“Malachi had been out shopping for fresh herring at the time of his parents’ arrest. He had the sense to take refuge with a Christian family whose sons were friends at public school. Their father helped him obtain identity papers under a new name. To avoid attracting attention by dropping out of school in mid term, he waited until Christmas vacation to leave. The school board certified a medical explanation for his departure.
“He was thirteen years old when he voluntarily began his life as an orphan on the streets. This experience, he told me, taught him all he needed to know about business. He peddled whatever he could find, working the pathetic appeal of his age for all it was worth. His first breakthrough came when he forced his way into a warehouse stocked with jerry cans full of gasoline. He was able to spend six days lugging all he could into a storeroom he’d rented. (He’d wheedled a shopkeeper down to a ridiculously low price: two jerry cans sold paid a month’s rent.)
“When the steady increase in the price of gasoline started flattening, Malachi sold his remaining stock and bought a supply of hard-to-find foodstuffs on the black market; and long before truffles, oranges, and corned beef lost their exotic attraction, he had shifted into real estate, renovating abandoned apartments that he sold or rented through the first house-poor postwar years; and thus, success following success, he climbed the hierarchy of profitable commodities. He finally transformed a business in consignment clothing into a brilliant ersatz of high fashion, cornering the trade of a new class of aspiring women, and this earned him enough money to pay his way to Canada, a useful step toward gaining entry to the United States, the mecca of ‘hardened entrepreneurs’ like himself. His plan worked. Two years later he had reached Boston, which he soon left for the temperate climate of Miami.
“While still in Antwerp, he had introduced himself to the reconstituted Jewish community; and he had made many friends there and, even better, admirers: they heralded his arrival in Toronto with effective recommendations; similar ones eased his advent in Boston; when he appeared in Miami, he was wreathed with the honor of having survived the Shoah and with the prestige of a businessman who had demonstrated how Jewish courage, intelligence, and chutzpah could overcome dismaying obstacles. The Jewish financial community in Miami welcomed him with a sympathy that Malachi’s wit and youth (he had then just turned twenty-three) transformed into an informal consensus of support. He was provided with an accurate survey of business possibilities where he might exercise his talents; more remarkably, he was assured of a guarantee of bank loans that would give him a satisfactory measure of independence in choosing and managing his ventures. Malachi demonstrated his gratitude by remitting whatever capital he had saved to the members of the unofficial consortium that was promoting his career; and when the vouched-for loans came through, he willingly signed promissory notes that bound him to their early repayment.
“However, he did not listen to his benefactors when deciding on his next enterprise. They foresaw him entering new fields that held a prospect of imaginative development, like transistors, or ceramic materials for machinery. Instead, Malachi opted for a very conventional business: a Ford concession selling cars and trucks, in the relatively drab community at the edge of Coral Gables, more precisely on the corner of Red Road and 41st Street. The automobile industry’s future, already none too promising, was further jeopardized in 1973 by the first oil shock and the mini-recession that followed. Malachi turned this crisis to his advantage, buying the business for less than its lowest estimate. He also justified his decision to his backers with his past record: ‘Believe me, I know how to sell. I made a pile hustling so-called pâté de foie gras to Belgians who’d naturally never even heard of it.’
“He showed what he meant with a novel promotional stratagem he invented. He used a second loan to buy a controlling interest in a local TV channel that was about to go out of business. Its programming consisted of regional news, weather forecasts, and extensive reports on neighborhood sports teams; the channel made its small profits from advertisers in Miami-Dade County.
“Malachi programmed an ad for his Ford concession at 9 p.m. on Sunday evenings. It began conventionally enough, with Malachi himself conducting a quick tour of his sales rooms and repair shop, which he’d had minimally spruced up, concluding with a list of his advantageously priced models. At exactly two minutes and thirty seconds into this routine commercial, viewers were without warning or explanation confronted with the opening episode of a serial that they would learn (if they listened carefully) was called The Medical Wars of Metro-Dade County. Many viewers surely assumed there had been a technical glitch and would have probably turned off their sets if what they were watching hadn’t been so baffling; and those who continued were treated to a second surprise when, after exactly four minutes and fifteen seconds, the episode was abruptly broken off to reveal the malicious face of Malachi smiling out from his array of glistening Fords. He reassured his audience that the story it had been watching would be resumed on the second Sunday of the following month. The first episode would be repeated on the intervening Sundays for viewers hoping to spot clues to the mystery that they’d missed at the first showing. Any spectator too impatient to wait
