Kennedy - Roscoe

Praise for William Kennedy:

Kennedy is a writer with something to say, about matters that touch us all, and he says it with uncommon artistry

Washington Post

Kennedys power is such that the reader will follow him almost anywhere, to the edge of tragedy and back again to redemption

Wall Street Journal

Kennedys art is an eccentric triumph, a quirky, risk-taking imagination at play upon the solid paving stones, the breweries, the politicos and pool sharks of an all-too-actual city

The New York Review of Books

His smart, sassy dialogue conveys volumes about character. His scene setting makes the city throb with life

Newsday

What James Joyce did for Dublin and Saul Bellow did for Chicago, William Kennedy has done for Albany, New York: created a rich and vivid world invisible to the ordinary eye

Vanity Fair

His beguiling yarns are the kind of family myths embellished and retold across a kitchen table late at night, whiskified, raunchy, darkly funny

Time

William Kennedys Albany Cycle is one of the great achievements of modern American writing

Daily Mail

William Kennedy is pre-eminent among his generation of writers... Kennedy is peerless in the depth and acuity of his sustained vision, and the lost, past world of Albany says more to us today about the current state, about the heart and soul, of American politics than any recent bestselling, Hollywood-pandering political thriller has ever done

Spectator

Kennedys writing is a triumph: he tackles topics in a gloriously comic, almost old-fashioned language. You feel Kennedy could write the Albany phone book and make it utterly entertaining

Time Out

Kennedy proves to be truly Shakespearean

The Sunday Times

Kennedy is one of our necessary writers

GQ

ALSO BY WILLIAM KENNEDY

FICTION

The Ink Truck

Legs

Billy Phelans Greatest Game

Ironweed

Quinns Book

Very Old Bones

The Flaming Corsage

Changs Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

NONFICTION

O Albany!

Riding the Yellow Trolley Car

WITH BRENDAN KENNEDY

Charlie Malarkey and the Belly-Button Machine

Charley Malarkey and the Singing Moose

First published in the USA by Viking Penguin 2002
This ebook edition published by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2011
A CBS COMPANY

Copyright William Kennedy, 2002

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.

The right of William Kennedy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-74322-073-6
eISBN: 978-1-84983-838-2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Typeset by Hewer Text UK Ltd
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CRo 4YY

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY COHORT OF EARLY ROSCONIANS:

Harry and Helen Staley, Andy and Betsy Viglucci,

Doris Grumbach, Laurie Bank, Peg Boyers,

Dennis Smith, Brendan Kennedy,

and to my wife, a cohort all by herself,

the endlessly astonishing

Dana

That year an ill wind blew over the city and threatened to destroy flowerpots, family fortunes, reputations, true love, and several types of virtue. Roscoe, moving along the road, felt the wind at his back and heard the windblown voices.

Do you know where the ill wind comes from, Roscoe? the voices asked him.

No, he said, but Im not sure the wind is really ill. Its illness may be overrated, maybe even fraudulent.

Do people think theres such a thing as a good ill wind? they asked.

Of course, he answered. And when it comes it billows the sails of our city, it nourishes our babies, comforts our aliens, gives purpose to our dead, tranquilizes our useless, straightens our crooked, and vice versa. The ill wind is a nonesuch and demands close attention.

Why should we believe what you say?

As I am incapable of truth, Roscoe said, so am I in capable of lying, which is, as all know, the secret of the truly successful politician.

Are you a politician, Roscoe?

I refuse to answer on grounds that it might degrade or incriminate me.

Roscoe Owen Conway presided at Albany Democratic Party headquarters, on the eleventh floor of the State Bank building, the main stop for Democrats on the way to heaven. Headquarters occupied three large offices: one where Roscoe, secretary and second in command of the Party, received supplicants and debtors, one where Bart Merrigan and Joey Manucci controlled the flow of visitors and phone calls, and one for the safe which, when put here, was the largest in the city outside of a bank vault. Of late, no money was kept in it, only deceptive Democratic financial data to feed to the Governors investigators, who had been swooping down on the Partys files since 1942, the year the Governor-elect vowed to destroy Albany Democrats.

Money, instead of going into the great safe, went into Roscoes top drawer, where he would put it without counting it when a visitor such as Philly Fillipone, who sold produce to the city and county, handed him a packet of cash an inch thick, held by a rubber band.

Maybe you better count it, make sure theres no mistake, Philly said.

Roscoe did not acknowledge that Philly had raised the possibility of shorting the Party, even by accident. He dropped the cash into the open drawer, where Philly could see a pile of twenties. Democratic business was done with twenties. Then Philly asked, Any change in how we work this year, Roscoe?

No, Roscoe said, same as usual. And Philly went away.

At his desk by the door Joey Manucci was recording, on the lined pad where he kept track of visitors in their order of arrival, the names of the men who had just walked in, Jimmy Givney and Cutie LaRue. Joey was printing each name, for he could not write script or read it. Bart Merrigan spoke to the two arrivals. Merrigan, who had gone into the army with Roscoe and Patsy McCall in 1917, was built like a bowling pin, an ex-boxer and a man of great energy whom Roscoe trusted with his life. Merrigan leaned into Roscoes office.

Patsy called. Hell be in the Ten Eyck lobby in fifteen minutes. Givney from the Twelfth Ward and Cutie LaRue just came in.

Have them come back Friday, Roscoe said. Is the war over?

Not yet. Cutie says youll want to see him.

How does he know?

Cutie knows. And what Cutie dont know hell find out.

Send him in.

Merrigan told Jimmy Givney to come back Friday and Joey scratched a line through his name, using a ruler for neatness. Merrigan turned up the volume of the desk radio he was monitoring for news of the official Japanese surrender. A large framed photo of the new President hung on the wall behind his desk. On the wall opposite hung George Washington, FDR, who was still draped in black crepe, and Alexander Fitzgibbon, the young Mayor of Albany.