“We can do something, however, and we shall. When we slay this monster Heydrich, we shall be offering the gift of hope to millions who thought hope had vanished from their lives forever. There are no noncombatants in this war, Monsieur Blaine, no neutrals. One is either for us or against us. Should you prove to be numbered among the latter instead of the former, then you shall be sacrificed with no more thought or regret than if you were a spring lamb.
“I have promised my wife that you will take part in this mission. She has assured me of your loyalty. She is my most trusted confidante. How and why she is so certain of you is of no import to me. Nor is what happens to any of us after we accomplish our mission. That I will leave to God. Should you try in any way to interfere with our chances for success, though, I will kill you myself. To do anything less would betray a sacred trust, and that is one thing, indeed the only thing, I am not prepared to do.”
Major Miles interposed himself.“Very well, then, gentlemen, you have your orders. Upon receipt of Miss Lund's signal, you are all to report to the airfield at Luton at once. You will be issued your armaments at that time. I advise you all to set your affairs in order and to get plenty of rest. When the shooting starts you'll be glad you did.”
He put down his pointer.“The mission upon which we are all embarking is fraught with danger. I won't deny that. His Majesty's government is as much a part of it as any of you, and it is in the highest interests of that government to make sure that Operation Hangman succeeds. It must, and it shall. That is all.”
If only that were true, thought Rick.
Rick and Renault shook hands with everyone in the room as they departed. When it came time to shake hands with Victor Laszlo, it was Rick this time who had to hold out his hand and wait several seconds before it was grasped.
“Good luck,” said Rick.“It must be nice to always be right.”
“It is,” said Laszlo.
CHAPTER TWENTY
He knew what he promised Ilsa, and he cared. But not that much, and not right now.
Ilsa was in Prague. He was in London. A body of water and half of a bottle of Jack Daniel's lay between them, although not for long. She never had to know about it. Besides, he needed all the help he could get.
He drank straight from the bottle; this was no time to stand on ceremony. Demon rum had always helped him think before. After everything that had happened, after the worst that could happen had happened, it had still been his friend. It had protected him from the Italian bullets in Ethiopia, had shielded him from the gunfire of the Nationalists at the Ebro River, when victory had seemed so close and then evaporated so quickly, and had given him the courage to fight on, all the way to the end, when even the bottle could tell the difference between victory and defeat, if he still couldn't.
Rick the liberal. Rick the idealist. Rick the freedom fighter: what a laugh. Couldn't they tell the difference between a man on a mission and a man on a suicide mission? In Ethiopia he had thought death would be simple. There was a war on; all you had to do was wander out on the killing ground and wait for the one with your name on it to show up. Selassie's battle against the Italians had seemed hopeless, which suited Rick just fine; but the Africans had surprised everybody by holding off Mussolini for almost eight months. From late November 1935, when he washed up in Addis Ababa because it was the most remote place he could think of on such short notice, until May 1936, when the new Roman legions had occupied the country, he had fought as best he could—not expecting to win, hoping somehow not to lose, but not caring much either way, and always ready to take a bullet. Just as long as he could take out a few Italians, especially the ones who reminded him of Salucci. They all reminded him of Salucci.
He got to Spain three months later, just in time for the civil war. He hadn't intended it that way, but his bad luck seemed to be following him around. The Spanish Civil War taught him a few things. The first thing it taught him was that he was glad he wasn't around for the American Civil War. Practically overnight, brother fought brother, father fought son, and everybody killed everybody in the most horribly imaginable way.
He didn't like to think about what he'd seen in Spain. Hemingway had written a whole novel about it, about the place where futility married brutality and their offspring was called the International Brigade. Hemingway had made the war sound heroic, but what did a writer know? Rick had seen the Internationals used for cannon fodder, chewed up and spat out by Hitler's Condor Legion and the Italian Blackshirts, and there was nothing heroic about it. It was Ethiopia all over again, except with better food. He hated to see so many good boys fed to Franco's machine guns so cavalierly. Like him, they believed in the cause of fighting fascism; unlike him, they were willing to die for it. Not that he wasn't willing to die; it was just that he was trying to die for something else, and not succeeding.
Not like LuÍs, who wasn't trying to die at all. His death wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, just the exit of another kid who believed the slogans and the shouting, who trusted people he shouldn't have trusted and paid for it with the only coin he had: his life.
LuÍs Echeverria bought the farm at the Ebro River in September of 1938, which was near the end, just before Rick, like thousands of others on the losing side, had fled to France and the simulacrum of Maginot Line safety. Everybody said the Ebro River was the turning point of the war. That made it sound glamorous in retrospect, which it wasn't. Back home, the equivalent would have been the shot to the back of head as you were strolling idly along the Fifth Avenue underpass at the new Rockefeller Center, or the pop between the eyes when your last vista was some Hackensack swamp, and here you thought you were just going out to get the papers with a bagel and a schmear on Second Avenue.
LuÍs was a handsome, black-haired boy of nineteen whose fondest wish was that he would get home alive to Marita, the girl he loved even more than he loved freedom, which was to say one hell of a lot. LuÍs had shown him the lone photograph of Marita he carried with him at all times, had shown him the letters he had received from her. Rick had not had the heart to tell him about the perfidy of women—hell, about the perfidy of people—because, after all, what difference would it have made? That was the sort of thing a young man had to find out for himself, the hard way, if he lived long enough to become an old man. Poor LuÍs, who wore his heart on his sleeve and the picture of Marita next to his heart and died in the fullness of his twentieth year.
“Rick,” asked LuÍs as they awaited the attack,“are you scared?” He always asked Rick that question before a battle. It had become a kind of good-luck ritual between them. LuÍs was grinning his funny gap-toothed grin, the wind was in his hair, and he looked like a minor Greek god, disporting himself on the Champs de Mars.
“No,” he answered truthfully.
“Why not?”
“Because I don't care,” replied Rick. He knew LuÍs did care, that he cared too much for his own good, that he cared not only for himself and for Marita, but for Spain, which was far too much for one brave boy to care for.
The kid was right beside him as Franco's forces charged. The attack was only a feint, but nobody bothered to tell them that. The main offensive would take place somewhere else. Unfortunately the feint was in their direction, which made it the main offensive as far as Rick and LuÍs were concerned.
The Nationalists were coming at them, wave upon wave, and Rick was killing them as fast as he could. Something was wrong, though: it was too easy. Franco usually didn't fight like this, didn't give up this much so easily. The men were coming straight across the river, into the teeth of the entrenched Republican position. Well, that was their problem; with every shot he felt one step nearer to whatever vindication he could muster.
Rick kept firing as fast as he could. He loved being in these kinds of scrapes, so different from the wars in New York. Those had been conducted with brutal, practically corporate efficiency. In New York victory or defeat all depended on who got the drop on whom, and the fight was over in a matter of not
minutes but seconds. Triumph was all in the planning. In Spain, in battle, you either bought it or you didn't, and there wasn't a damn thing you could do about either eventuality.
“Rick!” shouted LuÍs.“Watch out!”
He whipped his head away from his smoking machine gun, but it was too late. A handful of Franco's men had crossed the river on horseback, sweeping around behind their platoon's position. Damn! he should have anticipated this: the old sucker punch. Frantically he struggled to turn the machine gun around. He was still struggling when the bullet entered LuÍs's head just above his left eyebrow. Rick saw the damage before its victim felt it. He knew LuÍs was dead before he did.
LuÍs died in his arms, his eyes still staring forward, in anticipation of the glorious victory that would never come.
Whispering softly, Rick laid him down to rest. He wished he knew some kind of Catholic requiem, but the Kaddish would have to do. It had done before.
He knew the end was near, of course. Right in the middle of the Ebro campaign had come word of the Munich Pact of September 29,1938, signed by Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier, and Mussolini. It cut the heart right out of the Loyalist cause. No help would be forthcoming from France, or Russia, or England—or, for that matter, from the United States. The good guys were alone; no cavalry would be charging over the hill to rescue them. Franco's German-trained air force pounded the Loyalists in the hills, Franco's troops slaughtered them in the streets of their cities. Somehow Rick managed to survive, staggering from defeat to defeat. Barcelona fell on January 26, Madrid on March 28. The civil war ended four days later, but Rick Blaine was already in Marseille, drunk and wondering what it took to kill yourself besides courage.
“Mr. Richard?” Sam's voice came out of the night and into his fog.
“What is it?” he asked. He tried to tidy up the sitting room, to make himself more presentable, but it was no use. Sam had seen him like this too many times to be fooled. He sank back into his chair, clutching his bottle like a baby.
Sam pretended not to notice. Instead he busied himself in Rick's bedroom, organizing his clothes, folding them neatly, and packing them into a duffel bag. The bag was all Rick was going to be allowed to take with him, but that didn't mean the clothes couldn't be neat.
“You all ready to go, boss?” Sam asked idly, knowing that Rick was looking for the answer in the bottle and, unlike most men, stood a pretty good chance of finding it there.
“As ready as I’m ever going to be,” replied Rick, trying to get up but unable to because the swallow or two left was still weighing him down.
Sam sat across from Rick. In his hand he held Rick's favorite Colt .45 automatic, the one he had brought with him from New York, the one he had used on Mussolini's men and on Franco's, the one he had shot Major Strasser with. He took the weapon apart lovingly, cleaned it, and oiled it.“This one's always been your favorite,” he observed.
“Yup,” agreed Rick.“I just wish I’d killed the right guy with it in the first place and saved us both a lot of trouble.”
Sam shook his head.“Boss, you got to forget about that. It was all a long time ago. Besides, it wasn't your fault, everything that happened.”
Rick laughed bitterly.“Whose was it, then? I didn't see anybody else standing in my shoes, wearing my clothes, driving my car.” He took another drink.
“I was driving your car. Or did you forget?”
“That was so long ago I don't remember.”
“Well, if I hadn't been driving your car, you wouldn't be here.”
“Next time, try not to do me any favors.”
“You was young, boss.”
“I was old enough to know better.”
“Whatever you say.” Sam laid out the pieces on the oilcloth and reassembled them carefully.“Ain't it nice the way everything goes together,” he said.“Each part fits in so well with the other. Don't you wish everything in life was like that?”
“Well, it isn't.” Rick had finished the bottle and was wondering what to do with it.“You know, Sam,” he said,“this may be it.”
Sam didn't even look at him. He knew what he was talking about, and he didn't like it any more than his boss did.“Now don't you go talking that way, Mr. Richard,” he said.“You done more dangerous things before, and you always come back. You know you do. So you just take this here gun and go do what you have to do, and then you come back here and you'n me'll light out for the territories, like we always plannin’.”
Rick snorted.“Things are different now,” he said.“In Africa, in Spain, I didn't care whether I came back or not. That's probably what kept me alive. Now I do.”
“Because of Miss Ilsa?” asked Sam.
“Mrs. Laszlo, you mean.”
“Miss Ilsa,” insisted Sam.“She's the reason, ain't she?”
Some questions didn't require answers. Rick lit a cigarette. Sam snapped the last pieces of the gun back into place and handed it to Rick.“Boss,” he said,“why you got to go? This ain't your fight.”
“What makes you so sure?” Rick asked.
Sam muttered something to himself. Rick didn't even have to hear it to know what he was saying. He decided to ignore it.
“She's different, Sam. After Paris, I thought she might be Lois all over again, and when she showed up here with Laszlo, I was certain of it. Just another girl who married the wrong man, the kind of guy I could never compete with, and now wants me to save her from herself. But I was wrong. She's given me something to live for again. That's why I’m scared.”
He blew some smoke out of his lungs and crushed the cigarette viciously into the ashtray.“So has Victor Laszlo, except he doesn't know it yet.”
“Boss, you never been scared of nothing,” said Sam.
“That's just the problem.” Rick threw the bourbon bottle into the fireplace, where it shattered with a resounding crash. He listened carefully until the last of the glass shards had stopped clattering to the floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
New York, July 1932
If God had wanted to smile on those for whom He otherwise had very little time, Prohibition was surely a sign of divine favor. What had been meant as punishment for the most despised members of American society, the new immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, had turned out instead to be a great gift to them. For Solomon Horowitz, who appreciated a present when it was offered and never turned one down, this turn of events only reinforced his notion that most laws achieved exactly the opposite of what they were intended for. He had learned this lesson as a young man, in the old country, and he had applied it, with great success, in the New World.
The summer sun was casting its first light over the Queens flatlands. The Tootsie-Wootsie's first customers would not begin arriving for hours, even the ones who couldn't control their thirst. Still, there were bills to be paid and proceeds to be counted, and the only people Solly trusted to do that were himself and Rick. Reclining slightly in an easy chair, his waistcoat mostly unbuttoned to give free rein to his expanding belly, Solly was puffing contemplatively on a cigar. He was the very picture of Central European ease and wisdom, transplanted to Manhattan.
“Ricky, you know what mistake that shmendrick Salucci makes?” inquired Solly.
Rick shook his head, even though he knew the answer. Solly liked his questions to go unanswered, except when he didn't: his boys had to tell the situations apart.
“He takes himself too serious!” Solly slapped his hand on the countertop, hard, and laughed heartily.“And he takes business not serious enough. This is why I take him to laundry every day!” For a moment Rick wondered whether Solly was having a heart attack. His face habitually turned purple whenever he heard—or more likely told—a funny one, or at least one he thought was funny.“He even drinks his own booze!”
“But you play the numbers,” objected Rick, who otherwise had no objection to gambling.
“I run the numbers,” Solly retorted.
“So you cheat yourself.”
<
br /> “It ain't cheating when you cheat yourself!” Solly said heatedly.
“Sure it is,” replied Rick.“It's the worst kind of cheating. Only a chump lets himself get cheated, and only an even bigger chump cheats himself. You told me that yourself.”
Solly looked over at his protÉgÉ.“Maybe. Sometimes. Now and then.”
They were sitting in Rick's office at the back of the club, which was located on the second floor of an otherwise nondescript Harlem building near the intersection of 136th Street and Lenox Avenue. The only indication of the Tootsie-Wootsie's presence was a small awning, in front of which stood a uniformed colored doorman. A small grocery store occupied the ground floor, and three floors of flats topped the club. Solly owned the building and collected the rents. It was just one of the many buildings he owned in Harlem proper, which had turned mostly black, and East Harlem, which was holding the color line.“East Harlem, you can't go wrong,” Solly would often say.“You got the Polo Grounds and the new Yankee Stadium across the river in the Bronx. The white people will never let them go. It's baseball, for chrissakes!”
Solly belched loudly.“Enough baseball,” he said.“Let's talk business.” He glanced at his pocket watch, which he kept tucked in his vest.“We gotta hurry.”
Rick Baline had the best head for business Solly had ever encountered outside of himself. Indeed, in Rick Solly saw much of himself, except with more advantages in life. Rick wasn't saddled with a thick shtetl accent; he talked real American. He wasn't like most other young fellows these days, chasing after the false gods of booze, broads, and Stutz bearcats when there was money to be made.
No, Rick was different. He had taken to the Tootsie-Wootsie Club as if he had been born in it. His sharp eye missed nothing. He knew which customers could pay and which couldn't and which of the latter it was important to let in anyway. He kept the staff from stealing, he kept the musicians from fighting over women, he kept the angry fathers whose young daughters were in the chorus line from getting too obstreperous, and he kept the band members away from the young daughters. He kept the songwriters paid and mostly sober. He made sure the pianists knew which songs were the most popular. Once in a while he even let a customer sing along, especially when that colored boy Sam Waters was at the keyboard playing“Knock on Wood.” He kept his gat in his trousers or in the pocket of his dinner jacket just as smooth as silk and nobody the wiser, not even the cops who came there to drink and ogle.
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