William Kennedy - Roscoe

“Could you have predicted this?” Roscoe asked Gladys.

“Never.”

“What was the situation here at the mill this week?”

“His brother, Gordon, really thought he was taking charge. He and his sisters have been scheming to take control, because Elisha’s been in Washington so long and profits are down. They blame him, but anybody with half a brain knows it’s because the war was ending. They had awful fights.” Gordon was the senior vice-president of the City Exchange Bank.

“Elisha wouldn’t kill himself for that,” Roscoe said.

“Riddles,” Gladys said. “This place’ll go straight to hell without him, and Alex won’t have anything to do with it. It’ll be a battle royal between Veronica and the family lawyers. And I’ll be out on the street.”

“Whoever runs it, they’ll need you.”

Roscoe felt an odd intimacy with Gladys. For as long as they’d known each other they’d each spoken only to the other’s public self. Gladys sipped her whiskey, gave a shudder, and set the glass on the desk.

“You know what he did last night, Roscoe? He kissed me.”

“He do that often?”

“Once a year, maybe, on the cheek. Last night on the mouth, sweetly. He always kept tabs on my skirt. Somebody sent him pictures of naked women about fifteen years ago, and of course I always opened his mail. ‘You in the market for this stuff?’ I asked him. He held one photo up. ‘That’s what I figure you look like,’ he said. ‘It’s close,’ I said, ‘but you’ll never know.’ ‘I know,’ he said, ‘a bitter denial.’ ”

But “bitter” wasn’t the word. Roscoe understood how Elisha could have worked up a quiet, arm’s-length love for Gladys, a woman of durable good looks that fluctuated with perms and marcels not always in her own best interest; sturdy, busty, feminine, always wore pumps, and everyone, not only Elisha, monitored her legs. She’d gone the novena route for years and tried to keep the commandments. But going with Mac the cop must have led to repetitive spiels in the Saturday-night confessional: Bless me, Father, for I have sinned; I did it again with that same fella. She dressed modestly in fashions that didn’t change much, and Elisha once said her smile could warm the north wind. She’d never married, and Mac wasn’t a prospect. Mac’s wife had left town years ago, but he wouldn’t divorce her. Also, that subterranean love Gladys and Elisha shared, a silent love presumably without consequence, had probably spoiled her for others.

“That kiss,” Roscoe said, “that was the extent of it?”

“No. He also said, ‘If I ever told you what I felt, you’d put your hat on and tell me to go to hell. But you know it anyway.’ And I did know. I always knew. I’m so glad I was here, Roscoe. I fell asleep after the whiskey, but I remember asking was he going away anyplace, and he said, ‘If I leave you’ll know it.’ ”

“Do you want to go home and sleep?” Roscoe asked.

“The last time I fell asleep Elisha died. Besides, I should call the undertaker.”

“That’s Veronica’s job.”

“I always make his travel arrangements. Aren’t you going to call Veronica?”

“I’ll go get her when O.B. gets here.”

“You can start over with her now,” Gladys said.

“Start over.”

“She’ll expect it. So will everybody else.”

“What does that mean?”

“Really, Roscoe, do you know how transparent you are sometimes?”

Roscoe heard car doors closing. Oswald Brian Conway, his younger brother and Albany’s chief of police, unshaven and in his baggy gray sharkskin, stepped off the elevator with two of his Night Squad boys behind him, Bo Linder and Joe Spivak. Roscoe asked the detectives to wait outside and let no one in. O.B. went directly to Elisha and stared at him.

“What happened to him?”

“He decided his life was over.”

“I don’t get it,” O.B. said.

“Nobody does,” Roscoe said. “Who’s the coroner on duty?”

“Nolan. I didn’t call him yet.”

“Don’t. We’ll do this alone for now. It goes down as a natural death.”

“Are we sure it’s a suicide and not a murder?”

“Gladys was here all night, working with him.”

“How are you, Gladys?” O.B. said. “You didn’t murder him, did you?”

“Not even in my dreams. Is Mac coming?” Mac was O.B.’s partner.

“He must be in bed,” O.B. said. “He went off duty at four-thirty. Does Patsy know?”

“No,” said Roscoe. “I can’t use the phone for this. Send one of your boys up to tell him. But don’t mention suicide. And don’t, for God’s sake, let anybody leak it to the press. I don’t want Veronica hearing it on the radio.”

“When are you getting her?”

“Now. You want a lift home, Gladys?”

“I suppose so,” Gladys said.

“You go get Veronica,” O.B. said. “That’s priority. I’ll see Gladys gets home. This thing stinks out loud.”

“It’ll get louder,” Roscoe said. He picked up his suit coat and went out.

Roscoe and Veronica

Everybody knew he was insane about her when they were young. Insane. Pressing, pressing, pressing her to marry him. But Elisha dazzled her with his razzmatazz and the family fortune he had regenerated. And Veronica, with sweet pets and kisses, told Roscoe one of her lovely lies: “My darling Ros, you love me so much you’ll absolutely die if I marry you, but Eli will die if I don’t marry him.” Roscoe remembered trying to decide which train he should walk in front of; but he got over that and tried not to blame Veronica for defecting. She was no golddigger, just a moderately rich girl who suffered from money. And Elisha had much more money than she. Also, Elisha was a winner and a great guy, and who the hell was Roscoe, anyway? A young punk lawyer with a talent for fun. Roscoe brooded and did the next best thing to marrying Veronica: he married her sister, Pamela, a liaison that carried on interminably for four days, then turned into several previously unknown forms of unkindness.

Roscoe stopped at the Morris Diner in North Albany to get just-baked French crullers and coffee for Veronica. She loved those crullers (so did Roscoe), and with the coffee and sugar they’d give her a rush so she wouldn’t nauseate in front of dead Elisha. He then drove up the hill to Van Rensselaer Boulevard, where the great estate of Tivoli — Veronica suddenly its sovereign — had stood since Lyman built it, a landscape of dream for Albanians of the last century. The estate’s mansion was sited on the plateau that ran along the crest of the river valley, giving a vista of the serene and turbulent Hudson, the green heights of Rensselaer, and the Berkshire Hills beyond. But vista was secondary to the builder, who wanted solitude, isolation above the crowd, a desire that belonged to yesterday. Now Roscoe moved along the boulevard past a row of new and boxy little houses owned by Italian grocers and German plumbers, past Wolfert’s Roost Country Club, founded by newsmen and politicians, then drove through the open wrought-iron gates and up the long, winding driveway to Tivoli, his second home.

“Why are you here at this hour?” Veronica asked him over coffee in her breakfast room. “The last time you brought breakfast you and Elisha were going fishing.”

The sight of her in a Chinese dressing gown, her golden hair loose and only slightly mussed from sleep, quickened Roscoe’s heart, but he told it to behave itself.

“I need your help,” he said. “Eat a cruller.”

“You need my help?” She bit into a cruller.

“Elisha.”

“He didn’t come home last night,” she said. “He stayed at the office.”

“I know that.”

“Were you with him?”

“I was.”