Washington Confidential 1 – Mortimer · Verses Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 1Introduction
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 1
Introduction
MortimerEnglish
Introduction: WASHINGTON CONFIDENTIAL ix
Part One--THE PLACES (Confidential!)
1. DISTRICT OF CONFUSION 1 Washington’s whys and wherefores, guaranteed to mystify, amaze and amuse.
2. “GORGEOUS” GEORGETOWN 8 No relation to the wrestler, only sometimes he makes more sense than the rich big domes and fancy queers who reside in this made-to-order Greenwich Village.
3. NW COULD MEAN NOWHERE 12 North West is the only section of Washington which counts. On the other hand, what is there in it you won’t find in Denver, Detroit or Dubuque, except the White House?
4. NOT-SO-TENDER TENDERLOIN 21 Where the hustlers hustle.
5. HOBOS WITH NO HORIZONS 30 They can’t vote the bums in Washington’s flophouses, otherwise these skidrows are like your home-town Bowery, except there are three.
6. GREEN PASTURES 34 Here the poor, downtrodden colored folk are not equal, they’re superior. And there are more of them. This is a Negro Heaven.
7. MIGHTY LIKE A ROSE 46 Where the blackest crimes are hatched.
8. CHINATOWN CHIPPIES 56 Washington’s Chinatown offers inducements other than Chop Suey and Chow Mein.
9. THE OVERFLOW 62
A. The Free State--where anything goes for a price.
B. The Policy of the Old Dominion is policy.
10. UNCLE SAM: LANDLORD 70 The government owns 40% of the land. Read this and find out what happens on it.
Part Two--THE PEOPLE (Confidential!)
11. THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A DAME 74 You can say that again about those in Washington.
12. G-GIRLS 77 They come in two grades: A. Government Gals--they’re many and not so glamorous. B. Glamour Gals--they’re few and not so glamorous.
13. COMPANY GALS 83 Being a dissertation on a specialty known only to Washington and how one finds same.
14. FOR IMMORAL PURPOSES 86 The capital was made for lupos. An elucidation on how one goes about being one.
15. GARDEN OF PANSIES 90 The hand-on-hip set wins the battle of Washington.
16. THE LITTLE RED HERRINGS 99 Agrarian reformers--that’s what the bright State Department lads call them, in other countries. We call those in Washington traitors.
17. KICKING THE GONG AROUND 107 When we speak of hopheads, we don’t mean Congressmen.
18. THE YOUNG IN HEART 118 Until we read this book we liked children. In Washington the little dears are devils.
19. BOOZE AND BOTTLES 123 Washingtonians imbibe three times as much as you. Where they get it, how and why, with pointers on what to do with your hollow leg.
20. CAFE AU CORN 131 That’s Washington’s Cafe Society.
21. CALL ME MADAME 134 With apologies to Irv Berlin. Being the story of the Social Climbers who climbed in when SOCIETY climbed out.
22. STRIPED PANTS 144 Elsewhere men who wear ’em bury the dead; in Washington most who wear them are dead but not buried. That’s the sad tale of what happened to the once oh, so gay diplomatic corps.
23. LOBBYIST’S LICENSE--THE RIGHT TO PETITION 155 The population consists of so many five percenters, lobbyists, fixers, lawyers, press agents and men from Missouri, you’d think everyone was taking advantage of the Constitutional guarantee.
24. RACKETS BY REMOTE CONTROL 171 Washington’s underworld is operated by local overseers for absentee landlords. This is how the system works.
25. WHO’S WHO IN MOBOCRACY 177 The Blue Book of the silk-lined aristocracy who own the works.
26. THE TERROR FROM TENNESSEE 194 Estes in Plunderland.
27. LUCKY NUMBERS 206 After all, politics is a gamble, so why shouldn’t the citizens do it too?
28. IT’S A CRIME 213
Murder and mayhem, rape and robbery are pastimes in
Washington. Jail? Don’t be naïve.
29. THE LAW 220 The poor, underpaid coppers, who try to enforce it.
30. HOW TO STAY OUT OF JAIL 229 Hire the right lawyer and bondsman. This will name him.
31. THE BOSSES 234 They’re responsible for the works working. Maybe that’s why they don’t.
32. THE MONARCHS OF THE METROPOLIS 240 The “Honorable” members of Congress.
33. WIRETAPPERS, SNOOPS AND SPIES 245 The only thing they can’t tap is sign language.
Part Three--THE ESCAPE (Confidential!)
34. THE TUESDAY TO THURSDAY SET 254
Where shall we go? Anywhere, but most head north to
New York, Philly and Atlantic City.
35. BALTIMORE CONFIDENTIAL 258 Baltimore is less than an hour away, but what a difference! You’ll find things here they never heard of even in Chicago.
Part Four--THE LOWDOWN (Confidential!)
36. INSIDE STUFF 276 What they don’t teach you in school.
37. TIPS ON THE TOWNS 281 Advice for the visitor with much that’s unknown to the natives.
38. CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE TO WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE 292 Where to find what, when, including much you should never want, but if you do--
Part Five--THE APPENDIX (Confidential!)
A. HEADWAITERS’ NAMES 298 This and a sawbuck will get you an insult.
B. GUSTATORY GUIDE 298 Where to find what food, when.
C. DINING AROUND THE WORLD 300 For those who don’t rate bids to embassies, but want to eat foreign.
D. BARE BABES 301 Where to find ’em. Or where to keep away from ’em, which is harder.
E. LUPO’S LOG BOOK 301 Being some notes to file away where your wife won’t look.
F. THE INNER CIRCLE 302 Extracts from the list of 800.
INDEX 307
WASHINGTON CONFIDENTIAL
P-s-s-s-t!
Here we go again--Confidential.
We turned New York inside out; but we both live there. We turned Chicago upside down; but we were both raised there. We descended on Washington not quite like Stanley invaded Africa, because in our combined 75 years of newspaper work we had been in the capital hundreds of times. It intrigued us because we never could understand it. So we decided brashly to do a Lait-Mortimer operation on it from scratch. Our principal discovery was that nobody understands Washington--the city, not the nation’s nerve-center.
By the time we went through it--its avenues, its alleys, its cat-houses, its dumps, its mansions, its hotels, its police stations, its jails, its courts, its clubs, its closets, and its catacombs, we knew more about it than anyone who lives in it, and finished the job which stymied Lincoln Steffens 40 years ago; for that classic muckraker who turned up the shame of the cities recoiled in bafflement when he attempted to “do” Washington.
It was our toughest task of digging, but we turned up plenty. We think we have X-rayed the dizziest--and this will amaze you, as it did us, the dirtiest--community in America.
We are not reformers. We are reporters. As such we will take you with us through a metropolitan area of 1,500,000, living in what should be a utopia, but which is a cesspool of drunkenness, debauchery, whoring, homosexuality, municipal corruption and public apathy, protected crime under criminal protection, hoodlumism, racketeering, pandering and plundering, among anomalous situations found nowhere else on earth.
Washington is a made-to-order architectural paradise with the political status of an Indian reservation, inhabited by 800,000 economic parasites; no industries but one, government, and the tradesmen and servants and loafers and scum that feed on the highest average per capita income in the world, where exist the soundest security, the mightiest power, and the most superlative rates of crime, vice and juvenile delinquency anywhere. And this in a seat of intelligence, the cross-section of the whole United States, where women far outnumber men.
It leads the country in the percentage of the native-born. There are no peasants, factory-workers or slums as they are known in every other city of magnitude.
The paternal form of local administration in this disenfranchised and politically castrated community should eliminate ward and district bosses, vote-buyers, grafters and gangsters, all of whom elsewhere thrive primarily on controlling votes. Yet in this magnificent planned city of majestic proportions, the official heart of the richest and greatest and freest land in the history of mankind, we found corruption and perversion, organized and individual, that dazed a pair of hardened characters who considered themselves shock-proof after their groundwork for the books that debunked New York and deloused Chicago.
We spent many months in Washington. We made contacts in our own surefire way, which opened up sources not usually available to the reporters there, who regard affairs of their town as chickenfeed, and who dream of becoming syndicated columnists who can pontificate on Congress, the Cabinet and the White House.
We know plenty about those, too. But we will stick to the Lowdown on the Big Town, which has become our trademark.
We will not even attempt to be comprehensive. We have no hope or aim to make Washington a better place to live in. We don’t give a damn what kind of a place it is to live in, except that the kind of place we found furnished us with that sole commodity in which we deal--copy.
Everything interested us, but we will limit this to what we think will interest you. This is no guide-book. This is no preachment and no appeal, not even a lesson. As we said in the introduction to Chicago Confidential, “We have nothing to sell except books.” And we sold plenty of them and are still selling them.
This will be the stripped-down story of a queen who turned into a street-walker.
That’s why we were born--to tell you what you couldn’t find out without us--Confidential!
