The Predators (33 page)

J. P. spoke across the table. “I just want to get there before any of the other waters.”

“We’ll make it, son,” Jacques said confidently.

I had nothing more to say. It was their company.

J. P. spoke to me as they got into the car to drop him at his hotel. “What do you think of my father?”

“Your father has his own ideas,” I said.

“Don’t put it down,” J. P. said. “My father has been right more times than he’s been wrong.”

3

“When do you think we’ll go to the States?” Giselle asked.

I was stretched out on the bed looking at the
Herald Tribune.
“I don’t really know,” I answered. “I didn’t get any more information since we spoke with J. P.’s father. Maybe they are down on it. Maybe I spoke too soon. I was talking to them about a lot of money.”

Giselle smiled. “I don’t think it’s the money. I think the old man is looking for a partner.”

“You mean he’s trying to hedge his bet?” I asked.

“The French always want to do that. They like to bet a little on each side. This way they feel they are safe.” Giselle stretched out on the bed next to me. “Maybe we can find someone to go in with him,” she said.

“Like who?” I asked.

“Paul,” she said. “He has a lot of money in the States now. Maybe he would want to take a piece of it.”

“Paul?” I looked at her. “Do you think the Martins would want to get involved with outside money?”

“Why not?” she asked. “Money has no family ties.”

“Can you get in touch with him in Corsica?” I asked.

“I know how to get in touch with him,” she said. “But there’ll be one thing. You’ll have to ship the water over on one of his freighters.”

“He has ships?” I asked.

“He’s also tied in with the Greeks. But the shipping will have to go out of Marseilles. The Corsicans control the port there. They can’t ship out of Le Havre.” She looked at me. “What do you think?”

“How do you know so much about him?” I asked.

“I told you a long time ago that we’re family,” she answered.

“I think I better talk about it with J. P. first. Maybe his father wouldn’t want to do business with the Corsicans.”

“He shouldn’t have any complaints,” she answered. “After all, the Corsicans kept his labor under control during the war.”

*   *   *

Buddy didn’t get to California. He found a better deal in Harlem. He was running numbers from 110th Street down to 59th Street between Central Park West and the East River. Buddy and I had kept in touch. I knew that he had more than twenty runners and they reported to him at a used car dealership on St. Nicholas Avenue. Buddy and Ulla had a son. When he was baptized, they named him Jerome. I saw pictures of the child; he was fair skinned and good-looking. They didn’t live in Harlem; instead, they had a fairly new apartment on 80th Street and West End Avenue.

I called him at home. It was the only telephone number I had because Giselle and Ulla kept in touch by phone. New York was six hours behind us and I knew that Buddy always got home late. I called him at six in the morning, which was midnight in New York.

“I’m coming home, Buddy,” I said loudly into the phone. “The Plescassier company is going to bring their bottled water into the States.”

“That’s balls,” he said. “Why should anybody in New York pay for French bottled water when they get it free from the tap?”

I smiled into the phone. “Does Ulla wash her pussy in tap water?”

“No,” he answered. “She uses plain bottled water from the A & P.”

“French water is better,” I said. “I bet Ulla would buy it if she could get it.”

“I don’t know,” Buddy said doubtfully.

I laughed. “Don’t be a schmuck. Giselle even has got me washing my balls in Plescassier.”

“Okay,” he said. “So what do you want me to do?”

“I’ll need a big storage place or warehouse near the Brooklyn docks. Don’t forget I’m moving a lot of bottles of water and I don’t want the breakage to put me out of business.”

“The only place you can go to is Bush Terminal. But the Brooklyn waterfront is controlled by the Randazzo family. You’d have to make a deal with them.” He laughed. “And they’re tough—they’ll want a piece of the action.”

“Who do I have to deal with?” I asked.

“I have a good friend who I met when I was working in the navy yard. Phil Cioffi. They put him in charge of the whole terminal.”

“How do I get in touch with him?” I asked.

“You don’t,” Buddy said. “My boss is close with the Randazzo family. Albert Anastasia is the capo down in Brooklyn. They’ll put me in touch with Cioffi. You tell me what you want and I’ll find out how much it’s going to cost you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Nothing really changes, does it, Buddy?”

Buddy laughed. “Not really. Only your Uncle Harry’s gone up in the world. He and Kitty have two kids. He’s got the franchises for White Tower nickel hamburgers, maybe three hundred stores. He’s also got a bottling contract for Royal Crown Cola-in the East and a bottling plant in New Jersey. And he and Kitty live in a big house in Westchester.”

“Jesus,” I said. “That son of a bitch!”

“Fuck him!” Buddy said. “The two of them are yesterday for you. You’re doing okay. Giselle coming in with you?”

“Of course,” I answered.

“Married yet?” Buddy asked.

“We’re waiting for the time,” I answered.

“Ulla says you shouldn’t wait too long or you’ll lose her.”

“I’ll think on it,” I said. “Meanwhile, put a rush on it. I have to get Plescassier into the States.”

4

There were fifty gallons of Plescassier water in each of the barrels that we shipped to the States, on an old Greek ship leaving from Marseilles that would take about twenty days to arrive in New York. One hundred thousand gallons in all being shipped to the Bush Terminal in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, one month before, Giselle and I took the
Leonardo da Vinci
from Genoa. We landed in New York eight days later. Giselle loved it, but I didn’t care much for the ocean. I spent most of the time being seasick, and I almost kissed the ground on Fifty-first Street when we came off the ship.

Buddy and Ulla were there waiting for us. They had everything planned for us. We would stay at their apartment until we could find our own place. The two girls would look for an apartment while Buddy was taking me to meet Phil Cioffi at the terminal offices.

Buddy and I walked into the terminal offices. We were right on time. The secretary asked us to wait a moment. She went inside the office behind her desk. In a moment, both she and a tall man with a mustache came out. Buddy stood up and introduced me.

“Mr. Cioffi, this is my friend, Jerry Cooper,” he said. I had never seen Buddy so formal.

Mr. Cioffi stretched out his hand. “How you doing, Jerry?”

“Just fine,” I answered. He seemed like a nice enough man.

We went inside the office and started talking about what I needed. After a while, Mr. Cioffi stood up and said he would need to bring Mr. Albert Anastasia into the meeting. He said that Anastasia was the only one who could approve this kind of deal.

Buddy and I looked at each other.

Soon enough, Cioffi came back in the room with a man that was about five feet ten and very heavy, and had thin strands of hair crossing his bald head. He had a long cigar that he always kept in his mouth when he was talking.

After we all sat down, I spoke first. “Mr. Anastasia, I’m bringing in Plescassier water from France. I’ve got one hundred thousand gallons in fifty-gallon barrels.”

He puffed away on his cigar. “That’s a hell of a lot of water!” He paused for a minute. “That’s about thirty thousand square feet of storage. Jesus! That’s stacking them four barrels high. Hell of a lot of space!”

It was a lot of space. I nodded in agreement.

“What the hell do I need this for? I’d have to charge you ten thousand dollars a month.”

“Mr. Anastasia,” I said politely. “You know I’ll never be able to pay that kind of rent. We’re just starting out.”

“You from New York?” Anastasia asked me.

“Originally. I served in the army in France and I just got back,” I answered.

“Those frogs think their water is pretty good?”

“It sells good in France,” I answered.

“Okay, Cooper, I’ll take three thousand dollars a month for the first six months. Later, we’ll renegotiate,” he said gruffly, and puffed proudly on his cigar. “Only because you served our country. And I’m a very patriotic man.”

“That includes heat enough to keep the water from freezing?” I asked.

Phil Cioffi nodded.

“How you going to bottle this water?” Anastasia asked.

“I owned a seltzer bottling company before the war. I’m going to try and see if it’s still in business.”

Anastasia leaned back in his chair. “What do you Jews know about bottling soda? There’s only one or two seltzer companies still in business and they are only selling two or three hundred bottles a week. Now, we have a bottling plant in Long Island. We can bottle anything. We already bottle American Cola and all the fruit-flavored sodas. We can do it in any kind of bottle that you want and it’s a lot cheaper than you can do it yourself.”

I looked at him. His cigar was stinking up the room. “That sounds good, but how much will that cost? My people in France really have control of all the money.”

Anastasia waved his cigar. “We’re reasonable. Not only do we do the bottling, we can also set you up with salesmen to reach the stores and make a deal with the Teamsters union to deliver.”

“Okay,” I said. “How much?”

Anastasia looked down at the desk. He scribbled some numbers on a notepad. He looked at it for a few minutes. Then he threw his pencil onto the desk. “Fuck it!” he said. “This is nothing but a pain in the ass. Tell you what I’m gonna do. I’ll give you the best goddamn deal of your lifetime. You set up a company and give us fifty percent of it and then all you have to do is rake in the money.”

“I’ll still have to clear it with the French,” I said. “But thank you, Mr. Anastasia.”

He smiled broadly and offered me one of his cigars. “Just call me Al,” he said.

5

J. P. was angry. “Everything in the United States is Mafia. The warehouse is controlled by the Mafia. The bottling is controlled by the Mafia, the selling and distributing is Mafia. And they take fifty percent of everything! And what do we have? We pay for the shipping, we pay for the barrels, and for one month of personnel at the springs for the water. Then we have nothing left but one sou a liter.”

“We still need advertising if we’re going to sell to the stores. I’ve already talked to some of the big grocery markets. They want advertising if they use space for the bottles. Wholesalers won’t sell to the restaurants unless they get one hundred percent markup on each bottle,” I said. “Other European businesses are making money in the States. Cosmetics, perfumes, many canned foods. We can sell Plescassier here, but we have to invest to make it happen.”

“My father doesn’t want to invest that kind of money. Period,” J. P. said. “You’ll have to find a way to get us out.”

“Five-liter bottles,” I answered. “That’s what your father wanted, and that’s what we’re going to have to do. But it will not make any money and it certainly won’t add to the Plescassier name.”

“I don’t have the choice,” J. P. said. “Do what you can.” And he hung up the phone.

Giselle looked at me. “You don’t look very happy.”

We had been in our little furnished apartment on East 64th Street for almost a month. “I’m not happy. In two days the water arrives in Bush Terminal and I haven’t got a deal with anyone to buy Plescassier. J. P. thinks the Mafia is too expensive, his father won’t invest money to advertise, and at the end of it, I’m the one who is fucked.”

She crossed the room and sat on the couch next to me. “If it doesn’t work,” she said, “we can always go back to France.”

“And what is that for me? A shitty job for no real money and no future,” I said. Hooked at her. “I’m sorry, darling, but I’m American and this is where I should be. In France, I’m still a foreigner.”

“I am a foreigner here,” she said. “But I am happy to be with you.”

“I am happy to be with you, too, dear,” I said. “But I’m a man. I want to take care of you. I don’t know how long J. P. will want me once I go back. Then I’m just a gigolo living on your back.”

She took my hand. “Jerree, just give yourself time. We’ll find a way out.”

I kissed her. “You’re wonderful. You always believe in me.”

She laughed and got to her feet. “Take a shower. I’ll wash you. Then we can go to bed and make love. You’ll forget all about your problems.”

“You forgot about dinner,” I said.

“After,” she said.

*   *   *

In the morning Buddy woke me up. “I got a hot deal for you,” he said.

I groaned. “I’ve not been lucky with good deals,” I said.

“Don’t be a schmuck,” he said. “This is really hot.”

“What?” I asked.

“A Roadmaster right off the line,” he said. “And you can get it for peanuts.”

“It’s hot?” I said.

“So?” he answered. “We get it from the used-car dealer. Everything’s been taken care of. You even get legitimate papers.”

“My business is going into the shithouse and you want to talk to me about hot deals,” I said.

“You pay a grand,” he said. “It’s forty-five hundred off the showroom floor. Keep it a couple of months and you can get twenty-five hundred for it.”

“I’m not in the car business,” I said.

“You need a car,” he said. “Your taxicabs cost that much in a month. Besides, Giselle needs a car. Subways and buses are not her style.”

“Okay,” I said. “Where do you want me to go to get it?”

“I’ll pick you up about noon,” he said. “It’s at a Buick dealership up on St. Nicholas Avenue.”

I took Giselle with me to get the car. She stared at it. “Mon Dieu,” she said. “It’s a giant.”

Buddy and I laughed. “It’s a great car,” I said. “This is the first year they came in with air-conditioning.”

“Why do you need an air conditioner in an automobile?” she asked. “Just open the windows and you get all the air you need.”