But Baltimore is getting the gravy that overflows from crowded Washington, the hot money out for the kind of fun not tolerated in the District. Baltimore is somewhat in the state of development Chicago knew four decades ago. That city’s political morality is still primitive. The same trend is manifest in Baltimore. Yet crimes of violence and serious felonies are not as pronounced as in either Washington or Chicago.
Most citizens are openly on the side of the law-breakers, too; the concepts of liberty and non-interference play into the hands of the hoodlums and the harpies.
At this writing, any and all forms of vice are tolerated and protected. There is a price for everything, and it’s not much. In fact, it costs only $500 to jump to the top of the police promotion list.
PART FOUR
THE LOWDOWN
(Confidential!)
36. INSIDE STUFF
The sharpie who got tired of selling the Brooklyn Bridge moved into the District and now sells the Washington Monument.
Suckers aren’t born at the rate of one a minute, Washington never does anything on time; but the Union Station and the airfield pour them out day and night. And God made them marks. For they are either simpletons with cow-dung on their boots or they are the conman’s dream, the lunk with larceny in his heart. Those who don’t come to Washington to gawk come to get. And the little chiseler is a setup for the bigger chiseler. The characters in “The Gilded Age,” by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner have shaved off their beards, but otherwise are still with us. Men with grandiloquent schemes, who think a Congressman from their county can land them a $10,000,000 contract for the quick conversion of a barn, are ready-made for the polished pros who can wrap that up for them and who set themselves forth as “expediters.”
They confide, sotto voce, that they have connections which they can’t even breathe about; they hint with delicacy that certain people must be reached, and for that purpose advance funds must be placed in hand, after which the expediter will gladly accept a small commission on the completed deal—as, if, and never.