North River by Pete Hamill Read Free Book Online Page A

except Larry. Delaney could see a piano in the living room, topped with framed photographs of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Bix Beiderbecke. A gallery of heroes, just like Molly’s, but with different names and faces. Louise was heavy, wearing full makeup, her face twitching.
    “Look at that,” she said, pointing to her husband’s head. “That ain’t kosher.”
    She was right. There was a bulge on the right temple. Larry was conscious, but when Delaney gently touched the lump, he pulled away in pain.
    “That hurt,” he said.
    “Is it getting larger?” Delaney said to Louise.
    “Yeah,” Louise said. “When he come home last night, there wasn’t even a bump.”
    Delaney leaned in close. “Listen, Larry, we gotta get you to St. Vincent’s —”
    “No hospital. Not for me. Not now, not never. Everyone I ever knew went to a hospital never came back. Including my father.”
    “Larry, you might have a fractured skull. You might have bleeding in the brain. We need X-rays. And I don’t have an X-ray machine in my bag.”
    “Not a chance.”
    Delaney sighed in an exasperated way.
    “Okay, I can’t force you. But tell me this: Who’s your favorite undertaker?”
    Louise sobbed and turned away.
    “Don’t make jokes, Doc,” Larry whispered.
    “It’s no joke, Larry.”
    Larry said nothing. Delaney put his hands on his hips, trying to look stern.
    “Come on, you dope,” he said. “I’ll go with you. I want to hear you play ‘Stardust’ again.”
    Delaney and Louise walked him east on icy streets to St. Vincent’s. Larry Dorsey grumbled all the way. The wind rose, and they shuddered together in their heavy winter clothes. Boys shoveled snow in front of the shops. An elevated train moved slowly along the tracks into a crowded platform. The street in front of the emergency room had been plowed since he’d taken Eddie Corso through the secret door a hundred feet away from this entrance. They walked in past an empty ambulance. Delaney explained the problem to a buxom nurse named McGuinness. He saw nuns like black haystacks walking the corridors beyond.
    “Thanks, Dr. Delaney. We’ll take care of it. Call later and we’ll know what it is.”
    “Thanks, Miss McGuinness. Is Dr. Zimmerman on duty?”
    “Wait, I’ll get him.”
    Zimmerman emerged from an inner room, smiling, shaking hands with Delaney, while Dorsey was led away and a second nurse took notes from Louise. The two doctors stepped to the side. Zimmerman was in his twenties, skinny, freckled, with reddish hair and bulging, inquisitive eyes. He had some Lower East Side in his voice.
    “Like Grand Central around here today,” Zimmerman said. “They’re all digging their way out and falling down with heart attacks.”
    “How’s our patient?”
    “He’s a tough nut, all right. He keeps asking for morphine and then laughing.”
    “Can I see him?”
    “Third floor, at the end.”
    Zimmerman turned to see a man with a white face being carried in by two younger men. Delaney touched the intern’s sleeve.
    “Thanks, Doctor.”
    “If we get caught,” Zimmerman said, “we’ll do the time together.”
    Eddie Corso was in a bed in his private room, covered with a heavy blanket, a transparent oxygen tent over his head. He needed a shave. To the side of the door was Bootsie, looking suspicious, even anxious, trying to appear casual by examining the state of his fingernails. The shade was drawn, a light burning on a side table. Delaney parted the flap of the tent.
    “Morphine, morphine . . .”
    “That’s a bad old joke now, Eddie.”
    “So am I.”
    Palm down, Corso curled his fingers at Bootsie, and the fat man eased out the door to stand guard in the hall. Corso smiled weakly.
    “Thanks, Doc. Again.”
    “Thank Dr. Zimmerman.”
    “I did. But it was you, Doc. Without you . . .”
    “Enough already.”
    A longer pause.
    “I hear you got someone staying with you at the house.”
    “I do. My grandson.”
    “Where’d his mother