Roscoe (28 page)

“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 singer,” 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.

He awoke in sunshine, the pain bearable only if he didn’t move. Nine o’clock on the bedside table clock. He felt as if he’d slept a week, but it was only
sixteen hours. Veronica was watching him from the heavy oak rocker by the fireplace. Beside her on a four-wheeled oak serving wagon lay mystery food under two silver-covered serving dishes.
Veronica at morning: scoop-neck white blouse with pink roses on the bodice, tan riding britches and brown boots, a vague suggestion of lipstick, hair in a tie at the back of her neck, smiling.

“Somebody killed me and I went to heaven,” Roscoe said.

“You went someplace. I came to call you for dinner three times last night, but you were comatose.”

“You’re looking out for me.”

“People know you’re not entirely well, don’t they?”

“Some people. Is that really nine o’clock?”

“What do you care what time it is?”

“I have to place myself in the cosmos. Time is important. So is food. I’m starving to death and you sit there quizzing me about time, hoarding mysterious food under silver
covers.”

“I can’t believe you’re hungry. Not you.”

“I haven’t eaten for weeks. People refuse to feed me.”

“Can you sit up?”

“I can try.” And, as he did, the pain stabbed him in the stomach, the chest, the heart. He fell back. “It hurts,” he said.

“All right, I’ll feed you.” She wheeled the tray to his bedside and uncovered lox and cream cheese and capers and onions and sour cream and applesauce. “There’s
coffee in the thermos pitcher, and bagels and blintzes in the warmer, if you want any.”

“Of course. I want it all.”

She took a bagel and a blintz from the warmer in the bottom of the wagon, which was heated by two flaming cans of Sterno. She poured him a cup of coffee.

“You’re serving me a Jewish breakfast.”

“It was my father’s favorite.”

“I remind you of your father, is that your point?”

“You take care of me the way he did. Gordon’s lawyer called. He got your letter and they want to settle. Whatever did you say that made them so agreeable?”

“I don’t want to talk about it. I want a bagel.”

She sat on the bed and ripped half a bagel, spread cream cheese on a fragment, piled it with capers, onions, a slice of lox, and put it to his mouth. He bit and chewed, stared at her, swallowed,
sipped the coffee, waited for another bite, chewed it, stared.

“Press your breasts against my arm while you feed me,” he said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“It’s brazen.”

“It’s not brazen. It’s a friendly gesture.”

“It’s more than friendly.”

“We’re more than friends. I’m no stranger to your breasts. I remember them well.”

“Then you don’t need them pressed against you.”

“Memory only goes so far. I need full-rounded reality.”

“You’re very fresh.”

“Just like your bagels.”

She cut a blintz and dabbed it with sour cream and applesauce. She put it into his mouth, and a spot of applesauce stayed on his chin. She leaned close to him and licked it away. He pulled her
close and kissed her, her arms over his shoulders, her breasts against him, and it was years gone, years since she had yielded her soft mouth so totally, everything unbelievably sharp to Roscoe.
But are these real responses, Ros, or ritualized emotions you turn on like the radio? Is this even the same woman you fell in love with? Well, she still responds the same way in your arms, so the
real question is, will she stay there? Don’t ruin it. Don’t go too far. If it’s going to happen it could happen at Tristano, if we ever get there. Also, you couldn’t do
anything, anyway. You can barely move. He licked the top of her chest.

“Be careful there,” she said.

“You licked me. I’m getting even.”

“I’m in your debt again.”

Gratitude. Is that what this is about? Gratitude is cheap. True, but if that started it, don’t knock it. And that worshipful-slave routine, so grateful for her handouts—get past it. No
woman is that perfect. She’s got the venal streak of the rich, money tunes in her music. Didn’t the phone call on the mill settlement bring on this affection? And somewhere in that
beautiful head she’s still a bit of a nutcake, believing a con artist like Nadia has answers. Don’t call her a nutcake.

He put both arms around her and squeezed her, his cheek on hers, and she squeezed him, hurting him, breathless pain he could love. They held this intimate clinch, the closest moment of their
lives, at least since 1932, another year that made Roscoe crazy, and this would do it again, no doubt about that either, this embrace that was setting off alarm bells in both of them. You can feel
that in her, can’t you, Ros? She squeezed him again. He kissed her hair. He would kiss her soul if he could only find it.