Roscoe

by William Kennedy

  She cried. Her tears would melt steel. She kissed him so many, many times. He cried with her. His tears stained the floor tiles. They kissed and kissed. They fumbled each other. She could not stop crying as they kissed. He raised her clothing to touch her every where. She did the same with him. Then they put everything back in its proper place. She leaned against the door and slapped it softly as she cried. He blew his nose and went upstairs for his brown valise with the fifty thousand in cash in the false bottom, quiet wages. Everything else he left in the room. Goodbye, room. He asked her to call a cab and it came, and when she saw him coming down the stairs she sent it away. They continued to kiss by the door. Love. Oh, love. Such love as this. God help our love. You have my heart, Roscoe. I won’t give it to another. We don’t know how life will change. We never know the future. You take my heart with you. Our hearts, our hearts, oh, our hearts. We never know what will happen to our hearts.

  On the Night Boat

  From where he stood on the promenade deck, Roscoe could hear the first strains of music from the boat’s orchestra: cellos, then oboes, a Wagner overture, with desire implicit in the music. Just what Roscoe needs. He moved up the deck until he could no longer hear it. As the boat’s motor began to thrum he noticed two lone men on the quay, one prone with eyes closed, arms outstretched, unmoving. Dead? The other standing at the downed man’s feet looking toward the boat, a tableau vivant. The downed man had done something unspeakable; this Roscoe sensed through his kinship with the fallen. Roscoe called out to him to get up and explain himself, but the man was beyond words, as was Roscoe, who can never utter the words that would trigger Alex instantly, and forever, into fear and trembling.

  He walked the deck, assessing time by the intensity of the flickering shore lights and contemplating the myriad forms deceit takes, how they intersect and magnify, or cancel each other out. Veronica, the sleeping beauty, will awake to find she is forever wed to a dead man and can never explain why. Does she know why? She may always have known. So much comes down to self-deceit, such as Roscoe shooting that bear. How could he have convinced himself, or anybody, that he shot that bear? Yet Roscoe believes in his creations: his beau geste saved the Party, and won him Veronica’s love. A lie, after all, is only another way of affirming the desirable. A live lie is better than a dead truth, and there is no ultimate wall that the creative individual cannot breach through deceit. To repossess Veronica’s love, Roscoe would lie until he forgot how. Any time he chooses, he can see her stunning in her black sheath, naked in her jacket on the bed, smart in her riding britches and boots, contoured in her black bathing suit, fetching in her slip at the hotel, new at morning in her Chinese dressing gown. He will not lose these visions.

  Two chubby nuns walked past him on their way to becoming cherubim and went into one of the boat’s private parlors. Roscoe followed and looked through the parlor window to see nuns and priests sitting at several card tables, silently exchanging holy pictures and tarot cards. This looked new. He entered to find a luxurious gambling establishment: carpets obviously from Brussels, an explosion of finely wrought brass railings, brass light fixtures and cuspidors, mahogany chairs, velvet wallpaper, unique décor for a Night Boat. He moved among the gaming tables, stopped at a corner where five well-dressed gentlemen were playing a dice-and-card game Roscoe could not identify. He studied the blackboards which listed stock prices and odds on ball games, fights, marriages. He moved to the board with the racing entries, noted a familiar name: Cabala 2, and then coming toward him he saw Johnny Mack, Patsy’s bookie, and the elegance here made sense. Owner of racehorses, man of taste and fashion, premier gambler, why wouldn’t John furnish this parlor as handsomely as his White House, Albany’s premier chamber of games?

  Johnny wore a stylish black-and-gray-checked suit with black piping, his pince-nez anchored to his waistcoat by a broad black ribbon.

  “I didn’t know you were on the river, Johnny,” Roscoe said to him.

  “After the Governor arrested me, I lost faith in cities,” Johnny said.

  “I’ve had a similar epiphany,” Roscoe said.

  “Epiphanies come when you least expect them.”

  “What’s that game in the corner?”

  “What would you like it to be?”

  “What a question,” Roscoe said. “Who are those players?”

  “Who would you like to play against?”

  And then Roscoe realized that the world as he knew it had been overthrown while he was in cloister. He would have to move from scratch, like a novice. The very thought of new game strategies depressed him. Who cares what you bet on now, Roscoe? Do you? What exactly is your legacy, even if you win? Ten years from now, will anybody know you ever gambled on anything, or ever drew breath?

  “I’ll pass on the game, but I’ll bet that filly, Cabala 2,” Roscoe said.

  “Again?” Johnny asked.

  “I’m a sucker for it,” Roscoe said.

  It was August 1937, he in the Fitzgibbon box in the Club House at Saratoga, next to Veronica. The horse he owned with Elisha and Veronica, Pleasure Power, would run in and win the Travers, two races hence. Perhaps through unconscious symmetry, Roscoe and Veronica had both bet Johnny Mack’s two-year-old filly, Cabala. But the horse entered the starting gate in fear, reared wildly, threw her jockey, flipped herself onto her back under the gate between two stalls, and, in her insane flailing to stand upright, fractured a pelvic bone that severed an artery. When they pulled her out from under the gate she tried to stand but fell on top of her useless leg. She bled so rapidly into the turf she was dead before they came to quiet her with the pistol. Veronica hid her eyes. Roscoe watched through binoculars. The turf below, the sky above, are true. It’s true only if you can’t fix it. Everybody in the cemetery is true.

  “Your bet is accepted,” Johnny said, marking his notepad.

  Roscoe decided long ago that only a bet on the impossible makes sense. It is an act of faith and courage requiring an irrational leap over reason. A man wins simply by making such a bet.

  He went back out onto the deck and could hear the heavy churning of the paddle wheel and the th-th-thump of its crankshaft as the boat moved out into the center of the darkening river. Perhaps a thousand passengers were in their berths making love. That’s why the Night Boat was born. When Roscoe circled back to the entrance of the main saloon, the orchestra was still doing Wagner, but was now into the love theme; or was it the death theme? One of those.

  Ah well, he thought, going in, either way I could use a little music.

  This is a novel, not history. There was a political machine in Albany comparable to the one in this book, and some of the events here correspond to historical reality, and some characters here may seem to be real people. But I don’t do that sort of thing. These are all invented characters, the McCalls, the Fitzgibbonses, even Al Smith and Jack Diamond; and their private lives are fictional. They might be better than their prototypes (if they have any), they might be worse; but I hope they and their book are true. As Roscoe points out, truth is in the details, even if you invent the details.

  For some of the details I owe abundant thanks: to my assiduous researcher of so many years, Suzanne Roberson, who finds whatever I need, including things I don’t yet know I need; to Bettina Corning Dudley, who gave me access to her-father-theMayor’s cabin and certain of his papers; to Dr. Juan Vilaró and Kiki Brignoni, who introduced me to fighting chickens; to Dr. Alan Spira, who gave me pericardial counsel; to Judge David Duncan, my legal counselor; to Joe Brennan, who twenty or more years ago gave me his World War One diary in hopes I would find a way to use it, and so I have—but Joe should not be held responsible for what Roscoe did with his war; to Bertie Reddish, who told me some exceedingly rare stories; to Detective Lieutenant Ted Flint, who has talked to me for fifty years about being an Albany cop; to Rikke Borge and her fellow trainer, Richard (Pinky) Edmonds, MOL, who counseled me on horses; to Paul Grondahl for his illuminating biography of Mayor Erastus Corning; and to S
. K. Heninger Jr. from whom Roscoe learned about Pythagorean order and virtue.

  I owe thanks to people who told me great stories: John and Tony Treffilerti, Ira Mendelsohn, Betty Blatner, Mae Carlsen, Peggy O’Connell Jensen, Marge and Andy Rooney, Ruth Glavin, Johnny Camp, Fortune Macri, and I revisit endlessly the marathon conversations I had with leaders and insiders, early and late, major and minor, and certain effective enemies of the Albany political organization; enemies first: Victor Lord, a Liberal, Congressman/editor Dan Burton, State Senator Walter Langley, and Assemblyman Jack Tabner, all Republicans; and the De mo c ratic players: Mayor Corning, the unbeatable, Mayor Tom Whalen, the first reformer, Mayor Gerry Jennings, the incumbent from North Al bany, Charley Ryan, Frank Schreck, Bob Fabbricatore, Swifty Mead, Johnny Corscadden, Joe Zimmer, Sheriff Jack McNulty, As semblymen Dick Con ners and Jack McEneny, Congressman/newsman Leo O’Brien, the Judges John Holt-Harris, James T. Foley, Edward Conway, Martin Schenck, and Francis Bergan, and the boss himself, Daniel Peter O’Connell.

  Countless others, including unnamable Democrats, bemused Republicans, hostile reformers, a felon or two, and news reporters and editors back to pre-Prohibition days, enhanced my knowledge of the machine.

  But don’t blame any of the people above for what’s in this novel. Blame Roscoe.