Not me, Ed.
Eddie rocks back on his heels. What? Is this a kid?
No.
Don’t tell me you want to keep on plantin petunias.
Beats pushing up daisies.
Sutty.
Ed. With good behavior, and a little help from Lawes, we can be out of here in four years. We’ll be young yet. We’ll have lives.
Eddie starts to argue but Willie hands him the Dorothy Perkins and strolls back to Chapin.
The next morning Willie and Eddie are called to Lawes’s office. A vase on the desk is filled with new Madame Butterfly. The window over the desk looks down on Chapin’s gardens. Lawes stands at the window, his back to Willie and Eddie.
Someone overheard you two clowns yesterday. In the gardens no less—there’s gratitude for you. Well, I’m not going to have some mutts from Irish Town sully my reputation with a crash-out. You’re both gone. Today. I’m shipping you north to Dannemora. Hard by the Canadian border. You don’t like Sing Sing, eh? Trust me, this place will soon seem like Shangri-la.
A guard gives Willie five minutes to pack his things into a paper bag. Then he and Eddie are loaded aboard a bus. Hours later Willie finds himself on the floor of a stone cell, being spit on by two French-speaking guards who stink of cheap wine. The cell is smaller, colder, nastier by far than Willie’s cell at Sing Sing. And there isn’t a rose within two hundred miles.
Sutton watches a car cruise up to Yankee Stadium. The window rolls down. Two men appear from nowhere, pass a brown paper bag into the car. Money comes out. The car speeds away.
Sutton shakes his head. Say—what’s a beer cost these days at Yankee Stadium?
Fifty cents, Photographer says.
And they put me in jail for robbery.
Photographer fumbles in his camera bag for a new lens. What was Sing Sing like, Willie?
If you wanted to learn how to be a criminal, there was no better place. It was the Princeton of bank robbery. There were bank robbers who’d been there so long, they were called bank bursters. That was the old-time term, back in the last century.
How long were you there?
That first time? Less than a year. It went by fast. I became friends with an old newsman, Charlie Chapin, and I was learning a lot from him. But then Eddie and I were overheard talking about escaping. Well, Eddie was talking, I was listening. I always worried it was Chapin who ratted us. I hope not. Anyway, the warden shipped us to Dannemora, a dungeon up north. That’s when things got rough. Stone cells, no heat. They beat us with metal sticks, fed us undercooked mountain goat. Judas goat.
Sutton smacks his lips, as if tasting the goat, sets off for the Polara.
Photographer runs ahead, walks backwards, shoots Sutton in stride. Yeah, he says. That light bouncing off the stadium is cool, Willie. Kind of spooky.
Reporter walks just behind Sutton, holding open a file. Mr. Sutton, this file says that while at Dannemora you met a future accomplice? Marcus Bassett?
Sutton grunts.
What was he like?
Typical yegg.
A what?
Stickup man.
He sounds, from these clips, like a character.
His head was shaped like a triangle, Sutton says. A perfect triangle. Imagine? And his eyes looked like waterbugs. And they never stopped moving. You meet someone whose eyes are like waterbugs, walk the other direction. But somehow I thought Marcus was a right guy. I was fooled, I think, because he was a writer. I had respect for writers back then. I should have wised up when he showed me some of his stories.
No good?
The literary equivalent of undercooked mountain goat. He became a stickup man because he couldn’t sell anything.
Sutton stops, takes one last look at the stadium facade. Walled garden, he says. I think it was at Dannemora that I first became angry. A cell is a bad place to be angry. When a man’s angry, he needs to move around, burn it off. Lock an angry man in a cell, it’s like locking a stick of lighted dynamite in a safe.
Who were you angry at?
Everyone. But mostly myself. I hated myself. The unhealthiest kind of hate.
Were you angry with Eddie? For messing up the good thing you had going with Chapin?
Nah. I could never be angry with Eddie. Not after that wink.
What wink?
TWELVE
Willie sits before the parole board, fifteen pounds underweight, shivering. He’s been shivering for three years. He tells the board that he wants to go straight. He tells them that he wants to get married, get a job, become a contributing member of society. He tells them that the last four years in Sing Sing and Dannemora have been a torment, but also a godsend, for which he thanks them. He didn’t know himself four years ago, but he does now. He knows who Willie Sutton is, and who he isn’t. It’s June 1927, he’ll soon turn twenty-six, and he’s sick about how much of his twenty-six years he’s wasted. Fighting to keep his voice steady, he tells the board that he’s determined not to waste one minute more.
He sees the effect of his performance. He sees the members of the parole board lean forward, soak up his words, conclude that Sutton, William F., no longer poses a threat to society, that he should be released at once.
Days later it is so ordered.
As to the matter of Sutton’s accomplice, Edward Buster Wilson. Parole denied.
Willie packs his books into a paper bag. First the Tennyson. He’s memorized the ballad Tennyson wrote about the great love of his youth. Come into the garden, Maud. I am here at the gate alone. Next his heavily underlined copies of Franklin, Cicero, Plato—all recommended by Chapin.
A keeper walks Willie over to the prison’s parole agent, who hands him a ten-dollar bill wrapped around a train ticket. The keeper then walks Willie to the prison tailor, where he’s given a release suit. Gray, with a brown tie. At the front gate Willie stops, asks the keeper: Would you please tell Eddie Wilson goodbye for me?
Hit the grit, asshole.
Willie walks to the station, boards the local, arrives in Grand Central at dusk. He walks to Times Square, marvels at the new signs, the dozens of new marquees. And the lights. Someone apparently decided while he was gone that Times Square should outshine Coney Island. He sees a towering sign: WELCOME TO NEW YORK, GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD. He stops at a newsstand, buys the papers and two packs of Chesterfields. Settles into a coffee shop. At a corner booth, not touching a plate of pastries and a cup of coffee, he stares out the window at the men and women passing by. The population of New York City must have doubled since he left. The sidewalks seem twice as crowded. And everyone looks different. They’re all wearing new clothes, using new words, laughing at new jokes. He wants to ask each of them, What’s so funny? What’d I miss?
He wolfs a cruller, opens the Times. He reads the sports page. Gehrig homered, Ruth doubled, the Yanks clobbered the Sox. He reads about Lindbergh’s triumphant return to the U.S. The aviator was just in New York City days ago, the papers say, and Mayor Walker and the whole city turned out to shower him with adulation and ticker tape.
Willie turns the page. Ads for vacation packages. A berth on a train to Yosemite costs $108.82. On a train to Los Angeles—$138.44. He thinks of the crumpled dollars in his pocket. He flips to the wants, runs his finger up one column, down another. Griddle man—experience required. Bookkeeper—experience a must. Driller—references only. Store detective—experience, references, background check.
He looks around the coffee shop. People are staring. He didn’t realize he was cursing aloud.
He walks around the theater district, reading every marquee, every lobby card, listening to the new jazz spilling out of the clubs. He watches gentlemen and ladies skipping across the street, dancing in and out of new theaters, laughing. They walk past him, through him. When he got out of Raymond Street Jail seven years ago he felt bleak. Now he feels invisible.
Bleak was better.
He stands outside the Republic Theater on West Forty-Second Street. The show is Abie
’s Irish Rose. He can hear the overture. He pictures the dancers and actors warming up, the audience nestling into their seats for an hour and a half of fun. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, shuffles along. He comes to the Capitol Theater. NOW PLAYING: LON CHANEY AS A FUGITIVE IN THE UNKNOWN. Also, as an added bonus, newsreels of Colonel Lindbergh.
Willie feels as if the world is a novel he set down years ago. Picking it up again, he can’t recall the plot, the characters. Or why he cared. He tells himself that he’ll remember, he’ll feel like part of the world once more if he can just find work. A job, that’s the answer, it always was. He has no experience, no education, and no one will hire a guy coming off a four-year bit. But maybe he can find something legit through his criminal associates. Maybe in another city.
He snaps his fingers. Philadelphia. He went there often with Doc, and though he only had glimpses late at night from the windows of moving trains, he liked the town. Brotherly Love. The Liberty Bell. Ben Fuckin Franklin. He walks to Penn Station, boards the Broadway Limited. He slips into the barber car, pays a dollar for a haircut and face massage, then finds a seat in the parlor car, by a window. He pulls Franklin’s autobiography from his paper bag. Chapin told Willie that Franklin built his life around one simple idea—happiness. Before doing anything Ben asked himself, Will this make me happy? Now, reading about Young Ben running off to Philadelphia, Willie grins. He guesses there are worse footsteps to follow in.
Outside the train station in North Philadelphia he asks people how he can find Boo Boo Hoff, the erratic mobster who runs this town. Boo Boo’s headquarters, people say, is a gym. He surrounds himself with fighters as a king surrounds himself with knights. Willie walks into town, finds the gym, finds Boo Boo in a humid corner working out a densely muscled featherweight.
Approaching with caution, Willie introduces himself, explains that he’s out of work.
Boo Boo grins. He has one of those grins that descend from left to right at a ninety-degree angle, like a knife slash. Yeah, he says with a kind of affected impatience, yeah, yeah, Willie Sutton, Doc mentioned you. Said you was smart. Said you was a right guy.
Yes sir, Mr. Hoff. How is old Doc? Is he well?
He’s getting three squares and plenty of rest if you call that well. He was pinched a couple years ago. The judge gave him a long bit. Doc being a repeat offender.
Boo Boo turns back to the featherweight, whose body has less fat than a leather belt. The featherweight stands before a speed bag, thrums it with his fists, makes it purr. He looks well-tuned to Willie, ready to step in the ring right now, but Boo Boo chides him.
Don’t make love to the fuckin bag kid. What are you gun to do next, kiss it?
No, Boo Boo, the featherweight says, smiling, exposing his mouthpiece, which glistens with saliva and blood.
Why don’t you kiss it kid? You seem to be kind of sweet on that bag, so gwan, kiss it.
Gee, Boo Boo. I’m doin my best.
Your best? I’m not paying you to do your best, you bum. I’m paying you to hate that bag. Why will you not hate that bag? Why will you not hate and maim and kill that bag like I fuckin told you?
Okay, Boo Boo, okay. I’ll hate da bag.
Boo Boo turns from the featherweight. I might have something for you, he says to Willie.
Really? Say, that’s great, Mr. Hoff.
Willie hopes it’s something in the fight game. Maybe he can manage some ham-and-egger. Boo Boo is one of the best fight promoters in the country. Impresario, that’s what newspapers always call him, though it seems to Willie like an awfully fancy word for a man whose face looks like an ass. Fat, pale, globular, the only thing missing is a line down the center. Boo Boo must know he has an ass face too, which is why he wears that extra-large boater and that bow tie the size of a box kite. He’s trying to distract from the obvious, even though it’s futile. His face looks like someone took a great big heinie and put a boater and bow tie on it. Talking to Boo Boo, Willie thinks, is like being mooned.
It’s a little job, Boo Boo is saying.
No job too small sir.
Real little.
Well. Like I said.
I need for you to bump someone off.
Uh.
A real little—pest.
Well.
A fuckin pisher.
Er. Gee.
What. You just said.
I know. But I don’t think. Kill a guy? Holy.
Relax. It’s not what you think.
Okay. Phew. For a second there.
It’s only half a guy.
I’m lost again.
Half man. Full pay.
I don’t think. See, I’m not.
A dwarf. A little hunchback dwarf traitor cocksucker who works for me but also for the cops, which therein lies the problem. Ooo what a mouth on this little pest. He tells cops whatever they want to know about my operations, they don’t even have to slap him, they just pinch his little cheek and he sings like Jolson. Plus I think he’s skimming. He needs offing in the worse way. Look. Here’s his name. I’m writing it down for you on this piece of paper. I’m also writing down the name of the gin mill he owns. Go say hello, look him over. But do not let on that I’m wise. Let me know if you’re interested.
Willie walks around Philadelphia, staring at the piece of paper, the name scratched in Boo Boo’s globular handwriting: Hughie McLoon. Willie tries to picture McLoon, but he can only think of Daddo’s stories about the little men back in Ireland. Willie’s been afraid of little men ever since. Still, he needs a job. What would Ben Franklin do if offing a dwarf were the only way to be happy?
By nightfall Willie finds himself at Tenth and Cuthbert, standing outside Hughie McLoon’s Dry Saloon. He forces himself to walk in, take a seat. He orders a whiskey, asks for Hughie. Who wants to see him? Friend of a friend. He’ll be along. Willie orders another whiskey. He orders a bowl of turtle soup. Around eleven he sees a hat floating toward him along the bar, like the dorsal fin of some languorous tropical fish. You lookin for me? the fish asks.
Willie hops off his stool. Mr. McLoon? Hello, my name’s Sutton. Willie Sutton. Boo Boo Hoff sent me. Said you might have a job for me.
Hughie gives Willie the head-to-toe. More like the hip-to-toe. Oh yeah? Hnh. Fine, fine, welcome to the Dry Saloon kid. Let me buy you a drink.
Roughly Willie’s age, Hughie is two-thirds as tall. He can’t be four feet. More than merely short, he’s all out of proportion. His brow is too big for his face, his hat is too big for his head—his voice is too high for his mouth. He sounds like a Josephine Baker record played too fast.
He tries to hop on the barstool next to Willie. He can’t. He needs help, and he’s not shy about asking. He places his palm on Willie’s, like a deb stepping into her cotillion.
Despite Willie’s nerves, despite Hughie’s distracting appearance, they get on well. Hughie, it turns out, is a fine conversationalist. He reads the papers, thinks deeply about current events, politics. He’s rooting for Al Smith, of course, the first Irish Catholic to be a serious candidate for president. But he also likes Coolidge, thinks Coolidge will go down as one of the best presidents in history.
Kind of a sourpuss, Willie says.
Nah, Hughie says with a wave of his hand, Silent Cal’s just serious izzall. I like that. Life’s serious. Cal wants what he wants, and anyone duzzen like it can jump straight up his Vermont fuggin ass. And Cal wants you to get rich.
Me?
You, me, everybody. Cal takes the handcuffs off businessmen, so we can do what we gotta do. I marked him down as my kind of fella back in ’19. When he stood up to them Boston cops. Any man who stands up to cops is all right by me. You wimmee?
Hughie lets out a laugh. A disturbing sound—like a Thompson machine gun. A few staccato bursts, then an ominous smoky silence. Willie makes a point to avoid saying anything funny.
The talk swings around to baseball. Like Willie, Hughie is a fan. He stabs a thumb the size of a baby carrot into his chest.
I
used to be in the game, he says.
That so?
I was batboy for the A’s. I was fourteen. Skinny as a bat back then too. Which made my hump look bigger. One day we’re playin Detroit, see? And here comes Ty Cobb walkin up to the plate. All of a sudden he stops, gives me the stink eye. Before I know what’s what, he’s rubbin my hump for luck. The fans is laughin, all the other Tigers is laughin. Even my own team is laughin. Then, wouldn’t you know, Cobb laces a triple up the gap. Goes on to get four hits that day. Well you know how superstitious ballplayers can be. From then on, every player has to rub my back. For luck. They practically rubbed the skin off.
Willie takes a long look at Hughie. Poor little fella, Willie thinks. He should rub his own back, because his luck’s about run out.
Hughie’s favorite topic is women. He’s girl crazy, he admits, and girls are twice as crazy for him. They like to pick him up, cradle him, cootch him under the chin. He’s a half-pint Valentino, he claims, but he can’t enjoy it, because his heart belongs to one heartless bitch.
She comes in here once a week, Hughie says morosely. With her husband. She’s got long red hair, stands about five nine in her silk stockings. She’s my Everest. I don’t want to go on livin if I can’t never make it to the top.
Plant your flag.
Zactly.
Have you told her how you feel?
Teller all the time. Teller I’d be the happiest man inna world if only she’d lummy. She don’t lummy. Says I’m cute. Says she’d like to put me on a charm bracelet. Aint that a low blow?
Hughie is drunk. Willie too. At last call they stagger out, arm in arm, and say a fond good night on the sidewalk. Before waddling away Hughie tells Willie to come by in the morning about that job. Willie watches the hump fade slowly into the darkness, then staggers in the opposite direction. He keeps staggering until he finds a two-dollar flop. He falls onto the filthy bed, his clothes still on, and before passing out he realizes he can’t kill Hughie. He’s ashamed to admit it, but he can’t kill anyone, especially not Hughie.
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