North River by Pete Hamill Read Free Book Online Page B

go?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe Russia.”
    “Russia? Is she nuts? There ain’t enough snow right here for her?”
    “The truth is, I’m not really sure where she is. I think Spain. Which means she has a passport, and had a ship to catch. I called Jackie Norris at the Harbor Police and asked for his help.”
    “He’s a good cop. You didn’t mention me, did you?”
    “Never. Jackie says he’ll do what he can.”
    “He always keeps his word.”
    Corso closed his eyes and looked as if he were drifting. Delaney came closer.
    “You hurting, Eddie?”
    He opened his eyes.
    “Nah. Well, just a little. You got someone to help with this boy?”
    “Angela sent me a woman.”
    “Good. She’s a Wop, I hope?”
    “I think she’s Italian, but I don’t know. I didn’t ask.”
    “Angela sent her, she’s a Wop. Good for you, with a kid on your hands. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know what the fuck you were doing.”
    “That’s for sure.”
    They were silent for a while.
    “Your daughter Gracie don’t come back, Doc, the kid could be there a long time.”
    “I’ve thought about that.”
    “How old is the boy?”
    “Three in March. On St. Patrick’s Day.”
    “Jesus Christ. Another goddamned Mick. And fifteen years from now, when you’re an old man, he’ll be graduatin’ from high school.”
    Delaney laughed. “I thought about that too.”
    Corso seemed to be fading away by the second. Delaney thought he should call Zimmerman, maybe something . . .
    “You got any money?” Corso said, coming back from where he had gone.
    “Enough.”
    “Come on. Don’t bullshit me, Doc. I know you spent a mint when Molly, you know . . .”
    He didn’t finish the sentence. The missing words were
took off.
    “I remember you put ads in the newspapers,” Corso went on. “You had them leaflets on every lamppost from Twenty-third Street to the Battery. You hired some private dick. That must have took a lot of dough.”
    “I’ve got enough, Eddie. I saved some, I have patients. The boy won’t starve.”
    “Las’ time I was in your house, when I had that thing with malaria, I froze my nuts off. You don’t have
steam heat,
Doc. That kid’ll be runnin’ around bare ass and —”
    “The woman will watch him.”
    “Freezing her own ass off too.”
    Corso turned his head to the wall and sighed.
    “How long’s it been now?” he whispered. “Since Molly went —”
    “Sixteen months,” Delaney said.
    “Christ.”
    Corso’s hand moved to the flap of the tent, then fell to his side.
    “I’m thinkin’ of gettin’ out of this thing.”
    “Good.”
    “I don’t like the way the thing is going. Moving booze, runnin’ clubs, that was one thing. That was
fun,
f’ Chrissakes. But that’s over. It died with Prohibition.” A pause. “I don’t like what some of these guys want to do now. And they don’t like that I don’t like it. Especially the fucking Neapolitani . . . bunch of cazzi. That Frankie Botts . . .”
    He cleared some phlegm from his throat, and Delaney put a tissue to his mouth so he could spit it out. The sputum was pink.
    “Besides, I got three grandchildren myself now, Doc. I sent them and their mother away this morning . . .”
    “They’re good kids. I delivered two of them, remember? And gave all three their shots.”
    “Right, right . . .” He closed his eyes again briefly. “I want to see
them
graduate from high school.”
    “And college too.”
    “Hey, wouldn’t
that
be something? College. They’d be the first kids in the history of the Corso family to . . .”
    They were both quiet for a while. Then Delaney said, “If you get out of . . . the business, what’ll you do?”
    “Maybe become a priest.”
    Delaney laughed.
    “Nah. Maybe I’ll move to Florida. Or out west someplace.”
    “You’d go nuts.”
    “I’d rather be nuts than dead.”
    Delaney moved slowly west, into a river wind. The snow was now ice, blackening in the streets like an untreated wound, and he could not