William Kennedy - Roscoe

“He’s a nice-a boy,” Pina said. “Never no trouble.”

“We’ll check it out,” Mac said, and he holstered his pistol. “I want to talk to you,” he said to Pina, and he took her arm and sat with her on an empty sofa. He stroked her hair, kissed her, like old times, then talked to her. Giving her the news?

“They shouldn’t let him near a gun,” Mame said to Roscoe.

“Sometimes he’s right about these things,” Roscoe said.

Olive Eyes looked twitchy, ready to do something to restore peace to the Notchery, but what? Shoot a cop? Renny Kilmer went back to his bar.

“Anybody want a drink?” Renny asked, but got no takers.

Oke stood up from his seat among the whores, buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his trousers. “Too much stuff goin’ on here,” he said. “Guess I’ll move along.”

“See you next week, Oke,” Mame said.

“That guy gonna be here?” Oke asked.

“No, he’s just here today,” Mame said.

“This kind of stuff ruins the atmosphere,” Oke said.

The violinist stood up and asked Roscoe, “Is he really arresting me?”

“I don’t think so,” Roscoe said. “Leave the violin. Pick it up tomorrow.”

“Thanks, mister, thanks,” the young man said, and as he and Oke walked toward the door, Roscoe heard Bindy’s heavy step coming down the stairs, also heard the sound of gunshots, and the front door being smashed open, and he thought, Goddamn, O.B., why are you doing this now? We’re nowhere near ready.

But it wasn’t O.B. It was half a dozen state troopers, and more on the street, a dozen cars with thirty troopers surrounding the Notchery and every street bordering it, the Governor coming to visit. Roscoe noted that Bindy had put on a shirt for the occasion.

The troopers moved through the building, confiscating papers and taking note of Bindy’s safe, which he would not open for them. They arrested Mame for running a disorderly house, her four whores for whoring, and Renny Kilmer and Olive Eyes for abetting prostitution.

Dory Dixon, the State Police inspector whom O.B. had ejected from the Dutchman’s murder scene, said he was padlocking the Notchery, and holding Mac, Bindy, Roscoe, Oke, and the violinist, for consorting with whores. The women and the two johns were escorted to police vans waiting in the parking lot. Two Polish women who did cleaning and laundry for Mame were let go.

“Sorry to interrupt your afternoon fun, Roscoe,” Dixon said.

“If you’re really arresting us,” Roscoe said, “my fun has just begun.”

“Tell me you weren’t here to see the girls,” Dixon said. “Tell me I didn’t see McEvoy in a corner with a naked whore.”

“The lieutenant had a tip that a stolen, priceless violin was here. I refer you to the instrument on top of the piano.”

The inspector went to the piano and picked up the violin.

“This is priceless?” he said.

“I couldn’t say,” said Roscoe. “I’m no expert on the Stradivarius. Are you?”

“No.”

“We’ll have an expert appraise it,” Roscoe said.

“You came along to help the lieutenant carry the violin?”

“I was conferring with Mr. McCall about my client in a homicide case.”

Bindy had collapsed onto a sofa in glum silence when the raiders entered, but this remark won his attention.

“Quite a busy afternoon,” Dixon said. “A priceless violin recovered, and a homicide. What homicide?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“It’s a unique defense, Roscoe. I’ll give you that.”

“Where are you taking us?”

“Justice Dillenback in Colonie.”

“And we travel in your vans?”

“I think you can get there in your own vehicle,” Dixon said.

“My clients as well? Mr. McCall and Lieutenant McEvoy?”

“Agreed. We’ll follow along in case of any confusion.”

“Fine. And take care of the cow, Inspector.”

“Cow? What cow?”

“The cow that’s going to follow you around after you leave here.”

Roscoe, Bindy, and Mac went in Mac’s car to a pay phone, where Roscoe called O.B. with the bad news: as chief of a raiding party, you’ve been one-upped.

“What the hell are you doing out there?” O.B. asked.

“Saving the world,” Roscoe said.

“Mac is with you? On whose orders?”

“Mine. And because he and I both have more brains than you.”

“You don’t know what I’m dealing with.”

“Hey, O.B., an avalanche is coming. Get Patsy and meet us at Black Jack’s grill. Patsy without fail, you hear?”

Roscoe called Freddie Gold, the Party’s bondsman, and told him where to post bail for anybody who needed it, and to bring a car for the working girls.

In Justice of the Peace Elgar Dillenback’s court in Colonie, a Republican stronghold, the Governor’s investigators could feel secure in filing their charges, comparable security not always likely in a court presided over by one of Patsy’s judges. The press had been notified, and photographers awaited the arrival of Mame, her ladies, and her courtiers. Pina, the beauty in the bunch, won star attention, but Mac, Bindy, and Roscoe were the catch of the day. Another front-page coup for Roscoe. How does he do it?

Before Justice Dillenback, a bland little man with hair dyed the color of stove black, everybody pleaded not guilty, Oke weeping as he did so, his way of life, and maybe his family, exploded. “I only went there to dance,” Oke said. “I don’t consort with whores. I couldn’t come if you called me.”

All charges were misdemeanors and bail was obligatory, five hundred each. Sin is an act, vice is a habit, whoring is dicey.

“You are charged with consorting with prostitutes; how do you plead?” the justice asked Roscoe.

“Less guilty than yourself, with all due respect, Your Honor, for you weren’t there and, really, neither was I. Not guilty.”

“Curb your remarks, Mr. Conway.”

“Curbed, Your Honor.”

“Bail is set at five hundred dollars.”

The justice called Bindy, another not-guilty five hundred, and then Mac, for whom Roscoe had another defense: “A policeman investigating a theft is himself arrested. This should not be, Your Honor.”

“Perhaps not, but that’s how it is. Five hundred.”

Bindy pulled from his pants pocket a double-fold of cash three inches thick and held by a rubber band. He peeled two one-thousand-dollar bills off the fold, more of the same underneath, paid bail to the court clerk for Roscoe, Mac, and himself, and waited for change.

“Is that your cash from the safe?” Roscoe asked him.

“Pocket money,” Bindy said.

“Any left in the safe?”

“Nothing.”

Roscoe focused on Pina across the courtroom: disheveled beauty in a clinging blue dress and high heels, hair in need of sprucing for the next photo shoot. The bondsman was posting everybody’s bail, and Pina was about to leave with the other whores. Roscoe nudged Mac.

“Tell Pina she’ll ride with us,” Roscoe said.

Roscoe and Bindy moved toward the door, and Mac brought Pina. Dory Dixon was talking to a reporter from the Sentinel.

“Your cow will be along any minute, Inspector,” Roscoe told Dixon.

In the car, Roscoe asked Pina, who sat in the back seat with Bindy, if she knew why she was here.

“Mac tells me,” she said.

“What did he tell you?”

“That I go to jail.”

“Are you ready for that?”

“I no want go to jail.”

“But you killed the Dutchman.”

“Sometimes.”

“Once is enough.”

“He’s-a no good.”

“True. And we’ll try to help you.”

“Why you help me?”

“Because he was no good.”

“Okey dokey. What I do?”

“You tell us what happened.”