As Time Goes By 1997

1931-35. Yitzik “Rick” Baline is a small-time New York criminal navigating the gritty world of Prohibition-era crime. He crosses paths with Lois, the daughter of the powerful gangster Solly Horowitz, and their budding romance earns Rick Solly’s favor. This alliance helps Rick ascend to power as the boss of the Tootsie-Wootsie Club, a bustling speakeasy that becomes a magnet for underworld figures and patrons alike. Yet Rick’s rise isn’t without rivals; Tick-Tock, Solly’s stern principal aide, watches Rick with envy and schemes to position himself as Solly’s eventual successor should the older man step away or fall.

Solly makes it clear that Lois’s future should lie beyond the shadows of crime, steering her toward a more respectable life. She eventually marries Robert Meredith, a lawyer who dreams of politics, even though Lois does not truly love him. This union destabilizes the Horowitz faction, feeding resentment and fueling conflict. As gang warfare erupts among the Horowitz, Salucci, and O’Hanlon clans, the violence compounds, and the street power plays grow lethal. In a brutal turn of events, Solly and Tick-Tock are killed, and Lois and her husband—exposed as a corrupt politician—meet their end as the criminal landscape collapses around them. Rick, now a fugitive, seizes Solly’s money—half a million dollars believed to be destined for Lois—and flees America with his ally Sam, heading to Boston. In a final act of reinvention, Rick changes his name to Richard Blaine as the pair plot a long journey away from the life they left behind.

1941-42. The trajectory shifts as Rick, Louis, and Sam depart Casablanca with documents from Louis, making their way through Lisbon to London. With America now drawn into World War II, the trio becomes entwined in larger currents of resistance and escape. Their path leads them toward a reawakening of purpose: Victor—their ally—yearns to reclaim a crucial role in the Czech Resistance, while Ilsa begs to be drawn into the mission, and Rick and Louis agree to help, though Sam remains in London to hold the line.

Ilsa, a woman of formidable resolve who speaks perfect Russian, is dispatched to Prague to work as an assistant to Reinhard Heydrich, the feared “Butcher of Prague.” Her cover as a White Russian grants her access to the inner circle, and she earns Heydrich’s trust to the point where he contemplates making her his mistress. The Soviet-backed plan to strike at the heart of the Nazi leadership—Operation Anthropoid—proceeds despite the ever-present risk and the cold shadows of betrayal. In the tangled web of loyalties, Victor reluctantly accepts the possibility that Louis might have betrayed them, and tragedy follows when Victor kills Louis and then assassinates Heydrich, sacrificing himself in the process.

With North Africa returning to Allied hands, the story arcs toward a new chapter: Ilsa and Rick marry and return to Casablanca, traveling with Sam. In this reimagined landscape, Carl emerges as the new owner of the famed café, and Rick’s Café Américain continues to operate under new stewardship, maintaining its place at the center of the city’s night life and its unfolding political intrigues. The long road from Prohibition-era crime to wartime resistance and a rebuilt Casablanca underscores a world where personal loyalties, romantic currents, and shifting power dynamics intersect in ways that reshape Rick’s destiny and the fate of those around him.