“I just punched out Roy Flinn,” Roscoe said.
“Nice,” Patsy said.
“That little pimple,” Bindy said.
“Veronica’s a nervous wreck. I only went down to yell at Roy, but then he said Elisha owned a block of whorehouses. So I hit him.”
“Good,” Patsy said.
“He said we’re in for a dogfight with the Governor. What do you make of that, Bindy?” Control of brothels and gambling had been Bindy’s responsibility since the 1921 takeover.
“Dogfight?” Bindy said. “I’ll tell him about dogfight. I’ll break both his legs. Put the Night Squad on him, Pat. Break both his legs.”
“You hear anything about raiding the whores?” Roscoe asked.
“They been snooping around Division Street,” Bindy said, “but it don’t feel like a raid.”
“Shouldn’t we close the whores down to be safe?”
“How will anybody get laid?” Bindy asked.
“Tell the boys to have a go at their wives,” Roscoe said.
“We’ll see a lot of rape.”
“This isn’t forever,” Roscoe said. “Just till we see the whites of their eyes.”
“If this goes public I’ll catch hell from the Bishop,” Patsy said. “Wouldn’t hurt to give the girls a vacation.”
“How could Roy say that about Elisha?” Roscoe wondered.
“We had a big buy-up in ’33,” Patsy said.
“I remember that,” Roscoe said, “but not Elisha.”
“You were in Kentucky, screwing around with racehorses,” Patsy said.
“It happened fast,” Bindy said. “Income from the madams fell two thousand in two weeks, two owners died, one left town, and three houses went dark. I told Patsy we oughta own them places, so we bought ’em. And kept buyin’.”
“Elisha bought them?” Roscoe asked.
“He organized the investors,” Patsy said.
Bankers panting to do business with the city could prove their sincerity by investing in whorehouse real estate, and lawyers could do the same by representing the whores when they were periodically arrested to put their pictures in the files, and to justify the Vice Squad’s existence. Within two months the neighborhood of the whores was stabilized through dummy corporations, and whoredom also had new friends at court.
“Roy said Elisha owned the houses,” Roscoe said.
“He never owned ’em,” Patsy said.
“I wonder if his name is on any deeds.”
“He used front people.”
“But can they prove he was behind it?”
“I don’t know how,” Patsy said. “And who’s gonna indict a dead man? They want us up against the wall for Alex’s re-election. What I don’t get is where Roy Flinn borrowed the balls to take us on.”
“Maybe he wants to get back at us for what happened to Artie.”
“Artie?” said Patsy. “That’s fifteen years ago.”
“Artie died six months ago in Poughkeepsie,” Roscoe said. “Maybe it affected Roy. He didn’t even want a death notice in the papers.”
“Where’s his leverage?” Patsy asked.
“He’s cozy with the Governor’s gang, so maybe he feels protected,” Roscoe said. “Also, his paper’s heavy with ads from outside Albany—summer hotels, nightclubs, restaurants, dude ranches that don’t worry about pressure from us.”
“Send a fire inspector down to that firetrap of his,” Bindy said. “Make him spend thirty grand to bring it up to code. He’ll come around.”
“Bad scene,” Roscoe said. “Harassing the press, and the patriotic press at that. There are other ways.”
“Name a few,” Patsy said.
“Take over his block. You did it with the whorehouses.”
“The whole block?”
“It’s a small block. Condemn one side to widen it for improved traffic flow, put in new sewer pipes. Pay Roy a quarter of what his building’s worth, settle sweet with the—what?—three, four other landlords? Then we own the block. When Roy is gone and we’ve got the property, cancel the project.”
“Condemn the block,” Patsy said. “Goddamn it, Roscoe, you are one twisted, beautiful sonofabitch.”
“That’s what my mother always said.”
“You want some chicken?”
“Of course I want some chicken.”
“The gravy’s good.”
“Life without gravy is not life,” Roscoe said.
As they went back to the kitchen for lunch, O.B. called to report that Roy Flinn and his lawyer were filing a third-degree assault charge against Roscoe. Roy’s eyebrow and lip were badly split and his nose was broken.
“Have Rosy open court at two o’clock for the arraignment,” Roscoe told O.B. “Tell him to set my bail at four hundred to make Roy feel good.”
“You’ll be here, like an upstanding citizen,” O.B. said.
“Of course I’ll be there. Two o’clock. On the dot.”
Patsy looked at his watch. “Two o’clock’s too early,” he said. “You gotta eat your chicken.”
“Make that three o’clock,” Roscoe told O.B.
In Police Court, Roscoe could hear Roy Flinn’s nose throbbing under its bandage as they stood before the bench to hear Rosy Rosenberg, whom Roscoe and Patsy had put on that bench, read the law relating to assault, and then set bail at four hundred dollars, “in default of which you will be remanded to Albany County jail.” Roscoe smiled at Rosy, waved at Roy, and paid the four.
Horse Talk
They were in the east parlor of Tivoli when Gilby read the item about Pamela in the Sentinel and asked Veronica, “Is it true she’s my mother?”
Veronica told him, “I’m your mother. She gave you up before you were born.”
“Now she wants me back.”
“She can’t have you, and she won’t get you.”
“Who’s my father?”
“He’s dead,” Veronica said. “You didn’t know him.”
“I don’t know anything,” Gilby said, and he went out onto the porch.
“Where are you going? Listen to me!” But he kept walking. She caught up with him. “Did I ever tell you what your Grandma Julia used to say? ‘Patience and perseverance took the snail to Jerusalem.’ ”
Gilby shrugged.
“When she was a girl,” Veronica said, “she’d throw a penny off the bridge into Washington Park Lake and say, ‘I’m going to have a big, big house and a butler named Johnny,’ and she did.”
Gilby stared at her.
“She only went to third grade in school, but she owned the world. I’m talking about overcoming problems. Do you see that? It’s like breeding a champion Thoroughbred. Your father and I always wanted that for you. You have money and brains and love, and you can’t give that newspaper story any importance. What does the stupid Sentinel know about champions?”
Gilby went onto the back deck, vaulted the railing with one arm, and ran down the drive toward the stables.
“Gilby!” Veronica yelled. “Listen to me! I want to tell you about this.” But he would not look back. She went down the steps of the deck and ran after him as fast as her high heels would allow. When she reached the second stable, he was saddling Jazz Baby. Ticky Blake, who for twenty-two years had trained Fitzgibbon horses, stopped brushing Mr. Bantry, Veronica’s bay, and listened.
“Gilby, your life won’t change,” Veronica said. “I won’t let it. I’m a strong person. Do you believe I’m strong? Well, I am, and we have powerful friends in all the courts, and I have more money than your aunt does to fight this, and I’ve won every fight I ever had with her.”
Gilby, in his white sneakers, stepped up into the saddle.
“Gilby,” Veronica said, “talk to me.”
The boy nudged Jazz Baby onto the road and into open pasture, toward the trail through the western woods.
“Saddle Mr. Bantry for me, Ticky,” she said, and she ran to the house and up to her bedroom and pulled herself out of her dress and slip and s
hoes. She stepped into her riding britches and boots, then shoved her arms into a pullover shirt, and double-timed down the stairs with her hair flying, a laissez-faire beauty when she wanted to be. She mounted Mr. Bantry and rode at a gallop into the woods after the boy, praying to her trinity of Gods—Jewish, Anglican, Catholic—that she would not lose Gilby, because she absolutely could not lose another thing, not one. Yet she seemed to be galloping toward more loss and new shame, the press again prying just as it had when Elisha was named a profiteer in the crazy baseball pool and he fled with her to Europe from a scandal that never really amounted to much, so supported was he by clergy and politicians of every stripe. Elisha, grand husband, you’re gone, and you left Veronica in wicked confusion: grief still green but waning; men hovering at the wake, eyes probing her widowed beauty for just one wrinkle of welcome. But Veronica rejected every eye, wants no affection while she still cries in the half-empty bed. She’s fighting the fears her loneliness generates, but they are smothering her.
She rode the trail to where it came out of the woods at Lake Tivoli. Maybe Gilby would go to the fishing shack to be there with his memories of Elisha. She should have told Gilby the history of his birth, as Elisha wanted, but she’d waited for him to come of age, so he could handle such disturbing rejection. They told him only that he was adopted, his parents’ names unknown to them.
She saw the shack and dock and lake, which Gilby had not yet outgrown but would now think of as no longer his. It is yours, Gilby, and I’ll see you keep it. She wanted to find him on the dock but he wasn’t in sight. She turned onto another trail, seeing him ahead of her, then not. She stopped and listened for him, heard the rustling breath of the forest, the breath of her horse, but no sound of her boy. She had lost him. No, she would never lose him. He was gone. No, not gone. Gone. Never.
She came slowly back to the stables. Ticky was feeding the horses alfalfa and bran, and the shredded beet pulp. She stabled Mr. Bantry and looked toward the woods for Gilby. She saw Roscoe coming out of the house, and the sight of him was tonic. Things would change now.
Then here came Gilby, riding across the west pasture. He swung himself out of the saddle, and she was again struck by his resemblance to Elisha: lean and lanky and growing taller, and that same resolute jaw. His straight black hair blown wild, and those black eyes. Yusupov also had dark features. But from Gilby’s boyhood, Veronica suspected Elisha, not Yusupov, was his father. She hinted this once to Roscoe, who explained that children grow up to look like the people they live with, and so do bulldogs.
“So you come back,” Ticky said as Gilby walked Jazz Baby to the hose bib outside the stable. “You gonna stay awhile?”
Gilby did not answer.
“Aren’t you going to talk to us?” Veronica asked.
Gilby did not answer, or look at her.
“What ails you, boy, you don’t talk to your mama?” Ticky said. “Where you get off on that?”
Gilby looped Jazz Baby’s reins over the rail fence and took off his saddle. He filled a bucket with water from the hose, and washed the horse with a sponge.
“Lookit this boy don’t talk to his mama. What kind of boy is that?”
“I don’t have anything to say,” Gilby said softly.
“You got a whole lot to say you ain’t sayin’.”
Gilby washed Jazz Baby’s nose and whispered to the horse.
“Boy talks to his horse but don’t talk to his mama.”
“It’s all right, Ticky,” Veronica said, “he’ll talk when he’s ready.”
“I did that with my mama,” Ticky said, “my papa’d say, You don’t wanna talk to peoples you get outa this house go live with that horse.”
“I can do that,” Gilby said.
“He can do that,” Ticky said. “He can live with Jazz Baby, and Jazz Baby gonna cook breakfast for him. Jazz Baby gonna buy his shirts. Hey, Roscoe, you know this boy here don’t talk to his mama, he gonna live with his horse.”
Roscoe nodded to Ticky, touched Veronica hello on the shoulder.
“You believe in horses, is that it?” Roscoe said to Gilby.
Gilby dropped the sponge into the bucket, took the scraper off its nail, and scraped water off Jazz Baby’s flanks, shoulders, and haunches.
“Do you know how stupid horses are?” Roscoe said.
“They’re not stupid,” Gilby said, scraping the haunches.
“Stupider than crabmeat,” Roscoe said.
“Horses are smart,” Gilby said, scraping faster.
“Gimme that scraper,” Ticky said. “You gonna skin that horse.”
“Don’t tell me how smart horses are,” Roscoe said. “They tell too many lies.”
“Horses don’t lie,” Gilby said.
“Are you serious? There’s a broken horse for every light on Broadway. You ever try to hide a tennis ball in a horse’s ear? You can’t do it. On the other hand, I never met a horse I didn’t like.”
“Me either,” said Gilby with a tight-lipped smile.
“Why do you want to live with your horse?”
“Nobody tells me anything.”
“You mean that stuff in the Sentinel about the lawsuit?”
Gilby nodded.
“That’s how you learn. You read the papers. You know you’ll need a lawyer to fight this thing in court. You have any lawyer friends?”
“No.”
“Sure you do. Me.”
“Are you a lawyer?”
“I’m your lawyer. Your mother hired me.”
“When?”
“This morning.”
“She didn’t tell me that.”
“We don’t tell you everything all at once. We parcel it out. We ever tell you about Einstein’s theory that light curves with gravity? We ever tell you how John Calvin tried to cancel Sunday baseball?”
“Nobody even told me where I was born.”
“San Juan, Puerto Rico. I was there.”
“You were? Where’s Puerto Rico?”
“Down there in the middle of it all. It was a very hot day. Bright and sunny, the trade winds blowing in off the Atlantic, palm trees, sandy beach, whitecaps on the ocean. You were very good-looking when you were born. You looked like a pineapple. We brought you back here in your father’s airplane right after you left the clinic with whatsername.”
“Aunt Pamela?”
“That’s the one,” Roscoe said.
“Why does she want me? She doesn’t even like me.”
“I don’t know anybody she does like. She wants money and needs you to get at it, even though she couldn’t wait to get rid of you. But your parents loved you and wanted you even before you were born.”
“What’s my real name?”
“Gilbert David Fitzgibbon, as always. A stately name.”
“What’s stately?”
“Dignified, magnificent. Don’t let anybody change it.”
“Me and Alex have the same name, but he’s not my brother.”
“He’ll always be your brother.”
“He’s my cousin.”
“Then he’s your brother-cousin. Do you love him?”
“I guess so.”
“No guesses. Do you love him, yes or no?”
“Yes. But my father’s not my father.”
“No, of course not.”
Roscoe took off his hat and coat, handed them to Veronica, and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He tipped over a bale of hay and stood on it, took Jazz Baby’s reins, threw his right leg up, and mounted the horse.
“You gonna ride him?” Gilby asked.
“I might.”
“I didn’t know you could ride. You don’t have a saddle.”
“I used to ride bareback in rodeos. I was in ten or fifteen rodeos, one after the other.”
“You were never in the rodeo.”
“Well, you’re right, but your father and I rode bareback plenty down in Texas. They all ride bareback down there.”
“My father didn’t ride.”
??
?He gave you a pony, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And when you outgrew it he gave you a horse.”
“Yes.”
“But he wasn’t much of a father, because he never rode a horse, right? And he never took you fishing, never took you to New York to see the lights of Times Square, never introduced you to Jack Dempsey, never gave you a bicycle or started a bank account so you’d have your own money, never sent you to one of the greatest schools in town, never taught you how to throw a baseball and a horseshoe, never took you down to Hyde Park so you could shake hands with the President, never let you sleep with him and your mother when burglars were coming up through the steam pipes, never took you to Laurel-and-Hardy movies and bought you White Tower hamburgers, but, hey, we all know he whipped you with his riding whip so you’d bleed all over the bed. We also know he woke up every day of your life and talked to you about something important. I know, because I was in on a whole lot of those breakfast conversations. Can you possibly imagine how much your father shaped who you are? And you say he’s not your father? Baloney gravy, kid. Who else would’ve done those things for you?”
Gilby looked at his mother and at Ticky, who kept nodding his head. Gilby wanted to say his father shouldn’t have tricked him, but the image arrived of Elisha pitching a horseshoe. Before Gilby could answer him, Roscoe moved Jazz Baby forward and, when he was in open pasture, rode him at a canter, then into a gallop, across the whole pasture to the woods, and then galloped back to the stable and slid gracefully off the horse’s back, doubling over in pain.
“What happened?” Veronica said in panic, and she took Roscoe’s arm. “Are you hurt?”
“Just the usual bareback shock waves,” Roscoe said. “It happens to everybody.” He slowly straightened himself. “Ticky,” he said, sitting on the bale of hay, “tell Gilby what your father told you about horses.”
“Oh, my father,” Ticky said. “Peoples used to say about my father, ‘Oh, he’s a good man with a horse,’ and I’d say, ‘Pa, what you doin’ with that horse? Is that the way you do it?’ And he’d say, ‘Shut up, boy. You wanna learn, go out on your own,’ and he wouldn’t teach me. I worked for other horsemens and they’d teach me. But I didn’t have no father about knowin’ horses.”