“Hey,” the red-faced comic was saying, “how about these new government deductions, these new ‘pay as you go’ taxes, the President calls ’em? But after you pay, where can you go?”
Polite laughter rippled; the crowd, denied dancing, were mostly talking among themselves, and drinking. Not far from where we sat, though, somebody was laughing a little too loud, I thought, trying a little too hard: the husky guy who’d taken that postage-stamp table. Like Kollek, he was blond, in his late twenties, with the blank, barely formed features of a fullridescholarship jock; hell, he was big enough to play tackle in the Big Ten….
Kollek casually asked, “Ever hear of the Haganah, Nate? That’s not a word you necessarily have to go to synagogue to run into.”
The Haganah, which had been around since after World War One, was an underground defense organization controlled by David Ben-Gurion’s Jewish Agency for Palestine and a high command of Palestine’s Jewish leaders. There were Zionist terrorist groups of course, but Haganah wasn’t one of them: their policy was havlagah, self-defense.
“Is that still around, now that Israel’s a state?” I asked.
Kollek just smiled and puffed his cigar. He was about to say something when a waitress came around to ask us if we wanted drinks. He ordered Jack Daniel’s on the rocks and I ordered rum and Coke.
“What’s a poor young nation to do,” Kollek said, not exactly answering my question, “when a great patron like the U.S.A. decides to ration its goodwill the way it used to ration gas and meat?”
“What you mean is,” I said, “the U.S. won’t ‘ration’ you any arms or military supplies.”
An arms embargo was in effect: neither side of the Arab-Israeli war could have American weaponry-legally.
Kollek shrugged and said, “I’m a fund-raiser, Nate, workin’ through the UJA.”
United Jewish Appeal.
“‘Just’ a fund-raiser, Teddy?”
“Well, also I’m a recruiter. I look for influential American Jews who can give more than money-who can provide leverage-like Eddie Jacobsen, President Truman’s old business partner.”
“I hear he doesn’t keep kosher either,” I muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“You know, a big part of my job, Nate, is I’m always on the lookout for guys like you.”
“What kind of guy would that be?”
He gestured to me like I was a Cadillac on a showroom floor. “American Jewish war veterans, with combat experience, willing to volunteer for the Israeli army-over half our volunteers come from America, y’know.”
“One war was plenty for me, thanks.”
A waitress finally cleaned off the tackle’s tiny table; he ordered from her, without even looking at her, a good-looking little brunette, though on occasion he was still sneaking peeks at our booth.
“Hey,” Kollek was saying, shrugging, “you were a long shot, but it couldn’t hurt to ask. Anyway, it’s not like we’re beggin’ for leads on ex-soldiers ripe for recruitment.”
“You’re not?”
“No … we’re supplied with names and personal details of potential recruits by our friends on the inside.”
“The inside of what, Teddy?”
He shrugged, exuding friendliness and cigar smoke, then dropped his bomb: “The Pentagon.”
“… This is about Forrestal, isn’t it?”
Kollek laughed, again ignoring my question. “You know, Nate, it’s the last thing I ever expected to be involved with…. I was one of the lucky Jews, you know, the lucky few the British allowed to move to Palestine in ’35, before Hitler started gobbling up Europe. I started a kibbutz on the shores of the Sea of Galilee-can you picture it?”
I had to smile, hearing this from the Damon Runyon character seated across from me.
“Galilee, that’s where they say Jesus walked on the water. Easier for him doing that than me being a farmer. Oy! They said, ‘Teddy, you’re a worldly man, you have charm, people meet you and they like you … we’ll send you to godless New York.’ … You know, these are people that admire the Soviet-style economy, socialists that view America as materialistic, superficial, pointless. Me, I took to New York immediately-Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, and those jazz musicians from Harlem, hot damn!”
“What did you mean, Teddy? What was the last thing you’d ever expected to get involved with?”
He rolled the cigar around in his mouth, giving me a sly look. “What do you think I’m talking about, Nate?”
“Arms smuggling,” I said. “Intelligence gathering.”
Up onstage, Jack “Jive” Shaffer was singing an effeminate version of “Nature Boy” in a pageboy wig, prancing, mincing, getting some laughs-though not from the tackle at the postage-stamp table.
Kollek’s cigar had gone out; he relighted it. “Let’s just say I won’t deny I’ve developed contacts, informers, assistance of various kinds in the Pentagon.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I promised you the lowdown; Teddy Kollek delivers on his promises. Sure you won’t have a Cuban?”
“No thanks.”
“First Cuban I ever smoked, Ben Siegel gave me, after one of his Havana trips. Ben, God rest him, was one of our biggest contributors-better than fifty grand. Meyer Lanksy, Mickey Cohen-you know them, too, don’t you?”
“Acquaintances, not friends.”
“Well, they’re my friends, generous ones, and not just in terms of money, no. Jewish and Italian gangsters can be helpful in so many other ways.”
“Like linkups with waterfront unions, if you’re trying to smuggle guns and money, you mean?”
Again Kollek didn’t answer me directly, saying, “They’re crazy, those guys. Do you know Lanksy suggested I draw up a hit list of ‘enemies of the Jewish people’?”
“Take him up on it?”
“No, it was tempting, but I declined-respectfully.”
Using the same tray, the cute brunette waitress brought us our drinks, then took the tackle his: a bottle of 7 UP and a glass of ice. Maybe he was in training.
“Okay, Teddy. You got friends in the mob, you got friends in the Pentagon. What’s your point?”
Kollek leaned forward, the eyes again disappearing into the slitted pouches. “Haven’t I made it? Your pal Forrestal thinks we’re trying to kill him. Why, to get information we’re already getting from sources all around him? Hell, a phone call to Meyer Lanksy, I could have that fat cat snuffed out like a candle. But that’s not how I operate-not that the son of a bitch wouldn’t deserve it.”
“So, any American official that doesn’t back Israel deserves to die, Teddy?”
He was shaking his head, cigar smoke swirling around him like a wreath. “That’s what I don’t get about you, Nate-you’re Jewish, you’re a combat veteran-how can you work for that Nazi bastard?”
Up onstage, the drummer hit a rim shot, punctuating Jack “Jive” Shaffer’s latest joke-and Kollek’s.
“Oh,” I said, “so now Forrestal’s a Nazi? I see-Roosevelt’s Secretary of the Navy, a Nazi, sure, that makes sense; Truman’s Secretary of Defense a Nazi. Teddy, this may come as a shock to you, but not everybody who opposes Israel is a fucking Nazi.”
The quizzical eyebrows raised even higher. “You mean, maybe James Forrestal doesn’t have a corner on the paranoia market? Don’t you read Drew Pearson? Nate, your friend Forrestal’s company Dillon and Read helped finance Hitler!”
I sipped my rum and Coke, refusing to get caught up in his hysteria. “A Wall Street firm doing business with Germany after World War One, before Hitler’s rise, doesn’t make Forrestal and the rest of Dillon, Read amp; Company a nest of Nazis.”
“Bullshit! They loaned hundreds of millions to the German cartels that formed the backbone of Hitler’s war machine. Hell, Forrestal’s on the fuckin’ board of directors of General Aniline and Film, the American arm of I. G. Farben, the drug and industrial trust that created Auschwitz!”
Kollek was getting really worked up; it was all the tackle at the postage-stamp table could do not to just pull up a chair at our booth.