Sutton (17 page)

Holy shit, Reporter says again
.

Sutton laughs. Reporter and Photographer turn and see the lenses. Reporter puts a hand over his mouth. Photographer grabs the wheel
.

Funny, Photographer says. Hilarious
.

Mr. Sutton, was that really necessary?

You said you couldn’t imagine, Sutton says, dropping the lenses. Now you can imagine
.

Hours after Happy’s trial, Willie tells Eddie he needs to be alone. He walks the length of Brooklyn, walks through Prospect Park, walks all night until he can’t walk another step, then walks some more. As the sun oozes above the river he finds himself walking down Sands Street. Jeepers, Wingy says, opening her bedroom door. Last I heard, you were a wanted man.

You heard wrong. No one wants Willie.

I’ll show you want. Buy an hour?

I’ll pay for the whole morning.

Big shot.

Och, it’s Eddie’s money.

All the same, I don’t think I can go all morning, sugar lump.

Nah, nothing like that. I just need someone to talk to. I need a friend, Wingy.

She puts her one hand on her hip, gives her head a sympathetic tilt. Come on in, Willie.

They lie on her bed, Wingy propped against the headboard, Willie against the footboard.

Wingy, did you ever wish you could just start your life over?

You and your questions. Let’s see. About thirty times a day.

That’s my dream.

That’s everybody’s dream, Willie.

How do you know?

People tell me their dreams.

How come no one ever does it?

It’s quite a trick. You figure out how to manage it, you let me know.

Eddie says the whole thing’s rigged.

Eddie’s a wise man.

I should’ve listened.

To who.

To him. To anybody. Except myself.

You’ve always been cockeyed.

I have?

Sure. Remember when you worked at the bank? You used to tell me how wonderful it all was, how you were going to be the bank president one day. The
president
for Pete’s sake. You were a dreamer, Willie. You were like some potato-eater fresh off the boat.

She stands, wraps herself in a sheet, holds forth her arm. The laaand of
lib
-
er-tee
, she says in an operatic voice. Send me your huddled messes and misses and asses.

Willie laughs, rolls onto his side. I always wanted to go up inside her, he says.

Wingy laughs, lies down beside him. The Fels smell—still. He takes her arm, wraps it around himself. They both fall asleep laughing.

In the morning he rides the trolley to Thirteenth Street. It’s just his parents now. His brothers have left the city, gone out west. Older Sister is married, Daddo has passed. Willie sees the cane in the corner, gives the empty rocking chair a push. House feels strange without the old chatterbox, he says. Mother doesn’t answer. She sits at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, refusing to make eye contact. Father stands behind her, saying nothing loudly. They’ve both read about Happy in the papers. They assume Willie is mixed up in it somehow.

That Happy business had nothing to do with me, Willie says.

They don’t answer.

You know me, Willie says. You know I’d never hit a guy on the head and take his billfold.

Know you, Mother says.
Know
you? We don’t have the slightest idea who you are.

Father nods, grinds his jaw.

How many times can I apologize for the Endner thing, Willie says.

Not enough, Mother says. And isn’t that the problem.

Please, Father says, if you care about us at all, Willie Boy, you’ll leave us alone.

He walks to Meadowport, sits deep inside the tunnel, replaying the last three years. At dusk he walks out, through the meadow, through the park, and soon finds himself on Eddie’s doorstep at the St. George. Eddie throws open the door. Pleated slacks, a sleeveless white undershirt, white suspenders hanging down. He’s been doing push-ups. His arms are the size of Willie’s legs. Where you been, Sutty?

Everywhere. Nowhere. Wingy says hi.

They go up to the roof. Eddie has a pint of bootleg in his back pocket. He takes a swig, offers it to Willie. Willie shakes his head. But he smokes Eddie’s cigarettes greedily. He’s been denying himself tobacco, trying to economize.

The sun is nearly set. They watch the lights come on in Manhattan, cars going back and forth across the bridge. An ocean liner, lit up like a miniature Manhattan, heads off to sea. Willie imagines the passengers: gentlemen standing along the upper decks, taking the air, ladies below sipping illegal cordials. On the Brooklyn side of the bridge steam bubbles from the Squibb factory, where they make stuff for bad stomachs. The air is heavy with milk of magnesia.

Willie looks at Eddie: I can’t stop remembering Happy’s face when they dragged him off in bracelets.

Yeah. Me either.

Sing Sing. Christ.

It’s a war, Sutty. Us, them. How many times do I have to tell you.

They watch the bloodred sun slide into the river. Every day, Eddie says, that fuckin sun goes out the same way. A blaze of glory.

Mm.

Hey, Sutty.

Yeah.

Look at me.

Huh.

I got somethin I need to tell you.

Shoot.

You’re a fuckin skeleton.

Willie laughs. I am kind of hungry.

I think if you ate a grape you’d have a paunch. We need to get some groceries in you, boy. Fast.

No can do. I’m broker than broke.

My treat.

At the speak on the corner Eddie orders for Willie. Meat loaf, oysters, creamed potatoes, garden salad, a wedge of apple pie à la mode. Eddie was right, the food helps. Willie feels alive. Then comes the check. Dead again. He’s twenty years old, no job, no hope of a job, sponging off his friend.

He stabs the pie. Ed, what am I going to do?

Move in with me. Stay as long as you want. You know you’re like a brother.

Thanks, Ed. But long-term. What’s any of us going to do?

Eddie leans back. I might have a solution. For both of us.

Eddie tells Willie that he’s leaving the bootleggers. Happy’s arrest has given him pause. Prohibition is no joke, the government isn’t playing. If you’re going to take the risk, you better make sure the reward is worth it.

Meaning?

One of the other drivers introduced me to a guy. Horace Steadley. Goes by Doc. A box man out of Chicago, and a great one at that—a true genius. Though he made his bones running the glim-drop back in Pittsburgh.

The what?

The glim. A nifty little two-man con. First man goes into a department store, dressed real sharp, wearin an eye patch, says he lost his glim—his glass eyeball. Tells the clerk he’ll pay a thousand bucks if anyone turns the eyeball in to Lost and Found. Leaves his callin card, fancy, gold-embossed with his phone number. Next day, the second man goes up to the clerk carryin a glass eyeball. Anyone lookin for this? He gets the clerk to give him three hundred. Why not? The clerk knows the glim’s worth three times that much. But when the clerk dials the number on the first man’s callin card, disconnected. Doc had it down to a science. But then he started crackin safes, takin down jewelry stores, and he liked that a whole lot better. Now he runs a topflight box crew and he needs a couple more men. He’s a right guy, Sutty. A real right guy. And he knows his potatoes, so he can
teach
us. Then we can start our own crew. Move up to the bigs.

Bigs?

Banks, Sutty. Banks.

Oh Ed. I don’t know.

The waiter comes, clears the table. Eddie orders two coffees. When the waiter goes away he hisses: What don’t you know?

Isn’t it—
wrong
, Ed? I mean, hell. What about right and wrong?

The world is wrong, Sutty. I don’t know why, I don’t know when it went wrong, or if it’s always been, but I know it’s wrong, sure as I know you’re you and I’m me. Maybe two wrongs don’t make a right. But answerin a wrong with a right? That just makes you poor and hungry. And nothin is as wrong as that.

Neither says anything for several minutes. Eddie lights a cigarette, puts on his hat. Just come meet him, he says.

Minutes later Willie is letting Eddie push him into a cab.

Doc’s apartment is all the way over in Manhattan, near the theater district. As they approach Times Square, Willie looks out the window. Men in tuxes, women in evening gowns, hurrying from luminous motorcars into cafés, clubs, theaters. The looks on their faces say: Depression? What Depression? Willie wishes he were going to see a show. He’s never seen a show. One of the million things he’s never done. He should level with Eddie, tell him this is a waste of time. Heisting jewels isn’t his line. He doesn’t know what his line is, but it isn’t this.

Too late. They’re outside Doc’s building, under the awning. The doorman is buzzing upstairs to announce them.

Sutton peers at the tops of the new skyscrapers in midtown. OK, boys, pop quiz: What drove Jack Dillinger to rob his first bank?

No clue
.

A girl broke up with him
.

Left at the next light, Reporter says to Photographer. Then straight until Fifty-Third
.

It’s on the corner, Sutton says
.

What’s the significance of this next stop? Photographer asks
.

It’s where Doc lived, Sutton says
.

Doc?

My first teacher
.

Happy, Doc—when do we get to hear about Sneezy and Dopey?

You two are Sneezy and Dopey
.

Har har
.

Willie and Eddie stand at attention, Willie straightening his tie, Eddie brushing dandruff off his shoulders. The door opens. A liveried butler takes Eddie’s topcoat and fedora. Willie says he’ll keep his. They follow the butler down a long hall into a sunken living room. Willie does a triple take at the furniture. End tables, side tables, coffee tables—it’s all safes. Big, little, metal, wood—safes.

A man enters from a hall on the other side of the living room. He has an oversize head covered with thick marshmallow hair, and a mouth full of crooked teeth, which he tries to conceal with an equally thick white mustache. Come in, he says in a booming voice, come in, boys.

Doc, Eddie whispers to Willie.

Doc waves a crystal rocks glass full of whiskey. What’ll you have?

Nothing, Willie says.

A double of whatever you’re havin, Eddie says.

Doc pours Eddie’s drink at a bar underneath oil paintings of black-hatted horsemen chasing lithe foxes. He motions for Willie and Eddie to join him in the center of the living room. The windows look onto the theaters. Fluttering marquees make the room brighter, darker, brighter, darker. Willie sits in a chair with curved legs and a silk seat cushion. It feels like sitting on a beautiful woman’s lap. Doc and Eddie take the sofa. Bending at the waist and lowering himself, Doc grunts and groans as if sliding into a warm bath.

Pleasure to finally meet you, he says to Willie. Eddie here tells me you’re the brightest lad to come out of Irish Town.

Eddie tells me you’re the best thief to come out of Chicago.

Silence.

That’s a dirty lie, Doc says. I’m the best anywhere.

Eddie smiles. Doc smiles. Crooked smile to go with the crooked teeth. Willie lights a Chesterfield, looks for an ashtray. There’s one on the safe at his elbow. Nice place you got here. Who’s your decorator, Wells Fargo?

They’re all functional too, Doc says. I practice on them, take them apart, put them together, time myself. I’m like a boxer who lives in his gym. The best ones do, by the way.

What’s with all the paintings?

Ah. They’re from my first boost ever. An estate in Oak Park. They lend a touch of class, I think. They give me hours of pleasure. Sometimes I sit here all night, having a libation, rooting for that fox.

Willie gives Doc a fast once-over. He does seem like a right enough guy. But what’s with that getup? He’s dressed like a manager at Title Guaranty. Cutaway coat, gold watch chain, plaid bow tie. Plus—white opera gloves? Willie cocks an eyebrow, asks about the gloves. Doc holds out his hands and spreads his fingers, as if Willie has asked a question to which the answer is an emphatic
Ten
.

Willie, he says, my fingers are my life. I’m a box man, I make no pretense of being anything else. On the contrary I’m proud of my art, which goes all the way back to the ancient Egyptians. Did you know the pharaohs were the first to use a lock with pins? I guess they were the first people with valuables. Ach, kids today don’t care about the history. They just want to peel a box, shoot a box—put some nitro in the cracks and boom. It’s loud, it’s vulgar, and frankly you’re more likely to get caught. I still think the old ways are best. Stethoscope, fingers, let the tumblers talk. A safe is like a woman. She’ll tell you how to open her, provided you know how to listen. So if anything happens to these fingers, well, I’m sleeping under bridges. Naturally I take care of them. Polish the nails. Sandpaper the tips. Keep them warm and well-wrapped. Hence—opera gloves. They’re from D’Andrea Brothers, by the by. Do you know their stuff? I think they’re the tops.

Willie has never heard anybody talk like Doc. He’s either a genius, as Eddie said, or else just full of hot air. Willie fears it’s the latter. He wants to stand, tell Doc thanks but no thanks, and he’s on the verge of doing just that when Doc says:

Eddie tells me you’re mooning over some bird.

Willie frowns at Eddie. Eddie shrugs.

It’s been a tough couple of years, Willie says. Let’s leave it at that.

Eddie says it’s a lost cause. The bird’s some rich man’s daughter.

Please don’t call her a bird.

Eddie says she’s out of the country, no hope of finding her.

Willie remembers a line from his Latin class at St. Ann’s. Where there’s life, he says, there’s hope.

Uh-huh.

Doc stares at one of his safes, deep in thought. He looks as though he’s placed his mind inside the safe and locked the door. His eyes turn glassy, his bottom lip goes slack. Thirty seconds. Forty.