Throughout its checkered history, the nation’s capital has held special allure for the most sophisticated species of the American criminal class: the con artist. Nowhere else, save perhaps for Wall Street, has the confidence game been more comfortably practiced and its practitioners more handsomely rewarded. Disciples of Phineas Barnum, knights of the golden fleece, con artists have swindled their way through society soirées on Embassy Row and wheedled their way into
IT WAS AT THE TOBACCO COUNTER of the Willard Hotel at 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, the story goes, that Thomas Marshall, who served for eight years as Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, uttered the words that were to become one of America’s classic aphorisms: “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.” As with so many other good
IT’S AUGUST IN Washington, and the livin’ ain’t easy. Under the swelter of the noonday sun, the nation’s capital is moving in shimmering slow-mo. If you walk, you’ll wilt. The subway tunnels are steam baths. Most of the city’s taxicabs — those without air-conditioning — are hell on wheels. The smart folks have gotten out of town. Had it not been for Harry Zitelman, however, things might be even worse.
A dense curtain of fog gripped the Long Island coastline in the early hours of June 13, 1942, parted here and there only by misty beams of moonlight. Amagansett Beach, a sheltered stretch of rolling dunes and tall grasses, was deserted, serene.
AS HE FACED CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATORS in an eleventh-hour attempt to salvage his reputation, if not his fortune, Harry Wardman swayed nervously in the witness chair. Even at 62, though slightly florid, the one-time kingpin of the Washington real-estate business had not lost the vitality and vigor that had compelled him so often to work 20-hour days. He had come down