William Kennedy - Roscoe

“On what ticket?”

“I could run on a Chinese laundry ticket and beat you,” Al says.

“We’re very close on Elisha,” Patsy says.

“You’re not close,” says Al, “you’re finished.”

“Lehman’s people are asking if Elisha will take lieutenant governor,” McCooey says.

“No,” says Patsy.

“What’s the difference whether he takes it or not?” says Al. “They don’t need him. This argument’s done and over. Lehman’s through the roof.”

“You’re with Lehman?” Patsy says.

For six weeks Al has been promising Patsy and Roscoe he won’t endorse Lehman unless Curry does; won’t do FDR any favors. Al brought FDR out of physical retirement to become Governor in ’28, and FDR nominated Al for President, but this June, at Chicago, FDR took the presidential nomination away from Al, and the happy warrior went into a deep and angry sulk. But tonight he is back in the spotlight.

“Lehman,” says Al, “supported me all-out in ’28. He gave me half a million, and I’m with him till the cat comes back. I’m nominating him tonight.”

“You hook-nosed sonofabitch,” Patsy says, “you did it again.” He stands up and Roscoe sees that curled fist. “You threw us in.”

“You green baloney,” says Al, “you don’t even belong in this room. You’re still a truck driver in my book.”

“Are you giving us those six?” Patsy asks McCooey.

“I’m tired, Patsy. We held it as long as we could. It was a good fight.”

Patsy turns to Curry. “What do you say to this, John?” he asks.

“Tell Elisha we’re solid with him for lieutenant governor,” Curry says.

Pluperfect Memory

Roscoe and Alex separated at the bottom of the cemetery slope. Joey Manucci opened the back door of the limousine for Roscoe as he slid in beside Hattie-with-no-more-tears.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“He’s worried about me,” Roscoe said. “He thinks I attract disasters.”

“You attracted me.”

“You’re not a disaster, you’re a sexual force of nature.”

“Roscoe,” Joey said, “you’re not making a pass at the widow, are you?”

“She made a pass at me,” Roscoe said.

“I’m telling the priest,” Joey said.

“Good,” said Hattie. “Tell Mother Superior too.”

“I myself find this shocking,” Roscoe said. “I’m not used to sex in the cemetery. Tell me about 1932, the night Elisha lost to Lehman.”

“You mean did I have sex that night? No. And you were no help.”

“Don’t blame me for your dry spells. Do you remember Pamela that night?”

“She stayed at one of my places. Obnoxious woman. Attractive. She climbed all over Elisha whenever she saw him.”

Roscoe can now see Pamela sitting with the Albany delegation during that last session of the Democratic convention. The night is growing wild as the politicized mob, almost as many thousands on the street outside the Armory as inside, rushes the police line to see the historic confrontation of Al Smith and FDR. Will they spit in each other’s eye? Will Lehman and Elisha come to blows? Pamela sits in the first Albany aisle, two down from Veronica and Elisha, in Patsy’s empty chair. Pat the loser won’t sit, won’t put himself on display. Elisha is in his chair when Farley mentions his name as the next speaker, and fevered applause breaks out for the almost-Governor, what a fight you put up. They love you now, Eli; but ten minutes from now? Who can say how long love lasts?

Roscoe, standing by the stairs to the speakers’ platform, watches Elisha rise, then lean over and kiss Veronica. Pamela rises also, and as Elisha passes her on his way to the microphone she does her boa-constrictor number, big huggypoo, big kissypoo. Once past Pammypoo, Elisha makes a speech that has more sincerity and solidarity than is necessary from a betrayed man. It is an honest speech from a profoundly loyal Democrat. He truly wants FDR to be the new President, and Lehman the next Governor; never wanted that for himself, was repaying the Patsy debt, and will go on repaying it for two years as lieutenant governor, the job Patsy now calls the door prize: no authority, not much patronage goes with it, and your only hope of advancement is for the Governor to drop dead. But Elisha cannot wish anyone ill, or be false to himself, which is why Roscoe, try as he might with memory’s eye, cannot see in Elisha’s behavior the lie that would make all that flirty intertwining with Pamela anything more than family effusion. Did he actually go off with her to her Jay Street lair this afternoon when they both disappeared? Did he take her to some dark speakeasy for a back-room flip? He could have focused on her in any number of rooms at the Ten Eyck, but Roscoe doesn’t believe these possibilities. Roscoe sees Elisha’s face in memory and cannot find a trace of the necessary concupiscence, or intrigue.

“Stop at the grocery,” Roscoe said to Joey. “Get me four Hershey bars. I won’t have time for lunch.”

And when he was gone Roscoe asked Hattie, “Do you think Elisha ever got it on with Pamela?”

“God knows she was ready,” Hattie said. “And he did have a bit of a stable back then, didn’t he?”

“I don’t know how serious he ever was about that.”

“He was amused by women.”

“Many are. He was also at a low point, with the mill and the loss of his daughter. And he was drinking too much. He was in New York often, and she did live there.”

“Why are you bringing this up now?”

“I’m trying to imagine him as Gilby’s father.”

Hattie went silent at that, and in her silence Roscoe again sees the finale of the convention, the thrill, the bathos really, of the reconciliation on that stage when FDR shakes hands with Al and says, before a hundred newsmen and the whirring newsreel cameras, “I’m glad to see you, Al, and that comes from the heart.” And Al retorts, “How are you, old potato?” Hats fly into the air, and roars erupt from the headless, hatless mob at the restoration of affection between its not-quite and next presidents. Even Roscoe feels, against his will, this ready-to-wear emotion in his throat as enmity is publicly buried and harmony rises from the grave. But Al really will not stay harmonious for very long after this night, for it will quickly become clear that he will never be a New Deal insider, that his days of power and influence are over. And he will then become FDR’s vigorous enemy. Nor are Roscoe and Patsy destined to be New Deal wheelers. Their dream — the Patsy dream that Roscoe borrowed — of proximate power at a more exalted level, also died with Elisha’s defeat. We came so close. But that’s that and quit brooding, says Roscoe. Think of tonight as the festive prelude to FDR’s presidential victory, which is only a month away: a Democrat in the White House at long last, a Democrat up at the Capitol.

Roscoe, Patsy, and their Albany legion will officially bury all rivalries, will deliver heavy pluralities for every Democrat on the ticket. They will awake on the election’s morning-after and Roscoe will call Patsy to say for the first, but not last, time, “Pat, we are Democrats, remember? And we are steeped in Democracy. We own the city, the county, the state, and the nation. Things could be worse.”

They also own the splendor of the night that follows the convention’s end, the midnight streets as bright and crowded as Times Square at the theater hour, lines forming in front of the restaurants, dance bands carrying on with their hot and sweet duty at the hotels, speakeasies guarded by plainclothes Albany cops against untimely raids by dry agents who should mind their own business on a night like this. Lights will burn all night long in The Gut, a time to get well, girls, and, in the Ten Eyck’s ballroom, Elisha’s private party is throbbing for half the town. Roscoe in memory sees his allies and kindred strangers shoulder to shoulder in the social afterglow of all that political stardust. He sees Hattie being wooed by a state senator whose name has long been erased from Roscoe’s memory. Bart Merrigan is ready to deck whoever pinched his wife on the elevator, but Bart can’t decide which of three men did it. The Democratic women are in great demand by the randy Manhattan delegates, and when Roscoe brushes against Veronica he says, “I remember you,” and she answers, “And I you.” Waxey’s beer is on tap, and Roscoe sees Mush monitoring the movement of two more kegs of it; but the Waxey-Mush axis will soon be redundant, the real goods coming back, and Roscoe’s Stanwix will again become the label of choice at political gatherings, also at all saloons hoping to prosper in the city. Mike Pantone’s six-piece jazz band is playing “Walking My Baby Back Home,” and in a corner to the right of the band, partly hidden by a potted palm, Roscoe sees Alex offering his silver hip flask to his Aunt Pamela, precocious youthful reveler joining the party. They learn quickly.