Different how?
Wall Street, Willie. They’re a bad bunch.
I’m surprised they venture across the bridge.
They come to Brooklyn for—something different. On this side of the river, the plainer the girl, the better the business. They feel they can make bold with us plain ones. Be more themselves, I guess.
Don’t lump yourself in that group. Nothing plain about you, Wingy.
You’re sweet, Willie. But I know who I am. What I am. And as such, I’ll take a sailor over an investment banker any day.
Why’s that?
Bankers don’t ask, Willie. They take.
I’m sorry you’re having to deal with such fellas.
Don’t be. It makes me feel less guilty when I rob em.
Willie laughs.
Wingy asks if he’s got any smokes. He takes out a pack, lights one for her, leaves the pack on the bed.
I wish they could all be sweet as you, she says. That first time? I still remember you walking through that door, polite, shaking—grateful. Yes mam, no mam. Like it was the first day of school. Like I was your teacher.
It was. You were.
Willie sits in a chair, Wingy sits on the edge of the bed. She runs her one hand through her hair. I miss that Willie Boy, she says. The only weird thing he ever wanted to do was call me Bess.
Willie looks off. That Willie Boy is dead, he says.
Along with your rich uncle.
Sure, he says. Right.
Was there a funeral?
Yeah. No one showed.
She moves over to her makeup table. Watching her cross the room Willie thinks she looks much older than her years, though he has no idea how old she is. She sits, powders her nose, asks his reflection about Happy. Willie frowns. She asks about Bess. His frown deepens.
I wrote her a letter. But I had nowhere to send it.
You’ll hear from her, Wingy says. If she’s as smart as you always said, she’ll get in touch.
He taps his new gold watch. I better be going.
Short visit.
I’ve got a meeting.
He stands, straightens his tie, reaches into his breast pocket. He comes out with a neat stack of new bills, holds it forth with two hands. Wingy turns on her stool. She doesn’t stand, doesn’t take it.
The hell is that, Willie?
Christmas gift. Belated.
What’s the punch line?
I thought you might like to go somewhere. Like we talked about. Start over.
He steps forward, places the money on Wingy’s lap. She touches it, flips the bills like pages of a book. She looks up. I don’t want your pity, Willie.
It’s not my pity. It’s my money. Hell it aint even my money.
She stands, lets the money fall. She covers the ground between them in one step, wraps her arm around Willie. Surprised, Willie stiffens. Then lets his body go slack. Gives her a brotherly hug.
He’s not dead, she says.
Who?
Willie Boy.
Doorman: Merry Christmas sir.
Sutton: Merry Christmas to you kid. Say, is there any chance 8C is vacant? A friend of mine used to live up there and I was hoping to take a quick look around. For old times’ sake.
Doorman: Wait a second. Hold the phone. Aren’t you Willie the Actor?
Sutton: Yeah.
Doorman: Willie the Freakin Actor?
Sutton: Some people call me that.
Doorman: Willie the Actor at my freakin door? Okay, this right now is blowing my mind. My old man is not going to freakin believe this. He’s your biggest fan, Mr. Sutton. Run, Willie, run, that’s what my old man says whenever you’re in the papers. Three greatest Willies in New York, my old man says—Willie Mays, Joe Willie Namath, and Willie the Actor.
Sutton: You’re very kind.
Doorman: Hey—wow. I mean—wow. Could you sign my newspaper?
Sutton: Sure thing.
Doorman: Here. Sign it right here. Under your picture. There you go. Put—To Michael Flynn, That’s where the money was. Michael Flynn, that’s my old man. I’m Tim Flynn. What the heck are you doing here, Mr. Sutton?
Sutton: I got out yesterday.
Doorman: Who doesn’t know that? But here?
Sutton: I’m reminiscing. Visiting old haunts. I used to know a guy in this building, and I was just hoping to see his place.
Doorman: Eight C? Okay, that’s the Monroe place. Between you and me the Monroes are some Grade A world-class WASP prick motherfucks.
Sutton: Is that a fact.
Doorman: If they weren’t home I’d be happy to show you around. On the q.t. Hell, I’d let you use their toilet. But they’re definitely home. Guests have been going up all morning.
Sutton: Maybe there’s another way? That’s a handsome uniform you’re wearing. What size are you kid?
Doorman: Thirty-eight.
Sutton: What say we trade outfits? This suit is brand-new.
Doorman: You serious?
Sutton: Dead serious. I’ll go up as the new doorman, invent some reason for knocking on their door, and be out before they know what’s what.
Doorman: Gee, I don’t know, Mr. S. I could lose my job. And who are you?
Reporter: I’m writing an article about Mr. Sutton.
Photographer: And I’m taking his picture.
Sutton: Oh. I didn’t know you boys were behind me. Kid, meet Commanders Armstrong and Aldrin.
Doorman: Merry Christmas.
Photographer: Same to you.
Sutton: Well, okay kid. I understand. I’d love to give you a tip, but all I’ve got is a couple of checks from Governor Rockefeller.
Doorman: Please, Mr. Sutton. I wouldn’t take your money.
Sutton: Don’t say that kid. Don’t ever say that. Never turn down money.
Eddie was right, Doc does know his potatoes. He can talk all night about safes. And Willie can listen all night. After their regular planning session at the coffee shop on the corner, Willie often follows Doc back to his apartment for private tutorials.
In addition to safes, Doc is a collector of quotations. He has one to illustrate every teaching point. He’s fond of Gibran. Work is love made visible. And Novalis. We are near waking when we dream we are dreaming. He knows pages and pages of Plutarch, Epictetus, Emerson. When he’s had too much to drink he’ll say this over and over: Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox and squirrel and mole.
One night Doc pours himself a whiskey, lights a thin cigarillo, eases back on his sofa. It’s all a kind of sad joke, Willie Boy. Americans are a trusting people, so your average safe is an impediment at best. It’s not meant to stop you, just slow you down. If you know boxes, really know them, this whole game is child’s play. Every box is flawed by design. Even if you can’t crack it, there’s always at least one way around the lock, a back door installed at the factory, in case the owner croaks, the tumblers quit working. Or else the combination is obvious, the owner’s birthday, say. Or else it’s writ down someplace obvious. You’d be flabbergasted how many times it’s right there on the wall above the safe. The rule with safes is a rule you can apply to everything, Willie. There’s always a way in.
Along with all that’s worth knowing about safes, Doc teaches Willie about alarm systems, door locks, padlocks, cops. He teaches Willie which lawyers are best for which charges, and which ones to avoid. He leads him around town, introduces him to the fraternity. Hard-eyed killers, flashy bootleggers, wizened yeggs. Cracksmen, petermen, heistmen, bookies, flickers, conners, buzzers, overlords. He presents Willie, like a minister without portfolio, to the bosses. Legs Diamond. Owney Madden. Dutch Schultz.
Lastly Doc carefully and patiently educates Willie about the logistics of offloading stolen goods.
Your most important tool, Doc says, isn’t your tension wrench, your stethoscope, your jimmy. It’s your off man. Whosoever converts your boost to cash knows as much a
bout you as anyone in the world, including your mother, so choose that person as you choose your partners. With double care.
Doc’s off man is a woman. A well-known socialite, she’s in the society columns every week for giving truckloads of money to the church, the ballet, the library. Newspapers call her a doyenne, a dowager, a pillar of the community. Doc says she’s also a sicko. She gets a thrill from diamonds with a sordid provenance. She has a particular fetish for other women’s heirlooms.
Willie goes with Doc one day to meet Socialite at her home, a gorgeous town house in the East Sixties. For the better part of an hour they sit in her Art Deco living room, on white leather Barcelona chairs, drinking tea, eating lemon cookies. Half the walls are paneled with mirrors, so Willie finds fifty Willies eyeing him from all directions. He feels outnumbered. Outmanned.
He sees a book lying facedown on the coffee table. He picks it up. Socialite says it’s a collection of stories and poems you can only find in Paris. The young writer’s name is Heming-something. Willie studies the author photo, sets the book down. Looks like a tough mug, he says.
Ravishing, Socialite says. Every sentence is ravishing.
Willie isn’t entirely sure what this word means, but Socialite uses it a lot. Paris is ravishing this time of year. Clara Bow is ravishing on the silver screen. These new puzzles everyone is doing, crossword puzzles, are a simply ravishing way to pass the time.
A puzzle book is lying facedown near the short stories. She picks it up. Do either of you know a four-letter word for Europe river, starting with a?
Arno, Doc says.
Socialite’s eyes grow large. While she fills in the word, Doc shoots Willie a look. Willie removes a silk purse from his breast pocket and puts it on the coffee table. Socialite drops the puzzle book, scoops the bag. She carries it across the room and empties it onto a writing table that looks as if it was boosted from Versailles. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds go skittering across the table’s wood surface. She sorts them, examines each one through a lorgnette. Then she and Doc haggle.
I can’t do it, Doc says. I’d be in the poorhouse if I settled for that price.
You’re robbing me blind, Doc.
It’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.
All right, all right.
She opens a safe behind one of the mirrored panels. She removes a brick of cash, wraps the brick in butcher paper. Willie takes one last look at the jewels on the table. An impulse overcomes him. He shoots out his hand, seizes a three-carat Old European–cut diamond ring.
Please mam. Not this one.
Doc wheels. His eyes dart from Willie to the ring and back to Willie. They both turn and look at Socialite. Doc gives a pained smile. Well now. Uh. Apparently my associate has grown—attached—to that item.
Socialite purses her lips. She doesn’t like to lose out on even one piece of ice. She glares at Doc. Then Willie. Willie fears he’s queered the deal. He’s kiboshed Doc’s vital relationship with his off man.
Socialite sits at the writing table. A girl? she says.
Yes mam. She’s ravishing.
Sutton walks to the corner. There used to be an out-of-town newsstand right here, he says. We’d step off the overnight train, wearing our long topcoats, snap-brims wide as sombreros, and walk straight to this newsstand.
Who?
Doc’s crew.
Why?
We wanted to read our reviews. We liked being famous. Most people suffer from a fear that they’re not really here, that they’re invisible. Being famous solves that. You must be here, it says so in the newspaper.
Sutton looks once more at the spot where the newsstand used to be, as if it might materialize. Shit, he says, people dove out of our way as we came up this sidewalk.
Why?
We looked bad. And we knew we looked bad. We were trying to look bad. Every criminal is playing some criminal he saw in a movie. I can’t tell you how many guys I met in the joint who saw Bogart or Cagney at an impressionable age. No one loves Bogart more than me, but the man’s caused more bloodshed than Mussolini.
I’m confused, Photographer says. What reviews?
We’d buy the papers from whichever city we’d just hit and read the stories about our heist. Police say they have no leads—we always busted a gut about that one. Police say it looks like an inside job—we’d smack our knees over that one. But the bad reviews, we took those hard. If the cops said the robbery looked like the work of amateurs, we’d go into a funk for a week. Everyone’s a fuckin critic.
Reporter checks Sutton’s map. Mr. Sutton, speaking of newspapers, it looks like our next stop is Times Square? Now that’s the home of The New York Times. That’s the belly of the beast. Times Square is to reporters what a statue is to pigeons, so please, Mr. Sutton, I beg you—not Times Square.
Sorry kid. Willie has to see Times Square. Willie isn’t even officially out of prison until he hits Times Square.
Doc waits until they’re out on the street and almost to Times Square before he explodes. For the love of God, Willie Boy, what in blazes were you thinking?
I’m sorry, Doc—the ring just spoke to me.
Willie pulls the ring from his breast pocket and holds it to the spring sun.
Stow that thing, Doc hisses. Damn it, I thought your bird was out of the country.
Please don’t call her a bird. Yes, she’s out of the country. But I mean to find her. And when I do, I mean to be ready. To have a ring on me.
Doc squares his shoulders, pushes back his hat, looks as if he wants to hammer some sense into Willie. But then he sighs, rakes his fingers through his marshmallow hair. Okay, okay. I’ll deduct the ring from your next nick.
He shadow punches Willie a right to the jaw.
But in the future, he adds, if a piece of ice should speak to you, don’t answer, Willie Boy. Get me? Come on, let’s hit the Silver Slipper. You need to buy me a fuckin drink.
I should have never left Doc, Sutton says. I owed him. I was never good at anything until I met him. A man has to feel good at something or he’s not a man, and with Doc I discovered that I was good at stealing diamonds. Nah—I wasn’t good at it. I was great.
So why did you leave?
We were making nice jack, but I needed a big score. A bunch of big scores, actually, if I was going to find Bess and show her that I could take care of her. That was always in the back of my mind. That was my dream. Also, if I’m being honest, Doc was slipping.
It happens in Boston. The safe is a battered old Mosler, child’s play, but Doc just can’t find the numbers. He rolls the wheel, back and forth, nothing doing. Don’t know what’s wrong with me tonight, he says. His voice is different.
They bring out the drill. Eddie starts, puts three quick holes in the plate, but Willie is pointing to his gold watch. Time. They leave everything, walk out.
On the overnight train back to New York they sit together, saying nothing. Willie watches a Model A in the distance, trundling along a dark country road, one headlamp out. He turns and watches Doc, removing his white gloves, taking several pulls from a silver flask. The flask is shaking.
Willie gives himself a week off. He sits in his leather chair, looking out at the city, thinking. At last he puts on his best suit and walks down to Doc’s. They sit among the safes, drinking coffee, talking shop. Doc mentions the next job. Willie shakes his head.
Won’t be a next job for me, Doc. I’m out.
Ah Willie, no.
Doc. You knew I wanted to go out on my own eventually.
But why now? Why on earth now? We’ve got a bang-up thing going here.
Do me a favor, Doc. Hold out your hands.
Willie.
Do it, Doc.
Doc extends his arms, spreads his white-gloved fingers.
Look, Willie says. You’re playing ragtime.
Fuck kid—age. Happens to the best of us.
You blew that score the other night.
First time.
All the more reason.
Willie nods.
Godspeed, Willie. I’ll watch the papers for your reviews.
Days later Willie meets Eddie for lunch at a chophouse in Times Square. Over porterhouses smothered in onions Willie tells Eddie it’s time. Time to start their own crew.
Eddie nods.
What gives, Ed? I expected a little more vim. This is it, what you’ve always wanted, the real raw-jaw stuff. Banks.
Eddie shakes a Chesterfield out of Willie’s pack, lights it, takes a hard drag. I got some bad news, Sutty.
Shoot.
Old friend of yours is back in town.
Oh.
She’s gettin married.
Willie pushes away his steak. He looks at his hands. Ragtime.
Where?
Baptist church.
When?
Today kid. What I’m hearin, it’s an arranged thing. The groom comes from money. His family owns warehouses all along the waterfront.
Willie stands, staggers out of the chophouse. A produce truck comes barreling down the street, smashing through puddles. Willie and Eddie will always disagree about whether Willie changed his mind at the last second or Eddie ran out of the chophouse just in time.
They walk around Times Square, Eddie urging Willie not to crash the wedding.
Never mind that seein it will kill you, Sutty. Her old man could have you pinched.
For what? I’m not on probation anymore.
He owns Brooklyn. He don’t need a reason.
Eddie makes a good point. Willie considers wearing a disguise. He even steps into a theatrical shop, tries on a homburg and fake beard. But then he decides that he wants Old Man Endner to see him. He wants Bess to see him—at his best. He splurges on a scalp massage, a barber shave, a haircut. He puts on his newest suit, chalk-striped, with wide, dramatic lapels. At four o’clock, as the little old lady in the flowered hat presses down on the organ keys, Willie is five rows from the altar, two rows from the Rockefellers, the Old European–cut diamond ring in his breast pocket. Just in case.
Mr. Endner, escorting Bess down the aisle, sees Willie first. He tugs on his mustaches. He’s going to halt the ceremony, call the cops. No—his eyes narrow to watery slits, his mustaches fan out across a yellow grin. Because Willie is too late.
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