As Time Goes By (32 page)

"Oh, so now it's 'Rick darling,' huh?" he said. Karl
swooped by to pour some more champagne. Karl was
professionally deaf. "You should have thought of that
when you ran off with him."

"I didn't run off with him—he ran off with me!" she
said. "He swept me off my feet. You know that."

"I sure do," said Rick, "I was there. In fact, I was
trying to do the same thing and not making a very good
job of it." He lit her cigarette for her and popped one
of his own in his mouth.

She inhaled deeply, as if the cigarette might save her
life. "Daddy wanted it to happen, you know that. He wanted his little girl to be somebody, and look at me
now!"

"Yeah," Rick agreed. "Look at you. You're not
somebody, Lois—you're married to somebody. Can't
you see that?"

"Now he's thinking about running for governor."

"He'll never beat Lehman," said Rick.

"He thinks he can," said Lois.

"I think I can fish, but I can't."

"Oh, Rick," she said, and began to cry.
   

Crying women were not unheard of at Rick's place,
but he didn't like them crying at his table. He helped
her to her feet. "Come on," he said, "let's go back to
my office."

Karl saw Rick make a brusque downward motion of the chin that signaled to him to take over.

They went into Rick's private office and shut the
door. Lois promptly collapsed on the couch that Rick
used from time to time as a daybed.

"What am I going to do?" she sobbed. "I can't leave him—it would ruin his career. It would break Daddy's
heart."

"You should have thought about that before you mar
ried him," said Rick. "You're a big girl now."

She smoothed back her hair, which had fallen from its pinnings and now spilled across her shoulders.

"Can't you help me?" She unfastened the diamond
brooch and placed it on a table. "I hate this thing," she
said.

"So do I," he said.

He wanted to stop himself, but he couldn't. She
didn't want to stop herself, and she didn't. Lois was
always stronger than he was, Rick remembered as he
fell into her arms.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
N
INE

New York, October 1935

The affair was two months old when Robert Meredith
found out about it. Rick knew this day had to come. He
and Lois had been as discreet as possible, but this was
New York City, the worst place in the world to have an
affair. Some unwritten law stipulated that no matter
what you were doing, someone who knew you would
hear about it. Maybe it was because the city was so big:
a town of eight million blabbermouths, each one living
on top of his neighbor.

He had told himself their affair was wrong: not only
morally—although that, he felt, was questionable—but
professionally. Even with Repeal, Meredith could still
make a great deal of trouble for him with the state li
quor authority should he so wish, and how Solomon
Horowitz would react to adultery between Rick and his
daughter could only be guessed. As Rick was well
aware, the union between Lois
and Meredith was not only a marriage but a peace treaty, any disruption of
which could mean a resumption of hostilities on a scale larger than before.

That was a war he and Horowitz would both lose, for
Solly no longer had any taste for the hard end of the
business. That was pretty much Tick-Tock Schapiro's private preserve these days. A couple of rival black
numbers gangs had sprung up recently in open defiance
of his covenant with Lilly DeLaurentien; the way Rick heard it, the Voodoo Queen herself was behind at least
one of them. The Mad Russian, however, didn't seem to care, or at least he didn't make it a point of pride to
punish the miscreants personally, the way he would
have in the old days. "It's their neighborhood now, Ricky," he said when Rick broached the subject one afternoon. "Let them have their turn."

If Solly was slipping, Salucci remained lean and
hungry. Weinberg, sitting at his adding machine and
toting up the profits, was making him ever greedier
with thoughts of citywide domination. Unlike Horo
witz, the ferret-faced Sicilian would have no compunc
tion about restoring white rule to Harlem as brutally as
possible, at least as far as vice went. Where O'Hanlon
fit into this picture Rick was not sure, but Dion was far
too smart to step in front of a Horowitz-Salucci feud.
If anybody knew how to play the angles, it was O'Han
lon; there wasn't a card that was played, a roulette
wheel that was spun, or a pair of dice that was rolled
in a crap game he didn't already know the outcome of.

Of course, it was O'Hanlon who told Meredith about the affair.

The date was October 22, 1935. When the phone
buzzed softly in his office that morning, Rick picked it
up on the first ring. Very few people had his private number; still, he was not surprised to hear the Irish
man's lilting voice at the other end of the wire.

"Mr. Baline?" said the voice. O'Hanlon never called
him "Rick."
        

"Who wants to know?" said Rick.

"A word of friendly warning to you, my boy," said
O'Hanlon. "I very much fear that Senator Meredith is
on his way down from Albany to pay you what I expect
will be a most unpleasant visit."

Rick didn't have to ask what the visit was about.
"What it's to you?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing at all," said the Irish gangster. "It's
just that I hate to see a young fellow like you come
to grief over a woman, even one as attractive as Mrs. Meredith. Women are such a waste of time, don't you
think? Especially when there's business to be conducted."

Rick didn't think, but he let O'Hanlon go on.

"They practically grow on trees, and yet each one of
them can make us feel that she's the only one in the
world: the most precious, valuable commodity on earth. They want us to think that someday they're
going to be scarce, like liquor under the Volstead Act.
When, in fact, they're a glut on the market, if only a
man chooses to see them in the proper light."

"How much do you know?" snapped Rick,

"All that I need to."

He might be bluffing. "What makes you so sure that
Meredith is gunning for me?" Rick asked.

"I thought a bright lad like you would have figured
it out by now," said Dion. "For sure, didn't I tell him my own good self?"

Rick's blood ran cold. "What did you do that for?"

O'Hanlon let out a low laugh. "Let's just say that an
unsatisfactory status quo is makin' me a bit bored and
uncomfortable, and I thought it was high time someone
stirred the pot a bit."

"Let's talk."

"Dion O'Hanlon, at your service. This is, after all, a business matter for both of us."

"How soon can you get here?"

"Not the club. Your place. I'm already there. "You'd
better hurry if you know what's good for you."

Rick didn't have to be told twice. The thought crossed
his mind that O'Hanlon's request for a meeting could be a setup, a hit—but why would either O'Hanlon or
Salucci want him dead? Killing him wouldn't get them
any closer to taking over Solly's other Harlem rackets
and would only ignite the very gang war they were all
trying to avoid. Solomon Horowitz might be getting
older, but he wasn't getting any nicer. He still could do
some serious damage to both Salucci and O'Hanlon
should they take him on, even if they eventually took
him out.

Thoughts racing, Rick drove downtown. He was
alone. Abie Cohen wanted to come, as he was under
standing orders from Solly to do, but Rick had waved
him off. "It's my mother," he shouted as he drove off.
Abie shrugged and, for the tenth day running, tried to
do the crossword puzzle. Even though he was cheating
(the puzzle was yesterday's, and he had the answers in front of him), the going was still tough.

Rick pulled up in front of the San Remo in ten min
utes flat. He left the car parked in front of the building for Mike the doorman to keep an eye on. The elevator
operator greeted him as he entered. '"You have a visitor,
Mr. Baline," he told him.

O'Hanlon was standing politely in front of his door, clutching the brim of his hat in one hand and reading
the sports pages of the
Daily News
with the other. "Mr.
Baline," he said. "How splendid of you to offer the
hospitality of your home to a friend in the middle of a
busy day like this."

"Whaddaya want?" Rick asked brusquely, unlocking the door. He didn't feel like standing on ceremony
and sure as hell didn't feel like offering O'Hanlon a
drink, although that didn't stop him from pouring one for himself. "What do you mean, you told Meredith
about Lois and me? What the hell for?"

O'Hanlon was perched in one of Rick's easy chairs,
his bird face shiny and scrubbed, his legs crossed at the
ankles, his double-breasted suit cut so well that even
when he sat the buttoned jacket didn't bunch up. If
Rick's rudeness bothered him, he didn't show it.

"Mr. Baline," he began, "I have a confession to
make." Rick looked surprised. O'Hanlon forged ahead.
"You should feel flattered. Not even Padre Flynn down
at Saint Mike's has heard Dion O'Hanlon's confession for more than a full month of Sundays.

"My confession is this: I have a terrible character flaw. For don't I always tell the truth to my friends,
even when it hurts other of my friends? As it appears I
have in this instance. But Senator Meredith asked me point-blank last evening whether the rumors he was hearing in Albany were true, and I had to admit that,
insofar as I myself was privy to any trustworthy infor
mation at all, they were—distressing though such knowledge might be to all and sundry."

"Now he's on his way here," said Rick. "What's he
going to do? Shoot me?"

"Surely you don't expect an esteemed public official
such as Senator Meredith to kill a man in cold blood?"
O'Hanlon shook his head in disbelief. "I believe he
has people for that sort of thing. Lorenzo Salucci, for
instance. He and Salucci have been doing business together for some time. I introduced them, of course, and
have profited handsomely from the arrangement. A
friend in the state legislature is almost as good as having the mayor of New York on the payroll. Who, of course, I also have."

"Of course," said Rick. Nobody could work both
sides of the street like Dion O'Hanlon.

O'Hanlon dropped his voice to a deadly whisper.
"Now listen, and listen carefully, to what I'm about
to say, boy. Your boss is finished. And do you know why?" He leaned forward as if to impart some great
secret, which forced Rick to draw a little nearer to
him.

"He's finished because he
doesn't listen,"
hissed the gangster. "He doesn't heed warnings, either from his
friends or, worse, from his enemies. No, he simply goes
his own way, the same way he has gone before, secure
in what he supposes is his puissance but is in reality
merely his arrogance and his ignorance."

O'Hanlon straightened up. "Salucci is too strong
now," he said evenly. "Believe me when I tell you that
Weinberg has already organized a hit team from Mur
der Incorporated—one of whom, I regret to inform
you, is a member of what you suppose is your own
gang—to finish the job begun by those poor boys from
Sicily so long ago. If Solomon is finished, then you're
finished, too, because your rabbi has been sadly ne
glecting his flock, and he just can't muster a minyan
anymore."

O'Hanlon examined his fingernails, which were per
fect. "In twenty-four hours," he said, "the Mad Rus
sian will be history."

"What about me?" asked Rick.

"Oh, I would be more than happy to find a place for
a man of your indisputable talents in my own organiza
tion," O'Hanlon replied, "but alas, I'm giving it up."

That was a surprise.

"I'm quitting. Retiring. I've got enough money
stashed away to take care of my family unto the genera
tions. America's a great country, boy, and how thank
ful I am to it for taking a poor immigrant lad like
myself and transforming him into a millionaire many times over. It's time for me to take my winnings, cash
out of the casino, and head for home. Therefore, in the
grand tradition of the magnificently corrupt Richard
Croker of Tammany Hall, I have purchased myself a
wee estate in County Mayo, there to enjoy the fruits of
my old age in peace and plentitude."

"That doesn't explain why you've ratted me out,"
objected Rick.

"Oh, but it does, lad," O'Hanlon said. "I like things
nice and neat, and I cannot abide the thought that after
I'm gone a messy turf war for control of the rackets
will break out in my beloved adopted city of New York
.
Yo
ur boss is a hothead, and New York is no longer any
place for hotheads. We're businessmen now, Mr. Ba
line, and we've got businesses to run. We're not just gangsters anymore, we're public servants, and we've
got to start acting like it."