North River

by Pete Hamill

  “The treatment’s over. His mother’s okay.”

  “Good. Stay the fuck away.”

  There was a silence. Delaney knew what he was talking about. The rules of the brutal trade said that if you hit me, I’ll hit you back. If it takes a lifetime.

  “When it’s over, my friend, what’ll you do?”

  “Go far away. Where they’ll never think of findin’ me.”

  “You’d live in the Bronx?” Delaney said, and smiled.

  Corso laughed. “Nah, I’d keep runnin’ into them goddamn Yankee fans. Arrogant bastids. I’d be sure to get locked up for attempted homicide.”

  He stood up and stretched. Carlito came over and sat beside Delaney. There was a bowl of change on the table before him, nickels, dimes, quarters. No pennies. He began stacking them by denomination.

  “That woman, that Rose,” Corso said. “Everything I hear, she’s good people. A hoodlum, but good people.”

  “She is.”

  “Don’t fuck her over, Doc.”

  “I won’t.”

  Delaney stood up. The boy started dropping the coins back in their bowl. Two at a time. Then a few single coins. Then three and four. All the while making the sighing sounds of boredom.

  “I’d better take this fella to the beach,” Delaney said.

  “And the hot dogs at Feltman’s.”

  They embraced by the screen door. Corso stepped back.

  “You know where I’m thinkin’ of goin’?” He paused. “Back to France.”

  “Jesus, pal.”

  “I want to see that Paris. Sit at a table on some boulevard and have a cognac and watch the broads go by.” Another pause. “Then get me a car and drive down to where we were. To the place where all the guys died. To where all the rain was and all the fuckin’ mud. Just go and say good-bye the right way.

  “Then,” Corso said, brightening. “Then I go down the south of France. Get the sun. Get laid once a week. Look at the sea.”

  “Send me your address,” Delaney said. “Under another name, please.”

  Corso laughed.

  Delaney and the boy strolled to the boardwalk and looked at the sea and the hundreds of thousands of people on blankets, drinking beer and Coke and wine, heating up food, devouring sandwiches. He tried to imagine Eddie Corso on the Riviera and smiled. He and the boy took off their shoes and held them tight, rolled up their trousers, and moved down wooden stairs and through the spaces between sandy blankets, the sand itself very hot, and into the surf. The boy ran out, then retreated as a fresh wave broke, then ran again. He saw some boys splashing girls, and turned and splashed with his left hand at Delaney, who splashed back. A black Lab shook off an immense amount of water, soaking Delaney and the squealing boy, then crashed again into the surf after a tossed ball. Delaney wished he could stay there forever.

  On Thursday morning, he took Carlito on the old Arrow bicycle and pedaled off for the bread and newspapers. At Reilly’s he saw the tabloids shouting from the newsstand.

  MOB BOSS

  RUB OUT

  He didn’t need to read them to know who had been killed. But he bought all the papers and took them home with the bread. Rose had already heard the news on the radio. How one Frank Botticelli was in a car with two others when they were cut off by a bread truck on West Eighteenth Street and the car was riddled by machine-gun fire. More than one hundred shots were fired. All three were dead.

  “How come I don’t feel bad?” she said, her arms folded tightly across her breasts.

  “It must be sad for the mother,” Delaney said.

  “Maybe it’s a relief.”

  He hugged her.

  FIFTEEN

  HE GAZED OUT AT THE OLIVE TREE, ITS FRESH LEAVES A SILVERY green in the morning sun. He hoped that Eddie Corso was riding the Atlantic, bound for Le Havre. He knew he shouldn’t feel that way. He knew he might have headed off the murder with one call to Danny Shapiro. He couldn’t do that. Not in this neighborhood. Not in a place where the informer was the lowest form of human. Besides, his friendship with Eddie Corso was forever. It was part of the war. For Eddie, the quarrel with Frankie Botts was complete, according to the rules of his world. They were not Delaney’s rules. But he understood them. Now, he hoped, it was over. Rose knew that it was not.

  “They’re sure to come looking for you,” she said. “You know that, right? And maybe for me.”

  “Why? It’s over.”

  “These guys, it’s never over.”

  She placed fried eggs before Delaney and the boy. She prepared nothing for herself except coffee.

  “Look,” she said. “They know you’ve been going to see Frankie’s mother. You know something about him, how he lives. They know you are a friend of Eddie Corso. They know you saved his life on New Year’s.” She turned her gaze to the olive tree, while the boy ate greedily. “They’re sure to figure you helped set up Frankie.” She looked directly at Delaney now. “They know I’ve been going there too, to see Frankie’s mother, to be the nurse. So to them, maybe I’m part of the setup too.”

  “We’ll deal with it,” Delaney said.

  “So will they,” Rose said.

  She looked again at the olive tree.

  “Some of those olive trees,” she said, “they live five hundred years. That one will be there after we’re all dead and gone.”

  She sipped her coffee, swallowing her dread.

  “Let’s deal with the next couple of weeks,” Delaney said.

  In his office, he called Danny Shapiro, who was out on his own house calls. This was a busy morning for detectives. Delaney left a message. Then he called Knocko Carmody. He didn’t have to explain.

  “Yeah, I read the papers,” Knocko said. “Don’t worry.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “How’s the steam heat comin’?” Knocko said.

  “They should be finished this week.”

  “Just in time for July.”

  “It should be great,” Delaney said.

  Knocko hung up, and Delaney knew that men would soon be watching the street again. He told Rose, and she looked unconvinced. He heard Monique come in, and talked to her too. She would keep the inside door locked and only allow regular patients in to see him. She nodded toward the kitchen.

  “She better be very careful,” Monique said. “Neapolitans like shooting Sicilians, male or female.”

  “Rose didn’t cause this, Monique.”

  “No, but to them she’s part of it, for sure.”

  On house calls after lunch, pedaling steadily on the old Arrow, he watched every passing car, every unfamiliar face. Thinking: It would be stupid to die in this cheap Mob melodrama. Stupid to be a one-day story in the Daily News, three paragraphs maybe, or maybe page one if nothing else happened that day. The tabloids wanted to keep this story alive. The Mob sold many things, including newspapers. On a newsstand, he saw the headline in the Journal: COPS FEAR GANG WAR. How many times had he read that headline since the days of Prohibition? I don’t even need to read it. I know more about it than the reporter. So did Rose, who never went to gangster movies.

  Delaney’s calls took him past the Good Men Social and Athletic Club, where Eddie Corso had been shot among the funny hats and noisemakers of New Year’s Eve. There was a TO LET sign in the window. On the corner, a few men stared at him, and one of them nodded. He looked up and saw another man peering down from the rooftop. Scouts of a defending army, awaiting the counterattack.

  In late afternoon, he came down tenement stairs after treating a woman named O’Toole, whose body was being eaten by cancer. She didn’t care about Frankie Botts or Eddie Corso or the Giants. She just wanted to live a little longer. “I want to see my granddaughter graduate from grammar school,” she said. “Down at Sacred Heart.” That is, she wanted to live for two more weeks. He would try his best. That’s all he ever could do.

  Delaney stepped into the fading sunlight at the top of Mrs. O’Toole’s stoop, took a breath, saw a few men talking on the corner. H
e went down to unlock his bicycle, chained to the iron fence. He heard leathery footsteps and looked up. A movie gangster was walking hard, wearing his gray fedora and a pin-striped suit, pulling his face tightly over his teeth.

  “Hey, you,” he said.

  “Me?”

  The man stood over him now. “Yeah, get into the car.”

  Two houses down, the door of a car opened onto the sidewalk.

  “Why?”

  “ ’Cause I said so, that’s why,” the man said, putting a hand inside his jacket.

  Delaney smiled, still squatting, thinking: All shoulder, all my weight, everything on it.

  And stood up abruptly, took a step, and whipped the left hook with everything behind it, grunting as he threw it, and hit the man on the side of the jaw. He heard something crack. The man went down hard on his back, one leg bent awkwardly beneath him, the other leg shaking. His eyes were rolled up under his brow. Then a fat man came out of the parked car, holding a gun, waddling and cursing.

  And here came Knocko’s boys: six of them, big and burly, hefting bats and axe handles. Two bounced their wooden bats off the skull of the fat guy, who went down, his pistol rattling on the sidewalk. They kicked his face into bleeding meat. Another two men dragged the driver out of the car, while a third man drove an ice pick into the wheels. A skinny young red-haired man hit the driver with a hook, and he went down. Then a pale green van came around the corner. The back doors opened, and Knocko’s boys lifted the three unconscious gangsters, heaved them into the interior, and drove off. It was all over in a few brutal minutes.

  Delaney trembled. Could’ve died. Could have been dead right now. His left hand hurt, but he flexed it and was sure nothing had been broken. The skin of his middle knuckle was torn, but nothing else. He finished unlocking the bicycle and placed his bag in the basket. The skinny red-haired kid came over.

  “I’m Liam Hanratty,” he said. “My grandfather was Packy. You know, that trained you a long time ago? He told me about you. Now I know he wasn’t bullshitting.”

  “Looks like he taught you pretty good himself,” Delaney said. “I saw that hook.”

  “He said you had a terrific double hook. Body, then head.”

  Delaney shrugged, then shook hands gently with the young man.

  “Where’d they take those guys?” Delaney said.

  “Where else? The North River, I guess.”

  He laughed.

  “Teach them somethin’,” he said. “Don’t fuck wit’ the neighborhood.”

  Delaney left before the police arrived.

  Danny Shapiro arrived after dinner, while Carlito slept in his room. Rose gave the detective a plate of ravioli and a beer. They sat at the kitchen table.

  “We rounded up as many guys as we could find,” Shapiro said. “Corso’s old mob. Frankie’s mob. We locked them in separate jails. But this could go on awhile.”

  Rose said, “I don’t know when it ends.”

  “When they start marryin’ each other,” Shapiro said.

  “Ha! Never.”

  “Maybe that’s best,” Shapiro said. “They ever get together, we’re all in trouble.”

  “Maybe they should all see Romeo and Juliet sometime,” Delaney said.

  “Yeah, they get together too, Romeo and his Juliet,” Shapiro said. “Except they’re dead.”

  Shapiro laughed with Delaney. Rose only smiled. She had mastered the Daily News, Delaney thought, but Shakespeare would take a little longer. Shapiro finished his ravioli, wiping the plate clean. He sipped his beer.

  “Well, what should we do?” Delaney said. “Right here.”

  “Stay in the house. Keep the doors locked.”

  “Impossible,” Rose said. “That boy has to walk, I have to buy food.”

  “And I’ve got house calls every afternoon.”

  “Just for a few days,” Shapiro said. “Give them time to cool off. Racket guys need peace and quiet to do business. They’ll calm down. But it might get worse before it gets better.”

  He got up to leave.

  “The food was great, Rose,” he said.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  They walked to the door. Shapiro looked at Delaney.

  “Did you know this was coming?”

  “Put it this way, Danny. I wasn’t surprised.”

  Shapiro looked down.

  “What happened to your left hand, Doc?” he said.

  “Nothing much.”

  “That ain’t what I heard,” Shapiro said, and smiled.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

  “If I did, half the city would be in the can.”

  He tapped Delaney on the left shoulder and then he was gone. Rose locked the gate and the inside door. Then she folded her arms and stared at Delaney.

  “Okay, tell me,” she said. “What happen to your left hand?”

  “Let me brush my teeth first.”

  He told her in the dark, and she laughed and then went silent. He could hear her breathing harder.

  “I told you it wasn’t over,” she said.

  Then she started kissing him. His face and his neck and his skinned left hand.

  In the morning, they learned from the newspapers and the radio that Shapiro was right. It got worse. Two fully clothed bodies were fished from the North River and identified as members of the Frankie Botts mob. There was no sign of their hats. Around midnight a group of masked men kicked in the locked door of Club 65, heaved gasoline bombs into the empty interior, and left. The firemen came and poured water into the empty store and left it a wet smoking mess. The families that lived in the apartments above the bar all got to the street safely and would live with the stench of smoke for a few weeks. No deaths. Just a strategic bombing. A show.

  There were six more killings, scattered from Mulberry Street to Times Square, where a Corso man died in a movie house with an ice pick in his ear. But there was no sign of hoodlums in the neighborhood. Delaney went on working. He saw patients every morning. He made house calls. He stared at the olive tree. He painted bad paintings alongside Carlito. He made love to Rose at night. The papers said that the funeral of Frankie Botts would take place on Monday morning at Our Lady of Pompeii R.C. Church. There was even a photograph of Frankie’s mother leaving a funeral parlor on Second Avenue, frail, dressed in black, her face stern, a few stray hoodlums in the background, and two uniformed cops. On Saturday morning, Rose and the boy went shopping. Monique was uneasy.

  “I don’t like her taking the boy out there,” Monique said, gesturing toward the street.

  “He needs larger sneakers, and socks too,” he said. “She knows all the cheap places up on Fourteenth Street.”

  “Still . . .”

  “Rose says gangsters don’t get up this early.”

  “Well, she should know.”

  He ignored the edge in her voice.

  “Any mail from Spain?” he said.

  “No, just bills. I’ll have them ready later.”

  He turned to the door of his office.

  “Send in the first patient.”

  And so he spent the morning dealing with other people’s pain and fear. A woman with a spreading rash. An old longshoreman whose feet were red and swollen with diabetes. A young mother who was runny with gonorrhea and shame, both driven into her by a drunken husband. A man in his forties, shuddering and half-mad from the DTs, accompanied by a frightened teenaged daughter. A woman whose sputum and cough revealed the consumption. Two vets who needed quinine, and one who was losing feeling in a leg that had been lacerated at Château-Thierry. A black eye. A swollen jaw. A runny ear that gave off a vile odor. Pain. Fear. The need for relief or hope. None of them mentioned the gang war. In his office, Delaney fiddled with his pen.

  He wrote a single word on his pad.

  Rose.

  That Saturday night, he was sipping tea after dinner, thinking of taking Carlito back to Coney Island, to ride with him on the mechanical horses in Steeplechase. Or among the turrets
and minarets of Luna Park. Rose was upstairs with the boy. The phone rang. And rang. He picked it up. It was Jackie Norris, from the Harbor Police.

  “Hey, Doc,” he said. “Can you come over here to Brooklyn tomorrow? The Kings County morgue.”

  “Why?”

  “I think we found something.”

  They dropped off Carlito with Angela, and Rose said she would pick him up as soon as she finished at St. Brendan’s. Her face was apprehensive, because Delaney had told her in the night where he was going and why he could not take the boy. She said nothing, but her face told him that she was imagining many scenarios. Angela seemed delighted, and the boy was smiling and carrying his teddy bear. Delaney and Rose each told the boy that they would return soon and kissed his cheek. Then turned to Angela. She smiled at them in a knowing way. The harpies might not know. Mr. and Mrs. Cottrell might not know. Angela knew what they did in the night.

  They said good-bye, and Delaney walked Rose part of the way to St. Brendan’s. Few words were spoken.

  “If it’s her,” Rose said at the corner of Fourteenth Street and Eighth, “what are you going to do?”

  “Bury her,” he said. “What else can I do?”

  “And your daughter? She comes for the funeral?”

  “Maybe.” He hugged Rose. “First I have to see if it’s Molly.”

  Rose walked quickly toward St. Brendan’s. Delaney watched her for a few minutes. She turned and waved but did not smile. He waved back, and then headed for the subway.

  On the train out to Brooklyn, many Sunday-morning riders pored over the Daily News. The headline shouted: 2 MORE SLAIN. But he didn’t buy a paper, even from a kid hawking them in the subway cars. He wasn’t keeping score. On this morning, he didn’t even care who won the Giants game.

  Jackie Norris was waiting at the main entrance to Kings County Hospital, smoking a cigarette. His suit was rumpled, and he had the Daily News tucked under one arm. He saw Delaney and flipped his cigarette into the grass.

  “Doc,” he said. And nodded.

  “How’d you find her?”

  “If it’s her.”