by Pete Hamill
“Yes?” he said.
A young man stood up, holding his hat in his hands, and his coat draped over his forearm. His dark blond hair was cut short. He had pale eyebrows, pale blue eyes. About thirty. The young man moved past Monique.
“Dr. Delaney?” he said.
“That’s me.”
He flashed a badge.
“Edward Callahan,” he said. “FBI.”
Delaney gestured for Callahan to pass into his office, then closed the door behind them.
“Have a seat,” Delaney said, moving into his own chair. “What’s this all about?”
“Excuse me for intruding on your busy day,” the agent said, sitting with a kind of performed ease in the chair reserved for patients. He placed a notebook on his knee and took a pen from his breast pocket. “Let me get straight to the point: I’m looking for your daughter.”
So that was it. I was right. Not Eddie Corso. Nor Rose. Grace.
“I don’t know where she is,” Delaney said.
“We think you do,” Callahan said, smiling in a knowing way, his voice dropping into a deeper tone. “You received a letter a few days ago. We think it was from her. From Grace Delaney Santos. It was postmarked Barcelona, Spain.”
“I assume you have a court order to snoop through my mail,” Delaney said.
“The letter wasn’t opened,” he said, trying to sound reassuring. Delaney noticed that his fingernails were perfectly trimmed and polished. His dark blue suit was well cut, almost as severely as the clothes worn by Mr. Cottrell. “Besides, we’re not specifically looking for your daughter. We’re looking for her husband.”
“I don’t know where he is either,” Delaney said. “I’ve never even met the man.” Callahan scribbled on a pad, taking notes. “I do know he’s a Mexican citizen. Beyond that —” He shrugged. “Why is the FBI interested?”
“We’ve had inquiries from the Mexican government,” Callahan said. “Mr. Santos is a member of the PCM — the Mexican Communist Party.”
“And?” Delaney said. “Is that a crime?”
“No, but bombing is. The Mexican government believes Santos was responsible for bombing two government office buildings in Guadalajara.” His tone was level. “They want to locate him before he bombs anything else.” He gestured as if he believed this was a bit of a stretch, but went on gravely: “They have reports he went to Spain, where all sorts of unrest is in the air. Or maybe even to Moscow. And that gets us back to your daughter, Grace. If anyone knows where Santos is, she should.” He smiled. “For all we know, he could be in the Bronx.”
“Or Brooklyn.”
Callahan laughed. “Worse — New Jersey!”
He stared at Delaney, as if hoping he would fill the void with words. Delaney stared back.
“So?” Callahan said.
“I’ve told you all I know. Which is virtually nothing.”
Callahan took his coat off his lap and laid it on the floor.
“Dr. Delaney, we might be able to help you with something. If you help us.” Delaney looked at him blankly. “We know you have your grandson here. We know you are, what’s the best way to say this? Under siege. From the Frankie Botts mob. We can do something about that.”
Delaney stood up. He noted Callahan’s dark brown brogans and their high polished sheen.
“Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Callahan.”
Callahan didn’t move. He stared at Delaney, absorbing his own dismissal. Then he closed his notebook and reached down for his coat.
“Think about it,” Callahan said, and stood up to face Delaney. He smiled in a practiced way. Then handed Delaney a card. “Think about it.”
He went out, thanking Monique as he left. Delaney looked at the card, then placed it under his blotter beside the card of Harry Flanagan, the judge. Yeah, he thought: I’ll think about it, you son of a bitch.
Twenty minutes after Callahan left, Carlito rushed into the office and climbed onto his lap.
“Hot dog!” he said. There were still no verbs. “Hot dog, Gran’pa.”
Another advance: Ga’paw was now Gran’pa!
“You want hot dogs?”
“Hot dog.”
“Say: ‘I want hot dogs.’ ”
“I wan’ hot dogsss.”
His first verb. The verb “to want.” Everybody’s first verb.
Rose came to the door, smiling, her hair loose across her brow, cheeks still flushed from the February cold. She told him lunch was ready. He thought: Where does she go on Sunday?
Rose lifted the boy and took him past the planks of the carpenters, the sawhorse, the toolboxes, toward the kitchen. There was an odor of cut wood in the air. The worker named Mendoza laughed and said, “Buenas tardes, niño,” and Carlos answered, “Bey-nas tardes.” The other workmen were gone, but Mendoza was eating a sandwich, sitting on the stairs. “Hello, Doctor,” he said. “Pretty busy here today.” Delaney told him it was always busy on Monday. Thinking: We even had a visit from the G-men. He asked Monique to try to find Zimmerman at St. Vincent’s and then walked into the kitchen.
“This kid wants hot dogs!” Rose said. “I gotta nice sandwich for him, un panino, and he keeps saying he wants a hot dog. He did the same up Fourteen’ Street. Hot dog, hot dog . . .”
Delaney smiled. She put the sandwiches before them, along with glasses of lemonade. Carlito’s sandwich was cut into quarters.
“I want hot dog,” the boy said. The verb. That verb. Rose ig-nored him.
Delaney thought the panino was delicious, and so did the boy; he held each piece in two hands and took small, methodical bites. The memory of hot dogs fled the kitchen. Monique poked her head into the room.
“I got Zimmerman for you.”
Delaney excused himself and took the call in his office.
“Everything okay?” Zimmerman said.
“Yes, but —”
“But what?”
“A guy from the FBI was here a little while ago. In case he comes poking around the hospital, you don’t know anything about my personal life, especially my daughter. I’ll be at rounds tomorrow and explain everything.”
“You just did,” Zimmerman said. “I only know you from the halls of St. Vincent’s.”
“How’s it going there?”
“I want a vacation. Just one hour. Or two hours, go see a movie. I hear they’ve got sound now.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Back at the table, Delaney finished his sandwich and sipped the lemonade. Thinking: How did Rose find lemons in February? Then she pointed at Carlito’s feet.
“Look at what I got. On sale, one dollar, off a pushcart. Buster Browns!”
Carlito held up his left foot and pointed at the shoe.
“Hoo-shine!”
Delaney wrote a quick note to Grace, telling her about the visit from Callahan. His tone was flat and cold. Don’t mail any important letters to the house. I’ll send you an address that’s safe. You can blather away about simple stuff, the cathedrals, Goya. Just nothing that you don’t want to share with the FBI. He asked Monique to mail the letter, but not from here in the neighborhood. She gave him a knowing look. It wasn’t necessary to mention the FBI. Then Delaney went off on house calls, and his rage began to build.
As always on Monday, his last stop would be on Mott Street, in Chinatown. From a pay phone on Canal Street, he called a lawyer named O’Dwyer, who confirmed that he didn’t need formal paperwork to have Carlito living with him. If the boy stayed six months, Delaney could apply to become the legal guardian. So he knew that the FBI could not use Carlos to force him to take the king’s shilling, as Big Jim used to call it. Later, at Angela’s, he would arrange an alternate address. He called Rose too, said he would be a little late, but that they would all go to Angela’s. “Good,” Rose said. “I’ll make the boy take a nap. And hope he don’t dream about hot dogs.”
Now he was turning right off Canal Street, into Mott Street and a flood of Chinese faces, most of them male. Even under Roosevelt
, there had been no change in the laws against Chinese immigration. But Chinese seamen could jump ship, slipping into the water off Coney Island, or just walking down the gangplank in Red Hook, and make their way to Mott Street or Pell. They could come down the Hudson Valley from Canada. It wasn’t as easy for women. Still, there were a few women in Chinatown, and that was why he was here.
He crossed the street at Transfiguration Church, which in the nineteenth century had consoled the Irish poor from the Five Points and now served the Italians from Little Italy. He glanced at the church. A few older women moved in and out of the front door, dressed in black. Maybe this is where she goes on Sundays, Delaney thought. Maybe she comes here and listens to mass. Maybe she meets people from the old country. People she can talk with in Italian. Even a few people who knew Enrico Calvino in Agrigento, and knew that God would forgive her for breaking the man’s head.
At 26 Mott Street, he pressed the bell for the top floor and casually looked around to see if anyone had followed him. Nobody had. Or at least no Caucasians. The door clicked and he climbed the stairs, carrying his black leather bag. On the top floor, Tommy Chin was waiting for him, smiling broadly. He was dressed sharply, wearing a suit with razor creases that broke cleanly over polished leather shoes.
“Hey, Doc, how are you?”
Tommy Chin was second generation, and talked like Cagney. He shook Delaney’s hand and smiled broadly.
“I’m okay,” Delaney said. “Just a little beat.”
“You want coffee?”
“That’d be good.”
Delaney followed Chin into his office, with its two windows opening into the yard, its desk, its framed photographs of Chin with various politicians and police captains. There was a second door, and Chin cracked it open and said something in Chinese. He waved Delaney to a chair and then sat behind his desk.
“How’s it going?” Delaney said.
“Lousy. Everything’s slow. Nobody’s got much money, this goddamn Depression, and the first thing these guys do is cut down on ginch. All the wives must be happy.”
“Or deeply unhappy.”
Chin laughed. A Chinese woman came in, about fifty years old, her glossy black hair pulled back in a severe way, carrying a tray of coffee and sweets. She nodded at him in a wordless, intimate way. Delaney had known her since before the war, before Molly, before everything. Liann. He had treated her for gonorrhea three times, but she never gave it to him. She smiled, nodded, vanished.
“Where are the ladies?” Delaney said.
“One flight down, waiting for you,” Chin said. “The usual place. You know, Monday is Monday, the day we’re closed. They go and shop. They eat somewhere, usually some American place. They listen to the radio. Maybe they dream about some rich guy that’ll take them away for good. The usual stuff broads think about.”
As they filled cups with coffee, Delaney wondered if Tommy Chin was now selling cocaine and heroin out of the building, in addition to women. Or supplying shmeck to Frankie Botts. To keep tradition alive. Long ago, ten years before the war, when Tommy Chin was just a tough teenager, this was a famous opium den. Society ladies came every day to smoke a pipe and maybe get fucked by young Chinese guys, including Tommy Chin. The place wasn’t exactly a pleasure dome, but it did offer pleasure.
“I’d better go do the exams,” Delaney said. “I’ve got a dinner date with my grandson.”
“First, sit back and finish your coffee,” Tommy Chin said.
They sipped the last of the coffee and then rose together and went out the door. They could hear music coming from the third floor, then stepped into the parlor, with its couches and bar and chandeliers and odor of perfume. Tommy walked over to the cathedral-shaped Philco and lowered the volume, saying something in Chinese. There were five women, all in heavy bathrobes and slippers, like people waiting for a steam room. They smiled at Delaney. His arrival always told them that they had finished another week in America. Then Liann entered from the door to a smaller room, and gestured for Delaney to follow her. She pointed at one of the women, who stood up in a bored way.
“See you later,” Tommy Chin said. “Do the work of the Lord.”
The first woman went straight to a hard narrow bed and sat on the edge, kicking off her slippers. Liann took a corner chair, an expressionless chaperone. Beside her was a sink. When Delaney had first told Tommy Chin that he wanted someone there, Tommy was surprised and then pleased. A witness. A translator.
The woman was about thirty, and she laid back, closed her eyes, and opened her legs. Like every woman in the house, she had shaved her pubic hair. Delaney donned rubber gloves and went methodically through the examination, peering into all of her openings. The first girl was clean. He nodded, and she smiled and got up, pulling the robe around her. He went out, and a second girl came in, and then a third. All clean. No sign of bumps or lesions, no chancres, nothing running and glistening. They all smelled of soap. They all had smooth ivory skin. After each woman departed, he washed his gloved hands in the hot water of the sink.
The fourth woman was really a girl. Perhaps sixteen, but who knew? And she was shy and trembling. She stretched on the hard bed but did not open her shift. Liann said something in Chinese. The girl turned on her side, facing Delaney, and opened her shift. There was a bandage over her right nipple. He lifted it and saw that her nipple was almost severed. She lifted a leg. The flesh around her vulva was red. He gently turned her over. Her anus was worse, sore and torn. Her buttocks were purple from punches. There were bite marks on her back.
“What happened to her?” Delaney said. He glanced at the girl and her eyes were filled with tears.
“Some big Irishman,” Liann said. “Last night.”
“Jesus Christ.”
He reached in the bag and took out iodine and cleaned her wounded nipple. The girl winced, then sobbed. He bandaged the nipple. Then he handed her a jar of unguent.
“Tell her to use this for a week. Front and back.”
Liann explained in Chinese, and the girl took the jar. She said something.
“She want to know, she have a disease?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What about baby? The guy threw away condom.”
“Next week I’ll bring some things for a test.”
Liann explained, but the girl was not consoled. It must have been a savage night.
“Take her off the line,” Delaney said. “At least until I can see her next Monday. And the guy that did this? Don’t let him in the door again.”
The last girl was clean too, and he closed his bag, took an envelope from Liann. and went down to the street.
The night had arrived, dark and windy. An elderly Italian woman stepped out of Transfiguration, steam leaking from her mouth, a lumpy black pyramid. She stood there for a long moment, enclosed in Sicilian solitude.
I want.
That verb.
I want too.
I want. I want.
NINE
THE BOY TOOK HIS TEDDY BEAR WITH HIM TO DINNER, AND REvealed his name. Osito.
“It means ‘little bear’ in Spanish,” Rose said, grinning. “I asked Mendoza, the carpenter. Now the bear has a name, Carlito takes him everyplace. Osito this, Osito that . . . even bed at night.” A pause. “Someone to hold on to, I guess.”
Delaney thought there was a faint wistful note in her voice, but he did not respond as they walked through the cold evening to Angela’s restaurant. Rose held the boy’s free hand, while the boy hugged Osito.
The restaurant was half-empty, as it was on every Monday night, and a smiling Angela came to greet them. She led them to a table against a wall, out of the cold drafts of the opening door. Italian ballads played on the radio in the kitchen, with many mandolins. Angela waved and a waiter brought the high chair for Carlito. She pinched Rose’s cheek and whispered in Italian, then pushed her breasts against Delaney. She leaned down to Carlito.
“Okay. Wha’s this guy’s name?” she said, pointing at the
bear.
“Osito!” the boy blurted.
“An’ what’s he gonna eat?”
“Hot dog!”
“We don’t have no hot dogs in here, boy. This is a good restaurant. So no hot dog!”
“Okay, I want bagetti!”
“That we got!”
Carlito climbed into the high chair and squashed the bear beside him, with its paws on the tray. Delaney and Rose told Angela what they wanted, and she went off to the kitchen. Delaney gazed casually around at the other diners. One stranger, sitting alone, was facing the door and reading the World. He was wearing a badly cut suit but seemed too old to be working for the FBI and too out of style to be a gangster. Others nodded hello to Delaney, and he smiled back. Rose played nervously with a fork, tapping the tines on the tablecloth.
“The guy readin’ the paper,” she said quietly. “I don’t like his look.”
“He’s too old to be a bad guy, Rose,” Delaney said.
“Don’t be so sure.”
“I’m not,” Delaney said. And he wasn’t. There were many kinds of bad guys, and their badness could be as real as blood.
He got up to walk toward the men’s room, casually looking again at the stranger, and near the kitchen he stopped to talk with Angela. They were out of the view of the man reading the newspaper.
“I need something,” he said.
“Like what?”
“A safe address,” he said. “For mail. Nothing else. Where my daughter can write me without getting her letters opened.”
“I’ll give it to you with the check.”
“Also: The guy with the newspaper, alone. You ever see him before?”
“A couple’a days ago.”
“Keep an eye on him for me. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Later, drowsy with food and exhausted by the long day, Delaney read Byron for a while in bed, and then turned off the light. Sleep did not come. Images of the day moved through his mind, glimpses of ivory skin, a flash of the absolute certainty in Callahan’s eyes, the metallic look of a man who judged others. But Delaney could never judge the women in Tommy Chin’s house on Mott Street. They did what they must. In some ways, their lives were now better than what they’d left behind. It was true of them. As it was true of some Irish women not long ago, and some Jews and Italians, and all the others who had found their various ways to the indifferent city between two rivers. Some, but not all.