Impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.”
“Three days—it’s got to cost.”
“How much?”
“At least a hundred dollars. Depends on the material you select.”
“I paid six dollars for the last suit I bought.”
“Ready-made.” Pincus shrugged.
“All right—three days. Let’s get to it.”
At the age of seventeen, when his father and mother died, Dan Lavette abandoned all thought of school. During the two years that followed, he came to know the fishermen on the wharf, not as a kid who rode his father’s boat as crew but as one of them. He was the youngest of the lot. They liked him; they helped him; they got him drunk for the first time and they took him to his first whorehouse, and they accepted him as one of them, and when they tried to bully him, he fought them with a ferocity that won him his place as a man in a rough, crude man’s world; yet he never became a fisher man as such. He won his place but maintained himself as an outsider. The fishermen were Italian and Portuguese and Mexican and Yankee, and some of them owned their own boats and others worked on shares, but they all had in common the fact that they were fish ermen and they grew old as fishermen, their hands brown and horny, their brown faces as lined and tough as old leather.
He was nineteen when he came to the decision that the difference between Nob Hill and the Embarcadero was the difference between those who owned the boats and those who worked the boats. He decided that life was a plan and a schedule, just as a day’s crabbing was a plan and a schedule. He rented the shack on the waterfront, fixed it up, and moved out of the Cassala house,
5 2
H o w a r d F a s t
quieting the woeful fears of Maria Cassala that life with the bums and whores on the coast would de stroy him. He had no intention of being destroyed. A few months after he moved in, he bought the shack that he had made his home and his office for a thousand dollars in cash against a mortgage. He learned to keep a set of books. He borrowed from Anthony Cassala’s bank, mortgaging his boat to buy a second boat, and then mortgaging that to buy a third. He stopped drink ing after a dozen drunken sprees, not because he was afraid that he couldn’t handle the liquor and not for any moral reasons, but because drunk in a whorehouse, he had been rolled for two hundred and forty-five dollars in cash that he had in his pocket, and then decided that profit and loss did not match. The Barbary Coast, he decided, was a sucker’s game, a stupid delusion for kids in the bodies of adults; there were no paths from there to Nob Hill, and at nineteen he had had his fill of wasted, middle-aged whores and maudlin drunks and cheap con men, and fishermen who worked their back sides to the bone six days a week and then blew it all for one night on the Coast. He knew what he wanted; he wanted Nob Hill.
And this night, he was on the Hill, dressed in a gray sharkskin suit that fitted his massive bulk, wearing new black shoes, black socks, a white shirt, and a tie of mid night blue. He saw and observed and learned, and as he walked through the gateposts and up to the front door of the Seldon house, he examined and assessed the place, a Victorian mansion of redwood and gray stone. He was impressed yet not unaware of the gaudiness and ugliness of the place; and he felt that if he had put the same kind of money into the building of a Nob Hill cas tle, he would have done it differently. How he would have done it, he didn’t know; but the very fact that he sensed an aspect of vulgarity gave him assurance.
The butler who opened the door raised a brow. “Your coat, sir?”
He was hatless and coatless, indiffer ent to the weather. He made a
t H e I m m I g r a n t s
5 3
note of his error. As he glanced around the foyer, at the big staircase leading up to the second floor, the double doors on either side, the view through the glass doors at the back of the foyer to the potted plant
“Nothing is impossible.”
“Three days—it’s got to cost.”
“How much?”
“At least a hundred dollars. Depends on the material you select.”
“I paid six dollars for the last suit I bought.”
“Ready-made.” Pincus shrugged.
“All right—three days. Let’s get to it.”
At the age of seventeen, when his father and mother died, Dan Lavette abandoned all thought of school. During the two years that followed, he came to know the fishermen on the wharf, not as a kid who rode his father’s boat as crew but as one of them. He was the youngest of the lot. They liked him; they helped him; they got him drunk for the first time and they took him to his first whorehouse, and they accepted him as one of them, and when they tried to bully him, he fought them with a ferocity that won him his place as a man in a rough, crude man’s world; yet he never became a fisher man as such. He won his place but maintained himself as an outsider. The fishermen were Italian and Portuguese and Mexican and Yankee, and some of them owned their own boats and others worked on shares, but they all had in common the fact that they were fish ermen and they grew old as fishermen, their hands brown and horny, their brown faces as lined and tough as old leather.
He was nineteen when he came to the decision that the difference between Nob Hill and the Embarcadero was the difference between those who owned the boats and those who worked the boats. He decided that life was a plan and a schedule, just as a day’s crabbing was a plan and a schedule. He rented the shack on the waterfront, fixed it up, and moved out of the Cassala house,
5 2
H o w a r d F a s t
quieting the woeful fears of Maria Cassala that life with the bums and whores on the coast would de stroy him. He had no intention of being destroyed. A few months after he moved in, he bought the shack that he had made his home and his office for a thousand dollars in cash against a mortgage. He learned to keep a set of books. He borrowed from Anthony Cassala’s bank, mortgaging his boat to buy a second boat, and then mortgaging that to buy a third. He stopped drink ing after a dozen drunken sprees, not because he was afraid that he couldn’t handle the liquor and not for any moral reasons, but because drunk in a whorehouse, he had been rolled for two hundred and forty-five dollars in cash that he had in his pocket, and then decided that profit and loss did not match. The Barbary Coast, he decided, was a sucker’s game, a stupid delusion for kids in the bodies of adults; there were no paths from there to Nob Hill, and at nineteen he had had his fill of wasted, middle-aged whores and maudlin drunks and cheap con men, and fishermen who worked their back sides to the bone six days a week and then blew it all for one night on the Coast. He knew what he wanted; he wanted Nob Hill.
And this night, he was on the Hill, dressed in a gray sharkskin suit that fitted his massive bulk, wearing new black shoes, black socks, a white shirt, and a tie of mid night blue. He saw and observed and learned, and as he walked through the gateposts and up to the front door of the Seldon house, he examined and assessed the place, a Victorian mansion of redwood and gray stone. He was impressed yet not unaware of the gaudiness and ugliness of the place; and he felt that if he had put the same kind of money into the building of a Nob Hill cas tle, he would have done it differently. How he would have done it, he didn’t know; but the very fact that he sensed an aspect of vulgarity gave him assurance.
The butler who opened the door raised a brow. “Your coat, sir?”
He was hatless and coatless, indiffer ent to the weather. He made a
t H e I m m I g r a n t s
5 3
note of his error. As he glanced around the foyer, at the big staircase leading up to the second floor, the double doors on either side, the view through the glass doors at the back of the foyer to the potted plant
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