William Kennedy - Roscoe

By nine-forty, the absentee ballots were counted, Cutie’s votes were switched, and the official count was Jay Farley 14,747, Cutie LaRue 320, and Alex, as Patsy had called it, upward of 35,000, specifically 35,716.

After Patsy talked to the President he went into Roscoe’s office and closed the door. “I want you to go see the President,” Patsy said. “I want to send him a Civil War book, let him know how strong we are for him up here.”

Roscoe made no reply and Patsy looked at him with a cocked eye.

“Send Alex,” Roscoe said. “Or anybody. I’m all done, Pat. I told you that in August and now I say it again. The returns are in and I’m through.”

“Goddamn it, Roscoe, don’t start this.”

“It’s done, Pat. I’m out as of tonight. Bart can handle this office.”

“You can’t quit politics. That’s like a dog who says he don’t want to be a dog anymore.”

“Even if I’m a dog, I quit.”

“Does this have to do with Veronica?”

“It might. Why do you ask?”

“Eh,” Patsy said.

“Eh what?”

“You living at Tivoli and all that.”

“All that what?”

“I talked to Alex. You’re not keeping any secrets.”

“I haven’t been trying. But, all right, being around her changed my life. But I was ready to change. I doubt I’ll ever have a better life than I’ve had here for twenty-six years. But twenty-six is a long time. You’re my best friend, Patsy, the only best friend I’ve got left. I wouldn’t con you. I can’t handle it anymore.”

“You really mean it.”

“Now you got it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“We won the election, you still own the town, we control all fifty-two cards in the deck. Let’s go celebrate. The party’s at Quinlan’s.”

When they wrapped up the final count and left Bart to close the office, Patsy said he wasn’t up for Quinlan’s. Alex said he wouldn’t get there right away, had to do those City Hall interviews.

“But I’ll walk you up the hill, Roscoe,” Alex said, and they rode the elevator down from the eleventh floor in silence. Only when they were walking up State Street did Alex speak. He looked once at Roscoe, then spoke while staring up the hill at the Capitol.

“I know you and my mother went to Tristano with Gilby,” he said, “and I know something’s going on,” he said. “Roscoe, you may own the best political mind of anybody who ever drew breath in this town. You know how to manipulate power, you know how to win, and politically I’m immensely grateful. You were also a great friend of my father, a guardian to my mother after he died, and wonderful to me when I was growing up. Those were memorable days, and I hung on every word out of your mouth on how to play and gamble and drink and appreciate women. I no longer value that kind of life. But you’ve sunken back into it, worse than ever — punching out a cheap editor in his own office, caught with naked prostitutes, personally championing that vicious whore, watching your psychopathic friend murder your own brother, and then your insane hypothesis that my father raped Pamela. You won the case, but what a price you paid — a scurrilous false rumor that profanes his memory forever. It’s always the lowest common denominator that you cozy to, Roscoe, and I include your friend Hattie Wilson, landlady for the whorehouses. We’re a big city and we have to deal politically with all kinds, but you’ve brought the lowlife home to my family once too often. I say this with very mixed feelings, but I consider you a negative influence on Gilby, and an unfit suitor for my mother. So here’s the line, Roscoe. From now on, my family’s off limits to you. Do you understand me?”

They were in front of the Ten Eyck, and as two couples came out of the hotel one of the men called to Alex, “Congratulations, Mr. Mayor. Well deserved.” Alex waved and walked alone up the hill toward City Hall. Roscoe turned his back to the hill and looked down State Street, the street of celebrations. A bonfire burned in front of the Delaware and Hudson Railroad building, kids feeding it, a fire engine on the way with siren wailing. Buzzy Lewis came up from Pearl Street with two dozen first editions of the Times-Union under his arm, just off the truck.

“Hey, Roscoe, big night. Want a paper? It’s got a picture of the Mayor.”

“Sure, Buzz,” Roscoe said, and he gave Buzzy a deuce and put the paper in his coat pocket without looking at it. He had made no retort to what Alex said. None was possible. He imagined Alex delivering a similar harangue to Veronica, who would have expected it. Driving up to Tristano, Roscoe concluded she hadn’t told Alex where or for how long they were going, because he might have said don’t go. Roscoe felt the sudden reflux of a dreadful time long gone, negative luck running. What happened at Tristano wasn’t luck. It’s luck only when it’s bad. Roscoe quit luck at a young age. Power, not luck, transforms possibility. You don’t trust things simply to work out, are you serious? You fix them and then they work out. Elisha’s beau geste, his glory march to self-destruction, was now a reality for everyone, even though Roscoe had invented it. Logic so fine it becomes history. Create what doesn’t exist, and the false becomes true through existence alone. Roscoe even invented Elisha’s epitaph: “Stay alive, even if you have to kill yourself.” Everything Roscoe did was to ensure continuity of the Party, of Alex, of the family, of love. Roscoe decided Elisha had intended to restore the lost brotherhood. And, hey, didn’t the man’s will prevail tonight at the polls? Now you know, Governor: cakey action don’t kibble at the Café Newfay.

Mike Quinlan’s Capitol Grill was imploding with hilarity and the vest-busting effusions of Democrats, who effuse more effectively in victory than Republicans. Roscoe became their target when he walked in — handshook, clapped, kissed, hugged, winked at. He tried to respond to the congrats but could barely make out any words over Tommy Ippolito’s six-piece band playing “Paper Doll” with a beat that made Roscoe’s bones dance. But nobody could dance, the bar and back room both chockablock with bodies. Roscoe waved to Tommy and smiled as he waded through the mob. He knew every second face, could put a name to so many, knew how the ancients here had looked in childhood, how the young people would look at eighty. Phil Fagan, Kenny Pew, Ocky Wolf, all from St. Joseph’s, here they were, parading wrinkled necks, absent hair, crooked backs; and Roscoe corrected their flaws with visionary recall of their adolescent integrity. Not only could he reconstitute them backward into the past, Roscoe controlled their future, which is why they were here. You don’t know this, Ocky, but this is my final night of power over your life. Tomorrow, Roscoe will be powerless in a new life that will owe nothing to coercion. He threaded himself (some thread) toward Hattie, who was at a table for two near the band.

“Hello, love,” she said. “You did it again, didn’t you?”

“We did.”

“Say hello to Ted Pulaski, who lives in my building.”

“Hey, Ted, that’s a hell of a building to live in,” Roscoe said.

“Got a great landlady,” Ted said.

“He loves dogs,” Hattie said.

“Good for him.”

“I told him I buried my dog in Washington Park so I could visit his grave, and Ted wants to go see it.”

“You’ll enjoy the grave, Ted,” Roscoe said.

“I look forward to it.”

“That’s convenient. You like Ted, do you, Hat?” Roscoe asked her.

“I do, Rosky, I do.”

“You getting into that famous mood again?”

“Could be,” and she nibbled on the left Pulaski earlobe.

Roscoe moved toward the bar fielding questions: Is the Mayor coming? Where’s Patsy? At the bar, Cutie LaRue was explaining to several female admirers why he and Jay Farley lost to the McCall machine: “. they know how you vote by how you shift your feet in the voting booth, by the sound of the lever when you pull it. They go in the booth with you, or leave the curtain open, or cut a hole in it, or sandpaper it. ‘How come you split your ticket, my dear? I hope nobody else in the family does that.’ I tell you, they make those machines dance. Some machines got fifty votes in ’em before the polls open, and somebody’ll pull that lever forty times after they close. Jay Farley’s a nice fella for a Republican, and he looks honest, but honesty is no substitute for experience.”