As Time Goes By (36 page)

They had driven around the corner and had turned
onto Delancey Street, heading east.

"Maybe you're right, Sam," Rick admitted as the car
approached the Williamsburg Bridge. He twisted in his
seat, looking back at Manhattan. He wondered if he
would ever see it again.
 

"Sometimes the good guys don't win, boss," said
Sam. "This ain't the movies."

Just before they crossed over to Brooklyn, Rick told Sam to stop the car. He jumped out, opened the trunk, and stuffed his pockets with as much cash as he could carry. He snapped the suitcase shut. "Get out, kid," he
said.

"Ain't I coming with you?" asked Ernie.

"No. You're the boss now. You gotta take care of things. Mostly, you got to take care of yourself. Here,
take this."

Rick handed Ernie the suitcase. Whatever else Salucci might be looking for, he wouldn't be hunting for
a kid with a suitcase. "Bring this to my mother," he
said. "Don't look inside, just take it and go. You remember where she lives, don't you?"

Ernie nodded. "East Sixty-eighth."

"Right," said Rick. "And this is for you." He
handed Ernie a thousand dollars, which would go a
long way in the Depression. "Don't blow it on the po
nies. Save it. Help out your ma. Go straight. You'll be glad you did."

"I will, Rick," said Ernie, trying hard not to crack.
The kid was all right. Rick patted him on the head, then
shoved him toward the Third Avenue streetcar line.

"One more thing," he shouted. "Buy my mom a
knish, will ya?"

They drove all day, reaching Boston in the late eve
ning. The next morning, on his way to the steamship
company to buy two passages to Le Havre, Rick
grabbed a copy of the
Boston American,
a Hearst paper
that would carry Winchell.

EIGHT DEAD IN GANGLAND SHOOTOUT

Senator Meredith, 7 Others, Perish in Mob Mayhem

In an outbreak of gangland ferocity unequaled in the
city's history, fast-rising State Senator Robert Haas
Meredith, his wife, and six hoodlums died yesterday in a hail of gunfire.

The shootings took place at two Harlem locations: the
Tootsie-Wootsie Club and a social club near the City
College of New York.

In addition to Senator Meredith, the dead included his
wife, Lois, and Solomon Horowitz, gang chief of upper
Manhattan and the Bronx. The other victims are still
being identified by police.

Yesterday's column reported allegations that the Sen
ator was linked to mobster Lorenzo Salucci in a host of shady business dealings over the past several years.

But we are pleased to report today that according to
highly placed sources in New York and Albany, the doc
uments were fakes, circulated by Yitzik "Rick" Baline,
the disgruntled manager of the Tootsie-Wootsie Club, in
a failed attempt to blackmail the Senator, steal his wife,
and move in on Horowitz's crime empire.

Police have named Baline the prime suspect in the
shooting of Mr. and Mrs. Meredith, whose bullet-
riddled bodies were found in Baline's office at the
Tootsie-Wootsie Club. Police theorize that the Merediths
went there to confront Baline personally and were mur
dered in cold blood.

Baline is also the leading suspect in the death of
Horowitz. Additionally, he is alleged to have stolen a
considerable sum of money from the club's coffers to
finance his getaway.

"We'll get him," said Police Commissioner Thomas
J. O'Donaghue. "We'll hunt him down like a dog.
There's no place in this great land of ours that's safe for
him to hide."

Typical Winchell, thought Rick: he left out Abie
Cohen and the yegg in the Bronx. He threw the paper
away. He didn't need to read any further.

"In what name are these passages being booked?"
asked the steamship line clerk.

Rick thought for a moment. If Isidore Baline the
songwriter could reinvent himself as Irving Berlin,
why couldn't he? The first name on his passport was
Rick, and it would be a simple matter to reverse two of
the letters of his surname.

"The first one is for Mr. Samuel Waters," he said.
"The other's for Mr. Richard Blaine. And yes, that'll
be cash."

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
F
OUR

On the evening of May 26, a glittering promenade
was taking place in the Protector's residence in the cas
tle. The ball was in celebration of the Wehrmacht's ad
vances in the Soviet Union. In little more than a year
the German armies had rolled back the Russians along a front a thousand miles wide, had driven to the gates of Moscow and Leningrad, and were poised to smash
the Red Army once and for all. The war would be over
very soon, and then, their
Lebensraum
secured, the
Germans could turn their attention toward the real
enemy: the Western democracies.

Ilsa looked ravishing. Her shoulder-length hair
brushed her bare shoulders, and around her throat she wore a spectacular diamond pendant, which Heydrich
had given her for the occasion. Her dress, which
plunged daringly in the back and came down to her
ankles, was a deep russet.

"But surely blue is your color, my dear," said Heydrich as he greeted her.

"No, not blue," she protested. "Never blue."

Heydrich laughed. "Why not? Blue is the color of your eyes, the color of the Bavarian sky, the color of
the North, the color of the Aryan. Besides," he added,
"blue is the color of my eyes as well." He was standing
very close to her, and she could feel his breath on her
shoulder.

Heydrich mistook her quiver for desire. "Yes, my
dear," he said, "I feel it, too." He ran his hands over
the bare skin of her back. Such delicious skin, which had so utterly beguiled him, and in such a short time. That flesh, which he had not yet sampled—but which
he intended to, very soon.

"Please, Reinhard," she said, squirming gracefully
away from him. "You want me to look my best, don't
you?"

"Of course I do," he said, stepping back in his mili
tary way to admire her. What a magnificent woman she
was! It was true that German doctrine held the Slavs to
be
Untermenschen,
but there were exceptions to every
rule, and Tamara Toumanova was certainly one of
them. Besides, with a name like that, she wasn't really
a Slav, but a noblewoman. Why, she could easily be
related to Kaiser Wilhelm II himself. As he looked
more closely at her, he was convinced he was right.
Reinhard Heydrich prided himself on his ability to de
tect members of the Master Race, no matter where they were from.

She was not like other women. He had no pleasure
in taking them, and no challenge, because they could
not resist. They were afraid of him, because they feared
the worst should they deny him. He had imagined that
an unending supply of willing women would be the
highest form of pleasure, but how quickly it had turned
to ashes in his mouth. It was like battling an opponent
who wouldn't fight back, who surrendered so quickly that there was no time to enjoy his discomfiture, who
sought to kiss your hand even as it was poised to strike
him. Who deprived you of the pleasure of beating him. For such people, whether men or women, the Protector
of Bohemia and Moravia had only the bitterest con
tempt. They were not human beings. They were animals and deserved to be treated as such.

Tamara, however, had resisted. She did not seem to be afraid of him. Most women would sleep with him because of what he represented, not because of who he
was. This one, he thought, might be different.

Before he got too carried away by Miss Toumanova's
beauty, he reminded himself that there was a war on
against the Russians, and when victory came she might have to suffer along with the rest of her countrymen. A
pity, but it could not be helped. Besides, the Germans had been told to expunge the word "pity" from their
vocabulary. It was weak, it was Western, it was Jewish.
Mercilessness must be the hallmark of the New World
Order, lest the world think less of its conqueror.

"Do you see that tower, there?" he asked her, point
ing out the window and into the courtyard of the castle.
"It used to be a prison; perhaps it will be necessary to make it so again someday. It is called Dalibor Tower
after its most famous inmate, who had been con
demned to death and was incarcerated there for many months while his fate was being sealed. To console
himself, Dalibor spent hours each day playing his violin, with such surpassing beauty—or so the story goes;
these Slavs are such sentimentalists—that people
would come from all over the city to hear him play. On
the day of his execution, thousands turned out to see
him die, weeping copiously."

"Surely," Ilsa said softly, "he could not have played
more beautifully than you."

"But," said Heydrich, "on the day of my death, will so many weep?"

No, thought Ilsa, but her lips spoke otherwise. "Let us not have these morbid thoughts on such an auspi
cious occasion," she said. "Shall we greet our guests?"

That was why he preferred Tamara to the hundreds
of other women available to him. Because she could
appreciate his genius—yes, his artistic genius—when
few others could. They said—those
Jews
in Halle—he
would never be good enough. Look
,
at him now: ruler of all he surveyed and accompanied by the most beautiful woman in Europe.

How glad he was that she was with him on this im
portant evening. Several of the military leaders and party officials would be present, including General
Keitel, Admiral D
ö
nitz, and Himmler, as well as that
Austrian pig Kaltenbrunner, who probably plotted
against him in his sleep. The real generals, Heydrich thought as he examined the brass buttons on his tunic for signs of smudged polish, unfortunately would not
be there. They would be fighting on the Russian front:
men like Guderian, the Panzer commander, and von
Paulus, who was even now driving on Stalingrad—men
who were actually carrying the fight to the enemy, in
stead of strutting in Berlin.

He studied his reflection in his shoes.

That evening, the lights of the castle blazed as never
before. As the guests departed, they all proclaimed that
never had they seen such an elegant gathering. The Protector came in for the most extravagant praise, for
the quality of the guest list (and with a war on!), for
the distinction of the food (and with a war on!), for the
elegance of the ladies (and with a war on!), and most of
all, for the loveliness of his companion, the enigmatic
Tamara Toumanova, descendent of the Czar of all the
Russias, whose comeliness was surely unsurpassed in
Prague, Bohemia, or even, according to some (who
perhaps had imbibed too frequently of the French champagne), in all of Germany itself.

How lovely she looked tonight in her scarlet dress! they all told him.
 

As for his own clothes, he preferred gray.

Across the river, Rick Blaine saw the lights of the castle. "Live it up, you Nazi bastards," he said.

"Now, Ricky, let's not be jealous," said Renault,
puffing on a Gauloises. He loved the name—"Gallic girls." It reminded him of his favorite subject. "There
are very probably some extremely beautiful women up
there. In a happier time, our task would be to lure them
down here." He laughed bitterly, more at his former
self than anything. "The thought of those German
hands on such lovely creatures
...
It's a crime against
nature, is what it is."

Renault saw his friend wasn't paying attention.
"Well, good night. Be sure to get plenty of rest tonight.
Somehow I suspect tomorrow's going to be a very
busy day."

Rick said nothing as Renault departed, but continued
staring at the castle until the last light had gone out and
everybody had gone home to bed.

Ilsa Lund returned with Reinhard Heydrich to his
villa that night. She had no choice.

"Etwas trinken?"
he asked, not waiting for an an
swer. One of his stewards had already poured them
each a glass of champagne.

Ilsa didn't want any, but she thought it best not to
refuse. She had managed to get by at the party by sip
ping a little of her drinks and then discreetly pouring
most of them into some houseplants. She needed all
her wits about her now.

They toasted each other. She let him lead. "To the
most magnificent hostess in the Reich," said Heydrich.

"To a wonderful party," she said as they clinked
glasses.

They drank in silence.

"Another?" asked Heydrich, beckoning to the ser
vant.

"No, please," she said gaily. "It's going right to my head, and I've had so much already." She threw her
champagne flute into the fireplace and listened with satisfaction as it shattered.

Heydrich followed suit, flinging his glass into the
hearth. "The finest blown glass, from Rattenberg in the Ostmark." He laughed, using the Nazis' new name for
Austria. "How easily we consign it to dust!"

He collapsed into an armchair and sat appraising her.
He was largely drunk, and very dangerous. She was mostly sober, and even deadlier.

"Stand by the window, that I may savor your beauty
in the moonlight," he commanded her, and turned to
the butler. "That will be all, Ottokar," he said. "Tell the staff they may retire for the night. All of them."
The manservant gave the Nazi salute and bowed
gravely as he backed out of the room.