Word: picked
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...reason is simple: local barber shops, shoe-shine parlors, and newsstands operate as pick-up joints for a well-organized bookmaking syndicate. Bets are placed either with employees of these places, or with "walking agents" who make a point of being there at a certain time every day, to the tune of at least $1000 daily...
...openly are bets being taken and numbers slips "written," that a complete stranger can walk up to almost any cab driver and be directed to an "agent." If it is too early for the agent to make his rounds and pick up the cabbie's numbers, the driver will deliver it to him. He will in turn make the pay-off, if it isn't so large that it is worth his while to skip town and keep it for himself...
...have never "invested," you know Harvard Square's bookies and pick-up men as "solid citizens" who work in or run certain shocshine parlors, liquor stores, dry-cleaning establishments, newsstands, and bars...
...their friend, you know how they figure "it's tough to make an honest living." You know how they have been approached by agents of the big Boston syndicate. You know how they are being paid a certain percentage of their rent to allow a pick-up man to meet his bettors in their shops at certain times. You know how some of them clear between 10 and 15 percent of all the money bet with them, if they phone in the bets and work "on the up-and-up" with the bigger agents...
...least another dozen local business men are suspected of meeting rent payments by accepting money from bookies and pick-up men who use their places of business to contact bettors and phone in wagers...