32,000 SPEAKEASIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 124, 27 May 1932, Page 8

32,000 SPEAKEASIES.

NEW YORK'S HUGE TALLY. «NIGGER NATE'S" HIDING PEACE. RACE TRACK'S FATAL LI^E. (By a Special Correspondent) NEW YORK, April 15. We are wondering whether there will come a battle of figures between Police Commissioner Mulrooney and one of our favourite former commissioners, Grover Whalen.

Commissioner Mulrooney maintained stolidly during a luncheon speech that no one had the slightest idea, with the

exception of himself and a few others in his department, as to the number of speakeasies in the city.

"This will be given out at the proper time," he declared. "There will be a surprise later."

The figures published during Commissioner Whalen's regime stated there were 32,000 speakeasies on record. Mr. Whalen added that if he put a policeman in each one there would be none left for other protection. It makes us wonder what Commissioner Mulrooney lias in mind as a surprise. We talked with one of his cops, and were informed that there would be around 40,000 "speaks," in his opinion.

He thought that 20,000 more men would have to be placed on the police force to handle whatever the commissioners were talking about, and that that number would still leave no other protection.

Then he added that, because of the Increasing competition, both the liquor and the beer were getting more potable. A Nice Clean Place. The thing that all criminals most heartily desire is a secure hiding place. For "Nigger Nate," a gambler who knows hie New York the way a miser knows the insides of his pockets, and who is now serving a ten-year sentence, this city presented the easy way out when he learned a short while ago that police were seeking him on a charge of doping racehorses. Raymond knew that New York excels as a place in which to become lost, either permanently or for a stated period. The city is nationally known as a place where everybody rubs shoulders and nobody has neighbours.

Raymond made good his escape from the police for a time by descending to the most dense!}' populated section of the city, the Bowery. There, among men who think a dime is the highest piece of currency extant, the man who bet £10,000 on the turn of a card, and who is reputed to be one of the wealthiest of local gold hoarders, "faded out" for more than two weeks while the police sought high and low for him.

He occupied a room in a hotel which features on its front door a huge sign bearing the legend, "This is a clean place built for men who want to be absolutely free from vermin." He would have been free from gaol as well if he hadn't gone off to a race track to make a "killing" on a fixed iace.

The man who runs this hotel tells this story of "Nigger Nate":—

"I was making up his bed one day when he was out, and I found 1300 dollars in bills under his pillow. I put it in the safe, and when he came back I said to him, 'Did you lose something?' "'I don't know,' he says; 'maybe I did.'

"Is this yours?' I says, and shows him the 1300 dollars.

"'I don't know,' he says,

'maybe it

"The next day Nate comes to me and says, 'Want to make some money?' He tells me he's got it all fixed for a certain horse to come home first. 'I'll let you know in time,' he says. And he did. Ten days later I gets a wire from him with the name of the horse. It was boo late for me to place a bet. The race had been run before I could, but his horse won all right. He might still be hiding here if he had kept away from the track." Barber Shop Blues. When we must have our hair cut we go through the process on a Saturday at a modest hotel near the office, whose barbers hope soon to get jobs in Times i Square, a half-block away.

Our barber is perfect, but he has had the habit, we noticed, of leaving his chair and patron, and arguing with a lady at the door.

"Madam," we overheard to-day, is in California."

_ There followed all sorts of exclamations, and eventually, when the clippers started again, we asked who in blazes was in California, and what of it.

"It is not my fault I am always disturbed," said Peter. "This lady has heard that Rudy Vallee once came here on Saturdays to have his hair cut. She wants one of his curls. Time after time, lately, I have told her that he comes here no more, being in California. Yet she offers me a dollar every Saturday for a lock of his hair."—(N.A.N.A.)