William Kennedy - Roscoe

“My God, Hattie,” she said, leaving the door ajar, “it’s hotter here than outside. Pour me one of those teas, Roscoe.”

“Glad to see you, too, Mame,” Roscoe said.

Hattie closed the door, then poured an iced tea for Mame, who sat on the other end of the sofa from Joey.

“Hiya, Mame,” Joey said.

“How’s it hangin’, Joe?”

“Down to my knees.”

“Send my regards,” Mame said.

“Never mind the shoptalk,” Roscoe said. “We hear the Governor may make a surprise raid on some of the girls.”

“How could that happen?” Mame asked. “We pay off everybody, including one of the Governor’s lawyers, and a couple of the very best state legislators.”

“You hear any rumors?”

“Pina said the troopers were talking to South End pimps, and she mentioned they’re interested in Division Street.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“They’re also talking to the Dutchman, and Pina says they know a beat cop taking payoffs, eight dollars a week.”

“Eight dollars. A fantastic specific, but not quite grounds for a raid. Who told Pina that?”

“I didn’t take it serious,” Mame said.

“Who could it have been? When was it?”

“Last night. Could’ve been anybody.”

“You and Pina worked last night?”

“We never close.”

“Everybody else closed,” Roscoe said.

“So I heard.”

“Patsy sent the word out yesterday to shut down.”

“Patsy, Patsy, Patsy. Fuck Patsy. We’re using the peephole. Only people we know get in.”

“Did you say fuck Patsy?” Hattie asked her.

“I did. He came to our place years ago, then all of a sudden he stays home and says his Rosary. What I think is his dick fell off. I hope it did.”

“Oh, Mame, Mame,” Hattie said. “You’ve gone bedbugs.”

“What you’re saying is Bindy won’t close? All eight places are running?”

“Just the Notchery,” Mame said. “You know how much money we’re losing with seven places dark? How are people supposed to live?”

“You know the money it’d take to get you and your girls out of jail? Lawyers, bail, greasing judges we don’t own, appeals if anybody’s convicted? This is happening at the state level, sweetheart, and the election is coming.”

“We’ve had raids before,” Mame said. “Nothing changes and then we go back to work. God, Hattie, I can’t stand this heat.” Mame opened her front burtons and slipped off her blouse. She wore a corselette that put much of her chest on exhibit.

“Lookin’ good, Mame,” Joey said.

“I don’t overeat,” Mame said.

“Wanna go in the bedroom?”

“Thanks, Joe, but I never fuck before lunch.”

“So,” said Roscoe, “you’re saying Bindy’s now in business for himself?”

“Wasn’t he always?” Mame said.

“I’ll think about that,” Roscoe said. “In the meantime, madam, I suggest you guard your peephole very vigorously.”

Roscoe walked slowly down the hallway toward Supreme Court at one minute to ten, Veronica and Gilby beside him. Photographers from the local papers were ahead of them, shooting, walking backward as they reloaded their Speed Graphics. You’re on tomorrow’s front page, Ros. Suck in your gut.

As they entered the courtroom, Roscoe moved Gilby a step ahead, then he and Veronica walked down the aisle together, maybe his only chance to do this. Pamela and Marcus Gorman had not arrived, but the courtroom was half filled, mostly with women who had come to see the socially notorious Pamela. The Times-Union this morning carried a capsule history of her marriages and scandals, her liaisons with millionaires, royal exiles, and Caribbean gigolos, and it highlighted the night she spent in jail for smashing a woman’s face with a champagne glass, thirty-two stitches, because the woman had insulted President Roosevelt. Give the devil her due. She’s still a Democrat.

“She’s not here yet,” Roscoe said to Veronica. “Have you figured out what you’ll say to her?”

“That I’ll cut out her heart and throw it to my dogs the way she bounced hard-boiled eggs to her poodle.”

“Splendid,” Roscoe said.

He settled his clients at the defense table and checked on the press: Frank Merola, who covered courts for the Times-Union, a friendly face, another way of saying he was on the Party’s payroll and would not be hostile to a Roscoe client, especially Elisha’s widow; Bill Cooley of the Knickerbocker News, who was also on the payroll but whose story might be less friendly, for one of his editors was born and would die a Republican; and also Vic Fenster from the goddamn Sentinel .

Roscoe heard Pamela before he saw her, her volume announcing the grand dame’s arrival. She wore a lavender picture hat, more suitable for the racetrack than the courtroom, a matching lavender dress, and red shoes. Her nylon stockings had a rare sheen, unlike any Roscoe had seen when he shopped with Trish, these surely from the haute-couture black market.

“I feel so secure with you on the case,” Pamela was saying as she entered, smiling up at Marcus Gorman, who was beamish beside her. They came toward the bench, Marcus nodding a restrained collegial greeting to Roscoe. Pamela paused to stare at Gilby, who sat at the defense table beside Veronica. She walked to him.

“Oh, Gilby, sweet boy, how handsome you look.” She grasped his hand and squeezed it.

“Leave him alone,” Veronica said. Pamela ignored her and went to the table where Marcus was waiting. A court bailiff entered the judge’s chambers, and then George Quinn, the court crier, announced that court was in session, the honorable Francis Finn presiding, all rise. Finn was a young question mark, for, although he owed his presence on the bench to Patsy’s endorsement, it was Marcus who had used his influence to get him into Albany Law School right out of high school, without an intervening college education.

“I’ve read your petition, Mr. Gorman, and your response, Mr. Conway,” Judge Finn said, “and it seems to me there are issues of fact to be determined here. Do you agree?” He looked to Marcus, a formal figure in dark-blue suit and subdued red tie, who stood and spoke with unusual restraint — flamboyance, not understatement, was Marcus’s trademark.

“No, Your Honor,” Marcus said, “for we are dealing here with the biological right of a mother, under law, to possess her own child. There was no legal adoption of this boy by Veronica Fitzgibbon, only a temporary custody arrangement agreed to by a deeply troubled mother whose circumstances would not allow her to raise the child as she wanted him raised. But she has triumphed over adversity and now reclaims her right to cherish her own flesh and blood, to give him the upbringing he deserves from his true mother. And we ask that immediate custody of her only son be granted to her — today.” And he sat down.

“What do you say to this, counsel?” the judge asked Roscoe.

And Roscoe stood and recounted the Gilby prenatal adoption plan, noted the absence of contact between biological mother and child for three years after the birth, and only eight mother — son meetings during the next nine years.

“And so Pamela Yusupov,” said Roscoe, “who gave her child away with a great expression of relief before he was born, has seen the boy only ten times in his entire life, including the day of his birth and this sighting today. Yet she wants to take him from the mother who, while cradling him as her own when he was only hours out of the womb, heard Pamela Yusupov say, ‘Thank God, thank God I’m no longer a mother.’ Now this unnatural mother seeks to wrench that child out of the only mother’s arms he’s ever known. The boy does not want to leave, and it would be tragic to place him, against his will, in custody of this stranger. What’s more, this stranger’s sole purpose here is to obtain money from the estate of her late ex-husband, who disowned her five years ago, who was father to this boy but never saw him — not once — in his entire life. Should the profoundest of human bonds, between mother and son, ever be measured by the financial gain it will bring? Your respondents ask that this mischievous suit be dismissed.”