Sutton (25 page)

Sutton sir. William Francis Sutton Jr.

Photographer double-parks on Madison, just off Eighty-Sixth. Sutton looks out the window at the former home of Funck and Sons. I’ll be damned, Sutton says. It’s still there
.

What is?

I got a job with a landscaping firm in that redbrick building. Forty-two years ago. The boss sent me to Greystone, a famous estate. Terrible soil. We had to dig out and blast out truckloads of rock. I don’t know how much poop we had to mix into the topsoil
.

Sutton opens the car door, puts one foot outside. He smiles. The place was so beautiful, I begged the boss to put me on permanent. I actually got down on my knees
.

Get off your knees, Funck says. I’m not putting you on permanent.

Why not?

I don’t need you there. My man with the rupture is back.

Please sir. This is the right job for me. The grounds, the air, the owner. After prison a man needs to heal—they should send prisoners straight to the hospital—and Greystone is a place where I can do just that.

Heal on your own time.

Willie doffs his cap. If that’s how you feel sir.

It is.

Willie gets off his knees, walks toward the door. So long, Funck. I hope the missus doesn’t make too much trouble.

So long … Wait. Why trouble?

When I shoot her a wire—relating our conversation about Chapin? When I tell her that her husband thinks it’s a swell idea to blast a wife in her sleep?

Funck turns the color of a poinsettia. You wouldn’t.

Willie leans against the door’s frosted panel. Wouldn’t I?

She won’t believe.

Probably not. She sounds like a very sweet woman.

He’s laughing, Photographer says to Reporter. He’s just standing in the middle of Madison Avenue, laughing
.

Mr. Sutton, why are you laughing? And would you please be careful—there are cars coming
.

I was remembering how I got the boss to put me on full-time at Greystone. Ah boys, score one for Willie. Finally things were turning around for me. A job I loved. A job I was good at. Money in my pocket. I started getting in shape, putting on weight, and on my day off I’d spend hours and hours at the library. Reading. What bliss
.

Reading what?

Everything
.

Photographer holds the map against the wind. Oh brother, holy shit, is that why our next stop is—the library? Seriously? Willie—we’re going to the library?

The first chance Willie gets, he pulls newspapers, magazines, business journals, everything he can find in the library about Mr. Untermyer. He’s shocked by what he learns. Willie and Eddie thought they were pretty slick, breaking into a bank, but Mr. Untermyer
breaks up
banks. As a special prosecutor, Mr. Untermyer became the all-time bank buster, the scourge of America’s most notorious robber barons. During tense hearings before the United States Congress, hearings that riveted the nation, Mr. Untermyer, a fresh orchid from Greystone in his lapel, called one banker after another to the stand and exposed them as conspirators, liars, thieves. Over a span of several years, through a secret money trust, the bankers had hijacked the financial system. They’d appointed one another to the boards of their various banks and corporations, essentially merging them all into one secret superbank. Mr. Untermyer had the audacity to expose this skulduggery, to publicly interrogate the perpetrators, who happened to be the richest men in America, among them J. P. Morgan and one of the Rockfellers. What was more audacious to Morgan than the questioning itself—Untermyer was a Jew.

The hearings didn’t end in criminal charges, but they did ruin Morgan’s health. Shaken, humiliated, he fled to Europe. Weeks later, in a lavish hotel suite in Rome, he breathed his last. His heirs and partners openly blamed Mr. Untermyer. While Mr. Untermyer never accepted the blame, he never denied it either.

Whenever Willie sees Mr. Untermyer on the grounds of Greystone, he tries to catch his eye. Now and then Mr. Untermyer comes over and chats. Willie can’t believe a man so important, a man busy slaying Morgans and shaming Rockefellers, makes time. But Mr. Untermyer seems amused by Willie, intrigued by his stories about Irish Town, Sing Sing, Dannemora, Eddie. When Willie runs out of real stories, he makes up new ones. In the middle of just such a story, a querulous look comes over Mr. Untermyer. Willie, he says, I think you’re a modern seanchaí.

Willie, kneeling in the shadow of the Temple of Love, planting delphiniums, looks up. He can see the nymphs dancing behind Mr. Untermyer. My grandfather used to talk about the seanchaí sir.

I don’t doubt it. Your grandfather was from Ireland of course.

Yes sir.

The seanchaí was a holy man in Ireland. He made the long nights shorter. And he didn’t always care if his stories were true.

Is that bad?

Not necessarily. Truth has its place. In a courtroom, certainly. A boardroom. But in a story? I don’t know. I think truth is in the listener. Truth is something the listener bestows on a story—or not. Though I wouldn’t recommend you try that argument on a wife or girlfriend.

Willie laughs. No sir. Is it true sir that you planted these gardens for your wife?

It is. Every time they bloom, I grieve anew.

Yes sir. Sorry sir.

Mr. Untermyer clears his throat. May I ask you something, Willie?

Sure thing.

What’s it like to rob a bank?

Willie starts to answer. He sees the look on Mr. Untermyer’s face, stops himself. He wipes his brow, stabs his spade into the ground.

Honestly, Mr. Untermyer, it’s a job. Other bank robbers in the joint, they like to say how thrilling it is to rob a bank, how nothing makes a man feel more alive. That’s the bunk sir. The idea is to do it well, do it fast, get home safe.

Mr. Untermyer smoothes his mustache. I thought you might say that.

May I ask you something sir?

Of course.

What’s it like to make a Rockefeller squirm?

Mr. Untermyer smiles upriver. Nothing makes a man feel more alive, he says, then walks away.

Sutton takes one last look at the former home of Funck and Sons. Okay, he says. Let’s scram. Next stop: New York Public Library, Central Branch
.

Photographer shakes his head. Honestly, Willie, I can’t think of anything less visually compelling than the damn library
.

Visually compelling
.

Yeah. I’d rather shoot you talking to some more prostitute ghosts. I mean, a bank robber in front of a library? I don’t see the point, brother. And my editor won’t either—unless you happened to hit the library back in the twenties
.

I would have, if they’d kept books locked up the way they did money
.

Also, while we’re at it, I’ve got no idea why we needed to come here
.

I wanted to tell you about Mr. Untermyer, the owner of Greystone. He was an American Cicero
.

You couldn’t tell us about him at Yankee Stadium?

I wouldn’t have remembered everything without seeing this building. I wouldn’t have remembered that Mr. Untermyer killed J. P. Morgan. I think he secretly wished he’d offed Rockefeller too
.

Photographer squints at Reporter. Reporter shrugs. They all get in the car
.

Sutton taps Photographer. You’d have loved Mr. Untermyer kid. He really spoke your language. Boy did he hate banks. He told me once that the Founding Fathers worried more about banks than they worried about the British. They knew that banks had been causing chaos, bringing empires to their knees, for centuries, all in the name of free enterprise
.

Photographer snorts. Willie, are you—a Communist?

Fuck no kid. They asked that question once of Capone and he went crazy, almost brained somebody, and I know how he felt. Commie? I don’t want to give ninety percent of my nick to the government. Mark me down as a believer in small government. Mark me down as a believer in free enterprise. But when a few greedy bastards make up the rules as they go, that aint free enterprise. It’s a grift
.

You sound at least a little socialist
.

What’s your political bent kid?

I’m a revolutionary, Photographer says
.

Sutton laughs. Of course you are. That’s a grift too. Did you boys know that old man Morgan was obsessed with his nose? It was covered with carbuncles, pockmarks, veins—it was the bane of his existence. He couldn’t stand having his picture taken. If he’d seen you coming with your camera he’d have run away like a little sissy. A camera scared Morgan more than Communism
.

Photographer laughs, pulls into traffic. J. P. Morgan running away from me. Now that I’d like to see
.

They begin to head downtown. Photographer lines up Sutton in the rearview:

Hey Willie—you told us Untermyer hated banks. But I haven’t heard you say that you did
.

Haven’t you?

Sutton looks out the window at the sky. Look, he says. The moon is rising
.

THIRTEEN

Willie in the reading room, his head under one of the brass lamps. July 1929. He scans the headlines in the
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
.

COOLIDGE SUMS UP HIS ACHIEVEMENTS

FORMER SLAVE DIES AT 109

BESSIE ENDNER HAS HUSBAND ARRESTED

The light from the brass lamp grows blurry. Willie’s line of vision narrows. He brings the newspaper closer to his face, reads as fast as he can, but the words don’t make sense. He has to read the first paragraph four times before it sinks in.

Bessie Endner is again in trouble. She tells a judge that her husband has mistreated her, threatened her life …

Next comes the boilerplate reference to her criminal past.
The pretty young woman, who astounded friends and the public by running off …

Then a bit of reporter snark.
She tells a judge that shortly after she married she found that life instead of roses was a mere hail of ripe chestnut burrs
.

Finally the newspaper lists her new address, where she’s said to be hiding from her abusive husband—15 Scoville Walk, Coney Island.

Willie staggers home to his flop. He takes a tepid shower, the only kind possible in the communal bathroom, shaves his jaws carefully. Combs Wildroot into his hair. Splashes lavender water on his cheeks. Puts on his release suit. Lights out for the subway to Coney Island.

Stepping off the train he realizes he’s a wreck. Too emotional, too keyed up to see Bess right now. In this state he’ll scare her. He walks up and down the beach, taking long draughts of sea air. He stops at Luna Park, stands outside the front gate and relives that triple date of a decade ago. Eddie and Happy. First and Second Girlfriends. He lingers beneath the giant heart-shaped sign above the park entrance.
THE HEART OF CONEY ISLAND
. He watches the moon slowly rise out of the sea.

He walks to the brand-new Half Moon Hotel, at the far end of Coney Island, its golden dome shining in the twilight. He sits in the lobby, watching people come and go. Most seem to be honeymooners. They stroll arm in arm through the lobby, up to their rooms, out to the beach. He can’t bear it. He flees the hotel, walks until he finds a dark, divey little speak. Two whiskeys, bang bang, now he’s ready. He strides up Mermaid Avenue, hangs a right on Twenty-Fourth, left on Surf, turns down Scoville, comes to Number 15. A salt-stained bungalow. The wind is picking up. It blows sand into his eyes. He looks once more at the moon. At the library he read an article that said there’s no wind on the moon.

He knocks on the screen door.

No answer.

He opens the screen door, knocks on the main door.

No answer.

He closes the screen door, backs away. He turns, walks slowly up Scoville. At the corner he hears his name in the wind.

Oh Willie.

He wheels. She’s fifty feet away. He takes one step toward her, she takes two toward him. She’s wearing a sundress, green and blue, form-fitting, like a tail fin. She looks as if she rode the moon out of the sea. They both break into a run, colliding in the middle of the street. The feel of her taut body under the thin sundress—Willie has never known such desire. He didn’t know that he was prey to such desire.

He sets her on the ground, looks at her.

Ah Bess. No.

Her eye is black, her lip bloodied.

Sutton touches the base of the lion outside the New York Public Library, stares at the lion on the other side of the entrance. I can never remember which one is called Patience, which one is called Fortitude
.

I didn’t even know they had names, Photographer says
.

You know who named them kid? Mayor LaGuardia. During the Depression. He said that’s what New Yorkers would need to survive the hard times—Patience and Fortitude
.

Photographer tries to shoot Sutton from the sidewalk. A line of tourists gets in the way. They’re speaking what sounds like German. They notice Photographer shooting Sutton and assume Sutton must be famous, so they take out their cameras. Reporter and Photographer yell at them, shoo them away like pigeons
.

No pictures! Ours! Exclusive!

Sutton watches the Germans scatter. He laughs. Now he turns to the lion. The old lion, he says. The old lion perisheth for lack of prey
.

Say something, Willie?

No. Mustve been the lion
.

Mr. Sutton, what happened here? In what way was this a—what did you call it? Crossroads?

This is where Willie ran out of patience and fortitude
.

They walk along the ocean. Bess tells Willie that Eddie was right, her father did force her into the marriage. Heavily in debt, her father faced losing his shipyard, so he found a rich family with a dissolute bachelor son.