The Adventures of Herbie Cohen: World's Greatest Negotiator by Rich Cohen

Author:Rich Cohen [Cohen, Rich]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Jewish
ISBN: 9780374722012
Google: Wq09EAAAQBAJ
Publisher: FarrarStraus
Published: 2022-05-10T20:30:41+00:00

The station owner, understanding that Larry was a weak, temptation-driven character—not a criminal, just a schmuck—dropped the charges. Larry, who agreed to return the money as soon as he had it, was free, but free to do what? He was out of a houseboat, out of a career. He did not visit Miami Beach again for years. Nor did he go to Brooklyn. The story of his arrest had made national news, and he was too ashamed to show his face.

If Herbie had been in Larry’s life, it never would’ve happened; he would’ve gotten Larry out of it just as he’d gotten him out of the Moppo thing, just as he’d gotten Tommy DeLuca out of the trouble with army intelligence. He tried, calling every person and number he could think of in an effort to contact Larry, but Larry did not want to be contacted. He’d made himself vanish. He was like a jumbo jet that one minute is blazing across a clear sky and is gone the next. As if he’d never existed. As if he’d never been born. As if he’d been sent to purgatory, where he’d pay for his sins with a fate he feared more than death—obscurity.

And so I sing the song of Zeke the Creek’s Missing Years.

He retrieved his car and headed west. He slept in motor courts and ate in diners, swam in hotel pools surrounded by chain-link fence, lingered in faded beach towns with arcades. Pensacola. Destin. Fort Walton. The Florida Panhandle is like the bottom of the sea. When he looked back at Miami, he saw an angel with a flaming sword barring his return. He spent his last dollar on a pack of cigarettes in Biloxi, Mississippi, then noticed a 50-watt radio station that broadcast local news and high school sports. He went inside and got a job.

Because he was so good on the air, he was noticed and promoted. He moved to a bigger station in Mobile, Alabama. He also worked at trade shows, called college baseball games, and hung out in local nightspots. He continued on to Louisiana, first Shreveport, then Lafayette, then Alexandria, a small city in the middle of the state. He worked on a station in the afternoon and called the greyhound races at the dog track at night. He met a woman. They lived together in a ranch house on the nicest street in town. He could smell magnolia flowers as he stood over the Weber grill. He’d formed new habits, wore strange clothes, made new friends. He joined a country club and became a college football aficionado. It was almost like amnesia, the emptiness that allowed him to operate without thought of the past.

He was approached at the dog track by a station manager from New Orleans who’d heard Larry while sitting in the grandstand. He still had that voice. To find him announcing greyhound races in Alexandria was like finding Nolan Ryan pitching on a sandlot. He offered Larry a job. A month later, Larry was once again working at a major station.

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