As Time Goes By (35 page)

He got to his feet, Lois's body slipping out of bis
arms for the last time. This was where laziness got you, this was where carelessness landed you, this was where
inattention washed you up—all for committing the sin
of thinking yourself respectable in the eyes of polite society. Polite society was still Mrs. Astor's ballroom, no matter how much that ballroom liked to drink. Po
lite society married its daughters off and didn't have
their husbands come back to haunt them with ghouls
like Salucci and Weinberg in tow.

Salucci and Weinberg. Payback time. The clock was
ticking on all of them.

Cohen and Lowenstein and Tannenbaum, squad
leaders, Abie downtown to Mott Street, Laz and Pinky
to the West Side, on the double, with four or five of
their best gunsels. Hit Salucci and hit Weinberg and hit
them hard and hit them dead. Get them in their cribs now, on Mott Street, around the old Points, on the
Bowery, in the penthouse at the Waldorf if need be, but
get them and kill them and worry about the aftermath
afterward.

His last act was to clean out the safe. He had never
counted the money in it, because, up to this moment,
the amount was none of his business. Now it was. He was going to need cash, and lots of it.

He rifled through the carefully arranged stacks of hundred-dollar bills and whistled to himself. The safe was stuffed with half a million dollars, maybe more.
Solly had been saving it for Lois. Now Rick was steal
ing it. He stuffed it in a suitcase and ran.

His last view of the club was the awning, and the
poster in front, the poster he had had printed up just
the other day, which advertised "Tonight in person. Lunceford and Hupfield, together again. Performing your favorite songs, including the hit, 'As Time Goes
By'! With Sam Waters at the piano."

He made the Broadway bridge six minutes later, a
new Manhattan speed record, but luckily the cops were
not around to record it. He didn't want to have to ex
plain why he was driving so fast, or what he was doing
with a suitcase filled with half a million dollars in the
trunk of his car. At this point, he preferred to let his .45
do the talking. If it wasn't too late.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
T
WO

Renault had wasted no time in finding suitable fe
male companionship among the locals. Failing to find
Rick shortly after his arrival, he was strolling up on
Pet
řří
n Hill—the faux Eiffel Tower he found irresist
ible—and had promptly made the acquaintance of a
young lady named Ludmilla Maleeva. He had suc
ceeded in getting her to make love to him after tempt
ing her with some small luxuries, as well as with his
tales of how the real Eiffel Tower looked and how
beautiful Paris was in the summer. She slept with him
that afternoon with enthusiasm, if not ardor, for M.
Boucher was as close as she was going to get to Paris
at this point in her life.

Her passion, however, she was reserving for Karel
Gabčík
, a Czech boy from the countryside who had
come to the city to study at the university. Ludmilla had great hopes for Karel—until the Nazis closed the universities. After the big student demonstrations in September 1941, the Germans had shot nine students and sent 1,200 more to concentration camps. Luckily Karel was not in either group; like his older brother,
Josef, who had escaped to England to continue the
fight, he remained adamant in his hatred of the Ger
mans.

Ludmilla could not quite understand what the Gab
čí
k
s had against the German occupation. She was not
old enough to care whether the place she lived in was
called Czechoslovakia or Bohemia or the Greater German Reich, as long as she was happy. Though the rest of Europe might be at war, Bohemia was at peace. Her
beautiful hometown of Prague had not been bombed
or disfigured by fighting in any way. There had been
rationing, of course, but food was plentiful, even meat,
and the beer still flowed freely. How much worse it
could be!

Still, she had already figured out that information was the coin of the realm. So when Renault, after
downing most of a bottle of the Czech liqueur called
Becherovka, hinted at an important event that would soon occur, she listened very carefully. This informa
tion would delight Karel, she was sure, as well as raise
her in his estimation. She wanted Karel to love her as
much as he loved his country. The way she saw it, if she could pass on a tip, then Karel could pass it on
through his brother's network, and perhaps they would
eventually throw the Germans out and live happily ever
after, the way couples did in fairy stories. She had to
admit that last part of the fantasy was a long shot, but long shots won every now and then, even in central
Europe.

She was only seventeen, but she knew enough to
know that what she knew was worth knowing.

The next evening she met Karel in a country tavern in a little town outside Prague named Bubenec. She
didn't mind traveling to meet her lover, because she
was wearing a new dress that the nice M. Boucher had
purchased for her, as well as a pair of French silk stock
ings that he had produced from God knew where. She
liked the way the men admired her as she walked down
the street, the way they seemed to savor her very exis
tence as a woman. Her voluptuousness would not last
forever, that much she knew; she was determined to
make it last as long as she could, and for it to pay off.

Sitting at a table with some of his friends, Karel
looked up as she made her entrance. He noticed her
new dress. Good, she thought. Let him wonder where I
got this dress. Let him wonder where I got these beauti
ful stockings. Let him start paying me more attention
than resistance and revolution.

Karel kissed her as she sat. She loved the way he tasted, of fresh Czech beer and strong cigarettes. So much better than the little Frenchman, who could not
handle even a single bottle of Becherovka, which any
self-respecting Czech could down before dinner, be
fore the serious drinking began.

Ludmilla wasted no time in getting to the point.

"Karel," she said, "something is going to happen."

Karel was careful to evince no reaction. "What kind
of something?" he asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "Something very big."
She dropped her voice. "A bomb!"

The part about the bomb she made up, but it sounded
good. In fact, M. Boucher had not said anything at all
about a bomb but only had muttered something about
an event that would shock the world, something involv
ing weapons and death, until he'd finally fallen asleep and she'd had to squirm out from underneath him, the
pig. The French were supposed to be such great lovers.

"Hush!" Karel drew her mouth toward his and pre
tended to kiss her. "Who told you this?" he muttered
under his breath.

She could see the alarm in his eyes as he held her
face close to hers. "A Frenchman I met yesterday," she
confessed.

"Did you sleep with him?" demanded Karel, sound-
ing more distressed than jealous. "Is that where lie told
you? In bed?"

"Yes," she confessed glumly.

Karel
Gabčík
was willing to forget about Ludmilla's
infidelity for the moment. Far more important was his
brother's operation. Could she be referring to Opera
tion Hangman? What else?

After a brief interrogation, he made some small ex
cuse, got up from the table, and ran out the door to
grab his bicycle. The other men in the tavern saw Ludmilla
alone, and Ludmilla saw them. A brief, decent
interval, and then she was no longer alone.

After an hour of furious pedaling, Karel reached the
farmhouse in Lidice. The first person he saw was Victor Laszlo, staring at the sky and smoking contempla
tively.

"Mr. Laszlo!" exclaimed Karel. He could not bring himself to call the famous Resistance leader "Victor."

Lost in thought, Laszlo finally deigned to take notice
of him. "What is it, boy?" he asked.

If Laszlo was nervous, thought Karel, he did not
show it. Karel hoped that when his time came to strike a great blow against the oppressor, he would be as
brave as Victor Laszlo.

Breathlessly Karel told him what Ludmilla had said.
So great was his respect for Victor Lazslo that he suppressed none of the details about Ludmilla's dalliance
with the Frenchman, even though it shamed him. Vic
tor calmly thanked Karel for his wit and loyalty in
coming to him so fast, although his insides were roil
ing. "Speak of this to no one, do you understand?"
he said. "No one. Make sure your Ludmilla does not,
either."

Panicked, the boy jumped on his bicycle and disap
peared back in the direction of the city.

It was Renault; it had to be. The vain, strutting, pompous little fool. Could he not forgo the pleasures
of a woman's body for even one day? For one hour?
Damn him to hell.

He thought furiously. The operation must go ahead; that much was certain. He had received Blaine's signal via the Underground, and his team was ready to move
in the early morning. They had come too far to give up
now. They had planned too carefully to let one careless
slip stop them. Already they had risked too much to
let one foolish little Frenchman interfere with the most glorious deed in Czech history. Tomorrow morning Reinhard Heydrich would die, just as surely as the sun
would come up to witness his death.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
T
HREE

New York, October 23, 1935

He made it to the intersection of Grand Concourse
and McClellan Street, a few blocks north of the Bronx
County Courthouse and Yankee Stadium, in no time flat. The building was a large, imposing, prosperous-
looking structure that commanded the west side of the
broad boulevard with pride; an immigrant's slice of
American heaven. He parked his car right in front, ig
noring whatever danger might be lurking.

The door to the Horowitzes' apartment was ajar.
Rick drew his pistol and stepped inside.

Irma Horowitz was sitting on the couch. The couch
was the only place left to sit. The rest of the room—
indeed, the rest of the flat—looked as if a hurricane had
hit it. Furniture was toppled over, pictures had been knocked from the walls, drawers emptied and plates
smashed. Smack in the middle of the floor lay a dead
man, a bullet wound in the back of bis head. He lay on the floor, spread-eagle, as if he had suddenly attempted a half-gainer on dry land. His gun lay a foot away from
his outstretched right hand.

In the eye of the storm, Irma was sitting quietly, talk
ing to herself.

"Mrs. Horowitz," Rick said with urgency. He had never called her Irma. He was not about to start now.
Besides, he wasn't even sure if she recognized him.
Her eyes were open, but they were staring, unfocused,
straight ahead. He be
nt close to the stricken woman. "Where's
Solly?" he asked. Then he remembered she didn't
speak English, not that well.
"Wo ist Solly?"

"Weg,"
she murmured: gone.
          

"Wo?"
he asked again.

She didn't answer. Maybe she didn't know. Maybe
that was what had saved her life.

Rick's practiced eye could tell at a glance what had
happened. Hunting for Solly, a Salucci hit team had
paid the Bronx apartment a visit. Even Salucci's boys, though, were not about to shoot an old woman in her
own living room, so they had to content themselves
with tossing the place and terrorizing her until they got
bored and went away, leaving one of their number to
stand guard. Solly must have concealed himself, or
maybe had arrived just after the hit team, because
clearly he had waited until the odds were more in his
favor and then had shot the guard from behind and
taken off to plot his revenge.

He had a pretty good idea of where Solly was. Not
cowering in fear in some crib even Rick didn't know
about. Not holed up in a third-floor walk-up on the
West Side with only a collection of weapons and a mat
tress for comfort. No, if he knew Solly, he was in the
old blind tiger near City College, where he felt safe.

Tick-Tock was probably with him, awaiting the ar
rival of Salucci. He had to get there before it was too
late.

There was not much he could do for Irma now. She was well taken care of financially—but what if some
thing happened to Solly? What if something had al
ready happened? He had a couple of grand in his
pockets, which he pressed into Irma's unresponsive
hands; it wasn't much, but it would have to do. Then
he picked up the telephone and called the police, which
was the first time he had ever done that. You never
knew when Salucci's boys might come back.

He kissed her lightly on the cheek. She paid him no
notice at all. As he left he realized with a shiver that
she was reciting the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the
dead.

He raced back over the river to Harlem.

The front door of the hangout was open as he cruised
by. Rick didn't see any cops outside, which meant if
there had been trouble, it was extremely recent.

Wait a minute. There was something. That oncoming
car. The one with four occupants, all men.

Rick nipped around the block and pulled off the road
and into the park, where his car would not be seen, especially by downtown hoods who didn't know the
neighborhood. He jumped from the car.

The car, a big Chrysler CA brougham, parked right
outside, its motor running. The wheelman was looking
intently at the doorway. He never saw Rick come up to
his window, which was open.

Rick jammed the muzzle of his gun against the
man's head and fired. He sprinted through the door
right behind Salucci's men. This was what he saw:

Solly at the back table, reaching for his gun.

No Tick-Tock.

The three gunmen drawing theirs as they charged.

Solly shooting the first man in the face as he
rushed forward.

The second man firing as he advanced.

His first shot catching Solly in the neck.

Tick-Tock emerging from the back room.

Solly, bleeding, continuing to fire.

The second man falling, hit in the thigh by a low shot.
        

Rick firing at the second man, but missing, be
cause he was already down.

Tick-Tock coming up with his piece and pointing
it not at the gunmen, but at Solly.

The third man firing, hitting Solly in the left arm,
and starting to turn toward Rick.

Rick firing in response, blowing the man off his
feet.

Tick-Tock firing at Solly, hitting him.

Solly slumping in his chair.

Tick-Tock firing again.

Solly jerking as the last bullet hit him.
        
^:

Rick firing at Tick-Tock.

Tick-Tock, with his brains decorating the wall be
hind his head.

Horowitz lying with his head on the table. He was
still alive, but not for long.

". . . bitches bastards," snarled Solly through his
bloodstained lips as Rick reached him. He was blowing
blood bubbles, which meant a hole in his lungs, which
meant the end.

Horowitz's eyes struggled to focus on Rick's face.

"Lois," he said faintly, and his eyes formed the
question. Rick didn't have the heart to answer it.

"I'll take care of her, Sol," he promised. "I'll take
real good care of her from now on."

Solomon Horowitz shuddered once and died in Yit
zik Baline's arms.

Rick hugged his dead boss fiercely. He was dimly aware of shouts in the street beyond, of commotion.

At the other end of the long room, faces peered in
the window, black faces with curiosity and fear wres
tling for control of their features. He looked at them
blankly.

A groan came from somewhere in the room. It was
the second man, who was scrabbling for his gun, trying
to get to his feet, but his feet wouldn't obey him. Rick looked at him and didn't recognize him. He didn't ex
pect to.

He put Solly gently to rest. He stood and, as he
walked over to the wounded man, reloaded his pistol.

"Where's Salucci?" he barked. The black children
who had been gawking through the open doorway
pulled their heads back.

The gunman had almost reached his gat when Rick
kicked it away and stomped the heel of his shoe onto the man's fingers. At least one snapped.

"Where's your boss?" he asked, pulling back the
hammer and pointing it at the man's head.

The dying gunman tried to force some spittle to his lips but failed.

"I'm asking you for the last time," said Rick.

He spat. Rick fired.

"Suit yourself," he told the corpse.

He went out the back way and was headed for his car
when he heard a familiar voice. "Mr. Richard," it said,
"over here."

It was Sam, sitting in the Buick Series 50 two-door coupe that Rick had given him for Christmas. Little
Ernie Cohen was in the backseat, excited and scared.

"They ain't goin' to be lookin' for a colored boy,
boss," said Sam. "Get in and get down."

Rick did as he was told. Sam gunned the engine and
the car flew away. "Where to?"

"As far away as possible, Sam," said Rick, slumped deep into the seat.

"Good," said Sam. "I always wanted to go there."

"Let's start with Mott Street."

Trying to nail O'Hanlon in his penthouse on West 34th Street would be pointless. O'Hanlon was far too
smart to hang around, waiting for anyone to come after
him. Having stirred the pot, he was no doubt enjoying
the turmoil from a safe vantage point somewhere. Hell,
Rick wouldn't put it past O'Hanlon to be sitting in the police commissioner's office on Centre Street, smok
ing a cigar with the chief and commiserating about the difficulty of keeping law and order these days.

Salucci, however, was not that smart and not that
good. At least, Rick hoped he wasn't.

Rick was wrong. A block away from Mott Street, he
spotted Abie Cohen's car. Then he saw Abie in it
Abie was missing one eye and most of his nose, and almost all of his blood, which had escaped out the slash in his throat. He would get no help from Abie or, he realized
with a sudden stab of insight, from any of his other
boys. The Horowitz gang was through.

Rick didn't want Ernie to see his dad this way, but it
was too late. Ernie bit his lower lip hard, but he didn't cry. He was a tough kid; it was just too bad he had to
do all his growing up in the space of two minutes.

Rick put his hand on the door handle and started to get out, but Sam grabbed him. "You can't go in there,
boss," he said. "It's suicide."

"I'm in the mood for it, Sam," said Rick.

In front of Salucci's headquarters were a couple of
his boys, watching out for trouble. Rick knew more
would be inside. Maybe he could take the jokers at the
door, but how was he going to get anywhere near Sa-
lucci before they blew him to bits? He'd seen Cagney try it in
The Public Enemy,
take on a whole gang, and
look what had happened to him: ventilated. He gazed
up at the building, knowing that Salucci was in there
somewhere, probably with Weinberg, laughing their
heads off and already starting to carve up the Mad Rus
sian's empire.

Sam kept one hand around Rick's wrist, his pianist's
grip strong. "Boss," he said, "no matter what kind a
mood you in, I ain't lettin' you go. You try, you gonna
have to shoot me first. That's the way it is."

Rick turned to look at him. "What's it to you?" he
asked.

"It's a good job, is what," replied Sam. "Good jobs is hard to come by these days, in case you ain't no
ticed."

Slowly Rick released his hold on the door handle. "I
don't have a club anymore, Sam. Which means you don't have a job anymore. So I guess you're fired."

Sam shook his head again. "Heck, boss, that don't
make a bit of difference. You'll get another club some
day. It just don't have to be here, that's all." He hit the gas pedal. "I ain't fired, neither. As long as you alive,
I got me a job, even if it's just teachin' you how to
fish."