Roscoe has parked his sedan by the curb under one of the oak trees that line both sides of the street. Moonlight goes among the branches and the leaves and glistens the black hood of his car and the sidewalk. Then a breeze quivers the shadows. The air is warm and brings the scent of boxwood.

Roscoe is considering Marcus Zee, what the big man said. Clients develop a conscience, Marcus Zee told him. Marcus has thick gray brows and an aftershave that smells like licorice. It’s human nature, Marcus Z said. That’s why we let you know up front. We don’t reconsider a deal. You understand? Once money changes hands, the client steps away, the client’s part is finished.

For his fiftieth birthday, six days ago, the club gave him a surprise party. They hired a detective to find those remaining Philadelphians who not only knew Roscoe Burchett’s father but would be willing to share stories about him while enjoying an after dinner cigar and brandy. The club thought this was the perfect birthday gift for their Roscoe, a man who could tell a joke, a man of contradictions.

Antoine Levy likes to say Roscoe has bible belt politics and New York marketing strategies. Both men have syndicated talk shows that originate in Philly. Roscoe’s show is syndicated to three hundred and fifty-four radio stations, mostly the Midwest and the Southeast. Antoine has fifty-five or sixty stations, Roscoe isn’t sure. These stations are in the Northeast and the Northwest and California, the crust around the heartland.

Roscoe is not naïve. He knows Antoine Levy has been infuriated and bewildered by Roscoe’s success for close to thirty years. This is a one way rivalry and it’s not good natured and it’s not a contrivance for their talk shows. Roscoe’s success is Antoine’s obsession.

Antoine and Roscoe joined the club on the same month and year, August of 1981. Antoine is tall and angular with dyed black hair and a bad comb-over. Roscoe has an almost pretty face but a thick neck and one too many chins. Roscoe’s fingers are small and delicate and his body is doughy. An obese body, some people might say, especially a person like Antoine Levy.

The club was content with their plans. They believed the birthday boy would be both surprised and amused. Doesn’t Roscoe love settling into his leather chair with a fresh copy of the Times , a brandy, and a sweet Montecristo? Isn’t he longing to hear stories about the father he never met? The club doesn’t do this for every member. They don’t do it for Antoine Levy.

Bob T. was an elderly man who used a metal walker. Two of the members had to set their brandies and cigars aside to assist him to the podium. Bob T. said he celebrated his seventy-sixth birthday last month. He looked ninety, older than that, really. His shoulders were bony and hunched. He had colorless bits of hair that disrupted his scalp more than added to it. Bob T. used his first five minutes to thank everyone. He complimented the club on their Persian rugs and their velvet burgundy curtains. Bob T. also tried a joke but it didn’t go anywhere.

Me and Roscoe’s dad, Mack, used to smoke Chesterfields out by the Forty-Sixth Street El in West Philly, Bob T said. His voice was thin, nervous. He said, So one day Mack takes a dollar from his mom’s purse and buys himself a pack of cigarettes and one
of those Zippo lighters. We must have been eight, maybe nine. And we’re sitting on the bottom step that lead to the El, puffing on the Chesterfields, when a dog comes up and sits beside Mack. This is a nothing special dog, a black and white dog. Short. Lots of hair. But Mack isn’t in the mood for dogs, and he tells this particular dog to get lost.

The dog stretches and yawns, you know, the thing dogs do. And as the dog starts to walk off, Mack flicks open that Zippo, gets a nice flame, and tosses the lighter at the dog’s hind quarters. The dog’s ass flares like it was soaked in gasoline. Just boom! like that. All its hair fries into little black stubs. The dog went crazy. It was running around in circles, barking and whimpering, you know, trying to look at its ass. Meantime, Mack was laughing so hard he pissed his pants. Well. Okay. That’s my Roscoe’s dad story. What do you think?

This was when E. J. Speidel leaned over to Roscoe and whispered how the night might be a long one. E. J. was skinny and young looking, maybe in his late thirties-early forties, with receding blond hair and a preference for chinos and pullovers. E. J. had joined the club last winter. He taught English literature at Saint Thomas, a private high school in Germantown. Several chairs beyond E. J., Antoine Levy was there with his comb-over, laughing and applauding the old man. A dark, weighted feeling pressed down on Roscoe. He smiled and tried to show Bob T. that Roscoe Burchett was better

than good sport. Roscoe Burchett could see humor in situations that others would find personally offensive, even hurtful. But Roscoe’s smile was stiff, nothing that belonged to him. The laughter and the applause left Roscoe isolated from the others. His stomach began cramping. The smell of cigar smoke and whiskey and aftershave thickened the air. Roscoe didn’t want to hear an evening of horror stories about his father. He couldn’t defend a man he never met. Worse, he couldn’t defend the man to himself.

Roscoe is still parked next to the curb beneath a large oak tree in the Rittenhouse Square, downtown Philly. Moonlight and shadows cut bright and dark patches on the windshield and the hood of his sedan. Across the street is Antoine Levy’s townhouse. Roscoe holds a unlit Montecristo between his small pink fingers. His belly is wedged against the bottom of the steering wheel. Roscoe wheezes a little with every breath. The driver’s seat won’t go back any further. He is waiting for Marcus Zee, just to see if his ten thousand gets a knock on Antoine Levy’s door.

Levy has exhausted Roscoe. Each year the benchmark gets raised. Antoine’s envy has become more and more intense, more and more serious. Three years ago Antoine had an affair with Roscoe’s wife, Gretchen, who then divorced Roscoe, took the two boys, Roscoe, Jr. and Michael, and married Antoine Levy. Antoine didn’t even like Gretchen. In less than a year the newly weds had filed for divorce.

Roscoe has another wife now. Her name is Shawna and she has real blond hair and the sort of smile you see in magazines. She is twenty years younger than Roscoe but says that age never mattered to her and, besides, mature men know what they want and how to get it and most of them are settled and grateful that a young woman will take them seriously. Last year, for their first anniversary, Roscoe bought Shawna a jacket length white ermine coat. Shawna cried and kissed his cheek and told him he was the sweetest thing.

Tommy R. looked older than Bob T. He didn’t need help to the podium like Bob T. but getting there took some time. Tommy wore a full length green army coat and a red baseball cap that had the white letter P on it. His face was narrow, the skin sheer enough to see the veins in his forehead and jaw. Tiny veins crisscrossed his nose. And what teeth he had were dark and didn’t look good. Tommy R. didn’t thank anyone for inviting him to the club.

I met Roscoe’s dad in school, Tommy R. said. We went to Germantown High together, Mack and me. Tommy R. pulled a wrinkled gray handkerchief from the inside pocket of his Army coat. He blew and wiped his nose. Then he said, This school had a lot of rough kids, what you would call a gangster school. We had this guy, Mr. Hartzell, John Hartzell, who was the school disciplinarian. That was his title, The Disciplinarian.

He used to play line for the Eagles in ‘42. The man was enormous. You know, six-three, two-seventy-five, a human mountain. Mr. Hartzell’s job was to make sure the gangsters didn’t beat the crap out of each other. Us guys, mostly. But the Germantown girls were no flowers, either.

So we’re in the cafeteria and Mack says to me, Kato Boy, that was the name he gave me, Kato Boy, like the sidekick guy in the Green Lantern comics. Mack says, Kato Boy, I’m chopping that giant down at the knees. And I say, Why you want to go and do that, Mack? And Mack says, I don’t know. The guy annoys me. Mack wasn’t big, not John Hartzell big. At most, he was five-six or seven, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds.

You know, wiry but crazy. Mack was the sort of kid that wanted to do a thing just to do it.
The next morning Mack jumps on Hartzell from the top of a locker. The boys lockers were down in the basement, and every morning Hartzell would go through each locker and toss the weapons he found into a canvas sack. Knives, guns, you name it. So Mack is riding Hartzell like the man was a bull in a rodeo. I’m watching the two of them from the doorway. Mack has one hand over the guy’s eyes. Hartzell is swinging his fists in the air and banging himself into the metal lockers. You know, trying to shake off my boy. Hartzell is cursing, too. I don’t know why that shocked me but it did. He’s yelling F this and F that. Wait ‘til I get you, you F. Mack keeps riding him, though, a real cowboy. Mack is also beating him with a metal pipe he stole from shop. He beats his head, he beats the man’s face. Blood was everywhere.

After Tommy R. finished the story, two or three members applauded but their applause was thin and reluctant. Most of the men just kept quiet. Roscoe was staring at the wood floor, his arms on his knees, his big belly resting against his thighs. He looked over to Antoine Levy. Antoine had on a gray three piece suit, white shirt, and a blue and red striped tie. His arms were folded in front of him and he was grinning. That same dark, weighty feeling pressed hard against Roscoe’s shoulders and inside his chest. The things around him seemed to lose color. E. J. tried comforting Roscoe by patting his arm. Why don’t you tell them to forget this? E. J. said. Roscoe wanted to tell E. J. that the evening was like driving past an automobile accident. You didn’t want to see the blood and the broken bodies but you always slowed down to look. Instead he said, When you don’t know someone you’re supposed to know, anything will do.

Roscoe has stayed in the car the entire night, his Montecristo unlit, his belly tight against the bottom of the steering wheel. His wife, Shawna, thinks he is in Baltimore selling his talk show to a new radio station. She gave him a pouty face when he left the house this morning with his suitcase.

The oak trees that line both sides of the street are silver from the moon. Shadows and light cover the sidewalk and the clipped lawns and the black hood of his car. The air is warm and a breeze comes and goes and quivers the leaves and the shadows.
Roscoe made the deal four days ago. E. J. Speidel had given him Marcus Zee’s name. He is now wondering if Marcus Zee didn’t pocket his ten thousand and go to the Bahamas. No one has entered or left Antoine Levy’s townhouse the entire night.

Roscoe tried reaching Marcus Zee yesterday afternoon. He was leaving his ninth or tenth voice mail when the big man picked up. I’m seeing him when I see him, Marcus Zee said. Maybe tomorrow night, maybe early that morning. Is that okay with you? Do I have your permission? Don’t be calling me anymore, fat man. Your calls insult me. Your calls say you have no confidence in my professionalism.
I don’t want him killed, Roscoe said.
We’ve discussed this, the big man said. You’re not paying to kill anybody.
I just want him gone, Roscoe told him. He could hear the tremor in his own voice. Roscoe said, That was our deal. Okay? All right? Antoine goes to Ohio or Florida, some other state, somewhere that’s not Philly. I also want to know your plan. Do you break his legs, an arm? How do you achieve your goal?
Get off my phone, Marcus Zee said.
It’s a reasonable question, Roscoe said.

Robert W. waved to everyone as he trotted up to the podium. He looked younger than Tommy R. or Bob T. but let the club know he was eighty-two and still had all his teeth. He was short and slim and wore a tailored blue gabardine suit and a pink shirt with a white collar. He also had a pink silk tie done in a single Winsor and a matching pocket handkerchief.

Roscoe had a great dad, Robert W. said to the club and gave a wink. Mack and I used to bar hop together. We must’ve been twenty-one, twenty-two, you know, early twenties. The ladies loved Mack. We would walk into a bar and they’d gather around him like he was honey on a stick. Roscoe’s mom, Elsie, she and her girlfriends used to go to this one bar on Locust Street. Every Friday night, there was pretty little Elise and her two buddies. I forget their names, Kathleen and Judy Ray, something like that. But Elise was the cutest of the three. The girl was what we used to call a heart stopper. That’s what Mack called her, anyway, his sweet heart stopper. She wasn’t much more than five feet, tiny thing. Dark bobbed hair, those sheep dog bangs, cute shape, she had it all. And the biggest blue eyes you ever saw. The girl knew how to use those eyes, too, let me tell you. Not a whole lot of women could get Mack’s attention, not for long. But Elise did. For awhile Elsie had that boy and refused to let go. Mack wouldn’t let go of her, either. You could stand next to them and feel the sparks, or whatever you call it, the electricity. What they had could’ve lit up every home in Philly.

Neither one of them wanted to get married. Even after pretty Elise knew she was pregnant, she didn’t want marriage. Elise told me she thought Mack was great in the sack but she didn’t think he would be a good father, the sort of husband a girl could rely on. I knew Mack wasn’t ready for a child. That boy was barely ready for himself. Oh, he liked the first part fine, you know, the conceiving part. Mack just didn’t know what to do with the second part, where you have the child for the rest of your life. They were young, that’s all. Too many hormones and no instructions. I think it’s amazing Elise kept that baby. It’s to her credit, really, her character. Thank God she did, though. Isn’t that right, Roscoe?

After the surprise party, E. J. joins Roscoe at Happy’s on Locust Street, an old neighborhood bar that is a block or so from the club. It’s the bar where his parents met. Roscoe also bought his first drink at Happy’s. That was June, 1974. Elsie took him here for his eighteenth birthday. He bought her a cold one, too. Don’t let the night get you down, E. J. says. He orders a vodka martini straight up with an olive.

I figured Mack for an S. O. B., Roscoe says. He is on his second Scotch-rocks. Then Roscoe says, But the dog thing with the Zippo, and beating some guy with a metal pipe, it got to me. Nobody wants to hear that about their father.
Who’s to say it’s true? E. J. tells him.

Happy’s is a shadowy room that has a wall length mirror behind the bar. There are a dozen dark wood tables and three booths, a blue felt pool table with gold filigree, and a jukebox with bright red and yellow neon. Sinatra is on Happy’s music list, Sarah Vaughan, Nina Simone, the good stuff. Roscoe and E. J. have the booth by the door. A middle-aged couple sits two tables from them, and a older women has just ordered a drink at the bar.

How they met is true, Roscoe says. He holds his Scotch-rocks with both hands. His fingers are small and delicate and don’t match the rest of him. When Roscoe looks down at the drink, his double chin overlaps his collar. Mother told me those stories a thousand times, he says. She would go on and on, the way they met at Happy’s. I’ve heard the stories, believe me.

All we had was Robert, E. J. says. Some of his martini has splashed onto his blue cotton sweater. E. J. uses a paper napkin to pat it dry. He says, You know Robert, our last speaker? The club couldn’t find anybody else. We were ready to cancel the whole party, go another direction. Cufflinks, a nice watch. Antoine brought us the other two. The first two, Bob and Tommy? Those were Antoine’s boys.You didn’t tell me, Roscoe says.
I am now, E. J. says.

Roscoe has lighted his Montecristo. He rolls the cigar between his thumb and small pink fingers. His protruding belly still presses against the bottom of the steering wheel. The window on the driver’s side is open an inch to keep the sedan ventilated, and smoke drifts into the warm night. A sweet smell, the sugary version of burning leaves. Moonlight glitters the tree above him and the other big oaks that line the street. Shadows of branches are on the polished black hood of the sedan, the white pavement.
He keeps debating with himself. Should he or should he not warn Antoine Levy? Roscoe imagines knocking on Levy’s door at two fifteen in the morning And what does a person say? I’ve hired a man to convince you to relocate, Roscoe could say. Vermont, Florida, Ohio, it doesn’t matter. The man might break your leg, an arm, Roscoe could say. But I can’t stop him now, that’s part of our deal. The man I hired thinks his clients develop a conscience. Nothing is ever reconsidered. Roscoe’s debate also has a darker, less charitable side. This would be the thirty year list of humiliations caused by Antoine Levy, his competitor. Levy’s latest may have occurred six days ago at Roscoe’s surprise birthday party. Two of the three guest speakers, Bob T. and Tommy R., probably didn’t know Roscoe’s father at all. Antoine Levy could have bought and coached them. That would be so him, so Antoine Levy.

Roscoe is going back and forth with this debate when he sees someone across the street leaving Levy’s townhouse. Roscoe tries to scoot down in the seat but his stomach and the steering wheel won’t let him. Whether it’s a man or woman isn’t clear, not right off. The night and the shadows of the oak trees hide the person. There is the sharp click of high heels on concrete. It’s a quick, confident stride, even purposeful. The woman walks into the yellow spotlight of a street lamp. She becomes visible for two or three seconds. She has blond hair and a good shape and wears a jacket length white fur, perhaps mink, perhaps ermine.
That weighty feeling seeps back into Roscoe’s shoulders and inside his chest He has forgotten to breathe, and he rests his forehead on the steering wheel and takes a breath. Roscoe can feel his heart at the sides of his neck. Then he tosses the cigar, rolls up the window, and starts the sedan. He looks in his rearview mirror as he drives away. A man is walking under the street lamp. His size alone is familiar, a big man. Marcus Zee keeps his word.

Roscoe can not believe how tired he feels, every muscle, every joint. He doesn’t care about anything but a hot shower and his own bed. Maybe a drink after his shower, a Scotch-rocks; no, a cold chardonnay. This thought, these everyday, pleasurable things, eases the tensions along his shoulders and his neck. He will tell Shawna that he missed her and didn’t want to spend the night in Baltimore by himself. He imagines tip-toeinginto the bedroom and hearing her sweet voice all rusty with sleep. Come and hold me, she will say. I’m so glad you’re home. Roscoe pictures her asleep now and dreaming of him.

END

• Mack Dunstan’s Inferno (2)

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