Roscoe (23 page)

He has lost fifteen pounds since they stuck the needle in him, has recovered provisionally, is not out of the woods, but out of the wheelchair, and has sought retreat in Quinlan’s (proper
name the Capitol Grill), across State Street from the Capitol, a spa for lawmakers, politicians, and newsmen, where Roscoe has been palming beer glasses since Mike Quinlan opened the place two days
before repeal. It is where political winners host banquets in the large back room, and it’s a consolation pit for losers: piano music nightly (Al Smith often sang with this piano). Its walls
are dense with photos of major, minor, and less-than-minor pols—FDR, Wendell Willkie, Jim Farley, Thomas E. Dewey, Patsy, Elisha, and Roscoe, among many—also with cartoon images of
governors, senators, presidents in Napoleonic hats, dunce caps, admiral’s uniforms, Santa Claus suits, Roman togas, and underwear, riding donkeys, elephants, and dead horses, commanding
sinking ships. Wherever you look you see images of yesterday’s politics fading away.

But the place has also given Roscoe pleasure, song, blue romance, and, in off hours, peace and solitude, which is what he is now seeking: an hour alone before Mac arrives with his difficult
news. Mac had called headquarters asking Roscoe to meet him, a first for this exemplar of self-reliance, and when Roscoe asked, “What’s the problem?” Mac answered,
“Chickens,” and Roscoe understood that the Patsy-Bindy feud was heating up.

What the hell ails Bindy? Why would he con Patsy after all these years? Well, there’s the usual rub of money, never enough, plus the brothel shutdown reminding him again he’s only a
second banana in this town, which Mame often tells him. Patsy gives the orders, Patsy controls the wealth, Patsy has the famous chickens; and so Bindy needs to win. But he usually does: eight
winners in eight races at his favorite trotting track last July, when Roscoe went with him; nine winners with his own trotters at nine different tracks the same season. He can’t gamble in
Albany, because everybody knows he can’t lose—
his
dice,
his
cards,
his
dealers,
his
joints,
his
town—and players drop out when he drops in. Even
when the game is straight, Bindy wins. So he leaves town to gamble, goes maybe to Troy, to Fogarty’s.

“Bindy always does exactly what he wants to do,” Patsy once said. Well, yes, but how could he think he could con not only Patsy but also the unconnable Tommy Fogarty? It seems to be
in the man’s nature to believe the con will prevail, for he learned it early. Hawking newspapers at age ten, he also worked as lookout (for strolling cops) for young Midge Kresser as Midge
worked his three-card monte game in front of the Broadway hotels. Bindy grew up among grifters and gamblers who liked sure things—Mush, for one, who taught him that stuffing a sponge up the
nostril of a racehorse enhances its ability to lose. He and Mush subsidized card thieves who worked the trains and the night boats. He won twenty thousand at a crap game one night in Saratoga and
was then arrested for using slugs to make calls on a public phone.

Yet Bindy is no miser, just a man who delights in deceit. He was always cheerful, a right guy, yes, generous, paid his debts, good company in joints like this, bought drinks for the crowd, gave
losers taxi money home, always good for a touch, if you paid it back. Roscoe drank many a night with Bindy, always liked him, still does. But then he turned sour, grew farter after the Thorpe gang
broke in on Mush, still Bindy’s partner, and burned his testicles with a candle to get the combination to his safe, which Mush yielded in exchange for medium-rare testes.

The Thorpes also brought in Lorenzo Scarpelli from Newark to kill Bindy over beer, for he and Mush (Patsy the true power, but always in the background) managed its total flow into Albany, and
the Thorpes could not enter the market. Scarpelli fired three shots at Bindy on his front porch, all near misses. Bindy leaped into the bushes, betrayed by his spaniel, which wagged its tail at the
bush. Scarpelli shot the bush and missed again, Bindy returned fire with the pistol he kept in his milk-bottle box, and Scarpelli sped away. Starved for action, Scarpelli crossed the river to
Rensselaer, held up a bank, killed a guard, and was sentenced to the chair. Mush, Bindy, and Roscoe, all close to the warden at Sing Sing (who came to Albany to straighten himself out with gin
after every execution), drove down to watch the Scarp sizzle.

The afternoon was so quiet that Roscoe could hear Georgie Moisedes open the tap and let the beer, still Stanwix, flow into one glass, then another. Cutie LaRue and Eddie Brodie had been sitting
at the bar when Roscoe came in, and now he heard them talking.

“Let’s go tell Roscoe the campaign plan,” Cutie said.

“You don’t want to be seen talking to Roscoe,” Brodie said. “You’re supposed to be the enemy.”

“Yeah, don’t bother Roscoe back there,” Georgie said. “He wants company he’ll come out here.”

“He wants to be alone,” Cutie said.

“He’s figuring it out,” Georgie said.

“Figuring what out?”

“Whatever it takes.”

Smart. Georgie is smart; but not entirely; finally got enough money to open his own poolroom and card game, then bet it with Mush against Billy Phelan in a nine-ball match. When Billy won,
Georgie handed Mush the door key, and went back to drawing beer for pols like Roscoe, whose glass is empty. Ros got up and walked to the bar, stood next to Cutie. Is this a free country? Cutie
can’t talk to me? What will they accuse us of, conspiracy to confuse the election process? Cutie can’t win, can’t begin to win, so why is he running? Must be a Democratic trick—I
saw him talking to Roscoe. Republicans already saying such things.

“Mr. Brodie, Mr. LaRue,” Roscoe said, pushing his glass toward Georgie with another in his eye.

“Glad to see you out and about, Roscoe,” Brodie said. “You had a siege of it.”

“A martyr to the caprice of automobile travel,” Roscoe said.

Edward Brodie began his newspaper work as a reporter on the
Sentinel,
and later, after Patsy had forced the paper to close, moved to the
Times-Union
and enshrined himself on
Patsy’s high altar by rebutting a federal report that Albany, an incorrigible city of speakeasies, was also one of the most openly sinful cities in the nation, abounding in bawdy houses and
streetwalkers. Brodie conducted a survey of civic and city agencies, plus man-in-the-street interviews for his article, and found that in ten years no one had complained of any vice. One arrest had
been made for procuring in 1928, along with four transient women convicted of prostitution, jailed, then exiled forever from the city by police. Men on the street told Brodie: “Albany is a
clean town . . . Albany is nowhere near as bad as they say.” Three weeks after his story appeared, Brodie was appointed Albany’s commissioner of charities and communication, writing
speeches for every politician Patsy allowed to make one. Roscoe called him the Oracle.

“Cutie, I heard you say you wanted to talk to me,” Roscoe said.

“Since you’re the opposition in this election, Roscoe,” Cutie said, “I wanted to warn you we’re organizing heavy attacks. I plan to campaign as Uncle Sam, in a suit
of stars and stripes, a beard, and a tall hat, and I will put you and Mayor Fitzgibbon on notice that I mean what I say about good government.”

“Will Uncle Sam make speeches?” Roscoe asked Brodie.

“He will,” said Brodie. “He will insist on lowering the price of meat, for, as you know, Uncle Sam was a butcher in the War of 1812. He will stump for the right of soldiers to
get out of the army now that the war is over, and he will demand more shade trees be planted downtown. Uncle Sam will also sing ‘God Bless America’ at the close of every
rally.”

“Sounds like this’ll be our toughest fight ever,” Roscoe said.

“Watch out for me, Roscoe,” said Cutie.

Mac came through the open door in hat and shirtsleeves and nodded at Roscoe as he approached. He only looked at Georgie, Brodie, and Cutie, then back to Roscoe.

“Beer, Mac?” Georgie asked, pushing Roscoe’s beer across the bar.

“Vichy water,” Mac said. He didn’t drink anymore, except a little port now and then with Gladys.

Georgie poured Mac’s Saratoga Vichy on ice. As Roscoe paid for a round, picked up his beer, and started back to his corner, a sparrow flew through the door and panicked, soaring the length
of the bar and back, corner to corner, lost, trapped.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” said a lone middle-aged woman at the end of the bar, a martini in front of her. Roscoe knew her, but not by name: a reporter who covered the Capitol for
downstate newspapers. She rummaged in her purse, pulled out a rosary, and waved it at the sparrow, which was still soaring frantically from wall to wall. “It’s bad luck when a bird
flies inside the house,” she said, and raised her arm higher to swing the rosary like a lariat.

“He’s just getting out of the sun,” Brodie said. “Buy him a beer, Georgie.”

“You’re right that birds are bad luck inside a house,” Roscoe said, “but never in a saloon.” He watched the crazed bird, which hovered, then changed direction, in
quick and aimless flight. Georgie flapped a bar towel at the bird, intensifying its panic.

“Don’t hurt it,” the woman said. “That’s worse.”

“Just waving it toward the door, dear,” Georgie said. “First time we ever had a bird in here.”

“Who you kidding?” Roscoe said. “This place caters to cuckoos.”

Back and forth went the bird.

“Now, everybody calm down,” Roscoe said. “Sit perfectly still and just shut up. Don’t make him more nervous than he already is. Quiet.”

No one moved or spoke. They all watched the bird fly back and forth, back and forth. As the bar fell unnaturally silent and still, the bird perched on a hanging light fixture. It twitched its
wings, looked up, down, sideways. Then, with coordinates under control, it zoomed straight down from the fixture and out through the open door. The woman kissed her rosary and put it back in her
purse.

“Thank you, sir,” she said to Roscoe. “You understand birds.”

“I know what it’s like when you’re in the wrong place,” Roscoe said.

“So,” Roscoe said to Mac, “tell me about the chicken war.” They were alone in Roscoe’s corner.

In a whisper Mac answered: “Patsy wants to bust the Notchery, with Bindy in it. He wants Bindy in jail.”

“He can’t want that. That’s insane. Where did you get this?”

“O.B. got it from Patsy last night and gave it to me this morning. It’s my baby.”

Roscoe had talked with Patsy and O.B. both at morning and Bindy was never mentioned. So, Roscoe, Patsy doesn’t trust you on this. He’s afraid you’ll find a way to stop the raid
before it happens; and O.B. joins him in a second brotherly conspiracy.

“You’re organizing the bust? O.B.’s not going in with you?”

“He’ll be on the outside, but that’s fine,” Mac said. “I wanted a second opinion before I made the move. You’re the only second opinion in town.”

“How do you even know Bindy’ll be at the Notchery?”

“We saw him go in this morning and he didn’t come out.”

“You still have that prowl car out front?”

“Gone. Let him think we left. But we’re watching from two houses.”

“Don’t you think he knows that?”

“He might.”

“You move in with your troops, knock down the door, back up the wagons, and haul off Bindy, Mame, the lot.”

“Right.”

“Who’s in there?”

“Pina, anywhere from three to eight girls, the maids, and Mame’s bouncer and bartender. Plus Bindy, and maybe some customers.”

“You get to bust Pina.”

“Would you believe.”

“But you can’t do it. That’s why you’re here.”

“I can do it,” Mac said. “Mac does what he’s told. But Patsy and Bindy been going at each other like this for as long as I know them. They fight and then patch it up. If
that happens after I bust Bindy, where the hell am I?”

“Very astute, Mac. When is this happening?”

“Tonight.”

“What if Bindy’s not there when you break down the door?”

“I don’t know. Buy Mame a new door?”

“Can you imagine how happy the Governor will be over this? And what it’ll do to Alex’s campaign?”

“I’m only a lieutenant, Roscoe. I got an order I gotta go with. Unless you know how to stop it.”

“I’ll go up there with you now. We’ll have a cup of tea with Bindy, talk things out. How’s that sound?”

“Cup of tea.”

“Bindy likes his cup of tea. Four and a half teaspoons of sugar.”

“Something you oughta know, Roscoe,” Mac said, and he leaned closer, spoke in the softest possible whisper. “Pina did the Dutchman. Her prints were all over his room. O.B. and
Patsy know this, but nobody else.”

“Nobody except you, now me, the fingerprint boys, Pina herself, who told Mame, who told Bindy, and by this time every whore in town knows.”

“The troopers don’t know about the prints. The FBI don’t.”

“Let’s hope that’s true,” Roscoe said, standing up, once again readying his backbone for a move into the hideous maw of subsequence. Dutiful Ros, should be elsewhere,
he’s still here. And the blue devils are running loose.

Mac, Who Was Once a Child

In 1914, Jeremiah McEvoy’s father left his wife with five kids in their rotten house in Sheridan Hollow. Mac was eight and went to work at Bensinger’s Steam Laundry.
Heat, stink, lifting, hauling, fourteen hours, buck fifty a week. He came thirty minutes late one day, they docked him fifty cents. Mac broke two plate-glass windows, spread ashes on two rooms of
clean laundry. Mrs. Bensinger shoved two dollars at him, saying, “Leave us alone.” Mac danced on the street for nickels and pennies, got a fiver from Jimmy Walker, the assemblyman,
which gave him lifelong affection for politicians. When he was ten, the city took all five McEvoy kids from Mac’s mother, too sick. She moved in with her sister, who had a house. Mac, too
old for the orphan asylum, went on the job auction block. This farmer looked at his teeth, no rot there, made him walk and pick up a chair, told him, “Get in the wagon,” and they rode
eight miles to one hundred and eighty chickens.