Humorous Fiction/Romantic Comedy/Historical Fiction/Jewish Fiction
Date Published: July 9th, 2024
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Abe Goldstein’s life is speeding downhill faster than a Coney Island
roller coaster.
His Manhattan diamond company is on life support. Crime is so bad that
muggers are mugging other muggers. And his overbearing mother has gone
behind his back and posted his profile on a Jewish dating site. Now,
Abe’s phone is blowing up with messages from women who want to marry
him.
At the advice of his accountant, Abe flees to Honolulu and cuts a deal with
an Okinawan family to buy their diamond ring business. The owner’s
beautiful daughter Kiyoko stays on as a consultant, and Abe finds himself
falling hard for her.
But there’s trouble in paradise. Abe’s meddlesome mother hires
an unscrupulous matchmaker to break the pair up and find a nice Jewish girl
for him instead. To make matters worse, a rival diamond firm connected to
Japanese organized crime is bent on destroying Abe’s fledgling
business, Shaloha Gems.
As Abe navigates the twists and turns of his unconventional island life,
everything he values is in jeopardy. He may be willing to damage his
relationship with his mother to preserve his romantic relationship. But will
he crumble under the pressure if he loses his reputation and his budding
diamond empire too? Or will a discovery that leads back to the darkest days
of World War II open an unexpected door to a brighter future?
EXCERPT
Abe Goldstein stared out of the barred back-office window of his company, Goldy’s Diamonds & Gems, which overlooked the rainy and grey 47th Street Diamond District. The grimy man-trap door, the hallway entrance, and the lone off-duty NYPD officer outside told the story of a city that had seen its best days and was going downhill faster than a Coney Island roller coaster.
Abe thought even a roller coaster goes back up again, but there was no way in hell that New York would make a comeback. Since the Covid lockdowns, the huge spike in crime, and the exit of most of his retail client base out of New York City to South Florida, his retail business had dropped off a cliff, and his wholesale business was barely keeping him afloat.
Today, Abe was meeting with his longtime friend and accountant Adam Bushkin, whom Abe jokingly referred to as “Bombastic Buskin,” like Johnny Carson’s accountant who had once recommended that Carson invest in X-rated bookstores in Iran.
Like Abe, Adam was an Orthodox Jew who kept kosher, observed Shabbat, and wore the yarmulke to show reverence for Hashem. He looked and acted like a pudgy version of the old-time comedian Red Buttons, wearing the mischievous look of a man always on the verge of laughter. This was their quarterly meeting before tax filing, and Abe looked forward to it like he did a root canal.
“So, Bombastic,” he said, “give me the good news first, so I can smile for five seconds at least.”
Adam reported that, “The good news is that Katz’s Deli on Houston Street downtown has a new lunch special: all-you-can-eat kosher pickles with your fifty-dollar pastrami sandwich. The bad news is that revenues have sunk into the toilet by over 50 percent. I hate to tell you, Abe, but your business is on life support. You can’t hold on much longer. I suggest you consider selling and moving out-of-state. My other clients in the diamond business have moved to Florida — Miami, Boca Raton, and Palm Beach. The business district in those cities looks like Tel Aviv.”
Abe chewed his lower lip unhappily. “My diamond clients who moved there tell me the competition is so fierce that they’re all undercutting each other, and their margins are slimmer than the Jewish book of business ethics. They are making bupkis down there.”
Abe’s father, Moishe, had founded the business in New York City after the war. Moishe was a Holocaust survivor of the Dachau concentration camp and still had the tattoo on his left forearm. Now he had a scraggly white beard and hunched back from old age, and the demeanor of a man who had seen much suffering in his life.
Before the war, Moishe’s family had established diamond businesses in Amsterdam and Antwerp. They’d lost everything after the Germans conquered the Netherlands. Moishe’s parents, brothers, and sisters all perished in the camps. Moishe was the youngest and survived to be liberated by the United States Army. Later, he was sent to a displaced persons’ camp and was adopted by the Goldstein’s, distant relatives who were also in the diamond business in New York.
Abe resembled his father as a young man, but even more so the movie star Adam Sandler, with curly brown hair and a well-trimmed beard that accentuated his cleft chin and square jawline.
“Bombastic,” he exclaimed, “what am I going to do? We still have a great supply line of diamond cutters in Tel Aviv and connections with De Beers in Johannesburg. Come up with something!”
A week later, Adam called Abe and set up a lunch meeting at Katz’s. The men slid into their usual booth, gripping pastrami sandwiches thick enough to choke a horse. They munched on the endless pickle barrel gracing each table.
“There’s enough salt in these pickles to kill the entire cardiology wing at Bellevue Hospital,” Abe joked.
“Abe, you are a young man, only forty. It will take at least fifty years for Katz’s pickles to kill you — unless you marry a Jewish yenta. Then I give you about twenty years or less.”
Abe wiped his mouth on a napkin and shot Adam a dour look. “Don’t mention marriage. My mother is driving me crazy. She even bought me an online subscription to JDate, that Jewish singles dating app. She put my photo and cell phone numbers on the site. I got meshuga women contacting me day and night. They only show headshots and describe themselves as voluptuous, so I am guessing that some of these women are big enough to put license plates on them.”
His accountant smiled. “Abe, don’t choke on your pastrami sandwich when I tell you this, but I think I found a gem of a wedding/engagement ring company where the markups on diamond rings are double what they are in New York.”
Abe arched a brow. “Oh, yes? Pray tell me where this gem is located.”
“It’s in Honolulu, Hawaii.” Adam leaned across the table, eyes twinkling. . .
About the Author
Born and raised in New Jersey, Terry Chodosh earned his MS in criminology
from Florida State University. Terry began his twenty-eight-year career with
the United States Secret Service (USSS) in NYC and fulfilled assignments in
the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Honolulu field offices as well as in the
Gerald Ford protective detail.
While assigned to the Honolulu office, Terry traveled extensively in Asia,
conducting complex financial crime investigations and providing executive
protection for US government officials, including the president and vice
president of the United States. After retirement, Terry wanted to tap into
his humorous and creative side, which was often restrained throughout his
career, so he began writing his novel Shaloha Gems.
Terry lives with his wife and son in Honolulu, Hawaii. He enjoys distance
swimming in the ocean and outrigger canoe paddling, and he strives to stay
one step ahead of skin cancer and tiger sharks.
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