Chapter I: Front Matter

Transcriber’s Note

Italics are enclosed in _underscores_, boldface in =equals signs=.

WASHINGTON CONFIDENTIAL

_Previously Published_

_by Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer_

NEW YORK CONFIDENTIAL
CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL

_by Jack Lait_

HELP WANTED (_a play_)
THE BIG HOUSE
BROADWAY MELODY
BEAST OF THE CITY
PUT ON THE SPOT
GANGSTER GIRL
BEEF, IRON AND WINE (_short stories_)
GUS THE BUS
OUR WILL ROGERS
WILL ROGERS’ WIT AND WISDOM
A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO SUCCESSFUL WRITING

_by Lee Mortimer_

NEW YORK BEHIND THE SCENES

_WASHINGTON
Confidential_

_BY JACK LAIT_
AND
_LEE MORTIMER_

CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC.
NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY CROWN PUBLISHERS, INC.

_Second Printing, February 1951_

_Printed in the United States of America_
_American Book--Knickerbocker Press, Inc., New York_

_The Confidential Contents_

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!