The Immigrants (36 page)

“That’s a shame. You’re denying Mark a very deep pleasure. He’s a good man. Why should you hurt him?”

“Jake is Jake. And I think I like him the way he is. Here is your tea, Rabbi. Do you want sugar?”

“Three lumps.”

The rabbi was thoughtfully stirring his tea when Jake entered and greeted him warmly. “I left your agricul tural expert outside complaining that I don’t make full use of my irrigation facilities.

What is that kid?”

“He’s going to Palestine to build a Jewish homeland. He’s practicing now.”

“Good. Anyway, it’s wonderful to see you, Rabbi. It’s been years.

But what brings you here?”

“I could come as a shepherd looking for a lost sheep.”

“I don’t think Jews look very hard for lost sheep,” Clair said.

“Possibly. I come on business, Jake.”

“Business?”

“I’ll come directly to the point. The point is sacra mental wine.”

“What?”

“Precisely. I have a suspicion that Clair is as indiffer ent a Christian as you are Jewish. So I will instruct you. Wine plays a very large part

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in both religions. Among the Jews, we use wine every Shabbat—you know what that is? The Sabbath—for a prayer called the Kiddush.

On Passover, wine is a part of the Seder. On other occa sions, wine is necessary from a religious point of view. So we must have wine.”

“But what about Prohibition?” Clair asked.

“Ah!” He reached into his pocket and took out a worn scrap of paper. “You see, I come prepared. A rabbi is an assortment of things, also a lawyer and a judge. Ask your father about that. I haven’t time to go into it now.” He began to feel through his pockets. “My other glasses.”

“I’ll read it for you,” Clair said.

“Good. It’s an extract from the Volstead Act, Section Six. Read.”

Taking the piece of paper, Clair read: “Nothing in this title shall be held to apply to the manufacture, sale, transportation, possession or distribution of wine for sa cramental purposes, or like religious rites…The head of any conference or diocese or other ecclesiastical jurisdiction may designate any rabbi, minister, or priest to supervise the manufacture of wine to be used for the purposes and rites in this section mentioned…”

Clair looked up at him in bewilderment, and Jake said, “Wait a minute, Rabbi, you’re not coming to ask us to make wine?”

“Why not? Now both of you listen to me for a mo ment. We have an association of twelve synagogues. Each year we buy eight hundred gallons of sacramental wine. It’s made in the East, and they have been charg ing us seven dollars a gallon. Now they’ve raised their price to nine dollars. We don’t make profit on the wine; we give it out for the Passover at cost, but even cost is a burden for poor people. So since I am a rabbi in retire ment, they appointed me to see what can be done, and since you have the only Jewish winery in the area, I come to you. You will make the wine, and we will pay you seven dollars a gallon.” As an afterthought, he added, “And occasionally, I will supervise.”

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Jake shook his head. “Rabbi, I’m sorry, but you’ve come for nothing. There aren’t any wineries, Jewish or otherwise. They’re all busted and closed down. The only one who makes any wine around here is a Basque named Fortas who lives down the road and who makes a few hundred gallons of bootleg stuff, a kind of zinfandel. We buy a gallon from him occasionally, but believe me his days are numbered too. The Feds go up and down these valleys like hound-dogs. As for us making wine, we just don’t know how.

We never made a gallon of the stuff, and we wouldn’t know where to begin.”

“Seven times eight hundred is fifty-six hundred dol lars,” the rabbi said calmly. “Clair has been telling me what kind of a struggle you had. I admire that. You are young and strong, and you can work twelve hours a day. What about tomorrow? What about your children?”

“It’s impossible,” Jake said. “Wine-making is an art, a profession.”

“So my mother was an artist, God rest her soul, be cause she made her own wine. Good wine too. How did you learn to grow plums and raise cattle?”

“It’s different.”

“Ah! You know the Bible? Three thousand years ago, we raised cattle and we grew plums and we made wine. We used to be called the people of the vine. And now a boy with your education tells me he doesn’t know how. Jacob, I speak for only twelve small Orthodox synagogues. What about the Reform Jews? The capac ity of the rich is always larger than the capacity of the poor—”

“It’s just not feasible.”

“Now you hold on, Jake,” Clair said. “I want you to listen to what the rabbi is saying and stop telling him it’s impossible. We broke our backs over this place when everyone said it was impossible. The only days of rest I’ve had in the past seven years were when I was too pregnant to move, and we still dream about owning

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a washing machine and a radio. If the car runs another thirty days, it’ll be a miracle. If Fortas can make wine, we can make wine. We got all the equipment out there in the big house, just sitting. Now, Rabbi, what about this. I’m not Jewish.”

“I suspected as much.” Rabbi Blum smiled.

“Well, doesn’t that matter?”

“Not as long as you follow my instructions. What I tell you now is only for you to think about. I’ll write you a long letter, spelling it all out. Now, we require that the barrels and the presses be cleaned in a certain way. If they have lain fallow for seven years, they can be considered usable. The wine is to be made for the Passover. If it is used before the Passover, it becomes
humotz
, or not usable for the Passover. But once it is used initially for the Passover, it can then be used through the rest of the year, when it becomes
humotz
and
humotz
is allowable.”

“It’s too late to start vines,” Jake said.

“Jake, we’ll buy the grapes. Heaven knows, there are enough grapes for sale in this valley. Rabbi, what kind of wine is it?”

“Traditionally, Clair, a sweet wine is used, and what ever wine you make, it should be heavy and sweet. In the olden times, the wine came from Malaga in Spain, which was once, a long, long time ago, a Jewish city. The real Malaga is a kind of muscatel, very rich and luscious and full-bodied. What we have been buying is made in New York City from Concord grapes. It is called Malaga, but it resembles Malaga like I resemble you.”

“And you trust us to have eight hundred gallons of wine that you can use ready for you by Passover?” Jake asked him.

“Much worse than what we buy from New York it couldn’t be,”

the rabbi said. Bernie Cohen entered the kitchen at that moment, and the rabbi said to him, “Out in the car, Bernie, there’s a bottle of wine. Bring it in here. I’ll leave it with you,” he said to Jake. “It’s a sam ple of what they call Malaga in New York. There’s no hurry.

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You have seven months, and that’s time enough. Meanwhile, they’ll draw up some contracts and send them to you. Have you enough money to start?”

“We’ll find the money,” Clair said firmly.

Speakeasys, blind pigs, blind tigers, private clubs—the fact that there were at least a hundred places in San Francisco where liquor was sold made it no easier for Dan Lavette to get drunk. His enormous body resisted alcohol, and going about the matter with cold, sober, and depressed determination did not help. On the day that May Ling left the city, he walked out of his office at half-past four, walked into a place on Battery Street called Madam X’s, and put down three shots of what was euphemistically called rye whiskey.

The taste dis gusted him, and he went to another place called Harry’s.

Harry’s had imitation Tiffany chandeliers and a thirty-foot bar of polished oak. There were four bartend ers, and by six o’clock the customers were elbow to elbow.

Harry’s attested to the fact that the rye whiskey it served was Golden Wedding, bottled in bond. Dan or dered a double shot and put it down with a beer chaser. The beer was needled. The bartender poured him an other double shot, and Dan drank it and then stared at the beer.

“The beer,” he said to the bartender, “is needled piss. The whiskey is bootleg swill, and you, my friend, are a motherfucking fraud.”

The men on either side of Dan looked at him and then backed away. The bartender put out both hands, palms down. “Just take it easy, mister. We don’t adver tise. This is a private club. You don’t like what we serve, go elsewhere.”

Another bartender waved a hand, and two heavyset men moved toward Dan.

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“I go where I please,” Dan said slowly.

“You’re drunk, mister. Better leave.”

“When I decide to, buster.”

The two heavyset men closed in on him. Each grasped one of his arms. Dan stepped away from the bar and swung the two men together. The move was sudden and unexpected, and their heads met with a loud crack. The bartender vaulted the bar and came down on Dan, who staggered and then flung the bartender over his head and across the room. The two heavyset men came at him now, shaking their heads and growling. Dan grabbed his beer mug and crashed it down on the head of one of them. His knees buckled and he went down. The other man was sending hard, driving blows at Dan’s stomach. Dan hit him in the face, and the man went down, his nose spurting blood. Now two more bar tenders were over the bar, each hanging onto one of Dan’s arms, while the first bartender, his fist clenching a pair of brass knuckles, let go at Dan’s face and stom ach. The blow to his face opened a cheek and dazed him, and the two bartenders dragged him across the room. The third bartender opened the street door, and they dragged Dan out into the street. As the third bar tender came at him with the brass knuckles again, Dan kicked him in the testicles. The man went down, groan ing and clutching his groin, and Dan flung off the other two.

A crowd gathered, and as Dan stood there at bay, blood streaming from his face, his clothes torn, one man down at his feet, the two others circling him warily, the police appeared.

Mark Levy was still in his office at seven-thirty that night when Polly Anderson buzzed and informed him that Inspector Crowther of the San Francisco Police was on the phone and would like to talk to him. Ever since Feng Wo had left, Mark worked late. They had

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already hired and fired a replacement, and Mark had come to realize that any valid replacement was out of the question. Feng Wo had traced the intricacies of their operation from the day it began, and there was no one who could step into his shoes and do what he had done. Dan would never stoop to details; everything he did was in the grand manner. If money was needed, he would say to Mark that they needed so much and let it go at that; if money had to be spent, he would spend it. It was up to Mark to plan and connive and juggle.

Now, irritated, he asked what the devil Inspector Crowther wanted.

“He’ll only talk to you.”

“Put him on, put him on.”

Crowther was respectfully troubled. “It’s about Mr. Lavette, Mr. Levy—”

“Dan Lavette?”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Well, what about him? Is he hurt?”

“Well, yes, he’s hurt, not too badly. Trouble is, he hurt a lot of other people. He wrecked a speakeasy, and he put two men in the hospital. We got him here, and it adds up to aggravated assault, but we didn’t want to charge him or book him until we got a better picture, and I think you’d better come down here.”

“God Almighty,” Mark whispered. “What hap pened?”

“Well, sir, as near as we can make out, he got drunk and became violent.”

“Are there any newspapermen there?”

“Not yet. I understand. We’re keeping a lid on it.”

“Now listen, please, inspector,” Mark said. “I’m going to try to find Mayor Rolph, and if I do, we’ll both come down to headquarters. I’ll come anyway—right now. But for God’s sake, try to keep this quiet, and don’t book him. I ask that as a personal favor, and I know the mayor will be with me on this. You do that for me, and I’ll remember it.”

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“I’ll do my best, Mr. Levy.”

Bolting out of his office, he paused to enlist Polly Anderson, who pleaded, “It’s almost eight already, Mr. L, and I have a dinner date, which happens once a month—”

“Look, they’ve arrested Mr. Lavette—”

“Good heavens, why?”

“I’ll explain another time. I want you to track down Mayor Rolph and get him to meet me at Police Head quarters, and don’t take no for an answer, and I swear I’ll buy you the best dinner the Fairmont can put on the table. Will you?”

“I will.” She sighed. “I hope it comes out all right. He won’t go to jail, will he?”

“I hope not.”

At least they hadn’t put Dan in a cell. Crowther took Mark to an interrogation room, where Dan sat slumped over a table, his cut cheek held together with a piece of cornplaster, his shirt and suit torn and soaked with blood.

Crowther said, “I swear, I don’t know what to do with this one, Mr. Levy. We’re just lucky it happened in a speak, because maybe no one will bring any charges. That is, if nobody dies.”

“What do you mean, if nobody dies?”

“Well, these two in the hospital. One is a bouncer, whose skull he fractured with a beer mug, and the other is a bartender who he ruptured with a kick in the balls. Jesus God, here’s one of the leading men in the city in this kind of a brawl. I never ran into nothing like this before.”

“How many were there?”

“Five as near as we can make out.”

“Then it’s self-defense.”

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“In a courtroom, Mr. Levy, in a courtroom. And like I say, if nobody dies.”

Now, in the interrogation room, Dan stared bleakly at his partner.

“How on God’s earth did you get into this?”

“Don’t lecture me,” Dan whimpered. “I’m sick as a dog. Look at me. I vomited up my guts, and my belly feels like a mule kicked me there. I’m almost forty years old, Mark, and I’m soft and flabby, and I got no busi ness in a fight. Christ, I haven’t been in a fight since I was a kid.”