Roscoe

by William Kennedy

  “We’ll give it back to those rat bastards,” Patsy said. “We go public now with all we got.”

  What Roscoe had heard from Patsy was evidence on an undercover state cop who was a wife beater, but his wife wouldn’t talk against him—a weak case, but something. Also, an aide to the Governor had gotten drunk and punched a bartender; not much mileage there. But the best bit, and we’d find a way to use it, was the Spanish pimp held by his ankles out a tenth-floor State Office Building window by undercover state police trying to make him talk about Albany cops on the take. The pimp truly had been ankled out the window, but the anklers were two New York cops on their day off, doing Patsy a favor by impersonating sadistic state troopers.

  “Bindy also has a movie, don’t you, Bin?” Roscoe said.

  Bindy shook his head. No deal, Roscoe.

  “Whatta you got?” Patsy asked Bindy.

  “Nothin’ for you,” Bindy said.

  Patsy came up out of his chair, a bear in a wild lunge, and flung a right hand to Bindy’s chin. Bindy rammed him with a high elbow on the side of the head, and both brothers shook off their blows, Patsy gut-butting Bindy with his head, staggering but failing to topple the fat man, Patsy taking more head blows from Bindy’s fists as the improbably nimble Bin bounced out of Patsy’s range. O.B. and Roscoe moved between the brothers, brothers on brothers, and stopped the fight.

  “Let’s fight the Governor,” Roscoe said.

  “Cheatin’ sonofabitch,” Patsy said.

  “You’re a bad loser,” Bindy said.

  “This isn’t over,” Patsy said.

  “You want your money back, welsher?” And Bindy took the cash from his pocket and tossed it at Patsy, who caught it, undid the rubber band, riffled the wad of thousand- and five-hundred-dollar bills.

  “You get a rematch anytime you want it,” Bindy said.

  Patsy pocketed the money and turned to Roscoe, trying seriously not to smile.

  “Better get that little lady’s story in writing,” he said.

  Roscoe called Veronica and told her his news so she wouldn’t discover it in the newspapers, the way she discovered the Gilby scandal-mongering.

  “They’re going to say I was consorting with whores,” Roscoe said. “But I wasn’t. This was political business, strictly. Do you believe me?”

  “Do you ever go with whores?”

  “No.”

  “But you did.”

  “Years ago. Years. I go with you, or I like to think I do. I want only that. You’re the only woman in my life.”

  “What makes a woman be a whore?”

  “Need, money, bad luck, stupidity, a fondness for pimps, sometimes too much talent for sin.”

  “Do I have that talent?”

  “You have a bit of it. I like to think that you have a talent for love.”

  “So do you,” she said.

  The daily Times-Union and Knickerbocker News carried subdued front page reports on the raid on the Notchery and six other brothels operating cautiously, but not cautiously enough, and listed the names of those arrested. Both papers carried photos of Mame and Pina on inside pages, none of Roscoe, Bindy, or Mac. The Sentinel, printing its edition two days before its usual publication day, obviously with inside information, used banner headlines with photos of Roscoe, Bindy, and Mac on page one, and half a page of whore photos inside. The paper also had, exclusively, the addresses of every whorehouse in town, the number of whores working in each house, and names of madams and owners of each building in which a house operated. Hattie Wilson was listed as an owner. “Upper-echelon members” of the McCall political machine were said to have masked financial interest in the real estate. Elisha was not mentioned. An unnamed Governor’s spokesman called this a major crackdown on prostitution controlled by the Albany political machine. The Notchery, he said, was the collection point for money from all the brothels in the city. The Sentinel also carried an editorial calling the raids an overdue move to clean up the city, so sullied by wartime transients who used the city as a sewer. It argued for throwing out the Democratic scum in the upcoming election.

  Patsy reacted by having the city fire commissioner condemn Roy Flinn’s Sentinel building for multiple transgressions of fire and building ordinances that would keep Roy in court for years. He also had two dozen rats trapped at the city dump and then let loose into the Sentinel’s basement, with witnesses calling the infestation a neighborhood menace to children, and a photographer on hand to document the rats. Bindy gave Patsy his movie of the Governor’s aide, in hose, bedded with three women, with a transcript of their conversation; and this was sent anonymously to the Governor, to newspapers, radio stations, and the Albany Catholic Diocese. By day’s end the aide had resigned.

  The dailies sought second-day comment from mayoral candidates, and Republican Jay Farley deplored the brothels and cheered their closure. Alex, who had returned to Fort Dix for discharge, issued a statement in absentia saying he favored a postwar renewal of moral purpose, and would pursue it upon his return. Cutie LaRue said the brothels should stay where they were. “If you take away the opportunity to sin,” he said, “you also take away the opportunity not to sin, which eliminates the opportunity for virtue. Those places should exist so we don’t have to visit them.”

  Albany County District Attorney Phil Donnelly announced he was empaneling a grand jury to investigate the Governor’s police methods—hanging men out of windows, using degenerate dope fiends as informants against private citizens. O.B. announced Pina’s arrest for second-degree murder, and her confession to the crime.

  People gathered as Roscoe’s mid-morning press conference took shape in front of the Double Dutch bar: merchants from down the block, gamblers from the horse room next door, stray winos, passing soldiers, teenagers on the prowl, six policemen to monitor the crowd. The bar was padlocked, its shades were drawn, its neon tubes rat-gray in daylight. Roscoe had invited all local newspapers, radio stations, wire services, and out-of-town correspondents who covered the legislature; and two dozen reporters came to hear how Pina had killed a State Police informer to escape torture, rape, even death.

  “The Dutchman had been after secrets,” said Roscoe, standing on two milk crates to be visible, his shirt so wet it was soaking through his coat, and drops of sweat from his chin spotting his tie. “The Dutchman thought Pina knew secrets about prostitution and politics, which he planned to pass on to his partners, the state troopers, a cabal of pimps and prosecutors designed to persecute Albany Democrats. But Pina knew no such secrets. She made her living as a dancer and singer. She had worked in roadhouses like the Notchery ever since her flight from abuse, first by her father, then her husband, men who violated her beauty until all she could do in her rage was flee her native land for America. She made her way from Italy to Albany, using her beauty to find work, caught by the Dutchman, who hired her for this abominable place, this Double Dutch bar. It is sad that such places as this exist, but because of the low urges of the human being, they do. The Dutchman preyed upon these urges, hiring women to ply men with fake whiskey at inflated prices for the right to sit next to them at his bar. And that was Pina’s profession, bar girl, B-girl, singer of songs for this vile man.”

  Roscoe showed photos of the Dutchman’s ropes, the chair he tied Pina to, the pipe he tied the chair to, the bed strewn with obscene photographs, the dildo he raped her with, “. . .and I do not expect you to photograph this or even mention the substance of these photos to your readers or listeners. I show them to reveal the obscene life of this man—and lower than he the lowlife of this city does not get—the opium and the dope he smoked, the books of pornography that agitated his warped mind, his sadistic quest for beautiful young women to enslave and torture. But Pina broke away from him and found the best friend she ever made in this city, Mary Catherine Ray, who gave Pina a job in her nightclub. There is no shame in expressing your God-given talent for song or dance in this world, and Pina had these talents. She sings like an angel, dances the way the c
louds move. She had been at the Notchery singing with a violinist, a friend who recognized her ability. But suddenly she was arrested by State Police and put through ignominy and absurd rituals. This happened just as an Albany detective and myself were about to accept her surrender. For Pina’s remorse over the death of the Dutchman had brought such an ache to her heart, and such disquiet to her soul, that she gave her confidence to Mary Catherine. And Mary, on hearing her story, sought advice from her friend Benjamin McCall, a figure of known stature in this community Ben McCall then asked me to protect the rights of this young beauty when she surrendered, and I went to the Notchery to meet him and Pina, bringing with me one of the most respected detectives on the Albany police force, a man I trusted to move Pina through the legal process without prejudice. And as her surrender was about to take place, this detective and I were both arrested by the troopers and charged with a low misdemeanor.

  “Why? Why did state troopers, working for the Governor’s special investigators, do this? Publicity was their goal. Publicity to use against the popularly elected Albany Democratic organization they so irrationally hate and seek to destroy.

  “And why do they want this publicity so badly that they stoop to such tactics as arresting a detective who is making a major arrest? I’ll tell you why. I direct your attention to the great building at the top of State Street, the Capitol of New York State, where some of you work, but which is now the captive office of a gnarled and mustachioed little gnome who wants to be President of our nation—I refer to the power-maddened Governor, who will do anything to get elected. That’s why we’re here today, my friends, because of the lunacy of presidential ambition. May God deliver our city from it, and from that man so possessed by it.”

  The Knickerbocker News, in its midday final, reported Roscoe’s speech on page one, with his photo in front of the Double Dutch. The paper also carried an editorial wondering why a State Police inspector would make a politically motivated misdemeanor arrest of a detective lieutenant who was arresting a surrendering murderess. “Have the State Police lost their brains?” the newspaper wondered.

  In a sidebar, Cutie LaRue suggested that the Democrats nominate Roscoe as their next candidate for governor. When Roscoe read the paper, he sent a one-word telegram to Inspector Dory Dixon. “Moo,” it said.

  The heat was fierce after the press conference, and the pain was niggling at Roscoe’s heart. He had never felt more vital or necessary, yet he knew he was not well. He should go home to Tivoli, let Veronica take care of him. But he could not go directly from the Double Dutch to Veronica’s presence. He went to Hattie’s, to comfort her in her time of public embarrassment.

  “Gin and food is what I need,” Roscoe told Hattie, and she brought out her Canadian gin and phoned in an order to Joe’s Delicatessen for pastrami sandwiches on rye (two for Roscoe) with coleslaw and dill pickles, which Joe sent down in a taxi. They ate in front of Hattie’s parlor fans, and Roscoe apologized for not foreseeing the publication of her name in the paper. Roscoe opened his shirt to beat the heat and he thought of poor old Oke. Hattie waved the skirt of her housedress to air her thighs.

  “They made a whore out of me, Rosky,” she said.

  “They made me a consort of whores,” Roscoe said.

  “I could’ve been a good whore.”

  “Well, yes, but no. You’ve got too much heart.”

  “Whores have heart.”

  “Maybe at the beginning. Whoring eats your heart.”

  “Everything eats your heart,” Hattie said.

  “Nothing ate your heart, Hat. You’re still the love queen of Lancaster Street. How can I make this thing up to you?”

  “You could love me like a husband.”

  “And you’d kill me like a husband. My heart couldn’t handle it today.”

  “You have to do something about that heart, Rosky, if it gets in the way of love.”

  “I’ll talk to it,” Roscoe said.

  Roscoe saw Jack Diamond waiting for a trolley, and told Mac to stop and pick him up. Jack wore a shoulder holster with no pistol, disarmed in death. He didn’t say hello to Mac, but you can’t blame him. Jack, moving through the timelessness of his disgraceful memories, had insight into Roscoe’s destiny.

  “Roscoe,” he said, “there’s chaos waiting for you. How will you cope?”

  “I’m glad you asked that, Jack,” Roscoe said. “I’ll cope through virtue, and virtue I’ll achieve through harmony. The musical scale, always a favorite of mine, is expressed in harmonious numbers: the octave, the fifth, and other fixed intervals, all reflecting an order inherited by this earth. An equivalently calibrated heavenly order guides our planets and stars in their harmonious trajectories, generating the music of the spheres, which, though silent, is mathematically chartable, and always a crowd pleaser. Do you agree, Jack?”

  “I try to,” Jack said.

  “Virtue,” said Roscoe, “comes from heeding these unseen numbers, this silent music; also from the judicious exercise of power, contempt of wealth, and a prudent diet. The virtuous warrior who inherits the mantle must, with fire and sword, expel disharmony, amputate sickness from the body, ignorance from the soul, luxury from the belly, sedition from the city, and discord from the family, thereby ending all wars, and restoring music to God’s cosmos. This is my plan of attack, Jack. What do you think of it?”

  “Virtue was always one hell of an idea,” Jack said. “Let me off at the corner.”

  At mid-afternoon Bart Merrigan came to Hattie’s to find Roscoe and make sure he had not died of rhetoric and heat. He also brought news that Elisha’s will had surfaced for probate in Surrogate Court, Elisha’s siblings had seen it, and their lawyer wanted to talk. Roscoe was exhausted from the Notchery-Pina debacle and his worsening chest pain. He had napped at Hattie’s for two hours, not enough, and now wanted only to retreat to the tranquillity of his Tivoli rooms until the world changed. But, as usual, he lost out to his rage for duty, and would have to forgo that elegant peace and go to his office to cope with Elisha’s brother and sisters.

  Elisha, on the night of his death, had shown Gladys the document naming Roscoe executor of his estate, and told her that if anything ever happened to him a family feud would erupt, but Roscoe would find “the key” to solving it. Gladys assumed he meant Roscoe would be fair with all parties in settling control of the mill. But Roscoe decided “the key” related not to fairness but to the protection of Veronica. How could Elisha assume Roscoe would be fair? Roscoe had never been fair, and who knew that better than Elisha?

  Elisha’s siblings—brother Gordon, the banker, and sisters Antonia and Emily—even before Elisha’s death, had aimed to control the mill and stop what they saw as its downward slide. Their plan was to replace the inattentive, dollar-a-year Elisha with Kyle Glockner, a bright man who had risen from the rolling mill to become a superior salesman, sales manager, eventually vice-president, a man the siblings believed they could control. When Elisha died, Glockner did move into the breach, and chaos did not erupt as Gladys had feared. After the funeral, the siblings pressed Veronica to agree to joint control, with Glockner as titular head.

  Veronica, with Elisha’s holdings, controlled the mill with 50 percent of common voting stock. The siblings had 45, but with Glockner’s 5 percent, given to him when he became Elisha’s vice-president, a standoff was possible. Glockner, however, a protégé of Elisha, was neither as malleable nor as friendly to the siblings as they expected, and as their dream of control faded and the mill’s postwar slide continued, the siblings urged Veronica to sell it before everybody slid into bankruptcy.

  Bart drove Roscoe to Party headquarters, which was also Roscoe’s law office, one cabinet drawer holding his entire practice: the Elisha and Gilby files. The day was crisp and sunny, and a breeze had blown away the heavy heat. Roscoe, in wilted clothing, felt soiled in the shining afternoon.

  “Everybody loved your speech on Pina the whore,” Bart said.

  “I like to think of her as a singe
r,” Roscoe said.

  “She gonna do any time?”

  “Of course not. Have you no morality? The woman was a victim, not a murderess.”

  “I hear the Dutchman’s still dead.”

  “Has anybody complained about that?”

  At headquarters, Roscoe reviewed the files on Elisha’s estate, then called in Mrs. Pringle, his secretary-on-call, and dictated a letter to the Fitzgibbon siblings’ lawyer, setting out estate specifics: only half a million in Elisha’s personal assets, plus Tivoli, worth another million or so, to be appraised; six hundred thousand to Veronica from Elisha’s life insurance, none of these legacies involving the siblings. The mill’s value, which did involve them, required detailed appraising. Roscoe advised them that monthly fees for himself as counsel and executor would be fifteen thousand, plus five thousand for Bart Merrigan as appraiser. Also, the mill’s holdings in other states would necessitate hiring additional lawyers and appraisers. “Sad to say,” concluded Roscoe, “the Surrogate Courts of this nation are exceedingly dilatory, and we should not expect final resolution before three to five years. Some notorious cases have continued for twenty-eight, even thirty-five years.”

  Roscoe sent Joey Manucci to hand-deliver the letter to the siblings’ lawyer, Murray Fish, an old hand at probate who was well aware that Surrogate Harry Crowley was married to Patsy’s niece. Bart then drove Roscoe to Tivoli. A taxi was at the front entrance as they pulled in, and Roscoe recognized the woman getting into it: Nadia, the spiritualist with only one name. Bart helped him out of the car and up the front steps and Roscoe then went in under his own waning power. He looked for Veronica in the front parlors, but she was elsewhere. One step at a time, so difficult to catch a breath, he climbed the staircase to his second-floor suite, then stripped and dropped his foul clothing into a hamper. He soaped and showered slowly, sat on the bed and painfully pulled on a clean pair of boxer shorts, and at five o’clock on this afternoon of sublime sanctuary, he eased his transient self between the sheets of his four-poster double bed. Alexander Hamilton had once owned this bed, so went the Fitzgibbon family legend. All his life Roscoe had been linked to this family, and because of it, because of Veronica, he’d remained in Albany and in politics. So was this new illness another fraud to keep him in the same house with her? He’s equal to the idea, but no, Roscoe would not withhold breath from himself for any reason. But he loves being here. Even when he married Pamela and, as the groom, kissed bridesmaid Veronica, he told her she should’ve been the bride. What would it have been like not being near her all his life? Who would be his love? Could he have endured politics without her presence? He buried his face in the pillow and imagined Nadia at the séance in her darkened parlor saying she could see Rosemary, Veronica’s five-year-old daughter, coming through the clouds, and that the child looked beautiful and happy in her pink dress and pink bow. This thrilled Veronica, who said, “That’s exactly what she was wearing the day before she died.” Nadia’s snout came up the sewer drainpipe into the sink, but Roscoe ran the water and down she went. Up again she came, so Roscoe opened both faucets and let them run, and there went Nadia: down the pipe, into the river, and bobbing out to sea, no longer a threat to Veronica. And Roscoe could sleep.