Roscoe by William Kennedy
Bindy’s naked flesh rollicked with heavings and ripplings as he laughed. “That’s good, Roscoe. Very funny.”
“Not funny. Patsy is ready to close this place and bust everybody in it, including you.”
“He wouldn’t do that.”
“That’s what he said about you switching chickens. But he put the order out last night. I kid you not. And if I can’t stop it, everybody loses except the Governor. We could blow the election.”
“Patsy raids us, he goes down with us,” Bindy said. “I could put him in Sing Sing. And I’ll fight the Governor, too. We got sound movies of one of his top guys in fishnet stockings in bed with three broads.”
“Won’t that be great? First Pina and the Dutchman, now orgy movies.”
“What about Pina and the Dutchman?” Mame asked. She had been hovering nervously.
“They know she did it, Mame. Her prints were all over his place.”
“She used to live there,” Mame said.
“Prints with his blood.”
And Roscoe listened to their silence. “Maybe you should get Pina a lawyer.”
“We should get her out of town,” Mame said.
“She wouldn’t get off the block. This place is under surveillance.”
“It was self-defense,” Mame said. “That Dutch bastard tied her up and tortured her.”
“The word’s around she likes tie-ups.”
“Who cares what she likes? He hurt her bad.”
“You’re saying O.B. is ready to raid us?” Bindy asked, the news finally penetrating.
“Patsy might charge you with harboring a murderer. He can get nasty when he puts his mind to it.”
Roscoe watched Bindy think. Having organized that harebrained chicken-switch, here he goes again, considering the defiance that will destroy what he’s spent a lifetime creating, his empire of negotiable love, plus splitting the Party all to hell in an election year, and maybe crash-landing himself in jail. Money in the safe, surrounded by love-seekers, and all he wants to do is beat his brother, another impossible bet. Is everybody nuts?
Olive Eyes came into Mame’s parlor, knocking as he entered, and said, “That cop is gonna shoot the guy with Pina,” and Mame moved on a run down the stairs, Olive Eyes after her, and Roscoe following. And there, indeed, in the parlor was Mac, .38 in hand, Pina in her negligee next to him, pistol not quite pointed at the young man holding a violin by its neck.
“No doubt about it,” Mac was saying, “this is the stolen fiddle. Worth thirty thousand, they say.”
“It’s not stolen. I’ve owned it seven years,” the young man said, handsome kid, the look of a gigolo. “I bought it for two hundred dollars.”
“I think you’re a thief,” Mac said.
Pina looked convinced that Mac might do something with that .38. The barman and Oke were in a corner with the whores, behaving like wallpaper.
“Put the gun away, please,” Mame said. “We don’t need this.”
“I’m arresting a thief,” Mac said. “Are you protecting a thief?”
“I’m no thief,” the young man said.
“He stole this violin in Chicago,” Mac said. “Took it off a musician about to give a concert.”
“I never been in Chicago,” the young man said.
“He called the musician and said he found it in a taxi and he could have it back for ten thousand dollars,” Mac said. “That’s not a thief? That’s extortion set to music.”
“I didn’t do any of that. That’s crazy.”
“Can you prove you own the violin?” Roscoe asked.
“I bought it, ten bucks a week, at the Modern Music Shop downtown. They know me.”
“We can check this out, Mac,” Roscoe said.
“He’s a nice-a boy,” Pina said. “Never no trouble.”
“We’ll check it out,” Mac said, and he holstered his pistol. “I want to talk to you,” he said to Pina, and he took her arm and sat with her on an empty sofa. He stroked her hair, kissed her, like old times, then talked to her. Giving her the news?
“They shouldn’t let him near a gun,” Mame said to Roscoe.
“Sometimes he’s right about these things,” Roscoe said.
Olive Eyes looked twitchy, ready to do something to restore peace to the Notchery, but what? Shoot a cop? Renny Kilmer went back to his bar.
“Anybody want a drink?” Renny asked, but got no takers.
Oke stood up from his seat among the whores, buttoning his shirt and tucking it into his trousers. “Too much stuff goin’ on here,” he said. “Guess I’ll move along.”
“See you next week, Oke,” Mame said.
“That guy gonna be here?” Oke asked.
“No, he’s just here today,” Mame said.
“This kind of stuff ruins the atmosphere,” Oke said.
The violinist stood up and asked Roscoe, “Is he really arresting me?”
“I don’t think so,” Roscoe said. “Leave the violin. Pick it up tomorrow.”
“Thanks, mister, thanks,” the young man said, and as he and Oke walked toward the door, Roscoe heard Bindy’s heavy step coming down the stairs, also heard the sound of gunshots, and the front door being smashed open, and he thought, Goddamn, O.B., why are you doing this now? We’re nowhere near ready.
But it wasn’t O.B. It was half a dozen state troopers, and more on the street, a dozen cars with thirty troopers surrounding the Notchery and every street bordering it, the Governor coming to visit. Roscoe noted that Bindy had put on a shirt for the occasion.
The troopers moved through the building, confiscating papers and taking note of Bindy’s safe, which he would not open for them. They arrested Mame for running a disorderly house, her four whores for whoring, and Renny Kilmer and Olive Eyes for abetting prostitution.
Dory Dixon, the State Police inspector whom O.B. had ejected from the Dutchman’s murder scene, said he was padlocking the Notchery, and holding Mac, Bindy, Roscoe, Oke, and the violinist, for consorting with whores. The women and the two johns were escorted to police vans waiting in the parking lot. Two Polish women who did cleaning and laundry for Mame were let go.
“Sorry to interrupt your afternoon fun, Roscoe,” Dixon said.
“If you’re really arresting us,” Roscoe said, “my fun has just begun.”
“Tell me you weren’t here to see the girls,” Dixon said. “Tell me I didn’t see McEvoy in a corner with a naked whore.”
“The lieutenant had a tip that a stolen, priceless violin was here. I refer you to the instrument on top of the piano.”
The inspector went to the piano and picked up the violin.
“This is priceless?” he said.
“I couldn’t say,” said Roscoe. “I’m no expert on the Stradivarius. Are you?”
“No.”
“We’ll have an expert appraise it,” Roscoe said.
“You came along to help the lieutenant carry the violin?”
“I was conferring with Mr. McCall about my client in a homicide case.”
Bindy had collapsed onto a sofa in glum silence when the raiders entered, but this remark won his attention.
“Quite a busy afternoon,” Dixon said. “A priceless violin recovered, and a homicide. What homicide?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“It’s a unique defense, Roscoe. I’ll give you that.”
“Where are you taking us?”
“Justice Dillenback in Colonie.”
“And we travel in your vans?”
“I think you can get there in your own vehicle,” Dixon said.
“My clients as well? Mr. McCall and Lieutenant McEvoy?”
“Agreed. We’ll follow along in case of any confusion.”
“Fine. And take care of the cow, Inspector.”
“Cow? What cow?”
“The cow that’s going to follow you around after you leave here.”
Roscoe, Bindy, and Mac went in Mac’s car to a pay phone, where Roscoe called O.B. with the bad
“What the hell are you doing out there?” O.B. asked.
“Saving the world,” Roscoe said.
“Mac is with you? On whose orders?”
“Mine. And because he and I both have more brains than you.”
“You don’t know what I’m dealing with.”
“Hey, O.B., an avalanche is coming. Get Patsy and meet us at Black Jack’s grill. Patsy without fail, you hear?”
Roscoe called Freddie Gold, the Party’s bondsman, and told him where to post bail for anybody who needed it, and to bring a car for the working girls.
In Justice of the Peace Elgar Dillenback’s court in Colonie, a Republican stronghold, the Governor’s investigators could feel secure in filing their charges, comparable security not always likely in a court presided over by one of Patsy’s judges. The press had been notified, and photographers awaited the arrival of Mame, her ladies, and her courtiers. Pina, the beauty in the bunch, won star attention, but Mac, Bindy, and Roscoe were the catch of the day. Another front-page coup for Roscoe. How does he do it?
Before Justice Dillenback, a bland little man with hair dyed the color of stove black, everybody pleaded not guilty, Oke weeping as he did so, his way of life, and maybe his family, exploded. “I only went there to dance,” Oke said. “I don’t consort with whores. I couldn’t come if you called me.”
All charges were misdemeanors and bail was obligatory, five hundred each. Sin is an act, vice is a habit, whoring is dicey.
“You are charged with consorting with prostitutes; how do you plead?” the justice asked Roscoe.
“Less guilty than yourself, with all due respect, Your Honor, for you weren’t there and, really, neither was I. Not guilty.”
“Curb your remarks, Mr. Conway.”
“Curbed, Your Honor.”
“Bail is set at five hundred dollars.”
The justice called Bindy, another not-guilty five hundred, and then Mac, for whom Roscoe had another defense: “A policeman investigating a theft is himself arrested. This should not be, Your Honor.”
“Perhaps not, but that’s how it is. Five hundred.”
Bindy pulled from his pants pocket a double-fold of cash three inches thick and held by a rubber band. He peeled two one-thousand-dollar bills off the fold, more of the same underneath, paid bail to the court clerk for Roscoe, Mac, and himself, and waited for change.
“Is that your cash from the safe?” Roscoe asked him.
“Pocket money,” Bindy said.
“Any left in the safe?”
“Nothing.”
Roscoe focused on Pina across the courtroom: disheveled beauty in a clinging blue dress and high heels, hair in need of sprucing for the next photo shoot. The bondsman was posting everybody’s bail, and Pina was about to leave with the other whores. Roscoe nudged Mac.
“Tell Pina she’ll ride with us,” Roscoe said.
Roscoe and Bindy moved toward the door, and Mac brought Pina. Dory Dixon was talking to a reporter from the Sentinel.
“Your cow will be along any minute, Inspector,” Roscoe told Dixon.
In the car, Roscoe asked Pina, who sat in the back seat with Bindy, if she knew why she was here.
“Mac tells me,” she said.
“What did he tell you?”
“That I go to jail.”
“Are you ready for that?”
“I no want go to jail.”
“But you killed the Dutchman.”
“Sometimes.”
“Once is enough.”
“He’s-a no good.”
“True. And we’ll try to help you.”
“Why you help me?”
“Because he was no good.”
“Okey dokey. What I do?”
“You tell us what happened.”
“When?”
“When you killed him.”
“I’m-a no guilty.”
“Good. Now tell us what he did to you.”
Pina’s Story
Pina liked it when the Dutchman tied her up and punished her, and the Dutchman liked it because Pina liked it. She had often submitted to him this way when she lived with him. But after she left him to work for Mame, why did she go back and do it again? Well, he pursued her and promised her a major payday. Mame told her to go with him and find out what he’d told the troopers about Bindy’s seven houses. Did he know how much, and who they paid off at the state level?
The Dutchman, Vernon Van Epps, age fifty-four, drinking more than usual, decided that only the rope trick would activate his engine, and Pina, because she had not yet gotten the information from him, said okey dokey. He sat her on the bed, put the gag in her mouth, tied her hands behind her, raised the skirt of her dress, and looped another rope around her ankles and up between her legs, leaving her exposed, pulling the rope tighter than usual over her shoulder. She shook her head no and he laughed and pulled it tighter still. She writhed in resistance but she was his bundle now, and he lifted her, fully wrapped, off the bed and carried her to a corner of the room near the bed and sat her on a wooden chair. He tied her to the chair, and the chair to a heating pipe that ran floor to ceiling, then he blindfolded her.
Pina, alone in her darkness, hears the Dutchman drinking, clinking glass and bottle. Time. He removes her blindfold and she sees him standing naked before her, toying with himself, drinking while he toys. He readjusts her skirt upward and goes to bed with himself and watches her. He gets up and blindfolds her again. Time. She smells the ganja. She cannot loosen her bonds, and serious pain is developing in her legs and thigh the way she is bent. A long darkness. A long silence, then voices. He removes the blindfold and she sees a naked woman in bed with him. Pina doesn’t recognize her. The woman and the Dutchman use each other as they watch Pina. The Dutchman reapplies the blindfold. Pina does not know how long she has been here, but it is night and silent. When he removes the blindfold again it is daylight. She does not think she has slept. The Dutchman is alone, wearing a robe, and asks if she is ready. She nods and he undoes her legs but she cannot stand. The clock says four. He says he went on the nod and forgot her. She has been his prisoner for eighteen hours. She is very, very hungry. He has on his bed photographs of favorite starlets, tied up and not, from his pornographic lending library. He takes the gag from her mouth and loosens the rope between her legs. He carries her to the bed. She lies on it feeling wretched, stretching her legs to ease her pain. She asks him for whiskey to stop the pain and he pours her three fingers, which she drinks, and then she lies silent. Time. He watches her. The pain diminishes and she pulls herself into a sitting position by grasping the headboard of the bed. She stands, very wobbly. The Dutchman moves in front of her, unbuttons her dress, and takes it from her. He helps her step out of her panties and removes his own robe. He seems to be drunk again. She says she needs water and he nods once and falls back on the bed. She walks very slowly to the kitchen and fills a water bottle, takes a glass from the cupboard and drinks, puts the large steak knife inside the fold of a dish towel. She carries bottle, glass, and knife on a tray to the bedroom and sets it on a bedside table and puts herself between it and the Dutchman. She smiles at the Dutchman, who is now toying. She picks up one of his dildos and penetrates herself with it. He likes to watch this. He sits up in the bed, leans toward her, and watches. Balancing himself on one elbow, he takes the dildo in hand and works it in and out of Pina. He throws the dildo aside and puts his mouth on her. She takes the steak knife out from under the towel and pushes it into the left side of his throat, then into his chest. He rolls and she stabs him in the back, again and again. When he rolls over, she stabs his chest until she is sure she has hit his heart. While he gurgles his last, she washes the blood off herself in the bathroom, then washes the knife in the kitchen sink and puts it back in its drawer. She finds sliced Swiss cheese in the Frigidaire and puts it on saltine crackers from the pantry, dabs it with mustard, eats. She dresses herself and stands by the window
Roscoe chose Black Jack McCall’s grill in North Albany as a meeting place because the Governor’s investigators wouldn’t be listening there. After Jack McCall died in 1937 at age seventy-nine, the grill was locked, and iron grids installed on its windows against intruders. But Roscoe chose it also because it was where the original McCall faction of the Party had taken root in Black Jack’s day. Patsy perpetuated that tradition by opening it at election time for the annual meeting of ward leaders and candidates—a spread of roast beef, turkey, salads, and Stanwix—and Roscoe delivering Election Day street money to ward leaders, one by one, in the back room. Then it was locked till next year. O.B. was already inside with Patsy, the two of them leaning against the empty bar, when Roscoe, Mac, and Bindy arrived with Pina. The place was a cube of dead heat, punishing; but Roscoe closed the door.
“What’s she doing here?” Patsy said. “I don’t want whores in here.”
“Hear me out, Pat,” Roscoe said. And he took three chairs off the tabletop and set them upright, put one in a far corner for Pina and gestured for Mac to keep her company, pushed one at Patsy, and sat backward on one himself. Then, in the rapidly spoken shorthand he had used all his life with Patsy, he told the story of Pina’s bondage and retaliation and, in a whisper Pina could not hear, mentioned this was usable, which Patsy heard with reluctant clarity, frustrated that his own Notchery raid had not put his brother in jail. He stared with frigid eyes at Bindy, who, with O.B., moved closer as Roscoe talked softly of Dory Dixon and Dillenback. And we have to arrest Pina, Roscoe said. He would speak as her attorney.
“She’ll have to go inside,” Patsy said. “She know that?”
“Vaguely.”
“She won’t be very friendly when that happens.”
“We’re the only friends she’s got. We’ll go for justifiable homicide, and the grand jury may not even indict. You know those grand juries.”