Cellars' Market: Wine War by Douglas Stewart

Author:Douglas Stewart [Stewart, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chewton Publications
Published: 2015-08-27T22:00:00+00:00

NEW YORK

Outside Penn Central station it was 92 degrees and still rising. So it was that street cries seemed louder, cab horns more strident and smells more pungent than was good for man or beast. Thus thought Joe Mocari, as he glanced skywards and noticed that the morning sun had given way to a thickening layer of cloud, which would build up to a stinking, exhausting humidity by evening. But, like all New Yorkers, Joe tolerated it, for this was home, this was the place he understood, the place where, depending on his mood, he knew everybody—or knew nobody.

In the station concourse throngs of over-fired commuters sought out their Amtrak connections, but Mocari ignored the queues waiting their turn to buy tickets, or to argue with an official, which was reckoned by many to be the sport of the day. The hotter the day, the more strident the complaints about the late arrival from Boston or Philadelphia. Instead Mocari headed for the rack of newspapers which hung outside the bookstall and a glance revealed that the papers from Europe had arrived. He quickly purchased copies of Le Figaro, the Daily Telegraph and The Times. Then, perching himself on a counter stool in the drug store, he sipped an iced coffee and read from the English papers with obvious relish and satisfaction. The pace of the French wine scandal was accelerating and had reached front page proportions. Unable to read French, nevertheless he appreciated the gist of Le Figaro’s article, written under the headline CRISE EN BOURGOGNE? The article suggested that, following the initial discovery of some dubious Chablis and Volnay in Le Chameau Chambré restaurant in Paris, tests carried out within twenty-four hours, on random samples from a number of other leading restaurants had revealed more than a dozen examples of wine scattered around the city, whose contents bore no resemblance to the information on the label. ‘Heads would roll’ was the journalist’s warning and prophecy.

In England 150,000 bottles of Chablis had been impounded at Liverpool Docks, on arrival from Holland and the English Wine Standards Board and the police were now investigating.

Joe phoned California. ‘Hi! Nat! I’ve got the papers. Have you seen them?’

‘Sure. So we go for Superblend.’ This was the codename for the jackpot.

‘Anything I can do?’ enquired Joe. ‘London’s gone well. Did you read about that geyser le Breton?’

‘Sure. We’ve done well. France, England and here with McMac’s.’

‘If I don’t ring tomorrow, you’ll know I’m dead.’ Mocari wondered for a moment whether he’d been melodramatic. But, hell no. If his role in setting up the McMac affair came out, then he was expendable, certainly worth the cost of a hired hood and a solitary bullet. It was, after all, the same view that he’d taken about Kressin in Dallas, Zeeler in New York and Dupont in Paris. Death was as easy as making up your mind. A phone call, a word in the right place, and you could fix anything from New York.

Out in the sunlight

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