William Kennedy - Roscoe

Roscoe saw the blur of two birds in the air, one falling, bleeding from the head, and landing on its back, a wing twisted outward. Patsy and Bindy were faced off across the pit, Bindy smiling. Roscoe sat down beside Tommy Fogarty and shook his hand.

“Seven to six, Patsy,” Tommy said, “but Patsy’s chicken is on his back.”

“What’s the bet?”

“I’m holding forty thousand, and the betting’s heavy.”

“They’re fairly serious.”

“There’s sparks tonight. They’re not talking.”

“It’s been going that way,” Roscoe said.

Cy Kelly, Patsy’s white-haired handler, who worked mornings as Judge Rosy Rosenberg’s clerk in Albany Police Court, stepped into the pit and folded the fallen bird’s wing under his side, then put the bird on his stomach. But clearly he could not stand. Even so, Bindy’s bird kept his distance from Patsy’s downed bird, whose head followed his enemy’s every move. Then Bindy’s bird feinted, and Patsy’s thrust his bleeding head at the comer with fierce strength, a game but fatal move. Bindy’s bird, with wicked speed and unexpected strength, caught that extended neck in a bill-hold and worked it, worked it, finally snapped it. Then he stepped on the corpse and crowed victory. Some of the crowd roared.

Seven to seven.

Roscoe edged his way to the first row of the bleachers, where Patsy was sitting between his driver, Wally Mitchell, and Johnny Mack, who ran the White House on Steuben Street, Albany’s oldest gambling parlor. Johnny, Patsy’s personal bookie, was paying off bets against Patsy’s dead chicken.

“How’s life, John?” Roscoe asked.

“Life looks dead, Roscoe, but there’s always another chicken.”

Some of the crowd moved to the bar for a ten-minute drink, and Cy Kelly carried the dead bird to a corner where the corpses were stacked.

“I hear you’re winning,” Roscoe said, sitting behind Patsy.

“Not with that one. What’s with the cane?”

“Protection against women who find me irresistible. Anybody tell you yet that somebody murdered the Dutchman?”

Patsy shook his head and waited.

“Stabbed two dozen times. He was informing for the troopers.”

“Informing on what?”

“Whores, pimps, that’s all he knew. I wonder what Bindy thinks of it.”

“Ask him. I won’t talk to the stupid bastard. He kept the Notchery open last night. I had O.B. put a prowl car out in front. That’ll stop his traffic.”

“My guess,” Roscoe said, “is they’ll link us to the Dutchman, even if they know better. Coming after that Roy Flinn business, it can’t be coincidence.”

“Sounds like a passion killing, hitting him that many times.” Cy Kelly was coming toward them with chicken in arms. “Here comes the Ruby,” Patsy said. “I gotta pay attention.”

“I won’t see you later,” Roscoe said. “I’m checking into Albany Hospital with these pains of mine.”

“You need any help?”

“Bart’s driving me up.”

“Have him keep me posted.”

The crowd drifted back in from the bar, and Roscoe went to where Bindy was sitting with his driver-bodyguard, Poop Powell, and his handler, a man Roscoe didn’t know. The handler was holding the next battler, a speckled bird with a black breast and dark-brown wings, one of Bindy’s Swigglers. It was Bindy’s pride in this new breed that had led him to challenge Patsy, their first main in a year.

“Bindy, old man,” Roscoe said, “you’re doing okay. I saw that last one.”

“We’re moving,” said Bindy. “What’s on your mind, Roscoe?”

“The Dutchman. He was stabbed dead last night. And a trooper told O.B. he was one of their informers. After that business with Roy Flinn, I doubt this death is a coincidence.”

Bindy just looked at the bird his handler held. It was serene and only half visible in the handler’s arms. Bird, you don’t look like you might be about to die. I’ll bet the Dutchman didn’t either. And certainly not Elisha.

“You ever figure the Dutchman as an informer?” Roscoe asked.

“He’d rat on his mother for a free beer,” Bindy said.

“You have anybody in mind we oughta talk to?”

“I’ll think about it.”

“He hang around the Notchery?”

“He came looking for Pina when she went to work for Mame.”

“Maybe Pina has an idea,” Roscoe said.

“She was all done with him. Leave her out of it. Sit down and watch the chickens. You want some candy?”

He offered Roscoe the half-empty two-pound box of Martha Washington chocolate creams he’d been eating, a remarkable gesture. On a trip to Saratoga with Roscoe, Bindy had eaten an entire box in twenty minutes; and when Roscoe asked for a piece, Bindy told him, “Get your own candy.”

“I’m on a diet,” Roscoe said to the new candy “Who’s your handler?”

“Emil,” Bindy said. “Say hello to Roscoe, Emil.”

“Hey, Emil,” Roscoe said.

Emil looked up and said “Uhnnn,” and turned his attention back to the chicken in his arms.

“Emil’s worked with chickens in New Orleans, San Francisco, all over.”

“This bird got a name?” Roscoe asked.

“This is the Swiggler,” Bindy said. “You ever been swiggled?”

“Not by a chicken,” Roscoe said.

Bart came over to Roscoe. “How you feeling? You want to leave?”

“I feel terrible,” Roscoe said, “but I can’t leave now.”

“I’ll be at the bar,” said Bart, who loathed chickens, even in sandwiches.

Roscoe moved away from Bindy to a center position between the brothers, taking no sides. Jack Gray, Tommy Fogarty’s matchmaker and referee, gave the birds their second weighing-in of the night on the corner scale, the Ruby three pounds nine ounces, the Swiggler three eight and a half, a near-perfect match, and Jack pronounced them ready to fight. Emil took the Swiggler off the scale; Cy Kelly lifted the Ruby into his arms and then both men circled the pit to give the spectators a close look at the combatants. The birds, spurs on, rested easefully in arms, healthy, the color of winners. The betting was six to five on the Ruby, who was a veteran of one fight, which he’d won in the first twenty seconds. The Swiggler was also a one-time winner who had taken some cuts, but danced the better dance.

“Five hundred on the Ruby,” Johnny Mack said.

“You’re on,” Bindy said, and the betting dialogue began, the crowd’s overture of grunts and gestures, fingers raised and fingers back, money, money, and more where that came from, an escalating hum, the electric music of rising expectations.

“I like the speckled, fifty dollars,” a woman said, and Roscoe saw Bridie Martin, who cleaned houses for a living, a durable gambler.

“You got it,” a man said, “but if I win we go for a drink.”

“I’m not fond of knickknacks,” Bridie told her suitor.

“You’re on anyway,” the suitor said.

“Bill your cocks, boys,” said Jack Gray, the third man in the pit. Emil and Cy stood behind their chalk lines, four feet apart, facing each other, each bird held with both hands. They moved the birds’ beaks till one pecked the other, hackles rising, pecked again; and then both handlers crouched behind their lines. Jack said “Ready,” and the birds’ feet touched the dirt, they stood; Jack said “Pit ’em,” and each bird, set free, went at the other’s head, chest, throat, flew up and kicked, up and kicked; and with each kick by those flying needles the bettors roared, they know punishment when they see it, kick, kick, and kicks too fast to see, whap, whap and the Ruby is seriously punched, flies backward, falling, but up again and at that sonofabitch, they’re in a smash-up now, rolling, stabbing each other, then hung, spurs in each other’s chest, thigh, anyplace, and Cy and Emil approach the bundle, disengage the spurs — Easy, boys, don’t hurt anybody.