Sutton (21 page)

Eddie suggests they go out, blow off steam. We need a break, he says.

A ball game, Willie says.

A beautiful new ballpark has just opened in the Bronx. The whole city is talking about it.

Swell idea, Eddie says. You’re always thinkin, Sutty.

It’s April 24, 1923.

Sutton looks up at the
CANADIAN CLUB
sign, above the fluttering
COCA-COLA
sign. He looks at the theater where he used to see silent films. It’s now showing a twin bill:
Daniel Bone
and
Davy Cock It.

He looks at the headlines scrolling around the building to his right. He reads them aloud.
POPE CALLS FOR WORLD PEACE IN XMAS MASS
… Good luck with that …
NIXON TO CUT FUNDING FOR NASA
… Sure, that figures, what’s NASA ever done for us? …
TRIAL OF CHICAGO SEVEN RIOTERS WHO DISRUPTED DEMO CONVENTION RECESSES UNTIL MONDAY
…
Just delaying the inevitable
.

Mr. Sutton, at the risk of being redundant, can we please move on to our next stop?
The New York Times
is right over
there.
It’s a miracle we haven’t been spotted yet
.

BANK ROBBER WILLIE THE ACTOR SUTTON FREE AFTER
17
YEARS
… Hey! HEY! That’s me! Can you beat that? I’m famous
.

You’ve been famous all your life, Mr. Sutton
.

Touché kid
.

A Chesterfield dangling from the corner of his mouth, the bag of handcuffs tucked under his arm, Sutton flips up the fur collar of Reporter’s trench coat and walks off, a new bounce in his hobbled step
.

Where to? Photographer calls after him
.

The Bronx, Sutton says
.

Oh good, Reporter says. I can just see tomorrow’s zipper headline.
JOURNALISTS SLAIN IN XMAS MUGGING
.

Yankee Stadium is packed. It’s a special occasion and every man dresses accordingly—finest suit, sharpest necktie, best boater. Willie has chosen a yellow linen three-piece with a lavender four-in-hand, Eddie a gray tweed with a lime-green tie. Each of them wears a white hat with a wide black band. Eddie’s cost four hundred dollars.

They splurge on premium seats, third base side. The guy in the parking lot wants two hundred bucks. Pricey, but what choice do we have, Eddie says. We can’t sit with the bleacher bugs.

The seats are three rows from President Warren G. Harding, whose box is draped with red, white and blue. Eddie cranes his neck. He doesn’t like Harding, a hypocrite, a connoisseur of women and whiskey despite his wife and Prohibition. He doesn’t like that Harding is tight with Rockefeller. Nor does Willie. Before the first pitch Harding tries to shake hands with New York’s young star, Babe Ruth. Eddie howls as Harding mugs for the cameras and Ruth pointedly doesn’t.

Would you get a load of that, Sutty. Rich as Croesus and Ruth’s still a Democrat. Mark me down for a Ruth fan.

A boy in a white paper hat comes down the aisle selling Cracker Jacks. Eddie hails him, buys two boxes, hands one to Willie. Aint this the life, Sutty? Only thing that could make it better—a couple of ice-cold beers. Goddamn Prohibition. I think I hate the Drys worse than the Dagos.

In the bottom of the fifth Ruth whipsaws a speedball high into the spring sky. For a moment it hovers like a second moon. Then it descends swiftly and lands with a plonk against a right-field seat, near the Edison Cement Sign.

That swing! Eddie says. Mother of God, Sutty, the
violence
in that swing.

Willie and Eddie are lifelong fans of the Brooklyn Robins, but they can’t deny that this Ruth fella is the genuine article. As Ruth saunters around third base, Willie and Eddie stand and respectfully applaud. They’re close enough to see the seams in Ruth’s socks, the stains in his flannel jersey, the pores in his nose. Willie can’t take his eyes off that nose. It’s wider than Willie’s, double wide, which makes Willie double fond of Ruth.

The crowd is quieting down, settling back into their seats. Wally Pipp is striding to the plate. Willie feels a hard tap on his shoulder. Leaning over him are two Ruth-size men.

You Sutton?

Sutton who?

This Wilson?

And who might you be?

Come with us.

Where to?

We’ll ask the questions, Skeezix.

Look, mister, we paid good money for these seats.

You wouldn’t know good money if it bit you on the ass.

Who are you to be saying—?

The men grab Willie by the lapels and lift him out of his seat. They do the same with Eddie. Fans gawk. Photographers kneeling around home plate turn and look to see what the commotion is about. Pipp calls time, watches as the men push Willie and Eddie up the ramp. Holding on to his box of Cracker Jacks, Willie reaches into his pocket, palms Bess’s diamond ring, then digs into the Cracker Jacks as if for one more handful—and stuffs the ring deep down in the box.

Just outside Gate 4, before the men throw him into the backseat of their car, Willie tosses the box in the trash.

Sutton stands before Gate 4. They ruined it, he says
.

I was going to mention, Reporter says. While you were away, they remodeled
.

You say remodeled, I say ruined
.

It was old
.

It was younger than me
.

Photographer shoots the façade, the flags along the upper deck. You know the Yankees aren’t playing today, right, Willie?

Sutton gives him a cool stare
.

Just checking, Photographer says under his breath. But since every place we visit is totally changed, and since all of New York is totally and completely different on a subatomic level, what’s the point of all this driving around?

I’m totally changed too, Sutton says. On a subatomic level. But I’m still me
.

Photographer and Sutton look at each other, like strangers on a subway, then look at Reporter
.

Every generation, Reporter says, thinks the world used to be a better place
.

Every generation is right, Sutton says
.

Reporter flips his notebook to a clean page. So, Mr. Sutton, what happened here at the stadium?

This is where Eddie and I got pinched after our first bank robbery. Life was about to change—to end, really. But when the Pinkertons grabbed us here, and drove us downtown, you know what was on Eddie’s mind? Ruth. He kept talking about what Ruth would do his next time at bat. The jig was up and Eddie was still thinking about a baseball game
.

Didn’t cops call you the Babe Ruth of Bank Robbers?

That was later. Jesus was Eddie sore about missing the rest of that game. He kept talking about how much we paid for those seats. The cops at the jailhouse had the game on the radio, and every time the crowd cheered, Eddie would moan. He didn’t get it. I guess I didn’t either. I was thinking about that ring
.

What ring?

I chucked it in the trash right there. It was a miracle those Pinkertons didn’t see me do it
.

Mr. Sutton—what ring?

A diamond ring. I was going to give it to Bess. If I ever got the chance
.

Were you still in touch with her?

Nah, she was married by then
.

To whom?

Some rich guy. In case she was ever unmarried again, I wanted to be ready. With a nice big diamond ring. But the ring was from a job I’d pulled with Doc, meaning it was evidence, so I had to ditch it
.

Photographer points to the overflowing trash cans. So many garbage strikes since then, he says, maybe it’s still here
.

Sutton turns his back to Reporter and Photographer, looks into the breast pocket of his suit. The white envelope. He closes his eyes. Over his shoulder he says:

Bottom line, I shouldn’t have been thinking about rings, or Bess, or anything but my legal situation. Clearly my head was up my ass. I was too cocky
.

He turns again, faces Reporter. You have a girl?

Yes
.

You love her?

Well—

That’s a no
.

Wait—

Too late. I’m marking you down for no
.

It’s not that simple, Mr. Sutton
.

It is kid. Life’s complicated, love isn’t. If you need to think about it for one half second, you’re not in love
.

She treats him like shit, Photographer says. I’ve been telling him he needs to break it off. He thinks he can’t do any better. He has no confidence
.

Oh kid, it’s
all
about confidence. That’s the whole shebang right there. Whatever you do, do it with your nuts. That’s how Ruth swung a bat—with his nuts. Court a girl, rob a bank, brush your teeth, do it with and from your God-given nuts, or don’t do it at all
.

Photographer puts his camera inches from Sutton’s face, shoots him with Gate 4 in the background. Audacity, audacity, audacity, he says
.

Sutton lifts his chin. What?

Che Guevara said that
.

Audacity, eh? I like it
.

Reporter frowns. But, Mr. Sutton, you just said you had too much audacity here the day you were arrested. You were too cocky. Isn’t that a contradiction?

Is it?

Willie and Eddie are shackled together, loaded onto a train. September 1923. Neither speaks as the train rumbles up the Hudson. Each stares out the window at the russet and gold hills, the trees wavering in the mirror of the river. The way the gold leaves sparkle in the blue water—Willie thinks of Bess. He wonders if he’ll ever see her again. It doesn’t look promising.

He wonders if she read about the trial. It was in all the papers, partly because he and Eddie were able to afford a top lawyer. But Clarence Darrow couldn’t have gotten them off. The Pinkertons had them dead to rights. Brought in quietly by First National, the Pinks had no trouble tracing the oxygen tanks. Though Willie and Eddie used aliases when they made the purchase, the Pinks showed the salesman a book of mug shots—local boys convicted of breaking and entering. The salesman fingered Willie, the Pinks staked out Willie’s apartment, tailed him to Yankee Stadium. After the arrests they searched Willie’s apartment. Then Eddie’s. In a wastebasket at Eddie’s they found the receipt for the tanks. Open, shut.

Willie and Eddie didn’t steal any money, but they broke into a bank and their intent was clear. A botched bank robbery is still a bank robbery, the judge said. Five to ten years. Sing Sing.

During the forty-mile ride Eddie stares at the river and speaks only once:

Bet they got a lot of Dagos in Sing Sing.

He and Willie had both hoped for one small silver lining. A reunion with Happy. But their lawyer checked and found that Happy was released from Sing Sing six months ago. No one’s heard from him since.

A truck takes Willie and Eddie from the train station through the front gate of Sing Sing. When Willie sees those soaring walls, those black-uniformed guards holding black batons and black Thompson submachine guns, his mouth goes dry. This isn’t Raymond Street. This is real live hard-ass prison. He might not be able to take it.

Just as the gate swings open, the prison begins a routine test of Big Ben, the deafening siren that sounds whenever there’s an escape attempt or riot. Big Ben can be heard for miles, up and down the river, alerting people in nearby villages to stay indoors, savage convicts are on the loose. Within the prison walls it makes men clap their hands over their ears, pray for silence. As Big Ben cleaves the air, as guards strip-search Willie and Eddie, and shave their heads, and spread their ass cheeks, Willie turns. Eddie, bent over a chair, meets his gaze for one long moment—and winks.

One wink. The slow closing of one eye. Years later it will seem impossible to Willie that it could have made such a difference. But in those first days at Sing Sing, those pivotal moments when every man adjusts to his new reality or loses his mind, Willie lies in his seven-by-three cell, beside the bucket filled with disinfectant that serves as his toilet and washbasin, and listens to the thousand men above and below, cursing and crying and pleading with God, and he remembers Eddie’s wink, and the quiet center of his mind holds.

After one week Willie and Eddie are brought to meet the warden, though they already know what he looks like. Warden Lawes is a celebrity, every bit as famous as Harding or Ruth. With his oddly perfect name, his raptor eyes, he’s become a symbol of law and order, especially to Americans alarmed by the exploding prison population. He’s written acclaimed magazine pieces and a smash bestseller about his quest to reform Sing Sing. A movie is said to be in the works.

To the outside world Lawes is a saint. Having done away with some of Sing Sing’s older, harsher punishments, he’s now sprucing up the library, organizing a prison baseball league. Inside, however, old-timers warn Willie and Eddie that Lawes is insane. Simply to demonstrate his manliness, his fearlessness, he lets a lifer with a straight razor shave him every morning. He’s also recently declared a ban on masturbation. He thinks it leads to insanity, blindness. Prisoners caught in the act are thrown into solitary. The irony is lost on Lawes.

Standing before Lawes’s desk, Willie and Eddie play stupid. They pretend to know nothing about him. They answer no sir, yes sir, and Lawes is fooled, flattered, or else just playing along. He gives them each a plum job. Eddie is assigned to the dining hall, where he’ll be able to get extra chow. Willie is designated to help Charles Chapin, Sing Sing’s most celebrated inmate. Chapin might be more famous than Lawes.