Kitabı oku: «Sutton», sayfa 2
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.
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