Not on the phone. Meet me at the Childs restaurant in the Ansonia. Believe me, things are not what they seem. One hour. Childs. Please?
She hangs up without answering.
He arrives early. Dahlia is already there. She’s sitting at a small table in the back, next to the kitchen, wearing a dreadful dress and a felt skullcap that looks like a leather football helmet. Willie kisses her on the cheek, drops his hat on the table. He orders a slice of pie and a cup of coffee for each of them, sits directly across from her.
How you feeling, Dahlia?
Baby’s kicking like crazy this morning. Like he’s trying to get out.
Know just how he feels, Willie thinks. Now, Dahlia, he says, those letters.
The waitress brings their pie and coffee. He waits for her to go away.
Yes? Dahlia says.
It’s so simple, Dahlia. The novel, Dahlia. Marcus’s novel.
The novel.
Sure. Those letters are from Marcus’s novel. Obviously it’s a novel in the form of letters. They call it an epistolary novel.
Oh please.
Sure, sure, those letters are nothing more than passages from a work in progress. It’s laughable, really. I can understand why you thought—
But he signed them, Willie. With his own name.
Well, fine, Marcus has probably taken some true incidents from his romantic past, old affairs and so forth, and twisted them into a mix of fact and fiction. Writers do it all the time.
You’re saying there’s no taxi dancer named Millicent? From Soulard?
Willie eats a forkful of pie. Of course there’s a Millicent, he says. But she doesn’t come from Soulard. She comes from the fevered mind of Marcus Bassett. Your husband. Father of your unborn child.
He goes on at length about Marcus’s literary aspirations, about how much words and books mean to Marcus, to both of them. He talks about bumping into Marcus on the steps of the library, about how they both took refuge there in bad times. The more credible he sounds, the more despicable he feels. He was telling the truth the other night when he said that he never lies about love. He feels something in his throat, his gut, something he hasn’t felt in a long time. Conscience, remorse, guilt, he doesn’t have a word for it.
You swear, Dahlia says. You swear to me that those letters are fiction.
I swear.
Because if you’re lying—a second time—after swearing you never would—I’d actually enjoy turning you in.
Turning me—what are you saying, Dahlia?
I know what you and Marcus have been up to.
Honey, please, keep your voice down.
Your—spree!
Sssh.
Willie is wearing a high stiff collar and a flowered necktie and he feels them both getting tighter. He looks nervously around the restaurant. People are staring. He leans across the table. My hand to almighty God, he whispers, Marcus is not cheating on you.
Dahlia fishes a tissue from her purse. She touches the tissue to her nose, then wads it into a ball, as if she wants to throw it at Willie. From his breast pocket Willie removes his linen handkerchief, extends it to her. She takes it, dabs her eyes. Her face softens. I’m sorry for that outburst, she says.
They sit in silence for several minutes. Abruptly she stands. Her chair scrapes, almost tips over. Thanks for meeting me, Willie.
Don’t go. Finish your pie.
No. Thank you. I’ve taken up too much of your time already. I know you don’t have much—time.
Willie hesitates, stands. Dahlia kisses him on the cheek, walks out. Willie sits back down, asks for the check. He eats another forkful of pie and the restaurant goes sideways. Four, six, eight cops come banging out of the kitchen, knocking Willie out of his chair. They pin him to the linoleum floor, cuff him. There isn’t time to go for the strychnine. He hopes poor Marcus has time to go for his.
Photographer aims a finger gun at Sutton. What a trip, Willie. It just hit me, I think. You, about our age, packing heat, knocking over banks, jewelry stores. What a trip.
Shit, Reporter says.
What?
Over there. Channel 11.
A camera truck slams to a stop across the street. A young man with a tall Afro leaps out and sprints toward them, a TV camera on his shoulder. Reporter pushes Sutton into the backseat of the Polara and he and Photographer jump into the front seat. As they roar away Sutton looks out the back window: The young man is standing where they were standing, holding his camera like a suitcase, cursing and huffing like a man who just missed a train.
Photographer and Reporter howl, slap palms. That was close, Reporter says.
How the hell did Channel 11 find us?
I’m sure they were just driving along. Crime of opportunity.
If my editor sees Willie Sutton on TV—
Relax. The guy didn’t get off a shot. He never even turned on his light.
Reporter glances over his shoulder. I hope I didn’t hurt you back there, Mr. Sutton.
Nah kid. Nah. Felt like we were dancing. And it was a good lid-lifter for our next stop.
FIFTEEN
Willie lies on the backseat, hands cuffed behind his back. Two enormous cops fill up the front seat. The big one at the wheel chews an unlit cigar, the bigger one riding shotgun crams four sticks of Juicy Fruit into a freakishly small mouth. We got your partner, Bigger Cop says over his shoulder. Case you was wonderin.
I don’t have any partner, Willie says.
You don’t know John Marcus Bassett? Big Cop says.
Never heard of him.
His wife’s the homely gal you was just havin pie and coffee with.
You don’t say.
And Bassett sure as hell knows you. He’s givin detectives your autobiography right this minute.
Then he’s deranged. I tell you we’ve never met.
That’s why you was with his wife.
She told me she was single.
You mean to say you were makin that broad.
That a crime?
Could be. Did you get a look atter?
She’s a good person.
She looks like Lon Chaney. And she’s in a family way.
That mean she’s off the market?
Big Cop laughs, removes his unlit cigar, turns to Bigger Cop. This guy’s a riot.
They pull up to 240 Centre Street, a French Baroque palace with statues and columns and a great big dome on top. Like some kind of Cop Vatican, Willie thinks, looking over the building. Popes and cops—they certainly think a lot of themselves.
On either side of the front door is a white stone lion. Ah the library—what Willie wouldn’t give to be there right now. Just inside the front door a dozen cops in blue greatcoats stand around a high wooden desk. They greet Big Cop and Bigger Cop and congratulate them on the nice collar. One eyes Willie. Hope you enjoy your stay at the Centre Street Arms, he says—you probably won’t need a wake-up call. They all roar with laughter, the fattest one haw-hawing so hard that he gets winded.
Big Cop and Bigger Cop drag Sutton into a blindingly bright room and stand him on a stage along with six other men. Heistmen, petermen, yeggs—Willie’s colleagues. A group of civilians walks in. Bank employees. Willie recognizes them. They stand downstage, squinting up at him. He slouches, averts his eyes.
Sorry, they tell Big Cop and Bigger Cop. None of these men looks familiar.
Willie’s costumes, his makeup and mustaches, it all worked.
Now in walks Porter.
Recognize any of these men? Bigger Cop says, inserting another stick of Juicy Fruit.
Porter scans the group, left to right. Yes.
Go on up and place your hand on the shoulder of any man you recognize.
Porter walks onstage, stands before each man. Making a little show of it. At last he comes to Willie. He stands with his nose inches from Willie’s. Willie can smell his bay rum. Also the Stroganoff he had for lunch. Porter looks straight into Willie’s eyes, three seconds. Four. He sets his hand on Willie
’s shoulder, turns to the cops. This man, he says. Then he turns away from the cops and cracks a smile only Willie can see. Name’s Charlie, he says. Robber.
Big Cop and Bigger Cop take Willie into a side room with one metal table, one metal chair. Bigger Cop cuffs Willie’s wrists behind his back. Big Cop pushes Willie into the chair. They stand on either side of him.
Bassett sang, Bigger Cop says.
I keep telling you, Willie says, I don’t know who that is.
Bassett confessed to everythin, Big Cop says. He’d confess to working with Sacco and Vanzetti if we lettim, so it’s over, Sutton, help yourself.
Bigger Cop rattles off details only Marcus could know. Banks, costumes, exact dollar amounts. Also, a complete inventory of Rosenthal and Sons. Willie shudders. Poor Marcus. They must have given him some beating.
Big Cop mentions the sixty thousand Willie got for Rosenthal and Sons, but he doesn’t mention Dutch, because Willie never told Marcus about Dutch. Thank God. It’s Dutch the cops want, Willie can tell. They have a suspicion. There aren’t too many off men in New York who could handle that size haul. They scent big game, and they think Willie can lead them to it.
Sorry fellas, Willie says. There must be come confusion. Marcus is a writer. He must have told you the plot of the novel he’s working on.
Big Cop and Bigger Cop look at each other. Believe this guy? Big Cop says.
Some bad novel, Bigger Cop says to Willie.
Yeah, Big Cop says. See, in the plot of this novel, an ex-con named William Francis Sutton, age thirty, dresses up as a New York City police officer and goes waltzin and traipsin into banks, tra-la-la, and sticks em up, which we frown upon novels about yeggs impersonatin cops, see? We take exception. That badge means somethin to us, see?
Big Cop lumbers around, stands before Sutton. He finally lights the cigar from the squad car. What’s not in this novel, he says, what Bassett don’t seem to know, and what you’re goin to tell us right now, you Irish Town piece of shit, is where you hid the bank money and who helped you fence them jewels.
I want a lawyer.
These are the last words, the last intelligible words, Willie will speak for several days. A board or plank or two-by-four hits him at the base of the skull. His face smacks the table, his mind goes dark. Then—he’s a boy again, leaping off an abandoned pier on the river. High into the air he flies, so high that he’s diving into the sky. Gradually he tumbles backward and downward and then knifes through the cold black water. He hits something hard. Now someone is dragging him to the surface, back to the pier. It’s Happy. And Eddie. Hey fellas what did I hit? And how the hell am I going to get away from these apes? Eddie reaches out, touches the base of Willie’s skull. Sutty, you’re bleedin. No, it’s Willie reaching, touching. His fingers come away bright red, wet. He blinks, trying to clear his head.
Grab him, Mike.
Big Cop grabs Willie’s ankles. Bigger Cop grabs Willie under the arms. They hoist him into the air, effortlessly, flop him onto the table, faceup, like a turkey they plan to carve. Then more cops rush into the room. There are shouts, curses, as they pin Willie’s shoulders and hold down his feet and someone starts to whip Willie’s stomach with a rubber tube or car hose. Willie shuts his eyes and screams. I got rights. They cram some kind of gag which isn’t a gag into his mouth. They beat his legs, thighs, shins. He feels, then hears, one of his kneecaps shatter. He sees the women of Irish Town, the first warm days of May, draping rugs over fire escapes, whacking, whacking, and he feels something impossibly hot on his bare forearm, where his veins bulge. He tries to yank his arm away, but he can’t, they’ve got him too tight. He smells his skin burning, and he knows, he just knows, it’s Big Cop’s cigar.
They hit him in the groin. Some kind of bowling pin or Indian club. Right on his dick. Ah fellas not that. He’s out cold. He’s gone. He’s back—the burning flesh smell is now mixed with cop sweat. A voice asks if he’s ready to talk. Damn right he’s ready. He’ll tell them anything. He’s about to spill his guts, turn rat, which scares him more than whatever they might do next. Ratting scares him more than dying, so he bites down on this rag or sock or whatever it is they’ve shoved into his mouth and shakes his head back and forth, no no no.
Silence. Willie thinks maybe it’s over. Maybe they realize he can’t be cracked. Breathing hard, drizzling sweat, he keeps his eyes shut, feels the blood running down his face. Maybe.
He hears new voices in the room, knuckles being cracked. The new voices ask the old voices what seems to be the trouble. Then they start in. Fists. Big ones. Pummeling his ribs. The precinct boxing champs, Willie guesses. Middleweights, from the sound of them, and the feel. At least one light heavyweight. They’re getting a good workout on Willie’s torso. Jabs, hooks, rabbit punches. Each time one of Willie’s ribs snaps it sounds like canvas being torn. The pain. It consumes him, obliterates him. His body feels as if it’s made of fine spun glass and the cops keep smashing it over and over into smaller and smaller pieces, shards—how can there be anything left to smash? But they keep finding a new, pristine piece, smashing it. He’s never felt such pain, and yet there’s something familiar about the pain too. When has he been this anguished, forsaken, alone?
He remembers. Not in a conscious way, because he’s only half conscious, but with a thin slice of his mind he remembers Bess. Being banished from her house. Meeting her father. Hearing she’d left the country. Watching her become the wife of another man. Learning that another man’s baby was inside her. After all that pain, he tells himself between gulps of air, this pain won’t kill him, and if it does, so be it. He screams at the middleweights. G’head, g’head—do your fuckin worst! But he’s delirious and he has a cop’s underpants stuffed in his mouth. They can’t understand.
Then he smiles. That they understand.
The blows stop.
They stand Willie up, tie a cord around his ankles. They blindfold him and take him from the room and drag him down the hall to the edge of a precipice. He feels an uprush of cool air. He must be at the top of a long staircase, which must lead to some kind of subbasement. He tries to back away.
Last chance, Sutton. Ready to talk?
He says nothing.
Bombs away, asshole.
He goes head over feet over head, lands on his broken ribs, on his shoulder, on his nose. His poor nose. Broken again. The cops scramble down the stairs. Resisting arrest, eh? Trying to escape, is it?
They all laugh and Willie hears one of them laughing so hard, haw haw, that he becomes winded.
Then they do it again.
Photographer turns down Centre Street.
Slow, Willie says. Slow.
There’s a row of squad cars parked diagonally. They look just like the Polara, but they’re black and white, with lights on top. Sutton points beyond the cars to the front steps, the two stone lions.
That building, he says. That’s where they took me after they caught me and Marcus.
Photographer parks fifty yards away. I think this is as close as I can get, brother.
Sutton steps out, moves tentatively toward the building. He stops across the street, glowers at the officers and detectives who come and go between the stone lions. The old lion perisheth, he mutters. Lack of fuckin prey.
Reporter and Photographer come up behind him. What did they do when they brought you here? Photographer says.
What didn’t they do?
Could you be more specific?
Put me in a lineup. Asked me a bunch of questions.
Did you talk?
Yeah, I talked. I told them to go fuck themselves.
Then what?
Then they gave me the beating to end all beatings.
Pigs, Photographer says under his breath. They love to bash skulls.
They do kid. It’s true.
What was it like, brother? What was it like?
Sutton reaches into his breast pocket, takes out the fur-lined handcuffs. You want to know what it was like?
&n
bsp; Yeah.
Put these on.
Photographer laughs.
That’s what I thought, Sutton says. You’re all about experience. Until experience comes knocking.
Photographer looks hurt. He hands his camera to Reporter, holds out his wrists. Sutton twirls a finger. Nah kid, turn around. Hands behind your back.
Photographer turns and Sutton cuffs his wrists. Three police officers slow their walk, watching the old man in the fur-collared trench coat slapping fur-lined handcuffs on the hippie in the buckskin jacket. And doesn’t that old man look a lot like—Willie Sutton?
Cuffed, Photographer turns again. Sutton throws a crisp right at his midsection, stopping his fist an inch from Photographer’s belt buckle. Photographer flinches, jumps back. Sutton smiles.
Now kid imagine that punch landed. Imagine another one landing, and another, and fifty more. You can’t breathe. You’re coughing blood. After a hundred punches to the breadbasket you’re ready to rat out your mom and dad and all the angels in heaven.
He throws a flurry of shadow punches, jab, feint, jab, each one stopping just short of Photographer’s belt buckle or face. Photographer flinches at each one. Then Sutton steps off the curb, into the street, bent into a fighter’s crouch. He throws bigger shadow punches at police headquarters. Right cross. Left. Uppercut. Uppercut. Right hook.
I DIDN’T CRACK, DID I, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS?
Oh no, Reporter says.
I TOOK YOUR BEST SHOT, DIDN’T I, COPPERS?
Reporter puts his arms around Sutton, but Sutton wriggles loose, keeps shouting. AND NOW HERE I AM! I’M BACK. I’M STILL STANDING. AND WHERE THE FUCK ARE ALL OF YOU? HUH? WHERE?
For the love of God, Mr. Sutton, please.
Willie opens one eye. He’s lying on the floor of a holding cell. He sees, just inside the cell door, a tin cup of water. It smells like piss but he doesn’t care. He takes a sip, or tries to. His throat is closed, his Adam’s apple is bruised, enlarged. There’s also a loud ringing in his ears. His eardrum is shattered. Now, above the ringing he hears—sobbing? He peers around the cell, through the bars, into a hall lit by one bare bulb. Across the hall, leaning against the door of another cell, is Marcus. Poor Marcus. Willie crawls to his cell door, presses his face against the bars. Marcus, he whispers. Hey kid what’d they do to you? You okay? Hey Marcus—the worst is over, I think.
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