Roscoe (20 page)

“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:

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.