As Time Goes By (34 page)

"Why the British?" asked Rick.
        

"Can a story of a failed Allied attempt on the life of
a top Nazi be allowed to get out? I think not." He made
the sound of a machine gun, barking in a courtyard.
"Possibility number three is that Heydrich comes over
the Charles Bridge and we are ready for him and
against all odds Laszlo manages to throw his bomb into
Heydrich's car and against even greater odds it goes
off and against whatever odds you care to give it actu
ally kills him. Then what?"

"I've been wondering about that myself ever since
South Kensington," answered Rick. "After what
you've just told me, I can't see why the British would
want us back."

"Nor can I," Renault agreed. "The rescue plane
never arrives, we are all captured and shot, and the Brit
ish are able to disavow any knowledge of our activities.
You and Laszlo are forced to watch Ilsa's fate before
being consigned to your own. Then the Germans really
get mad, and raze whole villages, perhaps even small
countries, thanks to our rash action. Is that what we
really want?"

"It's not what I want," said Rick, "but nobody asked
me."

Renault observed his friend with wry detachment. Here they were, playing the most dangerous game of their lives, and the two of them were sitting around
discussing their prospects as if they were talking about
an upcoming football match in which they both had a
vague rooting interest.

Well, maybe it didn't really matter. How they were
going to get out of Prague had always seemed to Re
nault a bit of a polite fiction. Whether they succeeded or failed, no one on either side of this conflict would
want to welcome them home, or even admit knowing them. No matter what happened—whether Heydrich died or, far more likely, they were either killed on the
spot or rounded up and shot later—it would all be over
soon.

"Ricky," he said at last, "what do you want to have happen? I mean, if you could make everything turn out
exactly to your liking, what would it be?"

Rick lit a cigarette to help him think. "I don't
know," he said. "I guess I would say that Heydrich
dies, nobody else gets hurt, and we all get away safe
and live happily ever after."

Renault smiled. "Except for Victor Laszlo, you
mean."
          

"Maybe."

"No 'maybe' about it. Why, if I didn't know you
better, I would say that you've set this whole game up to get Victor Laszlo killed, not Reinhard Heydrich."

Rick rose and paced the floor. "But Heydrich de
serves to die because he's a Nazi and a murderer and a thug and a gangster! Because if he doesn't, millions of
people are going to suffer. And yet..."

Renault offered no reply to Rick's dilemma. Instead he said, "Victor Laszlo told Major Strasser something
back in Casablanca—in your own cafe—that's been
haunting me: that, if anything happened to him, hun
dreds of men like him would rise up from every corner of Europe to take his place. Isn't the same true of Hey
drich? Maybe we can kill him. Others just like him,
even worse, are only too willing—eager!—to take his
place. I'd like to think the supply of good men in the
world outweighs the number of bad, but right now
that's a bet I'm not quite willing to lay."

"So you're saying ... ?" asked Rick.
   

"So I'm saying that, whatever we decide and what
ever we do, the larger issue is not going to be deter
mined by our actions. We can't win this war all by
ourselves, Ricky, and if we're smart, we won't even
try. All we can do is hope to get out alive."

"Maybe you're right," said Rick. "The Germans are sitting pretty in Europe, and there's no way the Allies
can strike at them. The Russians are getting their teeth
kicked in on the eastern front; they've already been pushed all the way back to Stalingrad, and it doesn't
look like they'll be able to hold out much longer. When
the Nazis are through with them, they can turn the full force of their armies on the West—on us. The British
are trapped on their little island, the French have
quit—no offense, Louie—and the Americans are busy with the Japs in the Pacific." As he finished his cigarette he immediately lit another.

"Don't underestimate the Russians, my friend.
They'll probably blunder into Berlin before this is
through."

"On the other hand, what can the Germans do?"
Rick went on. "They can't even get across the English
Channel, much less knock out the British. Hell, the En
glish are still having dinner parties in London. And if
the Nazis can't get across the Channel, they sure as hell
aren't going to be able to get across the North Atlan
tic." He breathed deeply. "So America, at least, is
safe."

"But not, I remind you, central Europe," said Renault. "Where we find ourselves now."

"We do indeed," said Rick.

Renault's mind was racing. As far as the Resistance leaders back in London were concerned, the plan must fail. The British must not be allowed to pull off a coup
like assassinating Heydrich. While his orders were to
monitor the operation rather than explicitly to sabotage
it, he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that Victor
Laszlo's plan must go no further. That was fine with him; for the first time, he and Rick Blaine could be
allies in good conscience.

The larger question, though, weighed on his mind. Which outcome was in the best interests of France— not occupied France, or Vichy France, but
la belle France?
His brave words of greeting to Major Stras
ser—"Unoccupied France welcomes you to Casa
blanca"—he knew to be so much bravado. He was
nothing more than a collaborationist, a weak man, a
camp follower. A whore.

A whore. The kind of woman he had spent his life
despising. The kind of woman he had so diligently sought to turn all of womankind into, just to assuage
his conscience. He had made them sleep with him, the
enemy, because he could. He had been sleeping with the enemy because he wanted to. Because he
was
the
enemy. Not anymore.

He slept soundly that night, for the first time in cen
turies.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
O
NE

SENATOR, GANGSTER IN RACKETS PROBE!

read the headlines in the October 23, 1935, edition of
the
New York Mirror.
The byline was Walter Win
chell's. Winchell didn't often stoop to news stories, but this one was different. This one was
news.

What does the face of evil look like? If you are a regular
moviegoer, you may think you already know: a hard
guy with a fedora and a heater. But what if it was the
face of the man next door? Your best friend, or his best
friend—or worse yet, the fellow you voted for in the last
election?

Flash! This column has learned that Senator Robert
Haas Meredith, widely mentioned as a contender for the
Republican gubernatorial nomination in the next elec
tion, may be the target of an investigation into his ties
to a notorious gangland boss.

That would be none other than Lorenzo Salucci, the favorite tenant of the Waldorf-Astoria. There's hardly a
working girl in this town who doesn't owe her liveli
hood in one way or another to the sinister, olive-skinned
Sicilian—who's not even an American citizen!

According to documents received by this office, Sen
ator Meredith and Lorenzo Salucci—assisted by his
aide-de-camp Irving Weinberg—have been in cahoots for several years. Salucci, it is said, helped rig the elec
tion that saw the victory of the Republican Meredith
over the Democratic incumbent in heavily Democratic
New York State.

Maybe now we know why.

The documents clearly show a pattern of corruption
extending back years. With his partners, Meredith has
been involved in prostitution, loan-sharking, and, before
the blessed end of Prohibition, bootlegging.

Hold on to your hats:

Meredith's lovely wife, the former Lois Harrow, is
not the former Lois Harrow at all. On the contrary, she
is the former Lois Horowitz, the only daughter of Mr.
and Mrs. Solomon Horowitz of W. 127th Street in Man
hattan and the Grand Boulevard and Concourse in the Bronx. Mr. Horowitz, the uptown rackets king, is the
proud possessor of a rap sheet as long as my leg. And
that's pretty long!

What's more, we're told, the former Miss Horowitz
has been keeping company on the QT with the suave,
handsome Rick Baline, proprietor of the Tootsie-Woot-sie Club, the former uptown speakeasy that some say is really owned by Solomon the Wise himself.

This column tried to reach the Senator last night at
his home in Albany. But we were told that Meredith was
"away on business" and had no comment. Business,
yes—but what kind?

Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea: Stand by for further developments!

Rick read the
Mirror
with almost no emotion. The
bit about Solly and Lois was a typical O'Hanlon touch,
just to keep him honest.

He sat in his office, waiting. A cup of coffee lay on
his desk, untouched. He was thinking about touching it
when the buzzer alerted him to the imminent presence of a visitor. His loaded .45 lay right next to the coffee.
He didn't have to think twice about touching that. He
picked it up and slipped it in his pocket.

The door opened without a knock. It was Meredith.

"Come on in, Senator," Rick said as affably as he
could. "I've been waiting for you." He wasn't worried.
He'd confronted a lot tougher characters than Robert
Haas Meredith. Even so, he wasn't sure what to expect.
An irate husband, a ruined politician, a homicidal ma
niac.

He got all three.

The senator tossed his copy of the
Mirror
on Rick's desk. Rick waited for him to say something. He did.
"What is the meaning of this?" sputtered Meredith. His face was red, his tie was askew, and he hadn't
shaved that day.

"Why don't you ask Winchell?" said Rick. "It's his
byline. "You'll find him down at the
Mirror."

"I don't want to talk to some cheap newspaperman,"
Meredith hissed. "I want to talk to you."

"Be my guest, but make it snappy. I'm a busy man, Mr. Meredith. I've got a nightclub to run."

"Don't get smart with me."

"Why don't you cut the small talk and tell me the
real reason you've come here? Better yet, I'll tell you.
You've come here to find out what I know beyond what
was in Winchell today," Rick said. "The answer is, I
know plenty. I know all about you and Salucci, about
how he supplies you with girls when you come home
to visit your 'constituents' in New York." He blew a
smoke ring in the senator's direction. "I also know
how Weinberg cooks the books for you so you can
cheat the revenue service of what's coming to it. I also
know ... but why go on? I know everything, and what
I don't know O'Hanlon surely does. About the only
thing I don't know is why you must have double-
crossed Dion, because, friend, that is like welshing on
a bet with the devil."

Meredith sat there in the visitor's chair across from him, with only the gleaming leather surface of Rick's
desk between them. "You think you're a pretty smart
guy," he said.

"I am," answered Rick. "You're not. You're
through, Meredith, and so is Salucci and so is Wein
berg."

Meredith snorted. "We'll see about that. If I were
you, I'd be worrying about Horowitz right about now."

"Tick-Tock and Solly can handle anything your boys
can throw at them," said Rick.

"I wouldn't be too sure about Schapiro's loyalties." Suddenly the senator's head snapped up. "Where's my
wife?" he demanded.

"She was my girl before she was your wife," said
Rick. "I can't help it if she's decided that she prefers
it that way again." He looked into the back room.
"Why don't we let the lady decide for herself. Lois?"

"I'm right here, Rick."

She looked glorious. Her ebony hair was swept up, and her face was flushed with color. She was still the most beautiful woman either man had ever seen, and
Meredith realized at last he had been a fool to cheat on
her, a fool to risk the wrath of her father, a fool to risk
the ire of O'Hanlon, a fool to mingle with gangland
because it gave him a thrill, a fool to have carried hy
pocrisy as far as he had when he wasn't cut out for it, a fool to have trusted these people, who didn't even
trust themselves.

She walked toward both men, as alluring as Eve. She
smiled at Meredith and then threw her arms around
Rick Baline and kissed him as lustfully as she had ever
kissed a man.

"Do you want to go back with him?" Rick asked
her. "Although why bother? Hubby here'll be doing a
long stretch in the jug, you'll still have the house in
Westchester, and I can start visiting in the daytime in
stead of the middle of the night when he's down at one
of Salucci's whorehouses. What do you say?"

He knew he shouldn't taunt Meredith, but he
couldn't help himself. Robert Haas Meredith stood for everything in New York that he despised, because it
despised him.

In reply, Lois put her arms around Rick's neck and
hugged him again. "Please, Rick, take me away. Let's
run, while we still can—let's run far, far away, where
no one will ever find us."

"I guess that's your answer, Senator," he said.

He looked at Meredith and mentally replaced his pa
trician features with Solomon Horowitz's. Solly, who
had so diligently chased respectability, and at what
price. Solly, who had been willing to sacrifice for it his
only daughter, his only child, the only person in the
world he loved, really loved, without reservation, and
whom he had therefore condemned to a life without
love. How could he have gotten it so terribly wrong?

Lois removed her head from Rick's chest and looked at her husband.

"I hate you, Robert," she said. "I thought I loved
you. I tried to love you, not for your sake or even for mine, but for my father's. He wanted a better life for
me. So I let myself believe that I was happy with you,
and for a while I was, because I wanted out and you
were my ticket. You sure had me fooled."

She stood up straight and proud. "I learned soon
enough that you were a fraud. Sure, you lived in a bet
ter part of town and you wore fancier clothes and you hung around with people who didn't drop their g's and
knew which fork to use and vacationed in the South of France. But deep down you and the rest of your crowd
weren't any different from the men I had watched come
in and out of our house since I was a little girl. You
cheated the government and you paid off the cops and
you looked down your noses at people like my father
even while you were doing business with them. Some
times you even put them in jail, just to show them
who's boss.

"When I found out, did I leave you? I should have,
but I didn't. I put up with your hypocrisy, and I turned
a blind eye to your whoring and your cheating and your
chiseling. Not for your sake, but for my father's. No more. Look at you!" she spat with as much contempt
as she could muster. "You're not a man! You're
nothing!"

Meredith stood up. In his right hand he held a pistol.
"I'll show you who's nothing," he said.

Rick had one arm around Lois. He had his right arm free, but not free enough. "Put that thing away before
you hurt somebody, Senator," he said, reaching for the .45 in his pocket.

"You don't have the guts, you cheap hood," said
Lois.

Meredith aimed and fired. He hit Lois square in the
chest. She was dead before she collapsed across the
desk.

Rick's answering bullet found its mark surely and swiftly, knocking Meredith out of his chair, onto the
floor, and into eternity.
           
:

Suddenly alone, he cradled Lois in his arms, just as
he had done on that day so long ago, on the elevated
running down Second Avenue, on his way to buy his
mother a knish. Only this time he was powerless to
revive her.

He was kissing her when Abie Cohen crashed
through the door, his gun drawn. He saw Robert Mere
dith dead on the carpet and Lois Horowitz Meredith
dead in Rick's arms. "Jesus, boss," said Abie.

"Make sure Solly's okay," said Rick. "Now."

"He's up in the Bronx," Abie told him. "As soon as
he seen the papers this morning he cleared out."

"Tick-Tock's with him?"

"I don't know. I ain't seen Tick-Tock all day."

Something wasn't right. How long did it take to get
up to the Concourse, anyway? From Harlem it couldn't take longer than twenty minutes or so even at this time
of day; all you had to do was shoot across 125th Street
to Third Avenue, over the bridge to the Bronx, and
there you were, on the Grand Concourse in the New Jerusalem. Guns drawn and blazing, if need be.