Sutton

Wow. That makes me embarrassed for my profession.

We all pay for the sins of our colleagues.

Well, Mr. Sutton, rest assured, I won’t be putting any words in your mouth today.

Sutton cocks his head. How old are you kid?

Me? I’ll be twenty-three in February.

Young.

I guess. Relatively.

If Willie’s such a hot ticket, like you say, how come your bosses sent a cub to be my chaperone?

Um.

You draw this assignment because you’re Jewish? No one else in the city room wanted to work Christmas?

Reporter sighs. I won’t lie to you, Mr. Sutton. That might be the case.

Sutton gives Reporter a long slow once-over. He misjudged this kid. Reporter isn’t a Boy Scout, Sutton decides. He’s an Eagle Scout. And an altar boy. Or whatever the Jewish equivalent might be.

Reporter looks at his watch. Speaking of the assignment, Mr. Sutton. We should probably get going.

Sutton stands, checks his breast pocket. He pulls out the white envelope, puts it back. Then he pulls out a tourist map of New York City—he had the front desk send it up with the Chesterfields and the champagne. He’s marked it with red numbers, red lines and arrows. He hands it to Reporter.

What’s this, Mr. Sutton?

You said you wanted the nickel tour of my life. There it is. I mapped it all out.

All these places?

Yeah. And they’re numbered. Chronological order.

So these are the scenes of all your crimes?

And other key events. All the crossroads of my life.

Reporter moves his finger from number to number. Crossroads, he says. I see.

Problem?

No, no. It’s just. It looks as if we double back several times. Maybe there’s a more direct route?

We have to do it in chronological order. Or else the story won’t make sense.

To whom?

You. Me. Whoever. I can’t tell you about Bess before I tell you about Eddie. I can’t tell you about Mrs. Adams before I tell you about Bess.

Who?

See what I mean?

Right. No. But, Mr. Sutton, I just don’t know if we’ll have time for all of this.

It’s all of this or none of this.

Reporter laughs, but it sounds like a sob. The thing is, Mr. Sutton, your lawyer. Made a deal with my newspaper.

That was her deal. This is Willie’s deal.

Reporter takes a sip of coffee. Sutton watches him hunch deep into his fur-collared trench coat, thinking out his next move. Fear and anxiety are written in big crayoned letters across the pink-and-white face.

Take it easy kid. We don’t have to get out of the car at each stop and have a picnic. Some of them we can just cruise by. So Willie can eyeball the place. Get the lay of the land.

But my editors, Mr. Sutton. My editors make the rules and—

Sutton grunts. Not for me they don’t. Look, kid, this isn’t a negotiation. If my map doesn’t work for you, no sweat, we’ll just go our separate ways. I’m more than happy to stay in this nice room, read a book, order a club sandwich.

Checkout is at noon.

I checked out early from three escape-proof prisons, I think I can figure out how to swing a late check-out at one cream puff hotel.

But—

Maybe I’ll even make a few phone calls. Is the Times listed?

Reporter takes another sip of coffee, blanches as if it’s straight scotch. Mr. Sutton, it’s just that this, your map, appears to be more story than we can accommodate.

Why not wait to hear the story before you say that?

Also, if we could just go to certain places first. Like the scene of Arnold Schuster’s murder.

Sure, and once you’ve got me at the Schuster scene, you don’t need me anymore, and then I don’t get my ride to all the other places. I know how you newspaper guys operate.

Mr. Sutton, I wouldn’t do that, you can trust me.

Trust you? Kid don’t make me laugh. It hurts my leg when I laugh. Schuster comes last. End of story. Are you in or out?

But Mr. Sutton—

In or out kid.

Sutton’s voice is suddenly an octave deeper. With a serrated edge. The change stuns Reporter, who puts a finger on the dimple in his chin and presses several times, as if it’s an emergency button.

Sutton takes a hard step toward Reporter. He concentrates on assuming an at-ease posture while also conveying an air of total control. He used to do this with bank managers. Especially the ones who claimed not to remember the combination to the safe.

You seem smart for a cub, kid, so let’s not bullshit each other. Let’s put our cards on the table. We both know you only want a story. Sure, it’s an important story for you, your career, your newspaper, whatever, but it’s still just a story. Next week you’ll be on to the next story and next month you won’t even remember Willie. What I’m after is my story, the only story that counts with me. Think about it. I’m free. Free—for the first time in seventeen years. Naturally I want to go back, retrace my steps, see where it all went sideways, and I need to do it my way, which is the only way I know how to do things. And I need to do it right now, kid, because I don’t know how much time I’ve got left. My leg, which is thoroughly rat-fucked, tells me not much. You can be my wheelman or not. It’s your call. But you need to decide. Now.

I won’t be your wheelman.

Fine. No hard feelings.

We’re meeting a shooter. He’ll be driving.

A what?

A photog. Sorry—photographer. In fact he’s probably downstairs by now.

So you’re in?

You give me no choice, Mr. Sutton.

Say it.

Say what?

Say you’re in.

Why?

In the old days, before I’d go on a job with a guy, I always needed to hear him say he was in. So there’d be no misunderstandings later.

Reporter takes a gulp of coffee. Mr. Sutton, is this really—

Say it.

I’m in, I’m in.

SUTTON STEPS ON THE ELEVATOR, CURSING UNDER HIS BREATH. WHY DID he stay up all night? Why did he drink all that whiskey with Donald? And all that champagne this morning? And what the hell is wrong with this elevator? He was already feeling unsteady on his feet, but this sudden free fall to the lobby, like a space capsule plunging to earth, is giving him vertigo. In the old days elevators were manageably, comfortably slow. Like people.

With a ping and a thud the elevator lands. The doors clatter open. Reporter, not noticing Sutton’s pained expression, looks left and right, making sure no other reporters are lurking behind the lobby’s palm trees. He takes Sutton by the elbow and guides him past the front desk and past the concierge and through the revolving door. There, directly in front of the Plaza, stands a 1968 burnt sienna Dodge Polara, smoke gushing like tap water from its tailpipe.

This your car kid?

No. It’s one of the newspaper’s radio cars.

Looks like a cop car.

It’s a converted cop car, actually.

Reporter opens the passenger door. He and Sutton look in. A large man sits behind the wheel. He’s roughly Reporter’s age, twenty something, but he wears a fringed buckskin jacket that makes him look like a five-year-old playing cowboys and Indians. No, with his shoulder-length hair and Fu Manchu mustache he looks like a grown man pretending to be a five-year-old playing cowboys and Indians. Under the buckskin jacket he’s wearing a ski sweater, and around his neck a knitted scarf the colors of a barber pole, all of which spoil whatever Western look he was going for. He smiles. Bad teeth. Nice smile, but bad teeth. The exact opposite of Reporter’s teeth. And they’re as big as they are bad. His eyes are big too, and flaming red, like cherry Life Savers. Sutton would kill for a Life Saver right now.

Mr. Sutton, Reporter says. I’d like you to meet the best shooter at the paper. The best.

Reporter says the photographer’s name but Sutton doesn’t catch it. Merry Christmas, Sutton says, reaching into the car and shaking Photographer’s hand.

Back at you, brother.

Sutton climbs into the backseat, which is covered with stuff. A cloth purse. A leather camera bag. A pink bakery box. A stack of newspapers and magazines, including last week’s Life. Manson glares at Sutton. Sutton flips Manson over.

Maybe you’d be more comfortable up front, Reporter says.

Nah, Sutton says. I always ride in the rumble.

Reporter smiles. Okay, Mr. Sutton. I’m happy to ride shotgun.

Sutton shakes his head. Riding shotgun—civilians use the term so blithely. He’s actually driven countless times with men riding shotgun, holding shotguns. There was nothing blithe about it.

Photographer squints at Sutton in the rearview. Hey, Willie, man, I’ve just got to say, it’s a trip to meet you, brother. I mean, Willie the Actor—holy shit, this is like meeting Dillinger.

Ah well, Sutton says, Dillinger killed people, so.

Or Jesse James.

Again—killed.

Or Al Capone.

A pattern seems to be developing, Sutton mumbles.

I asked for this assignment, Photographer says.

Did you kid?

Even though it was Christmas. I told my old lady, I said, baby, it’s Willie the Actor. This guy’s been fighting the Man for decades.

Well, I don’t know about the Man.

You fought the law, brother.

Okay.

You were an antihero before they invented the word.

Antihero?

Hell yes, man. This is the Age of the Antihero. I don’t have to tell you, Willie, times are hard, people are fed up. Prices are soaring, taxes are sky high, millions are hungry, angry. Injustice. Inequality. The War on Poverty is a joke, the war in Vietnam is illegal, the Great Society is a sham.

Same old same old, Sutton says.

Yes and no, Photographer says. Same shit, but people aren’t taking it anymore. People are in the streets, brother. Chicago, Newark, Detroit. We haven’t seen this kind of civil unrest in a long long time. So people are crazy about anyone who fights the power—and wins. That’s you, Willie. Have you seen today’s front pages, brother?

It’s a nonstarter, Reporter whispers to Photographer. I already went down this road.

Photographer is undaunted. Just the other night, he says, I was telling my old lady all about you—

You know all about Willie?

Sure. And you know what she said? She said, This cat sounds like a real-life Robin Hood.

Well, Robin Hood was real life, but anyway. She sounds lovely.

Oh, I’m a lucky guy, Willie. My old lady, she’s a teacher up in the Bronx. Studying to be a masseuse. She’s changed my life. Really raised my consciousness. You know how the right woman can do that.

Your consciousness?

Yeah. She knows all about the trigger points in the body. She’s really opened me up. Artistically. Emotionally. Sexually.

Photographer starts to giggle. Sutton stares at the Life Saver eyes framed in the rearview—Photographer is stoned. Reporter is staring too, clearly thinking the same thing.

Trigger points, Sutton says.

Yeah. She’s studying the same techniques they used on Kennedy. For his back. I got a bad back—this line of work, it comes with the territory—so every night she works out my knots. Her hands are magic. I’m kind of obsessed with her, in case you couldn’t tell. Her hands. Her hair. Her face. Her ass. God, her ass. I shouldn’t say that though. She’s a feminist. She’s teaching me not to objectify women.

You had to be taught not to object to women?

Objectify.

Oh.

Reporter clears his throat. Loudly. Okay then, he says, shutting his door, spreading Sutton’s map across the Polara’s dashboard. Mr. Sutton has kindly drawn us a map, places he wants to show us today. He insists that we visit them all. In chronological order.

Photographer sees all the red numbers. Thirteen, fourt—Really?

Really.

Photographer drops his voice. When do we get to, you know? Schuster?

Last.

Photographer drops his voice lower. What gives?

It’s his way, Reporter whispers, or no way.

Sutton bows his head, tries not to smile.

Photographer throws up his hands as if Reporter is robbing him. Hey man, that’s cool. It’s Willie da Actor—he’s da boss, right? Willie da Actor don’t take orders from nobody.

Reporter pulls the radio from the dash. City Desk? Come in, City Desk.

The radio squawks: Are you guys garble leaving the static garble Plaza?

Ten four.

Photographer puts the car into drive and they lurch forward, toward Fifth Avenue, cruising slowly past the former sites of two banks Sutton hit in 1931.

Traffic is light. It’s seven o’clock Christmas morning, the temperature is twelve degrees, so only a few people are on the street. They turn onto Fifty-Seventh. Sutton sees three young men walking, debating something intensely. Two of them wear denim jackets, the third wears a leather duster. They all have long shaggy manes.

When exactly, Sutton says, did everybody get together and decide to stop getting haircuts?

Reporter and Photographer look at each other, laugh.

Sutton sees an old man rooting in a trash can. He sees another old man pushing a shopping cart full of brooms. He sees a woman—youngish, pretty—having a heated argument. With a mannequin in a store window.

Reporter peers into the backseat. Was the homeless problem bad before you went to prison, Mr. Sutton?

Nah. Because we didn’t call them homeless. We called them beggars. Then bums. I should know. When I was your age, I was one.

Hey Willie, Photographer says, if you’re hungry, man, I bought donuts. In that box on the seat.

Sutton opens the pink box. An assortment. Glazed, sugar, jelly, crullers. Thanks kid.

Help yourself. I bought enough for everybody.

Maybe later.

Donuts are my weakness.

You’d have loved Capone.

Why’s that?

Al used to hand out donuts to the poor during the Depression. He was the first gangster who gave any thought to public relations.

Is that so?

That was the rap against him anyway, that it was all for show. I met him once at a nightclub, asked him about it. He said he didn’t give a shit about PR. He just didn’t like seeing people go hungry.

Sutton feels a burst of pain in his leg. It flies up his side, lands just behind his eyeballs. He lets his head fall back. Eventually he’s going to have to ask these boys to stop at a drugstore. Or a hospital.

So, Photographer says. Willie, my brother—how does it feel to be free?

Sutton lifts his head. Like a dream, he says.

I’ll bet.

Photographer waits for Sutton to elaborate. Sutton doesn’t.

And how did you spend your first night of freedom?

Sutton exhales. You know. Thinking.

Photographer guffaws. He looks at Reporter. No reaction. Then back at Sutton’s reflection. Thinking?

Yeah.

Thinking?

That’s right.

You didn’t get enough time in prison to think?

In the joint, kid, thinking is the one thing you can’t let yourself do.

Photographer lights a cigarette. Sutton notices: Newport Menthol. Figures.

Willie, Photographer says, if I was in prison for seventeen years, and they let me out, thinking is the last thing I’d do.

I have no trouble believing that.

Reporter starts to laugh, pretends it’s a cough.

Photographer squints at Sutton in the rearview, runs two fingers down the stems of his Fu Manchu.

Sutton sees signs for the tunnel. In a few minutes they’ll be in Brooklyn. Jesus—Brooklyn again. His heart beats faster. They pass a movie theater. They all look at the marquee. TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE. Reporter and Photographer shake their heads.

What a coincidence, Photographer says.

Of all the films to open this week, Reporter says. I’ll have to work that into my story.

Sutton watches the marquee until it’s out of sight. Who plays Willie Boy? he asks.

Robert Blake, Photographer says. I saw the coming attractions. It’s a Western. About a guy who kills his girlfriend’s father in self-defense, then goes on the run. There’s a huge manhunt for him, the largest in the history of the West—it’s based on a true story. Supposedly.

They pass the corner of Broadway and Battery Place.

Canyon of Heroes, Reporter shouts over his shoulder. Seems like, this year, we’ve had a ticker-tape parade along here every other week. The Jets, of course. The Mets. The astronauts.

Isn’t it telling, Sutton says. When someone’s a hero, they shower him with little pieces of the stock market.

Photographer laughs. You’re singing my song, Willie.

Sutton sees some ticker tape still in the gutters. He sees another bum, this one curled in the fetal position. Bums lying in ticker tape, he says. They should put that on a postage stamp.

I covered every one of those parades, Photographer says. Got beaucoup shots of Neil Armstrong. Cool guy. You’d think a guy that just walked on the moon would be stuck up. He’s not. He’s really—you know.

Down to earth, Sutton says.

Yeah.

Sutton waits. One, two. Photographer slaps the wheel. I just got that, he says. Good one.

Everyone praises Armstrong and Aldrin, Sutton says. But the real hero on that moon shot was the third guy, Mike Collins, the Irishman in the backseat.

Actually, Reporter says, Collins was born in Rome.

Photographer gawks at Sutton. Collins? He didn’t even set foot on the moon.

Exactly. Collins was in the space capsule all alone. While his partners were down there collecting rocks, Collins was manning the wheel. Twenty-six times he circled the moon—solo. Imagine? He was completely out of radio contact. Couldn’t talk to his partners. Couldn’t talk to NASA. He was cut off from every living soul in the universe. If he panicked, if he fucked up, if he pushed the wrong button, he’d strand Armstrong and Aldrin. Or if they did something wrong, if their lunar car broke down, if they couldn’t restart the thing, if they couldn’t blast off and reconnect with Collins forty-five miles above the moon, he’d have to head back to earth all by himself. Leave his partners to die. Slowly running out of air. While watching earth in the distance. It was such a real possibility, Collins returning to earth by himself, that Nixon wrote up a speech to the nation. Collins—now that’s one stone-cold wheelman. That’s the guy you want sitting at the wheel of a gassed-up Ford while you’re inside a bank.

Reporter looks searchingly in the backseat. Seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought, Mr. Sutton.

In the joint I read everything I could get my hands on about the moon shot. The hacks even let us watch it on TV—in the middle of the day. A rare privilege. They put a set in D Yard. It was the first time I didn’t see black guys and white guys fighting over the TV. Everybody wanted to watch the moon landing. I think some of you people on the outside might have taken the whole thing for granted. But in the joint we couldn’t get enough of it.

Why’s that?

Because the moon shot is mankind’s ultimate escape. And because the astronauts were in one-sixth gravity. In the joint you feel like gravity is six times stronger.

The car windows are fogging. Sutton wipes the window to his right and looks at the sky. He thinks of the astronauts returning from the moon—250,000 miles. Attica is at least that far away. He lights a Chesterfield. Some nerve, he thinks, identifying with astronauts. But he can’t help it. Maybe it’s that setup in a space capsule—two in front, one in back, like every getaway car he’s ever ridden in. Also, he’d never say it out loud, not if you hung him up by his thumbs, but he sees himself as a hero. If he’s not, why are these boys chauffeuring him through the Canyon of Heroes?

Canyon of Antiheroes.

What’s that, Mr. Sutton?

Nothing. Did you boys know, after the three astronauts returned, Collins got a letter from the only man who understood how completely alone he’d been? Charles Lindbergh.

Is that true?

They enter the tunnel, drive slowly under the river. The cab of the Polara goes dark, except for the dash and Sutton’s glowing cigarette. Sutton closes his eyes. This river. So full of memories. And evidence. Guns, knives, costumes, license plates from getaway cars. He used to hammer the plates into tiny squares the size of matchbooks before dropping them in the water. And former associates—this river was the last thing they saw. Or felt. We’re here, Reporter says.

Sutton opens his eyes. Did he doze off? Must have—his cigarette is out. He looks through the fogged windows. A lifeless corner. Alien, lunar. This can’t be it. He looks at the street sign. Gold Street. This is it.

You committed a crime here, Mr. Sutton?

Sort of. I was born here.

He wasn’t born, Daddo always said—he escaped. Two months early, umbilical cord noosed around his neck, he should have died. But somehow, on June 30, 1901, William Francis Sutton Jr. emerged. Now, emerging from the Polara, he steps gingerly onto the curb. The Actor has landed, he says under his breath.

Down the street he goes, dragging his bad leg. Reporter, jumping out of the Polara, flipping open his notebook, follows. Mr. Sutton, is your family—um—still?

Nah. Everyone’s a fine dust. Wait, that’s not true, I have a sister in Florida.

Sutton looks around. He turns in a full circle. It’s all different. Even the light is different. Who would have thought something so basic, so elemental as light could change so much? But Brooklyn sixty years ago, with its elevated tracks, its ubiquitous clotheslines, was a world of dense and various shadows, and the light by contrast was always blinding.

No more.

At least the air tastes familiar. Like a dishrag soaked in river water. The energy feels the same too. Which may be why Sutton now hears voices. There were so many voices back then, all talking at once. Everyone was always calling to you, yelling at you, hollering down from a fire escape or terrace—and they all sounded angry. There was no such thing as conversation. Life was one long argument. Which nobody ever won.

Reporter and Photographer stand before Sutton, concerned looks on their faces. He sees them talking to him but he can’t hear. They’re drowned out by the voices. Old voices, loud voices, dead voices. Now he hears the trolleys. Night and day that ceaseless rattling is what makes Brooklyn Brooklyn. Let’s take the rattler to Coney Island, Eddie always says. Of course Eddie is long gone, and there is no rattling, so what is Sutton hearing? He puts a hand over his mouth. What’s happening? Is it the champagne? Is it the leg—a clot rattling toward his brain? Is that why he now hears his brothers taunting him, Mother calling from the upstairs window?

Mr. Sutton, you okay?

Sutton closes his eyes, lifts his face to the sky.

Mr. Sutton?

Coming, Mother.

Mr. Sutton?

THREE

CHICKENS, HORSES, PIGS, GOATS, DOGS, THEY ALL WALK DOWN THE MIDDLE of Gold Street, which isn’t a street but a dirt path. The city sometimes sprinkles the street with oil to keep the dust down. But that just makes it an oily dirt path.

Neighborhood boys are glad the street is dirt. Gold Street got its name because pirates buried treasure beneath it long ago, and on summer days the boys like to dig for doubloons.

There. A narrow wooden house, three stories tall, like all the others on Gold Street, except for the chimney, which tilts leeward. Willie lives there with Father, Mother, two older brothers, one older sister, and his white-haired grandfather, Daddo. The house is painted a cheerful yellow, but that’s misleading. It’s not a happy place. It’s always too hot, too cold, too small. There’s no running water, no bathroom, and a heavy gloom hangs in the tiny rooms and narrow halls since the death of Willie’s baby sister, Agnes. Meningitis. Or so the Suttons think. They don’t know. There was no doctor, no hospital. Hospitals are for Rockefellers.