He hadn't thought of it that way.
“Also,” she went on, “there is the obvious. Reinhard Heydrich is notorious for his, shall we say, fondness, for attractive women, and I—”
“And Ilsa is a very beautiful woman,” said Laszlo, finishing the sentence for her. “As you have noticed yourself, Monsieur Blaine.”
“You just can't wait to make her a part of your war, can you?” Rick snapped.
“You still don't understand, do you, Richard?” cried Ilsa. “I’ve always been a part of it! Why do you think we went to Casablanca? Certainly not for me to meet you again! You remember Berger, the jewel dealer who was often in your cafÉ? He was my contact—not Victor's. I was trying to get my husband out of danger, not the other way around.”
“What?” said Rick.
“Yes, my contact,” Ilsa repeated. “Berger was working for the Norwegian resistance. He was trying to get exit visas for us, and when he heard about the murder of the two German couriers and the existence of the letters of transit, he was going to try to purchase them from Ugarte. And then …”
“And then I interfered,” admitted Renault, “and had Ugarte arrested at Rick's place to provide a little amusement for Major Strasser.” He looked around the table. “I am sorry.”
“That's where you came in, Richard,” said Ilsa. “You got those letters from Ugarte, and you gave them to us. When you did, you became part of it, too. We're all in this together now.” She stopped and blushed. “Aren't we, Richard? Please tell me we are.”
He wanted to kiss her, right there in front of her husband, in front of everybody, and wondered why he didn't.
“I’ll think it over,” was all he said.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sam got in late that night. He was returning from his new gig, playing the piano in a smoky Soho nightclub located in a Greek Street basement that featured watered-down mixed drinks and a show of seminude girls that, in Sam's opinion, would not bear very close inspection in the daylight. The joint was called Morton's Cabaret Club, and it was run by a couple of Cockney gangsters, twin brothers named Melvin and Earl Canfield. The British civilians seemed to find them terrifying, but Sam simply found them amusing. The way they swaggered around in their tight black suits, which could not have concealed a cigarette lighter, much less a pistol, barking orders and generally acting as if they were tough guys! The very idea of an unarmed gangster made Sam laugh; the only unarmed gangsters he knew back home were dead gangsters.
The other black people at Morton's were a couple of dishwashers, and Sam didn't think much of them, either. They were West Indians, but far from the kind of Caribbean-born intellectuals he had encountered in Harlem, where the islanders more or less ruled the roost, socially speaking. Instead they were gentle and soft-spoken and unassertive, as if they feared that at any moment the British would notice they were black and ship them off across the ocean. Again.
At Morton's, the song in demand was “Shine,” a jazzy coon song by Ford Dabney that Sam had never minded playing, whether it was with Josephine Baker in Paris or by himself at Rick's cafÉ Americain. The white folks thought the joke was on him, but Sam knew it was really on them. He couldn't imagine colored people sitting around and paying to hear a white man make fun of himself.
“What kept you?” Rick demanded. He was alone in the sitting room, playing chess against himself. From his demeanor Sam found it hard to tell whether he was winning or losing.
“Nothing much, Mr. Rick,” he answered, taking off his topcoat and hanging it on the rack in the hall. He eyeballed the board as he came in: Rick was playing one of his favorites, a Paul Morphy game that featured a dazzling sacrifice of the black queen and victory on the seventy-sixth move. Sam and Rick had played it through just the other day. Why Morphy had played P-QR5 on the sixteenth move seemed obvious to Sam, but Rick apparently still didn't get it. He thought about lending the boss his copy of Philidor's L’analyse du jeu des Échecs, then remembered that Rick didn't read French very well. “Just a couple of policemen who wanted to know what a colored man was doing walking the streets of London in the middle of the night, and did I know there was a war on?”
“What'd you tell them?” asked Rick.
“I told them it wasn't my war.”
“Maybe it is now.” Rick knocked over the white king in resignation. “Come on, let's go downstairs. I’m tired of sitting here drinking alone and beating myself at chess. I’d like to hear some music. Maybe even some of the old songs.”
“Fine with me, boss,” said Sam.
They went down to the lounge at Brown's. There were no lights on and few customers, but Sam managed at the piano by candlelight. Rick's bourbon didn't need any light at all; it was just fine in the dark.
“You wanna talk about it, boss?” asked Sam, his fingers moving lightly over the keys. The song was “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby,” one of Rick's favorites. The boss always calmed down when he played.
“About what?” asked Rick.
“You know,” said Sam. “Her. Miss Ilsa.” The Morphy game was the giveaway; when Rick was feeling optimistic, he replayed old Jose Capablanca games.
“I thought I told you not to talk about her,” snapped Rick. “I wasn't aware that order had been rescinded.”
“Never mind, Mr. Richard,” said Sam. “I just was thinkin’—”
“Who asked you to think?” Rick said.
He smoked and drank for a time in silence. Sam continued to improvise at the keyboard. Unconsciously he let his fingers slide over “As Time Goes By.”
“Knock it off,” objected Rick, but Sam interrupted him quickly.
“You remember the first time we heard this song, Mr. Rick?” he said. “It was back at the Tootsie-Wootsie Club, thirty-one or thirty-two, I think it was.”
“That sounds about right,” Rick grunted. “Just around the time I became the manager.”
“It sure was.” Sam waggled his head in recollection. “Wasn't that a time.” He started playing pianissimo and turned to face Rick.
“I remember like it was yesterday,” he said. “That white boy Mr. Herman come marchin’ through the front door and said he got a song in him and it got to come out and Mr. Solomon says get out and take your damn song with you, this is a colored club, we don't want no Jews here, but you says I’m the manager now, and then you says to Mr. Herman play it and he plays it.” Sam took a sip of water from the glass on top of the piano, leaving out only one insignificant measure in the left hand. “And I been playin’ it ever since.”
“You sure have,” agreed Rick.
“Tell you the truth, I don't much care for it. But it was always one of your favorites.”
“And hers,” Rick said. “So cut it out.”
“I hear you, Mr. Rick,” said Sam, continuing to play, “but I ain't listening to you.”
“You're fired,” said Rick.
“I believe that when you give me that damn raise you been promisin’ me,” said Sam.
“He'll never fire you, Sam,” said Ilsa. “You play ‘As Time Goes By’ too beautifully for him ever to do that.”
Once more she came to him out of the darkness, an angel in white, as she had done in his café in Casablanca. Back then he'd thought he knew why she had come, and he had been wrong. Tonight, though, it was different. Tonight, he knew.
“When are you going?” he asked.
“Tomorrow.”
“Champagne?” It was what they had been drinking at La Belle Aurore the last time they had parted. It seemed appropriate.
“Champagne would be fine,” she said.
“Get the lady some champers, will you, Sam?” requested Rick. “And make sure it's cold. I don't care who you have to bribe to get it, just get it.”
“Okay, boss,” said Sam, rising.
She composed herself for a moment while Sam was fetching the champagne.
“Victor told me about the agreement you two made back in Casablanca, when Captain Renault had him in the holding pen
. About how you pretended to me that we would be leaving on that plane, when all along you planned to make me go with him. I want you to know that I’m grateful.”
“I wonder if I made the right choice,” said Rick.
“Never mind that now,” Ilsa said. “The important thing is that we're here, together. The important thing is not what's been done. The important thing is what we will do—together.”
“Sounds like you've got everything figured out,” observed Rick. “So what do you need me for?”
“I don't,” she replied, lowering her eyes. “Victor does.”
Rick downed the rest of his drink. “I’ve had better offers,” he said.
That was the wrong thing to say. “Richard, don't be so stupid! Don't be so selfish! Can't you see this is bigger than you and me, bigger than Victor, bigger than all of us? This is not about the problems of three little people. If you can't see that—if you won't see that—then you're not half the man I thought you were. You're not half the man I fell in love with in Paris.”
She was crying now. “Not half the man I’m still in love with,” she concluded, her voice trailing away.
Rick put his arm around her for support, and she sank back toward him, her head resting comfortably on his shoulder.
He kissed her, hard. She didn't pull back, not even for a second.
“Richard, don't you see?” she sobbed after their lips had parted. “He'll die. I know he will. This thing obsesses him. It's all he thinks about. What the Germans have done to his homeland—what they've done to him—he cannot allow to stand. He has devoted his life to driving them out of Prague, out of Czechoslovakia, out of central Europe entirely if he can. The year he spent in Mauthausen has only made him more determined, not less. No matter what happens, he will succeed. Even if it kills him.”
She dabbed at her eyes with Rick's breast pocket handkerchief. “That's why I’m asking you to help,” she said. “Not for him, but for me. For us. Do you understand now?
Reluctantly she drew away from Rick and sat back to look at him. “The British are going to smuggle me into Prague. The Underground can get me into the RSHA headquarters and, with luck, into Heydrich's office. There is an opening for a secretary there, and with my languages I can easily pass for a White Russian.”
“So that's your story,” said Rick. “I was wondering what it was going to be.”
“Yes,” said Ilsa. “My name is to be Tamara Toumanova, the daughter of a Russian nobleman who was shot by the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. I was raised by my mother across Europe, living in Stockholm, Paris, Munich, and Rome. I am at home everywhere, and nowhere.”
“What makes you think they'll fall for it?” Rick asked.
“They'll believe me all right,” replied Ilsa, “because they'll want to. As a White Russian, I want revenge on the Communists for what they did to me and my family. Anyone who hates the Communists is more than welcome in Nazi circles.”
She shook her head as Rick began to refill her glass. “No, Richard,” she said. “I must have my wits about me at all times from now on.” She smiled at him, that same heartbreaking smile he remembered so well. The last time he had seen it was in La Belle Aurore, when she wore blue. Tonight, the only blue she was wearing was the blue of her eyes.
“You as well,” she said with a little laugh, reaching to take the bourbon from his hand.
“Leave a fellow's drink alone, will you?” objected Rick.
She looked at him earnestly, longing and desire dancing in her eyes. “Then make it the last one,” she pleaded. “I need you completely sober from here on. We all do, if we are to have any chance of success. Whatever it is you're hiding from, please don't hide behind liquor anymore.”
Reluctantly he put down the drink. Booze had been his boon companion for so long that, besides Sam, it was his best friend. Getting off the sauce was not going to be easy. It was a lot to ask of a guy. He looked at Ilsa in the candlelight, and suddenly he knew just how easy it was going to be. “At least let me finish this one. A kind of hail and farewell.”
She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “You can finish it upstairs.”
“Keep playing, Sam,” said Rick.
“I ain't going nowhere,” said Sam.
Hand in hand, Ilsa Lund and Richard Blaine rose and left the lounge.
Very early the next morning, Tamara Toumanova departed for Prague.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
New York, January 1932
Ricky, you shoulda seen this place in old times,” said Solly after they had finished the policy racket collections, the beer deliveries, and the obligatory target practice one winter's morning. Solly still liked to collect on policy himself from time to time, perhaps to keep in touch with the roots of his success, and he would drag Rick around Harlem, collecting his tribute.
They were sitting in Solly's favorite counting house, a storefront saloon at 129th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. The joint itself wasn't much, but that was the point. A long bar was on the left as you came in the narrow front door, and Solly's regular table at the back commanded a sweeping view of the whole room. Getting the drop on him would be difficult here, especially when he was with two or three of his boys or all by himself with just Tick-Tock Schapiro to keep him company. Tick-Tock was worth two or three ordinary boys any day of the week and twice on Saturday.
“German and Irish, it was, and of course Jewish. Now, different.” He gestured with both palms facing up, a typically Horowitzian hand movement that meant What can you do? “Some folks don't like it.Feb on them! Ricky, let me tell you something those boys downtown don't know: Coloreds is people, too.” By “downtown,” Rick knew, Solly was talking not only about City Hall, but about Tammany Hall. And O'Hanlon. And Salucci and Weinberg in their headquarters on Mott Street, and all the other gangsters looking to muscle in on Solly's uptown turf.
“What is more,” Horowitz continued, “they got money to spend, especially on policy! Everybody love policy. And I let them all play.” He thumped himself on the chest. “I got big heart!” he exclaimed. “The goyim, what do they know? They treat their own kind like bupkus, and they treat the coloreds worse. But not me. I treat everybody equal until proven they deserve otherwise.”
The numbers game was one of the most lucrative, and probably the easiest, of Horowitz's rackets; you practically had to beat the suckers away with a stick. The gambler picked a number between 1 and 999 and put down a bet, usually fifty cents. The winning lottery number was the last three digits of the handle at a particular racetrack on that day, which was published in the newspaper, so everybody knew if he or she had won. A winning bet should have paid off at 999 to 1, but once the cost of doing business and markups had been figured in, the real payoff was only half that. Still, that didn't seem to stop anybody from getting a bet down.
Little black boys in Irish caps would call out in greeting to Solly as he made his stately procession uptown. Every once in a while Solly and Rick would spy a particularly well-dressed black man, turned out in spats and sometimes even a monocle, whom the boys followed with stars in their eyes. That would be one of Solly's collectors, a big man in the community who could afford the finest things available to a Negro. “You see,” he told Rick, “they know I’m honest. I pay off, 500 to 1.”
“But the odds are 999 to 1,” Rick objected one time.
“Is not my problem,” said Solly. “The rules say you pay off at 500 to 1 and that's what I do. Not 350 to 1. Not 400 to 1. Not even 499 to 1. Five hundred to 1, and not a penny less. I don't cheat them like Salucci does; I don't fix the handle the way Weinberg does with his phonus-balonus racetracks in Timbuktu. I treat ‘em square, and I got no problems.” He gestured up and down Lenox Avenue and watched gratefully as the men tipped their hats to him. “See?” he cried. “Everybody love Solly Horowitz! The Grand Rebbe of Harlem!”
When Solly had muscled into this part of Harlem, he had had to contend with the formidable figure of Lilly De-Laurentien, a Haitian
voodoo lady much given to bangles and beads who had had the colored numbers racket all to herself. Solly and Lilly clashed early and often, but after more than a few of her boys had ended up in the North River with their feet encased in blocks of cement, an uneasy truce had been called, with Lilly ceding most of her territory but retaining her social standing. There were whispers that Lilly and Solly had sealed their bargain with a roll in the hay, but no one really knew.
Solomon Horowitz confided in God and, once in a very great while and then only under duress, in Mrs. Horowitz. The only things he really trusted were his gat, which he kept well oiled, and his aim, which he kept well honed. This accrued to Solly's continued welfare and, indeed, existence, but it also had the added benefit of keeping the neighborhood's rat population handsomely in check. Horowitz hated rats, whether of the two- or four-legged variety.
In half a year Rick Baline had risen from green newcomer to one of Horowitz's most trusted advisers. Only Tick-Tock seemed to resent his rapid rise in the gang; the rest of them were clever enough to realize that Rick was smarter and braver than all of them. Killers Solly had plenty of, Schapiro foremost among them. Tick-Tock could put a bullet through a rat's eye at two hundred feet, which was a skill that came in quite handy down around the Five Points, where Tick-Tock had grown up. As the boss's bodyguard, Tick-Tock once had high hopes for himself in the succession department. Solly, though, was still the boss, and after him the boss would be whoever Solly said he would be. Solly knew it wasn't going to be Tick-Tock. Deep down, Tick-Tock did, too, and he didn't like it.
From Solly, Rick learned that while drink itself might be bad—”the booze I can take or I can leave, but you should leave it alone”—drinking, and the art of it, was something with which a young man could profitably busy himself, and busily profit himself as well. Therefore, in addition to his other remunerative rackets, Solly owned and operated a string of blind tigers, blind pigs, dives, taverns, saloons, and speakeasies across upper Manhattan. Horowitz also owned a string of laundries, mostly in the Bronx, where he could change dirty money for clean, get his bartenders’ aprons pressed, and from time to time cause to disappear in one or another of the lye vats a particularly troublesome corpse.
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