As Time Goes By (21 page)

"Isabel,"
she replied.
"Isabel ne rien."

He fed her from his small store of cheese and bread. He drew a bath for her in the tub at the end of the hall;
against all odds, the hot water was still working. He
bathed her gently and washed her hair lovingly, wrap
ping both head and body in his only two towels and leading her gently back to his room. They made love
with a bottle of cheap red wine to keep them company.
She cried out softly when he touched her.

In the morning they were both awakened by a loud,
angry knock at his door. From a distance, Renault
could hear Madame de Montpellier shouting, but it
wasn't her knock, which he knew so well from rent
day, but another, fiercer pounding. He staggered out of
bed and threw open the door.

A very large and extremely irate man was standing
before him. The fellow had red hair and a red beard
and red eyes and was dressed like a common laborer.
Worse, he reeked from every pore. Instinctively Louis
Renault recoiled from the apparition, thinking fleet-ingly that the fellow should fire his valet

That reaction saved his life. In his right hand the man
held a knife, which he wielded with dexterity, slashing
the air where Louis's throat had been just a second be
fore. Renault fell back, confused; the girl jumped up, alarmed. She screamed. Madame de Montpellier bellowed as she charged up the stairs. Doors throughout
the house flew open. It was 5:26 a.m., an hour and a minute Louis Renault would never forget.

"Stop," he cried as the intruder advanced toward Isa
bel. He moved toward the man as menacingly as he
could, but the stranger only laughed at him.

"Come, coward," he taunted. "Let's see how you
dance with a man."

Renault wanted to move, but his feet were nailed to the floor. He tried to fight, but his hands were tied. He
tried to speak, but his voice was gone. No, that was not
it: he was simply afraid.

"Bah!" sneered the man, knocking Louis aside.
"See, Isabel, how brave your new lover is!"

Isabel was kneeling on the bed, her eyes wide. The
sheets had dropped from her body, and Renault's mind
registered a fleeting glimpse of her beautiful body,
naked and exposed in the morning sunlight, dotted with
ugly bruises. Then she was covered in blood, and the sheets were covered in blood, her blood, and she had fallen to the floor, taking the bedclothes with her, the blade of the knife protruding from her breast, the han
dle of the knife still in the man's hand, that hand
drenched with her blood.
"Henri, non!"
were her last
words.

Exhausted from his murderous rage, the man named
Henri collapsed in one corner of the small room, his
chest heaving. Louis Renault sat transfixed in the other,
impotent. Through the doorway careened the concierge, followed closely by the police. The
flics
beat
Henri senseless, and then for good measure they turned their wrath on Renault. They pounded on his head until
he could no longer think and could no longer see and then could no longer feel anything.

He awoke five hours later in the police station. A
gendarme was applying a cold compress to his aching
head. He was lying on a small metal cot. Two other
men were in the room, both wearing suits.

". . . very brave of you,
citoyen,"
said one of the
men. "Madame de Montpellier has explained every
thing. We have been looking for this man Boucher for
several weeks. He was a pimp who beat his girls and
killed at least two of them. A very bad man."

Renault wasn't interested in M. Boucher. "Isabel?"
he croaked. He hoped he'd remembered her name cor
rectly.

"Oui, Isabel,"
said the man.
"Est morte, h
é
las!
There was no hope. The wounds were too grievous."

Renault fell back, silent.

"Your courage in attempting to defend the honor of this esteemed daughter of France shall not be forgot
ten," said the other man.

Renault had no idea what he was talking about.

"Isabel de Bononci
è
re," said the man, and all at
once Renault knew. The daughter of a minister of
France, who had disappeared from her home in the
Faubourg St.-Honor
é
, not far from
É
lys
é
e Palace. The
police had been searching for her, unsuccessfully, for
six months. It was thought she had run away. Reported
sightings of her came from as far away as Amiens,
Lyons, and Pau.

"This animal Boucher seduced a simple girl and led
her unwillingly into a life of shame," said the man,
who was taller than his colleague. As Renault's eyes cleared, he could see that the speaker was a man of substance; on his lapel he wore the Croix de Guerre.
Then he recognized the cabinet minister
É
douard Dala
dier.

Daladier leaned over and kissed Renault on both
cheeks. "For your bravery, you have the undying grati
tude of the Fourth Republic."

Louis tried to prop himself up on one arm but failed.
His head sank to the pillow once more. Perhaps some
good would come out of this horrible mess. Perhaps his
family would never have to find out. Perhaps ...

"For your continued discretion, I have the honor to
present you with"—Daladier fumbled for something in his pocket, and Renault's, spirits rose—"a commission
in the colonial Prefecture of Police." Daladier
smoothed the front of his suit jacket. "Should you ever
return to this country, or breathe a word of this incident
to anyone, then you should become a party to this
dreadful murder, a compatriot of this miserable
cochon
Boucher and thus an enemy of France. I trust I make myself clear."

Daladier smiled paternally when Renault managed
a nod, "Excellent!" he exclaimed. "A grateful nation
salutes both your judgment and your discretion."

With that, Daladier left. The other man, Renault now
noticed, was a policeman.

The next day he was released from the hospital and put on a military transport plane. Louis Renault spent
the next fourteen years in every godforsaken outpost
of France, from Vientiane to Cayenne to the Middle
Congo, until, finally, he had washed up in French Mo
rocco. In each country he had taken advantage of every
man—and, more, every woman whose man could not protect her. He had kept his mouth shut and his head
down, until Rick came along. Until Victor Laszlo and
Heinrich Strasser and Ilsa Lund came along. Ilsa Lund,
who reminded him so much of his dead Isabel and of
his lost Paris.

Damn them! Not remembering had been so easy, and
for so long.

Rick lit a cigarette as Renault finished his tale. "I
guess things are tough all over," was all he said.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

New York, April 1932

Rick got in his car. He cursed O'Hanlon and Mere
dith. He cursed Rector's. He cursed George Raft and
Mae West. He even cursed Ruby Keeler.

He turned over the ignition and started to drive—he
wasn't sure where.

His car, a new DeSoto model CF eight-cylinder
roadster that had cost him more than a thousand dollars, was parked heading downtown from Rector's, so
that's the way he went. He sped angrily down Seventh
Avenue, letting his subconscious direct him to 14th
Street, then east to Broadway. He followed Broadway down to Little Italy, made a left on Broome and then a right on Mott. Now he knew where he was going.

As he negotiated the Manhattan streets, he decided
to put Lois out of his mind for the moment and instead
dwelled on other things. His future, for example. He
loved being the boss of the Tootsie-Wootsie Club, but
how long would that last? Repeal was already in the
air. The same coalition of do-gooding suffragettes and
thin-lipped Bible Belt preachers that had given the na
tion Prohibition was now thumping the tubs to get rid of it.

Besides, what kind of a job was crime for a Jewish
boy? For Miriam Baline's son? Leave it to him to get into crime when most Jews his age were getting out
and getting degrees instead, abandoning the hard end of the business to doomed garment district thugs like
Lepke or Murder Inc. hitmen like Kid Twist Reles. The
kids he'd grown up with in East Harlem—what were
they now? City College grads, scholars, thinkers, even
a professor or two. He'd had his chance, and he'd al
ready blown it. He loved his new life, his expensive car and flashy clothes and the ability to whip out a roll and
peel twenties off the top like they were candy, but he
was ashamed of it, too. Aside from the vaguest general
ities, he had never been able to bring himself to tell his
mother what he really did for a living, which was why he hardly ever saw her anymore.

Plus, he knew it couldn't last. Nothing ever did.

Was it already time to think about quitting? The
Irish, by and large, already had. Probably because he
was an immigrant, Dion O'Hanlon was the last of
them; the rest of the paddies were busy pursuing more
profitable, and legal, forms of corruption, such as the police force, the law, and politics. Maybe he ought to
start planning his exit, get out and leave the business
to the Italians. They seemed to enjoy it. But not until
Solly got out, too.

He found himself parked across the street from 46
Mott Street. Like all gangster hangouts, the building
was as nondescript as clever men could make it. In
Rick's experience, gangsters preferred to attract atten
tion to their clothes, their cars, and their women, not to
their businesses; Salucci was no exception. Even at this
hour, the building's upper floors were illuminated by
electric light, while half a dozen or so hard boys were stationed around the perimeter, keeping the watch by
night.

Once more, Rick had an opportunity to compare his uptown world with this one, and the comparison was
not flattering. From the looks of things, if Salucci were
not already bigger than Solly, he soon would be. He
was younger, meaner, and would, when the time came,
hit harder. What O'Hanlon had given Rick tonight was a warning. Now all he had to do was deliver it.

If he had the guts. After all, he couldn't just walk up to Solomon Horowitz and admit that yes, he had been
seeing Lois behind his back, in contradiction of a direct
order. Yes, he had taken her to Rector's. Yes, he had
met with Dion O'Hanlon, Solly's rival and enemy. Yes,
O'Hanlon was offering a truce in exchange for the one
thing that Horowitz was least likely ever to consider
part of his business: his daughter. Sure, Solly wanted respectability for Lois, but not if it came with O'Hanlon's marker attached to it.

He didn't know what to do. He added his own name
to the list of people he was cursing, and he cursed him
self a fool and a coward.

He put the car in gear and slowly slid away from
Mott Street, heading back uptown again. There was
very little traffic, and within half an hour he was stand
ing in front of Horowitz's home on 127th Street.

The street was deserted. Solly didn't believe in hav
ing gorillas hanging around in front of his house. The
light in a third-floor parlor window, the one that looked
down into the street, meant Lois was still out—having fun with Meredith.

Rick shut off his engine and waited.

He must have dozed off, because the next thing he
knew he was hearing the sound of pealing feminine
laughter in counterpoint to deeper male guffaws. That,
he knew, was the liquor laughing.

He saw Lois get out of a car, Meredith's car—a
Duesenberg Model J, he noticed with chagrin; those
things cost twenty times what his jalopy did. How
could he compete with that?

He saw Meredith take her by the hand, across the
sidewalk and up the stoop, "You're going to have to
learn to let me open doors for you, darling," he said to
her.

"Sorry," she said, giggling.

They embraced near the front door. Meredith kissed
her on the lips, for a long time. Then he walked backward, down the stairs and across the sidewalk, never
taking his eyes off her.

She didn't take her eyes off him, either, even when
he got in the car, started the engine, and, after she blew
him one last kiss, took off down the street. She just stood there, looking down the street after him, long
after his car had disappeared around the corner and he
had headed back to whatever fancy-pants enclave on
Fifth Avenue he was from.

Rick rolled down the window and called her name
softly.

She looked up, startled.

"It's me," he said, getting out of his car.

"Oh, hi, Ricky," she said, brushing back her hair.

"Did you have a good time tonight?"

"I had a wonderful time," she replied. "The play
was swell. Thanks."

"Yeah," he said. "I hope dinner was, too."

She said nothing, just bowed her head slightly,
waiting.

"I'm sorry I had to run out on you like that," he
said, trying to preserve what little dignity he had left.
"Business. You know."

"That's okay," she said. "Look, Rick, I better be getting upstairs. It's late. I'm going to have a hard
enough time explaining everything to Papa as it is."

Rick scuffed his shoes on the pavement. "How are you going to explain him?" he asked. He couldn't bear
to utter his name.

"Robert said he'd like to see me again," she said. "With Daddy's permission, of course. He's going to
call me tomorrow."

"Ain't that swell?" was all he could think to say.

In one horrible evening, Rick Baline was seeing his whole carefully planned fantasy go up in smoke. The
way he had it figured, he was going to rise and rise in
the organization until Solly had no choice but to be
stow his only daughter upon him, the way the Protes
tants did in business downtown. Marry the boss's little
girl: that was his goal—and not just because she was
the boss's daughter, either. Because he was in love with
her and had been since the day they'd met.

He had never considered the possibility that she
might not be in love with him. They both had their eyes
on a bigger prize—except her prize didn't include him. Nor did it include anything around here: didn't include
the rackets, didn't include Harlem, and damn sure
didn't include the Bronx. From the shtetl to the state
house in one generation: that was Solomon Horowitz's
goal. And Lois's as well.

He could see why. As he'd sat in his car, waiting for
her, he had had a chance to look the neighborhood
over. Many more black faces were appearing on the streets than before, making Rick wonder how long the
Horowitzes were going to stay. The Jews were clearing
out, evicted or evicting themselves. Maybe his earlier ruminations were right. Maybe it was time to get out. Maybe it was time to grow up.

"Nice night, huh?" he said.

"I gotta go," she said.

No. Not yet.
           

"Let's take a walk around the block. I'd like to have
a smoke."

"Rick."
        

"For old times' sake," he begged. "I got something to say."

"Okay."

Rick lit a cigarette as they started down the long block. "Lois," he began, "I was going to ask you
something tonight. Before ... before ..."

"I know," she said.

"You do?"
   

"Sure." In the glow of the streetlights, she looked
more beautiful than ever. Her black hair had melted
into the ink of the night, her pale, almost ghostly white
face framed in purest ebony. She was Rachel, she was
Sarah, she was every beauty of the Torah. Perhaps she
was even Lilith; he didn't care.

"You want to know what Daddy thinks of you," she
said confidently. "Well, Rick, let me tell you: he's
crazy about you. He talks about you all the time. About
how far you're going to go. About how happy he is
that you and I met that day, about what would he do
without you. Is that what you wanted to know?"

They had stopped walking, and she had turned to
him. Her face was looking up at his. It might not be
what she was expecting, but it was now or never.

"No, Lois," he began, "that's not it. There's some
thing else I've wanted to say to you for a long time."
He tried to collect his thoughts, sort out his emotions, marshal his argument, and screw up his courage. He
failed miserably.

"I'm in love with you," he blurted. "I've always
been in love with you. From the first time I saw you on the el, even before you fainted." Impulsively he swept
her up in his arms. "Marry me," he said.

He kissed her, the way he had seen Meredith kiss
her. That would tell; a woman could never disguise her
feelings in her kisses.

She kissed him back, but perfunctorily. Then she broke away. "Stop," she said. "Somebody might see
us."

"So what?" he said, his passion rising. "Marry me."
He tried to kiss her again, but she deflected his pass.

"Please, Rick, please!"

"Marry me, Lois," he asked, begging now.

"Rick, no," she said. "I can't."

"Can't or won't?" he asked.

"Both," she said, and he knew he was finished. "Be
sides," she said, "I never knew you thought of me that
way before. Not really."

Never knew? How could a woman not know how a
man felt about her, not read it in his eyes, not hear it in
his voice every time he spoke to her? How could she
fall instead for some phony like that putz Meredith,
O'Hanlon's
nachshlepper,
a man without even a mind or will of his own?