least of which was, they were his connection to the father he knew about, but never knew. Poor David and poor Harry. Most children who grow up without a father are constantly told by their mother, whether true or not, how much their father loved them. Harry, of course, was well aware his birth came after his father was killed. Might it be, he sometimes wondered, that the records were more important to him than they ought to be?
After Tulane, just before he left for law school in Philadelphia, Harry decided he needed a really good record player, a top quality turntable. He was surprised to find no one sold any. The vinyl LP, invented by the engineers at Columbia Records in 1948, was already a relic of the past. The compact disc, with its seductive clarity, had pushed the record to forgotten bins in old music stores. So too was the fate of the record player, the quality turntable. Harry had no use for the CD. They were surely more precise than pressed vinyl, more like how one might think the music ought to sound. But, for Harry, the CD was less than the real thing, the sum failing to equal its parts. It was cold, empty. He just wanted a turntable and was disappointed when he couldn’t find a store that sold good ones. Everywhere he looked, they either had none or the little, cheap, children’s record players. The manager of a discount electronics superstore near the Roswell Mall told Harry there might be someone who could help him. “Try Fat Jack’s,” he said. “He’s got a place down the block from the Historic District, around the corner-I forget the name of the street. Look for it. If Jack is still in business, he’ll get one for you.” Fat Jack’s Audio was in a small strip center, one of four storefronts. It shared space with a chiropractor, a dry cleaner and a travel agency. There was a small sign above the door, but nothing in the window. Inside, Harry found an old man sitting on a car seat ripped from a Chevy or a Ford or some other 30-year-old American car. The car seat was on the floor, in the middle of the store, surrounded by boxes and boxes of records. The old man looked to be dozing.
“I’m looking for a turntable,” Harry said.
“Miss your records?” the old man asked, looking up, wide awake.
“No. I play them. It’s just that…”
“Don’t sound good enough for you?”
“Yes. That’s right. So, I’m looking for a good turntable-at a reasonable price. Someone told me I could find Jack-Fat Jack-and he might have one I could buy.”
“I’m Jack,” the old guy said, standing up and offering his hand to Harry. “What do you like most about your records?” he asked. Harry stood there, surprised by the unexpected and somewhat personal question, thinking about an answer. When nothing came to mind, he repeated it back to Jack.
“What do I like most about my records?”
The old man, who was anything but fat-he looked average, quite normal in every way-smiled at Harry and walked slowly over to the counter beyond the boxes of records, toward the rear of the store. Harry noticed there was no overhead lighting. At least none that was turned on. Three floor lamps, one in the middle of the boxes, another by the counter where Jack was, and a third well behind him, visible through an open door leading to some sort of back room, illuminated the store. Harry wondered what kind of business this guy could do in a store this dark. He didn’t see any turntables. He didn’t see any equipment at all. Harry had no way of knowing Fat Jack made everything he sold, been doing it like that for decades.
“Take your time,” Jack said.
“You know the sound you hear just as the needle touches the first groove?” said Harry, finally. “It’s only a moment. Just an instant. It’s like the sound of someone tapping an open mike. That’s it,” he said. “That sound. That’s what I like most about my records.”
Fat Jack-who, it turned out, had weighed nearly 400 pounds some years earlier, and lost more than half of it supposedly by giving up fried chicken-ended up making Harry a turntable. Belt driven, speed calibrated with a light sensor checking device and a manual override adjustment, separate power switches for the motor and the turntable itself, a special stylus he said he got from a special source in “Brooklyn, New York City,” even a soft landing, anti- static, removable, double-sided table cover. And he did the whole job for under five hundred dollars. Along with many of David Levine’s LPs, Fat Jack’s turntable, lovingly and securely packed, was already on its way to Turkey.
Going through the stacks in the tiny, old record store, he came upon Erroll Garner’s Concert By The Sea. He owned it; it was not one of his father’s. Harry bought it in a shop in Little Five Points, in Atlanta, when he was in high school. He remembered how often he played it late at night while studying for his twelfth-grade chemistry final. He remembered closing all the downstairs doors to keep the noise, especially Garner’s trademark grunts, from waking his mother who slept just down the hall. He’d go upstairs to the kitchen, make a pot of coffee, set himself up with his books and his notes at the small table in their living room and stay up, way past the middle of the night, studying. Putting the record back in its place, he smiled and pictured himself, once again a teenager, sitting in Mr. Kimmelman’s classroom getting every question right while all the time hearing Erroll Garner playing in his private ear. That night, on his flight to Europe, in his sleep, he heard him again.
Just as he knew it would, a whole new life opened to Harry in the Foreign Service. From the crooked, cobblestone streets and smoky cafes of Ankara, his initial station, to the noisy marketplaces of Cairo, and amidst the grandeur of Paris, his search for himself blossomed like the dogwoods along Peachtree Road. He cut his hair shorter than most. He’d always wanted it so he could run his hands across his head as if they were a brush. His wardrobe grew more formal and more distinctive. Unlike so many Americans in the Foreign Service, Harry bought his suits, shirts and ties in Europe. He favored the English tailors and found their merchandise to be both readily available and affordable. His personality emerged as brighter and more lighthearted than it had been while in school. The ease and comfort of his demeanor complemented his dressy appearance. He was funny, and fun to be with, ironic at times, but rarely cynical. He was well liked by just about everyone.
In Europe, where sexual liberation was neither new nor limited by age and class, Harry did quite well with the ladies. His female companions were numerous and diverse. By the time he reached London he was a seasoned professional in his mid-thirties, a comfortable expatriate, without serious affectation, sensitive to the pleasures and comforts of his life and fully satisfied at how little effort was required to secure them.
A year after Harry’s arrival in London, his mother died of pancreatic cancer. Elana Levine had just celebrated her 54th birthday. It happened so quickly. The leftover birthday cake Sadie had put in the freezer was still there, uneaten. One day Elana complained about not feeling right and faster than anyone could map out a campaign to defeat it, the cancer killed her. Elana Morales Levine never knew she had a sister. She died at home, as she insisted, in her own bed. She was surrounded by loved ones-Harry, who had flown in from England when Sadie told him how bad things were, and Sadie and Larry. She closed her eyes thinking of David, the morphine unable to still the joy of her final memory.
Frederick Lacey, the eldest son of a bourgeois Liverpool family, was commissioned as a midshipman in His Majesty’s naval service in 1916, three days after turning eighteen years old. His father, William Lacey, had arranged it. William Lacey’s comfort resulted from the splendid success of his company, a firm that specialized in railroad parts and supplies. Lacey’s, as the business was known, had a well-earned reputation for timely delivery, plus an ability to get parts that were otherwise in short supply, parts others seemed at a loss to deliver in any time frame. He charged more than the much larger London firms with which he competed. But, unlike them, he was always true to his word. A month’s wait meant a month’s wait, not two or three or even a year’s, as others would have it. Smart businessmen will always pay more for that kind of reputation. William Lacey knew that and regarded reliability as his most precious asset. Almost a century before computers and wire transfers made money fly around the world at the speed of light, Frederick Lacey’s father showed a mastery of modern economics. His carefully chosen accounts, in banks across the wide span of the European continent, allowed him to make displays of gratitude, when called for, immediately. Men of business whose national heritage often included-nay, required-the presentation of special favors, plus the legions of Customs Agents and other governmental overseers, greedy and quick to accept any bribe, were often satisfied on the spot. William Lacey could conclude negotiations and close the deal without the delay associated with most international financial arrangements. His son took notice.
The railroads, like all English industries, were controlled by the most powerful men of their time and it was through such contacts as these that William Lacey was able to secure his son’s position in the Royal Navy. Despite the manner of his commission, Frederick Lacey’s social status, or more precisely the absence of any, affected his career from day one. A combat sea assignment was out of the question. There were hardly enough of them for the sons of England’s truly important. None would be available for the boy of a Liverpool merchant. Instead Lacey’s participation in The Great War was spent entirely in Naval Logistics. This exclusionary policy, determined by the social mores of the nineteenth century, proved crucial to Frederick Lacey’s future and would have a tremendous impact on the affairs of powerful men and great nations throughout the twentieth century. It was clear for anyone
