Pete Hamill - North River

A heavy woman in her fifties paused and looked from Carlito to Delaney.

“You better give him a good whack, mister,” she said. “ ’Cause that kid ain’t goin’ nowheres.”

“I ain’t goin’ no ways,” Carlito said.

The heavy woman said, “Whad I tell ya?”

Delaney thought: Fuck off, lady.

But squatted down beside Carlito.

“Listen to me, Carlito.” The boy looked at him. “I know you want to stay. But first we have to go somewhere else. All of this, the bats and balls and guns, they’ll still be here. But I have to meet a friend, and then we can come back.”

The boy looked at Delaney with doubt in his eyes. Then he sighed, a form of surrender. Delaney stood and took his hand, and they walked across the wide avenue.

Then a man in a straw boater and sunglasses and a thick mustache emerged from the eddying crowds.

“Hey, Doc, glad you could make it. Come on.”

It was Bootsie.

His plain black Ford was parked on a side street and they got into it. The boy was still resisting. He wanted loud music, guns, baseball, watermelon. He clearly didn’t want to get into a car. Delaney placed him on his lap. Bootsie turned into the two-way traffic on Surf Avenue and inched along, with Steeplechase across the street on the beach side. Delaney could see Scoville’s, the saloon where for years his father and the other Tammany guys celebrated the birthday of John McKane, the nineteenth-century Tammany prince of Coney Island. The ritual started when McKane came home from Sing Sing in 1898. The old Coney boss died a year later, but the ritual went on, ending only with the double calamity of the influenza epidemic and Prohibition. And here was Scoville’s open again, and he wondered how many people were left alive who remembered McKane in his heyday.

Then Bootsie turned right into a side street and pulled into a driveway beside an old-fashioned bungalow on a street of identical bungalows. Kids played in the sandy front yards. Men walked home with the Sunday papers.

“This is it,” Bootsie announced, opening his door. The boy looked surprised. A house? Where is the sea?

“Thanks, pal.”

The door opened on the porch and there was Eddie Corso. In white slacks, sandals, and a sport shirt. His skin was dark and oiled and he had grown a white beard, neatly trimmed. He and Delaney embraced. There were no stale morphine jokes. Delaney stepped back and held Eddie’s shoulders.

“You look good, Sergeant. Where’d you get the tan?”

“Out west.” He waved a hand around at the neighborhood. “Here too.”

“And the beard?”

“Out west too. Do I look like a rabbi?”

“One full of wisdom and years.”

“This is the boy, huh?”

“This is the boy, all right.” Delaney moved the boy a few inches closer. “Carlito, this is my friend.”

“ ’Lo,” the boy said, offering his hand. Corso shook it. Delaney never said Corso’s name. In the age of the holy G-men, you never knew when they might drag a three-year-old before a grand jury. A breeze off the sea made a porch rocker move slightly.

Corso said, “Come on in, get a cold drink.”

When he led the way back inside, bells jangled on the outside door, and then he pushed through an inside screen door. Delaney looked around. There was a wide room inside the doors, with a couch and two chairs and a low table. There was a small kitchen with an icebox and a counter. The back of the house was dark, with two closed doors sealing off the bedrooms. It felt like what it was: a place for transients. There was a pistol on the counter. Another pistol was on the low table. Corso opened the icebox.

“Le’s see. I got Cokes, some beers… You don’t drink, but what about the kid?”

“He’s off the beer for now, Sergeant.”

Delaney noticed the boy staring at the gun on the low table. Corso popped open three Coca-Colas.

“One small favor. Carlito has his eye on that gun.”

“Oh, shit, I forgot.” He turned to Bootsie. “Stick that rod somewheres. Then go work on your tan while I talk to the good doctor.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Bootsie placed the pistol on a shelf above the sink, then went outside. He left the outside door open and the breeze came through the screen door. Delaney could hear the sound of the rocker moving heavily, as Bootsie watched the street.

“How do you feel?” he said to Corso.

“Pretty good.” Corso opened his shirt. His body was tanned but the scar remained a livid white. Delaney ran his fingers over it. It would fade. The way Rose’s scar had faded.

“He did a good job, that fella at the hospital,” Corso said.

“He sure did.”

“So why are you back?” Delaney said quietly.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t. Last I heard, you were getting out of the rackets.”

“I am,” Corso said, and sipped from the Coke bottle. “But first I got some unfinished business.”

Carlito stood up from the couch and stared through the screen door at some kids playing in the street.

“Forget about it,” Delaney said. “Just leave it alone.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

Delaney sighed, and stared at the Coke bottle in his bad hand.

“I gotta ask you a few things,” Corso said.

“You mean about Frankie Botts and me?”

“Yeah.”

“I was treating his mother. She had a bad case of shingles.”

Corso smiled. “A case of what?”

Delaney explained, and noticed Carlito at the screen door, staring past Bootsie at the street.

“And you brought that woman, what’s her name? She’s taking care of the kid?”

“Rose. To translate for the old lady.” A pause. “I told Frankie I would treat his mother if he would call off his boys. Somehow Frankie blamed me for saving your life on New Year’s Day. He wanted me to tell him where you were. I told the truth. I didn’t know. Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell. But some guys came around, a guy named Gyp. There were phone calls. I was afraid. For Rose. For the boy.”

Corso stared hard at Delaney, then exhaled and leaned back in his chair.

“Stay away from Frankie Botts,” he said. “It could be dangerous.”

“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.