Roscoe

Heartache

The needle went into Roscoe slowly, the surgeon aspirating the syringe as he pushed through skin and flesh toward the pericardium, the sac enclosing Roscoe’s heart.

The cardiac monitor and a tank of carbon dioxide for resuscitation sat beside Roscoe, who was strapped to a stretcher in a sitting position. His heart readings as the result of his tamponade were dangerous: paradoxical pulse, high venous pressure, low arterial pressure, muffled heart sounds. The surgeon, fearing cardiac arrest, had reacted with salvational speed after Patsy and Bart Merrigan carried Roscoe into the emergency room. Now the surgeon aimed his needle at Roscoe’s sternal notch, its route anesthetized by l-percent-plain Xylocaine, and as it entered, with difficulty, the leathery, membranous pericardium, six centimeters into the corpus, the pain intensified sharply in Roscoe’s chest and he cried out.

“Good,” said the surgeon. “We hit it.” And he withdrew the needle a few millimeters, until Roscoe’s cries eased. He then aspirated the syringe, drawing out blood from the pericardium. “There it is,” he said.

When Roscoe was X-rayed after the accident, no damage was detected to the sternum or ribs, and after his collapse at Fogarty’s, the X-ray showed no change in cardiac size or shape; nor was congestive heart failure a likely diagnosis. The surgeon chose pericardiocentesis, or the needle, and as he was aspirating Roscoe’s blood into his syringe he was saying that the cause might be an aneurysm from the trauma of the accident, that it could have bled, healed, and, dramatically, bled again, and only if they opened him up, a perilous move, could they confirm that diagnosis.

Roscoe, though sedated, processed this surgical patter with some disquiet. Nothing gets Roscoe’s attention quite like the prospect of his own funeral, especially when he is conjuring the Golden Annals of the Party he is planning to dictate one of these days — Elisha’s story, Patsy’s, Veronica’s, Hattie’s, all of us, how we did what we did, what became of us, and what it meant, including our fraudulence, a golden tool, for none of these lives could have been lived without it, something Roscoe discovered in the Christian Brothers grammar school, when he too-precociously perfected a test, then wrote a brilliant essay, and was accused of cheating, though Brother William, known as Knocko, could not say how he cheated. All he could say was that Roscoe, this inattentive boyo who wanted to be in the woods with birds and game more than in the schoolroom, could not possibly have written this. Knocko, so known for his whacks with the ruler and his use of knuckles on skulls, and who never encouraged his students to be smarter than himself, arranged to prove Roscoe a fraud with a second test. Roscoe, who could have repeated his perfection, or nearly so, chose to write inept answers on the second test, sufficient to pass but not excel (Magellan sailed around the world, from Ireland), and Knocko, plus Roscoe’s parents, who were summoned to discuss the crisis, beamed at his achievement. The boy is normal — wholesomely mediocre. We won’t prosecute him for sinful superiority. It happens to many a lad. He’ll do fine.

So Roscoe as a fraud was a great success. You certainly know how to rise in the world, Ros. A year later, he confessed everything to his father, and Felix was so proud of his boy that he bought him a rifle.

This event would, of course, go into Roscoe’s Annals, which had one fiat: leave nothing out, including old Mr. Considine, the custodian at School Five, where Roscoe went before his father put him in the Christian Brothers grammar school to teach him discipline. Mr. Considine tended the boiler, swept the halls, and opened the doors for the pupils at morning. His white mustache looked like a paintbrush, and he wore a long coat and a hat that had been in style in Civil War days, a relic, as Mr. Considine was a relic, a man whose life depended on politics, and who, soon after the Republicans took the city in 1899, was gone. Mr. C, we missed your kindly patience with unruly boys, missed your vast bundle of keys, your painful walk, your missing index finger, your nose like an eagle’s beak. For Roscoe, Mr. C personified all men dependent on the prevailing political wind, and when the wind changed, here came idleness, and the shame of sitting on the stoop, hoping for the dole. This vulnerability Roscoe etched into memory, a principle upon which he, Eli, and Patsy founded the Party. If you’re vulnerable to caprice, we can help you. But if you’re not with us, you’re vulnerable to our caprice.

By late afternoon after his pericardiocentesis, with fifty milliliters of fluid withdrawn from the sac and an indwelling catheter in him for further drainage, Roscoe’s pain and general malaise diminished dramatically, and he received his first visitor: Alex, in his army uniform, a thin private first class.

“Alex, my boy,” Roscoe said, “you’re back, but, God, you’re skinny.”

“I suppose I am, Roscoe, but the same can’t be said of yourself.”

“At it already. No respect for your elders.”

“Haven’t I come to see you? Before my wife and mother? I wanted to have a chat before you died of bloat.”

“Ah, you have a charitable heart.”

“Are you all right or not? As I get it, you were watching a chicken fight and fainted at the sight of blood.”

“A perfect analysis. Too much death in my life. Parallel mortality. So they stabbed me in the heart to ease my pain.” He raised his shirt to show Alex the catheter. “This tube is in here so they can stab me again.”

“Have them put a faucet on it and drain the fat.”

“A compassionate suggestion.”

Alex was six four, usually the tallest man in the room, his hairline not what it was when he left. He had his father’s Roman nose and that loose way of moving his lanky body, plus that widely known ladykiller smile that was all his own. He wore a row of military ribbons on his shirt: the Good Conduct Medal, marksmanship medals, European-theater ribbon with three battle stars, presidential unit citation to his battalion for valor in the Battle of the Bulge, the Combat Infantryman’s Badge, and the Purple Heart.

“We never knew you were wounded,” Roscoe said.

“Very minor. They now give Purple Hearts for hangnails.”

“Tell me your war stories,” Roscoe said. “Cheer me up.”

“I did nothing. I went nowhere.”

“That’s why they gave you all those medals.”

“These aren’t medals, they’re souvenirs.”

“When were you wounded?”

“Late afternoon.”

“Where did they get you?”

“On a green hill partly covered with snow.”

“Did you get to keep the bullet?”

“I wasn’t shot. I was raked by the teeth of a flying dog.”

“Fascinating. When I get out of this bed we’ll have a party with Patsy and all your friends. Like the old days. People will want to hear your flying-dog story, and we’re long overdue for an all-nighter.”

“No, no all-nighters.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve given up drink.”

“Not at all.”

“But you’ve given up questing in saloons for the Holy Ghost.”

“I believe so.”

“The army ruined you.”

“The real question is, what ruined you, my corpulent friend?”

“Ah, me. I wasn’t aware I was ruined yet. Getting there, of course.”

“You’ve arrived, old fellow. Here you are on your back, your system breaking down from wretched excess. You’re a capital ruin, Roscoe. We should register you as a historic landmark, in need of shoring up.”

“Your tongue was viperized by the army. But I forgive your calumnies. All we want to do is re-elect you.”

“I’m for that. Let’s launch the campaign instead of a party. What are you cooking up for me?”

“You’ll have a press conference at City Hall in your uniform and praise everybody for how they carried on in your absence. You’ll tell them how we’re going to pave the streets and improve the water supply. You’ll praise Karl’s job as acting mayor in handling our coal crisis. You’ll dedicate the Honor Roll in the Ninth Ward, in memory of all the boys from the North End who served. Pop O’Rourke’s been after me for months to have you lay the wreath.”

“Pop is still alive?”

“He wouldn’t declare the Honor Roll finished until you came home.”

“What about my opposition, Jason Farley?”

“You don’t mention him. Let him get his own publicity. Now that we know you’ve been wounded we’ll drop a hint and let the press quiz you. You’ll be modest, won’t talk about it.”

“It’s not worth talking about.”

“Fine. The mystery will intensify your myth.”

“Is that it?”

“No, there’s Cutie LaRue. Remember Cutie? He doesn’t know it yet, but we plan to run him against you on an independent line, maybe the Flatulence ticket. Patsy wants a third candidate.”

“Why?”

“Dilute the opposition. The usual reason.”

“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? Who needs a third party anymore?”

“You’ve been away, boy. The Governor’s attacks on us got a lot of ink in the papers.”

“Turn me loose, I’ll get a lot of ink.”

“You will, but this is Patsy’s plan. He wants to humiliate the Governor with numbers. Troopers will be at every polling place, looking for violations. We’ve filed suit to stop them on grounds of voter intimidation, but if we don’t prevail they’ll cut into our control of the vote.”

“But Cutie LaRue — he’s a bad joke.”

“Yes. Patsy’s bad joke.” Roscoe’s voice stiffened. “Don’t you laugh at Patsy’s jokes anymore?”

“Since you put it that way.”

“That’s still the way it’s put in this town, Alex. Don’t stay away so long next time.”

Alex looked at his shoes and did not speak.

“Tell me about my father,” he said. “Joey only said it was sudden.”

“That’s the truth. He was more ill than anyone knew. His heart was twice its normal size. He told me he was retiring, but I couldn’t imagine it was for health reasons. He looked fine. He was in other trouble, but didn’t explain.”

“What trouble?”

Roscoe shut his eyes and rubbed both eyelids with thumb and forefinger, hiding. No way out of saying what has to be said. Say it, Roscoe.

“Listen, Alex. You have to know. Your father ended his own life. He took a huge dose of chloral hydrate.”

These facts did not register on Alex’s face. Behind a grim stare he seemed to be trying to process their logic.

“Why did he do it?” Roscoe said. “That’s the obvious question you’re asking. It seems like an act without purpose, but that wasn’t your father’s style. If there’s a key to this, we’ll find it. Your own loss, your mother’s loss, it’s very great. And I can’t remember when I’ve known such diminishment.”

“Was he depressed?”

“Not to the naked eye. We celebrated V-J night together and he was fine. We had a little car accident and he got a bump on his head, not serious.”

“You must have a theory.”

“He burned some papers but we don’t know why. It could be linked to the Governor’s investigation of the organization. Also, your Aunt Pamela is in the mix. She’s suing your mother for custody of Gilby. She went public for the first time that she’s his mother, and we’re already in court. Your father talked with her weeks ago about it. He saw it as a money scheme, but I don’t know how this affected his behavior.”

“Why in the hell is Pamela doing this?” Alex asked, his lips tight and white. “What’s wrong with her?”

“I’ll take a week off sometime and explain it to you.”

“But Gilby was adopted.”

“Yes, and from her, anonymously. I drew up the agreement, which wasn’t quite an adoption. Your mother and I went to San Juan to pick up Gilby and bring him home.”

“Such villainy. Goddamn her.”

“We can hope for that too,” Roscoe said. “You should talk to Gilby about the lawsuit. He told me you weren’t his brother anymore. It was a bad moment, but I think he’s over it.”

“What do you mean about Pamela looking for money?”

“She may really be blackmailing the family,” Roscoe said. “I don’t like to bring this up, but she may threaten to say that Elisha was Gilby’s father. Did that ever occur to you?”

Alex threw back his head and wheezed, “Jesus, what next?”

“Did it?”

“Never.”

“It occurred to your mother, and me. But I don’t believe it.”

“Good. Neither do I.”

“That won’t stop Pamela from threatening to go public with it.”

“The bitch. The lousy bitch.” The look of white fury was on him. Roscoe could not remember ever seeing it in his face before. A nurse came into the room to take Roscoe’s vital signs and Alex stood up. He untucked his overseas cap from under his belt and put it on.

“Welcome home, soldier,” Roscoe said.

“I may stay in the army,” Alex said.

After Alex a parade of visitors came to Roscoe’s room. Hattie brought him half a dozen sugar buns, buttered. Trish came and showed him her new brassiere, and offered to move into his hotel suite to take care of him. Roscoe said, Thank you, Trishie, that’s very sweet, but I’d rather be cared for by wolves. Joey Manucci came back after taking Alex home and brought Roscoe the New York tabloids, four Hershey bars, and the news that Bart was keeping Patsy current on the action at headquarters and would stop by later.

Roscoe also received a telegram from his maiden sister, Cress, who still lived alone in the Conway family brownstone on Ten Broeck Street. “Dear Roscoe,” she wrote, “I hear you are ill with chicken pox. Does your doctor know you had that in childhood? You can’t get it twice. You probably have something else. Do not let those doctors fool you.”

And then, at last, Veronica came, in a pink summer frock, pink shoes, pink necklace, matching bracelet, and bearing a vase full of partly pink orchids from the Tivoli hothouse. She kissed Roscoe on the cheek, raising his blood pressure, then sat in a chair facing him and crossed her beautiful legs.

“What did they do to you?” she asked him. “Nobody can get it straight.”

“They put a needle into the sac around my heart to draw out blood, and they may do it again. If that doesn’t work they’ll cut open my thorax and sew up the wound in my heart. If that doesn’t work I told them to cut my throat. I’m out of pain and, seeing you, I’m brimming with pleasure. But just trying to sit up in bed is like running two miles.”

“When will they let you leave?”

“When I feel better.”

“Who’ll take care of you? Who’ll feed you?”

“I’ll hire a nurse. And use room service.”

“That won’t do. You’ll come to Tivoli. The servants and I will take care of you until you’re well.”

“Tivoli,” Roscoe said.

“Don’t argue with me,” Veronica said.

“Who’s arguing?” said Roscoe.

When Roscoe’s pain was all but gone, and the catheter removed, the doctor said he could go home, but in a wheelchair, for he would be slow to regain his strength. Bart Merrigan drove him to the Ten Eyck to help him pack for his stay at Tivoli.

“How do you feel today?” Bart asked him.

“Better.”

“Is your heart all right now?”

“Fantastic. What’s your point?”

“Nobody wants to upset you, Roscoe, especially me.”

“You’re upsetting me with questions. What the hell is on your mind?”

“Patsy’s in a black mood. Bindy’s handler switched birds in that final match. Bindy had two Swigglers, marked like twins, both the same weight, so this had been planned for a while. One twin fought only once, but the other had been in five fights, and he’s the one did in Patsy’s chicken. Ruby was overmatched. Tommy Fogarty thought something was wrong during the fight, but he didn’t figure it out till after he’d paid Bindy Patsy’s forty grand. He and Jack Gray searched Emil’s truck and found the twin chicken in a sack. He also checked out Emil in New Orleans. He’d pulled the switch down there two or three times before they ran him out of town.”

“What’s Bindy say about this?”

“Nobody’s seen him. O.B. says he’s hiding.”

“The man is nuts. You do a thing like that, you can’t hide from Patsy. Forty grand plus all those side bets. Christ. Now we’ve got a goddamn blood feud to deal with.”

Veronica ordered Roscoe’s lunch from Keeler’s and had it delivered to Tivoli in a taxi: strawberries in cantaloupe, a dozen oysters on ice, lobster salad, petits pois, glazed carrots, potatoes au gratin, and the choice of blueberry pie or Keeler’s famous ladyfingers. She had the servants open a bottle of Sauternes for the oysters and Pouilly-Fuissé for the lobster, and had everything served in the former conservatory, with its hanging geraniums, Wandering Jews, potted banana trees, and electrified hurricane lamps.

He had never sat here with her before, and it seemed calculated to create intimacy. She wore a golden chiffon scarf as a choker, and her hair was pulled back behind her ears. He fixated on her beautiful left ear, which he wanted to nibble.

“Do you like your lunch?” she asked.

“This is a room of enchantment. I like much more than my lunch.”

“Don’t like too much more.”

“The more you like, the happier you are. Is it wrong to try to be happy?”

“Don’t try to be too happy,” she said.

“Elisha would want us to be happy. He knew how to be happy.”

“No, he didn’t. He killed himself.”

“He did that for other people,” Roscoe said.

“Which other people?”

“You. And the boys.”

“How can you say that?”

“I’m eliminating possibilities.”

“Killing himself for me. You’re crazy, Roscoe.”

“He also may have done it because he owed me.”

“What did he owe you?”

“You. He took you away from me. Maybe he’s trying to give you back. I’m not sure it’s working, but so far, so good. You’re saving my life, and we’re together in this beautiful place.”

“I don’t think it’s wise to talk about this. Elisha would want us to be wise.”

“You think that’s all he’d want us to be?”

As he watched her across the table he thought: This is the most sublime woman ever put on this earth; perhaps I exaggerate. But all Roscoe wanted from the world right now was to look at her, talk to her, love her, have lunch with her, right here, forever. Was that asking so much? Also, once in a while, he’d like to kiss her, fuck her, forever, here, anyplace, on the table, once in a while. Was that asking so much?

The Soldier Boys Campaign

Roscoe in his wheelchair looked like a wounded old soldier, which he was, as he stared out from under the umbrella he held to fend off the foglike drizzle. Beside him stood Veronica, with Gilby holding an umbrella over her. Gilby had decided that even if Alex was only his brother-cousin he was more brother than cousin.

“He looks wonderful,” Veronica said to Roscoe. “I see so much Elisha in him. His gauntness makes him more of a man. Don’t you think, Roscoe?”

“He’s very like his father was at that age.”

“We’ll leave after his speech,” she said. “Gilby has to be at the dentist.”

“I’ll see you for dinner,” Roscoe said. “It’s years since I’ve gotten emotional about dinner.”

The block had been closed to traffic, and on the lawn in front of School Twenty, with the army, navy, and Marine color guard behind him, the soldier-boy Mayor was on the platform dedicating the communion of names of sailors, soldiers, and Marines who spent their young years fighting Japs, Nazis, and Italian Fascists, as a crowd of four hundred in the middle of the street listened. The names on the Roll were a stark listing of alphabetical love, a scroll of blessedness. Several names were separated out, writ larger. The Mayor pointed to one.

“Charley Becker, a Marine private from Walter Street — I used to play tennis with him,” the Mayor said, “and I could never return his serve. He was cut down in the first wave at Saipan. Bobby (Shadow) Valentino, an army corporal from Mohawk Street who could outrun my dog, was killed in the battle for Salerno. Captain Ray Ergott from Bonheim Street, a bomber pilot who played real good banjo, was shot down by Nazi anti-aircraft fire over Berlin. I saw other men, some of my great pals, killed on the battlefields of France. I won’t forget them. Neither will you, my friends, and neither will this city. Their names here will be revered as long as we. ”

He stopped speaking. He took off his overseas cap and looked up at the sky and let the rain hit his face.

“I hate talking about this,” he said. “I hate it that they’re dead. We live on and we leave them behind. How can we remember them? They fade. I already forget the name of the soldier who was shot a few yards away from me. I’m not sure I ever knew his name. Maybe it was Dave. He fell and the rest of us kept running until a shell hit Dave directly and the blast knocked me over. I was stunned, not hurt, but Dave’s blood was on my field jacket, my hands, my rifle. And that blood was all that was left of him. We couldn’t even find his dogtags. He died and I didn’t and I don’t know why I didn’t, but I know I consecrate his blood here today, and the blood of Charley Becker and Shadow Valentino and Ray Ergott. And I’m going to try to keep that blood of their short lives flowing in my memory until I’m not here anymore. That’s not very much to do for those fellows, and it sure won’t help them. But that’s all I can do. That’s all anybody can do. Now I’ll stop talking. I’m sick of words.”

Nobody moved, nobody applauded. It’d be like applauding a funeral mass. Alex stood the laurel wreath on its end on the Honor Roll’s pedestal. Then he put his cap on and saluted as the bugler played taps and the newspaper photographers took pictures. People waited in the rain to welcome Alex home, shake his hand, women he knew kissing his cheek, tears in their eyes, what a wonderful speech, don’t you look grand, we were worried about you. Veronica was right. In his voice, his inflection, Roscoe heard the echo of Elisha’s clear intelligence, but laced with the ease of a workingman’s speech pattern. Alex had been exposed to plainspoken language all his life by his father and Patsy and Roscoe, who took him to Party meetings, and ball games, and cockfights, and saloons, but the boy’s elite education had fortified his resistance to anything of a common order, and he spoke publicly with the unbendable rhetoric of a patrician. Today he spoke as a peer of those working-class dead men he’d known, no longer just Patsy’s boyish Mayor but now his own man, a personage: a rich man’s son with a common man’s heart. Goddamn it, Alex, that is an unbeatable combination. You can be Mayor forever.

The crowd broke up and Roscoe spotted Townsend Blair, bent over and staring at the ground, looking for money, people said, but that wasn’t it. He carried a burden. He’d been the Democratic candidate for mayor in 1919, our breakout year. He raised his head and looked at Alex, then turned to face Roscoe. Their eyes met and Roscoe nodded, but Blair’s face was a frown, and then he walked off with his bent back, the old anger still there.

Pop O’Rourke, diabetic, florid, and spiffy as always, whispered to Roscoe, “How do you like this turnout, Roscoe? And on a dreadfully stormy day like this. I’m exceptionally happy how we got our people out.”

“The Mayor must be happy, too, Pop,” Roscoe said, smiling at the loyalty of it all. “I see Townsend came out for the ceremony.”

“A rarity, indeed,” said Pop. “I never see him. Poor fellow, he still talks about it, collars people at the ballpark and says, ‘You know what happened to me in 1919? You know what they did to me?”’

“He still does that?”

“He does.”

Win Clark stood in the rain behind Pop, waiting to greet Roscoe, thank him again for his job as sidewalk inspector: tell us which flagstones need fixing, Win, and stay off the sauce, the ruin of Win, who drank the inheritance from his wife’s death. Only the sidewalk job put him back on his feet. But why shouldn’t we help a loyal committeeman, a stalwart for twenty years till he tipped over sucking the bottle. Win would want to tell Roscoe his bladder joke.

“Hiya, Roscoe,” he said. “What’s this with the wheelchair?”

“The old bladder’s acting up, Win.”

“I had a bladder stone once. You know how I got rid of it?”

“Tell me.”

“Like everything else, I pissed it away.”

“Stay dry, Win.”

Roscoe waved to Father Fearey, the assistant pastor at Sacred Heart and everybody’s favorite priest after Bing Crosby. Wally Kilmartin, the current Ninth Ward alderman, gave Roscoe the high sign, ready for a chat, but Dinny Rhatigan beat him to the wheelchair. Dinny was pushing eighty-five, and had been in on the election of Patsy in 1919. Patsy made him leader of the Ninth Ward when we took City Hall.

“You ailin’, Roscoe?” Dinny asked.

“I’m resting up for the football season,” Roscoe said.

“I hear Patsy got chickenswoggled.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“He called me.”

“Well, if he says so.”

“My God, is he pissed at Bindy.”

“So I understand.”

“I wouldn’t want to be Bindy.”

“Bindy won’t want to be Bindy if Patsy catches up with him.”

“The Mayor survived the war well.”

“He did.”

“It reminds me of 1919, Roscoe, after the war, and so many were against us.”

“It does exactly, Dinny. It does exactly.”

“But we’ll do fine this year.”

“I think we will, Din.”

“How long are they keeping you in that chair?”

“Till I get out of it.”

“I remember Felix in a chair like that. At the Phoenix Club.”

“I remember it too,” Roscoe said.

“It was 1919,” Dinny said. “That same year.”

“That very same year,” said Roscoe. “A musical year.”

“Musical?” Dinny said.

“I always remember it that way,” Roscoe said.

Opus One: Overture, 1919

The Phoenix Club, a one-story brick building with a step-gabled roof, Dutch-style, was a leftover from the days when the North End was part of the demesne of the patroons of the Van Rensselaer family, a tract forty-eight miles long and twenty-four miles wide, seven hundred thousand acres on both sides of the river, with sixty to eighty thousand tenant farmers living on it under feudal conditions. The building had been an office of the patroon’s manor, but in the late nineteenth century it became the Phoenix, the sanctum sanctorum of North Albany Democracy. Dinny Rhatigan, who owned the ice house on Erie Street, and thirty or so other men — Black Jack McCall the saloonkeeper-sheriff; Judge Brady, a hero when he ruled against that damned cleric who tried to stop Sunday baseball; Jack Maloney, the paving contractor, whose son Bunter held the city speed record for laying red bricks, 5,545 in forty-five minutes; Iron Joe Farrell, who ran The Wheelbarrow, the little Main Street saloon with the cockpit out back where Patsy sometimes fought his chickens; Emmett Daugherty, the old Fenian and labor radical; Pat McDonald, leader of the Eighth Ward, who rode his bicycle with the North Albany Wheelmen — these good fellows, and more, were keepers of the covenant in the old club: two rooms, two card tables, a pool table, six spittoons, and two heavily curtained windows nobody could see into or out of. In the great blizzard of ’88, six of them were playing cards when it started to snow. They raised the curtains to watch it fall, saw it get so deep that they decided not to go out. It snowed four days, and those snowbound fellas would’ve starved to death if their wives hadn’t come down with baskets of food.

It was a hot July day when Roscoe brought Felix to the Phoenix. Felix was sixty-seven and in the wheelchair with troubled lungs, wrapped in his blanket and trying to forestall pneumonia, the ailment that he feared would kill him and which, in three months, would. He had been coming to the club after the eleven o’clock mass every Sunday during all the twenty years the Republicans ran the town. It was a political haven, for, with Phoenix dominance, the ward had gone two-to-one Democrat, even in Republican landslides. For this reason also, Patsy had come along today with Roscoe and Felix to announce his candidacy for city assessor.

Felix instantly responded to Patsy’s plan: “Yessir, that assessor’s a good choice, it’s their Achilles’ heel. Same as it was ours thirty years ago.”

Assessment was a perpetual issue: high tax assessments on the property of political enemies, low assessments for loyalists and friendly corporations. Everybody did it if they were in, nobody liked it if they were out.

“What makes you think you can win?” Dinny asked Patsy.

“I’m up against Straney,” Patsy said, “and he wasn’t in the war. I’ll campaign in uniform, and I got a team ready to work with me, knockin’ on front doors till we drop. Elisha Fitzgibbon’s financing me, and Roscoe’ll manage me. They’re both smarter than me, so we can’t lose on brains.”

“Don’t matter how many brains you got,” Dinny said. “The Barnes organization can steal more votes than you can count.”

“I know that,” Patsy said. “Why the hell do you think I’m here?”

And in the laughter and then the silence that followed that brash remark, Roscoe saw that Patsy had transformed himself in the eyes of these veterans: had become not the fresh, ambitious pup he might seem at first, but a young fellow with a savvy that came from early exposure to politics at Black Jack’s knee, and then as bartender at Jack’s saloon, where politics was as important as the ale. Patsy talked the lingo and was ready for anything, even speaking the unspoken. He had a sharp, squinty eye, and an aggressive chin, ready for an argument. People knew him as fullback for the Arbor Hill Spartans, the team nobody could beat. He tilted his chair back until it leaned against the wall, his legs dangling in his high shoes.

“The Ninth Ward always goes two to one,” Patsy said. “Am I right?”

“Usually,” said Dinny.

“Can it go three to one? Four to one?”

Heads shook. Four to one? The fellow is crazy.

“It’s been done,” Patsy said. “Right, Felix?”

“That was when we had total control. Now it’s not so easy.”

“Can that control be organized? Can we buy it?”

“We can price it out,” Dinny said, “if we know the money is there.”

“It’s there,” said Patsy. “This is the year to move. We can win. McCabe is running Townsend Blair for mayor, and he’s definitely got a shot.” Packy McCabe was the longtime ineffectual boss of Albany Democrats.

“Who said they’re running Blair?” Felix asked.

“McCabe. I told him we had a candidate for mayor, and he laughed and said it was taken, that Blair had it. ‘Captain Blair of the 51st Pioneers,’ he says. ‘All right, Packy,’ I say to him, ‘then how about Roscoe Conway for district attorney?’ He says that’s taken too.”

“You never told me this,” Roscoe said.

“You don’t wanna run, but you could win. You got that medal. So I say to Packy, ‘Are you tellin’ me there’s no room on the ticket for anybody from the Eighth, Ninth, and Twelfth Wards? Are you sayin’ we’re outsiders, the lot of us, the gang of us that won the war?’ And Packy says, ‘No, no, my boy, not at all.’ ‘All right,’ I say, ‘then I’ll run for assessor.’ He says, ‘Let me think about that,’ and I say, ‘Don’t think too long or you’re gonna lose us. We’re big and gettin’ bigger, and it’s a new day. We got the vets and their families, and I got a whole lot of friends who won’t go your way if I don’t, and we’re ready to primary if we’re not on your ticket.’ ‘Let me think about that,’ he says again, and I say, ‘Okay, I’ll see you in church.’ That was yesterday, and I saw him at St. Joseph’s an hour ago, and he says he’ll back me for assessor.”

“By the great goddamn, that’s splendid, Patsy,” Felix said. “You’ve assaulted the barricades single-handed.” And the Phoenixers nodded and grunted their approval of this fighting spirit suddenly made visible in their clubhouse.

“Make no mistake,” Felix said. “Townsend Blair’s a hell of a candidate. And James Watt is not the most popular mayor this town ever had. He can be beat this year. Blair will get the soldier vote.”

“He will and so will I,” said Patsy, “and I’ll get coattails from those that know him but don’t know me. You trust Blair, Dinny?”

“He’s smart, and he’s honest,” Dinny said.

“That’s always a problem,” Felix said.

“The real problem,” Patsy said, “is he’s a captain. If he’s elected he’ll think he’s in charge.”

The Phoenix Club members heard this wisdom and looked at the precocious Patsy as if he’d just been born out of the ashes of one of their old cigars. They then took the entire discussion under advisement and went home for their first Sunday dinner under the new political order they did not quite realize had just come into existence.

The First Movement

Captain Townsend Blair of the 51st Pioneers Regiment stepped out as grand marshal of the election-eve parade, two hundred of his fellow Pioneers and five thousand others behind him, plus thirty thousand watching from the stoops and sidewalks, recognizing him from photos in the newspapers, and in the paid ads always in his uniform, garrison cap, and captain’s bars. He wasn’t a half-bad speaker, had a pleasant look, and money: his family foundry had been Lyman Fitzgibbon’s chief competitor in the stove era. Also, he was a Protestant, and that, plus wealth, was deemed essential in a mayor — for you know what happens when they elect a Catholic. Remember Felix Conway? Kicked him out for vote fraud. Who’d ever kick out a Protestant?

Blair also had the backing of Arthur T. Grogan, which was confounding as well as bad fiscal news for Patsy. Arthur Goddamn Grogan, Patsy called him. Grogan had begun his career as a teenage oyster-shucker at the Delavan House in Albany, graduated to bartender, bought a large shipment of tea on speculation from a traveling tea broker, and quadrupled his investment. He compounded that money as a politically connected contractor, first paving streets, then building sewers and bridges, then owning a gas company, trolley lines, electric-power companies, eventually building subways in Brooklyn, Queens, and Chicago, and it’s all done through politics, boys. That’s how he became the richest man in town, whenever he was in town, a Knight of Malta Catholic who had backed Felix Conway for mayor in 1890 and 1892.

Grogan preferred incumbents, liked money, not struggle, and when the Republicans came in here in ’99 he stayed with them for twenty years. But he kept his eye on electables, and this year of potential change gave a quiet but sizable sop to Packy McCabe on behalf of Townsend Blair, who had won the support of both labor and half the Fort Orange Club, the social sanctuary of Grogan’s financial peers. This year of 1919 just might be yet another season for Democrats, like 1918, when we elected Al Smith Governor. Now Prohibition’s coming, and people don’t want it. They’re going to blame somebody, and the Republicans are in charge here. This town is changing. If Blair wins this year, and he can, Packy McCabe will be on horseback with an elected mayor and also with Grogan, his absurdly rich benefactor. And they’ll all settle down together for God knows how long in City Hall, which Patsy has his own eye on; and so Patsy has a special problem with this.

Grogan was a problem of a different order for Roscoe and Elisha. They lived with the memory of his visit with David Morgan, Veronica’s father, who in 1914 had bought the mansion of a deceased dry-goods merchant on State Street, in an elite block facing Washington Park. Morgan bought the house when it came on the market, and moved his family out of the three-story South End brownstone they had outgrown. Roscoe was courting Veronica that year, and she told him the story of Arthur Grogan’s visit to the mansion. Grogan had pulled up in his Buick touring car and sent his chauffeur to bring David Morgan out to speak with him.

“My father knew him, of course,” Veronica said. “Everybody knew him.”

Grogan lived a block down State Street from the Morgans’ new house, in the city’s largest and most luxurious townhouse. David Morgan stood alongside the auto and Grogan said to him, “You know who lives in that house next door to you?”

“No,” David Morgan said.

“The Bishop’s family,” said Grogan. “The family of the Catholic Bishop.”

“I look forward to meeting them,” Morgan said.

“You can’t live here,” Grogan said. “You can’t live next to the Bishop’s family. You’re a Jew.”

“Does the Bishop know you’re speaking on his behalf?”

“Don’t get a fresh Jew mouth on you,” Grogan said. “Just get off this street. You don’t belong here. Go live where Jews live.”

“We live everywhere.”

“No, you don’t.”

The next day, Grogan moved stealthily to buy up stock in David Morgan’s scouring-powder company with the aim of taking control. Elisha learned of the scheme from his broker and, moving more quickly through Morgan family access to records of the diverse holdings, he bought the stock in Veronica’s name, then gave it all to her father as a loan. Grogan’s threat evaporated, and David Morgan was ever grateful, his daughter even more so: to the point of ending her courtship by Roscoe and marrying Elisha. A spoiler at many levels, Mr. Grogan.

The Morgans remained in their State Street mansion, and David Morgan gained a nodding acquaintance with the Bishop’s family next door.

It smelled like victory to Roscoe, even a large plurality. They marched past cheering crowds, past dozens of bonfires that illuminated the night, along with the fires in all their bellies, and they moved through the length of downtown, from Arbor Hill toward the Farmers’ Market on Grand Street, to the tunes of the fife-and-drum corps of Christian Brothers Academy, Roscoe’s alma mater. And they chanted:

Who ate the beans? Blair.

Who brought home the bacon? Blair.

Who took us over the top? Blair.

Who gets the soldier vote? Blair.

Elisha did not walk in the parade, but he helped pay for some of it. His steel mill had made a few million on war contracts, and out of guilt and friendship, and because he loved politics more than steel, he spent prodigally on Patsy’s campaign rallies, on election cards, on banners spanning half a dozen streets, plus ready cash for workers who wore out their shoes working the wards for Patsy. There’d be street money tomorrow to reward male voters for their vote, and silk stockings to reward the women. Bountiful newspaper ads, paid for by Elisha, had appeared with Patsy’s picture in uniform above his letter to the Women’s City Club promising assessment reform and agreeing with everything Captain Blair ever said.

Roscoe marched alongside Patsy, half a step behind, leading the third division, a thousand in line behind them — Patsy’s own booster club, North Enders, Arbor Hillers, soldier pals — and the chant went up for “Patsy, Patsy, Patsy.” Hell, even women were coming out, and, for the first time in history, they would work alongside vets and goo-goos as poll-watchers to guard against peeping at ballots, mirrors on the ceiling, bullies in the Donnybrook wards who block the door and either drive you away or force you to fight your way to the ballot box. We’ll have none of that in this year of our heroes, Captain Blair and Corporal Patsy.

Roscoe, walking at the head of this loyalist throng, felt the vibration of the marchers and spectators, their great numbers, the rumbling of their planetary music. Looking back at them as the parade stretched halfway up North Pearl Street, he wanted to dance that dance of love — show me that you love me — vote for me. Ah, the power of numbers. The power of all things and all people moving in their rightful place on the planet. You can hear the close harmony of their motion, the heavenly music of the spheres.

“What do you think, Roscoe,” Patsy said as they stepped along, “are we going to win?”

“I’ve got a bet on it,” said Roscoe.

“You could be the new district attorney. Why the hell didn’t you run?”

“Public office isn’t what I’m after.”

“It’s not public office, it’s politics.”

“I don’t want to go like Felix.”

“He had a good run of it. He built some schools, he made his fortune.”

“He never got over the disgrace. I can’t live that way.”

“What the hell do you mean? You don’t want to stay with us?”

“I’m with you. I’ll just stay out of the limelight.”

“The only way around McCabe is to get elected.”

“I know, and you’ll do that,” Roscoe said.

“I might. We did the work. I think they’re with me.”

Patsy kept waving, calling dozens by name, passing out smiles. Men stepped out to shake his hand, women to kiss his cheek. “Patsy, Patsy, Patsy,” came the chant. We’d heard the same at football games when Patsy ran and passed but mostly bulled through center, the dominant strategy that kept the Spartans undefeated for eight years. Patsy, bored with winning, quit the team and it disbanded. Roscoe saw that same athletic energy in the man now as he marched, shaping the military-hero image he would abandon as soon as the parade ended, a public man with less love for the limelight than Roscoe, yet driving himself into it and beyond to beat those sonsabitches. Why?

At the Farmers’ Market, Townsend Blair made his final campaign speech to what was supposed to be a block party. But rain clouds opened and he only managed to say, “Our plurality over Mayor Watt will exceed our wildest predictions. Our information now makes it a sure three thousand.” As he said this, someone hit him with a potato and his fedora fell off. His optimism drowned in laughter and a cloudburst as the crowd ran for shelter without the villain’s being caught. The next day, in the Albany Argus, Willie Ryan, the fruit-and-vegetable dealer, took an ad to say, “I didn’t know who threw the potato but I know where he bought it.”

The Second Movement

The Argus reported on election morning that Republicans were spreading the word not to vote for Abner Straney, the incumbent assessor. Voters were confused as to why his own Party would cut Straney, and so was Straney. Republican bosses said it wasn’t true they were cutting him.

Roscoe and Patsy were not confused. As Blair’s popularity soared and Republicans foresaw the loss of City Hall for the first time in twenty years, Patsy had an idea: Tell Billy Barnes, the Republican boss, if he cuts Straney, we’ll cut Blair in the three wards where our troops are in place. We can probably guarantee a cut of eight hundred in just the Ninth Ward.

Roscoe took the plan to lunch with Edgar Wills, Billy Barnes’s lawyer, and after lunch the word came back: Done. The Straney rumor was on the street in every ward as soon as the polls opened, and the cut-Blair advisory ran wild among Democrats in select wards.

The Third Movement

Just as the polls were closing on election evening, in the front of Joey Corelli’s barbershop on Broadway, which was the polling place of the third district of the Ninth Ward, Fortune Micelli turned up with twelve Italian veterans who wanted to vote. They all roomed in the ward, in Micelli’s rooming house on Broadway, which had six cots and sixty-two registered voters. The vets had U.S. Army honorable discharges in hand, but no naturalization papers, and spoke little English. Micelli, a high-school classmate of Roscoe’s, demanded that these war heroes, who had risked their lives for America, be allowed to vote, but Republicans argued it was illegal; and bilingual shouting and pushing turned into a rolling battle of ethnic pride, patriotism, and bigotry. Roscoe interpreted their constitutional rights for the pushing and screaming Italians, but he agreed with the Republicans that they couldn’t vote and had to move their chaos out of the polling place and into the street, that the voting day was now at an end. And while workers of both parties and the volunteer poll-watchers formed a human blockade to prevent the Italians from assaulting the polls, the barbershop door was locked. Inside, Eddie Pfister, a plumbing-supply salesman who worked the voting table for the Republicans, and Bart Merrigan, his Democratic counterpart, alone at the table, unlocked the ballot box and quickly separated out all ballots marked for Straney. They drew an “x” next to Patsy’s name on each ballot, thus invalidating it with a second vote, then put all ballots back in the box and locked it.

Patsy carried the ward, 1,196 to 458, and defeated Straney city-wide for the assessorship by 145 votes. Straney demanded a police probe of Ninth Ward vote tampering, but it was denied.

Townsend Blair carried ten of the city’s nineteen wards but lost the Ninth Ward to Mayor Watt by 850 votes, and lost the election by 1,200 votes. Three days after the election, Blair, meeting with newspapermen immediately following the recount that he and Straney had demanded, spoke aloud for the first time the loser’s lament he would repeat for the rest of his life: “They counted me out. They counted me out.”

Getting Wet

On the night of the recount, Patsy’s victory party in the Malley brothers’ Beaver Street saloon, the largest in town, was a mob scene, easily three hundred on hand to celebrate the election. All saloons in the state, Malley’s included, had closed October 28, after the Senate passed the Volstead Act over President Wilson’s veto, but this was a private party and no one would be dry tonight, everything free, the Stanwix kegs, courtesy of Roscoe, stacked in the Malleys’ back room, the last beer made before the brewery went dark. Giving beer away was as illegal as selling it, but Roscoe had Bart check with the federal enforcers, and they would not be enforcing tonight. Too soon.

Roscoe saw Patsy, surrounded by neighbors, ward pols, and women who touched him when they smiled up into his face. “Oh, Patsy, they can’t stop you now,” this from Mabel Maloy, an Arbor Hill beauty who’d worked as a poll-watcher for him. Flora Pender beside her, a neighbor who’d had Patsy’s attention for years, plus three women Roscoe didn’t recognize, all found the new city assessor irresistible.

Roscoe intruded to ask Patsy, “How do you like your party?”

“Better than gettin’ hit with a potato.”

“Do you want to make a victory speech?”

“Didn’t you hear about the politician who made a speech and lost the election?”

“You won the election.”

“That’s because I didn’t make a speech.”

Roscoe saw Elisha in the crowd with Veronica, a permanent, walking glory, and he lost her and still can’t shed the pain after five years. He waved to Elisha, nodded hello to Veronica, and turned away. Craig Leland and Frank Rice were edging toward Patsy, a pair of young bankers who’d backed Townsend Blair and longed to break Barnes’s City Hall tie to old-line banks, and could Patsy be the way? He could, which gave this night an importance beyond the winning of a simple assessorship. People were starting to believe this was the hole in the dike and next would come the flood. Corbett Atterby, a young lawyer with a moneyed pedigree who’d soured on the Barnes machine and came to work for Patsy, stood at the hero’s elbow, exploring one of Patsy’s spillovers: an open-minded blonde who worked as a secretary in the law office of Patsy’s brother Matt, the reclusive lawyer whose firm would become the leading law group in the city in five years; and Matt was here with Liza, his beautiful wife nobody liked. Tim Wiley, whose Molders Union backed Patsy, was here, and there was Louie Glatz, assistant brewmaster at Stanwix, who took over after Felix’s longtime brewmaster, Franz Prediger, saw Prohibition coming and found work in Argentina.

Roscoe searched faces, found uncountable strangers. Who brought them? Who cares? Join the Party, folks, the new Party. He saw Hattie Wilson and went toward her. She had organized this celebration, cooked the corned beef, chicken, ham, the works, raised the victory banner over the bar — PATSY DID IT! — brought in dishes and silver — she also did picnics and clambakes-the most organized woman in town, and a tantalizing eyeful to Roscoe’s eye: that full bosom, covered to the neck tonight, with matching hips and slender waist, proportions definitely not made in heaven. You couldn’t call her pretty — her face was too full of experience for such a delicate term — but its soft, full, not fleshy contours held a promise of pleasure, a wish for it, or was Roscoe imagining this? He would find out one of these days. Her first husband had died in the Argonne, and now she was seeing Louie Glatz, who, Roscoe decided, was wrong for her. Roscoe asked her, “Did you cook enough to feed this mob?”

“Even you won’t be able to eat all the leftovers,” she said.

“You look too good to be a cook,” he said.

“I do other things too.”

“Those are things I’d like to see.”

“I’ll bet you would.”

“How much’ll you bet? I want to see the color of your money.”

“You’ll have to make an appointment.”

“All right. Tonight. Here.”

“Here where?”

“I’ll figure it out,” Roscoe said.

“Here?”

“Here.”

She cocked an eye at him and moved away toward the food. Was that a yes? He threaded through the crowd toward Bindy and a stranger who, if he was Moishe (Mush) Trainor from New Jersey, was about to bring money back into Roscoe’s life. With the brewery closed, Roscoe’s income had vanished overnight. He could carry on as counsel for Elisha’s steel mill, but it bored the bejesus out of him, just as the mill often bored Elisha’s bejesus, both of them preferring the new vice of political excitement, the rush of blood during the campaign, the vital hangover from all that creative fraudulence, and the anticipation of power according to Patsy McCall, who would insist Packy McCabe put Elisha and Roscoe on the Party committee that would control the next election. Here we come, Packy, and we can see daylight. Also, as a politician, Roscoe gets to use his wits, of which he has several. And although all know how smart Patsy is, he can’t run this rump faction alone. He has the desire, the talent for making friends, and profound savvy about the human proclivity for deceit, but he needs an active lawyer as much as he needs money, to create a political future out of nothing but will power.

Money: it suddenly seemed available to Roscoe, if the scheme conjured by Bindy, with Patsy and Mush Trainor as his partners, worked out. Roscoe’s dead brewery, his peculiar bequest from Felix, had new reason to exist, perhaps even thrive in these dry times. Felix had moved back home from the Ten Eyck when his pneumonia worsened and he was unable to take care of himself, came back after almost twenty years to his old brass bed in the Ten Broeck Street brownstone, and Blanche welcomed him as if he’d only been gone for the weekend. Why did she do this?

“It was peaceful when he was gone,” she said, “no spittoons or politicians. He was no use around the house and he’d never go anywhere with me. But he did come to visit. He’d give us anything we asked, and never ask a thing from us, just to live alone in that drafty hotel. Then, one day, he says to me, ‘Could I come home to die, Blanche?’ And wouldn’t I be a fine one to say he couldn’t?”

Blanche and the Conway girls — Cress, Marianne, and Libby — monitored his breathing to see if he was still here or gone up, and O.B., Dr. Lynch, and Roscoe kept him company part of the day. But he lingered, refusing to die until he was sure Patsy had been elected and Blair hadn’t. Roscoe gave him the news as soon as he heard it, and explained the Blair and Straney cuts.

“You fixed both sides?” Felix asked.

“We did,” Roscoe said.

“How delicious. I’m proud of you. And proud of Patsy.”

“We had a good teacher.”

“Next stop City Hall.”

“That could be.”

“Do that for your father,” Felix said, beaming at having given this boy the proper upbringing, and also at the prospect of a vicarious, posthumous return to the Mayor’s office, the only form of redemption left to him. He’d raised this boy right. He stopped talking and smiled up at Father Loonan from St. Joseph’s, who had come to forgive Felix his political sins. The priest began with redemption through Jesus, but Felix raised a hand to protest.

“Jesus was a nice fellow, Father,” Felix said, “but he was a con man.”

The priest nodded and forgave him his blasphemy, and Felix said, “Remember Satan offering him that deal? ‘Fall down and worship me and I’ll give you the kingdoms of the world’? The poor devil never had a chance, Father. The fix was in upstairs. Jesus conned hell out of him, just like his father and that apple. You think he didn’t know what Adam would do once he got a look at that apple? Of course he did. A con from the get-go, Father, a con from the get-go.”

Father Loonan was forgiving this further blasphemy when Felix said, “I’m nothing, Father, and never was, and the same goes for this splendid son of mine, and for you too. None of us is worth an old man’s piddle and we never could be, because the whole world is fixed against us, Father. The whole damn world is fixed.”

As the priest forgave his insults and profanity, Felix closed his eyes and lapsed into sleep. When he awoke he said nothing more of equivalent eloquence, and then he died, leaving the bulk of his estate, nearly a million, to his wife and daughters. To O.B. and Roscoe he left the Stanwix Brewery, controlling interest to Roscoe, plus a few hundred thousand for the boys to split, which would keep them respectable but hardly affluent, his reasoning being that women had it hard and men should make their own way; and Roscoe and O.B. surely could find some use for the brewery, even if beer was illegal. Be willful, boys, was his verbal bequest, which was why Roscoe was moving toward Bindy and Mush Trainor, entrepreneurs of the new age descending, in which the illusion of beer would replace beer, the illusion of gin would replace gin, and the illusion of jurisprudence and justice would transform the populace into hoodlums, chronic lawbreakers, professional hypocrites, defiant drunks, and political wizards, the grand exalted whizzer being Patsy. Roscoe had already had an opportunity to sell his brewery for a very decent price to the new consortium — Patsy, Bindy, Mush, and God knows who else — and let them do what they would with it. What they wanted to do was make near beer, 0.5 percent alcohol, and people would drink it and think they were getting drunk. The consortium would soon make it easier for them to think that by infusing alcohol into the beer, then selling it for twice, maybe triple, what a half of beer had sold for last week. Take it or leave it, folks. Roscoe considered this offer and decided for sentimental reasons that he would not sell his father’s brewery but would himself become keeper of the golden vats — vats that brought wondrous ease to all those defiant drinkers, and serious profit to their owner.

He touched Bindy’s arm and Bindy said, “All right, Roscoe. Mush, I told you about.”

“Hello, Mush. Do people really call you Mush?”

“Don’t you like it?”

“It’s fine with me. I never heard the name.”

“Some heard it,” Mush said.

Mush was slight of build, a bit of a dude, with pocket handkerchief, silk vest, and gold watch and chain. He had a scratchy voice and a face scarred by an old pox, his small blue eyes his chief agent of analysis. As Roscoe talked, Mush seemed to listen less than he scrutinized Roscoe’s face for strength, weakness, venality, stupidity.

“You decide what you wanna do with the brewery?” Bindy asked.

“I’ll hold on to it.”

“We can raise the offer.”

“Not for sale, Bin. If it runs, I run it.”

“You ready to do business?” Mush asked.

“You’re handling the beer for Bindy,” Roscoe said.

“That’s my job.”

“You’ll pick it up, find the customers, deliver it.”

“I’ll do that. You ready to do business?”

“I am.”

“I’d like to see the place.”

“I don’t go to the brewery,” Roscoe said.

“Why not?”

“I only went there to see my father. He never wanted me selling beer. Then he gave me the brewery.”

“How do you run it?”

“With a bookkeeper, and Louie Glatz the brewmaster. My brother, O.B., will be around when you need somebody, and we’ll rehire whatever crew we need to keep your trucks rolling. How much beer will you need?”

“How much can you make?”

“That much, eh?”

“People want beer.”

“It won’t be beer. It’ll be oh-point-five.”

“That’s right.”

“Any stronger, they’ll padlock the place and me with it.”

“How does it taste?”

“The best in town. But when we run it over the heat to get the alcohol out, I don’t know.”

“Nobody’ll complain. We’ll fix it so it does what it’s supposed to do.”

“What do you know about beer, Mush?”

“Nothin’. I just move it.”

“How long you been moving it?”

“Two weeks.”

“An old hand.”

“I moved other stuff.”

Mush was known as a swagman, a dealer in stolen jewelry — his gold watch and chain were probably hot — and as a domestic smuggler of heroin wrapped in cigars and sealed inside Christmas candles. By repute he now had close ties to a Jersey brewery that had been preparing to go clandestine ever since Prohibition became a sure thing, which was why Bindy brought him to Albany, a major market for which the McCall brothers were anxious to compete. Six months earlier Patsy had bought an empty soap factory that covered half a city block in the North End to garage his trucks for hauling the beer, and to sell car and truck tires as a front. Bindy had set up stills in half a dozen city neighborhoods for making home brew, and was building a major still on Westerlo Island in the river. These would only begin to cover the demand.

“You plan to bring in the real goods, I hear,” Roscoe said to Mush.

“Right. As soon as we control some roads and trains. Where’s this brewmaster guy? Can he show me the layout?”

“I’ll have him do that.”

Roscoe found Louie Glatz, a dull, good-looking, yellow-haired German of thirty who was the third-generational brewer in the Glatz family. Roscoe brought him over to meet Mush, and Louie took the new partners to the brewery. Would this partnership last? Probably not for long. But in the short run, Stanwix’s income could skyrocket. We might even go round the clock making the stuff, and nothing illegal about it except the distributors. But what those fellows do is not my province, says the Ros. Let them spike the beer if they want the risk. Roscoe does not want a Felix reprise: cast out in disgrace. Roscoe is an honest man. Every man has his fault and his is honesty. But isn’t it true there’s no such thing as an honest man? Anyone who says that is himself a knave. Yes, of course. Honesty is the best policy for people striving to be poor, and an honest man’s word is as good as his bail bondsman. But as a practical matter, if a man insists on dealing only with honest men he’ll have to stop dealing. Roscoe knows how honest men think and it is terrifying. Wouldn’t showing yourself as partially honest be the smarter way to wealth, even though shameless dishonesty would quicken profits? Yes. And a man ought not be simply good, but good for something, and so Roscoe will try to succeed by making it a practice to be honest whenever it seems feasible.

Roscoe made rounds of the celebrants and drank a little Stanwix with many: Neil Tilton and Rob Cooper, a pair of young Fort Orange Club lawyers who were close to Elisha, and Will Smith and Mike Rea gan, who were jubilant over their re-election as alderman and supervisor of the stalwart Ninth Ward, and Cody Gilpin, the midget emcee for Malleys’ entertainers, when the saloon was running. Cody was on the small stage at the end of the bar playing very well a string of slow, sad tunes on his baby piano, “You Made Me Love You, (I didn’t want to do it),” “Come to Me, My Melancholy Baby,” and so on.

“Can’t you play something lively, Cody?” Roscoe said. “This is a celebration, not a wake.”

Cody banged a double-handed discord and got up from his stool. “Nuts to music,” he said, and he climbed up the barstool and sat cross-legged on top of the bar. He was in shirtsleeves, with his trademark derby.

“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Roscoe said.

Bart Merrigan moved in. “What happened to the music?”

“Gimme a beer, Sammy,” Cody said, and when Sam Malley, the co-owner of the saloon, poured him a very short beer, Cody told Roscoe and Bart about his wife, Absinthe, also a midget. “She ran off this morning with a little dink of a dancer to go back into vaudeville.” Absinthe and Cody had been part of a song-and-dance troupe playing Albany’s Empire Theater when they decided to settle here. Their jobs now gone with the new dry law, Absinthe wanted no more of Albany. But Cody liked the town.

“No saloons to work in,” Cody said. “You think Patsy’ll get me a job?”

“What kind of job?” Roscoe asked.

“Anything small.” Cody quaffed his baby beer, asked for another. “That little bitch,” he said, “she was my queen. I loved her like a slave.”

Little jilted guy, where would he find another Absinthe’s size in Albany? Roscoe, fearful of laughing or weeping, left Bart to cope with Cody. His eye found Hattie and he went to her.

“I’m here for my appointment,” he said.

“We don’t have an appointment.”

“I’m making one now.”

“For when?”

“Two minutes from now.”

“Where?”

“In the back room.”

“What do we do at this appointment?”

“You could show me the color of your money.”

“You sent Louie away.”

“Wasn’t that clever?”

“The back room’s not a good place for an appointment.”

“Is there anybody back there?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a fine place. Come and see me.”

And Roscoe went to the back room, which was stacked with beer kegs and several crates of whiskey. The Malleys also kept mops, brooms, the ice chest, an old woodstove, and trash barrels for the empties back here. Roscoe lit a wall sconce and drew the shade on the single window, then stood behind the kegs waiting, thrilled to his bones by what might be about to happen. But it seemed too easy. She would not come. Why should she yield to such a direct request? He had not uttered one courting line, not one word of affection, nothing but eyes and innuendo. She won’t come. But she didn’t say she wouldn’t. Roscoe had imagined this encounter before he went to war, then came home to find her a widow, and everything seemed possible. She’s a woman of substance. She knows who she is. She won’t come if she doesn’t feel anything for you, Ros. If she comes, that alone is a triumph, unless she comes in to say, Never do this to me again, who do you think I am? But Roscoe had seen reciprocation in her eye, hadn’t he? The back room of a saloon full of people, there must be a better place. Yes, but not now.

Hattie entered the room with a key in hand. She locked the door and came directly to Roscoe, and, without a word, he embraced and kissed her. They lingered over it, brand-new sweetness, and his possession of her face, the amplitude of her body, his hand on the small of her back moving downward and not repulsed, it was all so fine. She fits you, Ros, and he stopped kissing her so she could look at his face, see what she was doing to him.

“The color of your money,” he said.

“I don’t know how you talked me into this. We wouldn’t be here if Patsy hadn’t won the election.” And she unbuttoned one of four buttons on her shirtwaist.

“Then this must be political, like everything else in life,” said Roscoe, undoing a second button.

She undid the rest and opened the shirtwaist, revealing the lace shoulder straps and lace bodice of her white chemise, the splendid depth of her cleavage, and the northern hemisphere of her sumptuous breasts. Here were the partial but exquisite spoils of political war.

“Do you like the color of my money?”

“Beyond words.” And he kissed her in the latitude of Mexico. She raised his head and rebuttoned the shirtwaist.

“So soon?” he asked.

“It’s a beginning. Now you know what I look like. Why do you want to start with me, Roscoe?”

“I wanted to start before I went in the army. You know that.”

“You never said so.”

“I don’t always act in my own best interests. You’re a full woman, Hattie. You thrill my heart.”

“I have a feeling for you, Roscoe. You’re honest, outside politics. A man should have that.”

“I won’t contradict you.”

“And I like the way you kiss me. You have a knack. That’s a sign a man has paid attention.” And she kissed him again, but would not linger.

“When do I see you?” he asked as she broke the embrace.

“I’ll try to think about that,” she said.

“Do you suppose we’ll get past the chemise next time?”

“It’s been known to happen.” And she unlocked the door and went back to the party.

What did it mean? A certain measure of adventure, and Hattie did find value in him. Something rare seemed to be happening to Roscoe. His life was moving in an upward spiral: political victory, a new Democracy in the offing, restoration of his income, and now the blossoming of something like love. It was too soon to love Hattie, wasn’t it? But this certainly was something akin, and it was coming to him despite his fears, his fraudulence, his profound flaws. He was part of something that wouldn’t be the same without him, whatever it was: Triumvirate? Group? Party? Fusion of patrician and hoi polloi? All were in forward motion with the promise of fruition, a new brotherhood out of the old fatherhood, all, as Roscoe now saw it, an oblique creation of the dead Felix, who said Roscoe was a splendid son, not worth an old man’s piddle; and, in this spirit, Felix was everywhere here tonight, pushing Roscoe into an alliance with bootleggers, making him privy to the twisted glories of politics, and, through political consequence, forcing him to seduce a lovely woman away from his own brewmaster, leaving Roscoe awash in guilt, which he doesn’t accept. Life made me do it, he concluded. I’m innocent. I would never do such things on my own. It’s a trick. It’s a trap to make me powerful, rich, and happy. I don’t trust it.

Et Cetera

On Election Day, 1921, precisely two years after Patsy’s party, the McCall Democrats elected a new mayor of Albany, Henry J. Goddard, an Episcopal banker (Albany City Savings, founded by Lyman Fitzgibbon) who had gone to Albany Academy with Elisha. Patsy’s legend was by this time growing wild in the streets, but he had refused re-election as assessor and retired from public office forever to tend to patronage and, with Bindy, the care and feeding of the city’s drinkers and gamblers. Mush Trainor had proved himself a valuable personal connection for Bindy, who, having drunkenly shot out the lights of a ceiling fixture in a 55th Street speakeasy in Manhattan, a fixture that demanded to be shot out, and having then been blackjacked and trussed with clothesline by bouncers prior to being dumped in an alley who knows how dead, said to his trussers, “Mush Trainor’s my partner,” and off came the clothesline, out came a fresh bottle and glass, and the apology: “You shoulda said so.” And Bindy thereafter smiled inwardly whenever Mush’s name surfaced. A dozen or more people had died in Albany from drinking poison wine and beer, and a pair of Italian immigrant undertakers were convicted of mixing embalming fluid with dago red. Home brew laced with wood alcohol had killed or maimed the innards of numerous indiscreet drinkers, and from this had come the drinker’s test: Pour a little on the sidewalk and light it. If it gives a blue flame, drink it. If it’s yellow, sell it and run. Stanwix continued to produce near beer, and Mush kept pressing Roscoe to up the alcohol content — not a whole lot, Ros. But Ros said no, and the argument continued. Federal agents found barrels of Stanwix stored in cellars and back rooms of thirty presumably defunct Albany saloons, but because the beer was 0.5 percent alcohol, no one was prosecuted.

Cody Gilpin, drinking with Bart Merrigan at the dead end of Patsy’s party, fell off the bar in a stupor and didn’t move. Sam Malley said to Bart, “You don’t leave him here,” and so Bart stood Cody up and walked the wobbly midget to State and Pearl Streets, where they boarded the West Albany trolley for Central and Lexington Avenues, Cody’s stop. But Cody was comatose at Lexington, and Bart the Samaritan sat him on his shoulder when they reached the Watervliet Avenue stop and carried him to his own home, where Bart lived with his mother and maiden aunt, deposited him on the parlor couch, covered him with a blanket, and went to bed. Bart awoke to his mother’s scream and rose from bed to find her hysterical at having found, on her way to the seven o’clock mass, which she had not missed in twenty years, a naked midget asleep on her sofa, snoring, with his little hand clutching his erected little member. Bart, furious with Cody, bundled his clothing and pushed him, and it, out the front door onto the stoop (’What’d I do wrong?” Cody was asking) and was shutting the front door when Roy Osterhout, the beat policeman, seeing the midget emerge onto the stoop naked followed by flying clothing, stopped dead at the vision, trying to understand it, then said to Bart, “You put that whatever it is back in the house, or wherever the hell else it came from.”

Bart then monitored Cody as he dressed in the parlor, walked him to Central Avenue, put him on the West Albany trolley going east toward Lexington, and thought that that was that for Cody Gilpin forever. But Roscoe, responding to Cody’s request for a small job, talked Patsy, later in the week, into hiring Cody to train his young chickens.

Patsy would, before long, marry Flora Pender, and not Mabel Maloy as he thought he would, in the same way Roscoe married Pamela and not Veronica, and Hattie married Louie and not Roscoe. Roscoe confirmed a rendezvous with Hattie at the Malleys’, her choice of location, on the morning after Patsy’s victory party, when she was tidying up the saloon. Together they re-entered the back room, where she had spread a quilt on the floor, and there the chemise barrier fell away. Hattie and Roscoe would continue the affair for twenty-five years, during which Hattie and Louie would marry, cohabit, and separate; she would thereafter marry her third — Jabez Vogel, an engineer on the Delaware and Hudson — also her fourth — Benny (the) Behr, a veterinarian who brought her puppies to play with — and Floyd, the fifth, all without ever defaulting on her ripening love for Roscoe, who loved her in return. Roscoe watched her build her rooming-house empire, which he would find ways to merge with the work of the McCall political machine, in which he had become a key player. Neither he nor Hattie made demands of the other, only affirming from time to time that their love still waxed strong, and that neither of them cared to do without it.

First it was 1921, then 1923, and so on, a serious decade for the development of power, money, eminence, the high life, major trouble, and love, just the beginning.