Pete Hamill - North River

On the crowded train, the knuckles of her hand were white as she gripped the long bar above the packed seats. Delaney saw a film of sweat on her upper lip. She nodded when he said, “Just two stops and we’re there.” He stared at the reflection of her distracted face in the window glass as they moved through the black tunnel. She was looking at nothing. Or at things stirring vividly within her head. The blood seeping from Callahan’s scalp. Tillman’s badge. And perhaps most important: the visit later to Delaney’s bed. Delaney himself was still full of what had happened between them in the dark. They had crossed a line together. In the morning, everything had been the same, and utterly changed.

He glanced at the reflections in the windows: shopgirls anxious to be on time, Wall Street clerks in linty double-breasted suits, a uniformed cop with a drained face, heading to Brooklyn. Many read newspapers. All seemed gripped by the seediness of the Depression. None could have imagined what was filling Rose’s mind, or Delaney’s.

They came up onto Chambers Street, in the bright morning river light, slanting to the west from Brooklyn. They started walking to Broadway, and at the corner a small ice truck made a sudden turn, angrily blaring its horn. Rose jumped in alarm, shouted in Sicilian, and took Delaney’s arm. He squeezed it closer.

“Easy, Rose,” he said, and smiled. “Usually guys like that just run you over.”

She threw him a dark glance but said nothing. They walked uptown two blocks to Duane Street, and he could feel her gathering her strength for what awaited them. Her face was harder, her brow furrowed, her eyes focused on the sidewalk directly in front of them. Her grip on his arm grew tighter. They turned east on Duane Street, and saw up ahead the vast brightness of Foley Square. It was named for Tom Foley, who ran a saloon and was a chieftain in Tammany Hall and a good friend of Big Jim’s. Long ago, Foley gave a job to a kid named Al Smith, who had never finished the eighth grade, and Smith went on to become governor of New York and the Democratic candidate for president in 1928. Smith didn’t forget that Foley had given him his life, and pushed hard to name the square after him, as it was constructed on the site of the old Collect Pond and the Five Points slum. On the far side of the square, Delaney could see the new federal courthouse, its steel frame rising more than thirty stories into the sky, to be finished in another year. The FBI office was a block to the north. He mentioned none of this to Rose. She was rehearsing her secret script. Questions. Answers.

They turned into an office building on Duane Street and took an elevator to the sixth floor. She released her grip on his arm. They stepped out of the elevator into a small reception area, with a woman behind a sliding glass window.

“Dr. Delaney to see Judge Flanagan, please,” he said.

“One moment, sir.”

She hit a button, whispered into the phone, then turned to Delaney and motioned to an oaken door.

“Go right in, sir.”

Across the carpeted room, Harry Flanagan rose from a swivel chair behind a cluttered desk, a wide smile on his face. He was not wearing a jacket, and the many curves of his body were emphasized by his wilting white shirt.

“Good morning, Dr. Delaney,” he said, extending a hand for Delaney to shake. “And this must be, Miss, uh —”

“Verga,” Rose said. “Rose Verga.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Verga,” he said.

“Likewise,” she said.

“Have a seat,” he said, and Rose sat in one of the two chairs facing the judge’s desk. Then Flanagan gestured with his head to Delaney and walked to a wall covered with framed photographs. Delaney followed. There were pictures of ballplayers and prizefighters, soldiers and politicians. Al Smith was there and Jimmy Walker, who was away now in European exile. And there were many group photographs from political dinners and chowder outings and trips to Saratoga and the Polo Grounds. Flanagan pointed a finger at one group shot.

“I noticed this when I came in this morning,” he said. “It’s gotta be, what? Nineteen thirteen? Anyway, before the war. Right there in the middle is Tom Foley, that they named the square after. Look who’s next to him. That’s your father, Doctor. That’s Big Jim.” Delaney squinted. It was Big Jim all right. “And next to him? That’s me. I musta been seventy-five pounds lighter!” He laughed. “But look at this runt, over here on the left? That kid. Know who that is?”

Delaney shrugged. He didn’t know.

“That’s your man Tillman,” he said. “He came out of St. Brigid’s, his father dead, and Tom Foley, bless his heart, helped put him through law school. He ended up at the Justice Department during the war, and Hoover made him part of the Palmer Raids. When they started the FBI, he was right there.”

“I’ll be damned,” Delaney said.

Flanagan wheezed and returned to the swivel chair. Rose was trying hard to decode this conversation and sat very still, her face empty of emotion. Delaney took the other chair.

“Anyway, I called Mr. Tillman this morning,” Flanagan said, in a dry tone. “I reminded him who your father was, I reminded him that this fella Callahan didn’t have a search warrant. I reminded him what the papers would do with all this. He was very nice.”

Then he paused for a beat. He focused on Rose.

“Go home,” he said. “It’s all over.”

Rose went loose, with sounds coming from her, but no words. Uh. Just uh and uh and uh. Her hands moved without purpose. Delaney stood up. He felt as if his own tension was leaking out on the carpet.

“Thanks, Judge,” he said, shaking Flanagan’s hand with both of his own. “Thanks very much.”

“Yes,” Rose said. “Many, many thanks.”

Flanagan glanced at his wristwatch and stood up too.

“What is it the great Boss Tweed once said?” he said, and grinned. “It’s better to know the judge than to know the law.”

Back on Duane Street, she put a hand on a scrawny tree and started to laugh. Bent over. Released. Men and women hurrying past looked at her, and the women smiled and the men seemed baffled. All kept moving. Then Delaney saw that she was sobbing through the laughter. He handed her a handkerchief, and she wiped at her face and giggled like a youngster.

“Oh, Dottore. Oh, thank you. Oh, you crazy Irish. Oh.”

He put an arm around her waist and guided her to Broadway. Across the street was a large cafeteria called the Broadway Café, and they went in. She had not eaten breakfast, and he had only sipped from a cup of coffee. The place was loud with talk and the clatter of dishes and silverware. Many tables were filled: lawyers and defendants, reporters from the Sun, which was a block away, groups of three or four middle-aged uptown women preparing for a day of shopping for downtown bargains. Delaney and Rose paused inside the door, then saw two men get up from a table. One was clearly a lawyer, the other clearly a mug. The mug was dressed in a chalk-striped suit and looked nervous. Delaney nodded as they went to meet their fate, and Delaney and Rose sat down. There were empty coffee cups and some plates on the table, and a cigarette burning in an ashtray. A young man cleared the table, stubbing out the cigarette, and then a waitress in a green uniform came to them and faced Delaney, a pencil poised above her pad.

“What’s yours, sweetheart?” she said.

He explained to Rose: “No menus here.”

“Uh, let me see,” Rose said. “How about a roll with butter, a fried egg, and a jelly doughnut.”

“You want the fried egg on the jelly doughnut?” the waitress said. Then giggled. “Just kiddin’,” she said. She was about forty, with a tough Irish face. Rose said separate plates would be fine. Delaney said, “Just the buttered roll, and coffee, please. Black coffee.”