Roscoe by William Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

golddigger, just a moderately rich girl who suffered from money. And Elisha had much more money than she. Also, Elisha was a winner and a great guy, and who the hell was Roscoe, anyway? A
young punk lawyer with a talent for fun. Roscoe brooded and did the next best thing to marrying Veronica: he married her sister, Pamela, a liaison that carried on interminably for four days, then
turned into several previously unknown forms of unkindness.
    Roscoe stopped at the Morris Diner in North Albany to get just-baked French crullers and coffee for Veronica. She loved those crullers (so did Roscoe), and with the coffee and sugar they’d
give her a rush so she wouldn’t nauseate in front of dead Elisha. He then drove up the hill to Van Rensselaer Boulevard, where the great estate of Tivoli—Veronica suddenly its
sovereign—had stood since Lyman built it, a landscape of dream for Albanians of the last century. The estate’s mansion was sited on the plateau that ran along the crest of the river
valley, giving a vista of the serene and turbulent Hudson, the green heights of Rensselaer, and the Berkshire Hills beyond. But vista was secondary to the builder, who wanted solitude, isolation
above the crowd, a desire that belonged to yesterday. Now Roscoe moved along the boulevard past a row of new and boxy little houses owned by Italian grocers and German plumbers, past
Wolfert’s Roost Country Club, founded by newsmen and politicians, then drove through the open wrought-iron gates and up the long, winding driveway to Tivoli, his second home.
    “Why are you here at this hour?” Veronica asked him over coffee in her breakfast room. “The last time you brought breakfast you and Elisha were going fishing.”
    The sight of her in a Chinese dressing gown, her golden hair loose and only slightly mussed from sleep, quickened Roscoe’s heart, but he told it to behave itself.
    “I need your help,” he said. “Eat a cruller.”
    “You need my help?” She bit into a cruller.
    “Elisha.”
    “He didn’t come home last night,” she said. “He stayed at the office.”
    “I know that.”
    “Were you with him?”
    “I was.”
    “Is he in trouble?”
    “No.”
    “Is it the head injury? He was fine when he called.”
    “He’s in the office. In his chair. Now, don’t hold me to this, Vee, but I think he killed himself.”
    She squeezed her bitten cruller between fingers and palm, rolling it into a wad of dough as she looked at Roscoe.
    “No,” she said, and shook her head, “he wouldn’t do that.”
    “Maybe he didn’t do it. I could be wrong.”
    “You’re certain he’s dead.”
    “I’m certain.” And he put Elisha’s wallet on the table.
    “That bastard. That bastard !”
    “Atta girl. You tell him.”
    She dropped the wadded cruller and it rolled across the table to Roscoe. She picked up the wallet and put it against her face.
    “He wasn’t ready to die,” she said, and the tears were coming now. Roscoe couldn’t look at them.
    “Go get dressed, Vee. I’ll take you down to the mill.”
    When she was dressed and they were in the car she asked Roscoe, “Why do you say suicide?”
    “He burned papers and files he didn’t want anybody to see. It was a methodical ending.”
    “How did he do it?”
    “I don’t know. Not with a gun.”
    “Why didn’t he come home and do it?”
    “Maybe he didn’t want to make a mess for you. Maybe he didn’t want anybody saving him. Or maybe the idea of death arrived in such a perfect state that he had to act instantly,
a fatal muse descending, and there was only submission, no alternative.”
    “Something’s very wrong with me. I never saw it coming.”
    “None of us did,” Roscoe said.
    “It’s me he left. He was through with me.”
    “Nonsense. Who’d ever leave you?”
    “He ran away from something, or somebody. Who else is there to run away from?”
    “There was no cowardice in him,” Roscoe said. “He’d face anything.”
    “You’re so loyal. To