The Wrong Kind of Money (58 page)

And so—what to do now? Can I forgive him? That would be the Christian way. The Christian prayer tells us to forgive those who trespass against us. I wonder what Hannah would say. “Forget it,” I can hear Hannah's Old New York vowels saying. “Don't be ab
suhuhd.
Get on with your life, woman.
Shuh-uh-
ly this isn't the worst thing that's ever happened to any woman in the
wuh-uhld.
This isn't the
fuhst
time this has ever happened to a woman, and it
cuh
-tainly won't be the last.” But what kind of a life do I have to get on with, Hannah? Tell me that. And yet … and yet. After all, all he did was fuck her. You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a fuck is just a fuck. Fucking isn't loving. But I've already said that. And yet he wouldn't have fucked her if he really loved me, and so here I am again, right back where I started, talking in circles, getting nowhere.

And so now Carol is speeding blindly down the Henry Hudson Parkway with the sun in her eyes, courting an accident, but suddenly the thought of an accident is not without a certain appeal, a certain almost piquancy. Aren't there moments in every human life when the idea of self-destruction floats into the racing mind, beckoning with sirenish allure, holding out its gentle hand and offering a solution to everything? A temptingly fast solution? That was the best thing about it: it would be so fast.

Now her thoughts are measured and spaced out, and seem to be coming to her in slow motion. She is passing through the Riverdale section of the Bronx, and ahead of her is the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge to Manhattan. On her left is Baker Field, where she used to go to watch college football games. Below her, on her left, winds the Harlem River. On her right is the Hudson, looking deceptively wide and calm, and that narrow gap of water where the angry tides from the Harlem River boil into the larger river through a steep and narrow rock-strewn gap, some two hundred feet below. The railings of the Spuyten Duyvil Bridge do not look particularly substantial. One quick turn of her wheel, and her car would go flying through those railings, and it would be over, fast. She tries it, turns the wheel, and watches her car head for the railing. But when she feels her right foot fly to the pedal of the power brakes she knows she does not really want to die.

She sees the crash, everything, although she really cannot see it from her driver's seat. She sees her right front fender crumple against the railing, sees the right headlight shatter in a shower of glass. But now the car is at a standstill, its right wheel up on the concrete curb of the railing, the motor idling.

She puts the gearshift into park, and gets out to inspect the damage. The fender is caved in, but well away from the wheel, so the car will steer. The front bumper is twisted, but secure. The right headlight is gone, but at least a half an hour of daylight remains before she will need it. No fluids are dripping from under the hood, so the radiator is not cracked. The car will get her home. Perhaps there is something to be said, after all, for driving an expensive car. This being New York, of course, no one stops to help her, though motorists in both directions slow down for a better look at the accident.

The impact threw her chest against the steering wheel, and she struggles to get her breath back, feeling a little nauseated. But she gets back into the car and backs it off the curb, into the roadway, where it lands with a small bump and another scrape of the fender. Only then does she see, in her rearview mirror, the spinning orange light of a police car pulled up behind her, and a lanky young officer walking toward her. She rolls down her window.

“You all right, little lady?” he asks her.

“Yes, Officer. I'm fine, thanks.”

“What happened?”

“The sun was in my eyes.”

He looks up at the upper roadway of the bridge above them, which throws where they are now into deep shadow. “No sun under here,” he says.

“I'm afraid I just wasn't concentrating on the road,” she says.

“That's not a good thing to be doing when you're driving a car, little lady—not concentrating on the road.”

“I guess my thoughts were—elsewhere, Officer.”

“It's also not good to have your thoughts elsewhere when you're behind the wheel of a vehicle, little lady.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

“Think you might have fallen asleep at the wheel, little lady?”

“No, and—look, that's the third time you've called me that, Officer. I do have a name. Do you want to see my license and registration?”

“That won't be necessary, ma'am.”

“That's better,” she says. She looks up at his face. He is surely no more than twenty-four or twenty-five. She wonders: Is he going to ask me to get out of my car and into his while he writes out a ticket? She has heard lurid stories about policemen who stop single women, rape them at gunpoint, and then stuff them into the trunks of their cars.

“Where're you coming from?” he asks her. “Maybe from a cocktail party? Maybe had a couple of drinks?”

“No, but I wish I had.”

He squints at her. “What do you mean by that?”

“Because that would have given me a good excuse for what I did. Want me to get out of the car and try to walk a straight line?”

“No, that won't be necessary, ma'am.”

“It's funny. My husband's in the liquor business, and when you're in the liquor business you hardly ever think about drinking. Half the time I forget to stock the bar in my own house. My maid has to remind me.”

“Oh, you've got a maid?” He smiles. “It figures, with a car like this.”

“I used to have a maid. She quit this morning.” She studies his uniform, which strikes her as an unusual combination of styles and periods. His gray Stetson calls to mind the hats J.R. Ewing wore in
Dallas.
His blue double-breasted jacket and wide belt could have belonged to a Union cavalry officer in the Civil War, while his gray jodhpurs and black boots seem to have been borrowed from a polo player, though she doubts those long legs have ever been astride a horse. His skin is smooth and clean-shaven, though his beard is dark. He has a strong jawline and kind, dark eyes with heavy lashes. If he turns out to be a rapist, she thinks, I could do a lot worse. In fact, his face reminds her of someone she knows. She knows who it is: Noah, when he was younger.

“I've been following you for about the last five miles,” he says. “You were going a little fast—five, six miles over the speed limit. But I don't like to ticket anybody for as small a violation as that. You were driving just fine, but then suddenly you swerved and hit the railing here.”

“I know. My mind was on something else.”

“Where did you say you're coming from?”

“I don't think I did say, Officer. It's a place in Connecticut called Greenspring Hills. I don't know why they call it that. It's not green, there isn't any spring, and there aren't any hills to speak of.”

“Oh, sure. I know that place. The funny farm. You an inmate there?”

“No, but my mother is. Yes, I guess you could say my mother's funny. She's funny that way. That's a song, isn't it? And incidentally, they don't call them inmates. They call them residents. Or guests. And it's not called the funny farm. It's called an inn.” Why is she chattering with him like this, as though he were an old friend? “I got some bad news there this afternoon,” she says. “That's why I wasn't concentrating on my driving the way I should have been.”

“Bad news about your mom? I'm sorry to hear that. I lost my own mom just a month ago, so I know how you feel.”

“I'm so sorry, Officer.”

“Only forty-two. Too young. Cancer.” He walks around to the front of her car, looks at the collapsed fender, and checks the bridge railing. Then he returns to her window. “No damage done to the railing,” he says. “I'd have to ticket you if there'd been any damage done to that. Just some of your green paint scraped off. But it's going to cost you a few nickels to have that front end of yours repaired.”

“A few nickels …”

“It's a shame, too. Nice car like that. Tell me something—did you have your seat belt fastened?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I didn't.”

“I could ticket you for that, too.” His face is very serious, frowning. “But the fact is, I didn't actually
see
you driving without your seat belt. The first time I saw you, you'd already gotten out of the car. So I couldn't stand up in front of a judge and swear I saw you driving without a seat belt, could I?”

“No, I guess you couldn't, Officer.”

“You got far to go, ma'am?”

“East Side of Manhattan.” Yes, she guesses that's where she's going. At the moment, at least, there seems to be nowhere else to go.

“Well, you'd better get on your way. You'd better get home before dark. It's dangerous driving around at night with only one headlight. Would you like me to escort you home, ma'am?”

“Oh, no, thanks. That's very kind of you. But I'm fine now.”

“Anything else I can do?”

“No, thanks—unless—”

“Unless what, ma'am?”

“You don't happen to have a cigarette, do you?” she asks him.

“Sure,” he says, and reaches in the side pocket of his Union cavalry jacket. “Marlboro okay?”

“Anything!” she says with a little laugh.

He shakes one loose from his pack, offers it to her, and lights it for her with a match, and she sees the gold wedding band on his ring finger. Somewhere, she thinks, there is a very lucky woman.

“Thank you,” she says. “And thank you for letting me off without a ticket, Officer. You've really been very kind. I think, more than anything, what I needed was just somebody to talk to. I think that's why I had the accident. I need somebody to talk to.”

“Don't mention it, ma'am. Now, you just drive carefully—hear? And fasten that seat belt.”

“I will. I promise.”

He gives her a snappy little salute, touching the brim of his cowboy hat with the tip of his index finger.

“Good-bye, Marlboro Man,” she says with a smile as she rolls her window back up again.

She watches him in her rearview mirror as he walks back to his car. Then she buckles her seat belt, starts up her car again, and continues on across the bridge, the lighted cigarette clenched tightly between two fingers of her gloved hand.

20

Night

A letter from Jules Liebling to his son Noah, dated June 12, 1974, about six months before Jules died:

Dear Sonny,

The trouble with the booze business is there's not a damn thing to it. It's got no glamour. It's got no class. Any damn fool could make a few million bucks doing what I've done for a living, and don't let anybody tell you different. Now the wine business is something else again. “Vintners,” as they call themselves, are very lah-di-dah. Those snobs out in the Napa and Sonoma valleys go off riding to the hounds. If I tried riding to the hounds, they'd laugh me off the horse. Don't ask me why the hell this is. Making wine and making booze involves pretty much the same damn process. Boil the water out of your wine, and you'll get brandy. The only difference between selling wine and selling hooch is that the hooch makes more money.

If you get a kick out of making money, as I've always done, you'll get a kick out of this business. If you don't, better find yourself some other line of work, like be a college professor.

You'll hear some people talk about the “distilled spirits industry” as if it was some sacred thing that's been around for centuries. That's bullshit. It hasn't. The motion picture industry is older, and so, almost, is television. Both those industries are complicated. Ours isn't. I can tell you everything you need to know about booze in about two pages.

Until the present century there was no booze industry as such. People made booze, of course, but it was strictly a home operation. The guy with a still in his cellar or backyard made his hooch and peddled it to his neighbors. Then somebody got the idea that booze should be taxed. Taxation created the industry because you needed volume production and national distribution in order to fight the Feds. Taxation also created two new booze-related professions: moonshining and smuggling. The booze maker had a choice: either go along with the revenuers, or hide from 'em. I chose the former course because it seemed a hell of a lot easier.

But these new professions probably account for the fact that, in the public mind, people in our business are still considered to be crooks or lowlifes, or else ex-crooks and ex-lowlifes. Well, a lot of 'em damn well are.

Years ago, your ma asked me, “When are the nice people in New York going to accept us! When are even the nice Jewish people in New York going to accept us?” (Her folks were supposed to be some of those people.) My answer was: “When there's a cold day in hell
—
though they'll always accept our money.” She's more cynical now. She's maybe even more cynical than I am, and I'm pretty damn cynical.

Any kid with a chemistry set can make booze. Just put some water in a boiler and bring it to a boil. Meanwhile, set out your hogsheads. Add some corn meal and water to your boiling water, and mix it with an iron paddle called a mashing oar. This is called
soaking the corn.
Add more boiling water and keep on stirring. This is called
scalding the corn.
Next, add rye and stir some more. This is called
mashing in the rye,
and at this point the whole mixture is called the
mash.
It looks like hell; and stinks.

Next, cool the mash off by adding cold water. Then add yeast, and the mixture is now ready to
work,
or ferment. At this point your mixture is called
stuff,
or beer. When the fermentation is over, the mixture is said to be
ripe,
or ready to be put into the still. Your stuff gets poured into a trough leading to a condenser, and the condenser is
charged—
meaning you light a fire under it. Keep stirring, while the still is being
pasted—
its joints stopped up with paste to keep steam from escaping. As soon as the mixture boils, the liquor that runs off is called the
singlings,
also called
swill
or
pot ale.