The Head of the House

by Al Zuckerman

  The suite, furnished in a French style, looked as if it had already been the scene of a lively orgy. The fauteuils, canapé, cocktail table all were overturned. Pillows, towels, orange peels, silk stockings, chocolate wrappings, grapes were strewn everywhere and the marble-topped commodes at the sides of the room were littered with poultry bones, empty champagne bottles and crushed camelias.

  “My dove, my sveet pomegranate, my eternally beloved—” the huge woolly man was crawling away from his wife’s punishing hands, “—glory be to God you have arrived safely and ve are again together. …”

  “Animal. Cochon. I keel you!” Catching up to him with a leap, she began raining blows on his ear.

  “Ma cherie, my nightingale, my leetle strawberry, I love you, I luuuuve you.”

  Her fists froze in mid air. “C’est vrai?” she asked tremulously, aflutter like a schoolgirl.

  “Only you,” he crooned.

  “Oh Boreeees!” Her lips bit back a little whimper of joy, and she sniffled.

  Boris gripped her machine-powered wrist and raised his head to kiss her.

  Her puckered lips were but a hairline from his when a soft noise from the adjoining bedroom startled her. Abruptly she drew back, cried out, howled incomprehensibly, and began pounding at him more madly than ever.

  “Be-gob lady,” splurted the older of the two cops, “Yer hurtin ’im! Ye’ll be afther turnin the mug as blue as me own coat.” He bent to pull her off the vainly protesting giant.

  Little Nathan, standing at the door laughing, holding his belly, had tears streaming down his puffy cheeks.

  Izzie, realizing what had to be done, skirted the melee, slipped into the bedroom, locked the door, and began gathering up and tossing clothes toward a nude young lady nestled against the headboard of a vast bed.

  Izzie at twenty-one, except for fleeting glimpses of his sisters, had never seen a young woman wearing only her unclad skin—and so brazenly. At one and the same time he shuddered with embarrassment and yet felt an irresistible urge to peek at her breasts and the V of hazel hair below.

  Blood pounded at his temples. His head reeled. No time now, though. Izzie quickly hustled her out a door which exited directly to the corridor, thus absconding with the documentary evidence, and thereby winning Chichikov’s gratitude, which from then on he proclaimed loudly and frequently, and for all eternity.

  But never Jeanine’s gratitude. She’d hated him, and though four months had passed since Boris’s funeral, she probably still did. But Izzie’s instincts all said, no. She was no croaker, no trigger moll.

  His thoughts began to rove among two-bit moonshiners, metal fabricators, label printers, yeast makers, speakeasy operators, competing bootleggers. More than one had reason to want Izzie inside a coffin. …

  Farvel the Landlord was someone Izzie knew despised him. Skinny, frizzy-haired, and with a grating nasal voice always louder than anyone else’s, Farvel ran a candy wagon which collected empty bottles from speakeasies. He then resold them to bootleg bottlers who paid better for used authentic name brands than for newly made imitations. Despite his being called Landlord, Farvel owned little more than his sagging-shouldered jacket and loud ties. Even his small truck was usually in hock to his bookie. The nickname stemmed from the horse player’s side racket: spotting safe, secluded locations for stills, and then fronting for the lessee or buyer.

  Before entering the bottle business, Hoboken-based Farvel had bought used tins and other junk from Jersey farmers and rural store owners, and so had a widespread acquaintanceship with areas in which New York bootleggers set foot only with the greatest caution. The olive-skinned scrap dealer had been able to provide highly valued real-estate services for such entrepreneurs as Sally Pirone, Mannie Kessler, Larry Fay, Frankie Yale and even Solly “Cutcher-Head-Off” Weissman.

  For Chichikov to be able to detoxify industrial alcohol in quantity as well as to distill fresh sugar-based 190 proof, new high-speed installations were needed, and Little Nathan had thought of Farvel for finding them.

  The eager Landlord had hardly finished shaking Boris’s hand when he began pitching “a location ya wouldn’ believe. Mr. Whiskers, an’ not only the local, but the state troopers too, beggin ya to come in. Guaranteed tipoffs if the Feds come anywheres near—fifteen miles even. Pig farms next door, all aroun’, take the used mash an’ pay ya for it even.” And with all that, it had running water all year and deep evergreen woods, so they could cook right through the winter.

  Halfway through Farvel’s frenetic exposition, Boris had quietly begun chuckling. By the time the land broker had finished his spiel, the Russian was laughing out loud. Suddenly he thundered, “Most holy mother of God!” and he rose to his full towering height, “Hell and damnation and the bottomless pit! On what dungheap you find me such a blockhead? You know what his blabber is worth to me? Hemorrhoids!”

  Little Nathan’s generally half-open eyes had narrowed to the thinnest slits, a sign of displeasure, which the chemist not recognizing, blithely ignored.

  Farvel, fearful that all his efforts might come to nought, began twitching convulsively on one side of his face.

  Izzie, without knowing why, sensed that Boris was right, and more importantly, felt a warmth, a kinship for the blunt, temperamental Russian.

  Chichikov, his outburst ended, smiled benignly, and patiently explained that out in the woods with the chickens and pigs, there was no way of hiding, none whatsoever, a blessedly great-sized still. “It must be putted only in the guts, the bowels of the city. Yes, even though surrounded by gendarmes, thousands, ten thousand of police. Doesn’t matter.”

  The Landlord’s twitches grew more frequent.

  Beckstein, his head tilted to one side, seemed to be considering whether this shaggy Russian to whom he’d advanced so much money might not really be a lunatic.

  “Trucks,” Boris barreled on, “tventy, thirty, maybe fifty every day. They come with sugar, molasses, yeast, urea, disodium phosphate. They go away with the alcohol. Where you can have so many trucks, and nobody see? Only one place—where is many factories, many trucks already. And where is many different roads who are strong for the trucks, so they can coming not one way, but always different way.

  “And the stink when she cooking, how you hide that stink, hanh?” His projecting lips spread into a triumphant smile, revealing a mouth of nicotine-stained teeth highlighted by two gleaming gold ones. “Easy. You got next door rubber factory, or maybe chemical factory, bread factory.”

  “This guy,” the aggrieved Landlord whined, “is bananas, Mr. Beckstein.”

  “You sure?” Little Nathan answered softly, contemplatively almost. “They’re turning A-one alky out of Cleveland cheaper than anywheres. And they tell me, he done it.”

  “You wanna be in the city?” Farvel was incredulous. “You know how many mitts you gotta grease, even for a gyppo drop like this one,” and he waved his fingers at the warehouse walls. “For a jigger, it’s a hunnert times. The water inspector, the sewer guy, the fire marshall—it’s forever. An who’s gonna smell anything, I ask ya, way out on a Christmas tree farm? Who? Lissen,” he pleaded as if a knife were at his throat, “you gotta believe me. This place I got is poifeck.”

  Boris smiled indulgently. “You know how high has got to be a continuous-running column still?”

  “Would you believe a cave?” The Landlord, now ignoring Boris, was gesturing exclusively to Little Nathan. “Big. An a stream, pure mountain water flowin right through it. Best location I ever seen. Ever. I swear to God!”

  “Seventy-five feet,” the chemist calmly resumed, still smiling, “four floor high,” and he magisterially pointed his wooly fingers upward. “This you no can put in cave.”

  Farvel’s mouth now hung dumbly open, while Boris went on describing his needs for six or eight mash vats, fifteen-thousand gallon ones, for a cooling vat to contain copper condensing coils thirty-six inches in diameter, a galvanized iron tank, “not so beeg, only three or four hundred gallon” to r
eceive the distillate, for a high-pressure oil boiler and steam generator, for electric motors, pre-heaters, heavy duty exhaust fans.

  “Wait a minute, just a fuckin minute.”

  Izzie, who off to one side of Little Nathan’s desk had been enjoying the slippery, fast-talking Landlord’s being whittled away at, was a little shocked to see Farvel’s green eyes flickering with fresh cunning.

  “Where you gonna get water, here in a city, for them fifteen-thousand gallon tanks? The city don’ give that water away, ya know. They keep a record—in a book. An’ somebody usin that much water—cause you’re talkin ninety or a hunnert thousand gallons a week—they’re gonna come lookin for ya. They come faster than a greased eel.”

  “Yes,” the chemist, seemingly troubled, nodded, seeming to agree, “is a problem.”

  Izzie noted Little Nathan’s eyes narrow with concern.

  “In Cleveland, how do they work it there?” the tense bootlegger, leaning forward out of his chair, quietly asked. “They keep the fix in with half the water commission?”

  “No, no, no. Is much more cheaper to have another business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “You make in the same building maybe a laundry. Wash clothing. Much water. Or maybe a little factory for ginger ale, cream soda, orange pop. Also possible is,” and he scratched his bushy gray head until he found the word, “factory for the hair tonic.”

  Little Nathan’s chair creaked as he eased back into it. His closed lips hinted at a smile. “What kind of business are they using in Cleveland?”

  “We got rug cleaning plant. Nice. Water, water, all day water. And ammonia too. Beautiful stink. She stink like hell. Now in Detroit different. We got candy factory. The leequid sugar come in railroad tank car. Dump from railroad car right into mash. No unloading, nothing. Beautiful, hanh?”

  “Expensive.”

  “Never mind. You make fortune.”

  “I don’ know about no Cleveland and no Detroit.” Farvel, undaunted, jabbed his finger confidently. “But you could have ten candy factories, an they still ain’t gonna score for you in New York.”

  “Why not?”

  “Cause of the used mash. You cook up two thousand gallons of alky in one day, fantastic. I gotta hand it to ya. But then you got eighteen, nineteen thousand gallons of waste mash. Where’s that going? You can’t put that in no New York sewer. Them sewer guys spot mash fast as a bird dog spots a pigeon. An’ you can’t make no hair tonic with it neither.” The Landlord’s aggressive smirk faded, and his grating voice softened. “Lissen to me, Mr. Beckstein, why borrow trouble? There ain’t nothin like a good piece a hayseed. An’ for you, I got the best.”

  Little Nathan’s semismile had disappeared, “In Cleveland they truck away all that garbage?”

  “Nooo. We put pipe in Lake Erie. Deep pipe, way out. Then we pump. Nobody know nothing. Much more cheaper than trucks.”

  Farvel, head bowed, uncurled his fingers and held out his sweaty palms, acknowledging that Boris maybe did know something.

  The Landlord’s disappointment, though, was only partial. He also realized that the property they were after would be vastly more expensive, bringing a correspondingly heftier payoff.

  Two days later he was back, bubbling about a vacant Red Hook pier. But when Chichikov visited it, he pointed out that its floors wouldn’t be strong enough to support the big vats.

  Farvel kept on plugging, but one after the next, his discoveries failed to quite pass muster: weak water pressure, too many textile workers on a building’s first floor, too close to a precinct house and a prevailing wind that would blow the mash smell right at it, no railroad siding for tank cars. …

  After two weeks or so, Little Nathan himself, Izzie, Morris, even Boris between assignations had begun making block-by-block surveys of factory districts in Long Island City, Hoboken, the South Bronx.

  It was Julie Dubrowsky, whom Izzie had brought in to manage security for the “egg farm” stills, who one Sunday morning after an all night crap game in Brooklyn noticed almost adjacent to the Navy Yard a yellow brick, five-story Whitmore Candy factory with a crenelated roof and a “For Rent” sign. Concrete floors supported by steel girders, high-rise chimney, pier and rail loading facilities and truck bays—and a stinking rubber vulcanizer in the building directly to the rear; it was perfect. Within a month, Little Nathan had taken title, Boris had drawn up all the blueprints necessary for the electrical and plumbing alterations, the escape hatches, and for the still construction, Beckstein had installed a small dry-cleaning plant just inside the building’s main entrance with a second cousin to run it, and welders and sheet metal workers were busily fabricating the vats and connecting up the bubble cups for the main column itself.

  For Izzie it was a thrilling time, each day seeing this hurly-burly grow a bit more. Mountainous vats, shining tanks, boilers, all interconnected by endless multi-angled pipes, hoses, cables, each of whose purposes he made it a point to learn. Some day so magnificent an assemblage might be his. And when that day came, he’d be ready for it.

  When he first came with Little Nathan, he had assumed that much as grapes were crushed and fermented to make wine, so similar processes with rye, corn and other grains were used to manufacture whiskey. He’d often heard about stills and cookers around the garage, and had understood that at some point in the preparation of liquor it had to be heated. But that spirits did not come directly from the mash of grain, water, and yeast after it had fermented, but instead from the condensed vapors of this mixture when boiled, from its distillate—this to Izzie was a discovery, and an intriguing one.

  After his first visit to one of Little Nathan’s “egg farms” in north Jersey, the truckloads of bottled cooking gas finally made sense, as did the reel of copper coil he’d helped load one afternoon, and the gauges, thermometers and control valves which at various times he’d picked up from plumbing-supply houses. After two days in a cramped, steamy boiler room dug into a wooded hillside, he understood why at West Street he’d never heard mention of malt, barley, plums, potatoes, apples, or any of the ingredients he had thought went into the making of schnapps. A sharp operator like Nathan wouldn’t bother with whiskey or vodka or applejack. His two cookers turned out nothing but almost pure alcohol, made essentially from either sugar or molasses, which fermented faster—in seventy-two hours instead of the four or five days needed for grain—and which produced twice the gallonage that could be derived from equivalent amounts of corn or rye mash. This tongue-blistering brew, the still keeper, a gnarled old former poultry farmer, had explained to Izzie, would be diluted and flavored to remind the public of some pre-Prohibition product such as Scotch or bourbon.

  Izzie noted every detail as meticulously as if he were a medical student in an operating room amphitheatre. Fascinating to Iz was the still keeper’s practice of “study-in the bead.” When the flow of distillate began to slacken, the oldster would divert it into a bottle, shake it, and scrutinize the bubbles which had formed.

  “Why?” Izzie asked.

  “How else you gonna know if yer cookin up water ’r alcohol?”

  If the bead set half in and half out, it proved a hundred, that is, one-half alcohol. A higher bubble meant more alcohol, and a lower one, less.

  “An jes by lookin with the nekkid eye, I c’n tell exactly how much less ’r more.”

  The ex-farmer, enjoying an audience, explained further. The term “proof” came from the old days, “way afore any a them fancy gadgets like hydrometers, when they tested moonshine with fire. If your stuff wasn’t least one-half alcohol, a hundred proof, she wouldn’t prove—not ketch fire.”

  Izzie’s thoughts returned to Farvel. The Landlord was gone. The bottle dealer one afternoon had screwed up his courage and put the proposition to Little Nathan. He deserved, he felt, to be mashed for all his dry pulling. Asked for a number, Farvel had ventured five Gs. Little Nathan had laughed in his face. The skinny Landlord, Izzie felt certain, would have settled for a th
ousand, five hundred even. But Beckstein had snarled at him to get lost. Izzie himself had felt struck, watching Farvel suddenly stiffen, the man’s eyes glowing with hate.

  Couldn’t the poor tummler, Izzie had suggested after Farvel left, be paid off, just a little—to square things? Nathan’s reply had been, “You turning into some kind of sweet pea?”

  A few days later a strident, two-in-the-morning phone ring had startled Izzie out of bed. It was Boris, babbling, “Find a doctor qveek! Rush like hell to the still. The Landlord, I maybe kill heem.” Izzie realized his instincts about Farvel had been more sound than Mr. Beckstein’s.

  Boris, it seemed, had taken to carrying on his amours on a mattress under his drafting table at the still. So, if Jeanine called to check up on him, as she did several times daily, he could pretend to be killing himself with work. That night, luxuriating with the plumbing contractor’s plump, red-haired Irish bookkeeper, he’d heard footsteps and clinking noises somewhere out near the almost-completed main column. He’d tiptoed to investigate, and almost immediately sniffed suspicious fumes. The shadow spilling gasoline all around was Farvel.

  The Landlord, despite Boris’s mauling, was not dead. But the would-be arsonist’s jaw was broken. Farvel, Iz knew, deserved right then and there to be put out of his misery; but Iz felt distaste at the idea of doing it himself. Ten years after he’d killed Welzel, Iz in his dreams still could hear the German screaming, toppling into the pit. No, Gangy or Long Boy could take care of the crazy Landlord. Iz asked Boris to keep a sharp eye on Farvel, while Iz phoned Nathan. Boris was blabbering apologies when Iz returned, because the creep had slithered away. Iz inadvertently had saved Farvel’s life, and yet seemed to have gained his hatred. Because almost a whole year later Sally Pirone, for whom Iz and Julie were providing some anti-hijack protection, let drop that Izzie had best keep an eye out for the bugsy Landlord.

  The winter before this last, though, Farvel had drifted off to Hialeah and not been heard from since. So now, suddenly, a tommy gun rub-out? Farvel the Landlord? No.