Washington Confidential 19 – Mortimer · Library Across
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 19Part 2 · BOOZE AND BOTTLES
18
Literature · Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
Washington Confidential 19
Part 2 · BOOZE AND BOTTLES
MortimerEnglish
Washingtonians imbibe three times as much as you do, friend voter. Except for a few silly restrictions, no place in the country offers as many inducements to the potential alcoholic. The answer is, 14,151 drunks last year created a jail “housing crisis.” The number more than doubled in the last five years. Liquor consumption of the District is three times the U. S. average. Every resident, including new-born infants, soaked up almost four gallons of hooch last year.
Even allowing for thirsty tourists, conventioners, and Virginia and Maryland commuters, Washington drinks more than any other U. S. city, including dissolute New York and debauched Chicago.
This is the place where price control was invented, yet the District has no peacetime minimum price law on bottled goods. You can buy standard brands for a dollar less than anywhere else. Many unnamed whiskeys and gins are cheap; it doesn’t pay to cook your own. Whiskey costs less than $2.50 a fifth, and gin can be bought for $1.75. Yet the bootleg business is a major industry. Millions of gallons sold in the District, on which no tax was paid, swell the known figures.
The liquor control situation is an anomaly. Like the District of Columbia, itself, the liquor laws were born of compromise, this between Congressmen from the wet and bone-dry states.
You can drink hard liquor in restaurants and cocktail lounges, but only when sitting at a table. Beer and wines may be dispensed over the bar, but not to standees. You’ve got to find a stool. Some genius figured you can’t get plastered sitting down, forgetting that many who drink and sit can’t stand up again.
Hard liquor may not be sold on Sundays, though beer and wine can be. Bars can remain open until 2 A.M. every night except Saturday and Sunday, when they must shutter promptly at 12. You can’t line drinks on your table; anything in your possession at the closing hour will be swept out of your hand. Most places issue the last call 15 minutes before the limit and in that final quarter-hour there are wild drinking scenes as customers try to get drunk all at once.
Liquor for off-premise consumption is sold in bottle stores, of which there are about 350. They close at nine on weekdays and at midnight on Saturdays and all day Sundays. A package store license costs $815 a year, but it will cost you $50,000 to buy one, as the ABC Board has frozen the rolls.
Those who can’t get a bun on by closing time have no trouble locating an oasis after the curfew. At this writing there are 613 so-called bottle-clubs running in the District, in addition to hundreds of gin flats in Black Town, where almost any cab driver will steer you. Bootleggers work certain street corners, where you can buy bottle goods after hours.
The legal age minimum is 18 for beer and 21 for hard stuff, but this law, like almost all other rules and regulations, is breached more often than honored.
Citizens and Congressmen seek sporadically to rationalize local liquor laws, in hope of cutting down violations. But the dry bloc buries the bills in committees. Everyone was surprised when the House District Affairs Committee managed to bring up a bill permitting sale until two on Saturday nights. This turned out to be a piece of parliamentary jockeying in the fight against the President’s FEPC Bill, of all things. That law, obnoxious to Southerners, would have come up for a vote unless one with legislative priority could be sent in ahead. And that bill, according to the calendar, was a proposed law to liberalize drinking habits in the District. So the Southerners brought it up, side-tracked the FEPC, and, a couple of weeks later, when it came time to vote on the booze act, roundly routed it.
The thirsty visitor finds it easy to find a bottle-club and become a full-fledged drinking member on the spot. The names, locations and owners of these after-hour spots vary from day to day. Occasionally, after clean-ups, all or most close for a couple of weeks or a couple of months. As these words were written the District was recovering from its most painful drought, brought on by revelations before the District Crime Investigating Committee, headed by Attorney Fischbach.
The front-page stories forced the cops and U. S. Attorney Fay to close some joints. Others lay low awhile. A murder in the Hideaway Club didn’t help, either.
We made an intensive study of bottle-clubs. Of the score or more we visited, we found only one apparently operating legitimately and according to law. That was the Lyre’s Club, about which more later. Of the 600-plus such clubs in Washington, it is possible that a few adhere to the book, but we didn’t hear of them.
On paper, bottle-clubs are supposed to be membership organizations, incorporated for social and benevolent purposes. Members bring their own liquor, which is held for them, their names on the labels. The clubs sell setups and food.
Charlie Ford, a Washington attorney to whom we will have occasion to tip our hats in much more detail later, is the lawyer for a number of clubs. He officiated at their births.
Here’s how most of them really work. Regular patrons, i.e., “members,” are supposed to pay annual dues of about $10, depending on the club, but most regulars pay nothing. Transients, i.e., guests, are charged a door-fee of one or two dollars, depending on the club.
Setups are sold, to those who bring their own liquor, at a nominal price of 35 cents and up. If you haven’t your stuff parked or with you, most clubs will sell it to you under the counter or advise you it can be had from a guy seated in front of the entrance in a car.
These clubs are incorporated as non-profit private enterprises, not required to pay Federal amusement taxes even when they provide floor shows and dancing. Nor need they have ABC liquor licenses, because they are supposed not to be selling.
Many of them operate as follows: The prospective owner or owners and a couple of their friends or employes incorporate as a social or benevolent organization. The real owner then rents and furnishes the premises, which he in turn sublets to the so-called social club at a rent which will approximate all the “take” from membership and door charges. The “club” thereupon turns over the kitchen, the sale of setups and the hat-checking and cigaret stand to the real proprietor, as a concession, in return for a token payment, which in turn goes back to the proprietor with the rent.
In clubs that sell liquor illegally or provide gambling, records of such activities are not kept. The proceeds go directly into the owner’s pocket. If raided or threatened by cleanup drives, the clubs disband. The owner organizes a new club under the same terms and repeats the process.
A new twist is being added since the Fischbach exposé. Some club proprietors are making deals with units of legitimate bodies, such as veteran groups, labor unions, etc., whereby the clubs share some of the profits. One, the Amvets, closed after the Hideaway shooting, its Charter lifted by the national organization.
Bottle-clubs find customers in a variety of ways. Some employes of licensed night clubs and restaurants hand out guest-membership cards to patrons who inquire where they can go after two. These steerers write their names on the cards and draw a kickback for every customer, usually a dollar a head.
Many cab drivers shill for the bottle-clubs, as well as for gin flats. Cab drivers’ pay varies with the size of the party. They sometimes get as much as $5 a haul. They are the chief source of prospective patronage for the colored bottle-clubs. More than 500 after-hour spots in Washington are operated by Negroes or in the Negro district. All cater to blacks and whites. The twenty to thirty white bottle-clubs running are segregated as to Negro musicians and actors. In one club we saw three pretty blonde girls with two Negro men. They were all reefer-smokers, palpably.
Cabbies who hustle for the bottle-clubs not only do so in front of hotels and licensed cabarets and restaurants, but try to pirate customers away from opposition clubs. When they see a prospect waiting for the peephole to open, they tout him away “to a better place, where you won’t have any trouble.” The Hideaway, in Georgetown, depended almost entirely on such maneuvers, as it is far out and off the beaten track.
The pirates were acting so brazenly, police stepped in to curb the practice by giving tickets to drivers parked at strategic spots. The law requires cabs to cruise at all times, except in posted hack-stands, which are only outside major hotels.
Food, dancing, entertainment, and often dames are for sale at the clubs. Sometimes waitresses are available, but they work until 6 in the morning, by which time the average rounder has forgotten all about it. The price for a $10 girl picked up in a club is $20.
Some provide craps, stud poker and other games. The night we were there, a crap game ran on the top floor of the Atlas Club, on Pennsylvania Avenue, two blocks from the White House, and at the Stage-crafters Club, another hangout of General Harry Vaughan. The Atlas applied for a private club liquor license, which would permit legal sales, but the application was held up by the ABC Board until the club president, Sidney Brown, who was abroad, could return for a personal appearance. It happened that Mr. Brown, the sponsor of this after-hour spot, was abroad because he is an employe of the State Department. Some months previously, gambler Gary Quinn said he was the president of the Atlas. The license was denied, so it is still running as a bottle-club.
Among the after-hour clubs operating at this writing are the Top Side, 501 12th Street, NW; the Guess Who, 811 L Street, NW; the Acropolis, 719 9th Street, NW (patronized by Greeks); the Culinary Arts, 307 M Street, NE, and the Yamasee, 1214 U Street, NW. The last two are colored clubs.
The most notorious of the after-hour-spots speaks, the Gold Key, was closed by Committee revelations. It has since reorganized as the Downtown Club, with some of the same characters. Most of the others are patronized by unimportant transients or night workers, such as musicians, waiters and bartenders.
The Gold Key got the cream and they’re back again. Among its regular patrons were local sports, including playboy Senators and officials. Waitresses there made as much as $150 a week in tips, whereas they are lucky to knock down $50 in other places. When lawyer Charlie Ford drew up the papers for the Gold Key, its original organizers were Albert Glickfield, alias Al Brown, Patsy Meserole, and Harry Conners, his brother-in-law. Meserole is a former New York gangster, one of the last surviving members of the late Legs Diamond mob. Glickfield is a gambler and associate of Frank Erickson. The accountant for this after-hour club was Henry W. Davis, a division head in the Accounting Division of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, an agency of the U. S. Government.
Meserole left the Gold Key to open the Stagecrafters, 433 3rd Street, NW, and took a lot of the top political and theatrical business with him. His partner is Dominic Ferone, another ex-New York mobster. General Vaughan is a patron. It sells liquor openly and provides gambling, and waitresses will get women for them as wants ’em. Meserole testified under oath that many Congressmen and Senators were customers.
When Congressional investigations indicated the club was operated illegally, it was shuttered until the heat was off. But so heavy was the influence of its owners, through business ties with members of the New York Syndicate and the exalted position of its patrons, that as soon as the investigation shut down, the club reopened, not quietly, but brazenly.
We have before us an ad in a Washington daily which reads:
NOTICE....
Members and Their Guests
STAGECRAFTERS CLUB
NOW REOPENED
Same Place....
Same Policy....
Same Committees....
Same Benefits....
Membership Drive Now On
Help Get New Members!
EDWARD P. MESEROLE, Secretary
The Stagecrafters is the haunt of unsavory “introducers” who make contacts with wealthy chumps there, offering girls and gambling. Police recently arrested a lout, who, they charged, had become acquainted with William H. Engelmann, a photo-lithographer from Baltimore, out for a fling with friends in the Stagecrafters. The prisoner suggested a blackjack game and took him to a room in the Ambassador Hotel, which is owned by Gwen Cafritz’s husband. Engelmann was soon a $1,500 loser, and asked his host to cash a check. He said he would, at the hotel cashier’s booth, and left with Engelmann’s check. Engelmann became suspicious when the man didn’t return after an hour. He found the man had checked out. When the fellow was caught, police said, they found on him a deck of marked cards.
Another bottle-club that opened after the adjournment of the Congressional investigation is on the site of the Palm Grill, at 14th and Q, under a new name, the Sunrise.
The shuttered Turf-and-Grid was reborn as the aforementioned Amvets. The Turf’s owner, Richard O’Connell, has been employed by the government since the beginning of the New Deal, in such agencies as the original NRA, the Department of the Interior (under “Honest Harold” Ickes) and more recently in the Red-infested Wages and Hours Division of the Department of Labor.
Another club that operates on and off is the United Nations Social Club. When we visited it, its chief social activity was a crap game. Another is the Crystal Cavern.
When George P. Harding, a 39-year-old gunman and underworld fingerman, was shot to death by Joe Nesline, notorious Prohibition era bootlegger, in the Hideaway--an aftermath of last year’s conquest of Washington by the Mafia--Washington’s bottle-clubs took another shellacking.
Congressmen beat their breasts, newspapers shrilled, the DA promised action and the cops vowed to close all the joints. For a few days a couple of clubs went easy; at this writing most were again in action.
The Hideaway, scene of the crime, was reported “closed for good” by the precinct captain, but Joseph Horowitz, an owner, announced “business as usual” while the cops were telling everyone the premises were empty. At press time, the present and future status of the club was in doubt.
Legitimate clubs are a necessity until the District authorities amend the outmoded liquor laws. One which we liked is the Lyre’s. Most members of this club are night-workers whose hours are such that they could never get a drink or relax if they had no place to go after 2 A.M. Among them are musicians of the big hotels and night clubs, waiters, waitresses, hatcheck gals, government swing-shift people and visiting entertainers. We spent considerable time at the Lyre’s and noted everything was on the square. No patrons were permitted to enter who weren’t members or their guests, and no drinks were served except out of members’ bottles.
The Lyre’s is chummy. There’s a mainfloor bar and lounge and a basement dining-room and dance floor. Most of the musicians in town hang out there and put on jam sessions all night long. Its hosts are Vince and Mildred Carr, former Baltimore and Philadelphia night club operators. They have many friends in show business. The Carrs won’t tolerate hookers and drunks, allow no soliciting, gambling or hoodlums. But unfortunately the Lyre’s is unique.
Not all who want to drink late can afford to or can get into or know about bottle-clubs. Those who spend an evening in a licensed cabaret and find themselves still sober or out for fun at two, or at midnight on Saturday, are up against it. Licensed clubs and cocktail lounges can’t sell for off-premises consumption. If you tip your waiter liberally he will dig up an empty Coca-Cola bottle and let you fill it with the remaining liquor at your table.
Some people who run dry at midnight Saturdays drive to Maryland, where bars and package-stores close at 2 A.M.
Washington is loaded with bootleggers and blind tigers. We have already referred to the gin-flats in Black Town, where home-made gin--raw ethyl alcohol flavored with juniper and sometimes diluted with apple cider--is sold. Prices are reasonable, as low as 50 cents a drink and $3 a bottle. The flats, usually five- or six-room affairs, have juke-boxes. Parlor floors are cleared for dancing. Beds are handy. If cops come, it’s a private party. But cops don’t come.
We pulled up in our cab to the NE corner of Popner and U Streets, and waited five minutes. A colored man came over and asked us what we wanted. He had gin, Scotch and corn. We bought gin, trade-marked, $2.50 for a pint.
David Douglas Davenport, self-styled “Union Station bootlegger,” has been selling booze in the railroad terminal for years. He charges $5 for a pint of whiskey, which he keeps stashed in an automatic coin locker. Davenport has a record for court appearances, 115 in one year. He lost to the law once, and did two years in the District jail. The day he got out of the can he was in business in Union Station again and still was at this writing, though arrested again and out on bail.
Many after-hour bootleggers sell legitimate stuff, which they buy at Washington’s low prices, and retail at 100 or 200 per cent profit. Hundreds of other bootleggers, especially Negroes, dispense moonshine. Most of this is acquired from mob sources in Brooklyn and New Jersey, where the Mafia operates gigantic stills capable of producing thousands of gallons a day. According to Carroll Mealy, capable and efficient head of the Alcoholic Tax Unit, the rum-runners take this stuff to Washington in 1940 Fords, with Cadillac or racing motors in place of original power. This model is preferred for its carrying capacity, maneuverability and inconspicuous appearance. The souped-up motors can hit 120 miles an hour against pursuit.
Much moonshine is made in Washington, though none of the raided stills was found with a large capacity. The stuff is cooked at 2nd and G Streets, NW. But legitimate Washington sources supply liquor to be run into nearby dry and semi-dry states and counties.
Not all who buy from bootleggers get drunk. Some get robbed.
“The tough part about it was that I never got the whiskey,” Army Sgt. Filmore M. Broom, 41, moaned to police.
He said a Negro offered to sell him a bottle, but when the sergeant pulled out his wallet, containing $190, to pay, the Negro snatched it and ran--with the whiskey, too. This happened at 5th and Neal Streets, NW, and police are looking for a Negro with red suspenders and a white straw hat. No winter description available.
