Gangster

"Cagney," by John McCabe. Knopf. 439 pages. $27.50.Actor James Cagney was a man of contradictions.On screen he personified restless energy and lurking violence, but off screen he was a quiet, introspective, private man who wrote poetry, painted and backed environmental causes.In an industry known for promiscuity and excess, Cagney was faithfully married for 65 years; he avoided parties and rarely drank alcohol. He maintained lifelong personal and professional relationships with his three brothers and one sister, but his minimal contact with his adopted children eventually led to estrangement.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa -- Rashaad Staggie, head of a gang called the Hard Living Kids, met an even harder death.A dealer in violence and drugs, he was given rough justice by a vigilante group that has taken the law into its own hands for the past year because members feel the police are ineffective.The vigilantes circled Staggie's house in Cape Flats, one of the most crime-ridden areas in the country, to stop his drug dealing.Staggie was not there that night in August 1996, but when he heard of the demonstration he headed home, full of bravado.

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- Bloodshed is no stranger to Ciudad Juarez, the border city across the swirling Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. For years, it has had a murder rate twice New York's, but authorities mostly shrugged off the carnage so long as it did not spill out of the shanty towns and victims could be dismissed as drug dealers.Recently, however, something seems to have snapped. After a series of daytime attacks by gangsters firing automatic rifles claimed 20 lives in a month, business people, clerics and other civic leaders are speaking out.A nationwide wave of homicide has followed the death in July of Amado Carrillo Fuentes, the Mexican drug trafficker who made Juarez his main smuggling gateway to the United States.

Ah, the Depression. Who doesn't long for those days when rival big-city gangs waged war on each other, tearing apart families and impoverished neighborhoods?Oh, yeah. We do have rival gangs tearing apart neighborhoods. They just don't dress as well as they do in "Hoodlum."The gangster genre endures, perhaps, because movies like "Hoodlum" make violence look so good. But while "Hoodlum" paints Harlem in sepia tones and gorgeously re-creates scenes of '30s New York (although it was filmed in Chicago)

He was recently rated the No. 1 star in Hollywood history. He's probably had more books written about him than any other American movie star. He made snarls and lisps seem downright sexy.He's even been immortalized on a postage stamp.Which helps explains why tomorrow, Humphrey Bogart takes up a two-month stay at the Charles Theatre.Beginning with a showing of "The Petrified Forest" tomorrow and Monday, the Charles will be screening Bogart films every Saturday morning and Monday evening through Oct. 27. For fans, the 11-film festival offers a rare chance to see Bogie on the big screen, to see a larger-than-life character in the sort of larger-than-life setting he belongs.

SpiderI wassitting so long a spider seized me,dropped his guideline from my sweater,commenced his killer's cartwheelsand lunges, weaving and wanderingin space on silk.I could not let such spinning stop.I sat still and watched him dance designsin the dazzled air.BatThe gray headed fruit bat hangs upside down,bears her baby upside down, panting,showing her assassin's pointed teethin a rosebud mouth.She licks her baby into life, covers himwith her lady gangster's black leather wings.ManThe Afrikaner told how he and other officers shota young black student, made a fire.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- Race continues to pervade the American consciousness in subtly pernicious ways, making us an edgier and ever more divided country, and there are many little signs that it's getting worse. But here and there are a few big signs that suggest the opposite, and they're as welcome as the first shafts of sunlight after a storm.Last Sunday the Washington Post gave about a page of space to a young black reporter's reflections on the indirect racism he sees everywhere about him. He didn't mean the name-calling bigotry of the past, he explained, but the race-based responses of white taxi drivers to blacks seeking to hail them, of white women finding themselves alone in elevators with black men, of whites of all sorts confronted by black belligerence.

TOKYO -- Nomura Securities Co.'s top 15 executives resigned yesterday in an unprecedented bid by the Japanese brokerage to restore an image tarnished by disclosures that it was illegally dealing with gangsters.The resignations, which included the head of Nomura's European operations and 14 Tokyo-based executives, come six weeks after Nomura said two executives had passed $560,000 through an illegal account to a sokaiya, a racketeer who blackmails companies. It was the second mob-related scandal involving Nomura in six years.

Though Humphrey Bogart is a cult figure today, popularity came relatively late in his career as an actor. Trained on the stage, he spent a decade in mostly "B" movies for Warner Brothers Studio before becoming a star with "High Sierra" (1940) and "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). Astonishingly, Bogart was offered these roles only after George Raft turned them down, but once Bogart achieved success in these movies his career rose steadily.Soon after his death in 1957, Bogart became an unconventional hero in the United States and Europe.

"8 Ball Chicks: A Year in the Violent World of Girl Gangsters," by Gini Sikes. Anchor Books. 320 pages. $23.95The times, they are a changin': Today's kids are more familiar with the dark terrors of a drive-by than the wholesome fun of a drive-in. In their alternative rock song "Novocaine for the Soul" the Eels sing "Life is hard/ and so am I/ give me something/ so I don't die/ before I sputter out."That hit could be the anthem for the youths who populate Gini Sikes' uneven but compelling docudrama exploration of the lives of girl gangsters, "8 Ball Chicks."