North River

TWELVE

IN THE MORNING, IN HIS BEDROOM, FRESH FROM A SHOWER, A bathrobe loose across his shoulders, Delaney glanced at the newspapers. There was a huge taxi strike, with twenty-five thousand hackies out on the street. La Guardia, speaking as a New Yorker and an American and not as a Republican, said in a speech that everybody must support President Roosevelt. The Giants were working their way east and north, playing exhibition games. John Dillinger was spotted in Santa Fe and in Oregon on the same weekend, but did not rob any banks. There was no news from Spain. And no sound from the top floor.

He removed the robe and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt stronger, younger, after only a week on the bicycle. I’ll have to work even harder now, pedal more furiously, or the Italian food will smother my Celtic bones. His eyes fell on the books beside the bed, and the third volume from the top was a selection of the work of Dante Alighieri. He slipped it out. The frontispiece was a small black-and-white version of the portrait at the Met that looked like Frankie Botts. He started dressing for the day, and wondered what would happen in the afternoon on Grand Street.

That afternoon they walked to Grand and Mott from the subway, and Rose was sullen most of the way. Carlito was now in the care of Monique, and Rose wasn’t pleased to be drafted into Delaney’s service. She wore her old shoes and walked quickly, as if wanting to rush back to Horatio Street. The streets here were crowded, the last of the pushcarts parked beside the curbs. In the newspapers, La Guardia was saying that he would get all the pushcarts off the streets because they were unsanitary, but suggesting that they were part of the stereotype of Italians and thus had to go. Most were still on the streets, but because of the strike, the taxis were not. Rose moved through the neighborhood as if it was at once familiar and alien.

“I don’t like doing this,” Rose said when they were a block away.

“It’s not for him,” Delaney said. “It’s for his mother.”

“You know she’s Sicilian, right?”

“I thought Frankie was a Neapolitan.”

“No, it was a — how do you say it? Mix marriage?”

Delaney wanted to laugh but didn’t. “That’s why Frankie must have asked for you.”

She shrugged and looked ahead in a dark wary way. “Maybe.”

She paused to examine the window of Di Palo’s cheese store. Little signs were pinned into the cheeses: ragusana, romano, mozzarella. Her lips moved, as if saying the names, but no words emerged.

“I could make some great stuff out of that window,” she said, repressing a smile.

“We’ll stop on the way home.”

Delaney looked at the bells on the doorframe in front of the vestibule. One was marked B, nothing more, and he pressed it. A buzzer rang, and as he pushed on the door something clicked and the door opened. Ah, the rewards of crime. Only gangsters could afford electrically controlled locks in the tenements of New York. Delaney led the way up the narrow stairs, with low-wattage lights above them. Each step and landing was covered with brownish linoleum. The banister smelled of lemon juice. Cooking odors filled the air, along with the aromas of cheese from the store, all mixed with music from the Italian radio stations. Frankie Botts was alone on the third-floor landing.

“Up here,” he said, leaning over the banister. “Right here.”

On the landing, Botts had assumed a pose of command, hands jammed in the pockets of a dark suit, a lightbulb above him emphasizing his shadowed eyes and high cheekbones. Delaney thought: Christ, he looks like a painting by Caravaggio. A single light and the deepest darkness. The sense of menace was palpable. He shook hands with Botts, but Rose stood with her arms folded across her breasts. She was wearing a dark blue sweater, and her eyes were examining the place, never looking directly at Frankie Botts. Down the steps was the safety of the streets. Up one final flight was the roof. In some houses in New York, the roof was for hurling people into the yards.

They passed into the kitchen, and Frankie closed the door behind them and turned two locks. There were no bodyguards in sight. The kitchen was like a thousand others: stove, refrigerator, table, chairs, a sink. The bare table had the texture of bone from many scrubbings. A framed lithograph of the Bay of Naples was on one wall, a young man in an army uniform on another. That was Carmine, killed in Château-Thierry, the same photograph that was hanging in Club 65. The one whose death had so hurt Frankie’s mother. She was obviously a woman who would not surrender her hurt.

“Where’s the patient?”

“In here,” Botts said.

He led the way through the flat, passing more photographs of Carmine, and several of a young woman and a young Italian man, made in a studio in some city in the old country. Delaney was sure the woman was Frankie’s mother, with her vehement Sicilian eyes, and the man with her was surely Frankie’s father. His face was amused. The apartment was immaculately clean.

“Right here,” Frankie said.

He opened a door to a back bedroom. The shade was drawn. An old woman in blue pajamas was lying under the covers of a bed with a dark carved wooden headboard. She still resembled the young woman in the framed photograph. Her hair now was almost white, pulled back in a bun, but it was the same woman. She had handsome lined features, and was breathing in a shallow way. Her eyes were closed. A votive candle flickered on a bureau, but there was no other light. The top of the bureau was cluttered with more framed photographs, one showing the entire family with a New York river in the background, and separate ones of Frankie in a baseball uniform and Carmine in a summer shirt and long pants. In one, Frankie stood with his kid brother, both smiling, Frankie taller and more muscular. Delaney had seen many bureaus like this one. He laid his bag on the floor.

“Momma?” Frankie said.

Her eyes came open, the irises a washy blue, and she blinked at the strange faces of Delaney and Rose. She seemed as wary as Rose was. Frankie went around to the side of the bed and turned on a lamp.

“Momma, this is the doctor,” Botts said in Italian. “He’s here to see you.”

She answered, “I don’t want to go to the hospital.”

Frankie said: “He knows that, Momma. But he gotta examine you, see what’s the problem.”

“I don’t want nobody looking at me,” she said in English. “It’s too ugly.”

Then she saw Rose.

“Who’s she?”

“I’m like a nurse, signora,” Rose said in Sicilian. “I’m here to help the doctor.”

“That’s right, Momma,” Frankie said in English.

The woman sighed in an accepting way and said, “You get outta here, Frankie. Okay?”

Frankie shrugged, backed out of the room, and left Rose and Delaney with his mother.

“You have to show me the problem, Mrs. Botticelli,” Delaney said, and to be sure, Rose translated. The old woman seemed reassured and began to unbutton the top of her pajamas. Her scrawny chest and belly were covered with sores, some erupting into blisters. Delaney leaned forward to see them better, and touched them gently.

“You see?” the old woman said. “Disgusting!”

“The doctor’s going to fix it,” Rose said in Sicilian. “Don’t worry. He’s the best.”

“It’s so awful,” the old woman said. “I want to die.”

When Delaney came out ten minutes later, Frankie was leaning against a window, staring at the street.

“Jesus, that was fast,” he said.

“The problem is called herpes zoster,” Delaney said. “It comes from nerves, worry, any kind of stress. The common name is shingles.”

“Shingles? Like on a fuckin’ roof?”

“That’s the word. Don’t ask me why. They can be very painful for a while, and they itch. They come late in life to people who had chicken pox when they were kids. Somehow the chicken pox virus stays alive, buried in the body, waiting to make a move. She gets full of worry and then, pow: shingles. But they’re nothing to worry about. I mean, you don’t die from shingles.”

“So whatta we do?”

Delaney was already writing a prescription.

“First get this cream. She has to apply it four times a day. If she can’t do it, have someone come in and do it for her. I had a small jar in my bag, and Rose is applying it now.” Delaney filled out another prescription. “This is for some pills. To ease the pain. One after every meal.”

“She ain’t eatin’.”

“Make sure she eats something, Frankie. Three times a day. For strength. Otherwise, she’s okay. No fever, strong heartbeat. How old is she?”

“How should I know? She’d never tell us. You know these people from the old country. They think they’re always in front of the grand jury… I figure sixty-five, seventy, something like that.”

Rose came out of the bedroom, then stepped into a hall bathroom. They could hear water running as she washed her hands.

“I’ll come back same time next Monday,” Delaney said. “And see how she’s doing.”

Botts took an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Delaney. “For you,” he said. Delaney brushed it away.

“You know what I want,” Delaney said.

“I do?”

“Call off your boys, Frankie. Let us all live in peace down on Horatio Street.”

The sleet returned to the gangster’s eyes. His body tensed and coiled, and he turned away. “There’s a lot of things involved,” Botts said. “I gotta talk to my people.” Rose emerged from the bathroom, and Botts returned the envelope to his pocket. Rose nodded a cool good-bye to Frankie Botts, opened the two locks of the door, and stepped into the hall.

“Let me think about it,” Botts said. “Like I said, there’s lots of things involved.”

“Starting with my grandson.”

“No, starting wit’ that fucking Eddie Corso.”

Delaney lifted his bag and followed Rose into the hall. He did not shake hands or say good-bye. Going down the stairs, she looked at him, as if saying: What was that all about?

“We’ll talk later,” he said.

On the crowded street in front of the building, Rose looked straight at Delaney.

“That was nice with the mother,” she said. “What you did, the way you talked to her. She’s scared to death, and you made her feel safe. Very nice.”

“You helped too, Rose. You helped a lot.”

“I know,” she said. “She wouldn’t let a man put the cream on her. And it made me feel better. But I can’t stand that comorrista Frankie.”

“I wasn’t there just for her,” Delaney said. “I want Frankie to leave us all alone.”

“Then you better not cure the old lady,” she said. “As soon as she gets better, they come looking for you.” She laughed. “Faster if she dies.”

He grinned and said, “I thought about both possibilities.”

She looked serious now. “What’s the matter with her?”

He explained about shingles and its roots in chicken pox and how it can be triggered by worry. Her brow furrowed.

“Can we give it to Carlito?” she said.

“Probably not,” he said. “But we’d better wash again when we get home.”

She nodded and went into the cheese store, and Delaney stood there watching the ceaseless movement of the street. Now he spotted two men from Club 65, sitting in a parked car, watching him. They had pulled guard duty on Grand Street. Frankie Botts said there were other people involved. But he wouldn’t have to consult with these neckless gunsels. They were just enlisted men from the infantry of the Mob. Then he was sure that Frankie Botts did not need to consult with anybody else. He wanted Delaney to care for his mother, to cure her, and he would not lift the threat until the task was done. But at least for now, they were safe. He felt lighter, and watched the schoolkids running around the pushcarts.

After a while, Rose stepped out of the store with a smile on her face and a brown paper bag in her hand. Delaney reached for the bag, and she pulled it away from him.

“Hey, you got a bad arm. Just carry your doctor bag. This doesn’t weigh much, so don’t even try.”

She was issuing orders, and her tone pleased him. It meant that she was more comfortable with him now, that she believed he would see the joke in what she was saying, that she wasn’t just a person who worked for him. She had made sergeant.

“Whatever you say, Rose.”

They moved west through the crowds, while Puccini’s music played from several open windows. He glanced at her, and she seemed thoughtful.

“Maybe I could be a nurse.”

Delaney said: “You already are.”

In the following weeks, they lived by the certainties of routine. The ache in his arm went away. The bad dreams ended. In the mornings, he took Carlito on the bicycle to buy bread and newspapers. On days of spring rain, he covered him with a poncho that Rose had found on Fourteenth Street. He took Rose with him to visit Frankie’s mother, and the blisters healed, but the dark stains remained on her itching skin. He showed Rose how to take the woman’s pulse and temperature, and back in the office he explained how to enter the information on the woman’s record sheet. Monique was not happy about any of this.

“I got two things to tell you,” she said one afternoon. “One, I’m not a babysitter. I can’t handle all this and the boy too. He’s adorable, but I just can’t do it.” She took a deep breath, exhaled. “And Rose? She’s not a nurse. She does the records, she goes on a house call, what the hell is that?”

“It’s just for one patient, Monique.”

“I know, but it’s the way she does it. Going in the file cabinet, taking the patient record sheet, writing stuff that isn’t spelled right. I just don’t like it.”

“Maybe you could do it together.”

“No, I’m the nurse.”

Delaney sighed.

“Give me a few more weeks.”

“I’m serious, Jim. I just might quit.”

He looked at her hard. “Don’t do that, Monique. Don’t even say it. For God’s sake. The patient speaks Sicilian, and I need Rose there. The way I need you here. Capisce?”

She looked away.

“I hope you capisce where you’re going with all this,” she said. He did not answer, and went into his office.

Days passed. He noticed that Rose’s diction while speaking English was becoming crisper, and she told him to correct her when she said the words wrong, the way he corrected Carlito. Most mornings she took the boy grocery shopping, while Delaney handled patients and while Bessie cleaned, and in the afternoons he pedaled hard from one house call to another. Rose went with him to see Mrs. Botticelli. He did not bring Rose with him to examine the Chinese women on Mott Street.

More and more people were on the streets now, exulting in the good weather, and he waved to Mr. Lanzano, the oil and ice man, and Fierro, the sign painter, and Mr. Nobiletti, the shoemaker. He explained to Danny Shapiro that a medical truce was under way and there was no need for cops on the block. He had a cup of coffee with Knocko Carmody and explained the truce. Knocko was pleased and promised him two ducats for opening day at the Polo Grounds. “Make it the first Sunday after opening day,” Delaney said. “You got it,” Knocko said. One morning Delaney stopped at a shipping company on Fourteenth Street and ordered twelve book cartons and some tape and three lithographic crayons, and later told Monique that when the goods arrived, she should have them stacked in Molly’s room. He lunched with Jake Zimmerman. He examined the window of Billy McNiff’s toy store. He went on grand rounds at St. Vincent’s. He read the newspapers. There was a story deep inside the Times about growing tension in Spain, and mergers of the left-wing parties, and talk of the coming struggle. But there was no real news, and no letter from Grace. He wondered if the FBI had intercepted all of them.

Rose took over the records of Carlito, weighing him, measuring him, exclaiming one evening to Delaney that his legs were already harder from pedaling the fire engine and maybe even longer. This made Delaney laugh. Rose said: “I’m not kiddin’ around! Take a look!” Looking at the boy’s legs, he thought: Maybe she’s right. She took the boy’s temperature every morning. She examined him carefully after each evening’s bath, searching for signs of chicken pox, saying, “I don’t want this kid getting shingles when he’s sixty!” She never did say where she went on Sundays.

One Saturday evening, Rose said: “You want to come with me tomorrow?”

“Where?” Delaney said.

“Where I go on Sunday morning,” she said. “You asked me about it.”

“Sure,” he said. “We’ll go together. The three of us.”

The next morning they walked west and then north. The boy was excited, pointing out new churches and new stores and another firehouse. Then they turned toward the North River. Ahead a crowd of men waited before a church called St. Brendan’s. Rose said: “Hey, Jimmy, how are you?”

A small dirty man smiled at her. “Just great, Rose,” he said. “Just great, now that you’re here.”

He had hollow colorless eyes, white hair growing in tufts from his ears, a heavy rat-colored coat. He smelled like shit. Delaney edged away from him, lifting the boy, thinking: I should have brought surgical masks. If I’d known we were coming here. Rose pushed forward, past the shit-smelling man, took the boy from Delaney, and led the way to a side entrance. The men here all knew her name too. Mornin’, Rose… God bless ya, Rose… Hey, Rose, get that sauce goin’, Rose. She waved to them and kept moving, burying the boy’s face against her shoulder.

The path to the old lower church was down three steps into a gloomy alley. In the old days, the overflow crowds heard mass down here, but times had changed, for the worse. Here and everywhere. The downstairs space was no longer a church. There were more than fifty long tables, each occupied by men having Sunday breakfast. At the front of the low-ceilinged lower church, there was a kitchen where the altar once stood. A few men were on line with metal trays, stragglers scooping up watery scrambled eggs and mashed potatoes and coffee. A growling mesh of talk provided the basic sound, punctuated by occasional bursts of laughter and the clatter of metal trays. They were all men. Some ignored breakfast. They were waiting for lunch. Waiting for Rose.

“I work here Sunday mornings,” Rose said, “getting lunch ready for these guys.” She returned the boy to Delaney, told them to wait, and walked to the side of the steam tables into a back room. The way altar boys once walked to the sacristy. Carlito’s eyes were full of questions, but he said nothing. Rising off the men was an odor of dried sweat, dirty clothes, unwashed feet, and despair.

Rose reappeared behind the counter with a pale green cotton uniform over her street clothes and a dark green apron looped around her neck. She had tied a handkerchief across her mouth and was nodding, gesturing, ladling out the last remnants of breakfast to newcomers. They came in more slowly now, a few volunteers waiting until other men left spaces at the tables before admitting new ones. Breakfast was almost over. Rose turned to the kitchen and began pouring water into a huge pot for soup. The early-afternoon meal was next, and she was clearly the boss. She began chopping vegetables and slicing chicken and gesturing with her hands to some of the others. A young black man helped her lay all the pieces on platters, covering them with dish towels against the flies. Then she started preparing the sauce. The black man opened can after can of tomato sauce, sliding them to her along a counter, and Rose emptied each into a huge pot. Then she added freshly diced tomatoes. Her hands moved as quickly as they did in the kitchen on Horatio Street. She never once looked at Delaney and the boy.

The boy kept pointing at Rose and saying her name and smiling. But Delaney thought: I must get him away from here. The place is a germ farm. Everything might be in the air. From tuberculosis on down. He waved at Rose and caught her attention and gestured toward the exit and then at the boy. She stopped what she was doing and came around from behind the counter and down the aisle. She lowered the handkerchief, smiling broadly.

“So you see what I do on Sundays,” she said.

“I do,” he said. “It’s beautiful.”

“I make the sauce, and they have a big meal of ziti and chicken at two o’clock. When I’m already gone. It’s the best they get all week. They come from all over.”

“This is great work, Rose.”

He meant it.

“Hey,” she said. “See you later.”

She turned, lifted her handkerchief to her nose, and hurried back to the kitchen. Delaney took the boy’s hand and they went out into the hard city, heading for the park. When they reached the corner, the sun was shining. Delaney inhaled deeply, breathing in the morning air. Breathing the spring.

That night she came home looking drained, but now Delaney understood. Her Sundays were for the casualties of peace. For all those sad, fucked-up, beaten-up, or beaten-down men who had survived the Great War, who had made marriages and fathered children and roared in speakeasies and danced until dawn and then blew it all. She didn’t judge them. She tried to comfort them, to put a little good sauce into their lives, at least once a week. Delaney started to boil water for coffee, and when she tried to move him away from the stove, he stood in front of her, his hands up, his palms out. Carlito came to Delaney’s side, grinned, and put up his hands too.

“You’ve had a long day, Rose. Now it’s our turn.”

“Come on, no jokes, please.”

He opened the refrigerator and lifted out the flat box from Angela’s and placed it on the table. The boy blurted: “For you, Rosa!” She blushed, turned away, squeezed the boy’s right hand. Delaney opened the box to the tightly wrapped sandwiches, the container of soup, the bread, the cannoli.

“Just sit,” Delaney said. “We know where the oil is, and the butter, and the pot to heat up the soup. Just sit.”

“Sit, Rosa,” said the boy, patting the seat of her chair. She eased into the chair, hugging the boy, looking at Delaney.

While they ate, she explained how St. Brendan’s worked, using leftover food from grocery chains and restaurants (including Angela’s), and how the priests raised money with bingo games and raffles, and how it was never enough. Delaney wished he had taken Frankie’s money and given it to Rose for the Sunday kitchen. She finished her half sandwich and sipped her coffee. The boy slipped off the chair, mounted the fire engine, and banged it into the door to the yard. Rose laughed out loud.

“Hey! Ragazzo! You gonna hurt yourself!”

He laughed. “No, Rosa. No.”

Rose turned to Delaney, arms folded on the tabletop.

“I guess you want to know where I go after we feed the men,” she said.

“I wonder sometimes, sure,” Delaney said, thinking: She reads minds too.

“It’s pretty simple,” she said, looking at him in a new way, as if suspecting he might be jealous. She smiled sweetly. “I don’t have a boyfriend, if that’s what you think.”

“You have the right.”

“I know better.”

“So?”

“I go to the movies,” she said.

“That’s it?” Delaney said, feeling something like relief. He smiled. “You go to the movies?”

“Every Sunday,” she said. “They are so — what’s the word? — wonderful.”

She said the word with a hair of pride in her voice for saying it exactly.

“What’s your favorite?”

“Last week I saw Flying Down to Rio. It’s got that actress Dolores Del Rio, who’s the most beautiful girl in the world. Dark hair, a long neck, long legs, a face, ooof. And she dances with that skinny guy, he can’t do nothing wrong. Every step he’s perfect, and relaxed, and like one hundred percent American. That Fred Astaire. I wanted to stay and see it twice, but then I’d have to sit through a gangster movie. I hate gangster movies.” A pause. “You know why.” Another pause. “I hate gangsters.”

“And today? What did you see?”

“The truth?” She chuckled. “I like to go over the East Side, a place called the Palestine, that everybody there calls the Itch, and I see King Kong again. The fifth time since it come out last year.” Now she was smiling broadly. “It’s just so wonderful. The greatest love story ever!” Her face darkened slightly. “That poor monkey, he falls in love with Fay Wray and what happens? He dies! Because he loves her! I cry every time.”

“Imagine if he met Dolores Del Rio.”

She laughed out loud. “And tried to dance like Fred Astaire.”

She leaned against Delaney, and he put his good hand on her shoulder and pulled her closer.

On the following Sunday morning, the city was drowning under a heavy spring rain. In his office, Delaney opened the safe and took a hundred-dollar bill out of Eddie Corso’s envelope. He addressed a new envelope, to St. Brendan’s, slipped in the bill, sealed the envelope, and gave it to Rose.

“A contribution to your Sunday work,” he said. “Don’t tell them where it came from. They might ask if I’m in a state of grace.”

She looked at him in a confused, dubious way.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But I want to.”

Then he handed her a manila envelope.

“There are face masks in here,” he said. “The kind we use at the hospital. They tie at the back of your head. Wear one. You never know what’s floating around in the air of St. Brendan’s beautiful restaurant.” He smiled. “And if you get a cold or something, you won’t pass it to the food.” A beat. “Or Carlito.”

She took the pale blue masks from the envelope and looked at them.

“They might think I’m some kind of a bank robber. Lady Dillinger feeds the poor!”

“Rose, I doubt that very much.”

She shrugged, slipped the envelopes into her pocketbook, donned her own poncho and winter boots, and went out to feed the poor. For a while, Delaney and the boy watched the rain pelting the backyard, where flowers were bending under the assault. The thirsty limbs of the olive tree reached for the sky. Then he turned to the boy.

“Come on, big fella,” Delaney said. “We have work to do.”

They climbed together to the top floor, and Delaney took out his keys and opened the door to Molly’s room. He switched on some lamps and raised the window shades. The boy gazed around.

“That’s a piano!” he said, as if suddenly retrieving the word in Spanish.

“You can play if you like,” Delaney said, and raised the top. He plunked one key. There was no echo of the past. “You see,” he said, “each key has a different sound.” He plinked another key, and another. Then he lifted the boy onto the stool. “Play, Carlito. Make music.”

He turned to the flattened boxes leaning against the bookcase, and to the roll of tape and pair of scissors. A stack of old newspapers was lying on the floor. Thank you, Monique. He unfolded one box. The boy plinked a key, then another, each one tentative. Delaney taped the bottom of the box, and placed it on the floor, and started to stack Molly’s scores. Schoenberg. Mahler. Bach. He remembered how Molly would come home from the Steinway store on Union Square with her face flushed and happy and a new score in her hand, and how she would go directly to this room. Here, she vanished into the music, forgetting the world, the house, Grace, me. Some passages were repeated over and over again, and he could hear the Ringstrasse in some of them, that year before the war. Now the boy was pounding the keys with two hands, a prodigy of atonality and dissonance, or just a kid making noise, and Delaney thought: Molly would have winced over this, and loved it too.

By the time Delaney was on the second box, Carlito came off the stool, bored with playing at the piano, and stood beside Delaney. He asked the boy to put a finger on the tape while he cut it with the scissors. He flipped the box to its taped bottom, and Carlito began to bring books from a lower shelf. Some belonged to Grace when she was not yet ten years old.

“Let’s keep these,” Delaney said. “Make a pile right there.”

“Okay, Gran’pa,” the boy said, and sat on the rug, looking at the books, turning the pages, seeing visions of Oz and Sherwood Forest. Delaney remembered buying the Oz book on Fourth Avenue, just before leaving for the war. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. By L. Frank Baum. The fourth edition. Molly said in one letter that she was reading it to Grace, who loved the illustrations, but never said that she had finished it. He handed Oz to the boy and told him to hold on to it. Robin Hood could wait. He put a Matisse book aside for himself, with tipped-in illustrations in splashy color. He filled two more boxes, sealed and marked them, and then Carlito looked up. He was looking at an illustration from Oz.

“Gran’pa, what is this?”

“That’s the Tin Man,” he said. “And that’s the Cowardly Lion. They’re going to the Emerald City. Later I’ll read it to you.”

“Read it now!” the boy said. “Come on, Gran’pa.”

“In about an hour, Carlito. We just have to finish the job.” Understanding that the boy didn’t know an hour from a month. “We’ll work fast, okay?”

And so they did. Certain shelves were emptied, others remained full, and a dozen boxes were taped and marked and sealed. He locked the door behind him. On Monday, Monique was bringing someone to carry the packed cartons to the shelves in the basement, far from the heat or the hazards of weather. As they went downstairs, the boy carried The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Delaney clutched the Matisse book. Thinking: Maybe I can start painting again, with my left hand. When he was sixteen he lasted three months at the Art Students League, where the drawing instructor first showed him Gray’s Anatomy, that fat masterpiece of bones and muscles and the hidden terrain of the body. Later the teacher told him sadly that he didn’t really have what it took for art. But — Gray’s Anatomy led him to the alternative dream of becoming a surgeon. He no longer had what it took for that, he thought, but maybe he could make paintings now that didn’t have to be art. That were just color and form and filled with emotion. Like a spring day. And Carlito could do the same. Up there in the room they were reclaiming from ghosts.

Delaney and the boy heated up the minestrone that Rose had left in the refrigerator for their lunch, and ate it with bread and a saucer of olive oil. The boy squinted at Delaney.

“Gran’pa? Why you have white hair?”

“Well, it’s not completely white, is it?” Delaney said, brushing a hand through his hair. “I mean, there’s brown hair there too.”

“Yes, but Rosa has no white hair.”

“She’s young, big fella. I’m old.”

He gazed at Delaney. “What is old?”

“It’s when…” He hesitated. What the hell was it? “It’s when you have a lot of birthdays and you live a long time.”

The boy tried to understand but gave it up and turned his attention to the stuffed bear. Delaney thought: You’ll know soon enough.

Later they went upstairs and stretched out on the boy’s bed, and Delaney read to him the beginning of the tale of Dorothy and her magic slippers, and after a while both were asleep.

In the evening, when the rain had eased, they went to Angela’s. Rose was not home yet, and Delaney wished that she was with them. Angela gave them a table for two along the wall. One large table was presided over by Harry Flanagan, the Tammany guy. He waved hello and Delaney waved back. The others at the table turned their heads and nodded too.

They were almost finished with dinner when Billy McNiff stepped in the door. He went directly to Delaney.

“Hey, Doc? I just passed your house. There’s two cop cars there, and an ambulance just pulled up.”

Delaney stood up and waved at Angela, who sensed an emergency and told him: “Go, go.”

He lifted the boy and hurried out, and as he turned into Horatio Street he saw the two squad cars with red dome lights turning. An ambulance was backed up to the curb, its back doors open. Don’t let it be Rose. A small crowd was forming, with excited kids running around, and women with folded arms, and many men. When he reached the house, Danny Shapiro was outside, his badge pinned to his zipper jacket, smoking a cigarette and talking to a uniformed cop. He stepped on the butt when he saw Delaney.

“What’s up?” Delaney said.

“Come on in,” Shapiro said. “See for y’self.”

Delaney put Carlito down and said: “Wait here, Carlito.”

“I want Rosa,” the boy said. He looked about to break into tears.

The uniformed cop said: “I’ll take care of him. Don’t worry, Doc.”

The cop lifted the boy and started talking to him in a low voice, but the boy’s anxiety did not go away. Delaney stepped into the vestibule. A man was stretched out on the floor of the waiting area, while two ambulance medics worked on him, wiping blood off his face. One medic was thin, the other beefy. Both said hello to Delaney. He recognized them from St. Vincent’s.

“You know this guy?” Shapiro said.

“Yeah,” Delaney said. “His name is Callahan. He’s an FBI man.”

“Jesus Christ,” Shapiro said. “Then the ID is real. I figured he’s some gonif with a phony ID.”

“Where’s Rose?”

“In your office,” Shapiro said. “She says she heard a noise and tiptoed down the stairs and sees this guy picking the lock on your office.”

“And then?”

“She hits him with a fuckin’ baseball bat.”

Delaney’s eyes widened. “Is he alive?”

“Barely.” He looked down at the stricken man. “Take a look, Doctor.”

Delaney squatted beside the medics, found a pulse, then pictured Rose with her Louisville Slugger parked each night beside her bed. The man’s eyes were still closed.

“There’s a seven-inch gash in his head, which is why there’s so much blood,” the thin medic said. “It looks to be just a scalp wound, but inside, who knows?”

“An inch lower, she hits the temple? He’s a corpse,” the beefy medic said.

“You need to get him X-rayed,” Delaney said. “See if his skull is broken.”

“Yeah,” the thin medic said. “There’s a concussion for sure.”

“What are you waiting for? Shouldn’t he be —”

“His boss is on the way, from the FBI. We were told, do nothing.”

Delaney stood up and said to Shapiro, “Where’s the weapon?”

“Over there,” Shapiro said.

The bat was leaning in a corner against the wall.

“When you searched this guy,” Delaney said, “was he carrying a search warrant?”

“Not unless it’s in his shoe,” Shapiro said. “He was packing a thirty-eight.”

Delaney pushed into his office, without touching the door handle. Rose was in his chair, her elbows on his desk, her hands cradling her head. Her face was flushed, her eyes glittery.

“I’m sorry to cause all this trouble,” she said softly.

“You didn’t cause it. The guy on the floor out there — he caused it. He broke into our house. You defended yourself and the house.”

“Who is he?”

“His name’s Callahan. He’s an FBI man, trying to track down my daughter, Grace.”

Rose groaned. “Ah, hell. I’m doomed. I gotta get out of here. If I killed a G-man, then —”

“Calm down. He’s alive. And he might be in more trouble than you. It looks like he has no warrant. That’s a piece of paper from a judge allowing him to go into someone’s house.”

“But I broke his head. Just like my goddam husband.”

She stood up, anxiously balling and relaxing her fingers, her words speeding now. “No matter what. They’re sure to investigate me. And I’m a — I don’t have papers.” She inhaled deeply, then exhaled almost desperately. “They could throw me outta the country! Away from Carlito! Away from you.”

Rose turned her back to him and choked off a sob. Delaney went to her and hugged her.

“Never,” he said. “Never.”

When Delaney stepped back into the waiting area, Callahan was sitting up, with his back to the wall. His eyes were open, but he was still somewhere else, like a fighter who’d been knocked out. A rough bandage was wrapped around his head to stop the bleeding from the scalp. Another casualty. And he suspected that Callahan’s pain was compounded by humiliation. The man did not look at him. Delaney could not repress a sense of pity.

“Where’d the medics go?” Delaney said.

“They got another run,” Shapiro said. “The Feds are coming themselves to pick this guy up.”

“What? This dope has to go to a hospital now!”

“Yeah, but the G-men say they’ll handle it.”

“Fuck the G-men.” He went back into his office and picked up the telephone. Shapiro grabbed his wrist.

“Leave it alone, Jim.”

Delaney sighed and placed the receiver back on the hook. In a corner, Rose was staring at him. He went to her and squeezed her hand in a gentle way. Then he went back to the hall, Shapiro behind him.

“Will they charge Rose with anything?” Delaney said.

“They might, but I doubt it, if they don’t have a warrant. I mean, the newspapers would kill them. No warrant and it’s breakin’ and entering.” He sighed. “But who knows, with these fucking amateurs. Some people actually think those G-men movies are true. Cops and newspapermen know they are bullshit. So do ninety-two percent of the people who lived through Prohibition.”

Delaney said: “I’ll be right back.”

He stepped outside, and Carlito was sobbing in the arms of the big cop and reaching with his left hand for Delaney. The crowd was larger in the street.

“I’ll take him off your hands, officer. ”

“Sure thing,” the cop said, passing the boy to Delaney. Carlito kept whispering granpagranpagranpa and holding him with both hands around the neck. Delaney carried him back inside, talking quietly to the boy. He eased past Shapiro and another cop and the stricken Callahan into his office. Rose came to them with tears in her eyes. The boy spoke her name and reached for her, and she took him in her arms and murmured softly in English and Sicilian, making a sound that was more music than language. Then Delaney heard the gate open and slam, followed by the slamming of the vestibule door.

“Stay here,” he said, and went out to the waiting area.

A short barrel-chested man in a gray fedora and an open overcoat was standing with fists on his hips. Delaney thought: Another movie version of J. Edgar Hoover. Another bullshit tough guy. Two more men in fedoras and open overcoats stood behind him, dressed like Callahan. One of them was holding a furled upright stretcher.

“Who’s in charge here?” the short guy said.

“I am,” said Shapiro, flashing his detective’s badge. “Danny Shapiro, New York Police Department. Who are you?”

“Tillman,” the short guy said in an annoyed voice. “FBI.”

“I showed you my tin,” Shapiro said. “Where’s yours?”

Tillman said, “Christ,” reached inside his coat, and removed a wallet displaying a card with his face on it.

“Welcome to Horatio Street,” Shapiro said.

“All right,” Tillman said. “What happened here?”

“Simple,” Shapiro said, glancing at Delaney. “This guy on the floor broke in here — you can see the open window on the second floor. He’s an FBI agent, but it looks like he’s got no warrant. And he starts picking the lock to Dr. Delaney’s office.”

“That you?”

“That’s me,” Delaney said.

“Where were you?”

“Having dinner with my grandson at Angela’s restaurant. Right around the corner.”

“And then?” Tillman said.

Shapiro continued: “The woman who takes care of the boy, Rose Verga, was upstairs in her room — she’s off Sundays. She’s taking a nap. Then she hears something. She picks up a baseball bat and comes down the stairs. Very quiet. She sees this guy, he turns, like he’s reaching for a rod in his belt, and she hits him in the head. That’s all.”

Tillman shook his head, his eyes moving from Shapiro to Callahan to Delaney and back to Shapiro.

“All right,” Tillman said, indicating Callahan. “The special ambulance is outside, it’ll take this guy away.” He nodded at the two men, and they unfurled the stretcher and went to Callahan. Then he said to Shapiro: “Where’s the woman?”

Delaney showed him into the office. Rose looked oddly defiant now, holding the boy close to her. He identified himself and asked her name. She told him.

“All right, Miss Verga, here’s what I want you to do,” Tillman said. “I want you to stay right here tonight, in this house. I could put you in a cell tonight, but that wouldn’t help anything. I want you down at federal court tomorrow morning, got that? You know where it is?”

“I do,” Delaney said.

“Don’t try to run away,” Tillman said to Rose. “You’ll be in big trouble.”

“Okay,” Rose said. Carlito was squirming.

“At federal court, you go to room 110. I’ll be there. We’ll take a statement. You can have a lawyer with you if you think that’s necessary. Depending on what happens, you might face criminal charges. You understand me?”

“You mean if something bad happens to Callahan?” Delaney said.

“Something bad already did,” Tillman said.

He stepped into the hall. Callahan and the stretcher bearers were out of the house. “Good night, gentlemen,” Tillman said. And he was gone.

Delaney faced Shapiro. “New York one,” Shapiro said, “Feds nothing.”

Then he was gone too. Delaney locked the door behind him.

At the sound of the gate slamming, the office door opened and Carlito ran out, with Rose behind him. Rose still seemed alarmed, as if prepared for sudden flight.

“That’s it?” she said.

“Until tomorrow morning at the courthouse,” Delaney said. He noticed that her face had hardened and her eyes were full of fright. “I’ll go with you.”

She came to him, and he put his arms around her. If fear had an odor, it was rising from her. She felt smaller and oddly younger.

“Don’t cry, Rosa,” the boy said.

For the first time in years, Delaney wanted to dance.

“Now…,” Rose said.

“Now everybody needs a good night’s sleep.”

Rose and the boy started up the stairs. Delaney went first to his office, looking for a business card.

The vast sea was empty and scarlet. The immense wave rose and rose and rose, carrying Delaney with its surging power, and then crested, held, seemed frozen, and then fell, dropping straight down into a darker crimson trough, and the trough was not empty. Tinpot helmets bobbed everywhere, going under then rising, faces contorted under the helmets, all mouths open, dozens of them, hundreds, drowning in the blood-red tide. He could see Eddie Corso without a helmet, his eyes glittery with fear, close enough to see and hear but too far to reach. There were dozens of soldiers whose faces he knew, but the only name he could remember was Eddie Corso’s. He began to see others: Knocko and Zimmerman and Mr. Lanzano. Packy Hanratty. Angela. All wearing helmets. All except Eddie and the boy. He was in the crimson water too, his eyes wide, full of terror, and Delaney tried to swim to him, calling Carlito! Carlito! Carlito! Delaney’s legs seemed to weigh three hundred pounds, and his right arm was useless, and he could not reach the boy. Carlito! Carlito! Carlito!

And then he was awake, and Rose was sitting beside him on the bed, caressing his sweaty face. Rose. This time not an illusion, not a scribble of dream or desire. Real. With her odor of flowers. In a bathrobe in the dark.

“You okay?” she whispered hoarsely.

“Yes,” he said, feeling a tremble in his voice. “Yes. Sure. Just a bad dream.”

“You were calling the boy.”

“Did I wake you up?”

“No, I wasn’t asleep.”

“I’m okay,” Delaney said.

“No, you’re not.”

She stretched out on top of the covers and pulled him close, her right arm across his chest. He could hear her breathing, cool and steady. A vague aroma of basil was now mixed with the smell of flowers.

“It wasn’t just Carlito,” she said. “I know. I couldn’t sleep with worrying. About going away. About living somewhere without the boy.” A beat; then, in a reluctant voice: “Without you.”

“Don’t go away,” he said.

He wanted to hold her face, to kiss her cheeks and brow and lips and neck. But he was afraid. If I cross this street, he thought, if I open this door, where will it lead? Will I ruin something? Everything? Will I force her to choose flight?

Thinking: Don’t play with her.

Thinking: Don’t take advantage of her goodness, her sense of unworthiness, her confusion.

Thinking: She came to me. Full of her own needs. Perhaps even acting out a farewell.

“It’s cold here tonight,” she said, and lifted her arm from his chest, and touched his face, and sat up.

Thinking: Don’t go. Please don’t go.

She folded back the blanket and sheet on her side of the bed and slipped in beside him. She bent her leg and slid it over his thigh, infusing him with warmth, while her hands moved to his face and neck. Her breathing was thicker. He realized in the dark that her bathrobe was open, and he could feel her breasts, pliant and full, and her hard nipples. And then it was hair and flesh and tongue, then it was sounds without words, then it was belly and bottom, and hands moving, and legs, and softness and hardness, and muscles taut, then it was wetness and then entry into deep endless warmth.

“Dottore,” she whispered.

“Rosa.”