A world of drivers and passengers

VJ night, the war in the Pacific is finally over, and in William Kennedy’s Albany the war of senatorial election is about to begin. The candidates stand up to be counted and the consequences of their election are considered.

Small crooks fresh out of crook school and the army rise into the lower reaches of these considerations. Bigger crooks and politicians start to circle each other and to watch their backs. And the biggest and most battle-scarred crooks of all (politicians to a man) – chief among whom resides Roscoe Conway – sit with their open wallets on their desks, old hunting trophies high on the walls of their offices, with their cigar-stuffed and ring-stiffened fingers clasped across their long-lunch paunches, and with the sounds of screaming, pleading, laughter and rapid gunshots conveniently far enough off-stage for them not necessarily to have to be heard. Or for them to be heard and taken note of depending on who is doing the pleading and the screaming and who is doing the laughing and the shooting.