The Chemist - Based on a True Story

by Chris Blewitt

  Here is where it all happened.

  The old man, referred to around here as Bags, due to the bags under his eyes he’s had since his twenties, was the man in charge. Directly in front of Tommy were two other young men down in the dungeon, both stirring large pots over flat top heated stoves that were made of black iron and could fit in any household kitchen. The pots on top were those found in restaurants or soup kitchens, each holding over ten gallons of liquid. The men were holding large wooden handles and slowly turning the liquid in clockwise formation. They looked up at Tommy and simply nodded their heads.

  Past the two stoves, there were folding tables with various tubes, smaller pots, buckets, thermometers, funnels, and flasks strewn about. Bags went over to the third table and began pouring liquid from one smaller pot into another larger pot, multiplying the amount of liquid. Against the back wall were over two dozen large wooden barrels or casks. Some standing upright and stacked neatly, others were lying on their sides, waiting to be filled.

  “Bring me one of those new boxes, will ya Tommy?” Bags asked.

  Tommy hoisted one of the boxes off the dolly and brought it over to the table. He pulled a switchblade out of his back pocket, flipped it open and started to slice the box open. Tommy closed the blade, put it away and ripped the box open.

  “You know what we got here Tommy? Pure ethyl alcohol, enough to get half the town of Philadelphia drunk!” He laughed and slapped Tommy on the back. “This is actually used to make paint! Ha, ha!” He continued his hearty, wheezing laugh. “Thanks to you, we’ll make booze out of this instead! Ha ha!”

  Chapter 3

  The train ride to Holmesburg Prison was filled with great anticipation for Charlie. He hadn’t seen his brother Jimmy in almost a year and now he was going to set him free. Charlie was there the day he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for armed robbery of the Wells Fargo Bank on 2nd and Chestnut. Jimmy lived a troubled life and the bank robbery catapulted him into a world of crime that he hoped ended at his sentencing. Two years his younger, Jimmy was the kid that skipped school, smoked cigarettes and hung out with all the wrong people. Now, at age twenty-nine, Charlie hoped he had learned his lesson.

  The train dropped him off and he walked the couple of blocks that took him over to the prison. After being searched and signing a bunch of papers, Charlie stood in a small room near the exit from the prison. He had been waiting for this day for the past two months, ever since he met the two men, Mike and Pat, in the hospital room. He was all healed, physically, but the work he had been doing for the two men was mentally challenging.

  The door opened suddenly and in walked his brother Jimmy. He was taller than Charlie and skinnier than when Charlie last saw him. A three day old brown beard covered his strong jaw and he smiled, showing off his tar-stained teeth.

  “Charlie!”

  They embraced.

  “You did this? You?” Jimmy asked.

  “You look good, Jim.”

  “So do you. Let’s get out of this shit-hole, eh?”

  They walked out the front door and into the sunlight that warmed them on the cool November afternoon. Jimmy immediately lit a cigarette and offered one to his brother who declined. As soon as he set foot on free land, Jimmy said, “Let’s find me a drink.”

  “Jimmy, taverns closed, in case you forgot. Prison make you forget about Prohibition? And this is the Northeast; we’ll find something when we get home. I hear the McDougals got to brewing some beer in their own basement.”

  “Trust me. Come, follow me.” Jimmy weaved up and down the streets of Northeast Philly until he came to a building that said, “Treach’s Deli”. He explained to Charlie that a guy in the joint told him where to get some good whiskey when he got out. They walked into the deli and asked for Mick. They were met with raised eyebrows until the youngest man in the shop went in the back for a few moments.

  “Let’s get outta here,” Charlie whispered to Jimmy.

  Jimmy just held up his hands indicating patience until the young kid came back and told them to follow him. He led them through the door and down a dozen rickety steps where they were greeted by a large man in a white t-shirt and black pants. He introduced himself as Mick and told them to follow him. They went through the storage area and passed bags of flour, crates of canned vegetables and boxes of paper products. They came to another door; Mick opened it with a key, and went inside.

  It was a bar. At least, it would’ve been a bar had alcohol been legal at the time. There were men lined up drinking from short thick glasses, while an older man poured from a couple of glass jugs. Jimmy and Charlie went up to the bar and they ordered whiskey.

  “Isn’t this great?” Jimmy asked quietly. Some of the men were talking to each other, some just staring ahead, drinking their brown liquid. He watched as the bartender poured four fingers of whiskey from the jug and handed both glasses to Charlie and Jimmy.

  “How is this made?” Charlie asked the bartender.

  “We got connections. Why?”

  “Just curious is all,” Charlie responded.

  “You a copper?” the bartender asked.

  “No, no.” He reluctantly took the small glass and sniffed the whiskey. Smelled like whiskey but who knew what it was made from.

  “To freedom,” Jimmy said, toasting his brother.

  They both downed the shot in one gulp and cringed at the taste as it burned their throats.

  “Yeech!” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, not like I remember it,” Jimmy agreed.

  Charlie shook his head in disgust and turned down Jimmy’s offer for another one. “Problem is, people are making alcohol with whatever they can make it with. They no longer make it like they used to. Don’t drink too much of this stuff. Damn, that was nasty.”

  Jimmy received his next shot from the bartender and paid the man a few coins. He raised his glass to Charlie and said, “Thanks for getting me out, no matter how you did it.” He downed the shot and closed his eyes tightly. “Still does the trick though.”

  <><><><><>

  It was Tommy Barone’s fifth trip to the docks where he met the Irishmen and paid them for the stolen cans of industrial ethanol. They kept the quantities the same, six boxes. He upped the fee he paid them to two hundred dollars, still pocketing three hundred for himself. After pulling into the warehouse and unloading the boxes, he decided to stick around and see how Bags made the vile liquid they were producing and selling.

  “The first thing we do is boil this ethanol and we capture the fumes, the vapor that the steam gives off.” Bags pointed to a coiled piece of copper rubbing set next to the large kettle. “Here you see the collection of the steam. It is now alcohol. We get enough steam, it turns to liquid. I then flavor this by setting Birchwood inside the fermentation tank to give it some woody taste. It now has to age for a couple weeks in the wooden barrels over there and then it is ready for sale. Pretty simple.”

  “Is it safe?” Tommy asked.

  Bags laughed. “Safe enough!”

  Tommy didn’t like the last comment by the old man and the chuckle that followed. He couldn’t believe the fact that they were making booze from something that was made to make paint. This could not be healthy, especially for those that consumed a lot of it. Tommy didn’t pay attention to what happened after the booze was made and left the warehouse. That was left to the man upstairs.

  The Bear had a decent enough system. After the booze was made, Bags told him it had to age for two months but The Bear sped up that process to two weeks. They were making roughly two barrels a day of the stuff and selling them for five hundred a pop. Seven thousand a week was not a bad profit for bootlegging. He paid out his men who delivered the stuff, paid Bags and Tommy and then had to pay his boss up in New York. Still, he took home two-thousand a week for his little operation. Prohibition was not all that bad to The Bear.

  Chapter 4

  A light snow fell softly on the streets of Philadelphia as dusk came on Christmas Eve. The daily newspa
per forecasted at least four inches of the snow on Christmas, making it the first white Christmas for Philadelphia in the 20th Century. Charlie was busy shopping on Market Street for his wife of six years, Helen. They didn’t have any children to buy for so he spent his entire Christmas bonus on her. He perused up and down all of Sansom and Walnut streets, looking at all of the diamonds and gold on Jeweler’s Row, trying to find the perfect Christmas gift.

  The stress he was experiencing the past few months evaporated quickly as the holidays approached. He need not worry about the job he was performing and decided to think about himself and his wife this holiday season. He stopped into Sam Rosen’s Jewels and spent almost one hundred dollars on a gold bracelet. Charlie had a grin on his face as he left the store and walked down the street. Just then, a familiar face came across his line of vision, his brother.

  He followed him as he turned the corner and he increased his steps to catch up with him. The throng of people, the snow and wind, all made it nearly impossible for him to call him by name. There was a break in the people and he saw Jimmy not thirty feet in front of him, swaying carelessly from side to side, almost as if he was caught up in a song and was dancing along the sidewalk.

  “Jimmy!” Charlie called. “Jim!”

  Charlie increased his pace and soon caught up to Jimmy at the corner of Sixth Street. He grabbed him by the jacket and turned him around.

  “Jimmy, whoa, whoa, didn’t you hear me back there?”

  “Charlie?” Jimmy asked. His eyes were glossed over and the thick stench of alcohol coming from his mouth made Charlie turn his head.

  “Jimmy, you been drinkin again?”

  “Again?” his brother laughed, swaying backwards. He spread his arms wide and said loudly, “It’s Christmas!” He stumbled a few feet and Charlie caught his arm to keep him from falling.

  “Jimmy, let’s get you home. Okay, let’s get some rest.”

  “Ah, baloney. It’s party time!” Jimmy pulled away from Charlie and started to walk down the street, arms high above his head, waving his hands.

  Charlie caught up to him and turned him around to face him. “Listen to me, you shouldn’t be drinking this stuff.”

  “What, you gonna call the cops on me big bro?”

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass that its illegal, what I’m saying is…” He looked around cautiously. “It’s dangerous.”

  “What do you mean, dangerous?” Jimmy asked.

  “I’m just sayin, you don’t know what they put in this stuff. It’s not like before when they all had factories and such. This stuff is being made by God knows who.” He stepped forward and took his brother’s face in his hands and said, “Trust me, I know.”

  Jimmy just looked at him as the snow picked up its pace and pelted their cheeks. He grabbed hold of Charlie’s hands and held them in his own. “I’m fine,” he said softly. He dropped their hands and walked slowly backwards and smiled. “See you tomorrow, bro. Merry Christmas!”

  Charlie stood there for a few moments watching his brother walk quickly down the street. He pondered going after him. Slapping him in the face and telling him everything. Everything he knew and everything he had done. It was for his own good, he thought. The farther away Jimmy walked, the less Charlie thought about going after him. He’d talk to him tomorrow.

  Christmas.

  <><><><><>

  The hospital on 11th Street was named for our 3rd President, Thomas Jefferson, and the emergency room was quiet as the staff basked in the holiday spirit. The sparsely furnished waiting room was decorated with red poinsettias, golden tinsel and two five feet high Christmas trees at either end, bathed in blinking lights. There were two men waiting in the chairs positioned in the middle of the lobby, both with icepacks. One was holding it to his ankle and another to his shoulder. They both claimed to have fallen on the ice that had formed under the snow as night fell on the city.

  “Mr. Atwater?” a woman from behind the counter said aloud. “The doctor will see you now.”

  The man with the sore shoulder walked gingerly over to the door where a nurse was waiting to take him back to see the doctor. Suddenly, the front door to the hospital burst open and in walked a man screaming obscenities.

  “Get off me you shit! Stop it” the man was saying.

  The man was by himself.

  “Sir! Sir!” the nurse at the counter said.

  “Get away from me! Are you crazy asshole?!” the man said, craning his neck to see behind him.

  “Sir! What is the problem?” the nurse said.

  “Don’t you see him?” the man said, walking in circles.

  “See who?”

  “Santa. He’s right behind me and he’s trying to hurt me! Maybe even kill me! Get him away from me!”

  The nurse raised her eyebrows and assumed another lunatic escaped from the nearby mental hospital. She pushed the radio button on her desk and signaled for security. “Sir, please have a seat. There is no one behind you.”

  “What? He’s right there and he’s holding a baseball bat!”

  “Santa is holding a baseball bat?” the nurse asked incredulously.

  “Yes! Don’t you see him?”

  Moments later two Philadelphia police officers came to her rescue and got the man under control. He was breathing rapidly and sweating profusely. His skin was bright red and his face was puffy and bloated.

  “What do you want us to do with him?” one of the officers asked.

  “Bring him in the back for observation,” she said.

  The officers brought him in the back and laid him down on a hospital bed. The man had stopped spouting his rants of Santa chasing him with a baseball bat and was calm as he was placed in the bed. His eyes were blinking rapidly and his hands were shaking.

  “What’s wrong with him?” the officer asked.

  “Got me,” the nurse said, shrugging her shoulders. She took his blood pressure and pulse and they were both through the roof. “Let me get the doctor, thanks gentlemen,” she said as she escorted the men out of the room.

  The nurse went into the main lobby, stopped to use the restroom, finally found the doctor and came back fifteen minutes later with Dr. Jonas. What they saw when they walked into the room was not good.

  The man in the bed appeared dead.

  He was half on the bed, half off the bed. There was mucous coming from his mouth and his nose. His eyes stared straight ahead and he did not move when they came in.

  “Oh my God!” the nurse said.

  They both went through the routine of trying to bring a dead man back to life but it was of no use. The man was dead and they had no idea why.

  “Doctor Jonas?” said another woman from out in the hallway. “Please come out here right away.”

  The other nurse led the doctor out to the waiting room where there was a young man having convulsions on the floor. He too appeared flush and puffy. Mucous was already coming out of his mouth and nose. The doctor bent down to get a pulse and felt it racing. Within seconds the convulsing stopped.

  “Get him in room three!” the doctor yelled.

  But it was too late. He was dead and there was nothing they could do to bring him back to life.

  The emergency room had never seen such atrocities as that Christmas Eve night. These two men were not the only ones that passed away under their watch. By the time Christmas night came around, a total of sixty people, mostly men, came into the emergency room that night with similar symptoms and eight of them perished.

  The following two days they saw hundreds more fall ill and twenty-three more fatalities. Everyone was celebrating the holidays. Everyone was drinking the homemade liquor.

  Everyone was drinking the poison.

  <><><><><>

  Charlie’s house was big enough to host Christmas so all of his nearby relatives came over for a Christmas feast. His parents came over and his wife’s parents too. His wife’s side of the family was large and little kids were running all over his house. He didn’t care. It was
Christmas. He had a big announcement for the family and he wanted everyone to hear it. He checked his watch every ten minutes and wondered where his brother was.

  By six o’clock he gathered everyone in the dining room and the room was quiet as he began to speak. “Family, first and foremost, let’s bow our heads and thank the Lord for bringing us together this fine day.” Charlie allowed a moment of silence to pass before raising his head and continuing. “Helen and I would like to thank everyone for coming.” He looked over at his wife and smiled. “We’d also like to say that Helen is expecting our first child!”

  A roar went up in the room and everyone laughed and hugged and shook hands and even cried. They’d been trying for three years to get pregnant and it had been hard on their marriage. It felt good to tell everyone at the same time. Everyone was happy.

  He heard a knock at the door. Ahh, Jimmy.

  When he opened the door it wasn’t Jimmy but a police officer.

  “Mr. Charles White?” the officer asked.

  A confused Charlie answered, “Yeah?”

  The officer took off his hat and said, “I’m sorry to tell you this sir, but your brother James has passed away.”

  Charlie’s look of confusion, not sorrow, enabled the officer to continue.

  “He was found in an alley off of 11th Street early this morning around three. It took us a while to find his identity and to locate his closest relative.”

  “What happened?” was all Charlie could muster.

  The officer shrugged his shoulders and said, “I wish I could say. Coroner said it was a heart attack.”

  “He was twenty nine years old!”

  The officer extended his hands as if to say, What do you want me to say? “We actually had a rash of incidents these past two days. One doctor thinks the first couple died of alcohol poisoning. He didn’t get to your brother yet. Could be the same.” He put his hat back on, shook Charlie’s hand and bid him a Merry Christmas.