First Place Writing: Prohibition in the harbor
"Apocalyptic Express" by Jamie Grant. Grand prize
Rumors swirled. A shipment of Jamaican rum was headed for the harbor. Sal Canizzi didn’t much give a hoot. His real beef with prohibition was the unequal enforcement of its laws. Speakeasies serving working class and poor patrons got pinched often. Swank joints rarely if ever did. He knew this from his days on the Los Angeles Police Department.
But bootleggers feared the Ku Klux Klan far more than the cops. Long Beach Klansmen kidnapped one of Sal’s high school classmates and forced him to down two ounces of Castor oil before tar-and-feathering him. And just the other day Sal overheard a known Klan leader in the Empire Theater say they were increasing their punishment of captured bootleggers — to flogging with a bullwhip.
Sal served with Klansmen in the Marines and, he suspected, on LAPD. He summed up their “moral up-righteousness” in a word: c-r-o-c-k. Just recently a jury in Bakersfield convicted a pair of them of forcing a 15 year-old girl to publicly perform lewd acts. In San Pedro local Klansmen scalded the legs of a 13 year-old with coffee during a raid on the headquarters of the Industrial Workers of the World.
His final year on the force lingered in his mind. It couldn’t be helped. For one, he hadn’t started his new job yet. Plus, sometimes he saw his old Harbor Division rival, Rhett Ryker, coming out of the pistol range. Other times Chief Louis Oakes’ irascible mug greeted him when he opened the LA Times. But the cop in him was fading, and in his view bootlegging paled in comparison to what the Klan represented. So he set out to try and thwart it.
Exactly where in the harbor would the shipment of rum arrive? Sal mulled the possibilities.Wilmington? Long shot.Long Beach? Nah.Cabrillo Beach? Maybe. Point Fermin? That was the odds on favorite with its many potential hiding places. Tony Bubic would likely know.
Upton Sinclair introduced the two of them in jail after he was arrested for reciting the Bill of Rights to striking longies. Bubic headed the IWW’s “Dehorn Squard,” which patrolled local hangouts to promote sobriety among the membership. Drunks made lousy soldiers in the class war. He didn’t go for any of that “I Want Whiskey” crap, and no one dared say that around the Bunyanesque Slav.
“Cannizzi, you goddamned garlic snapper you! How the hellya doin’?” said Bubic smiling broadly while pumping Sal’s hand.
“I’m doing fine you friggin scisscorbill!”
“What’s up?”
“Do you have any idea where that shipment is coming in?”
“Of rum?”
“Yes”
“No. But I’m going to Tommy’s Goodfellows tomorrow. If I hear anything I’ll callya from there.”
Sal shook his head in bewilderment, pondering the harbor’s daffy alliances. The Klan embraced the fledgling Daughters of the American Revolution despite its somewhat sympathetic view towards immigrants. It embraced the American Legion despite the fact that many members drank heavily and opposed Prohibition. But it hated the IWW with an indescribable passion even though the Wobblies supported Prohibition almost as strongly as the Klan did.
Sal steadfastly refused to join the American Legion. In his opinion, it served business interests more than veterans’, and on the issue of strikebreaking actually exploited them. And Legionaires lynching of a Great War vet in Centralia,Washington, just for being a Wobbly left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
Bubic called. Sal’s prediction was coming to pass: the shipment was coming to Point Fermin. At nightfall a tugboat would appear a couple hundred yards off Sunken Cityand rowboats would bring the rum ashore on the moonless night.
In Point Fermin Park, the Daughters of the American Revolution reenacted the Battle of Chelsea Creek deep into the balmy June evening. A hundred yards away a group of Old Californios dispensed educational leaflets to prospective new citizens. Klansmen had also heard the rumors and rotated keeping an eye out for suspicious-looking boats with watching both the DAR’s reenactment and the Old Californios’ table.
“You call yourself a real American?” said a young Klansman, interrupting Sal as he spoke to someone in Spanish.
“What did you say?” said Sal in an indignant tone while rising to his feet.
“You heard me”
“What branch of the military were you in, fella?” he asked while reaching into a pocket of his guyabera and moving closer.
“Didn’t serve,” said the Klansman, backpedaling from his remark.
“Figures. See this?” said Sal dangling a Purple Heart an inch from the Klansman’s schnauz.
“Yeah.”
“Belleau Woods. USMC Sixth Division. Seven years ago today! (pause) Who’s the real American, pal?”
By now a crowd had gathered around them. Several Klansmen stood silently behind their now heebie-jeebying comrade. Sal exchanged stares with them, too, before Sara Magdaleno appeared.
The petite leader of the Old Californios glanced up at both Sal and the Klansmen, pointed to a watch and then the nearly-disappeared sun. The largest Klansman motioned to the others and minutes later they were piling into his jalopy. Sal soon followed suit.
The next morning he awoke feeling pretty good about how copacetic things turned out. No violence, though he wouldn’t have minded left-hooking that cocky Klansman. Since he had them all occupied, the shipment of rum must have made it in OK. And it did, though much differently than he expected.
“Came in ambulances,” said Bubic as they shared burgers and iced tea in Goebel’s Cafe.
“Really?”
“West on PCH. Up and over Hawthorne Boulevard. Back east past that farmland. Into the abandoned vegetable warehouse in White Point.”
“So everything yesterday was a diversion?” said Sal in a kind of amused tone.
“Yup. They decided the tugboat idea was too risky. Coast Guard would’ve got’em, especially with its new fleet.”
“And the Old Californios’ table?”
“Another diversion. Sara Magdaleno’s idea…Disappointed?”
“Hell no! Why would I be? The Klan didn’t nab anyone did it?”
“Nope. And the last of the rum’s gotta be scattered all the hell overSanta Monicaand downtown by now.”
“Well, good enough” said Sal flashing a satisfied grin and shrugging his shoulders.
“Interested in some Pussers, Sal? Gotta bottle left. I can give it to you since you’re not officially a Wobbly.”
“Stash it. I’ll tell you what I am interested in, though” said Sal.
“What’s that?”
“Sara”
“Magdaleno?”
“Yes”
(pause)”Should I pass the word?”
“Please.”