Sutton

Compared to this guy, the TV reporter says, and the Hells Angels, and the soldiers who slaughtered all those innocent people at My Lai—Willie Sutton is a pussycat.

Yeah, says the Newsday reporter, he’s a real pacifist. He’s the Gandhi of Gangsters.

All those banks, the TV reporter says, all those prisons, and the guy never fired a single shot. He never hurt a fly.

The Newsday reporter gets in the TV reporter’s face. What about Arnold Schuster? he says.

Aw, the TV reporter says, Sutton had nothing to do with Schuster.

Says who?

Says me.

And who the fuck are you?

I’ll tell you who I’m not. I’m not some burned-out hack.

The Times reporter jumps between them. You two cannot get in a fistfight about whether or not someone is nonviolent—on Christmas Eve.

Why not?

Because if you do I’ll have to write about it.

The talk swings back to the warden. Doesn’t he realize that the temperature is now close to zero? Oh you bet he realizes. He’s loving this. He’s on some kind of power trip. Everybody these days is on a power trip. Mailer, Nixon, Manson, the Zodiac Killer, the cops—it’s 1969, man, Year of the Power Trip. The warden’s probably watching them right now on his closed-circuit TV, sipping a brandy and laughing his fat ass off. It’s not enough that they have to be part of this massive clusterfuck, but they also have to be the dupes and patsies of some crypto fascist macho dick?

You’re all welcome to sit in my truck, the TV reporter says. It’s warm. We’ve got TV. The Flying Nun is on.

Groans.

SUTTON LIES ON HIS BUNK, WAITING. AT SEVEN O’CLOCK RIGHT GUARD appears at the door.

Sorry, Sutton. It’s not happening.

Sir?

Left Guard appears behind Right Guard. New orders just came down from the dep, he says—no go.

No go—why?

Why what?

Why sir?

Right Guard shrugs. Some kind of beef between Rockefeller and the parole department. They can’t agree who’s going to take responsibility, or how the press release should be worded.

So I’m not—?

No.

Sutton looks at the walls, the bars. His wrists. The purple veins, bubbled and wormy. He should’ve done it when he had the chance.

Right Guard starts laughing. Left Guard too. Just kidding, Sutton. On your feet.

They unlock the door, lead him down to the tailor. He strips out of his prison grays, puts on a crisp new white shirt, a new blue tie, a new black suit with a two-button front. He pulls on the new black socks, slips on the new black wingtips. He turns to the mirror. Now he can see the old swagger.

He faces Tailor. How do I look?

Tailor jiggles his coins and buttons, gives a thumbs-up.

Sutton turns to the guards. Nothing.

Right Guard alone leads Sutton through Times Square, then past Admin and toward the front entrance. God it’s cold. Sutton cradles his shopping bag of belongings and ignores the cramping and burning and sizzling pain in his leg. A plastic tube is holding open the artery and he can feel it getting ready to collapse like a paper straw.

You need an operation, the doctor said after the insertion of the tube two years ago.

If I wait on the operation, will I lose the leg, Doc?

No, Willie, you won’t lose the leg—you’ll die.

But Sutton waited. He didn’t want some prison doctor opening him up. He wouldn’t trust a prison doctor to open a checking account. Now it seems he made the right call. He might be able to have the operation at a real hospital, and pay for it with the proceeds of his novel. Provided someone will publish it. Provided there’s still time. Provided he lives through this night, this moment. Tomorrow.

Right Guard leads Sutton around a metal detector, around a sign-in table, and to a black metal door. Right Guard unlocks it. Sutton steps forward. He looks back at Right Guard, who’s belittled and beaten him for the last seventeen years. Right Guard has censored Sutton’s letters, confiscated his books, denied his requests for soap and pens and toilet paper, slapped him when he forgot to put a sir at the end of a sentence. Right Guard braces himself—this is the moment prisoners like to get things off their chests. But Sutton smiles as if something inside him is opening like a flower. Merry Christmas kid.

Right Guard’s head snaps back. He waits a beat. Two. Yeah, Merry Christmas, Willie. Good luck to you.

It’s shortly before eight o’clock.

Right Guard pushes open the door and out walks Willie Sutton.

A PHOTOGRAPHER FROM LIFE SHOUTS, HERE HE IS! THREE DOZEN REPORTERS converge. The freaks and ghouls push in. TV cameras veer toward Sutton’s face. Lights, brighter than prison searchlights, hit his azure eyes.

How’s it feel to be free, Willie?

Do you think you’ll ever rob another bank, Willie?

What do you have to say to Arnold Schuster’s family?

Sutton points to the full moon. Look, he says.

Three dozen reporters and two dozen civilians and one archcriminal look up at the night sky. The first time Sutton has seen the moon, face-to-face, in seventeen years—it takes his breath.

Look, he says again. Look at this beautiful clear night God has made for Willie.

Now, beyond the crush of reporters Sutton sees a man with pumpkin-colored hair and stubborn orange freckles leaning against a red 1967 Pontiac GTO. Sutton waves, Donald hurries over. They shake hands. Donald shoves aside several reporters, leads Sutton to the GTO. When Sutton is settled into the passenger seat, Donald slams the door and shoves another reporter, just for fun. He runs around the car, jumps behind the wheel, mashes the gas pedal. Away they go, sending up a wave of wet mud and snow and salt. It sprays the reporter from Newsday. His face, his chest, his shirt, his overcoat. He looks down at his clothes, then up at his colleagues:

Like I said—a thug.

SUTTON DOESN’T SPEAK. DONALD LETS HIM NOT SPEAK. DONALD KNOWS. Donald walked out of Attica nine months ago. They both stare at the icy road and the frozen woods and Sutton tries to sort his thoughts. After a few miles he asks if Donald was able to get that thing they discussed on the phone.

Yes, Willie.

Is she alive?

Don’t know. But I found her last known address.

Donald hands over a white envelope. Sutton holds it like a chalice. His mind starts to go. Back to Brooklyn. Back to Coney Island. Back to 1919. Not yet, he tells himself, not yet. He shuts off his mind, something he’s gotten good at over the years. Too good, one prison shrink told him.

He slides the envelope into the breast pocket of his new suit. Twenty years since he’s had a breast pocket. It was always his favorite pocket, the one where he kept the good stuff. Engagement rings, enameled cigarette cases, leather bill-folds from Abercrombie. Guns.

Donald asks who she is and why Sutton needs her address.

I shouldn’t tell you, Donald.

We got no secrets between us, Willie.

We’ve got nothing but secrets between us, Donald.

Yeah. That’s true, Willie.

Sutton looks at Donald and remembers why Donald was in the joint. A month after Donald lost his job on a fishing boat, two weeks after Donald’s wife left him, a man in a bar said Donald looked beat. Donald, thinking the man was insulting him, threw a punch, and the man made the mistake of returning fire. Donald, a former college wrestler, put the man in a chokehold, broke his neck.

Sutton turns on the radio. He looks for news, can’t find any. He leaves it on a music station. The music is moody, sprightly—different.

What is this, Donald?

The Beatles.

So this is the Beatles.

They say nothing for miles. They listen to Lennon. The lyrics remind Sutton of Ezra Pound. He pats the shopping bag on his lap.

Donald downshifts the GTO, turns to Willie. Does the name in the envelope have anything at all to do with—you know who?

Sutton looks at Donald. Who?

You know. Schuster?

No. Of course not. Jesus, Donald, what makes you ask that?

I don’t know. Just a feeling.

No, Donald. No.

Sutton puts a hand in his breast pocket. Thinks. Well, he says, I guess maybe it does—in a roundabout way. All roads eventually lead to Schuster, right, Donald?

Donald nods. Drives. You look good, Willie Boy.

They say I’m dying.

Bullshit. You’ll never fuckin die.

Yeah. Right.

You couldn’t die if you wanted to.

Hm. You have no idea how true that is.

Donald lights two cigarettes, hands one to Sutton. How about a drink? Do you have time before your flight?

What an interesting idea. A ball of Jameson, as my Daddo used to say.

Donald pulls off the highway and parks outside a low-down roadhouse. Sprigs of holly and Christmas lights strung over the bar. Sutton hasn’t seen Christmas lights since his beloved Dodgers were in Brooklyn. He hasn’t seen any lights other than the prison’s eye-scalding fluorescents and the bare sixty-watt bulb in his cell.

Look, Donald. Lights. You know you’ve been in hell when a string of colored bulbs over a crummy bar looks more beautiful than Luna Park.

Donald jerks his head toward the bartender, a young blond girl wearing a tight paisley blouse and a miniskirt. Speaking of beautiful, Donald says.

Sutton stares. They didn’t have miniskirts when I went away, he says quietly, respectfully.

You’ve come back to a different world, Willie.

Donald orders a Schlitz. Sutton asks for Jameson. The first sip is bliss. The second is a right cross. Sutton swallows the rest in one searing gulp and slaps the bar and asks for another.

The TV above the bar is showing the news.

Our top story tonight. Willie the Actor Sutton, the most prolific bank robber in American history, has been released from Attica Correctional Facility. In a surprise move by Governor Nelson Rockefeller …

Sutton stares into the grain of the bar top, thinking: Nelson Rockefeller, son of John D. Rockefeller Jr., grandson of John D. Rockefeller Sr., close friend of—Not yet, he tells himself.

He reaches into his breast pocket, touches the envelope.

Now Sutton’s face appears on the screen. His former face. An old mug shot. No one along the bar recognizes him. Sutton gives Donald a sly smile, a wink. They don’t know me, Donald. I can’t remember the last time I was in a room full of people who didn’t know me. Feels nice.

Donald orders another round. Then another.

I hope you have money, Sutton says. I only have two checks from Governor Rockefeller.

Which will probably fuckin bounce, Donald says, slurring.

Say, Donald—want to see a trick?

Always.

Sutton limps down the bar. He limps back. Ta da.

Donald blinks. I don’t think I get it.

I walked from here to there without a hack hassling me. Without a con messing with me. Ten feet—two more feet than the length of my fuckin cell, Donald. And I didn’t have to call anyone sir before or after. Have you ever seen anything so marvelous?

Donald laughs.

Ah Donald—to be free. Actually free. There’s no way to describe it to someone who hasn’t been in the joint.

Everyone should have to do time, Donald says, smothering a belch, so they could know.

Time. Willie looks at the clock over the bar. Shit, Donald, we better go.

Donald drives them weavingly along icy back roads. Twice they go skidding onto the shoulder. A third time they almost hit a snowbank.

You okay to drive, Donald?

Fuck no, Willie, what gave you that idea?

Sutton grips the dashboard. He stares in the distance at the lights of Buffalo. He recalls that speedboats used to run booze down here from Canada. This whole area, he says, was run by Polish gangs back in the twenties.

Donald snorts. Polish gangsters—what’d they do, stick people up and hand over their wallets?

They’d have cut the tongue out of your head for saying that. The Poles made us Micks look like choirboys. And the Polish cops were the cruelest of all.

Shocking, Donald says with dripping sarcasm.

Did you know President Grover Cleveland was the executioner up here?

Is that so?

It was Cleveland’s job to knot the noose around the prisoner’s neck, drop him through the gallows floor.

A job’s a job, Donald says.

They called him the Hangman of Buffalo. Then his face wound up on the thousand-dollar bill.

Still reading your American history, I see, Willie.

They arrive at the private airfield. They’re met by a young man with a square head and a deep dimple in his square chin. The reporter presumably. He shakes Sutton’s hand and says his name, but Sutton is drunker than Donald and doesn’t catch it.

Pleasure to meet you kid.

Same here, Mr. Sutton.

Reporter has thick brown hair, deep black eyes and a gleaming Pepsodent smile. Beneath each smooth cheek a pat of red glows like an ember, maybe from the cold, more likely from good health. Even more enviable is Reporter’s nose. Thin and straight as a shiv.

It’s a very short flight, he tells Sutton. Are you all set?

Sutton looks at the low clouds, the plane. He looks at Reporter. Then Donald.

Mr. Sutton?

Well kid. You see. This is actually my first time on an airplane.

Oh. Oh. Well. It’s perfectly safe. But if you’d rather leave in the morning.

Nah. The sooner I get to New York the better. So long, Donald.

Merry Christmas, Willie.

The plane has four seats. Two in the front, two in the back. Reporter straps Sutton into one of the backseats, then sits up front next to the pilot. A few snowflakes fall as they taxi down the runway. They come to a full stop and the pilot talks into the radio and the radio crackles back with numbers and codes and Sutton suddenly remembers the first time he rode in a car. Which was stolen. Well, bought with stolen money. Which Sutton stole. He was almost eighteen and steering that new car down the road felt like flying. Now, fifty years later, he’s going to fly through the air. He feels a painful pressure building below his heart. This is not safe. He reads every day in the paper about another plane scattered in pieces on some mountaintop, in some field or lake. Gravity is no joke. Gravity is one of the few laws he’s never broken. He’d rather be in Donald’s GTO right now, fishtailing on icy back roads. Maybe he can pay Donald to drive him to New York. Maybe he’ll take the bus. Fuck, he’ll walk. But first he needs to get out of this plane. He claws at his seat belt.

The engine gives a high piercing whine and the plane rears back like a horse and goes screaming down the runway. Sutton thinks of the astronauts. He thinks of Lindbergh. He thinks of the bald man in the red long johns who used to get shot from a cannon at Coney Island. He closes his eyes and says a prayer and clutches his shopping bag. When he opens his eyes again the full moon is right outside his window, Jackie Gleasoning him.

Within forty minutes they make out the lights of Manhattan. Then the Statue of Liberty glowing green and gold out in the harbor. Sutton presses his face against the window. One-armed goddess. She’s waving to him, beckoning him. Calling him home.

The plane tilts sideways and swoops toward LaGuardia. The landing is smooth. As they slow and taxi toward the terminal Reporter turns to check on Sutton. You okay, Mr. Sutton?

Let’s go again kid.

Reporter smiles.

They walk side by side across the wet, foggy tarmac to a waiting car. Sutton thinks of Bogart and Claude Rains. He’s been told he looks a little like Bogart. Reporter is talking. Mr. Sutton? Did you hear? I assume your lawyer explained all about tomorrow?

Yeah kid.

Reporter checks his watch. Actually, I should say today. It’s one in the morning.

Is it, Sutton says. Time has lost all meaning. Not that it ever had any.

You know that your lawyer has agreed to give us exclusive rights to your story. And you know that we’re hoping to visit your old stomping grounds, the scenes of your, um. Crimes.

Where are we staying tonight?

The Plaza.

Wake up in Attica, go to bed at the Plaza. Fuckin America.

But, Mr. Sutton, after we check in, I need to ask you, please, order room service, anything you like, but do not leave the hotel.

Sutton looks at Reporter. The kid’s not yet twenty-five, Sutton guesses, but he’s dressed like an old codger. Fur-collared trench coat, dark brown suit, cashmere scarf, cap-toed brown lace-ups. He’s dressed, Sutton thinks, like a damn banker.

My editors, Mr. Sutton. They’re determined that we have you to ourselves the first day. That means we can’t have anyone quoting you or shooting your picture. So we can’t let anyone know where you are.

In other words, kid, I’m your prisoner.

Reporter gives a nervous laugh. Oh ho, I wouldn’t say that.

But I’m in your custody.

Just for one day, Mr. Sutton.

TWO

DAYLIGHT FILLS THE SUITE.

Sutton sits in a wingback chair, watching the other wingback chair and the king-size bed come into view. He hasn’t slept. It’s been five hours since he and Reporter checked in and he’s nodded off a few times in this chair but that’s all. He lights a cigarette, the last one in the pack. Good thing he ordered two more packs from room service. Good thing they had his brand. He can’t smoke anything but Chesterfields. He always, always had a footlocker of Chesterfields in his cell. He washes down the smoke with the ice-cold champagne he also ordered. He puts the cigarette in his mouth and holds the white envelope to the daylight. He still hasn’t opened it. He won’t let himself until he’s ready, until the time is right, even though that means he might not live to open it.

His body is doing everything the doctor warned him it would do in the final stages. The vise feeling in the small of his back. The toes and legs going numb. Claudication, the doctor called it. At first you’ll have trouble walking, Willie. Then you’ll simply stop.

Stop what, Doc?

Stop everything, Willie—you’ll just stop.

So he’s going to die today. Within a few hours, maybe before noon, certainly before darkness falls. He knows it in the same way he used to know things in the old days, the way he used to know if a guy was right or a rat. He’s given death the slip a hundred times, but not today. He invited death in with that suicide note. Once you let death in, it doesn’t always leave.

He turns the envelope slowly, shakes it like a match he’s trying to extinguish. He sees the one sheet of loose-leaf inside, covered in Donald’s scrawl. He sees Bess’s name, or thinks he does. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen Bess when she wasn’t there. Has she already heard about his release? He pictures Bess standing before him. Conjures her. It’s easier to conjure her in a suite at the Plaza than in a cell at Attica. Ah Bess, he whispers. I can’t die before I see you, my heart’s darling. I can’t.

A faint knock makes him jump. He slips the white envelope into his breast pocket, hobbles to the door.

Reporter. His dark brown hair is wet, neatly parted, and his face, freshly scrubbed, is pink and white. From the neck up he’s the color of Neapolitan ice cream. He’s wearing another banker suit and the same fur-collared trench coat. In one hand he’s carrying a big lawyerly briefcase, in the other a paper box filled with bagels and coffee.

Morning, Mr. Sutton.

Merry Christmas kid.

Were you on the phone?

No.

I thought I heard voices.

Nah.

Reporter smiles. His teeth look twice as Pepsodenty. Good, he says.

Sutton still can’t remember Reporter’s name, or which newspaper he works for, and it feels too late to ask. He also doesn’t care. He steps aside. Reporter walks to a desk by the window, sets down the paper box.

I got cream, sugar, I didn’t know how you take it.

Sutton shuts the door, follows Reporter into the suite. Are we not going down to the restaurant kid?

Sorry, Mr. Sutton, the restaurant is much too public. You’re a very famous man this morning.

I’ve been famous all my life kid.

But today, Mr. Sutton, you’re the most famous man in New York. Producers, directors, screenwriters, ghostwriters, publishers, they’re all staking out my newspaper. Word is out that we’ve got you. Merv Griffin phoned the city desk twice this morning. Johnny Carson’s people left four messages at my home. We can’t take a chance of someone in the restaurant spotting you. I can just see some waiter phoning the Times and saying: For fifty bucks I’ll tell you where Willie Sutton is having breakfast. My editor would skin me alive.

Now at least Sutton knows Reporter doesn’t work for the Times.

Reporter clicks open his briefcase, removes a stack of newspapers. He holds one before Sutton. On the front page is Sutton’s face. Above it is a Man-Walks-on-Moon-size headline: SANTA SPRINGS WILLIE SUTTON.

Sutton takes the newspaper, holds it at arm’s length, frowns. Santa, he says. Jesus, I’ll never understand all the good press that guy gets. A chubby second-story man. What, breaking and entering isn’t against the law if you wear a red velvet suit?

He looks to Reporter for confirmation. Reporter shrugs. I’m Jewish, Mr. Sutton.

Oh.

Sutton can hear it in Reporter’s voice, the kid is waiting for him to say, Call me Willie. It’s on the tip of Sutton’s tongue, but he can’t. He likes the deference. Feels good. Sutton doesn’t remember the last time someone, besides a judge, called him Mr. Sutton. He returns to the wingback chair. Reporter, carrying his paper cup of coffee, sits in the other wingback, peels off the plastic lid, takes a sip. Now he leans forward eagerly. So, Mr. Sutton—how does it feel to be famous?

I don’t think you heard me kid. I’ve been famous all my life.

Arguably you’ve been infamous.

That seems like splitting hairs.

What I’m saying is, you’re a living legend.

Please kid.

You’re an icon.

Nah.

Oh yes, Mr. Sutton. That’s why my editors are so keen for this story. In the page one meeting yesterday, a senior editor said you’ve achieved a kind of mythic status.

Sutton opens his eyes wide. Boy, you newspapermen love myths, don’t you?

Pardon?

Selling myths, that’s what you fellas do. The front page, the sports page, the financial pages—all myths.

Well, I don’t think—

I used to buy in too. When I was a kid. I used to lap it all up. Not just newspapers either—comic books, Horatio Alger, the Bible, the whole American Dream. That’s what got me so mixed up in the first place. Fuckin myths.

I think maybe I haven’t had enough coffee.

Try some champagne.

No. Thank you. Mr. Sutton, all I’m saying is, America loves a bank robber.

Really. America has a funny way of showing it. I’ve spent half my life locked up.

Take your famous line. There’s a reason that line has become part of the culture.

Sutton stubs out his cigarette, shoots two plumes of smoke through his nostrils. Because the nostrils are different sizes, the plumes are different sizes. It’s always bothered Sutton.

Which line is that kid?

You know.

Sutton makes his face a blank. He can’t help having fun with this kid.

Mr. Sutton, surely you remember. When you were asked why you robbed banks? You said: That’s where the money was.

Right, right. I remember now. Except I never said it.

Reporter’s face falls.

One of your colleagues invented that line kid. Put my name to it.

Oh no.

Like I said. Myths. All my life, if reporters weren’t making me out to be worse than I am, they were making me out to be better.