badger game. Tai selected the victims, and he must have been a good judge of humans, for he seems never to have picked a bloomer. He would pick out some youth who was messenger or runner for a banker or broker—one who carried either cash or negotiable securities in large quantities around the city.
The girl Elvira would then make this lad, get him all fussed up over her—which shouldn’t have been very hard for her—and then lead him gently around to running away with her and whatever he could grab in the way of his employer’s bonds or currency.
Wherever they spent the first night of their flight, there Hook would appear—foaming at the mouth and loaded for bear. The girl would plead and tear her hair and so forth, trying to keep Hook—in his role of irate husband—from butchering the youth. Finally she would succeed, and in the end the youth would find himself without either girl or the fruits of his thievery.
Sometimes he had surrendered to the police. Two we found had committed suicide. The Los Angeles