Roscoe (6 page)

“His brother, Gordon, really thought he was taking charge. He and his sisters have been scheming to take control, because Elisha’s been in Washington so long and profits are down.
They blame him, but anybody with half a brain knows it’s because the war was ending. They had awful fights.” Gordon was the senior vice-president of the City Exchange Bank.

“Elisha wouldn’t kill himself for that,” Roscoe said.

“Riddles,” Gladys said. “This place’ll go straight to hell without him, and Alex won’t have anything to do with it. It’ll be a battle royal between Veronica
and the family lawyers. And I’ll be out on the street.”

“Whoever runs it, they’ll need you.”

Roscoe felt an odd intimacy with Gladys. For as long as they’d known each other they’d each spoken only to the other’s public self. Gladys sipped her whiskey, gave a shudder,
and set the glass on the desk.

“You know what he did last night, Roscoe? He kissed me.”

“He do that often?”

“Once a year, maybe, on the cheek. Last night on the mouth, sweetly. He always kept tabs on my skirt. Somebody sent him pictures of naked women about fifteen years ago, and of course I
always opened his mail. ‘You in the market for this stuff?’ I asked him. He held one photo up. ‘That’s what I figure you look like,’ he said. ‘It’s
close,’ I said, ‘but you’ll never know.’ ‘I know,’ he said, ‘a bitter denial.’ ”

But “bitter” wasn’t the word. Roscoe understood how Elisha could have worked up a quiet, arm’s-length love for Gladys, a woman of durable good looks that fluctuated with
perms and marcels not always in her own best interest; sturdy, busty, feminine, always wore pumps, and everyone, not only Elisha, monitored her legs. She’d gone the novena route for years and
tried to keep the commandments. But going with Mac the cop must have led to repetitive spiels in the Saturday-night confessional: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned; I did it again with that same
fella. She dressed modestly in fashions that didn’t change much, and Elisha once said her smile could warm the north wind. She’d never married, and Mac wasn’t a prospect.
Mac’s wife had left town years ago, but he wouldn’t divorce her. Also, that subterranean love Gladys and Elisha shared, a silent love presumably without consequence, had probably
spoiled her for others.

“That kiss,” Roscoe said, “that was the extent of it?”

“No. He also said, ‘If I ever told you what I felt, you’d put your hat on and tell me to go to hell. But you know it anyway.’ And I did know. I always knew. I’m so
glad I was here, Roscoe. I fell asleep after the whiskey, but I remember asking was he going away anyplace, and he said, ‘If I leave you’ll know it.’ ”

“Do you want to go home and sleep?” Roscoe asked.

“The last time I fell asleep Elisha died. Besides, I should call the undertaker.”

“That’s Veronica’s job.”

“I always make his travel arrangements. Aren’t you going to call Veronica?”

“I’ll go get her when O.B. gets here.”

“You can start over with her now,” Gladys said.

“Start over.”

“She’ll expect it. So will everybody else.”

“What does that mean?”

“Really, Roscoe, do you know how transparent you are sometimes?”

Roscoe heard car doors closing. Oswald Brian Conway, his younger brother and Albany’s chief of police, unshaven and in his baggy gray sharkskin, stepped off the elevator with two of his
Night Squad boys behind him, Bo Linder and Joe Spivak. Roscoe asked the detectives to wait outside and let no one in. O.B. went directly to Elisha and stared at him.

“What happened to him?”

“He decided his life was over.”

“I don’t get it,” O.B. said.

“Nobody does,” Roscoe said. “Who’s the coroner on duty?”

“Nolan. I didn’t call him yet.”

“Don’t. We’ll do this alone for now. It goes down as a natural death.”

“Are we sure it’s a suicide and not a murder?”

“Gladys was here all night, working with him.”

“How are you, Gladys?” O.B. said. “You didn’t murder him, did you?”

“Not even in my dreams. Is Mac coming?” Mac was O.B.’s partner.

“He must be in bed,” O.B. said. “He went off duty at four-thirty. Does Patsy know?”

“No,” said Roscoe. “I can’t use the phone for this. Send one of your boys up to tell him. But don’t mention suicide. And don’t, for God’s sake, let
anybody leak it to the press. I don’t want Veronica hearing it on the radio.”

“When are you getting her?”

“Now. You want a lift home, Gladys?”

“I suppose so,” Gladys said.

“You go get Veronica,” O.B. said. “That’s priority. I’ll see Gladys gets home. This thing stinks out loud.”

“It’ll get louder,” Roscoe said. He picked up his suit coat and went out.

Roscoe and Veronica

Everybody knew he was insane about her when they were young. Insane. Pressing, pressing, pressing her to marry him. But Elisha dazzled her with his razzmatazz and the family
fortune he had regenerated. And Veronica, with sweet pets and kisses, told Roscoe one of her lovely lies: “My darling Ros, you love me so much you’ll absolutely die if I marry you, but
Eli will die if I don’t marry him.” Roscoe remembered trying to decide which train he should walk in front of; but he got over that and tried not to blame Veronica for defecting. She
was no golddigger, just a moderately rich girl who suffered from money. And Elisha had much more money than she. Also, Elisha was a winner and a great guy, and who the hell was Roscoe, anyway? A
young punk lawyer with a talent for fun. Roscoe brooded and did the next best thing to marrying Veronica: he married her sister, Pamela, a liaison that carried on interminably for four days, then
turned into several previously unknown forms of unkindness.

Roscoe stopped at the Morris Diner in North Albany to get just-baked French crullers and coffee for Veronica. She loved those crullers (so did Roscoe), and with the coffee and sugar they’d
give her a rush so she wouldn’t nauseate in front of dead Elisha. He then drove up the hill to Van Rensselaer Boulevard, where the great estate of Tivoli—Veronica suddenly its
sovereign—had stood since Lyman built it, a landscape of dream for Albanians of the last century. The estate’s mansion was sited on the plateau that ran along the crest of the river
valley, giving a vista of the serene and turbulent Hudson, the green heights of Rensselaer, and the Berkshire Hills beyond. But vista was secondary to the builder, who wanted solitude, isolation
above the crowd, a desire that belonged to yesterday. Now Roscoe moved along the boulevard past a row of new and boxy little houses owned by Italian grocers and German plumbers, past
Wolfert’s Roost Country Club, founded by newsmen and politicians, then drove through the open wrought-iron gates and up the long, winding driveway to Tivoli, his second home.

“Why are you here at this hour?” Veronica asked him over coffee in her breakfast room. “The last time you brought breakfast you and Elisha were going fishing.”

The sight of her in a Chinese dressing gown, her golden hair loose and only slightly mussed from sleep, quickened Roscoe’s heart, but he told it to behave itself.

“I need your help,” he said. “Eat a cruller.”

“You need my help?” She bit into a cruller.

“Elisha.”

“He didn’t come home last night,” she said. “He stayed at the office.”

“I know that.”

“Were you with him?”

“I was.”

“Is he in trouble?”

“No.”

“Is it the head injury? He was fine when he called.”

“He’s in the office. In his chair. Now, don’t hold me to this, Vee, but I think he killed himself.”

She squeezed her bitten cruller between fingers and palm, rolling it into a wad of dough as she looked at Roscoe.

“No,” she said, and shook her head, “he wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe he didn’t do it. I could be wrong.”

“You’re certain he’s dead.”

“I’m certain.” And he put Elisha’s wallet on the table.

“That bastard. That
bastard
!”

“Atta girl. You tell him.”

She dropped the wadded cruller and it rolled across the table to Roscoe. She picked up the wallet and put it against her face.

“He wasn’t ready to die,” she said, and the tears were coming now. Roscoe couldn’t look at them.

“Go get dressed, Vee. I’ll take you down to the mill.”

When she was dressed and they were in the car she asked Roscoe, “Why do you say suicide?”

“He burned papers and files he didn’t want anybody to see. It was a methodical ending.”

“How did he do it?”

“I don’t know. Not with a gun.”

“Why didn’t he come home and do it?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to make a mess for you. Maybe he didn’t want anybody saving him. Or maybe the idea of death arrived in such a perfect state that he had to act instantly,
a fatal muse descending, and there was only submission, no alternative.”

“Something’s very wrong with me. I never saw it coming.”

“None of us did,” Roscoe said.

“It’s me he left. He was through with me.”

“Nonsense. Who’d ever leave you?”

“He ran away from something, or somebody. Who else is there to run away from?”

“There was no cowardice in him,” Roscoe said. “He’d face anything.”

“You’re so loyal. To both of us.”

“I’m not loyal,” Roscoe said. “I’m a traitor.”

“Of course you are. God should give the world more traitors like you.”

When he drove into the office parking lot at the mill, Roscoe saw men already at work in the traffic manager’s office, so, rather than subject Veronica to their scrutiny, he parked at the
side entrance. They went briskly in past the security cubicle, where Roscoe saw Frank Maynard and two of his guards whispering—The word is out—and up the back stairs to Elisha’s
office. Joe Spivak sat by the door, guarding the integrity of the death room. Nothing had been taken away or added, but as Roscoe entered, the room became an antechamber where he sensed he had to
begin. Begin what? Not courting the widow. He might get to that. Might. This was something else, and he knew it wouldn’t easily be defined. He also knew he now could not quit the Party; and
he knew Elisha had known that would happen.

Veronica walked to the dead Elisha and looked down at him, shaking her head no, no, no. “Oh Lord, Roscoe, it’s true.” And she crumpled in front of Elisha.

Roscoe gestured to Joe Spivak to get out, then lifted Veronica into the large leather chair where Gladys had also sat to stare at her dead love. “Slow, now, Vee. Take it slow.”

“He doesn’t even look a little bit sick,” Veronica said, her eyes wet again.

“Maybe he wasn’t sick.”

“He had to be.”

She stood up and walked to Elisha, hiked her skirt and straddled his lap, ran her hands through his hair.

“Were you sick, Elisha? How could you be that sick without my knowing it? You’re already a chunk of rubber.” She gave him a weeping kiss. “What went so wrong you had to
quit everything in such a hurry? You couldn’t wait to see your son come home from winning the war? Whatever it was we could’ve fixed it.” She lifted his left hand and studied it,
then took his diamond ring and gold watch from the dead finger and wrist. Lacking pockets, she put them inside her brassiere. She stared at Elisha, then kissed him and sat back. “Look at you.
Look what you’ve done to yourself. Bastard.” She slapped his face.

“Veronica,” Roscoe said. “Get a grip.”

He helped her stand and she tried to stop weeping.

“I thought I knew him. He’s a dead stranger.”

“Staying alive isn’t anybody’s obligation,” Roscoe said. “I’m betting he had a reason.”

Veronica let Roscoe put his arms around her while she wept—spasmic, throaty crying. Roscoe held grief in his arms and knew he could die of happiness, a traitor, embracing his best
friend’s wife. Yes, it’s true, Elisha, old pal. You’re dead and we’re not. Then Veronica stabbed him in the heart with her breast, a wound that meant nothing to her. Sweet
Roscoe, comfort me, let me fail in your arms, hold me close, feel how soft I am. But this is all you get, and don’t think this counts. You’re a wonderful fellow, Roscoe. Don’t
crowd me.

“It’s okay, Vee,” he said to her. “Let it out.”

“Oh, Roscoe, Roscoe,” she said. “What is going on here?”

“A temporary mystery. We’ll figure it out.”

“I loved him so.”

“Sure you did.”

She raised her head off his shoulder, trying to stop crying, and he saw she was abashed by their embrace. What a surprise. She smiled and stepped back from him, walked to the desk, and picked up
the photo of Elisha, Roscoe, and herself in the winner’s circle with Pleasure Power the day he won the Travers at Saratoga.

“I want to take this home,” she said.

“I’ll get an envelope.”

She picked up the photo of Alex in his army uniform. “We have to tell Alex,” she said.

“We’ll call the army, have them cable him. I’ll do that.”

Roscoe would do it all. And Alex would come home safely from the war to find that his father, not he, was the post-armistice casualty. Roscoe slid the Saratoga picture into a large envelope and
sealed its clasp. He walked Veronica down the stairs and toward the line of men arriving for work in the machine shop. They had all heard about Elisha, and Roscoe answered their condolences with
nods and salutes as he and Veronica passed them.

Sorry, Missus Fitz.

The sunlight was making intensely black shadows of the men as they stood in line to punch the time clock in the mill. They all spoke their regrets.

Sorry, sorry, Missus Fitz. Sorry, sorry. Really sorry.

“Good morning, men, and thank you,” Veronica said in a sharp, recovering voice, raising her head to meet their eyes. “Good morning, yes, good morning, men, and thank you. Thank
you so much. Such a beautiful day to die.”