Roscoe (41 page)

“Just watch that chair,” Roscoe said pointing to Elisha’s place at the table. “I
mean seriously watch it. Pay attention. Listen. Quiet. The loudest noise you hear is the fire, listen, then you hear your own breathing, listen, then you hear mine, listen and you’ll see
everything that’s there, and then you’ll start to see everything that isn’t, keep listening and you’ll find sympathy with all things, you’ll hear the moon shine and
the grass grow. Do you remember what your father looked like the last time you saw him? He looks like that now, except he got rid of most of the gray in his hair, and he looks younger. Close your
eyes and look at him. Hair combed same as always, they didn’t make him change it . . . Oh yes? . . . Seth says you get to pick your favorite age when you come back. Your father picked
forty-six, eight years ago, 1937, the year the Yankees took the Series from the Giants in five games and Pleasure Power won the Travers at Saratoga. A good year for us. The lines in your
father’s cheeks aren’t quite as deep as they became, and his energy level is up. You were four years old that year, and your parents bought you a blue tricycle for Christmas. John
Thacher was re-elected our Mayor, FDR was a year into his second term, and the second war hadn’t started yet. The Nazis hadn’t taken over Vienna, so your mother’s Jewish uncles
and aunts were still alive. See what your father’s wearing? His gray houndstooth jacket with the suede elbow patches, much like our visitors’ jackets . . . What’s that, Elisha?..
. He says he likes what we’ve been doing for him, especially the way the trial came out . . . He predicts Alex will be re-elected . . . I know that, Elisha, and I’m not even dead . . .
Ah . . . He says, yes, he’s trying to say . . . ‘I died too quickly, too soon, and I left a vacuum. I’m sorry about that,”’ and Roscoe’s voice deepened, picked
up the Elisha timbre and cadence he’d been mimicking for forty years. He poured the Salignac into Elisha’s snifter. “‘I wish I’d had a chance to talk to somebody, tell
you all what was on my mind, but I didn’t have time.’”

“You killed yourself,” Gilby said.

“Gilby, what are you saying?” Veronica said.

“Everybody knows it,” said Gilby. “I’m always the one who never gets told. You took poison,” he said to the empty chair, with a glance at Roscoe. And Roscoe saw in
Veronica’s face the terror that truth brings; and he feared it more than she.

“‘You know what they did in the Middle Ages?’” Elisha asked. “‘They drove a stake through the heart of any man who killed himself. They still do that with
Dracula, but not with suicides anymore. Because now everybody knows there’s no such thing as suicide. There’s only death. Some people die years before they bury them. People get sick.
People go crazy I met a fella over here, his wife insured him against going crazy and then he went crazy. They put him in the asylum and she went every week and brought him bananas, he hated
bananas. Then he died. You think she killed him, or was it the bananas? You don’t know what makes people crazy. Just a little too much of the old EP and then—bingity bing!—there goes the whole
kitty bosso. My trouble was I couldn’t say what was on my mind, it was so complicated. I tried, but it wouldn’t come out. A secret, even from me. Some kind of code, I suppose it was,
but I never could solve it. Breedy ale wouldn’t kitty, wouldn’t cut pips. I was sick and got sicker and then I died. You say I killed myself, but I was dead before the poison. That
poison was there for years, just waiting. So many times we don’t know we’re drinking poison. Could be just like sipping this great brandy,’” and Roscoe lifted Elisha’s
snifter and sipped from it, put it back where it was. “‘We try to do something, but before we can finish it, everything changes and there’s no point doing it anymore. That’s
a disease, when you don’t do the only thing you ever wanted to do. Probably you made the wrong choice, lived in the wrong town, did the wrong work for the wrong reasons, married the wrong
woman, I didn’t do that. Poison in your system but it doesn’t seem like poison. You’re dead but you keep living. You’re a corpse but you can’t get to the cemetery. You
talk, eat, smile but you don’t know you’re doing any of it, how could you? You’re dead. But, Gilly my boy,
you’re
not dead, and neither are your mother and Roscoe.
You all had quite a day today, seeing those eagles. Seth can probably call them by name, right, Seth? No. Seth says he only knows ducks. But a good day like today, that’s worth a lot.
It’s gone, and you’ll go home tomorrow, no more Tristano, no more eagles. But just because a good day slips into history doesn’t mean it’s gone. You had it once and
you’ll have it forever in memory. You came up here looking for me because I’m in your memory, and here I am talking about death. I don’t mean to be gloomy when you all have so
much life. You’ll be all right, all of you. Just keep asking that question, the one you don’t know how to answer and hardly know how to ask. I miss you all terribly, and I hope
I’ll see you later.’”

In the silence that followed, Roscoe took a long swallow of his own brandy and started rocking again. Gilby stared at the chair, then at Roscoe, anticipating more. “Is he gone?”

“He is.”

“Are Seth and Amos gone?”

“They are.”

“They weren’t really here.”

“No?”

“Were they?”

“I think they were,” Veronica said. “I heard them.”

“Where did they go?”

“Back in the vase, maybe, like that genie,” she said.

“They were all Roscoe,” Gilby said.

“One of them was your father,” she said. “I’d know his voice anywhere.”

“You were my father, weren’t you, Roscoe?”

“No, but I’d like to be, in case anybody asks.”

“He did sound like my father,” Gilby said to his mother.

“I hope you remember his words,” she said. “It was so sad to hear him. But wasn’t it a lovely visit?”

Elective Affinities

The newspapers trumpeted Alex’s sex speech and the police raids: “Mayor Cracks Down on Sin and Smut,” “Our GI Mayor Wants Sinless Town for Returning
GIs.” Twelve pimps and assorted whores were arrested, but, folks, you pay dues to do business in Albany. The raids outraged bookstores and newsstands, but Night Squad detectives assured them
they’d get their merchandise back after election.

The next day, still courting page one, George Scully, the Governor’s special prosecutor, personally led a State Police raid on three Albany betting parlors, including the central office,
from where racing information was sent by phone lines to horse rooms throughout the city. Forty workers and horseplayers were arrested, including Johnny Mack, Patsy’s pal, whose famous White
House was padlocked. And Johnny faced a judge for the first time in forty years. Candidate Jay Farley called a press conference to say such open gambling was proof of political collusion with
gamblers in this corrupt city.

In an election-eve rally at Knights of Columbus Hall on Clinton Square, Alex told the Party faithful and the press that “the Governor spent half a million dollars investigating this city,
harassed our citizens, pried into our private lives, put fear into the hearts of people who had no connection to politics, and what has he got to show for it? He disturbed the peace of a few
gamblers, but he solidified Albany more solidly than ever behind our Democratic Party. I feel sad that our former Lieutenant Governor, my father, Elisha Fitzgibbon, who founded this Party with
Patsy McCall and Roscoe Conway, isn’t here to see what’s about to happen in our city. But I spoke to Patsy a minute ago and asked him to make a prediction for us tonight. Will you come
up, Patsy?”

Patsy, who rarely spoke in public but this year saw himself in close combat with the enemy, rose from his front-row chair and stepped onto the small stage. Alex made room at the microphone, then
asked, “How do you think we’ll do tomorrow, Pat?” Patsy put his hands in his pants pockets, looked out at the crowd of five hundred that thought he was Jesus Christ in those baggy
pants and that wide-brimmed fedora, and told them, “The Governor made our campaign for us. Mayor Fitzgibbon will be re-elected by upward of thirty-five thousand plurality.” And as the
cheers, huzzahs, and whistling exploded, Alex ended the meeting by saying into the mike, “You heard the man, now let’s go out and do it!”

Patsy had wanted to say forty thousand, but Roscoe was dubious. Forty was a nice Biblical number to humiliate the Governor with, but our registration this year is down eight thousand from when
Alex won in 1941. That year a single taxi driver registered one hundred and eighty times and voted two hundred and three times. Nobody was looking. This year many servicemen haven’t been home
to register, and with the goddamn State Police on our backs, taxi drivers are no longer so intrepid. Roscoe felt the need to pump up the numbers another way, so he decided to put Cutie’s
votes into Alex’s column. Cutie might get a few thousand protest votes, and the switch would be done in the courthouse by the six-man presumably bipartisan Election Commission, who were all
Democrats. Roscoe would tell Cutie not to protest the election: We’ll let him have a few hundred and a no-show job for his mother. Roscoe also ordered the ward leaders to have all four
hundred committeemen do a second canvassing count—No half-assed guesswork this year, we want to shove firm numbers down the Governor’s throat. After the second canvass, Roscoe showed Patsy
that forty was too high, he should go with thirty-five.

Extra desks came into Party headquarters for the election count, half a dozen city accountants manned adding machines, and women volunteers handled the six special phone lines.
Joey Manucci went to Keeler’s twice for sandwiches and coffee, and Charlie Foy and Tony Mirabile from the Night Squad sat outside the door to keep out visitors and press. When the polls
closed at nine o’clock, the phones jangled and final numbers flowed in from every district. The only real surprise was one district of the Ninth Ward where Republicans got no votes at all;
but Bart Merrigan explained to Roscoe that on that voting machine the Republican line was soldered. By nine-fifteen, Jay Farley was conceding at his headquarters and Alex was promising a victory
interview at ten in City Hall. At nine-twenty, Bart found a phone message for Patsy that Joey had taken at five-thirty, long before Patsy arrived. The caller asked for Patsy’s home phone, but
Joey wouldn’t give it. The caller said he was from the White House, but that didn’t cut Joey’s mustard. Bart chided Joey. “You fucking moron, it was the President. You
wouldn’t give Patsy’s number to the President?” Bart called the White House back and connected Patsy to President Truman, whom Patsy first knew through Tom Pendergast. Patsy had
been solid with Truman for vice-president at the ’44 convention, when half the New York delegation still backed Henry Wallace. Mr. Truman asked Patsy how Albany Democrats were faring under all
that pressure from New York’s Governor. “That fella’s probably gonna run against me on the boss issue in ’48.” And Patsy told him, “We beat him bad, Mr.
President. He never laid a glove on us.” And Mr. Truman said, “Nice work, Patsy. You boys know what you’re doing up there.”

By nine-forty, the absentee ballots were counted, Cutie’s votes were switched, and the official count was Jay Farley 14,747, Cutie LaRue 320, and Alex, as Patsy had called it, upward of
35,000, specifically 35,716.

After Patsy talked to the President he went into Roscoe’s office and closed the door. “I want you to go see the President,” Patsy said. “I want to send
him a Civil War book, let him know how strong we are for him up here.”

Roscoe made no reply and Patsy looked at him with a cocked eye.

“Send Alex,” Roscoe said. “Or anybody. I’m all done, Pat. I told you that in August and now I say it again. The returns are in and I’m through.”

“Goddamn it, Roscoe, don’t start this.”

“It’s done, Pat. I’m out as of tonight. Bart can handle this office.”

“You can’t quit politics. That’s like a dog who says he don’t want to be a dog anymore.”

“Even if I’m a dog, I quit.”

“Does this have to do with Veronica?”

“It might. Why do you ask?”

“Eh,” Patsy said.

“Eh what?”

“You living at Tivoli and all that.”

“All that what?”

“I talked to Alex. You’re not keeping any secrets.”

“I haven’t been trying. But, all right, being around her changed my life. But I was ready to change. I doubt I’ll ever have a better life than I’ve had here for
twenty-six years. But twenty-six is a long time. You’re my best friend, Patsy, the only best friend I’ve got left. I wouldn’t con you. I can’t handle it anymore.”

“You really mean it.”

“Now you got it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“We won the election, you still own the town, we control all fifty-two cards in the deck. Let’s go celebrate. The party’s at Quinlan’s.”

When they wrapped up the final count and left Bart to close the office, Patsy said he wasn’t up for Quinlan’s. Alex said he wouldn’t get there right away, had
to do those City Hall interviews.

“But I’ll walk you up the hill, Roscoe,” Alex said, and they rode the elevator down from the eleventh floor in silence. Only when they were walking up State Street did Alex
speak. He looked once at Roscoe, then spoke while staring up the hill at the Capitol.

“I know you and my mother went to Tristano with Gilby,” he said, “and I know something’s going on,” he said. “Roscoe, you may own the best political mind of
anybody who ever drew breath in this town. You know how to manipulate power, you know how to win, and politically I’m immensely grateful. You were also a great friend of my father, a guardian
to my mother after he died, and wonderful to me when I was growing up. Those were memorable days, and I hung on every word out of your mouth on how to play and gamble and drink and appreciate
women. I no longer value that kind of life. But you’ve sunken back into it, worse than ever—punching out a cheap editor in his own office, caught with naked prostitutes, personally
championing that vicious whore, watching your psychopathic friend murder your own brother, and then your insane hypothesis that my father raped Pamela. You won the case, but what a price you paid—a
scurrilous false rumor that profanes his memory forever. It’s always the lowest common denominator that you cozy to, Roscoe, and I include your friend Hattie Wilson, landlady for the
whorehouses. We’re a big city and we have to deal politically with all kinds, but you’ve brought the lowlife home to my family once too often. I say this with very mixed feelings, but I
consider you a negative influence on Gilby, and an unfit suitor for my mother. So here’s the line, Roscoe. From now on, my family’s off limits to you. Do you understand me?”