North River (13 page)

Now he hesitated. Thinking: I don’t need to do this. I can leave it for the police. For Danny Shapiro. For Jackie Norris. Leave it. Leave it. And then walked in as abruptly as he used to dive into the North River as a boy.

The bar was bright from the light of the street and was still laid out the way it had been in the years of Fenians and rumrunners. But there were far fewer drinkers now. Propped on stools at the bar, each forming a little triangle with one leg on the floor for balance, three men whispered inaudibly, as if their volume had been reduced by the sudden presence of a stranger. Another man was at the far end of the bar, near the window, hands in his pockets, gazing at the street. They all wore the gangster uniform: pearl-gray hat, dark unbuttoned overcoat, polished black shoes. The clothes said that not one of them was about to go to work, ever. As in memory, a passageway led to the back room. Delaney stepped to the bar. The bartender was a huge suety man with thinning hair and a pug’s mashed nose. Delaney remembered Packy Hanratty’s saying of such a face, If he could fight, he wouldn’t have that nose. The bartender spread his large hands on the bar and leaned forward.

“Need directions?” he said.

“Just a beer,” Delaney said, and laid a dollar on the bar. The man eased over to the tap and pulled a lager. He placed it in front of Delaney and lifted the dollar. He rang up ten cents on the register, brought the change back to him, and stared at Delaney.

“Is Frankie Botts around?” Delaney said.

“Who?”

“Frankie Botts.”

“I don’t know no Frankie Botts.”

“Frankie Botticelli. Tell him Dr. Delaney is here. He should be expecting me.”

The bartender stared harder at Delaney, then gestured with his head to one of the three men. They’d heard everything that was said. One of them slipped off his stool and strolled into the back room. He was back quickly, looking surprised.

“Hands up,” he said.

Delaney raised his hands and was patted down.

“Back there,” the man said.

Delaney left a nickel tip and carried the beer through the passageway. A window opened into a tiny kitchen, but there was no cook and no sign of food. In the corner of the large back room, four men were playing cards. There were booths along one wall, as in the old days, and about six tables, but nobody else except the card players. Delaney walked to them, taking off his hat, holding it in his bad right hand.

“Give me a minute, Doc,” said the man who must have been Frankie Botts. “I wanna finish takin’ these bastards’ money.”

The other players looked up in an amused way, and the game continued. The back room was warmer, radiators knocking with steam heat. The side door was closed. Each player had a pack of cigarettes in front of him: two Lucky Strikes, one Chesterfield, one Old Gold. They used a common ashtray. Three of the men each had a shot glass in hand, but Frankie Botts sipped from a cup of black American coffee, a distinction that made him look more sinister.

Delaney moved away from the table, sipping from his beer. Club 65 was the same kind of place where Eddie Corso had been shot on New Year’s morning. The Good Men Club was Eddie’s joint. Club 65 belonged to Frankie Botts. Neighborhood saloons that functioned as private clubs. All strangers were discouraged. There were framed photographs of prizefighters on one wall. Dempsey, of course, Mickey Walker, Tony Canzoneri, Jimmy McLarnin, others whose names he used to know, now vanished from memory. A framed cover of the
Police Gazette
showed Gene Tunney in his prime. One larger one was signed by Jimmy Braddock, who must have known the place well. The ballplayers were there too. Ruth and Gehrig and Crosetti. And high in the corner was Matty. From before the war, before Prohibition, before the Depression. Browning now, and dim. Christy Mathewson himself. And there were other photographs: soldiers in uniformed rows, all from the AEF, and he moved closer and peered at them. Looking for familiar faces, but seeing none. Two neighborhoods away from the North River, and the living and the dead were strangers. Every saloon south of Thirty-fourth Street used the same decorations.

Delaney turned at the sound of groans and saw that the game was over. Frankie Botts swept up the pot. He was a lean man in his early forties, elegantly dressed, hair slicked back like George Raft. His shirt was, as usual for a big-shot gangster, white on white, with linen threads in diamond patterns adding luxury to a cotton base. And as usual, he was wearing a pinkie ring. His eyes were black under trimmed brows. He remained seated while the others stood up and moved to the far side of the room, where they took a table out of earshot.

“Sit down,” Botts said.

Delaney sat down, placed his beer beside him. It was going flat.

“You got some pair of balls, coming here,” Botts said, his mouth a slit.

“Mr. Botticelli, I never did anything to you.”

“Yeah? On the street, I hear you pissed off some people. On the street, I hear you saved Eddie Corso’s miserable fuckin’ life.”

“He saved mine. Twice. In France.”

Botts stared at him. His mouth got tighter.

“I don’t want to hear no war stories.”

Delaney shrugged. “Fine with me.”

Botts moved a spoon through his coffee, sipped, then yelled across the room: “Charlie, I need a fresh coffee.”

The one named Charlie hurried into the passage to the bar. Botts stared at Delaney.

“You was in France?”

“Yes.”

“My brother Carmine was killed in France. That’s him over there.”

He turned to the wall and pointed at a photo of a handsome young man. He seemed to have been photographed by the same cameraman who had pointed his lens at the Fischetti boy now on the wall of Angela’s restaurant. He remembered Packy Hanratty’s old advice: Don’t punch with a puncher. Box him.

“Where was he killed?” Delaney said politely.

“Château-Thierry.”

“That was a horror. What outfit?”

“The Sixty-ninth. What else? He was there three days and bang! Good-bye, Carmine. He was just nineteen. A fuckin’ waste.” He paused. “They didn’t just kill Carmine. They killed my mother too. She ain’t been right ever since.”

Delaney sighed, said: “I’m sorry for your trouble.” The Irish cliché. Then added: “Eddie Corso was shot too. Twice.”

“Yeah, but the prick lived.”

“That wasn’t Eddie’s fault. The Germans did their best.”

There was color now on the face of Frankie Botts. “Then, New Year’s Day,
you
save him,
again.
” His eyes sunk beneath his brows. They took on a metallic sheen. “And you cause nothing but trouble for me.”

“Mr. Botticelli, I’m a doctor. It’s what I do. I’d do it for you, too.”

“Bullshit.”

“Try me sometime. You know where I live. Unfortunately.”

Charlie came in with a cup of coffee and placed it in front of Botts. His voice and manner were apologetic.

“Sorry, boss. Had to make a fresh pot . . .”

Frankie Botts waved him away. Without looking at Delaney, he sipped from the hot coffee, laid down the cup. The pinkie ring flashed.

Then looking up, the eyes still lurking below the brows, his body coiled as if to strike, he said: “So whatta you want from me?”

Delaney cleared his throat. “Tell your man Gyp Pavese to move to Minnesota,” he said. “He calls my house last night, two in the morning. He repeats a threat he made the other night. He’s a clown, a knife artist, a gunsel, a prime jerk, and you must know it. But he’s doing his act in your name.”

“Why should I give a fuck?”

“First of all, if this clown Gyp kills me, there’ll be open warfare. And you know it, Mr. Botts. I’m the only doctor they have over by the North River. They don’t have much money anymore, but they do have guns. A lot of them. There’d be piles of corpses. Some pissed-off Mick will shoot at your guys and hit a little girl going to buy day-old bread. One of your guys will shoot out the window of a cab and kill a woman who lost a son at Château-Thierry. The war here would be more senseless than the war in France.”

Thinking: Stop. You’re making a speech. Get to the goddamned point.

“There’s another thing,” Delaney said, lowering his voice. “The most important thing of all.” A pause. “I’ve got a kid living with me. He’s three years old. My grandson. His mother’s gone off. If anything happens to me, I don’t know what will happen to that little boy.” A beat. “And last night Gyp threatened to do something bad to the boy.”

In the eyes of Botts, a shift. Irritation with Gyp? Annoyance? Certainly not sympathy.

“And I promise you, Mr. Botticelli, if Gyp puts the snatch on that boy, if Gyp
kills
him, I’ll make sure Gyp dies. And a few other people too. That’s not a threat. That’s a promise.”

“It sounds like a threat to me.”

He tamped out the cigarette and stood up, scraping his chair on the tiled floor. The wall clock said one forty-five. Delaney tensed. A nod to the other gangsters could kill him.

“You wanna end this?” Botts said. “It’s easy. Tell me where Eddie Corso is.”

Delaney looked directly at him.

“I told you I don’t know,” he said. “I assume he’s far away.”

A pause.

“You better get outta here,” Botts said. “While you can fuckin’ walk.”

Delaney went out the side door, pulling his hat tight against the bitter wind. He inhaled deeply, held his breath, then exhaled hard, making a small cloud of steam. His guts settled, as if he’d swallowed a gallon of vanilla ice cream. Nothing else was settled, but he had said his piece and was still alive. Frankie Botts knew better now what the stakes were. What could happen, if . . . He started walking west, glancing behind him. Nobody left Club 65. There were more people on Bleecker Street now, kids heading for school or home, women carrying groceries, men with slabs of lumber on their shoulders and others with toolboxes, hurrying along toward the Bowery or Broadway. He walked faster now, the sidewalk traffic thicker as he approached Broadway. And then he saw her, one hand inside the long blue coat, the other deep in a pocket, a dark wool hat pulled low over her ear, her men’s boots large and clumsy. Rose.

He stopped and waited for her to reach him. Her face was tight and concentrated, all vertical lines, two of them above the long nose. Then, six feet away, she saw him. Her eyes glistened.

“You’re here,” she said. “Right here on Bleecker Street.”

“Yes. And I still have a heartbeat.”

“God damn you,” she said, standing there, not taking her hands from the pockets of the coat. She looked smaller. Angry tears began coming.

“Why’d you go see Frankie Botts and not tell me? Why do I have to learn this from a note on Monique’s desk, when she goes to the bathroom? About if you don’t come back, call Knocko. Call Shapiro the cop. God damn you, Dottore!”

A few people turned their heads to look at them, and kept moving. Rose stepped back and wiped at her eyes with the sleeve of her coat. He hugged her, patting her back.

“Let’s go home,” he said quietly. “We can buy ice cream for Carlito.”

SEVEN

W
HEN THEY TURNED INTO
H
ORATIO STREET, THE WATCHERS
were still there. Two of Knocko’s boys. A plainclothes dick sent by Shapiro. One was facing the house from across the street, the others off to left and right, guarding the block, each with a view of the house. Delaney nodded to each of them. They nodded back, seeing Rose carrying the bag with the pint of ice cream. The shades were drawn in the Cottrell house, the boards still nailed shut in the house to the left, where so many Logans died in so few minutes.

They went into the front yard, and Delaney gave the watchers a little wave.

“We have to get these guys some coffee,” he said.

“Of course.”

The boy was in Monique’s room, seated on a chair, his small legs dangling. The paddleball on the floor. He leaped up and ran to Rose. An odd emotion brushed across Monique’s face: annoyance. Or relief. But she said nothing.

He called Knocko and then Shapiro and told them about his meeting with Frankie Botts. Each said the same thing: It ain’t over, so watch your ass.

Rose brought coffee in a thermos to the watchers and handed each a cup. When she returned, her face was still ruddy from the cold. They had cheese sandwiches, each grilled into what she called a panino, and then they ate the ice cream. Delaney felt it move cleanly into his stomach, calming him. He was sure he felt even more creamy pleasure from the ice cream than the boy did himself. On the radio, Bing Crosby was singing “I Found a Million-Dollar Baby.”

“You okay, Dottore?” Rose said.

“For now. What about you?”

“For now,” she said. “For now.”

Delaney hugged the boy and then dressed to go out on house calls. He returned at dusk. Kids were everywhere. He saw Mr. Cottrell step out of his daily taxi, locked in his permanent solitude. Knocko’s men were still there. He dined with Rose and the boy on soup and bread, the boy delighted with both. Then the telephone rang in Delaney’s office.

Rose gave him an ominous look. The phone kept ringing. Delaney hurried into his office and lifted the black receiver.

“Dr. Delaney here,” he said.

“Hey, what’s doing?”

Danny Shapiro, with a chuckle in his cop’s voice.

“Hey, Danny,” Delaney said, trying to smother the nerves in his voice. “Everything’s normal here. Thanks to you and the rest of the neighborhood.”

“Just checking,” Shapiro said. “Hug that little boy.”

“I will.”

He stood there for a beat, then returned to the kitchen. Rose saw the relieved look on his face and smiled.

Alone in bed, Delaney saw again the metallic sunken eyes of Frankie Botts. Actors worked long hours in front of mirrors to master that look. But actors fired blanks. Botts had killed people, and would kill more. The offense didn’t matter. Killing was a form of power. He imagined a ballpark. A river in flood. The olive tree in the garden, bursting into life. Anything but Frankie’s eyes. He fell into a light sleep. There were no phone calls.

But in a dream, Delaney saw the boy in pajamas, walking the shoulder of a midnight highway. Trucks and cars roared by, while the boy kept saying, “Mamá . . . Mamá . . . Mamá.” Over and over again. Then a Packard pulled over on the shoulder, behind the boy. A man in a fedora and long coat stepped out. Delaney started running to them, and then the snow came. No highway now. No trucks. No Packard. No coiled man in a long overcoat. No boy. Just the snow whining and blowing.

And Delaney woke up with his heart beating fast and the echo of a word in the dark room. He knew that the word must have been “Carlito.”

In the morning, Rose smiled in a tentative way. The radio was on, with news from distant places. The boy walked into the kitchen, still bleary with sleep.

“Good morn’, Rose. Good morn’, Ga’paw.”

Rose hugged him.

“Good morn
ing,
Carlos. You wash your hands?”

He nodded yes, then corrected himself.

“No,” he said, and hurried off to the upstairs bathroom.

“First he tells a lie, like all kids,” she said. “Then he changes his mind and tells the truth.”

“That’s a good habit to develop.”

“He’ll never be a politician,” Rose said.

“You never know.”

When the boy returned, his face was damp from washing. The room filled with the odor of frying bacon. He smiled.

“Goody,” he said. “Bay-con!”

“You said it, boy,” Rose said. “Very goody.”

Delaney glanced at the
Daily News.
In Germany, the Nazis had rewritten the Psalms. In Vienna, there was talk of a socialist rising and Chancellor Dollfuss promised to smash it with all the power of the state. He remembered seeing Dollfuss at a street rally in Vienna: a small, vehement young man, lashing out at journalists who made fun of his size. Now he had power. And small men with guns were dangerous people.

He turned to the back page, where only sports mattered. There was a photo of Mel Ott after connecting with a ball during a spring training game in Miami Beach. Behind him in the box seats could be seen the blurred faces of exultant fans. Delaney was sure that a man in the third row, shaking a fist, was Eddie Corso. Out of focus. With a beard. And thought: Frankie Botts must read the
News
too.

He went on his house calls, charged with wary energy as he moved through the cold bright afternoon. He walked with energy, climbed stairs with energy, spoke energy into his patients. As he walked, he ignored the three feet of sidewalk directly in front of him and looked at everything. At men. At strange faces. At cars. It was dark when he came home. A lone guard sat in a parked car, a lone window open an inch to cut the steam on the windows. One of Knocko’s muscle boys. They exchanged waves. Rose was humming some vagrant tune as she heated his meatballs and dropped pasta into boiling water. Carlito was upstairs in his bed.

“You look better,” Rose said. “Color in your face . . .”

“It’s the wind, not me, Rose.”

“No phone calls today — I mean, from those guys.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“You’re right. There’s too much goddamn worry around here.”

She ladled out the pasta and added the sauce, placed the food before him, and sat down to a cup of tea. The bread had been freshened in the oven.

“And Carlito?” Delaney said.

“Okay. He’s a good boy. But I told him, no more ice cream till his birthday.”

“Why not?”

“He’ll get
fat,
that’s why not. Get to look like a balloon in the Thanksgivin’ Day parade.”

Delaney laughed and so did Rose. He felt that this was now her domain, the room she ruled, as if she had been here for years.

After dinner he went into his office, the door open behind him. There were two new medical magazines, mail from St. Vincent’s, and a large envelope from the alumni association at Johns Hopkins, surely soliciting money. He put aside the medical magazines. For a long time now, he only glanced at the journals of his trade, looking at them within the context of his patients. He wanted to read about a vaccine that would cure their ailments. Stop gangrene. End tuberculosis. Dry up gonorrhea. These breakthroughs never came. And he never read the articles on advances in surgery.

Underneath the newspapers was a sealed letter. Addressed to him in Grace’s handwriting. With a Spanish stamp and postmark. He held it for a long moment. Then Rose was at the door, and he slipped it into his pocket.

“You better go read that upstairs,” Rose said. Her eyes were full of some unsettled mixture of pity and resentment.

“I guess so,” he said.

“Then go,” she said. “I’ll close up down here.”

“See you in the morning,” he said. Feeling all energy flee.

He laid the letter on the bed while he undressed. He washed and brushed his teeth, hearing Rose climbing the stairs, and then was alone in the silence. He donned pajamas and his robe and the old battered leather slippers. There was no sound from the street either, except the whine of the wind. He built a small fire to take the chill off the room. Then he was ready to sit down to read.

Dear Daddy,

I hope Carlito is well. I dream about him. I see his face when walking the streets or having a quick bite. I see a child his age and I fight back tears (most of the time). Sometimes I feel I’ve done the worst thing a mother can do to a child. Other times, I feel that I’m doing this all for Carlito. I hope that someday he will understand. Someday, when the world is more just, you will understand too, Daddy. Because I’m aware that I’ve done this to you too. You must be so angry with me, and so overwhelmed with things to do. Here in Barcelona, I see you too, walking the streets with your black bag.

I’ll be back as soon as possible. I promise. But I have to find my husband first. I’ve reached out to people who might know him, and at least one was encouraging. I can’t say more.

I’m writing this from a table in the Plaza Real, a beautiful square down near the bottom of the Ramblas, the great street of Barcelona. It’s early morning. Later it will be crowded. I’m learning the map of the tables in the plaza. The table of the communists. The table of the left Republicans. The table of the anarchists. The table of the socialists. There is no table for the conservatives, or the monarchists, or the fascists. At least I don’t know if there is. I doubt it, not here in red Barcelona, where the bishops now keep the doors of all churches locked against the rabble. At the Plaza Real, everybody reads newspapers and smokes cigarettes and drinks the tallest glasses of beer this side of York-ville. There is much talk of armed struggle, which I’ve picked up from scraps of conversation. I’ve bought a sketchbook and charcoal and sketch at the table, as attentive as a spy. I’m staying at a small pension a few blocks away from the Plaza, cheap and clean, but noisy at night. By the time you read this, I might be at another place, so keep using American Express. Try to send me a photograph of Carlito.

One other thing, Daddy. It’s hard for me to say this, but Momma is not coming back. You must face that reality. She is almost certainly dead. It’s time for you to get on with your life. I know that I’m not a very good person to be telling you how to live your life. In my own foolish way, I’ve done what Momma did to you: disappeared. But I know I’ll be back. Momma will not come back. You should find a good woman who will love you in the way you deserve.

With all my love, and please hug my little boy, who is also yours,

Grace

This time he did not weep. He read Grace’s letter again, and looked for his fountain pen to write a reply. Full of anger. The pen was not in his jacket. He must have left it on his desk. And now, a sense of relief brought on drowsiness, and he did not want to go back down the stairs. He knew where Grace was. At least he had that. He knew that five days earlier she was safe enough to sit at a café table and write to him. His reply could wait until morning. Perhaps by then his fury would be gone, like the end of a fever. He moved to the bed and picked up Byron, but he did not read. He thought: Tomorrow I must buy a camera.

Dearest Grace,

I was so happy to hear from you, to know (more or less) where you are, and that you are safe. Please don’t worry. What is done is done, and I suppose you must finish your task before coming home again. It has been bitter cold here, and the casualties of the Depression are everywhere. But we are getting by, better than most.

Carlito is a delight. He is now a champion with the paddleball. He is also a southpaw. He has grown about half an inch since he got here, and is a huge fan of bacon and eggs, Italian bread, and bagetti with meatballs. He seems to add between seven and ten words of English every day. I’ve hired a housekeeper, an Italian immigrant woman who speaks English. She is in your old studio, and Carlito is next door. Between her and Monique, I can still do my work.

Send me messages as often as possible. Later today I’ll buy a Brownie and make some photos. Thank you for what you said about your mother, though I haven’t yet accepted that final reality. Here, too, is a little bit of money. Above all, do not vanish.

With much love,

Dad

He slipped a hundred-dollar bill inside the envelope, and a second sheet of blank paper to hide it better, then addressed the envelope and sealed it. He sat there for a long moment. He had erased his anger. He hoped his words were not too cold or pompous. Then he heard the boy jumping down the stairs. “Ga’paw!” the boy shouted. “Ga’paw!”

They came in a steady line: two men who needed quinine; a sixteen-year-old girl with permanent headaches; a haggard man who had been coughing for seven weeks; a man suffering from what was surely leukemia; a fat wheezing woman whose swollen legs refused to take her across a room; a woman with tuberculosis who could never afford the pampered exile of Saranac Lake. He did what he could.

Monique went off to mail the letter to Barcelona and to buy a cheap camera and some film. Her annoyed look was still in place.
I have to talk to her, find out . . .
Then the last patient was gone, and Delaney sat there looking at old mail. He tore some of it in half and dropped it in his wastebasket. He riffled through the
Daily News.
The phone kept ringing, but Delaney ignored it. Then an aggravated Rose came through from the kitchen and lifted the receiver.