He walked into this Albany bar like he owned the joint, dressed to kill in a black overcoat with room enough for a Tommy gun. But all he was packing was his weapon of choice, a book.
The crowd met him at the door with a blast of cheers. There he is, they called out. There he is. William Kennedy. Bill.
Kennedy may be nearly 98 and using a walker, but don’t kid yourself. He knows where the bodies are buried — he still speaks to them — and he can drink you under the table. He is Albany’s ageless bard, and his appearance had just consecrated the rain-slickened night.
The occasion was a marathon reading of his novel “Legs,” about the dapper gangster Jack Diamond, who died in an Albany rooming house in 1931 from lead poisoning, brought on by three bullets to the head. The anointed venue was the ADCo Bar & Bottle Shop, an establishment of spirits, snug between the brick remnants of the old National Biscuit Co. bakery.
The event’s stated purpose was to raise money for the food pantry at Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Catholic church in the North Albany neighborhood where Kennedy was once an altar boy. But it also provided an opportunity to toast, once again, a man whose prose and presence have elevated this upstate New York burg for generations.
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