TOUGH GUYS / BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

Brownsville has always been a tough section of Brooklyn.

The one-mile square neighborhood was actually tougher than tough.

Its unofficial motto "Brownsville! Never ran, never will!" guaranteed Kings County Hospital the title of the most gunshot victims admitted to a E.R in the USA. During the crack epidemic the US Army even set up a training program called the Academy of Advanced Combat Medicine to take advantage of the area's hundreds of gunshot and stabbing victims.

Surviving the gauntlet of youth had steeled Mike Tyson for his reign as the heavyweight champion of the world and had molded Manny, my boss on 47th Street, for the old diamond dealer also hailed from Brownsville.

"Brownsville was always tough," the eighty year-old jeweler explained to everyone who had to listen. "I fought with Italians, Puerto Ricans, Irish, and Blacks, but in some ways we all got along. Everyone knew who they were. One day this big black kid decides to fight with me. He didn't give a reason. Maybe he didn't like pastrami. Not that my family could afford deli food. Clyde called me out and after school I met him in the playground. He had thirty friends with him. I wasn't too scared, because a fight with a schwartzer was usually fists. Only the wops and spics carried knives. Thirty-one schwartzers versus me. So I tell Clyde, "Listen you want to fight me then we fight, but if any of your friends touch me, then tomorrow they'll be a hundred of me out here looking to square things with you." Clyde looks at me and says, "Fuck it."

"We fought one on one. Neither of had heart in it and after a couple of punches, we shook hands. Not friends, but never enemies. That's how things were back then. No guns. No one dead."

Black boys and Jew boys were cautious friends in the 1940s. This urban truce lasted through the 1950s. The Civil Rights Act had been passed in 1965 to insure the progress of blacks, but Brownsville became a ghetto with the government sanctioned influx of cheap heroin, then it was gun shots night and day, and a roll-back by the corrupt police, as the absentee landlords torched their tenements.

Jimmy Breslin wrote about the neighborhood in 1968.

"Berlin after the war; block after block of burned-out shells of houses, streets littered with decaying automobile hulks. The stores on the avenues are empty and the streets are lined with deserted apartment houses or buildings with one old person in them."White people fled Brownsville for the Long Island suburbs in the 1960s. Jews to the Five Towns and Manhattan Beach, and Levittown.

His father, Jake, was a poor carpenter from the a Russian shetl. They was stuck in Brownsville. Manny never finished school and worked as a teenaged schlepper carrying diamonds and jewelry for several years in the Bowery diamond district. There the young man met the most beautiful girl in Brooklyn. Everyone said that Hilda looked like Elizabeth Taylor. They weren't lying about the comparison, especially since Manny's future wife posessed sapphire blue eyes. The two married and opened a jewelry store on Canal Street.

Manny left Brownsville for Long Island, but Brownsville remained in his blood. He didn't take shit from anyone. Not the mob from Little Italy. Not the other jewelers who looked down their noses at the young upstart or his wife's family who couldn't see what she did in the undersized starker, as the old folks call a tough guy in Yiddish. He wasn't beholding to none of them.

Street fights in the diamond trade were not acceptable, but Manny protected his own.

Shotguns were strapped under the counter. His revolver was in his desk. The safety off. He never had to fire either. Manny was friends with the wise guys on Mulberry Street. He was their kind of Jew and they took care of him.

Even after he moved uptown to 47th Street with his sons, Richie Boy and Googs. His heart remained still downtown and talked that way to customers, dealers, and his help.

"He comes from the Bowery." The old Azkhenazi families said to criticize his gruff ways.

"Not the Bowery, I come from Brownsville." Manny was proud of his heritage and even prouder to exhibit the street prowess a boy needed in that neighborhood.

Diamonds are traded on memo. One jeweler loaned merchandise to another jeweler on the promise that they had to be return within ninety days or paid the money. Honesty was a crucial element in these transactions, however not all jewelers were honest, so the odds were high that sooner or later you'll get burned by greed.

Manny depended on his tough guy reputation to avert any thefts and he was a young seventy in 1999.

Young guys weren't scared of old guys and one Miami jeweler burned Manny for a $20,000 diamond. This was before the age of cellphones. The dealer had gone to ground, but Manny got paid back plus profit by the insurance company. He made good to the dealer slowly. Manny liked paying slow.

Life went on.

Money came and went from one hand to the other without sticking in anyone's pocket for too long.

One night Manny took his second wife to dinner at a midtown restaurant after playing tennis under the Queensboro Bridge.

The midtown restaurant wasn't expensive, because besides being a tough guy, Manny was a little cheap. This vice was another legacy of a Brownsville upbringing. His second wife didn't mind the stinginess, because she used to dine with the infamous Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky and Luciano's 'Little Man' would split a dish with her. She always told Manny that he was no Meyer Lansky.

"He was a runt." Manny wasn't too tall either, but his height broke 5-8. A good half-foot taller than Meyer Lansky.

Size isn't the only determining factor for toughness, for another Brownsville native, Mike Tyson, was only 5-10. He KOed taller, stronger men with regularity throughout his career. Iron Mike had hit Leon Spinks so hard that the then-champion's eyes rolled in his head like a slot machine wheel.

Most of being tough was being ready to be tough and Manny was more than ready, when he spotted the diamond thief at the restaurant bar.

"Excuse me a second," he told his second wife and rose from the table.

The seventy year-old took out his tennis racket and strode across the dining room. The thief who had stiffed him for twenty Gs and eating alone. He was in his thirties, taller, and had remarked to another dealer that Manny could go fuck himself, if he thought he was going to get back his diamond.

"Hey, you." The Brownsville native called out to the younger man.

"Nice tennis outfit," the thief joked, thinking he was safe at the bar.

He misjudged the older man.

Safe was home in bed in Florida.

Not New York City.

Manny whacked the gonif in the head with the racket and avenged his disrespect with another couple of whacks to the ribs. His second wife pulled her husband off the fallen man. Two off-duty cops were glomming drinks at the bar.

The glib thief made up a story with hems and haws. They were going to arrest the two of them, but Manny's older brother had been a cop in the 20th Precinct. The two cops knew him. Seymour was a legend.

The cops freed Manny and threw the thief in jail. A search of the gonif's apartment turned up a steel box. Manny's diamond was still in its envelope. The cops kept it as evidence. Manny cursed them for six months.

"I'd rather have the stone back than see that piece of shit in jail."

Manny's balance of justice had been meted with the beating, but he got his diamond in the end without telling the insurance company of its return. He doesn't admit to hitting the gonif, but he's still a tough guy at eighty. Mean too, because something about those Brownsville street turned a tough guy mean and Manny was no exception.

He was an old mean tough guy.

We fought all day long over sales. He stiffed me on commissions. I called him a cheat. He was a piece of shit to me and I was a piece of shit to him.

One day a hard-nosed Hassidim was late delivering a diamond. My customer didn't want to wait. $200 out of my pocket. $2000 from Manny. Fish was a big guy. 6-4, but this wasn't the first time that he had been slow and I was from the South Shore, which was a little like Brownsville, only more Irish.

"I don't need this schiesse from a goy." Fish didn't like dealing with gentiles. The diamond maven was a big person on the street. His firm sold diamonds to Tiffany and Harry Winston. A gross macher.

"That's apparent from the way you treat me, sie gesund. I bet if I was wearing a yamulke, iI would have gotten the diamond fast.*" I was not a goy, but a sheygutz and slammed down the phone.

Ten minutes later Fish came into the exchange, itching for a fight. Fish unbuttoned his black rekel undercoat and Prince Albert frock coat. They were both a size XXXL

"I should smack you." His fists were clenched in rage. He had a reputation for the first punch.

"Hit me once if you want. I don't go down easy." I had been a tough guy back in the 70s, 80s, and some of the 90s. I was a tough guy in the 21st Century too, but with decreasing success. I maintained my stance, which was a few inches out of Fish's reach. "But if you try a second time then I'll take out your teeth."

"Slow down." Manny came to the counter. "Fish, we're here trying to make money. If you say you're going to give us a stone, give us a stone. Don't make so much drama about the goy saying something about your beanie." "Beanie?" Fish sputtered with outrage and his left hand grabbed his yarmulke, as if he was trying to distract me. "Yarmulke. Beanie. It's all the same to me." Manny hasn't been to temple in since his father Jake passed away at the age of 98. He had been run over by a truck and caught a cold. The cold was what killed him. Jake was a tough guy too. Manny's father came from a part of Poland that was just like Brownsville.

The Yiddish word for tough is hart.

"It's a yarmulke." Fish was an observant Hassid.

"Just like I said." Manny stood his ground.

Also out of Fish's range

The big Hassid eyed the both of us and shrugged off the moment.

Life on 47th Street was about making money or nimmt geld. He threw a packet and a memo on the counter.

"Here's your diamond."

"Like I said before sie gesund."

"Nimmt geld, sheygut."

"You too," Manny liked getting in the last word and turned to me, "Call the customer.

We sold his stone later that afternoon.

Manny complained about the small profit I squeezed from the customer.

"Better a little than nothing."

"Best ein bissel als nichts."

"Something is better than nothing, but more something is better than something." Manny smil<>ed with a laugh. He was still a tough guy. A piece of shit too, but he was my piece of shit. And the tough guy from Brownsville wouldn't have it any other way. Never ran, never will!

Torah Torah Torah - BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

TORA TORA TORA was one of my mother's favorite films. The infamy of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor burned bright in her memory. Her friends from Jamaica Plain enlisted in the Marines, Army, and Navy by the scores. Many of them failed to return to Boston. Their bodies rest on islands across the Pacific.

The 1970 film flopped at the box office. Hippies didn't want to see a war movie, but I went with my mother and father. She cried at the sinking of the Arizona. My father had joined the Army Air Force that January much like many young Americans volunteered for the armed forces after the 9/11 attacks.

The producers of MAGNUM PI and NYPD BLUE manipulated the Japanese Navy's radio command TORA TORA TORA into TORAH TORAH TORAH for episodes about stolen Torahs. It has never been used by the IDF, who have been trying to draft Yeshiva students into the army without any success, for they consider the Torah trumps any secular laws.

Last Friday I was on West 47th Street and ran into Rondell, a religious diamond dealer.

"So nu?"The heavy-set Hassidic diamond broker was happy that I had a new job. We boasted about the health of our families and after a few minutes I asked his opinion about the power of the Torah over the laws of man.

"The Torah was dictated to Moses over the forty years in the desert. The words come from a divine source." The Torah was the law for Rondell.

"What about the last eight lines? Some scholars considered that these were composed after the Death of Moses."

"They are all sacred." The youngish father of six was a true believer from a schul on Eastern Parkway and said proudly, "You know that the Torah is one of the most important school books in Korea. Its truth is taught to many of the young."

"The Torah?" I understood how the five books of Moses formed the backbone of Hassidic tradition and the Christian accepting the Pentateuch into their Old Testament as well as the Muslims regarding the ancient text to be the words of Allah, but Korea was on the other side of the world and while 22% of its people claimed to be Buddhists and almost a third profess to be Christian, almost half the country adhere to no religion. "What's the Torah have to do with Korea?"

"The Korean ambassador told Israeli TV that Talmud study is a mandatory part of the country’s school curriculum and almost every home in South Korea boasts a Korean version of the Talmud, and mothers commonly teach it to their children, who call it the "Light of Knowledge."

"I know many Koreans are Christian. I had several baptized in my youth."

My old boss shook his head. Manny had heard this schtick before.

"You were a missionary?" Rondell knew of my devotion to atheism.

"No, but as a child in Boston the nuns offered us a chance to support Korean infant orphans. $15 took care of them for the first month of their life and you got to name them." Somewhere in Korea were four men in their late-40s with my name. "Koreans are also prone to Evangelism."

"Evangelism?" Rondell was unfamiliar with Christian subsects.

"Born-Again Christians." Manny was listening to my every word.

At the mention of these words my Brazilian co-worker turned her head. Ava believed in the God of the Only Faith and she prayed for my abandoned soul, so I won't burn in Hell. I looked at her, as I said, "Yes, Born-Agains back Israel 100%, for without Israel there can be no Apocalypse and the Apocalypse bring back the Messiah to battle the forces of Satan. Ava, do you have a Torah in your house?"

"Yes, it's called the Book of Light." Ava's was guided by the Bible. To her every word was true, especially the Apocalypse. She noticed her boss glaring at her. He hated my bullshitting.

"Thanks." I respected her faith. This country the Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and from religion. "The Talmud gets around and so does the Koran."

"Not according to the Korean Ambassador. He says no Koreans read it, because it's a book of Islam." Rondell hated the Arabs; Christians as well as Muslims.

"That's not true. I have traveled through Korea's main airport on my many trips to Thailand and seen a few Muslim Korean in Inchon Airport, but no Hassidim. They prefer to fly through Tokyo or Beijing on the way back from the Hong Kong diamond shows Jews either, but then you don't have to like pastrami to be Jewish."

"What does pastrami have to do with the Torah?"

"Nothing other than it isn't tref."

"Goyim." Rondell was ecstatic to have stumped me on this issue and said, "Call me if you get a deal we can steal."

"Will do." We had made money in the past and I hoped that we made money in the future. We hugged as men equal in love of the world and I walked him outside the exchange. I wasn't making any money on the Street today and shouted, "TORAH TORAH TORAH."

"Say the word." Rondell pumped his fist in the air. He was a good family man and loved the Torah as should any rebbi.

That evening back home in Fort Greene I searched for 'Korea, torah' and found the following;

Nearly ten years ago, the Korea Times reported: “Interestingly, there are at least two different books currently sitting on Korean best-seller shelves that purport to explain the Jewish Talmud. The popularity of these books initially came as a surprise. But Koreans aren’t converting to Judaism. They read those books because Jews have gained a reputation for hard work and success, two things Koreans relate to well.”

Reports of Korean schoolchildren reading the Talmud – or at least stories thereof – have also been known for several years. One American teacher in South Korea related that in 2005, his elementary school students told him that as children, they had all read the Talmud, which they called the "Light of Knowledge." When asked if they had also read the Koran, they burst into laughter, saying, "Of course not, that’s the Muslim book.”

TORAH TORAH TORAH, but I prefer a good pastrami sandwich from Katz' Deli.

Throw in a cream soda and I'm in heaven on earth.

BET ON CRAZY / The Blue Diamond Affair

In the autumn of 2008 Richie Boy opened our jewelry store in the Plaza Hotel's Retail Collection. I thought we were going to coin a fortune. The Plaza was a legend. Rich people stayed there.

It didn't take me long to see a disaster looming on the horizon. The American economy was in the can after two endless wars and the theft of trillions by the banks.

The new management of the Plaza had hoped to convert the entire building into condos. The hotel union forced the city to only limit the change to 50% and the rest remained the hotel, but Israelis owners were developers unaccustomed to the hospitality business and they treated the guests like schlumps and played the same pop music in the Retail Collection for days on end like we had been renditioned by the CIA.

No signs were posted on the hotel entrances to inform passers-by about the score of high-end stores in the basement of the landmark hotel and few guests strayed down to the renovated boiler room.

Worst Richie Boy's two partners were pieces of shit. The Persian financial backer from Great Neck was bankrupt Persian from Great Neck and the other was a thief from Long Island.

Weeks passed without my consummating a sale at our jewelry store. My 60 year-old co-worker was having a nervous breakdown. Her husband had leveraged the mortgage on their New Jersey dream to the max. Everyday my work wife spoke about suicide.

"Madoff ruined me. How am I going to pay for my Botox?"

At least she had an excuse, but I wondered what crime I had committed in a previous life to be punished by imprisonment in this purgatory.

The only redeeming aspects of the Retail Collection were a weekly salary, the cakes of Demel's Pastry Shop, and an after-work beer at the Oak Bar. The bartender was an old friend and I would sit at the historic bar, happy to be away from the subterranean room of gloom underneath my feet.

The clientele of the Oak Bar was a mixture of nostalgic guests, loud tourists, and hard drinkers not offended by the management's edict to measure out the alcohol in shot glass. I mostly minded my own business, but one night a young Arab man took the stool next to me. He asked the time and commented on my Omega.

The automatic dated back to the 40s.

"I love watches." He was sporting a Audemar-Piguet retailing at $45,000.

I explained about my diamond store in the Retail Collection and he mentioned that he had a 4-carat blue diamond in his hotel room.

"A blue diamond?"

"Deep blue. What do you know about blue diamonds."

"Not much. Boron reflects the blue within the diamond. Only a few atoms of Boron in the millions of carbon atoms created the color. I saw the Hope Diamond at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington. Someone told me it had been stolen from the statue of Sita and the diamond was supposedly cursed by this sacrilege."

"Are you superstitious?"

"I'm Irish."

"But you work for the Jews?" His accusation gestures were extravagant.

"Why not?" Richie Boy and his father Manny had been relatively good to me over the years other than being more miserly than a French Canadian.

"No reason." Everything about Mubarrah said royalty or fake.

"Not at all. I know nothing. How big is the stone?"

"4 carat-plus. You want to see it?"

"Sure." I was very curious about his stone, since I had only seen a few blue diamonds in my 20-year career as a diamantaire and none had been as big as his. "Are you staying here

"In this hotel? No a chance." He laughed with a disdain and signaled for his check. "I'm at the St. Regis."

"I love the King Cole Bar." I paid $9 for my Stella with a ten and dropped a $2 tip for Orlando. The bartender and I went back to the Blackout of 1977.

It was a winter night, but not too cold, so we walked over to the St. Regis.

Mubarrah came from the Gulf. His family was connected to an emirate royal family. The Islamic right to have multiple wives . The doorman greeted Mubarrah with practiced deference and we went over to the elevator without getting a key.

"He didn?t make any moves on the ride up to his suite.

It was bigger than my lost East Village apartment by several hundred square feet.

"One minute." He took off his coat and sat on the brocaded couch.

I shucked my cashmere coat and sat on an elegant chair.

Mubarrah reached into a bag and pulled out a box of jewelry.

"Looks like someone is getting rid of their unwanted possessions."

"A friend needs money."

"Who doesn't these days?"

All the necklaces, bracelets, and ring dated back to the 80s and 90s. None of the pieces were stamped by Cartier or Tiffany. Our store on 47th Street brought such merchandise for 20-30% of value. Most people imagined their treasures were worth more. After my brief examination I said, "There's not much money in this."

I know, but there is in this." Mubarrah unfolded a small diamond parcel.

A iceberg-blue diamond flashed in the low light and Mubarrah handed over the loose emerald-cut gem for a closer inspection. My loupe revealed that the stone was clean. I had never seen a stone this beautiful.

I want to sell this." Mubarrah gestured at the diamond, as if pointing was ill-mannered

"Is it yours?"

"I used to wear in a ring." His voice betrayed the loss of privilege.

Mubarrah was twenty-five. His open palm bore no signs of having worked a day in his life.

"Have you shown it to anyone else?" It was a stupid question.

"No one."

It was a lie neither of us had to believe.

"How much you want?"

"$2.4 million."

I liked him saying 2.4 instead of 2.5. It showed he was willing to 'hondel' or bargain.

"But I know nothing about money." Playing dumb was a trick, but Mubarrah was as skilled at this game as an old camel dealer.

"2.4 million is a good price."

"You have any takers?"

"You?re the first person to see it in New York."

I feel honored." I pretended to believe him.

My boss Manny would think that he was a liar and Manny was rarely wrong in these matters. The Brownsville native had worked in the jewelry trade for over six decades. He had heard every story and considered most of the bullshit.

Can I show it to some privates?"

"Only here." He wasn't letting it out of his sight.

"Does it have any papers?"

"Here's the GIA certificate. Show them that." His fingers plucked the parcel from my grasp with the delicacy of a tiger snapping off a turtle's head. The diamond disappeared inside his jacket. "I'm here for a week and why don't you take the jewelry? Get an offer from your friends."

"Now?" We barely knew each other an hour.

"You're not Jewish. right?"

I had spent over 40 years with the Chosen People in the nightclub and diamond businesses. I spoke Yiddish. The Hassidim and I argued the dietary strictures of the Talmud. Some of this exposure had rubbed off the good way, but I once more admitted, "No, I'm a gentile."

"Then I can trust you."

"Thanks." The #1 rule on 47th Street was 'trust no one' and that adage worked for the rest of New York too. Even Staten Island, however the young Arab?s confidence was based on the fact that none of the outmoded jewelry belonged to him.

I said good-night and rode the elevator downstairs to the lobby where I telephoned Manny?s son, Richie Boy. I rattled off my find without mentioning the blue.

That information was better scherried to Jakob, an Afghani colored stone broker. That market was controlled by that tightly knit group of exiles. If one of them had seen the stone, then each of them would know of the gem.

The next day I excused myself from the Plaza. My co-worker was high on Valium. I doubted whether Janet registered my presence or departure. Her American Dream of being a millionaire was dead and she wasn?t alone, but none of them were willing to blame the banks.

I strolled down 5th Avenue under a bright winter sun and a cold wind whipped around the edges of the buildings. A good cashmere coat and leather hat kept me warm and I arrived at the colored diamond dealer within ten minutes. Jakob greeted me in his 17th floor office.

"You seen this stone before?" I handed him the certificate for the blue.

Jakob was a small man with a big family. They had fled Kabul before 1975. Very few Jews remained in Afghanistan, but those there were family.

"The certificate is interesting. How much he want for the stone?"

"$2.4 million."

"How did he get that price?"

"Probably someone offered him 2.3." It was only logical. ?It is a beautiful stone.?

"And you have seen many blues?? Jakob was big in his field. Hundreds of gem diamonds passed under his eye every month.

"Not many, but I can recognize something special." The previous spring I had sold a million-dollar ruby the color of pigeon blood and clear as a fine burgundy wine. "This diamond is as blue as the iceberg that sunk the Titanic."

"Deep blue. 4 carat." Jakob handed back the certificate. "Someone was showing this stone in Switzerland. The same numbers. Tell him I'm interested at 2 million. At 2.3 no one makes money, but him. Understand?"

"Of course." I wasn't getting involved in this sale for my health. I had two wives and two kids in Thailand. They liked eating every day. I bid Jakob good afternoon and walked over to our diamond exchange on West 47th Street. Richie Boy was unimpressed with Mubarrah's dreck.

A waste of time."

What about this?" I handed over the certificate. My commission on this sale would be in five-figures. ?I saw it last night. A beautiful stone. Worth about 2 million.

"It Still sounds like a waste of time. You have a buyer for it?"

"Jakob said it was worth 2 million."

"Yeah, but how much would he pay for it" Not 2 mill." Richie Boy got on the phone. The conversation was short and not so sweet. Jakob was still owed 90K for the ruby sale. Richie Boy changed the conversation and asked, "Does the Arab really want to sell the stone?"

"He says he does.?

"Then get him down here."

It was more an order than a request and my friend's tone said that I would get cut out of this deal by Jakob and Richie Boy. I would have loved to back-door the deal to another broker, but the other Afghanis were even more untrustworthy than Jakob.

I called Mubarrah to tell him about the jewelry and the offer for his diamond.

"Come see me."

On the way back to the Plaza I stopped by the St. Regis.

Mubarrah was in the lobby. He bid me to sit down.

"Tea?"

"Please."

I passed over the bag of jewelry.

"Like I said, there's not much money in it, but the blue diamond is another story."

He understood their disinterest in the dreck as well as the appeal of the blue diamond.

"A stone with clean and blue is rare. 2 million is an honest offer, but I have a better one from a friend in Geneva."

"Oh." My big commission evaporated with the confirmation of his shopping the stone. He had wasted my time and I sought to regain the upper hand.

"I lived the last twenty years in Thailand."

"Selling and buying rubies and sapphires."

"Something like that." Actually it was counterfeit Formula 1 shirts and jackets. "I arrived in 1990 a year after the Blue Diamond Heist. Are you familiar with this story about how a Thai janitor stole $20 million worth of jewelry and gems from the Saudi Royal Palace. He smuggled the loot back to his native province and started selling the jewelry at a 1000-baht each. A Bangkok jeweler discovers the treasure trove and buys it for nothing. The janitor buys a new tractor and some rice fields."

"I've heard some of this story." Anyone from the Gulf knew what happened next, but he said, "Go on."

"The Saudi King considered this theft an insult to his throne and send two diplomats and a royal thug to find the jewelry. The royal thug thought he was tough, but the Thais are tougher than a ball of barbed wire and his messengers were shot dead. The investigating police commander arrested the janitor and jewelry, but another two Saudi 'diplomats'. Finally the police handed over the stolen jewelry in a public ceremony. Only most of it was fake. A month later the Thai media photographed many of the cops' wives wearing the swag at a Red Cross function. This was not a shining moment in Thai-Saudi relationship and it worsened when the Saudis sent back 250,000 guest workers. In the end the cops killed the jeweler's son and wife looking for a 50-carat blue. Heads rolled in the police hierarchy and the thief exited prison after serving two years. His family and tractor were waiting in Lampung. The head cop was convicted for the murder of the jeweler's wife and daughter. His death penalty was lowered to 25 years. He claimed to be innocent."

"Everyone in that story was innocent depending the point of view."

"That diamond was bigger than yours. Maybe yours was cut from it." I was making this up, but guilt spread wide from a crime.

"It's been in my family for years."

"The certificate is new, but that's unimportant."

"I don't like bad stories and like them less with bad endings." Mubarrah toyed with his jacket. The blue diamond was inside a pocket.

"Behind all big gems and forture are a bad story." I could have punched him once quick, grabbed the diamond, and then ran out the door and catch a taxi to JFK. A 24-hour flight took me to Bangkok. The fence's price of 20% would last 10 years, except Thailand had a bad habit of re-writing happy endings and I might have been many things, but one of them was not a thief.

"Cursed like the Hope Diamond." Mubarrah tightened his grip on the hidden parcel. I had put a fear in his bones.

"You know your gems. If you can't get your price in Switzerland, give me a call.?" I thanked him for the tea, then strolled up 5th Avenue to the Plaza.

It had been a waste of time just like richie Boy had said in the beginning.

I would never sell the blue diamond.

I was stuck in New York like it was a minimal security prison, but one day i would escape Manhattan.

I came back to the Plaza's Retail Collection to find my co-worker crying behind a People magazine.

"What's wrong now?"

"Same as before. I still can't pay for my Botox." This line was a mantra attached to Janet's new-found destitution and I brought her a glass of wine from Demel's. I had one too. She popped a Valium and asked, "Where were you?"

"I had to go to the bathroom."

"You were gone three hours."

"Are you punching my clock?" she asked like a snitch. She wasn't bad, just paid to watch me like a hawk. "I hope you washed your hands."

"Twice." I appreciated her advice. She was a good work wife and knew that all men were alike and my wives thought the same, but women were all alike too. They would have loved that blue diamond. It was magic, then again so are all things of beauty.

Hassidic Magic Past Prime

I believe in magic.

Not many other people do.

Most are squares and who can tell squares what to think about anything other than potato chips?

The other day I ran into a Hassidic mystic from 47th Street.

He looked not so much down on his luck as hurting in health.

I approached the shuffling magician and said, "I remember you from the street. I was the Sahbbat Goy."

"I remember you too. You are old too." I could have spared him $10, however he said, "I need nothing. I have good. Let me see your hand."

He took my hand and regarded at my palm. His fingers traced runes. He coughed without health and said, "You think too much."

Another glance.

"And you love too much."

Neither was a curse and I wanted to say Danke, but he was gone.

Vanished.

To an atom.

I looked at my palm. I saw what he saw. Nothing, but the truth and that is the beauty of magic.

APOCALYPSE NOW AND THEN by Peter Nolan Smith

I tried to enlist in the Marines soon after my 16th birthday. My mother wouldn’t sign the papers.

The 1968 Tet offensive dented her belief in the final outcome of the Vietnam Conflict, as the fallen were airlifted home in coffins and the wounded filled the VA hospitals. Discharged soldiers were portrayed by the newspapers as drug addicted monsters. They were wrong. Those killers were my friends, p>Dennis Halley had seen action near the DMZ.

A Marine hero.

The Boston Globe had mentioned his heroics during the Tet offensive.

Twenty-one dead.

And he was alive. and a neighborhood boy returned from the Far East with nothing more than a thirst for beer.

My hometown’s John Wayne was dating my next door neighbor. Addy Manzi was the prettiest girl on the South Shore. The three of us vandalized an abandoned missile base of top of Chickatawbut Hill. The police had arrested me and I never gave up Dennis' or Addy’s name. He was a god and after getting released by the pigs I told him about my plans to join the Marines, while we were sitting by the Manzi’s swimming pool with the night closing on suburbia.

"Why you want to go?" He stared at the stars.

"I want to get out of here." My suburban hometown had three red lights, fifteen churches, and no bars.

“Not a good enough reason.” Dennis had been decorated with medals and a puckered hole in his arm from shrapnel.

"And why not?" The Marines were proud.

“Marines are taking a lot of casualties. Officers are gung-ho for promotion. One fucking captain ordered my friend to get some beer. A mine blew up his truck. My man died for warm beer. Viet-Nam is fucked and if you don’t have to go, then don’t go. The only people there are dumb fucks like me and poor white trash and blacks who can’t afford to go to college.”

“What about serving my country?” I believed in the American Way; life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“I'm done served this country enough for the both of us. I spent two tours humping around rice fields, burning villages, and shooting at an enemy I couldn’t see. But one of them saw me good enough to shoot me."

He touched his arm.

Addy kissed the wound.

I started to speak. He stopped me.

"If I hear you signing up for the jarheads, I’ll kick your ass.” The twenty year-ld Halley had killed VC and his eyes squinted like he was a stand-in for Clint Eastwood in THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY.

"What if I join the Army?"

"They are the real cannon fodder. Dead men walking, but if you want to leave this town, then join a carnival or circus."

“Okay.” I wasn’t arguing with my hero.

“Good, now give me some room.” He nodded to Addy. They wanted to be alone. I didn’t have to be told why and crossed the lawn to my split-level house.

It was painted pink.

The strength of Dennis' advice changed my life. I became a hippie instead of a Marine. I protested against the war. My father considered me a ‘commie’, but he didn’t want me to go to Viet-Nam. Like Dennis said the war was someone else’s fight and I avoided the last years of the war by attending college.

By the time I graduated in 1974 our troop levels were down to 1950 numbers, but more than 50,000 Americans had died in SE Asia and hundreds of thousands more had suffered grievous wounds to body and soul. Few of soldiers spoke about their experiences and those that had not gone wondered whether they missed the glory of war.

In 1975 Dennis broke up with Addy and moved to California.

In 1976 she and I kissed after my older brother’s wedding. I was too drunk to attempt anything more in my family’s Oldsmobile. I quit my teaching job at South Boston High School to relocate to New York.

Manhattan was heaven for a young man in his 20s. I had made. My girlfriend from West Virginia loved me and I worked at Hurrah, a rock disco on West 62nd Street. My days were free and I spent them going to the movies.

Double bills at the St. Mark’s movie house.

STAR WARS at the Whitestone Drive-in, ALIEN on May 25, 1979 at a Times Square theater, but none was more important than the release of APOCALYPSE NOW on 15 August 1979 at the Ziegfeld Theater, where the sound was state-of-the-art.

None of us knew what to expect from the Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or winner, but an hour before noon several of my co-workers from Hurrah showed up to join a line stretching around the block. The Ziegfeld was the only theater in New York showing the film and none of us had to be anywhere else in the world, but here. Whenever someone asked why Anthony, Reese, and Frank Halliday and I were waiting, they disconnected from their day and bought a ticket.

By 11:45 the show was a sell-out and disappointed film buffs begged for tickets at any price. No one was selling and the thousand-strong audience filed into the West 54th Street theater.

My crowd bulled our way to the center seats.

We knew what was what./

At noon the lights dimmed to a semi-darkness.

None of us were ready for what came next.

A jungle filled the screen and the whoop of helicopters passing overhead strobed over the sound system.

Dust and fire.

The young boy next to me ducked, as if a rotor blade might slice off his head and then a byzantine strum of a guitar followed by chimes and the predominantly male audience gasped with recognition of THE END by the Doors.

A man’s face upside down overlapped with carnage.

A hundred matches ignited throughout the theater. Marijuana smoke clouded the air. APOCALYPSE NOW time-machined back ten years into the past.

153 minutes later I exited into the steamy afternoon with a better understanding about why Dennis Halley was so vehement about my not enlisting.

“Do you think it was really like that?” Reese asked after fending off the next sitting’s questions about the film.

“I really didn’t know, but I wish I had gone."

"To kill people?"

"No, and not to serve my country." I wanted to bear witness to the spectacle of power and glory humbled by determination and I would gladly have risked my life to have the distinction of being a Viet-Nam veteran.

Now many men of my age felt the same way.

We had missed out on the Big Show.

I had never fired an M-16 at shadows.

I never danced with hookers at a Saigon Bar, but my hair had been shoulder-length in April 1975 and I danced in the streets of Boston with hippie girls.

Our side had forced the peace on Nixon's silent majority and the country turned its back on the War and the aftermath.

Several years ago I flew over Viet-Nam on a flight to the States from Thailand.

The country hadlooked at peace from eight miles high and I stared down at the mountains thinking about grunts humping 100 pounds backpacks up and down the slopes. It was a long way from America.

Back at work in the diamond exchange I told the security guards about my trip. Andy had served one tour in 1968 as a grunt out of the motor pool.

"I flew over Saigon. I dnd't drop a bomb."

Fucking gooks." His war was still alive, but I said, “I’ve been writing the Pentagon for a pension.”

“For what?” Andy knew my stance of the war.

“For all the years I protested against the war. Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, NVA is gonna win.” The chant had served as a slogan at demonstrations throughout the USA.

“Fuck that. You traitors will get nothing.” Andy spat out these words. The Brooklyn native was right-wing. His 2012 choice for president was the feisty Alaskan Sarah Palin. I wouldn't have fucked her with a donkey's dick.

"We did our part."

“And you deserve nothing. I landed in Saigon at the beginning of the Tet Offensive. Bullets smacked into the charter jet and the sergeants yelled at us to take shelter. I spent the first three days in a trench praying for a truce. Mortar rounds landed ten feet from our shelter. I stayed one tour and got the fuck out. I don’t get a pension for it, so why should some long hair peace-nik.”

“Hey, the Feds give money to everyone. Why not me?”

“But you were never in Vietnam?”

“No, but I was in Cambodia.”

“You served in Cambodia?” Andy didn’t figure me for Army and he was right.

“No, I visited Phnom Penh and Laos too.” Both countries were next to Thailand. Thousands of farangs travel to the borders for a visa renewal. I thought about Dennis Halley’s dead friend. He was one of thousands that didn’t come back to the States.

“Did you have cold beer?”

“A luxury. We drank it warm with it 95 in the shade and sweat pouring from every pore. And that is something worth fighting for?” I saluted the retired cop as a fellow veteran. "Not democracy.".

“Hippie scumbag.” He gave the finger.

“Baby-killer.” I didn’t mean nothing by it and neither did Andy.

My fingers split into a vee.

The gesture had many meanings.

Fuck the French to the English archers at Agincourt, since the frogs lopped off prisoners fingers to prevent their return to the killing ranks.

Churchill had transformed the vee into a sign for victory.

I remained true to the 60s.

“Peace.”

“And love.” Andy returned the gesture, for war was a young man’s game made dead serious by the decisions of distant old men and like everyone else who lived through those times we were glad to be sucking air into our lungs.

Here there and everywhere.

To see the opening scene of APOCALYPSE NOW, please go to this URL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntPHFVWDIqM

SUKKOT / BET ON CRAZY

Two years ago the Diamond District on 47th Street was dead on the high holiday of Sukkot.

All throughout the shetls of Williamsburg families were commemorating the Hebrews' wandering in the desert after the Exodus in Egypt by setting up sukkahs or outside dwelling to symbolize the tents on that decades-long journey to find someplace to call their own.

The Hasidic diamond dealers abandoned the Diamond District for the week. The day before Chol HaMoed Gabriel our broker left our store ten big diamonds in hopes that a goy might buy one. Richie Boy and his father weren't so religious and saw the holiday as a time to operate with less competition.

On the first day of Sukkot I opened the safe and arranged Gabriel's rocks in the window. Gem quality in individual diamond boxes glittering in the morning sunlight. None were under five carats and the total value of the goods was slightly over 500K. They made a big impression.

A half-hour later an over-weight gypsy in a Versace suit entered the store.

, "How much for the big stone?"

"It ain't for sale." I had never sold to a gypsy.

"Everything is for sale on 47th Street."

"Not this stone." I had nothing against Gippos, but they hadn't earned their rep for guile by being saints.

"Show him the stone." Manny was sitting at his desk. He had dealt with hundreds of gypsies during his years on the Bowery.

"Okay, but everything has a price," I grumbled, for the Roma were a WOT or a waste of time. Worse was the possibility that they might rob you.

"Which is?" I had seen Tony around the block.

"40K."

"Can I see it?"

"Sure." I went to the front window and plucked the stone from the tray. A zaftig, but attractive woman in a matching Versace dress smiled at me. She was Tony's wife. They worked as a team. She came inside.

I show her the diamond without letting her touch it.

"I love this ring, Tony." Her fragrance was Versace Bright Crystal.

"I love it too, but I don't love $40K for a 6-carat F SI3?" He was top of the line Roma. "Would you take 20K for it?"

"Thanks but no thanks." Gabriel had memoed the diamond for $35,000. Manny said that it was a lot of flash for the cash. My boss came from Brownsville. He had never lost its touch on his soul.

"I have the money." Tony brandished a roll of hundreds thick enough to be 20K, unless the center was all $1 bills.

"Sorry, the price remains 40K. No haggling either."

"I thought maybe you would want to do some business." What Tony meant was that if I gave him the stone, I could stick the 20K and walked out of the store.

"Sorry, no deal."

I sat at my desk and the gypsy exited from the exchange. Tony had other marks on his list. Maybe he would get lucky. My boss Richie Boy showed up a few minutes later.

"Anything happening?"

"A gypsy offered me 20K for Gab's stone." Manny stood up with a groan. His hip was killing the 80 year-old.

"You didn't let him touch it?"

"Not at all." Gypsies were skilled at switching stones.

"Let me check."

I got the stone for Richie Boy.

"You're lucky," he said after weighing out the diamond on the scale.

"Lucky was, if he sold it." Manny sat back down with a grunt. He wasn't getting old, but some parts of his body were on strike.

"We were lucky." Richie Boy nodded to me and I put the diamond back in the window.

Across the street Tony and his wife were standing outside a store. They were looking to get lucky.

Anything was possible on Sukkot.

Around noon the girls working for Manny's partner wanted to order lobster rolls from the new take-out.

Coming from Maine I was eager to try the lunch special.

Richie Boy signaled that he was in too.

Lobster might be tref or unclean and unfit for consumption according to Jewish tradition, however only one member of our staff was religious. The rest were bacon Jews.

Lunch came, we ate, and then discussed the lobster rolls.

Cindy thought it was good. She had gone to UMass.

Richie Boy was unimpressed. He was nursing a hangover.

I had eaten better in Maine, but Lincolnville was an eight-hour drive from 47th Street.

A chubby hand slapped the window.

Lenny.

The Hassidic bum.

His yamakah was sliding off what remained of his greasy hair and his fingers were twitching for money.

"Fuck him." Richie Boy had little patience for Lenny.

"He's harmless." Lenny was no Don Rickles, but he made me laugh.

"Tell him to go away. He's bad for business."

"Business? On Sukkot keep on dreaming."

"Do me a favor and send him away. Lenny's ruining my appetite."

I put down my lobster roll and went outside.

Lenny seemed to have gained more weight and he smelled like he hadn't been to a schvitz since before Moses freed the slaves.

"Lenny, you're messing up the window." His hand imprints were scattered on the glass like prehistoric paintings. "I'm the one who has to clean it."

"Sorry, Damian." Lenny was a slob in his filthy tee-shirt and ripped flannel trousers with sodden sneakers shaped like melted cheese. He has been living on the street for more than 20 years, but I had seen the fat bum deposit over $200 at the bank more than once. Some people say that his lunacy is an act, except his rhummy eyes told the truth.

"No worries." I liked that he called me 'Damian'. The name smacked of THE OMEN and the Son of Satan.

"Why Richie doesn't ever give?" Lenny begged everyone on the street for money. He even took small change.

"Maybe it has something to do with you calling him a Nazi."

"He is a Nazi. A country club Nazi who hates Jews like me." Lenny was fondling an etrog lemon, which someone must have given him for Sukkot. I could smell it over his stench.

"Lenny, I hear you say that to a lot a people on the street. It's not nice."

"I'll tell you what's not nice." Lenny pointed to Tony and his wife. "Over a million gypsies were killed by the Nazis, but no one ever builds a museum for them"

"The Roma are 'travelers'." That was the Irish word for them and it didn't have a nice meaning.

"And the Hebrews wandered forty years in the desert and what about the Wandering Jew?"

"That's a myth." The Goyim had created the legend of a Jew cursed with immortality for taunting Jesus on his way to the Crucifixion.

"Ahasver might not exist, but the Jews have traveled the world for centuries same as the Roma and people talk about them the same way as they talk about us."

Aren't you celebrating Sukkot?"

"I sleep outside every night." Lenny lived in the rough. He had no possession other than the clothing on his back. "Every day is Sukkot for me. Same as you, Damian. You wander the world."

"My wanderings are more like Dion's THE WANDERER than the Jews and Roma." I loved the line from that hit, 'I'm the type of guy'.

"I love Dion." Lenny knew every homeless shelter in New York. They were his world and the sidewalks were paths for his travels.

"Me too, but I wish I didn't."

"Your kids in Thailand." Lenny was crazy, but he wasn't stupid. He knew my life."

"Yeah, my kids." The four of them were halfway around the world. There was something not right about that arrangement and I felt more sympathy for the Roma than was normal for someone born on the Coast of Maine.

Richie Boy rapped on the window.

"Lenny, I got to go back to work." I had to make a little money.

"You got a dollar for the holiday?"

I handed him two bills.

He wished me luck and called for a blessing on my kids in Thailand.

"May you get home soon."

"Thanks." Seeing my kids was my greatest wish. Another month and I would have plane fare to Bangkok. I would count every day.

"Baxt hai sastimos tiri patragi." Lenny shambled into the street. His eyes were on Tony and his wife. He saw them as a soft touch.

"What's that?" I had never heard those words before.

"It's Romani for 'good luck.'"

"Sie gesund." I wished him well in Yiddish and returned inside the diamond exchange hoping to close a deal in the final hours of Sukkot, because all wanderers are lucky as long as they were heading home.