few months ago, my office was over the Copa-in the Hotel Fourteen, off Fifth Avenue?”
“I know where the Copacabana is.”
“Yeah, I guess you do get around, but I figured you bein’ from Chicago and all-”
“That where you know Frankie from?”
“Yeah, matter of fact it is.” He blew a fat smoke ring, then frowned and said, “Hey, I don’t mean to be rude- you want a Cuban?”
“No thanks. I don’t smoke.”
“In this joint, you might as well.” Whenever Kollek smiled, which was often, it was a wiseguy, Leo Gorcey- style half-smirk. “Frank’s a nice fella. Hot-headed, impulsive, but heart of pure gold.”
“I don’t know if his wife would agree with you.”
“Yeah, this Ava Gardner thing is a pity; kid’s career is goin’ to hell in a handbasket.”
At a postage-stamp table nearby, a young couple-who’d apparently had enough entertainment for one night- rose to leave and almost bumped into a husky young guy in a well-tailored blue suit, who was quickly taking their place, despite the empty glasses and tip awaiting a waitress’ attention.
“I got that information about Dick Lamm pretty well absorbed by now, Teddy, if you’d like to tell me who the fuck you are.”
He patted the air with a palm; cigar smoke swirled around him like the aftermath of a magician’s trick. “Don’t get testy, Nate-we’re gonna be great friends. Couple of Jewish joes like us.”
“I’m not all that Jewish, Teddy.”
Finally a grin showed some teeth: big white ones.
“‘Heller’ sure as hell ain’t Scottish.”
I leaned on an elbow and gestured with a thumb at my face. “Take a look at this Irish mug of mine; my mom was named Jeanette, she went to mass and she didn’t exactly keep kosher.”
“Did you go to mass, Nate, or synagogue?”
“I wasn’t raised in either church. If there’s a God, He keeps out of my way and I stay out of His.”
Kollek shrugged. “I grew up in a religious home, but I never been a regular synagogue-goer myself. When someone tries to force me to behave a certain way, I don’t like it.”
“I’m the same, Teddy. Which is why you have about twenty seconds to convince me to hang around.”
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
“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
“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
“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’?”
