As Time Goes By

by Michael Walsh

  “So do I,” Rick reminded him.

  “—and I smell one now. Why should the British care about Reinhard Heydrich? Why should they exert all this effort to kill one obscure Nazi, when there are others far more important, others whose deaths might bring an end to this war much faster? Why are they financing Victor Laszlo and his crew? Why don't they want their fingerprints on the knife?”

  “I give up,” said Rick.

  “Because there's something in it for them, something very important.” Renault lit a cigarette.“When we first met Major Miles, I raised the issues of reprisals. He brushed my concerns aside. Consider this, though: What if that's what they're really after? The British don't give a damn about Reinhard Heydrich. You heard Lumley complaining about the lack of Czech backbone, didn't you?” Renault's voice fell very low.“Well, what if this whole thing is simply a way to provoke an atrocity and get the Czechs fighting again? It wouldn't be the first time the English have done something like this. Remember Norway.”

  “What about Norway?” asked Rick, his curiosity rising.

  Louis was happy to explain.“When the English mined the harbors at Narvik in April of 1940, they were not trying to prevent a German invasion of Norway. They were trying to incite one, because they wanted to occupy Norway themselves and cut the German iron ore supply coming along the Kiruna-Narvik rail line. The problem was, the Germans outsmarted them and landed while the British ships were sailing home, awaiting the German response. The English got caught with their pants down once; they won't want it to happen again.”

  “That's hard to believe,” muttered Rick.

  “Hard to believe because that's the way they want it. Propaganda, dear boy—it's the name of the game. The English are as crooked as your roulette table.”

  “You never complained about my roulette table before. So why are you going, then?”

  “To retrieve the honor I thought I had lost forever,” Renault said glumly, sitting down.

  “Honor?” said Rick, surprised.“Why, Louie, I don't think I’ve ever heard you use that word.”

  “I did once,” replied Renault.

  “I guess there's a second time for everything, then,” said Rick, lighting another cigarette. Blindly his left hand sought the drink that was habitually at his side, until he recalled why it wasn't there anymore. Because of her.“You want to tell me about it?”

  “No more than you wanted to tell me,” said Renault.“Still, they say confession is good for the soul.”

  “I wouldn't know about that,” said Rick.“Don't let me stop you, though.”

  “Very well, then,” replied Renault, and told his story.

  In 1926 Louis Renault had left his home in Lille to come to Paris and seek his fortune. He was twenty-six years old, witty, educated, articulate, and far more elegant than his drab, grimy, industrial hometown. Renault rightly considered Lille too small for the proper exercise and display of his talents. He had no interest in following his father into the lace-manufacturing business but was only too pleased to accept his father's money to assist him on the short journey to Paris and the foundation of a small establishment there.

  Renault had envisioned a life as the darling of cafÉ society and the sensation of the salons. He had foreseen evenings at the OpÉra and nights in the company of breathtaking women. As she had for so many other young rouÉs, though, Paris proved herself an inhospitable mistress. Much to his surprise and chagrin, Louis found himself living not in an elegant suite of rooms in the rue Scribe, but in an unaesthetic flat on the fourth floor of a grimy building across from the Cimetière Montmartre in the rue Joseph le Mâitre and spending his dwindling funds in the dubious company of the ladies of Pigalle.

  One early evening in May he trudged back up the hill from the Abbesses stop on the MÉtro, discouraged. The money from his father was running out, he had no particular prospects for employment (not that he really desired any), his attempts to penetrate the salons of the Eighth Arondissement had so far failed, and his wits, which had always served him so well back in school, were being put to the test as never before.

  To his surprise, he found a young woman sitting disconsolately by the curb in front of his house. His concierge, a formidable brute of a woman named Madame de Montpellier, whose suspicion of outsiders and interlopers still extended to him, although he had rented his room for more than four months, was screaming imprecations at her; but the girl took no notice. The rain had not yet washed away the smell of cigarette smoke from her clothes, and her hair was uncombed. Renault tapped her on the shoulder, to ask if he could be of assistance, but she ignored him and stared straight ahead.

  He lit a cigarette, breathing in the tobacco smoke deeply. Madame de Montpellier (privately he doubted the validity of the nobiliary particle) finished her tirade with some choice words of invective and slammed down the window. Louis knew she was still there, watching, so he continued to smoke and gaze out over Paris—the view was spectacular, even if the accommodations were not—until a decent interval had elapsed. Once again he addressed the waif.

  “Louis Renault, at your service, mademoiselle,” he said with what he hoped was an aristocratic flourish.

  Finally she deigned to look at him. In the twilight he could not tell the color of her eyes, but they were big and round, and he knew they must be blue. Her light blonde hair fell unarranged to her shoulders. It had not been washed in several days, but—tant pis!“Renaud,” she said.“That's a funny name. Are you running from the hounds, like me?” She giggled, and for a moment he wondered if she was a bit mad.

  It was not the first time someone had made a pun on his name, but he acted as if it were and let out a chuckle.“Indeed, mademoiselle,” he said,“the hounds are baying at my heels at this very moment.” Which was something very near the truth.

  “Then perhaps we should go inside, where we will be safe,” she suggested, and stood up.

  She took his breath away. Not that every woman didn't take his breath away, but as he was growing older he was also growing more sophisticated in his appraisal of the female sex. Dirty and unkempt as she was, she was also special. That he could tell, even in the Parisian dusk, which after all was so much more romantic than the dusk in every other city.

  “What is your name, child?” he asked her as they mounted the steps to his room.Madame la Concierge had retreated to her matins and her meal; even so, they tread lightly upon the stair.

  “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, wrapping 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 fleetingly 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 before. 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 Isabel. 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 bruise.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 handle 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 everything. 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 correctly.

  “Oui, Isabel,” said the man.“Est morte, hÉlas! 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 forgotten,” said the other man.

  Renault had no idea what he was talking about.

  “Isabel de Bononcière,” 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.-HonorÉ, not far from ÉlysÉe 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 Édouard Daladier.

  Daladier leaned over and kissed Renault on both cheeks.“For your bravery, you have the undying gratitude 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 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 Morocco. 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.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  New York, April 1932

  Rick got in his car. He cursed O'Hanlon and Meredith. 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 nation 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 Blaine'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 already 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 generalities, 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 attention 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 d
aughter. 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 himself 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 standing in front of Horowitz's home on 127th Street.

  The street was deserted. Solly didn't believe in having 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.