weeks went by with nothing happening, Tricker’s gang relaxed a bit, thinking that the Gophers were just talk and no action.

In October 1910, four Gophers, one of whom was Ida’s ex-boyfriend, swaggered into the Café Maryland, approached the bar, and ordered four beers. Six Tricker gangsters, who were sitting at a large round table, were so shocked by the audacious move that they froze and didn’t say a word, much less try to dislodge the invaders. Outraged, it was Ida the Goose who spoke first. She yelled at the Gophers, “Hello! You guys have some value!”

The gophers calmly finished their beer, then one slowly turned around and said, “Well, let’s get started.” They each pulled out two pistols and began spraying the walls, mirrors and tables of the bar with gunfire. The two bartenders, who were not part of Tricker’s gang, dove behind the bar, and five of Tricker’s men were shot and disabled. The sixth, who was Ida’s new lover, dives under Ida’s floating skirt for protection. She looked at him disdainfully, then shrugged her shoulders and said, “Say, you! Go out and take it.”

Ida pushed him to the center of the floor and the Gophers pumped four bullets into his torso. Then Ida’s ex-boyfriend stepped forward and she put the finishing touches, firing a shot into the fallen man’s brain.

The four Gophers filed out of the Maryland Café, closely followed by Ida the Goose, beaming with pride that such a battle was being waged for her affections. She went back to the Gophers and never left her side again.