Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  The judge peers over his spectacles at the defense table. Lawyer touches the white hairs on his nose, puts a liver pill on his tongue. No questions, Your Honor.

  You may step down, young lady.

  Bess stands. She looks at her father. Then Willie. The first time she’s looked in his direction all morning, the first time their eyes have met in months. He tries to read her face. He can’t. She then floats up the aisle, out of the courtroom, onto the front pages. In Brooklyn, in San Francisco, in London, people will soon read about the little flapper’s charmingly innocent tale of first love and heedless crime. She’ll share the front pages with the bankers and their proxies haggling over the spoils of war. Because of her stirring testimony, however, there will be little mention of Willie and Happy in the newspapers. Reporters will turn Bess’s story of star-crossed lovers into the debut of one beautiful star.

  It doesn’t matter if the judge believes Bess or not. The judge himself doesn’t matter. Mr. Endner and his cronies have already told the judge, over ten-dollar cigars in his chambers, what to do. After some pointless testimony from the sheriff of Poughkeepsie, some dithering about the evidence, the squirrel coat, the receipts, the judge finds the boys guilty and sentences them to three years probation. He further orders Willie and Happy to stay away from Bess.

  William F. Sutton is released from Raymond Street Jail a few days before Christmas, 1919. He stands on the top step of the jailhouse, looking at the city. Free at last—so what? The Depression awaits him. It’s the only thing that awaits him. Under the best of circumstances he wouldn’t be able to find work. With a criminal record, forget it. Besides which, he’s lost Bess. He might as well turn around and ask to stay at Raymond Street.

  The reality is a little worse than he imagined. He misses Bess so much that he can barely function. He wants to die. He plans his death. He writes goodbye letters to his family, to her. At the last minute, walking to the river, he tells himself: If only I could speak to her, for even one minute. He goes to the house on President Street. To hell with his probation. He stands on the sidewalk. The stained glass, the fancy balustrades, the iron fence. He prays for her to pass by a window.

  They’re all dark.

  Mr. Sutton? Are you crying?

  No.

  The Polara is parked outside Kings County Criminal Justice Center. Formerly Raymond Street Jail.

  Reporter turns. Mr. Sutton, you’re crying.

  Sutton puts his hand to his cheek. I didn’t know I was crying sir.

  Sir?

  Kid.

  Sutton looks for a Kleenex. He opens the camera bag. Expensive lenses. He opens the cloth purse. Billfold. Baggie full of joints. Armies of the Night. Malcolm X. Photographer has dog-eared page 155. And underlined a passage. Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before voting to have other men kept behind bars—caged.

  He stakes out Coney Island, finds Bess’s girlfriends. They tell him that Mr. Endner has taken Bess out of the country until the scandal subsides.

  She sailed for Hamburg last week, First Girlfriend says.

  She’s going to live with Mr. Endner’s family, Second Girlfriend adds. Say—how’s Happy?

  Willie’s parents offer no comfort, no quarter, no mercy. When they speak at all in his presence, it’s not to him, but about him. They say he’s disgraced them, betrayed them. They won’t throw him out, but they want no part of him.

  Daddo would understand, but Daddo is failing. Half the time he thinks he’s back in Ireland with the witches and the mermaids. The little men—they’ve stolen Daddo’s mind.

  Thank God for Eddie. He’s still working at the shipyard, and he’s held in such high regard that he’s able to get jobs for Willie and Happy. A nice piece of luck, but also strange. Being in a shipyard reminds Willie of Endner and Sons, which reminds him of Bess, which makes him want to cry. Still, he’s working. He tells himself that this, this is all he needs. This is all he ever really wanted.

  As the new decade begins he’s standing on a hooded platform, dangling from the side of a freighter, wielding a purple flame of five thousand degrees. He’s cutting the freighter into pieces, cutting the pieces into littler pieces. The job is dangerous, grueling, exhausting, and thus a blessing. At the end of each day he has no choice but to sleep. Also, in his current frame of mind, he finds it therapeutic to destroy, to burn and break stuff apart.

  Most mornings, before work, he meets Eddie and Happy at a diner near the shipyard. They clap him on the back, tell him he’s good as new. He knows better. He knows that something inside him is broken, something more than his heart, and it’s like a scrapped freighter, there’s no putting it back together.

  He earns enough for a furnished room. His parents don’t bother to pretend they’re sorry to see him go. Mother says good luck, her tone is good riddance. Father stares, eyes filled with Disappointment. On his day off Willie goes for walks along the river. He saves his pennies for a ball game now and then with Eddie and Happy. It’s not much, but it’s enough. No one will ever hear him complain.

  Then he gets laid off. Eddie and Happy too.

  With nowhere else to go, the boys meet at the diner every morning. They talk about the Depression as if it were a punk they’d like to rough up. Eddie, on his soapbox: Crops failin, prices fallin, and banks, when they’re not goin under, foreclosin on everythin in sight. Banks, he tells everyone along the counter. Fuckin banks.

  Willie rations his savings. He has enough for three months, he figures, if he eats once a day, sticks to sardines and crackers. It’s some consolation that his pals are in the same fix, until they’re not. Eddie and Happy catch on with some high-flying bootleggers, driving beer trucks. Prohibition is now in full force, and though thousands of barkeeps and brewers are thrown out of work, all kinds of new jobs are created, for those not squeamish about the law.

  Eddie and Happy are transformed. They have suites at the St. George, bankrolls as big as ham sandwiches. They urge Willie to join them, but no. The newspapers are filled with stories about bad hooch. It’s made with rat poison, embalming fluid, gasoline. Fourteen people just died from a batch last month. They were lucky. Others wake up blind. After a night on the town, young men and women grope for the lamp on the nightstand, turn it on—and the room is still dark. I think about my Daddo, Willie tells Eddie and Happy. I don’t want to be the cause of someone spending his days in darkness.

  Eddie and Happy harass him, berate him—but they also understand. They float him loans, stand him meals. When the three get together at a chop suey joint, or a steak house near the bridge, they don’t even let Willie see the check.

  Thanks fellas, Willie says, glum. I owe you.

  At every meal Eddie and Happy wear brightly colored ties, fancy hats, pointy shoes. Willie wears pants that need mending in the seat. He pawned the suits he bought with Bess.

  Sutton sits on the curb across the street from the justice center, between Reporter and Photographer. When I got out of this joint, he says, I just about starved. There were no jobs, boys. None. Except running beer.

  Prohibition, Photographer says, rocking back and forth angrily. Big Brother butting into people’s personal lives. Back then it was booze, today it’s drugs—it’s all the same fascist ideology.

  Sutton grins. You’ve got strong opinions kid.

  And you know the worst thing about Prohibition, Willie?

  Sutton stubs out his Chesterfield. What’s that kid?

  Banks. Who do you think was laundering all the bootleggers’ cash? Banks were always bad, but during Prohibition they went hog wild. The fat cats got fatter. Am I right, Willie?

  Sutton shrugs. One thing is for sure, kid, nothing happened quite the way it was supposed to back then. The government banned drinking, but people drank more than ever. Women got the right to vote, but they didn’t really use it. The radio was invented—suddenly you could listen to Dempsey wallop a guy two thousand miles away—and they promised it was the en
d of loneliness. Hell it only made people lonelier. People sat in their rooms, listening to dance music, and theater plays, and laughter, and they felt more alone than ever. Nothing went according to Hoyle, nothing turned out as advertised. That’s when people started to get cynical.

  Reporter stands, checks his watch, checks the map. Our next stop is Manhattan, Mr. Sutton?

  Sutton nods. Yeah. We’re done with Brooklyn.

  Until the Schuster thing.

  Mm hm.

  Mr. Sutton. We made a deal.

  Deal. Yeah.

  Readers want to know what you have to say about Schuster.

  He was a nice kid who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which can also be said of the rest of us. What else is there to say?

  Any idea who might have killed him?

  Sutton stands, glowers at Reporter. Chronological order kid.

  But Mr. Sutton—

  Did you ever notice, kid, that the words obit and orbit are separated by one little letter?

  Down to his last two dollars, Willie walks into the recruiting center in Times Square. A burly sergeant tells him to have a seat, hands him some forms, asks how many chin-ups he can do.

  Plenty, Willie says.

  Push-ups?

  Stand back, Willie says, spitting on his palms, falling to his knees.

  The sergeant asks casually if Willie has a criminal record. Willie, still on his knees, looks off through the glass door at all the people bustling back and forth through Times Square.

  Sorry, the sergeant says, taking back the forms. Uncle Sam likes em squeaky clean.

  Eddie and Happy tell him to wise up. He can have pockets full of jack by this time tomorrow.

  Quit bein such a goddamn Boy Scout, Eddie says.

  Do you have any idea how much we’re making? Happy says.

  Before I peddle poison, Willie says, I’ll starve.

  From the looks of you, Happy says, that should be about two days.

  Then, May 1921. An uncomfortably warm day. Willie is in his room, lying on his bed, reading the sports pages. He’s two months behind on the rent. The door bursts open and he reaches for a bat to fend off the landlord, who’s barged in before. But it’s Eddie, out of breath. Sutty, grab your hat—Happy just got pinched.

  Shit. The beer truck?

  The truck, yeah. And assault.

  Who’d he assault?

  Nobody. The cops say he mugged some guy in an alley, hit him over the head and took his billfold, but it’s a dirty lie.

  In the cab to the station house, Eddie explains. The cops saw an opportunity. They figured they could use Happy to clear an old case off the books, and they knew he was good for some headlines, because of the Endner case.

  So what can we do, Willie says.

  Sometimes, Eddie says, if you just show up at the cop house, the cops know the prisoner has friends. He’s not a nobody. It keeps them from beating him too bad.

  Not this time. The cops nearly beat Happy to death. They keep beating him until he confesses to the assault, and another one to boot. Weeks later, in the same courthouse where Willie and Happy were tried for kidnapping Bess, a judge sends Happy to prison for five years. Willie and Eddie are in the front row. Happy gives them half a wave as he’s led from the courtroom in chains.

  Eddie taps Willie on the shoulder. Let’s go, Sutty.

  Yeah, Willie says, but he doesn’t move. He stares at the witness chair. He feels terrible for Happy, and partly responsible, but mainly he can’t stop thinking of the gray dress with the blue collar and blue cuffs. And the matching blue purse. She held it like a steering wheel.

  They drive half a mile, turn onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Sutton still doesn’t like the view from this bridge. He sits in the exact middle of the seat, where he can’t see the river below, and where much of the skyline is obscured by the heads of Reporter and Photographer. He does what he often does when he’s somewhere he doesn’t want to be. He recites a poem.

  He lunged up Bowery way while the dawn was putting the Statue of Liberty out—that torch of hers you know.

  What’s that, Mr. Sutton?

  Hart Crane. The Bridge.

  What’s it mean?

  Search me.

  Photographer aligns Willie in the rearview. You know any Beats?

  What am I, a jukebox?

  The Beats are where it’s at, brother. I shot Ginsberg once. Meditating.

  Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live. That’s Kerouac—he Beat enough for you?

  Photographer nods. Kerouac is cool, he says.

  Sutton leans sideways, sneaks a quick look at the city, leans back. Grunts. New York, he says. No matter how many times you see it, you never quite get over how much it doesn’t fuckin need you. Doesn’t care if you live or die, stay or go. But that—that indifference, I guess you’d call it—that’s half of what makes the town so goddamn beautiful.

  Reporter turns to look back at Sutton. He opens his mouth, closes it.

  Sutton chuckles. You got something on your mind kid? Out with it.

  I just have to say, Mr. Sutton, you are nothing like what I expected.

  Photographer snorts. Amen to that, brother.

  What did you expect?

  You just don’t seem—like a bank robber. No offense.

  None taken, Sutton says.

  I didn’t expect you to be quite so—romantic, Mr. Sutton. I mean, poetry? Socrates? And so nostalgic—the tears? Honestly, it’s just hard to imagine you with a gun, robbing banks, terrorizing an entire city.

  At the center of the bridge they hit a wall of traffic. Photographer turns to Reporter: Maybe you picked up the wrong guy in Buffalo last night. Did you ask this joker in the backseat for his ID?

  They both laugh.

  Sutton watches a cloud sail across the bridge. He puts on his glasses, takes them off, plays with the Scotch tape that holds them together. He looks down. He opens Photographer’s cloth purse. Malcolm X, Armies, baggie, billfold. He opens the camera bag. He takes out two telephoto lenses. Long sleek black metal—he holds one in each hand, tests their weight, then presses one to the back of Reporter’s skull, the other to Photographer’s.

  OKAY, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS, DO WHAT I SAY AND NO ONE GETS HURT. PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE MOTHERFUCKIN AIR!

  Reporter raises his hands. Photographer lets go of the wheel as if it’s scalding. The Polara swerves. Car horns blare from the next lane.

  Holy shit, Reporter says.

  Put the MONEY in the FUCKIN bag!

  WHAT money? Photographer says. WHAT bag?

  Holy shit, Reporter says again.

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

  Funny, Photographer says. Hilarious.

  Mr. Sutton, was that really necessary?

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

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

  You heard wrong. No one wants Willie.

  I’ll show you want. Buy an hour?

  I’ll pay for the whole morning.

  Big shot.

  Och, it’s Eddie’s money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  That’s my dream.

  That’s everybody’s dream, Willie.

  How do you know?

  People tell me their dreams.

  How come no one ever does it?

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

  Eddie says the whole thing’s rigged.

  Eddie’s a wise man.

  I should’ve listened.

  To who.

  To him. To anybody. Except myself.

  You’ve always been cockeyed.

  I have?

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

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

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

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

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

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

  They don’t answer.

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

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

  Father nods, grinds his jaw.