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Sutton
J. R. Moehringer
One of the most notorious criminals in American history is brought blazing back to life by a master storyteller.Willie Sutton was born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the twentieth century, and came of age at a time when banks were out of controlOver three decades, from Prohibition through the Great Depression, from the age of Al Capone until the reign of Murder Inc., police called Sutton one of the most dangerous men in New York, and the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted list. But the public loved him. He never fired a shot, after all, and his victims were merely those bloodsucking banks.Based on extensive research, Sutton is the moving story of an enigmatic man, an arch criminal driven by love, forever seeking the beautiful woman who led him into a life of crime, then broke his heart and disappeared.



J.R. MOEHRINGER
Sutton



About the Book
One of the most notorious criminals in American history is brought blazing back to life by a master storyteller.
Willie Sutton was born in the squalid Irish slums of Brooklyn, in the first year of the twentieth century, and came of age at a time when banks were out of control.
Over three decades, from Prohibition through the Great Depression, from the age of Al Capone until the reign of Murder Inc., police called Sutton one of the most dangerous men in New York, and the FBI put him on its first-ever Most Wanted list. But the public loved him. He never fired a shot, after all, and his victims were merely those bloodsucking banks.
Based on extensive research, Sutton is the moving story of an enigmatic man, an arch criminal driven by love, forever seeking the beautiful woman who led him into a life of crime, then broke his heart.

About the Author
J.R. Moehringer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing in 2000, is a former national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times. Author of the bestselling memoir, The Tender Bar, he is also the co-author of Open by Andre Agassi.
For Roger and Sloan Barnett,
with love and gratitude

AUTHOR’S NOTE
After spending half his life in prison, off and on, Willie Sutton was set free for good on Christmas Eve, 1969. His sudden emergence from Attica Correctional Facility sparked a media frenzy. Newspapers, magazines, television networks, talk shows – everyone wanted an interview with the most elusive and prolific bank robber in American history.
Sutton granted only one. He spent the entire next day with one newspaper reporter and one still photographer, driving around New York City, visiting the scenes of his most famous heists and other points of interest in his remarkable life.
The resulting article, however, was strangely cursory, with several errors – or lies – and few real revelations.
Sadly, Sutton and the reporter and the photographer are all gone, so what happened among them that Christmas, and what happened to Sutton during the preceding sixty-eight years, is anyone’s guess.
This book is my guess.
But it’s also my wish.
I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.
—LEWIS CARROLL,
“THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK”
Table of Contents
Title Page (#ua9aee487-bc90-5194-9342-0a8178da1b12)
About the Book (#u0883c304-dc72-5483-b533-4a442f3da3df)
About the Author (#ucdf15aee-55cb-5883-af68-3b7182d4f8ad)
Dedication (#u844e45fe-e1d5-56ff-93ad-f7479db769d4)
Author’s Note (#u67c9202f-5b98-5b80-9fd9-22dfc573fbb6)
Epigraph (#u06b81885-c76c-5c00-a1d5-612c1b45ecdf)
Part One (#u19fa3479-9724-51d9-a5d7-58459a51433a)
Chapter One (#u38e8a362-192d-5361-af99-395d3c9b7585)
Chapter Two (#u3d017803-11a9-516e-a4a1-8b60051037fc)
Chapter Three (#u9d6ead27-66c9-5720-808c-0ef47eaa8f00)
Chapter Four (#u78a132f8-7c0e-5366-acec-5a2aabfb5eb3)
Chapter Five (#u4d34aac7-56bb-58e5-b20c-cb2317948b84)
Chapter Six (#u098ef538-ed28-5788-a5c4-7d7067920002)
Chapter Seven (#u3f2d443f-cca8-52c1-89df-2ec95d6f3b54)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Part Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-two (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twenty-four (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgment (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by J.R. Moehringer (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PART ONE
Thus in the beginning all the world was America … for no such thing as money was anywhere known.
JOHN LOCKE, SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT

ONE
HE’S WRITING WHEN THEY COME FOR HIM.
He’s sitting at his metal desk, bent over a yellow legal pad, talking to himself, and to her—as always, to her. So he doesn’t notice them standing at his door. Until they run their batons along the bars.
He looks up, adjusts his large scuffed eyeglasses, the bridge mended many times with Scotch tape. Two guards, side by side, the left one fat and soft and pale, as if made from Crisco, the right one tall and scrawny and with a birthmark like a penny on his right cheek.
Left Guard hitches up his belt. On your feet, Sutton. Admin wants you.
Sutton stands.
Right Guard points his baton. What the? You crying, Sutton?
No sir.
Don’t you lie to me, Sutton. I can see you been crying.
Sutton touches his cheek. His fingers come away wet. I didn’t know I was crying sir.
Right Guard waves his baton at the legal pad. What’s that?
Nothing sir.
He asked you what is it, Left Guard says.
Sutton feels his bum leg starting to buckle. He grits his teeth at the pain. My novel sir.
They look around his book-filled cell. He follows their eyes. It’s never good when the guards look around your cell. They can always find something if they have a mind to. They scowl at the books along the floor, the books along the metal cabinet, the books along the cold-water basin. Sutton’s is the only cell at Attica filled with copies of Dante, Plato, Shakespeare, Freud. No, they confiscated his Freud. Prisoners aren’t allowed to have psychology books. The warden thinks they’ll try to hypnotize each other.
Right Guard smirks. He gives Left Guard a nudge—get ready. Novel, eh? What’s it about?
Just—you know. Life sir.
What the hell does an old jailbird know about life?
Sutton shrugs. That’s true sir. But what does anyone know?
WORD IS LEAKING OUT. BY NOON A DOZEN PRINT REPORTERS HAVE ALREADY arrived and they’re huddled at the front entrance, stomping their feet, blowing on their hands. One of them says he just heard—snow on the way. Lots of it. Nine inches at least.
They all groan.
Too cold to snow, says the veteran in the group, an old wire service warhorse in suspenders and black orthopedic shoes. He’s been with UPI since the Scopes trial. He blows a gob of spit onto the frozen ground and scowls up at the clouds, then at the main guard tower, which looks to some like the new Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland.
Too cold to stand out here, says the reporter from the New York Post. He mumbles something disparaging about the warden, who’s refused three times to let the media inside the prison. The reporters could be drinking hot coffee right now. They could be using the phones, making last-minute plans for Christmas. Instead the warden is trying to prove some kind of point. Why, they all ask, why?
Because the warden’s a prick, says the reporter from Time, that’s why.
The reporter from Look holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. Give a bureaucrat this much power, he says, and watch out. Stand back.
Not just bureaucrats, says the reporter from The New York Times. All bosses eventually become fascists. Human nature.
The reporters trade horror stories about their bosses, their editors, the miserable dimwits who gave them this god-awful assignment. There’s a brand-new journalistic term, appropriated just this year from the war in Asia, frequently applied to assignments like this, assignments where you wait with the herd, usually outdoors, exposed to the elements, knowing full well you’re not going to get anything good, certainly not anything the rest of the herd won’t get. The term is clusterfuck. Every reporter gets caught in a clusterfuck now and then, it’s part of the job, but a clusterfuck on Christmas Eve? Outside Attica Correctional Facility? Not cool, says the reporter from the Village Voice. Not cool.
The reporters feel especially hostile toward that boss of all bosses, Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He of the Buddy Holly glasses and the chronic indecision. Governor Hamlet, says the reporter from UPI, smirking at the walls. Is he going to do this thing or not?
He yells at Sleeping Beauty’s Castle: Shit or get off the pot, Nelson! Defecate or abdicate!
The reporters nod, grumble, nod. Like the prisoners on the other side of this thirty-foot wall, they grow restless. The prisoners want out, the reporters want in, and both groups blame the Man. Cold, tired, angry, ostracized by society, both groups are close to rioting. Both fail to notice the beautiful moon slowly rising above the prison.
It’s full.
THE GUARDS LEAD SUTTON FROM HIS CELL IN D BLOCK THROUGH A barred door, down a tunnel and into Attica’s central checkpoint—what prisoners call Times Square—which leads to all cell blocks and offices. From Times Square the guards take Sutton down to the deputy warden’s office. It’s the second time this month that Sutton has been called before the dep. Last week it was to learn that his parole request was denied—a devastating blow. Sutton and his lawyers had been so very confident. They’d won support from prominent judges, discovered loopholes in his convictions, collected letters from doctors vouching that Sutton was close to death. But the three-man parole board simply said no.
The dep is seated at his desk. He doesn’t bother looking up. Hello, Willie.
Hello sir.
Looks like we’re a go for liftoff.
Sir?
The dep waves a hand over the papers strewn across his desk. These are your walking papers. You’re being let out.
Sutton blinks, massages his leg. Let—out? By who sir?
The dep looks up, sighs. Head of corrections. Or Rockefeller. Or both. Albany hasn’t decided how they want to sell this. The governor, being an ex-banker, isn’t sure he wants to put his name on it. But the head of corrections doesn’t want to overrule the parole board. Either way it looks like they’re letting you walk.
Walk sir? Why sir?
Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care.
When sir?
Tonight. If the phone will stop ringing and reporters will stop hounding me to let them turn my prison into their private rec room. If I can get these goddamn forms filled out.
Sutton stares at the dep. Then at the guards. Are they joking? They look serious.
The dep turns back to his papers. Godspeed, Willie.
The guards walk Sutton down to the prison tailor. Every man released from a New York State prison gets a release suit, a tradition that goes back at least a century. The last time Sutton got measured for a release suit, Calvin Coolidge was president.
Sutton stands before the tailor’s three-way mirror. A shock. He hasn’t stood before many mirrors in recent years and he can’t believe what he sees. That’s his round face, that’s his slicked gray hair, that’s his hated nose—too big, too broad, with different-size nostrils—and that’s the same large red bump on his eyelid, mentioned in every police report and FBI flyer since shortly after World War I. But that’s not him—it can’t be. Sutton has always prided himself on projecting a certain swagger, even in handcuffs. He’s always managed to look dapper, suave, even in prison grays. Now, sixty-eight years old, he sees in the three-way mirror that all the swagger, all the dapper and suave are gone. He’s a baggy-eyed stick figure. He looks like Felix the Cat. Even the pencil-thin mustache, once a source of pride, looks like the cartoon cat’s whiskers.
The tailor stands beside Sutton, wearing a green tape measure around his neck. An old Italian from the Bronx, with two front teeth the size of thimbles, he shakes a handful of buttons and coins in his pocket as he talks.
So they’re letting you out, Willie.
Looks like.
How long you been here?
Seventeen years.
How long since you had a new suit of clothes?
Oh. Twenty years. In the old days, when I was flush, I’d get all my suits custom-made. Silk shirts too. D’Andrea Brothers.
He still remembers the address: 587 Fifth Avenue. And the phone number. Murray Hill 5-5332.
Sure, Tailor says, D’Andrea, they did beautiful work. I still got one of their tuxes. Step up on the block.
Sutton steps up, grunts. A suit, he says. Jesus, I thought the next thing I’d be measured for would be a shroud.
I don’t do shrouds, Tailor says. No one gets to see your work.
Sutton frowns at the three reflected Tailors. It’s not enough to do nice work? People have to see it?
Tailor spreads his tape measure across Sutton’s shoulders, down his arm. Show me an artist, he says, who doesn’t want praise.
Sutton nods. I used to feel that way about my bank jobs.
Tailor looks at the triptych of reflected Suttons, winks at the middle one. He stretches the tape measure down Sutton’s bum leg. Inseam thirty, he announces. Jacket thirty-eight short.
I was a forty reg when I came in this joint. I ought to sue.
Tailor laughs softly, coughs. What color you want, Willie?
Anything but gray.
Black then. I’m glad they’re letting you out, Willie. You’ve paid your debt.
Forgive us our debts, Willie says, as we forgive our debtors.
Tailor crosses himself.
That from your novel? Right Guard asks.
Sutton and Tailor look at each other.
Tailor points a finger gun at Sutton. Merry Christmas, Willie.
Same to you, friend.
Sutton points a finger gun at Tailor, cocks the thumb hammer. Bang.
THE REPORTERS TALK ABOUT SEX AND MONEY AND CURRENT EVENTS. Altamont, that freaky concert where those four drugged-out hippies died—who’s to blame? Mick Jagger? The Hells Angels? Then they gossip about their more successful colleagues, starting with Norman Mailer. Not only is Mailer running for mayor of New York, but he just got one million dollars to write a book about the moon landing. Mailer—the guy writes history as fiction, fiction as history, and inserts himself into all of it. He plays by his own rules while his rule-bound colleagues get sent to Attica to freeze their balls off. Fuck Mailer, they all agree.
And fuck the moon.
They blow on their hands, pull up their collars, make bets about whether or not the warden will ever be publicly exposed as a cross-dresser. Also, they bet on which will happen first—Sutton walks or Sutton croaks. The reporter from the New York Post says he hears Sutton’s not just knocking at death’s door, he’s ringing the bell, wiping his feet on the welcome mat. The reporter from Newsday says the artery in Sutton’s leg is clogged beyond repair—a doctor who plays racquetball with the reporter’s brother-in-law told him so. The reporter from Look says he heard from a cop friend in the Bronx that Sutton still has loot stashed all over the city. Prison officials are going to free Sutton and then the cops are going to follow him to the money.
That’s one way to solve the budget crisis, says the reporter from the Albany Times Union.
The reporters share what they know about Sutton, pass around facts and stories like cold provisions that will have to get them through the night. What they haven’t read, or seen on TV, they’ve heard from their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Sutton is the first multigeneration bank robber in history, the first ever to build a lengthy career—it spans four decades. In his heyday Sutton was the face of American crime, one of a handful of men to make the leap from public enemy to folk hero. Smarter than Machine Gun Kelly, saner than Pretty Boy Floyd, more likable than Legs Diamond, more peaceable than Dutch Schultz, more romantic than Bonnie and Clyde, Sutton saw bank robbery as high art and went about it with an artist’s single-minded zeal. He believed in study, planning, hard work. And yet he was also creative, an innovator, and like the greatest artists he proved to be a tenacious survivor. He escaped three maximum-security prisons, eluded cops and FBI agents for years. He was Henry Ford by way of John Dillinger—with dashes of Houdini and Picasso and Rasputin. The reporters know all about Sutton’s stylish clothes, his impish smile, his love of good books, the glint of devilment in his bright blue eyes, so blue that the FBI once described them in bulletins as azure. It’s the rare bank robber who moves the FBI to such lyricism.
What the reporters don’t know, what they and most Americans have always wanted to know, is whether or not Sutton, who was celebrated for being nonviolent, had anything to do with the brutal gangland murder of Arnold Schuster. A fresh-faced twenty-four-year-old from Brooklyn, a baseball-loving veteran of the Coast Guard, Schuster caught the wrong subway one afternoon and found himself face-to-face with Sutton, the most wanted man in America at the time. Three weeks later Schuster was dead, and his unsolved murder might be the most tantalizing cold case in New York City history. It’s definitely the most tantalizing part of the Sutton legend.
THE GUARDS MARCH SUTTON BACK TO ADMIN. A CLERK CUTS HIM TWO checks. One for $146, salary for seventeen years at various prison jobs, minus taxes. Another for $40, the cost of a bus ticket to Manhattan. Every released prisoner gets bus fare to Manhattan. Sutton takes the checks—this is really happening. His heart begins to throb. His leg too. They’re throbbing at each other, like the male and female leads in an Italian opera.
The guards march him back to his cell. You got fifteen minutes, they tell him, handing him a shopping bag.
He stands in the middle of the cell, his eight-by-six home for the last seventeen years. Is it possible that he won’t sleep here tonight? That he’ll sleep in a soft bed with clean sheets and a real pillow and no demented souls above and below him howling and cursing and pleading with impotence and fury? The sound of men in cages—nothing can compare. He sets the shopping bag on the desk and carefully packs the manuscript of his novel. Then the spiral notebooks from his creative writing classes. Then his copies of Dante, Shakespeare, Plato. Then Kerouac. Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live. A line that saved Sutton on many long nights. Then the dictionary of quotations, which contains the most famous line ever spoken by America’s most famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, a.k.a. Slick Willie, a.k.a. Willie the Actor.
Carefully, tenderly, he packs the Ezra Pound. Now you will come out of a confusion of people. And the Tennyson. Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone. He says the lines under his breath. His eyes mist. They always do. Finally he packs the yellow legal pad, the one on which he was writing when the guards came for him. Not his novel, which he recently finished, but a suicide note, the one he began composing an hour after the parole board’s rejection. So often, he thinks, that’s how it happens. Death stands at your door, hitches up its pants, points its baton at you—then hands you a pardon.
Once Sutton’s cell is packed, the dep lets him make a few phone calls. First he dials his lawyer, Katherine. She’s incoherent with joy.
We did it, Willie. We did it!
How did we do it, Katherine?
They got tired of fighting us. It’s Christmas, Willie, and they were just tired. It was easier to give up.
I know how they felt, Katherine.
And the newspapers certainly helped, Willie. The newspapers were on your side.
Which is why Katherine’s cut a deal with one of the biggest newspapers. She mentions which one, but Sutton’s mind is racing, the name doesn’t register. The newspaper is going to whisk Sutton aboard its private plane to Manhattan, put him up at a hotel, and in exchange he’ll give them his exclusive story.
Unfortunately, Katherine adds, that means you’ll have to spend Christmas Day with a reporter instead of family. Is that okay?
Sutton thinks of his family. He hasn’t spoken to them in years. He thinks of reporters—he hasn’t spoken to them ever. He doesn’t like reporters. Still, this is no time to make waves.
That’ll be fine, Katherine.
Now, do you know anyone who can pick you up outside the prison and drive you to the airport?
I’ll find someone.
He hangs up, dials Donald, who answers on the tenth ring.
Donald? It’s Willie.
Who’s this?
Willie. What are you doing?
Oh. Hey. Drinking a beer, getting ready to watch The Flying Nun.
Listen. It seems they’re letting me out tonight.
They’re letting you out, or you’re letting yourself out?
It’s legit, Donald. They’re opening the door.
Hell freezing over?
I don’t know. But the devil’s definitely wearing a sweater. Can you pick me up at the front gate?
Near the Sleeping Beauty thing?
Yeah.
Of course.
Sutton asks Donald if he can bring him a few items.
Anything, Donald says. Name it.
A TV VAN FROM BUFFALO ROARS UP TO THE GATE. A TV REPORTER JUMPS out, fusses with his microphone. He’s wearing a two-hundred-dollar suit, a camel-hair topcoat, gray leather gloves, silver cuff links. The print reporters elbow each other. Cuff links—have you ever?
The TV reporter strolls up to the print reporters and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas. Same to you, they mumble. Then silence.
Silent Night, the TV reporter says.
No one laughs.
The reporter from Newsweek asks the TV reporter if he read Pete Hamill in this morning’s Post. Hamill’s eloquent apologia for Sutton, his plea for Sutton’s release, addressed as a letter to the governor, might be the reason they’re all here. Hamill urged Rockefeller to be fair. If Willie Sutton had been a GE board member or a former water commissioner, instead of the son of an Irish blacksmith, he would be on the street now.
The TV reporter stiffens. He knows the print guys think he doesn’t read—can’t read. Yeah, he says, I thought Hamill nailed it. Especially his line about banks. There are some of us today, looking at the mortgage interest rates, who feel that it is the banks that are sticking us up. And I got a lump in my throat at that bit about Sutton reuniting with a lost love. Willie Sutton should be able to sit and watch the ducks in Prospect Park one more time, or go to Nathan’s for a hot dog, or call up some old girl for a drink.
This sets off a debate. Does Sutton actually deserve to be free? He’s a thug, says the Newsday reporter—why all the adulation?
Because he’s a god in parts of Brooklyn, says the Post reporter. Just look at this crowd.
There are now more than two dozen reporters and another two dozen civilians—crime buffs, police radio monitors, curiosity seekers. Freaks. Ghouls.
But again, says the Newsday reporter, I ask you—why?
Because Sutton robbed banks, the TV reporter says, and who the hell has a kind word to say for banks? They should not only let him out, they should give him the key to the city.
What I don’t get, says the Look reporter, is why Rockefeller, a former banker, would let out a bank robber.
Rockefeller needs the Irish vote, says the Times Union reporter. You can’t get reelected in New York without the Irish vote and Sutton’s like Jimmy Walker and Michael Collins and a couple Kennedys in one big Mulligan stew.
He’s a fuckin thug, says the Newsday reporter, who may be drunk.
The TV reporter scoffs. Under his arm he’s carrying last week’s Life magazine, with Charles Manson on the cover. He holds up the magazine: Manson glares at them.
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.
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.
Seven years old, Willie sits in the kitchen watching Mother, grief-sick, at the washbasin. A small woman, wide in the hips, with wispy red hair and bleary eyes, she scrubs a piece of clothing that used to be white and never will be again. She uses a powdered detergent that smells to Willie of ripe pears and vanilla.
The name of the detergent, Fels, is everywhere—newspapers, billboards, placards in the trolley cars. Children, skipping rope, chant the Fels advertising slogan to keep rhythm. Fels—gets out—that tattle—tale gray! Meaning, without Fels, your gray collar and underpants will tell on you. Judas clothes—the idea terrifies little Willie. And yet Mother’s constant scrubbing makes no sense. A noble effort, but a waste of time, since the second you step outside, splat. The streets are filled with mud and shit, tar and soot, dust and oil.
And dead horses. They keel over from the heat, fall down from the cold, collapse from disease or neglect. Every week there’s another one lying in the gutter. If the horse belongs to a gypsy or ragpicker, it’s left where it falls. Over time it swells like a balloon, until it explodes. A sound like a cannon. Then it gives off an eye-watering stench, bringing flies, rats. Sometimes the New York City Street Cleaning Department sends a crew. Just as often the city doesn’t bother. The city treats this nub of northern Brooklyn, this wasteland between the two bridges, as a separate city, a separate nation, which it is. Some call it Vinegar Hill. Most call it Irish Town.
Everyone in Irish Town is Irish. Everyone. Most are new Irish. Their hobnailed boots and slanted tweed caps are still caked with the dust of Limerick or Dublin or Cork. Mother and Father were born in Ireland, as was Daddo, but they all came to Irish Town years ago, which gives them a certain status in the neighborhood.
The other thing that gives them status is Father’s job. Most fathers in Irish Town don’t work, and those who do drink up their wages, but Father is a blacksmith, a skilled artisan, and every Saturday he dutifully, proudly places his weekly twelve dollars on the outstretched apron of Mother. Twelve dollars. Never more, but never less.
Willie sees Father as a fantastic collection of nevers. Never misses a day of work, never touches liquor, never swears or raises a hand in anger to his wife and kids. He also never shows affection, never speaks. A word here, a word there. If that. His silence, which gives him an aura, feels connected to his work. After eleven hours of hammering and pounding and swatting the hardest thing in the world—what’s to say?
Often Willie goes with Father to the shop, a wooden shed on a big lot that smells of manure and fire. Willie watches Father, streaming with sweat, slamming his giant hammer again and again on a piece of glowing orange. With every slam, every metallic clank, Father looks—not happy, but clearer of mind. Willie feels clearer too. Other fathers are drunk, on the dole, but not his. Father isn’t God, but he’s godlike. Willie’s first hero, first mystery, Father is also his first love.
Willie thinks he’d like to be a blacksmith when he grows up. He learns that when you make a piece of metal longer, you draw it, and when you make it shorter, you upset it. He learns to pump the bellows, make the flames in the hearth swell. Father holds up a hand, signaling careful, not too much. Every other week another blacksmith shop burns to the ground. Then the smith is out of work and the family is on the street. That’s the fear, the thing that keeps Father hammering, Mother scrubbing. One bad turn—fire, illness, injury, bank panic—and the curb is your pillow.
If Father never speaks, Daddo never stops. Daddo sits in a rocking chair by the parlor window, the one with the curtains made from potato sacks, delivering an eternal monologue. He doesn’t care that Willie is the only one listening. Or doesn’t know. A few years before Willie was born, Daddo was working in a warehouse and a jet of acid spurted into his eyes. The world went dim. The hard part, he always says, was losing his job. Now all he does, all he can do, is sit around and blether.
Most often he talks about politics, stuff that goes over Willie’s head. But sometimes he tells larky stories to make his youngest grandson giggle. Stories about mermaids and witches—and little men. To hear Daddo tell it, the Old Country is overrun with them.
What do the little men do, Daddo?
They steal, Willie Boy.
Steal what?
Sheep, pigs, gold, whatever they can lay their grubby little mitts on. Ah but no one holds it against the lads. They’re just full of mischief. Bad little actors.
Do you remember the exact spot where you were born, Mr. Sutton?
Sutton points to a tan brick building, some kind of community center. Tell them Willie Boy was—here.
Was it a happy childhood, Mr. Sutton?
Yeah. Sure.
Photographer shoots Sutton in close-up, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway behind his head. The expressway was built while Sutton was in prison. God what a monstrosity, Sutton says. I didn’t think they could make Brooklyn uglier. I underestimated them.
Cool, Photographer says. Yeah, brother, right there. That’s tomorrow’s front page.
Willie’s two older brothers despise him. For as long as he can remember it’s been true, a changeless fact of life. The sun rises over Williamsburg, sets over Fulton Ferry, and his brothers wish he were dead.
Is it because he’s the baby? Is it because he’s William Junior? Is it because he spends so much time with Father at the shop? Willie doesn’t know. Whatever the reason—rivalry, jealousy, evil—the brothers are so united against him, they pose such a seamless two-headed menace, that Willie can’t tell them apart. Or doesn’t bother. He thinks of them simply as Big and Bigger.
Willie, eight, is playing jacks on the sidewalk with his friends. From nowhere Big Brother and Bigger Brother appear. Willie looks up. Both brothers hold egg creams. The sun is bracketed by their giant heads.
So feckin small, Big Brother says, glaring down at Willie.
Yeah, Bigger Brother says, snickering. Feckin runt.
Willie’s friends run away. Willie stares at his jacks and his little red ball. His brothers move a step closer, looming over him like trees. Trees that hate.
It’s embarrassin, Bigger Brother says, bein known as your brother.
Put some meat on your bones, Big Brother says. And quit bein such a sissy.
Okay, Willie says. I will.
The brothers laugh. What happened to your friends, Willie Boy?
You scared them.
The brothers pour the egg creams over Willie’s head and walk away. You scared them, they say, imitating Willie’s thin voice.
Another time they make fun of Willie’s big nose. Another time, the red bump on his eyelid. They always make sure to tease him in the streets, away from any grownups. They’re as sly as they are heartless. They remind Willie of the wolves in one of his storybooks.
When Willie is nine his brothers stop him on his way home from school. They stand directly in his path, their arms folded. Something about their faces, their body language, lets Willie know this time will be different. He knows that he’ll always remember the high blue of the sky, the purple weeds in the vacant lot on his left, the pattern of the cracks in the sidewalk as Big Brother knocks him to the ground.
Willie writhes on the sidewalk, looking up. Big Brother smirks at Bigger Brother. What are we gonna do with him?
What can we do, Brother? We’re stuck with him.
Didn’t we tell you to quit bein such a sissy, Big Brother says to Willie.
Willie lies on his back, eyes filling with tears. I’m not.
Is it liars you’re callin us?
No.
Don’t you want us to tell you when you’re doin somethin wrong?
Yeah.
That’s what big brothers are for aint it?
No. I mean yeah.
Then.
I wasn’t. Being a sissy. I promise I wasn’t.
He’s callin us liars, Big Brother says to Bigger Brother.
Grab him.
Big Brother jumps on Willie, grabs his arms.
Hey, Willie says. Come on now. Stop.
Big Brother lifts Willie off the sidewalk. He puts a knee in Willie’s back, forces him to stand straight. Then Bigger Brother punches Willie in the mouth. Okay, Willie tells himself, that was bad, that was terrible, but at least it’s over.
Then Bigger Brother punches Willie in the nose.
Willie crumples. His nose is broken.
He hugs the sidewalk, watches his blood mix with the dirt and turn to a brown paste. When he’s sure that his brothers have gone, he staggers to his feet. The sidewalk whirls like a carousel as he stumbles home.
Mother, turning from the sink, puts her hands to her cheeks. What happened!
Nothing, he says. Some kids in the park.
He was born knowing the sacred code of Irish Town. Never tattle.
Mother guides him to a chair, presses a hot cloth on his mouth, touches his nose. He howls. She puts him on the sofa, leans over him. This shirt—I’ll never get these stains out! He sees his brothers behind her, hovering, glaring. They’re not impressed that he didn’t tattle. They’re incensed. He’s deprived them of another justification for hating him.
The sidewalk whirls like a carousel. Sutton staggers. He reaches into his breast pocket for the white envelope. Tell Bess I didn’t, I couldn’t—
What’s that, Mr. Sutton?
Tell Bess—
A stoop. Six feet away. Sutton lurches toward it. His leg locks up. He realizes too late that he’s not going to make it.
Willie, Photographer says, everything cool, brother?
Sutton pitches forward.
Oh shit—Mr. Sutton!
It varies widely, for no apparent reason. Sometimes the brothers simply knock Willie’s books out of his hands, call him a name. Other times they stuff him headfirst into an ash barrel. Other times they scratch, punch, draw blood.
They pretend there are offenses. Crimes. They stage little mock trials. One brother holds Willie while the other states the charge. Showing Disrespect. Being Weak. Kissing Up to Father. Then they debate. Should we punish him? Should we let him go? They make Willie plead his case. One day Willie tells them to just get it over with. The waiting is the real torture. Big Brother shrugs, sets his feet, rotates his hips to maximize the power. A straight right to Willie’s midsection, the punch lands with a surprisingly loud whump. Willie feels all the wind rush from him, like the bellows in Father’s shop. He drops to his knees.
When Willie is ten he tries to fight back. Bad idea. The beatings escalate. The brothers get Willie on the ground, kick their hard shoes into his kidneys, ribs, groin. One time they kick him so hard in the back of the head that he suffers nosebleeds for a week. Another time they twist his head until he passes out.
His parents don’t know. They don’t want to know. Father, after a twelve-hour day, can’t think about anything but supper and bed. Even if he knew, he wouldn’t say anything. Boys are boys. Willie used to admire Father’s silence. Now he resents it. He no longer thinks Father a hero. He goes one last time to Father’s shop, sees it all differently. With every unthinking swing of the hammer, with every metallic clank, Willie vows never to be like Father, though he fears that in some inescapable way he’ll always be just like him. He suspects himself of the same capacity for boundless silence.
And Mother? She sees nothing but her own grief. Three years after Agnes’s death she still wears black, still broods over the Bible, reading aloud, interrogating Jesus. Or else she simply sits with the Bible open in her lap, staring and murmuring into space. It’s a house of sadness and muteness and blindness, and yet it’s Willie’s only refuge, the only place his brothers won’t attack, because there are witnesses. So Willie clings to the kitchen table, doing his homework, using the rest of the family as unwitting bodyguards, while his brothers glide through the rooms, watching, waiting.
Their chance comes when Father is at work, Mother is paying the iceman, Older Sister is studying with a friend. Big Brother pounces first. He takes Willie’s schoolbook, tears out the pages. Bigger Brother stuffs the pages into Willie’s mouth. Stop, Willie tries to say, stop, please, stop. But he has a mouthful of paper.
Ten feet away Daddo stares above their heads. Here now, what’s happening?
Reporter catches Sutton just before he hits the ground. Photographer rushes to Sutton’s other side. Together they guide Sutton to the stoop.
Willie, Photographer says. What is it, man?
Mr. Sutton, Reporter says, you’re shaking.
They ease Sutton onto the stoop. Reporter takes off his trench coat, wraps it around Sutton’s shoulders.
Thanks kid. Thanks.
Photographer offers Sutton his barber pole scarf. Sutton shakes his head, pulls the fur collar of Reporter’s trench coat around his neck. He sits quietly, trying to catch his breath, clear his head. Reporter and Photographer loom over him.
After a few minutes Sutton looks up at Reporter. Do you have siblings?
No. Only child.
Sutton nods, looks at Photographer. You?
Three older brothers.
Were you picked on?
All the time, brother. Toughened me up.
Sutton stares into space.
You, Mr. Sutton?
I had an older sister, two older brothers.
Did they pick on you?
Nah. I was a tough little monkey.
Somehow he does well in school. He earns all A’s, one B. He doesn’t want to show his report card to anyone, but the school requires a parent’s signature. He cringes as Mother hugs him, as Father gives a proud nod in front of the whole family. He sees his brothers fuming, conspiring. He knows what’s coming.
Three days later they catch him coming out of a candy store. He manages to escape, runs home, but the house is empty. His brothers burst through the door right behind him, tackle him, hold him down, drag him into the foyer. He sees what they have in mind. No, he begs. No no no, not that.
They push him into the closet. It’s pitch dark. No, he begs, please. They lock him in. I can’t breathe, he says, let me out! He rattles the knob, pleading. He pounds the door until his knuckles and nailbeds bleed. Not this, anything but this. He scratches until a fingernail comes clean off.
He weeps. He chokes. He buries his face in the dirty coats and scarves that smell like his family, that bear the distinctive Fels-cabbage-potatoes-wool scent of the Sutton Clan, and he prays for death. Ten years old, he asks God to take him.
Hours later the door opens. Mother.
Jesus Mary and Joseph, what do you think you’re doing?
Mr. Sutton, do you feel up to continuing?
Yeah. I think so.
Reporter helps Sutton to his feet, guides him to the Polara. Photographer walks a few paces behind. Sutton eases into the backseat, lifts his bad leg in after him. Reporter gently shuts the door. Photographer gets behind the wheel, looks at Sutton in the rearview. How about a donut, Willie?
God no kid.
I think I’ll have one. Could you pass them forward?
Sutton hands the pink box across the seat.
Photographer picks a Bavarian cream, passes the box back. Reporter gets in, turns up the heater. The only sounds are the heater blowing, the radio crackling, Photographer smacking his lips.
Now Reporter unfolds Sutton’s map, leans toward Photographer. They whisper. Sutton can’t hear them over the heater and radio, but he imagines what they’re saying.
What are we gonna do with him?
What can we do, brother? We’re stuck with him.

FOUR
WILLIE COMES HOME TO FIND MOTHER IN THE PARLOR, READING THE Bible to Daddo. His brothers are out. For the moment they’re someone else’s problem. With a sigh of relief Willie pulls a chair next to Mother, rests his head on her shoulder. The Fels smell. It makes him feel safe and sad at the same time.
The late fall of 1911.
Mother skips back and forth from Old Testament to New, slapping at the crinkly pages, murmuring, demanding an answer. The answer. Each pause gives Daddo a chance to tap his cane and offer commentary on the sublime wisdom of Jesus. Now she lands on Genesis, the story of Joseph and his brothers. Willie’s mind floats on the lilt of her voice, the soughing of the potato sack curtains. And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near unto them, they conspired against him to slay him. And they said one to another, Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now therefore, and let us slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, Some evil beast hath devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Willie lifts his head from Mother’s shoulder.
And it came to pass, when Joseph was come unto his brethren, that they stript Joseph out of his coat, his coat of many colours that was on him; And they took him, and cast him into a pit: and the pit was empty, there was no water in it.
Willie puts his hands over his face, shakes with sobs. Mother stops reading. Daddo tilts his head. The boy, he says, is moved by the Holy Spirit.
Maybe he’ll be a priest, Mother says.
The next day she pulls him from P.S. 5 and enrolls him at St. Ann’s.
Photographer is peeking in the rearview, driving fast. Peeking faster, driving faster. Reporter, trying to make notes, can’t keep his pen steady. He turns to Photographer. Why are you driving like someone is chasing us?
Because someone is chasing us.
Reporter looks out the back window, sees a TV news van riding their bumper. How the hell did they find us?
We haven’t exactly been inconspicuous. Maybe somebody witnessed a certain bank robber fainting in the middle of the street …?
Photographer mashes the gas, runs a red light. He spins the wheel to the left, swerves to avoid a double-parked truck. Sutton, tossed around the backseat like a sock in a dryer, tastes this morning’s champagne, last night’s whiskey. He realizes that he hasn’t eaten solid food since yesterday’s lunch at Attica—beef stew. Now he tastes that too. He puts a hand on his stomach, knows what’s coming. He tries to roll down a window. Stuck. Or locked. Converted cop car. He looks around. On the seat beside him are Photographer’s camera bag and cloth purse. He opens the camera bag. Expensive lenses. He opens the cloth purse. Notebooks, paperbacks, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Norman Mailer’s The Armies of the Night, a plastic baggie full of joints—and a billfold. Sutton touches the billfold.
He sees the pink box of donuts. He lifts the lid, feels the contents of his stomach gathering on the launchpad. He shuts his eyes, swallows, gradually fights back the rising wave of nausea.
Photographer makes a hard right, steers toward the curb. The Polara fishtails. Squealing brakes, shrieking tires. They screech to a stop. The smell of scorched Firestone fills the car. Reporter kneels on the front seat, looks out the back. They’re gone, he says to Photographer. Nice job.
I guess it pays to watch Mod Squad, Photographer says.
They sit for a moment, all three of them breathing hard. Even the Polara is panting. Now Photographer eases back into traffic. Tell me again—what’s our next stop?
Corner of Sands and Gold. Right, Mr. Sutton?
Sutton grunts.
Sands and Gold? Christ, that’s a block from where we just were.
Sorry. Mr. Sutton’s map is kind of tough to read.
I was hitting the champagne pretty hard when I made it, Sutton says.
The Polara hits a pothole. Sutton’s head hits the roof, his ass hits the seat.
You don’t need to drive like a maniac anymore, Reporter says.
It’s not me, Photographer says, it’s these roads. And I think this Polara is shot.
Willie is shot, Sutton rasps.
The Polara hits another pothole.
One-sixth gravity, Sutton mumbles.
We’re almost there, Mr. Sutton. You okay?
Just realized something kid.
What’s that, Mr. Sutton?
I’m in the back of a radio car without handcuffs. I think that’s part of what’s got me on my heels this morning. That’s why I don’t feel like myself. I feel—naked.
Handcuffs?
We used to call them bracelets. The neighbors would say, Did you hear, they dragged poor Eddie Wilson away in bracelets?
Sutton holds up his wrists, stares at them from different angles. The purple veins, bubbled and wormy.
Photographer grins at Sutton in the rearview. If you want handcuffs, brother, we can get you some handcuffs.
Two classmates at St. Ann’s become Willie’s friends. William Happy Johnston and Edward Buster Wilson. That’s how newspapers will most often refer to them. Everyone in Irish Town knows, Willie is the smart one, Happy is the handsome one, Eddie is the dangerous one. Everyone in Irish Town knows, you better watch your step around Eddie Wilson.
He used to be such a sweet kid, Irish Towners say. Then his aunt and uncle took ill. The lung sickness. They had to move in with Eddie’s family—it was either that or a pesthouse. In no time their doctor bills wiped out Eddie’s family. This was just after the Panic of 1907, the country spiraling into a Depression. Irish Town passed the hat, saved Eddie’s family from being put on the street, but Eddie felt more embarrassed than relieved. Next, Eddie’s old man lost his job as a driller. Again the neighborhood passed the hat, again Eddie cringed. Finally Eddie’s mother got the lung sickness, and there was no money left for a doctor. She and Eddie were especially close, neighbors whispered at the funeral.
Overnight, everyone agrees, Eddie changed. His royal blue eyes turned stormy. His eyebrows drew together into a permanent V. He looked wounded all the time, ready to fight. When the Italians started to encroach on Irish Town, Eddie decided it was his job to hold them off. He was forever muttering about them Eye-ties, them fuckin Dagos. Every other week he was in another hellish battle.
The first time they meet, Willie sees only Eddie’s courage, not his pain. Something about Eddie reminds Willie of polished, martial steel. Also, he seems equally loyal and lethal. And Eddie sees Willie through the same rosy lens. Assuming Willie’s many bruises are from street brawls, not his brothers, Eddie grants Willie his deepest respect. Willie, in need of a friend, doesn’t set Eddie straight.
Happy never had to earn Eddie’s respect. They’ve been friends since birth. Their families live across the street from each other, their fathers are thick. That’s why Happy is always laughing at Eddie’s bad temper, because he remembers the old Eddie. To Willie, laughing at Eddie seems like asking for trouble, like the lion tamers at the street circus putting their heads between those pink dripping jaws. But Eddie never snaps at Happy. Happy is so happy, so damn good looking, it’s hard to be mad at him.
Some say Happy was born happy. Others say he’s happy about the way he looks. Unbearably handsome. Unfairly handsome. Most agree that some percentage of his constant cheerfulness is traceable to his family’s nest egg. The Johnstons aren’t rich, but they’re among the few Irish Towners who don’t live on the rusty razor’s edge. Happy’s father got hit by a trolley years ago and the family won a settlement. Moreover, they were smart enough not to put their windfall in a bank, hundreds of which have gone bust.
Daddo asks Willie about his new friends. He’s heard Happy’s voice from the street. He says Happy sounds handsome.
He is, Willie says. He has black hair and black eyes and the girls in school all love him.
Daddo chuckles. Bless him. What I wouldn’t give. And the Wilson boy?
Yellow hair. Blue eyes. He gets in fights. And steals sometimes.
Be careful, Willie Boy. Sounds like he has a bit of the Old Nick in him.
The what?
The devil.
Willie doesn’t understand what Daddo means. Until an older boy down the block, Billy Doyle, gets pinched. Housebreaking, shoplifting, something minor. What makes it major, what makes it the talk of Irish Town, is that Billy has given up the names of his confederates. The cops beat the names out of Billy, but that’s no excuse. Not in Irish Town.
Right after the cops turn Billy loose, he sits on his stoop, his jaw broken, his left eye purple and running with pus, a rotted plum. He’s a pitiable sight, but people walk past all day long as if he’s not there. Even mothers pushing prams give him the standard Irish Town treatment for rats. Silence.
Eddie, who grew up with Billy’s brothers, and likes him, watches from up the street for hours. After a while he can’t take it anymore. He crosses, walks up to Billy, asks how he’s feeling.
Not so good, Eddie.
Eddie leans in, puts an arm on Billy’s shoulder, tells him to hang in there.
Billy looks up, smiles.
Eddie spits in his eye.
Weeks later Billy Doyle drinks iodine. There is no funeral.
Sutton sees a family walking along the street, dressed for church. Dad, Mom, two little boys. Father and sons are wearing identical suits. In the old days, Sutton says, his voice weak, the worst thing you could be was a Judas.
Reporter glances into the backseat. Are you referring, by any chance, to Arnold Schuster?
No.
That whole ratting thing, that whole Code of Brooklyn—where does that come from?
Sutton taps his chest. From in here kid. The deepest part. When I was ten years old the cops found a man lying in the middle of our street, a baling hook in his chest. He was a stevedore, got crossways with some of the boys on the waterfront. As the cops took him to the hospital they asked who did this to him. He told the cops to go fuck themselves. Those were his last words—imagine? Three days later the whole fuckin neighborhood turned out for his funeral, including the guys who offed him. There was talk of petitioning the city to name a street after him.
All because he didn’t name the guys who murdered him?
People are clannish, Sutton says. We didn’t become human a million years ago until we hopped out of trees and split into clans. You betray someone in your clan, you open the door to the end of the world.
But the people who murdered him were in his clan? Didn’t they betray him?
Ratting is a hundred times worse than murder.
It all sounds kind of—barbaric, Reporter says. It sounds like people making life harder than it needs to be.
No oneis making anything kid. It’s just how human beings are built. Two thousand years later, why do we know the name of Judas and not the soldier who nailed Christ to the cross?
In 1913 Willie’s brothers move out. One gets a job at a factory in West Virginia, the other joins the Army. They give Willie one ferocious goodbye beating in the shadow of St. Ann’s, but Willie doesn’t feel it. Knowing they’ll be gone in a few days, knowing they won’t be part of his world anymore, makes the blows bounce off. But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. Watching Big Brother and Bigger Brother saunter away, Willie picks up his hat, licks the blood from his lip, laughs.
Sutton kneels on the cobblestones at Sands and Gold. He looks as if he’s about to propose to Photographer and Reporter.
Mr. Sutton—what are you doing?
St. Ann’s, my grammar school, used to be right here.
A gust of wind sends a few loose newspaper pages fluttering like birds. Sutton pats the cobblestones. These are the same cobblestones I walked on as a kid, he says in a half whisper. Time—the subtle thief of youth.
What? Who’s a thief?
Time. Some dead fuckin poet said that. Father Flynn quoted it all the time. Made us memorize it. He probably stood right there, where you two are standing, saying that line, which is pure horseshit. Time is a thief, but he’s not subtle. He’s a thug. And youth is a little old lady walking through the park with a pocketbook full of cash. You want to avoid being like youth? You want to keep time from robbing you? Hold on for dear life, boys. When time tries to snatch something from you, just grab tighter. Don’t let go. That’s what memory is. Not letting go. Saying fuck you to time.
Photographer puts a Newport between his lips. Uh—Willie?
Sutton looks up. Yeah kid.
Willie, this isn’t really working for me—creatively? You, at the site of your former school? It’s static, brother.
Static.
Yeah. Also, you’re kind of freaking us out.
Why kid?
Well. You’re talking to yourself, for starters. And you’re not making sense. Compared to you, most of the cats I met at Woodstock were acting straight.
Sorry kid. I’m just. Remembering.
Reporter steps forward. Mr. Sutton, maybe you could tell us some of what you’re remembering? Share something about your early life? Your childhood?
I don’t remember much.
But you just said—
Okay, Sutton says. Let’s go. Stop Number Three—Hudson Street.
Photographer helps Sutton to his feet. Willie, can you at least tell us the point of Stop Number Two?
Youth.
Youth?
Yeah. Youth.
What about youth, Willie?
She’s just fuckin asking for it.
There are no ball fields in Irish Town. No playgrounds, no gyms, no rec centers. So the neighborhood boys all gather at the Hudson Street slaughterhouse. In their short pants and vests, their collarless shirts and ragged shoes, they hang around the loading docks, mooching hooves and feet, heckling the animals on their way to die.
None of the boys respects the slaughterhouse like Eddie. None but Eddie roots for the butchers. If there were trading cards of butchers, Eddie would collect them. He cheers when the butchers slit a pig’s throat, laughs when they stab a cow in the eye or lop off a sheep’s head. He gazes worshipfully when they dip a mug into the raw blood at their feet and slurp it down for nourishment.
In 1914, however, Eddie sees something at the slaughterhouse that haunts him. One black castrated male sheep leads all the other sheep up the ramp to the killing door. At the last minute the black sheep does a shifty little sidestep, saving himself.
What’s with that sheep there? Eddie asks.
That’s the Judas sheep, a butcher says. It’s actually a goat that looks like a sheep.
Sutty, get a load of this fuckin sheep. Look how he double-crosses his buddies.
He’s just a sheep, Ed. Or a goat.
Eddie punches his palm. Nah, nah, that rat knows what he’s doin.
A few nights later Eddie rousts Willie and Happy from their beds and drags them down to the slaughterhouse. He jimmies the lock on the door to the loading dock and leads them into the filthy pens where the river barges unload the animals. In a far corner they find the black Judas sheep lying on its side. The sleep of the innocent, Eddie says, grabbing a board and giving the sheep a whack on the head. Blood goes everywhere. It spurts into Willie’s eyes and sprays the front of Happy’s white shirt. The sheep scrambles to its feet and tries to run. Eddie chases. Come here, you. He swings the board like a baseball bat, hits the sheep on the backside. Where you think you’re going? He gives the sheep another whack, and another. When the sheep is down, Eddie leaps on it, puts a tourniquet around the fleecy neck. Happy holds the kicking legs while Eddie slowly tightens.
Sutty, grab that board, give him one.
No.
Willie could never hurt a defenseless animal. Even an animal that rats out other animals. Besides, the sight of Eddie and Happy holding down the Judas sheep reminds Willie of his brothers. I seek my brethren: tell me, I pray thee, where they feed their flocks. Willie keeps his distance, though he doesn’t look away. He can’t. He watches Eddie and Happy torment the sheep, watches Eddie pull out a knife and stab it and stab it until the frantic baaa becomes a pathetic ba. Eddie and Happy are his best friends, but maybe he didn’t know them until now. Maybe he’ll never know them. He watches them laugh at the sheep’s lacquered black eyes going white, then pearly gray. He closes his own eyes. Tattle-tale gray.
Sutton paces up and down Hudson Street. He inhales deeply through his nose. Wet hide, offal, blood. Smell that, boys? Somehow that stench didn’t bother us as kids.
I don’t smell anything, Photographer says to Reporter.
Sutton points to his feet. Daddo said Eddie had the devil in him—I found out on this spot what that meant. Eddie’s first kill.
Now we’re talking, Photographer says, pushing Reporter out of the way, shooting as Sutton points to the ground.
Reporter sets down his briefcase, clicks it open, pulls out a stack of files.
What are those? Sutton asks.
The newspaper’s Willie Sutton files. Some of them anyway. There’s an entire drawer devoted to you, Mr. Sutton. You mentioned your grandfather. I saw him in one of these files. Was he the actor?
No. The actor was my father’s father. Back in Ireland. They say he knew most of Shakespeare by heart. I’m talking about my mother’s father.
Photographer keeps shooting. But who got killed here, brother?
A sheep, Sutton says.
Photographer stops, lowers his camera. A what?
There was a slaughterhouse here. I used to come with my best friends, Eddie and Happy. One night they killed a sheep. Or a goat pretending to be a sheep.
Why?
It ratted on the other sheep.
Photographer rests his camera on his hip. The sheep ratted, he says to Reporter. You hearing this?
Mr. Sutton, you mentioned Eddie. Do you mean Edward Buster Wilson? With whom you were arrested in 1923?
Yeah.
In this one clip, the judge said you were like outlaws in the Old West.
Nah, the judge said that about me and another guy. But it was sure true of me and Eddie.
Reporter flips open a file. Okay. Here we go—Sutton and Wilson. Unlawful entry, armed robbery.
Sounds about right, Sutton says.
And Happy—now, Mr. Sutton, is that William Happy Johnston? With whom you were arrested in 1919?
The same.
Burglary. Larceny.
Good old Happy.
Kidnapping. Wait—kidnapping?
You had to be there, Sutton says. You had to know Happy. Not that anybody really knew Happy. Not that anybody fuckin knows anybody.
Who did you and Happy kidnap?
Chronological order kid.

FIVE
AS WILLIE LISTENS FROM THE HALL, FATHER AND MOTHER SIT UP ALL night, a gas lamp between them, going over the family account book. Mother asks, What will we do? Father says nothing. But it’s the way he says nothing.
First it was those newfangled bicycles everywhere, now it’s these accursed motorcars. Not long ago people said the motorcar was a fad. Now everyone agrees it’s here to stay. Newspapers are filled with ads for the latest, shiniest models. New roads are going in all over the city. The fire department has already switched to horseless hose trucks. All of which means hard times for blacksmiths.
The summer of 1914. Despite his troubles at home, despite running the streets with Eddie and Happy, Willie manages to graduate from grammar school at the top of his class. There’s no thought of high school, however. The day after he gets his diploma he gets his working papers. His mother’s dream of him in priest robes gets shelved. His own dreams are never mentioned. He needs to get a job, needs to help his family stay afloat.
But it’s hard times for more than just blacksmiths. America is mired in a Depression, the second of Willie’s young life. Willie applies at the riverside factories, the downtown offices, the dry goods stores and clothing shops and lunch counters. He’s bright, presentable, many people know and admire Father. But Willie has no experience, no skills, and for every available job he’s competing with hundreds. He reads in the newspapers that crowds of unemployed are surging through Manhattan, demanding work. Other cities too. In Chicago the crowds are so unruly, cops fire on them.
Daddo asks Willie to read him the newspapers. Strikes, riots, unrest—after half an hour Daddo asks him to stop. He mutters into the potato sack curtains:
Feckin world is ending.
To save money the Suttons quit Irish Town, move to a smaller apartment near Prospect Park. They have so little, the move takes only one trip in a horse-drawn van. Then Father lays off his apprentice. Despite slower business, despite an arthritic back and aching shoulders, Father now puts in longer hours, which aggravates his back and shoulders. Mother talks to Daddo about what they’ll do when Father can’t get out of bed in the morning. They’ll be on the street.
Father asks Willie to join him at the shop. Big Brother, thrown out of the Army, is helping too. I don’t think I’m cut out for blacksmithing, Willie says. Father looks at Willie, hard, not with anger, but bewilderment. As if Willie is a stranger. I know the feeling, Willie wants to say.
After a day of shapeouts, interviews, submitting applications that will never be read, Willie runs back to the old neighborhood. Eddie and Happy can’t find jobs either. The boys seek relief from the rising temperatures and their receding futures in the East River. To get in a few clean strokes they have to push away inner tubes, lettuce heads, orange rinds, mattresses. They also have to dodge garbage scows, tugboats, barges, corpses—the river claims a new victim every week. And yet the boys don’t mind. No matter how slimy, or fishy, or deadly, the river is sacred. The one place they feel welcome. In their element.
The boys often dare each other to touch the sludgy bottom. More than once they nearly drown in the attempt. It’s a foolish game, like pearl diving with no hope of a pearl, but each is afraid to admit he’s afraid. Then Eddie ups the ante, suggests a race across. Perched like seagulls atop the warped pilings of an abandoned pier, they look through the summer haze at the skyline.
What if we cramp up, Happy says.
What if, Eddie says with a sneer.
The mermaids will save us, Willie mumbles.
Mermaids? Happy says.
My Daddo says every body of water has a mermaid or two.
Our only hope of getting laid, Eddie says.
Speak for yourself, Happy says.
Willie shrugs. What the hell have we got to lose?
Our lives, Happy mumbles.
Like I said.
They dive. Tracing the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge they reach Manhattan in twenty-six minutes. Eddie is first, followed by Happy, then Willie. Willie would have been first, but he slowed halfway and briefly toyed with the idea of letting go, sinking forever to the bottom. They stand on the dock, dripping, gasping, laughing with pride.
Now comes the problem of getting back. Eddie wants to swim. Willie and Happy roll their eyes. We’re walking, Ed.
Willie’s first time on the Brooklyn Bridge. Those cables, those Gothic brick arches—beautiful. Daddo says men died building this bridge. The arches are their headstones. Willie thinks they died for a good cause. Daddo also says this bridge, when first opened, terrified people. It was too big, no one thought it would stay up. Barnum had to walk a herd of elephants across to prove that it was safe. Part of Willie is still terrified. Not by the size, but the height. He doesn’t like heights. It’s not a fear of falling so much as a queasiness at seeing the world from above. Especially Manhattan. The big city is intimidating enough across the river. From up here it’s too much. Too magical, too desirable, too mythically beautiful, like the women in Photoplay. He wants it. He hates it. He longs to conquer it, capture it, keep it all to himself. He’d like to burn it to the ground.
The bird’s-eye view of Irish Town is still more unsettling. From the apex of the bridge it looks slummier, meaner. Willie scans the chimneys, the ledges, the grimed windows and mudded streets. Even if you leave, you never escape.
We should take the BQE, Photographer says.
No, Reporter says, stay on surface streets.
Why?
Buildings, stores, statues—there’s stuff on the streets that might jog Mr. Sutton’s memory.
While Reporter and Photographer debate the best route to their next stop, Thirteenth Street, Sutton rests his eyes. He feels the car stop short. He opens his eyes. Red light.
He rolls his head to the right. Tumbledown stores, each one new, unfamiliar. Is this really Brooklyn? It might as well be Bangkok. Where there used to be a bar and grill, there’s now a record store. Where there used to be a record store, there’s now a clothing store. How many nights, lying in his cell, did Sutton mentally walk the old Brooklyn? Now it’s gone, all gone. The old neighborhoods were just cardboard sets and paper scenery, which someone casually struck and carted off. Then again, one thing never changes. None of these stores looks to be hiring.
What’s that, Mr. Sutton?
Nothing.
Sutton sees an electronics store. Dozens of TVs in the front window.
Stop the car, stop the car.
Photographer looks left, right. We are stopped. We’re at a red light, Willie.
Sutton opens the door. The sidewalk is covered with patches of frozen snow. He steps carefully toward the electronics store. On every TV it’s—Willie Sutton. Last night. Walking out of Attica. But it’s also not him. It’s Father. And Mother. He hadn’t realized how much his face has come to look like them both.
Sutton presses his nose against the window, cups his hands around his eyes. On a few screens closer to the window is President Nixon. A recent news conference.
Reporter walks up.
Did you ever notice, kid, how much presidents act like wardens?
I can’t say as I have, Mr. Sutton.
Trust me. They do.
Have you ever voted, Mr. Sutton?
Every time I took down a bank I was voting.
Reporter writes this in his notebook.
Tell you one thing, Sutton says. I’d love to have voted against President Shifty Eyes here. Fuckin criminal.
Reporter laughs. I’m no Nixon fan, Mr. Sutton—but a criminal?
Doesn’t he remind you of anybody kid?
No. Should he?
The eyes. Look at the eyes.
Reporter moves closer to the window, looks at Nixon, then back at Sutton. Back at Nixon. Now that you mention it, he says.
I wouldn’t trust either of us as far as I could throw us, Sutton says. Did you know that Nixon, when he worked on Wall Street, lived in the same apartment building as Governor Rockefeller?
I’m not really a Rockefeller fan.
Join the club.
Personally, I liked Romney. Then, after he dropped out, I rooted for Reagan. I was hoping he’d win the nomination.
Reagan? God help us.
What’s wrong with Ronald Reagan?
An actor running the world? Get a grip.
When the river is too cold for swimming, the boys take their fishing poles to Red Hook. They buy tomato sandwiches wrapped in oil paper, two cents apiece, and sit on the rocks along The Narrows, dangling their lines in the slimy water. Even with no jobs, they can at least contribute something to their families if they catch a striper or two.
One day, the fish not biting, Eddie paces the rocks. Whole fuckin thin is rigged, he says.
What thing, Ed?
The whole thin.
Behind him a tug plows through the silver-green water, a barge glides toward Manhattan. A three-masted schooner heads for Staten Island. The sky is a chaotic web of wires and smokestacks, steeples and office towers. Eddie gives it all the evil eye. Then the middle finger.
Eddie’s always been angry, but lately his anger has been deeper, edgier. Willie blames himself. Willie took Eddie to the library, persuaded him to get a library card. Now Eddie has books to support his darkest suspicions. Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Peter Kropotkin, Karl Marx, they all tell Eddie that he’s not paranoid, the world really is against him.
Some fuckin system, he says. Every ten or fifteen years it crashes. Aint no system, that’s the problem. It’s every man for his-fuckin-self. The Crash of ’93? My old man saw people standin in the middle of the street bawlin like babies. Wiped out. Ruined. But did those bankers get pinched? Nah—they got richer. Oh the government promised it wouldn’t happen again. Well it happened again didn’t it fellas? In ’07. And ’ll. And when them banks fell apart, when the market did a swan dive, didn’t them bankers walk away scot-free again?
Willie and Happy nod.
I’m not saying the man who shot McKinley was right in his head, I only say I understand what drove him to it.
Get yourself pinched talking like that, Ed.
Eddie wings a rock at the water. Blunth—a sound like a fat man gulping. We’re on the losin team, boys. We’re Irish blunth and broke blunth and that makes us double fucked. Just how the rich want it. You can’t be on the top if there aint no one on the blunth bottom.
How come you’re the only one talking about this stuff? Happy says.
I aint the only one, Happy. Read a goddamn book, willya?
Happy frowns. If he reads he won’t be happy.
Of all the evil rich, Eddie thinks the evilest by far are the Rockefellers. He scans the horizon as if there might be a Rockefeller out there for him to peg with a rock. He’s obsessed with Ludlow. Last year J. D. Rockefeller Jr. sent a team of sluggers to put down the mine strike there, and the sluggers massacred seventy-five unarmed men, women, children. If anyone else did that, Eddie often says, he’d get the chair.
Tell you what I’d like to do, Eddie grumbles, winging a rock at a seagull. I’d like to go uptown right now and find Old Man Rockefeller’s mansion.
What would you do, Ed?
Heh heh. Remember that Judas sheep?
Photographer circles Grand Army Plaza, swings right on Thirteenth Street. He pulls over, double-parks. It’s gone, Sutton says, touching the window. Fuck—I knew stuff would be gone. But everything?
What’s gone, Willie?
The apartment house where we moved in 1915. At least the apartment house next door is still standing. That one right there, that gives you an idea what ours looked like.
He points to a five-story brownstone, streaked with soot and bird shit.
That’s where I saw my parents grow old before their time, worrying about money. That’s where I watched the lines on their faces get deeper, watched their hair turn white. That’s where I learned that life is all about money. And love. And lack thereof.
That’s it, Mr. Sutton?
Anyone who tells you different is a fuckin liar. Money. Love. There’s not a problem that isn’t caused by one or the other. And there’s not a problem that can’t be solved by one or the other.
That seems kind of reductive, Mr. Sutton.
Money and Love kid. Nothing else matters. Because those are the only two things that make us forget about death. For a few minutes anyhow.
Trees line the curb. They nod and bow as if they remember Sutton. As if beseeching him to get out of the car. My best friends were Eddie Wilson and Happy Johnston, Sutton says softly.
Photographer yanks a loose fringe off his buckskin jacket. You mentioned that.
What was Happy like? Reporter asks.
Broads loved him.
Hence the name, Photographer says, starting up the car, pulling away. Where to next?
Remsen Street, Reporter says.
Happy had the blackest hair you ever saw, Sutton says. Like he was dipped in coal. He had one of those chin asses like yours kid. A smile like yours too. Big white teeth. Like a movie star. Before there were movie stars.
And Eddie?
Strange case. Blond, real All-American looking, but he never felt like an American. He felt like America didn’t want him. Fuck, he was right, America didn’t. America didn’t want any of us, and you haven’t felt unwanted until America doesn’t want you. I loved Eddie, but he was one rough sombitch. You did not want to get on his wrong side. I thought he’d be a prizefighter. After they banned him from the slaughterhouse, he hung out in gyms. Then the gyms banned him. He wouldn’t stop fighting after the bell. And if you crossed him in the streets, Jesus, if you did not show proper respect, God help you. He’d give you an Irish haircut quick as look at you.
Irish what?
A swat to the back of the head with a lead pipe wrapped in newspaper.
Their luck changes in the fall of 1916. Eddie lands a construction job at one of the new office towers going up, and Happy’s uncle arranges jobs for Happy and Willie as gophers at a bank. Title Guaranty.
The bank job will require new clothes. Willie and Happy find a haberdasher on Court Street willing to extend them credit. They each buy two suits—two sack coats, two pairs of trousers, two matching vests, two silk cravats, cuff buttons, spats. Walking to work his first day Willie stops before a store window. He doesn’t recognize himself. He’s delighted not to recognize himself. He hopes he never recognizes himself again.
Better yet, his coworkers don’t recognize him. They seem not to know that he’s Irish. They treat him with courtesy and kindness.
Weeks fly by. Months. Willie loses himself in his work. He finds the whole enterprise of the bank exhilarating. After the Crash of 1893, the Panic of 1907, the smaller panic of 1911, the Depression of 1914, New York is rebuilding. Office towers are being erected, bridges are being laced across the rivers, tunnels are being laid underneath, and cash for all this epic growth comes from banks, which means Willie is engaged in a grand endeavor. He’s part of society, included in its mission, vested in its purposes—at last. He sleeps deeper, wakes more refreshed. Putting on his spats each morning he feels a giddy sense of relief that Eddie was wrong. The whole thing isn’t rigged.
They pull up to the former home of Title Guaranty, a Romanesque Revival building on Remsen Street. Sutton looks at the arched third-floor windows where he used to sit with Happy and the other gophers. In one window someone has taped a sign. NIXON/AGNEW. This is where I had my first job, Sutton says. A bank robber whose first job was in a bank—imagine?
Photographer shoots the building. He turns the camera, dials the lens, this way, that. Sutton shifts his gaze from the building to Photographer.
You like your work, Sutton says. Don’t you kid?
Photographer stops, gives a half turn. Yeah, he says over his shoulder. I do, Willie. I dig it. How can you tell?
I can always tell when a man likes his work. What year were you born kid?
Nineteen forty-three.
Hm. Eventful year for me. Shit, they were all eventful. Where were you born?
Roslyn, Long Island.
You go to college?
Yeah.
Which one?
I went to Princeton, Photographer says sheepishly.
No kidding? Good school. I took a walk around the campus one morning. What did you study?
History. I was going to be a professor, an academic, but sophomore year my parents made the fatal mistake of buying me a camera for Christmas. That was all she wrote. The only thing I cared about from then on was taking pictures. I wanted to capture history instead of reading about it.
I’ll bet your folks were thrilled.
Oh yeah. My father didn’t speak to me for about three months.
What do you like so much about taking pictures?
You say life’s all about Money and Love? I say it’s all about experiences.
Is that so?
And this camera helps me have all different kinds of experiences. This Leica gets me through locked doors, past police tape, over walls, barbed wire, barricades. It shows me the world, brother. Helps me bear witness.
Witness. Is that so.
Also, Willie, I dig telling the truth. Words can be twisted but a photo never lies.
Sutton laughs.
What’s funny? Photographer says.
Nothing. Except—that’s pure horseshit kid. I can’t think of anything that lies more than a photo. In fact every photo is a dirty stinking lie because it’s a frozen moment—and time can’t be frozen. Some of the biggest lies I’ve ever run across have been photos. Some of them were of me.
Photographer faces straight ahead, a slightly miffed look on his face. Willie, he says, all I know is, this camera took me to the bloodbath in Hue City. Tet Offensive—those aren’t just words in a book to me. It took me to Mexico City to see Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists. It took me to Memphis to see the chaos and the coverup after they shot King. No other way I would’ve gotten to see all those things. This camera lets me see, brother.
Sutton looks at Reporter. How about you kid?
How about me?
Did you always want to be a reporter?
Yes.
How come?
I’m a yeshiva student from the Bronx—in what other job would I get to spend the day with America’s greatest bank robber?
FBI agent.
I don’t like guns.
Me neither.
I admit, Mr. Sutton, some days I don’t love this job. No one reads anymore.
I do nothing but read.
You’re the exception. TV is going to make us all extinct. Also, a newsroom isn’t exactly the happiest place on earth. It’s sort of a snake pit. Politics, backstabbing, jealousy.
That’s one nice thing about crooks, Sutton says. No professional jealousy. A crook reads about another crook making off with millions, he’s happy for the guy. Crooks root for each other.
Except when they kill each other.
True.
Tell him about editors, Photographer says to Reporter.
What about them? Sutton says.
They can be a real pain in the ass, Reporter says into his lap.
Sutton lights a Chesterfield. What about your editor? In what way is he a pain in the ass?
He says I have a face that begs to be lied to.
Ouch. And what did he say when he sent you off to spend the day with Willie?
Photographer laughs, looks out his window. Reporter looks out his.
Go on kid. You can tell me.
My editor said I had three jobs today, Mr. Sutton. Get you on the record about Arnold Schuster. Don’t let another reporter or photographer near you. And don’t lose you.
Sutton blows a cloud of smoke over Reporter’s head. Then you’re fucked kid.
Why?
You’ve already lost me. I’m back in 1917.
Willie standing in the vault. It’s larger than his bedroom on Thirteenth Street, and it’s filled, floor to ceiling, with money. He gazes at the tightly wrapped bills, the strongboxes of gold coins, the racks of gleaming silver. He inhales—better than a candy store. He never realized how much he loved money. He couldn’t afford to realize.
He loads a wheeled cart with cash and coins, slowly rolls the cart along the cages, filling the tellers’ drawers. He feels all-powerful, a Brooklyn King Solomon dispensing gifts from his mine. Before returning the cart he cradles a brick of fifties. With this one brick he could buy a shiny new motorcar, a house for his parents. He could book a cabin on the next liner sailing to France. He slides one fifty out of the pack, holds it to the light. That dashing portrait of Ulysses Grant, those green curlicues in the corners, those silver-blue letters: Will Pay to the Bearer On Demand. Who knew the fifty was such a work of art? They should hang one in a museum. He slides the bill carefully back into the pack, sets the pack back in its place on the shelf.
Evenings, after work, Willie sits on a bench in the park and reads Horatio Alger novels, devours them one after another. They’re all the same—the hero rises from nothing to become rich, loved, respected—and that’s exactly what Willie loves about them. The predictability of the plot, the inevitability of the hero’s ascent, provides a kind of comfort. It reaffirms Willie’s faith.
Sometimes Alger’s hero starts as a gopher at a bank.
Pedophile, Sutton says.
Photographer is trying to get the City Desk on the radio. Yeah, he says, yeah yeah, that’s right, we’re leaving Remsen Street, headed to Sands Street, near the Navy Yard.
Goddamn perv, Sutton says.
Photographer lowers the radio, turns. You say something, Willie?
Sutton slides forward, leans across the seat. Horatio Alger.
What about him?
He’d cruise these streets looking for homeless kids. They were everywhere back then, sleeping under stairs, bridges. Street Arabs they were called. Alger would bring them home, interview them for his books, then molest them. Now he’s synonymous with the American Dream. Imagine?
Malcolm X says there is no American Dream, Willie. Just an American nightmare.
Nah, that’s not true. There’s an American Dream. The trick is not waking up.
After six months at Title Guaranty, Willie is summoned to the manager’s office.
Sutton, your work is exemplary. You are diligent, you are conscientious, never tardy or sick. Everyone at this bank says you are a fine young man, and I can only agree. Keep this up, my boy, keep on this path, and you are sure to go places.
A month later Willie is laid off. Happy too. The manager, red-faced, blames the war in Europe. Trading has collapsed, the world’s economy is teetering—everyone is cutting back. Especially banks. Into a hatbox Willie folds his sack coats and matching trousers and vests, his cravats and cuff buttons and spats, then sets the box on the shelf of Mother’s closet.
He buys five newspapers and a grease pencil and sits in the park. On the same bench where he used to read Alger novels he now combs the wants. He then walks the length of Brooklyn, filling out forms, handing in applications. He applies for bank jobs, clerk jobs, salesman jobs. He holds his nose when applying for salesman jobs. The idea of tricking someone into buying something they don’t need, and can’t afford, makes him sick.
At the start of each day Willie meets Happy and Eddie at Pete’s Awful Coffee. Eddie’s been laid off too. The builders of the office tower ran out of cash. Whole fuckin thin is rigged, Eddie mutters into his coffee cup. No one at the counter disagrees. No one dares.
Then, just around the start of the 1917 baseball season, on his way to meet Eddie and Happy, Willie spots a newsboy from half a block away, waving the extra. That one word, big and black and shiny as the badge on the newsboy’s shirt—WAR. Willie hands the newsboy a penny, runs to the coffee shop. Breathless, he spreads the newspaper across the counter and tells Eddie and Happy this is it, their big chance, they should all enlist. They’re only sixteen, but hell, maybe they can get fake birth certificates. Maybe they can go to Canada, sign up there. It’s war, it’s nasty, but Jesus—it’s something.
Count me out, Eddie says, shoving his cup away. This is Rockefeller’s war. And his butt boy, J. P. Morgan. I aint takin a bullet for them robber barons. Don’t you realize we’re already in a war, Sutty? Us against them?
I’m surprised, Willie says. I really am, Ed. I thought you’d jump at the chance to kill a few Dagos. Unless maybe you’re afraid those Dagos might get the best of you.
Happy laughs. Eddie grabs Willie’s shirtfront and loads up a punch, then shakes his head and eases himself back onto his stool.
Sutty the Patriot, Happy says. Don’t you worry, Sutty. You’re feeling patriotic? There’ll be plenty of ways to do your part. My old man says every war brings a boom. Sit tight. We’ll soon be in clover.
Within weeks it’s true. New York is humming, a hive of activity, and the boys land jobs in a factory making machine guns. The pay is thirty-five a week, nearly four times what Willie and Happy were making at Title Guaranty. Willie is able to give his parents room and board and a little more. He watches them count and recount the money, sees the strain of the last few years falling away.
And still he has something left over for a bit of fun. Every other night he goes with Eddie and Happy to Coney Island. How did he live so long without this enchanted place? The music, the lights—the laughter. It’s at Coney Island that Willie first realizes: no one in the Sutton household ever laughs.
Best of all he loves the food. He’s been raised on wilted cabbage and thin stews, now he has access to a sultan’s feast. Stepping off the trolley he can smell the roasted pigs, the grilled clams coated with butter, the spring chickens, the filet chateaubriands, the pickled walnuts, the Roman punches, and he realizes—he’s been hungry for sixteen years.
No delicacy at Coney Island is so exotic, so addictive, as the recently invented Nathan’s Famous. It’s also called a hot dog. Slicked with mustard, slotted into a billfold of soft white bread, it makes Willie moan with pleasure. Happy can eat five, Eddie can eat seven. There’s no limit to how many Willie can put away.
After gorging themselves, and washing it all down with a few steins of beer, the boys stroll the Boardwalk, trying to catch the eyes of pretty girls. But pretty girls are the one delicacy they can’t have. In 1917 and 1918 pretty girls want soldiers. Even Happy can’t compete with those smart uniforms, those white sailor hats.
Before catching a rattler home Eddie insists that they swing by the Amazing Incubator, the new warming oven for babies that come out half cooked. Eddie likes to press his face to the glass door, wave at the seven or eight newborns on the other side. Look, Sutty, they’re so damn tiny. They’re like little hot dogs.
Don’t eat one by accident, Happy says
Eddie yells through the glass door. Welcome to earth, suckers. The whole thin’s rigged.

SIX
THERE ARE HUNDREDS SPRINKLED THROUGHOUT THE CITY, BUT HAPPY says only two are worth a damn. One under the Brooklyn Bridge, the other on Sands Street, just outside the Navy Yard. Happy prefers the one on Sands. The girls aren’t necessarily prettier, he says. Just more obliging. They work ten-hour shifts, taking on three customers an hour, and more when the fleet is in. He relates this with the admiration and wonder of a staunch capitalist describing Henry Ford’s new assembly line.
Around the time of the Battle of Passchendaele, and the draft riots in Oklahoma, and the mining strikes throughout the West, the boys pay their first visit together to the house on Sands Street. The kitchen is the waiting room. Six men sit around the table, and along the wall, reading newspapers, like men at a barbershop. The boys grab newspapers, take seats near the stove. They blow on their hands. The night is cold.
Willie watches the other men closely. Each time one is summoned it’s the same routine. The man tromps upstairs. Minutes later, through the ceiling, heavy footsteps. Then a female voice. Then muffled laughter. Then bedsprings squeaking. Then a loud grunt, a high trill, a few moments of exhausted silence. Finally a slammed door, footsteps descending, and the man passes through the kitchen, cheeks blazing, a flower in his buttonhole. The flower is complimentary.
When it’s their turn Willie feels panic verging on apoplexy. At the upstairs landing he hesitates. Maybe another time, Happy, I don’t feel so good. My stomach.
Tell her where it hurts, Willie, she’ll kiss it and make it better.
Happy pushes Willie toward a pale blue door at the far end of the hall. Willie knocks lightly.
Come.
He pushes the door in slowly.
Shut the door, honey—there’s a draft in that hall.
He does as he’s told. The room is dim, lit only by a candle lamp. On the edge of a frilly bed sits a girl in a baby pink negligee. Smooth skin, long full hair. Pretty eyes with dark lashes. But she’s missing her right arm.
Lost it when I was six, she says when Willie asks. Fell under a streetcar. That’s how come they call me Wingy.
It must also be the reason she’s on Sands Street. Not many other ways for a one-armed girl in Brooklyn to get by.
Willie puts a fifty-cent piece on the dresser. Wingy rises, drops the baby pink negligee. Smiling, she comes to Willie, helps him undress. She knows it’s his first time. How do you know, Wingy? I just do, darlin. Willie calculates—it must be her hundred and first time. This month. As he stands with his pants bunched around his feet, she kisses his chin, his lips, his big nose. He begins to shake, as if cold, though the room is stifling. The windows are shut tight, fogging. Wingy leads him to the bed. She lies on top of him. She kisses him harder, parts his lips with hers.
He draws back. Half her bottom teeth are missing.
Merchant marine knocked them out, she says. Now no more questions, sugar lump, just you lie back and let Wingy do what Wingy does.
What does Wingy do?
I said no more questions.
Her touch is surprisingly gentle, and skillful, and Willie is quickly aroused. She drags her rich chestnut hair up his chest, across his face, like a fan of feathers. He likes the way it feels, and smells. Her hair soap, Castile maybe, masks the room’s other baked-in scents. Male sweat, old spunk—and Fels?
It struck him when he first walked in, but it didn’t register. Now it registers. Whoever launders Wingy’s bedclothes uses the same detergent as Mother. It’s a common detergent, he shouldn’t be surprised, but it confuses and troubles Willie at a climactic moment of his maturation.
More confusions. Willie thought Eddie could cuss, but Wingy makes Eddie seem a rank amateur. Why is she cussing? Is Willie doing it wrong? How can he be, when he’s not doing anything? He’s pinned on his back, helpless. If anyone should be cussing, it’s him. Wingy’s abundant pubic hair is coarse, nearly metallic, and it chafes and scrapes the tender skin of Willie’s brand-new penis. In and out, up and down, Wingy does her best to pleasure Willie, and Willie appreciates her diligence, but he can’t stop dwelling on the gap between reality and his expectations. This is what makes the world go round? This is what everyone’s so excited about—this? If there’s any pleasure at all in the experience, it’s the relief he feels when it’s over.
Wingy curls against him, commending his stamina. He thanks her, for everything, then gathers his clothes and gives her a ten-cent tip. He doesn’t stick around for the complimentary flower.
Photographer turns down Sands Street. The road is being repaired. He weaves slowly among orange cones, sawhorses. Anywhere along here, Sutton says.
Photographer pulls over, slips the car into park. Ninth floor, he says in an adenoidal voice—ladies’ handbags, men’s socks.
What happened on this corner, Mr. Sutton?
This is where Willie lost his innocence. A house of ill fame. That’s what we called whorehouses back then.
Was she pretty? Photographer asks.
Yeah. She was. Though she had only one arm. They called her Wingy.
Which arm?
Her left.
Why didn’t they call her Lefty?
That would’ve been cruel.
Reporter and Photographer look at each other, look away.
Do you want to step out, Mr. Sutton?
Nah.
Willie, Photographer says—why exactly are we here?
I wanted to visit Wingy.
Visit?
I can feel her, right now, smiling at us. At your questions. She didn’t like questions.
The ghost of a one-armed prostitute. Great. That should make a nice photo.
Okay, boys, next stop. We’ve seen where Willie lost his innocence. Let’s go to Red Hook and see where Willie lost his heart.
With the Armistice—November 1918—all of New York City becomes Coney Island. People fill the streets, dance on cars, kiss strangers. Offices close, saloons stay open around the clock. Willie and Eddie and Happy join the crowds, but with mixed emotions. The war was the best thing that ever happened to them. Peace means no more need for machine guns. No more need for them.
Laid off again, the boys scramble. They comb the wants, fill out applications, canvass. But the city is crowded with soldiers also hunting for work. Newspapers forecast another Depression. The third of Willie’s life, this one looks to be the most severe. Things get so bleak, so quick, people wonder aloud if capitalism has run its course.
The boys sit on the rocky waterfront at Red Hook, fishing, while Eddie reads aloud from a newspaper he pulled from the trash. Strikes, riots, unrest—and every other page carries a grim profile of another boy not coming home.
One of every forty who went overseas, Eddie reads, won’t be back.
Christ, Happy says.
At least they did something with their lives, Willie says.
Eddie stands, paces. He pitches rocks at the water. Nothin’s blunth changed. We’re blunth right back blunth where we started.
He stops, lets the rock in his hand fall to the ground. He stands still as a statue and stares into the distance. Willie and Happy turn, follow his gaze. Now they too stand slowly and stare.
Happy sprints toward her, removes his tweed cap, bows. She jumps back, but it’s an act. She’s not startled. A coiled cobra wouldn’t startle this girl, you can tell. Besides, it’s Happy. She was hurrying somewhere, walking purposefully, but now, coming upon a specimen like Happy, she’s got all the time in the world.
You gotta hand it to that Happy, Eddie says. He sits, adjusts his hat, checks the poles. Willie nods, sits beside him. Every few minutes they turn and shoot a wistful look at their friend.
Happy brings her over. Okay, you bums, look alive, on your feet. Bess, this here’s the Beard Street Fishing Club. Of which these are the presidents, Mr. Edward Wilson and Mr. William Sutton. Fellas, say hello to Bess Endner.
She’s an ash blonde, that’s how police reports will later describe her, but in the light of late autumn her hair contains every kind of yellow. Butter, honey, lemon, amber, gold—she even has golden flecks in her bright blue eyes, as if whoever painted her had some yellow left over and didn’t know what to do with it. She’s petite, five foot four, but with the graceful strides of a taller girl. Fifteen years old, Willie guesses. Sixteen maybe.
She’s carrying a wooden basket. She shifts it, shakes hands with Eddie, then Willie.
What’s in the basket? Happy says.
I’m bringing lunch to my father. That’s his shipyard right over there.
Some big shipyard, Happy says.
Biggest in Brooklyn. Founded by my grandpa. He came to this country in the hold of a ship, and now he builds them.
Willie stares. He’s never seen such confidence. The next time he does, it will be in men with guns. Eddie stares too. It doesn’t seem to make her uncomfortable. She probably can’t remember a time when people didn’t stare.
She points to their poles. Fish biting?
Nah, Eddie says.
What are you using for bait?
Bottle caps, Willie says. Nail heads. Chewing tobacco.
Water’s kind of icky, isn’t it?
We give the fish a hot shower and a shave before we cook them, Willie says.
She laughs. Sounds delish. On the subject of food, I better run. Daddy gets cranky when he’s hungry.
She wiggles her fingers goodbye. Is it Willie’s imagination or does she hold his gaze for half a second?
The boys stand shoulder to shoulder, watching her walk down Beard Street. They don’t speak until she passes into her father’s shipyard. Then they still don’t speak. They lie back on the rocks and hold their faces to the sun. Willie, eyes closed, watches the golden sun spots float under his eyelids. They remind him of the flecks in Bess Endner’s blue eyes. He’d have a better chance of kissing the sun.
A cat or rat scurries in front of the car. Photographer swerves. What the—? A block later, another cat or rat. So this is Red Hook, Photographer says—people live here?
And die here, Sutton says. In the old days you’d hear two guys at a lunch counter. One would whisper to the other, I dropped that package in Red Hook. Package meant corpse.
Reporter points to a pothole that looks like a lunar crater. Look out.
Photographer drives straight through it. The Polara begins to rattle like an old trolley.
You cracked the axle, Sutton says.
Brooklyn is full of potholes, Photographer says.
Brooklyn is a pothole, Sutton says. Always was.
Reporter points at a street sign. There it is—Beard Street.
Photographer turns on Beard, slides the Polara along the curb, scrapes the hubcap. Sutton steps out, limps across the cobblestones to a raised, railed sidewalk along the water. He steps up, grabs the railing, stands like a dictator about to address a crowd-filled plaza. Now he turns back to Reporter and Photographer, who are staying by the car. He calls to them: What are there, three billion people in the world? Four? You know the odds of finding the one who’s meant for you? Well—I found her. Right here. On this spot.
Reporter and Photographer cross the street, one jotting notes, the other shooting.
Boys, you’re only really alive, in the fullest sense of the word, when you’re in love. That’s why almost everyone you meet seems like they’re dead.
What was her name, Mr. Sutton?
Bess.

SEVEN
OUT OF WORK, NEARLY OUT OF CASH, THE BOYS STILL SPEND NIGHTS AT Coney Island, but they skip the hot dogs, the rides. They merely pace up and down the Boardwalk, looking at the Christmas lights. And the girls. Happy has an old ukulele. Whenever a beautiful girl passes by on the arm of a soldier, he purposely hits an out-of-tune chord.
Then, a miracle. The most beautiful girl in the crowd isn’t with a soldier. She’s with two girlfriends. And she recognizes Happy. And Eddie. Then Willie. If it isn’t the Beard Street Fishermen, she cries.
She runs over, dragging her two girlfriends. She introduces them. The first has red hair, pale green eyes, slightly recessed, and thick eyebrows. Double thick. Get a load of this bird, Eddie whispers. When they was handin out eyebrows, she must’ve got in line twice.
But First Girlfriend and Eddie discover that they have several friends in common, so they pair off.
Second Girlfriend, with long brown hair and a snub nose, doesn’t speak, doesn’t make eye contact, doesn’t seem to want to be here. Or anywhere. Her aloofness sparks Happy. He takes her by the elbow, turns to wink at Willie. Meaning, Bess is yours.
She wears an aqua blue hat, the brim pulled low, concealing her eyes. When Willie compliments the hat, and her matching blue dress, she slowly raises her face to him. Now he sees the golden flecks. They capture him, paralyze him. He tries to look away, but he can’t. He can’t.
She makes a favorable remark about Willie’s attire. Thank God he didn’t pawn his Title Guaranty suits. Thank God he wore one, the black one, tonight.
They follow their friends up the Boardwalk. Willie asks Bess where she lives. Near Prospect Park, she says. Me too, he says. President Street, she says. Oh, he says, well, you live on the nice side. Biggest house on the block, she says, you can’t miss it. Biggest house, Willie says, biggest shipyard. Means nothing to me, she says, it’s not my shipyard, and it’s not my house.
They talk about the war. Bess reads everything. She sits with her father every night, scouring the Times, and she never misses an issue of Leslie’s Illustrated. She says it’s criminal that bankers are balking at President Wilson’s plan to grant Germany a merciful peace. Criminal.
You certainly do have strong opinions, Willie says.
Don’t you think it a shame I can’t express them at the ballot box?
Oh, well, women will have the vote soon enough.
Tomorrow would not be soon enough, Mr. Sutton.
Of course. My mistake.
He tries to steer the conversation away from politics. He mentions the balmy weather. Unseasonably warm winter, isn’t it?
I should say so.
He asks if Bess is her proper name.
I was born Sarah Elizabeth Endner, but my friends call me all sorts of things. Betsy, Bessie, Bizzy, Binnie. I prefer Bess.
Bess it is.
They fall silent. The sound of their shoes clicking along the Boardwalk seems inordinately loud. Willie thinks about the impossibility of knowing anyone, of getting to know anyone, ever.
Say, uh, Bess. Did you know Coney Island was named by an Irishman?
Oh?
Coney is Irish for rabbit. I guess there were a lot of wild rabbits around here once.
She looks around, as if trying to spot one.
Big ones, Willie says.
She smiles weakly.
Wild, he says.
She makes no reply.
Willie racks his brain, trying to remember what he and Wingy talk about. He tries to remember what the hero says to the heroine in every Alger novel. He can’t think straight. He calls to Eddie and Happy. Hey fellas—what should we do next?
How about the Whip? Eddie says.
The girls think that’s a grand idea. They all hurry down to Luna Park. Luckily the line is short. The boys pool their money and buy six tickets.
The Whip is twelve little sidecars around an oval track. Cables move the sidecars slow, slow, then whip them around narrow turns. Each sidecar holds two people. Eddie and First Girlfriend take one, Happy and Second Girlfriend another, which leaves Willie and Bess. Climbing into the sidecar, Willie feels Bess’s upper arm brush his. One brief touch—he’s shocked by what it does to him.
Will it go fast? she asks.
It might. It’s their best ride. Are you afraid?
Oh no. I love going fast.
The ride starts, the sidecar lurches forward. Willie and Bess press together as it slowly gains speed. The whole thrill of the ride is how slowly it starts, Bess says. They hold tight to the sides, laughing, giggling. She screams as they whip through the first turn. Willie screams too. Eddie and First Girlfriend, one car ahead, look back, frantic, as if Willie and Bess are giving chase. Eddie points a finger and shoots. Willie and Bess shoot back. Eddie is hit. He dies, because it gives him an excuse to collapse his body across First Girlfriend.
Suddenly the sidecar bucks, crawls, comes to a stop. Bess groans. Let’s go again, she says.
Willie and the boys don’t have money for another turn. Luckily, Willie notices that a line has formed. Look, he says.
Oh drat, she says.
The three couples again stroll the Boardwalk.
Darkness is falling. The lights of Coney Island flutter on. Willie tells Bess that there are a quarter million bulbs in all. No wonder Coney Island is the first thing seen by ships at sea. Imagine—this right here is the first glimpse the immigrants have of America.
It’s also the last thing you see when you sail away, Bess says.
How do you know that?
I’ve seen it. Several times.
Oh.
She points at the moon. Look. Isn’t the moon lovely tonight?
Like part of the park, Willie says. Lunar Park.
Bess speaks in the stagy voice of an actress. Why, Mr. Sutton—handsome and clever?
He plays along. I say, Miss Endner, would you mind repeating that?
Can you not hear me, Mr. Sutton?
On the contrary, Miss Endner, I cannot believe my good fortune at being paid a compliment by so fine a young woman, therefore I was hoping I might memorize it.
She stops. She looks up at Willie with a smile that says, Maybe there’s more here than first met the eye. After a slow start he’s turning her. Like the Whip.
The three couples gather at the rail and listen to the pounding waves, a sound like the echo of the war drifting across the sea. The wind picks up. It billows the girls’ long dresses, causes the boys’ neckties to snap like flags. Bess keeps one hand on her hat. Happy gives his hat to Eddie and plucks his ukulele.
I don’t wanna play in your yard
I don’t like you anymore
You’ll be sorry when you see me
Sliding down our cellar door
They all know the words. Bess has a fine voice, but it’s quavering, because she’s cold. Willie takes off his coat and wraps it around her shoulders.
You can’t holler down our rain barrel
You can’t climb our apple tree
People drift toward them, adding their voices. No one can resist this song.
I don’t wanna play in your yard
If you won’t be good to me
With the final notes Happy makes his battered ukulele sound like a ukulele orchestra. Everyone claps and Bess squeezes Willie’s bicep. He flexes it bigger. She squeezes it harder.
Heavens, First Girlfriend says, looking at her bracelet watch, it’s late.
Bess protests. First Girlfriend and Second Girlfriend overrule her. The three couples follow the crowd toward the trolleys and subways. Willie and Bess begin to say their goodbyes. Then find themselves alone. Willie looks around. In the shadows of a bathhouse Eddie and First Girlfriend are entwined. Behind a fortune-teller’s booth Happy is stealing kisses from Second Girlfriend. Willie looks at Bess. Her eyes—pools of blue and gold. He feels the earth tip toward the moon. He leans, touches his lips softly to hers. His skin tingles, his blood catches fire. In this instant, he knows, in this unforeseen gift of a moment, his future is being reshaped. This wasn’t supposed to happen. But it is happening. It is.
At last, on the street, the girls stand facing the boys. Thank you for a lovely evening. Nice meeting you. And you as well. Merry Christmas. Good night. Ta ta. Happy New Year.
And yet Bess will be seeing Willie in just a few days. They have a date. The girls walk off, First Girlfriend and Second Girlfriend on either side of Bess. Willie watches them melt into the crowd. At the last second Bess turns.
You can’t holler down my rainbarrel, she calls.
You can’t climb my apple tree, Willie calls back.
She sings: I don’t wanna play in your yaaard.
He thinks: If you won’t be good to me.
Sutton looks at his reflection in the water. He realizes it’s not his reflection, but a cloud. Did you know Socrates said we love whatever we lack? Or think we lack?
Socrates?
If you feel stupid, you’ll fall for someone brainy. If you feel ugly, you’ll flip your lid for someone who’s easy on the eyes.
You’ve read Socrates?

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