Pete Hamill - North River

“That’s terrible.”

“No, it’s not. A lot of guys I used to know wish they had my problem, but they’re all dead. Here I can help a lot of people. And in a way, they’re my own people. So —” He glanced at the clock. “Hey, Jake, I’ve got to go.”

Zimmerman paused, then cleared his throat.

“I want to tell you something else,” he said.

“I know,” Delaney said. “So tell me.”

“I’m keeping the money,” Zimmerman said. “The money Eddie gave me.”

“You earned it.”

“It’s not even for me. My parents, well, this goddamned Depression, it has them —”

“Don’t explain, Jake.”

“I could get in a shitpot of trouble if —”

“Stop. Let’s walk to the hospital.”

Zimmerman exhaled, the tension draining out of him.

“I can’t. I’ve got to meet one of the other interns for a bite.”

Delaney opened the door.

“I’ll walk you to the corner.”

After grand rounds at St. Vincent’s, Delaney walked down the west side of Sixth Avenue, the El rising above him, the Jefferson Court House looming in the distance. At the corner of Tenth Street he saw the toy store. McNiff’s Toys. Run by Billy McNiff, who had opened it in 1928, three weeks after leaving prison, with a grubstake from one of his friends who were in on the holdup for which Billy took the fall. The shop’s windows were opaque with frost. Delaney went in. The small dark store was empty.

“Hello? Billy, you here?”

There was no answer, and he looked at the dusty toys in their bins. Tiny metal cars in bright colors, most of them Buicks. Bald, pink spaldeens, waiting for a stickball summer. Dolls with moving eyes, frozen into paralysis. Roller skates. A Flexible Flyer that nobody in the neighborhood could afford to race down a snowy hill. Surely stolen, Delaney thought. Somewhere uptown. Then, a dusty set of ice skates. A small red fire truck with a yellow ladder on top. Then he saw what he wanted: a bin full of teddy bears. He remembered an article in the Times where various pediatricians said that teddy bears gave young children a sense of security. There were no stuffed monkeys, and that was just as well. They would only remind him of the boy’s mother. Ah, Grace, goddamn you. We should be in this dump together, looking at the toys, and you could pick out what the boy might like and I could pay. You could tell me what you know about him that I don’t know. And then you could go, in pursuit of your goddamned husband, your last vision of utopia. You could give him a teddy bear too. I’ll take care of the boy.

The door opened abruptly, with a draft of cold, and slammed shut as Billy McNiff walked in.

“Hello, Doc,” he said, in a surprised way. “What the hell are you doin’ here?”

“Looking for a few presents,” Delaney said.

“We got ’em. At a good price too. Everything reduced ten pissent since Christmas. Who they for? Boy or girl?”

“Boy.”

McNiff was a small wiry man who seemed to bounce while he was standing still. His face was pared down, fleshless, lipless, like a skull. His skin seemed sprayed on his bones. As he came closer to Delaney, the odor of rum rose from his mouth and his body. From the saloon across the street. McNiff produced a paddle with a ball attached by a stapled rubber band.

“This is a hot item,” McNiff said. His eyes were glassy, and he started batting the ball with the paddle, missing three out of six times. “Kids love it.”

“I’ll take that, Billy,” Delaney said. “And this teddy bear.”

“What’s he? A Teddy Roosevelt fan?”

Delaney didn’t want a long talk, and said curtly: “Not at the moment.”

McNiff started wrapping the toys in a copy of the Daily News.

“The kid is your grandson, I guess.”

“You guess right.”

“The mother on vacation?”

“Sort of.”

“When’s she get back?”

“Billy, just wrap the stuff. No interrogation, please.”

McNiff laughed, his teeth brown and splintery.

“Sorry. It’s a habit from my youth.”

“What do I owe you?” Delaney said.

Out on the street, kids were everywhere, freed from the tenement flats.

Knocko Carmody came around a corner, in a gray fedora and long blue coat with a velvet collar. He grinned and embraced Delaney and asked how things were going and whether he needed anything.

“As a matter of fact…” Delaney paused. “As a matter of fact, I do need something. You know a steam heat guy?”

“Of course. My brother-in-law, Jimmy Spillane. Want me to send him over?”

“When he’s free, Knocko,” the doctor said. “I need an estimate.”

“Done.”

Knocko pulled out a pen and notebook and scribbled a reminder to himself. The way Big Jim did when he was doing his own form of grand rounds. Then Knocko stared for a moment at Delaney.

“You okay?” he said.

Delaney smiled. “Better than I thought I would be.”

“That Rose Verga is a pisser, ain’t she? Skinny as a rail, but she’d scare the shit out of a stevedore. A real hoodlum.”

Hoodlum was high praise indeed from Knocko Carmody. Knocko glanced at his watch.

“I’ll see you soon,” Delaney said, picking up the message. “Maybe at Angela’s. The boy likes bagetti.”

“You blame him? You wouldn’t want to give him Irish food, for Chrissakes.” He paused, then said: “Well, I gotta go bribe a judge.”

Knocko grinned, tapped Delaney on the shoulder, and went into a saloon called the Emerald Isle, walking the way Big Jim did, with an old-time West Side swagger, putting the weight on one foot and dragging the other.

Delaney got off the El at Twenty-third Street, hurrying down the rickety steps, Carlito’s bundle under his good arm. He walked north. At Twenty-fifth Street, he turned left into the wind off the North River. There was an ambulance in front of Eddie Corso’s brownstone, and a couple of cops inside a green-and-white cruiser, and a young gunsel in the uniform of gray fedora and long blue coat, leaning against the iron fence. The gate under the stoop opened and Bootsie stepped out. He gestured to Delaney with his head. Meaning “follow me.”

“How is he?” Delaney said.

“I ain’t the doctor,” Bootsie said. “You are.” He shook his head. “But he looks all right to me. Not great, but all right.”

Bootsie led the way up a flight of stairs and into the bedroom. Eddie Corso was lying in bed, paler and leaner and subtly older. He smiled when he saw Delaney.

“Hey,” he said, waving Bootsie out of the room. “You came.” He sat up. “What’s in the package? Cannoli?”

“Toys for the boy.”

“None for me?”

“You’re out for the season.” Then: “I have to check you out, Eddie.”

“I’m great. That kid you got me, Dr. Jake, he did a great job.”

“Let me look.”

Sighing, Eddie unbuttoned his nightshirt and with Delaney’s help slipped it off his shoulders.

“I suppose you’re leaving town,” Delaney said, as he gently lifted a bandage to look at the wound. “I guess the cop car will escort you at least as far as the Holland Tunnel.” Corso nodded, smiled, said nothing. Delaney said: “Let’s see… ” Eddie Corso was right: the incision was clean, the stitches removed. Healing well. Zimmerman had done a fine job. Delaney started tamping down the adhesive of the bandages.

“Yeah, I’m going. Maybe Florida. I need a tan.”

“You got a nurse to go with you in that ambulance? These things have to be changed twice a day.”

“She’s down in the kitchen. I stole her from St. Vincent’s for six months.”

“You’re taking a nun to Florida?”

“She’s not a nun. You think I’m nuts? Her name’s Stella.”