Page 68 of Fire and Bones
“This stays between us for now, right? I mean, the information is out there for anyone clever enough to find it. I did. But why wave a red flag?”
“Sure,” I agreed. For now.
“Emmitt, Charles, and Leo Warring. The Foggy Bottom Gang. I spent hours this morning digging into these guys, mostly in the Washington Post archives.” Doyle jabbed a thumb at the satchel by her chair. “Found close to three hundred articles mentioning them.”
“Why?”
“Back in the day, they ruled Washington’s booze and gambling world.”
I was lost.
“Bootlegging and the numbers racket.” If a human can be said to chirp, Doyle did it.
“And the Warrings are relevant because?”
“First, a bit of history.” Flapping a hand to indicate I should settle back.
I did. Reluctantly.
“DC wasn’t always the slick, cosmopolitan burg it is today,” Doyle began. “Until the sixties, it was pretty much a sleepy, southern town. No Kennedy Center, no Watergate, no metro system. That all changed with the expansion of the federal government in the late sixties and seventies.
“But let me backtrack a little. Before DC was established, Georgetown was a separate municipality. It remained so until incorporated by the district in 1871. Foggy Bottom, which borders Georgetown on the Potomac, was the district’s industrial center. Do you know how the area got its name?”
“River fog and industrial smoke.”
“Exactly. There was a large gasworks at 26th and G which, according to all accounts, put out a truly noxious stink. A lumber mill, two breweries, a glass factory. The area was totally blue collar.”
I’d learned some of this during my brief time with Hickey. Didn’t let on.
After running an agitated finger through her notes, cherry-picking facts, Doyle resumed her, what? Tutorial?
“Just after the turn of the century, a man named Bruce T. Warring opened a barrel business on the Georgetown waterfront at K Street. The bucks rolled in, so a few years later he moved his growing family to a large home in Foggy Bottom. Ten kids, an older sister named Esther, blah, blah, blah…” One finger slid down the page. “The last three were boys, Leo born in 1903, Emmitt in 1905, Charles in 1907. The youngest Warring brothers were in their teens when the Volstead Act became the law of the land.”
“Bye-bye, booze.”
“Yep. Prohibition began in 1917 in DC, a bit earlier than in the rest of the country.”
“God bless the WCTU.” A sarcastic reference to the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.
“Your namesake peeps.”
“Not at all.” Though I was sober of necessity, a genomic drunk as Katy often teased, I had no issue with others enjoying their martinis or Pinots.
The searching finger hopped down the page.
“Anyway, Bruce’s daughter, Esther, and her husband, Bill Cady, were quick to see the opportunities offered by a demand for illegal alcohol. Their residence, a row house at 2512 K Street, served as their base of operation.”
Doyle’s eyes rolled up to mine. “That’s just west of Washington Circle and the present-day George Washington University Hospital.”
“Got it.”
Lan, having quietly reentered the room, stood awaiting instruction, coffee pot at the ready.
“No, thanks,” I said, shielding my cup with one hand.
“I’m good,” Doyle said.
Dipping her head ever so slightly, Lan withdrew.