Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  Willie sees Marcus’s waterbug eyes. They look different. They’ve stopped—moving? And they’re locked on Willie. Now Willie notices that Marcus isn’t bloody. Marcus isn’t bruised. Marcus doesn’t have a mark on him. Through the pain, though the ringing in Willie’s ears, comes the revelation: Marcus did all that talking without suffering a single blow.

  And he’s still talking.

  Willie I didn’t know I didn’t know if I’d known what they were going to do I wouldn’t have said a word but they said they wouldn’t hurt you they said it was the only way out Willie I’m so sorry I just couldn’t face it they told me what they were going to do to me and I just couldn’t—

  Willie tests the hinges of his jaw. He spits up a bloody clump of something, which looks like an internal organ, and drags himself away from the door to the far corner of the cell. Curling into a ball he speaks three words, the last he’ll ever speak to John Marcus Bassett.

  You fuckin rat.

  Now there are five cops outside police headquarters, watching a Boy Scout in a Brooks Brothers suit drag the old man who looks like Willie Sutton up the street as the handcuffed and buckskinned hippie follows.

  You boys don’t know, Sutton says, breathing hard. You just don’t know. Until you’re in that room, at the mercy of a half dozen sluggers with badges, you can’t know. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of. But the way I held up under that—I’m still proud. It might have been my finest hour.

  He turns, gets in one more shout at the building. SEE YOU ROUND, RAT BASTARDS.

  Mr. Sutton, I’m begging you.

  They reach the Polara. Reporter guides Sutton into the backseat, as if placing him under arrest. He slams the door. Let’s get out of here, he says to Photographer.

  Get these cuffs off me, Photographer says.

  I don’t have the key.

  Get it from Willie.

  Let’s get out of here first.

  How am I supposed to drive? Photographer says.

  I’ll drive, Reporter says. Give me the keys.

  They’re in my pocket.

  Reporter fishes the keys out of the buckskin jacket. He helps Photographer into the passenger seat, then runs around and gets in on the driver’s side.

  As they speed away Photographer wriggles his body to face Sutton in the backseat. Willie, man, unlock these handcuffs—they’re cutting off my circulation.

  Sutton, still breathing hard, stares out the window, not answering.

  Willie, brother, come on. I’m starting to feel—panicky.

  Is that a fact kid?

  Willie.

  How you enjoying the Willie Sutton Experience so far?

  Photographer turns to Reporter. Tell him to uncuff me.

  Right, because he does everything I say.

  My trial was a joke, Sutton is saying. How do you not let in pictures of my caved-in face, my broken bones? My lawyer was all set to appeal, but after I was sentenced he got pinched himself.

  What? Your lawyer was arrested, Mr. Sutton?

  Albert Vitale. He was a former judge—it came out that he took a bribe while he was on the bench. From Arnold Rothstein.

  The guy who fixed the 1919 World Series?

  The same. They were tight. Guess who Rothstein’s brother was married to? Mr. Untermyer’s brother’s granddaughter.

  Willie, the cuffs. Please, brother.

  What happened to Marcus, Mr. Sutton? Did they beat him too?

  Nah. He was too busy talking for them to beat him. He thought if he ratted me out they’d go easy on him, but they still sent him away for twenty-five years. They turned him loose in ’51 and he died a few months later. The Times said he had two dollars and eighty-one cents to his name. He was found in a flop. Slumped over a typewriter. Fuckin rat.

  Willie on the bus to Sing Sing. February 1932. He can still hear the words of the judge, echoing off the marble pillars and the moon-pale walls of the courtroom.

  Sutton, you are a type of criminal whose misdeeds have shocked the American people. You are regarded by the police of New York as one of the most dangerous men ever to prowl our streets. In point of daring, defiance of law, absolute disregard of property and life, your crimes are among the most brazen ever committed in this city. When we read about holdups of this kind in the Old West, we marvel. We say such crimes could no longer exist. But you are the equal of those bygone desperadoes. It is extremely hard for a New York judge to see before him a New York boy, raised in an environment that should have made you good rather than bad. But my duty is clear. Though you are only thirty, I must sentence you to a period of time greater than you are years of age.

  Fifty years.

  The bus pulls through the front gate of Sing Sing. Sutton looks over the grounds. The first thing he notices is the rose gardens. They’re gone. And that’s just one of fifty changes. Lawes has rebuilt the prison from bottom to top. He’s turned it into a small city, with new industrial workshops, a new five-story cellblock, a new twenty-five-foot wall.

  Of course some things are the same. As guards lead Willie into his office, Lawes beams. Welcome back, asshole.

  Willie asks about the gardens.

  We installed new plumbing. The flowers had to go.

  Must have killed Chapin to see his roses bulldozed.

  It did. We planted him last year.

  Several more things are just as Willie remembers. The food, for instance. Cornmeal for breakfast, beans for lunch, a gristly disc of pork for dinner. It’s not just the same menu, Willie suspects it might be the same actual food from seven years ago.

  Lawes assigns Willie to the shoe shop, mending soles. Fifty years, he thinks. Marching up and down the hill from the shoe shop to the dining room, marching back to his cell at the end of another long dismal day, Willie says over and over and over: Fifty years. With no Chapin, no gardens, no Eddie, no end point, it’s more than he can fathom. More than he can do.

  He studies the new layout of the prison, making a mental map. Eight portals stand between him and the outside. His cell door is one. Then a flight of stairs and a locked wooden door. Then a long hall and a padlocked metal gate. Then another hall and another locked wooden door. Then another padlocked gate. Then the dining room and another locked wooden door. Then a final padlocked gate. Then the cellar, on the far side of which is a giant locked steel door leading to the yard.

  Even if Willie could somehow get through all eight portals, he’d then be at the outer wall. How do you climb a twenty-five-foot wall with guards standing along the top holding Thompsons?

  Two months pass as Willie wrestles with this question.

  One day a trusty lets slip to Willie that a single guard tower is unmanned overnight. This makes no sense to Willie. Until it makes perfect sense. The papers are filled with stories about Lawes’s lavish remodeling. Now, the Great Depression worsening by the day, Lawes must need to cut costs. Why pay guards to sit in each tower, all night, when you’ve spent millions to build an escape-proof cellblock?

  So Willie now thinks he knows the weakest point in the wall. But he’s still faced with the problem of how to scale it. And he still hasn’t solved the problem of how to get there from his cell. The eight portals. Another four months pass as he struggles with these problems.

  In the late summer of 1932, sitting in the yard and mourning the absent roses, Willie looks up and sees Johnny Egan coming from the machine shop. Dark, handsome, Egan looks a bit like Happy, though he acts a bit like Marcus. Willie doesn’t let himself dwell on this, however, because Egan’s a trusty, meaning he’s free to roam the prison grounds, free to flit in and out of the machine shops, which Willie now realizes are stocked with tools.

  During yardout Egan likes to play handball. So Willie sets about learning the game. He becomes good enough to team up with Egan in prison tourneys. He gains Egan’s respect, loyalty, plays doubles with him in the 1932 Sing Sing Championships. After one come-from-behind victory Willie wraps a sweaty arm around Egan’s neck and says he might need a
few things one day. He whispers a possible shopping list.

  You crashing out? Egan whispers.

  Willie doesn’t answer.

  Count me in, Egan says.

  I work alone kid.

  I’m in—or no help.

  There’s no sense arguing. Even if Egan could get the items on Willie’s shopping list, the tools needed to get through the eight portals, Willie still can’t imagine how to scale that wall.

  It’s Egan who finds a way. In November 1932, making his rounds, Egan passes through the cellar below the dining room and sees two wooden ladders behind some pallets. Each ladder is twelve feet long, he tells Willie. Not long enough to reach the top of the wall.

  Unless taped together, Willie says.

  So there it is. The plan is clear, and the time is now. Who knows how long those ladders will be there? Willie gives Egan his shopping list. For the doors and gates he’ll need a torque wrench, hook pick, shim. For the bars of his cell door he’ll need a small hacksaw.

  I’m in, Egan says. Right?

  Willie shakes his head.

  I’m in, Egan says, or no dice.

  Willie sighs. Fine.

  The next day, as Willie and Egan practice their forehands, Egan slips Willie the picklocks and hacksaw and shim. Willie tucks them under his shirt, inside his waistband. Playing handball with tools inside his waistband—not easy. The hacksaw in particular cuts up Willie’s back.

  Later, after lights-out, he runs the hacksaw along a lower bar of his cell door. It cuts the bar as easily as it cut his back. He saws clean through, knocks the bar out, and props the bar back in place with chewing gum. The next morning at breakfast he tells Egan to get himself a hacksaw, do the same thing to one bar of his cell, then wait.

  Willie knows he can pick the locks on all eight portals. He’s that good. Except the last one. That big steel door in the cellar, leading to the yard, is beyond his talents, beyond anything Doc taught him. For that one he’ll need a key. He gets a lifer to slip the master key off the head keeper’s chain, while the keeper is in the showers, and make a wax impression. In exchange Willie promises that, when he’s out, he’ll drop a wad of cash on the lifer’s family. Willie still has jars of money buried all over the city.

  Using the wax impression Egan is able to sneak into a machine shop and cut a crude copy.

  At the start of December Willie and Egan stand on the handball court, pretending to play, but in fact discussing what day would be best for a crash-out. Willie wants to go Tuesday, December 13, but Egan shakes his head. Thirteen is his unlucky number. All the bad things in Egan’s life, including most of his arrests, have happened on the thirteenth of the month.

  Fine, Willie says. The twelfth.

  Egan smiles, serves a bullet into the wall. Willie dives to return the serve, falls, reopens the cuts on his back.

  When the chosen day comes, Willie and Egan sit side by side at lunch, going over the plan one last time. Willie whispers that they’ll have to split up soon after the crash-out. Egan says that won’t be a problem. He has a brother on the West Side of Manhattan who can hide him.

  They exchange a look. Egan nods. Willie nods. See you tonight kid.

  The day passes like a decade. Willie can’t focus on his work. He almost sews a sole to his finger. At last, after dinner, back in his cell, he lies down on his cot and tries to slow his heart. It’s punching him in the throat. His heart knows—if he and Egan make one mistake, catch one bad break, the guards will mow them down, with pleasure. He pictures the newspaper headlines, writes the stories in his mind. From under his pillow he pulls out a letter from Eddie, who’s finally been released from Dannemora. Looking for jobs, Sutty. None to be had. People are still talking about you and Marcus. Good for you kid.

  The keeper on Willie’s tier passes the cell door. He stops. You feelin okay, Sutton?

  Yes sir.

  You’re sweatin.

  Touch of the grippe. I guess. Sir.

  Hm.

  They study each other.

  What’s that on your shirt?

  My shirt sir?

  Those red marks.

  Where sir?

  There. On your side. And back. Looks like blood.

  Oh. Cut myself playing handball sir.

  Handball?

  Yeah. Sir.

  Hm.

  Three seconds. Five. Eternity.

  G’night, Sutton.

  Night sir.

  Five minutes. Ten.

  Willie creeps to the cell door, kicks out the bar. Sucking in his gut and hunching his shoulders he somehow squeezes through the hole. He can’t believe—he’s standing outside his cell. Unsupervised. One portal down, seven to go.

  He runs down to Egan’s cell just as Egan is sliding through his own hole. They stand as they used to stand on the handball court, waiting for serve. Crouched, tensed, they can hear the keepers on the tier below.

  Now what the hell do you think Roosevelt’s goin to do that Hoover couldn’t?

  I’ll tell you what he won’t do. He won’t gun down Army vets in the street.

  Well now that’s a point, that’s a point.

  Willie and Egan tiptoe to the end of the tier, down three flights of stairs to the ground floor. The second portal, a wooden door, has a standard six-pin Corbin lock. Every other house in America has a Corbin. Willie has picked dozens of Corbins and this one takes all of three minutes. Egan laughs like a loon. Willie claps a hand over Egan’s mouth.

  The third portal is a padlocked gate. Willie takes out his shim, pops it.

  He and Egan creep down a hall to the fourth portal, another wooden door, another Corbin. His fingers warmed up, Willie picks this one in a minute flat.

  The fifth portal, another padlocked gate, is also no match for the shim.

  They’re in the dining room. Willie’s breathing is so loud, he can’t believe it’s not waking the cellblock. He and Egan slip among the empty tables, down another stairway, to the sixth portal, the last wooden door, a Yale lock, even easier than a Corbin.

  The seventh portal is a padlocked gate. Willie shims the lock, but the shim breaks. Shit, he whispers. Then he remembers—there are no more padlocks.

  They enter the cellar. There. The ladders. They tape them together and carry the makeshift ladder to the steel door. Willie holds his breath as he slides the duplicate key into the lock. It doesn’t fit.

  So that’s how it ends. With a faulty fake key. Son of a—

  Egan tries the handle. Unlocked. Slowly the eighth portal falls open. The yard is eerie, quiet. A frosty night. The stars look like a child’s silver jacks. They sprint to the wall, staying between the beams of the searchlights, and set the ladder. Egan goes first. Then Willie. At the top is a catwalk. Willie braces for the twenty-five-foot drop. He can already feel his ankle breaking. But the grass is surprisingly soft. Other than a twisted knee he comes through the jump fine. Egan too. They dash up a dirt incline to the road, where their getaway car is waiting. A familiar face behind the wheel.

  Photographer leans against his window. Are we almost there?

  Almost, Sutton says.

  Where are we going again?

  The Sundowner Hotel, Sutton says. My first stop after I crashed out of Sing Sing. Forty-Seventh and Eighth.

  Back to Times Square. Uh-huh. Great. We’re officially driving in circles.

  Life goes in circles kid. Why shouldn’t we?

  The radio squawks. Reporter turns it down. Mr. Sutton, exactly how did you crash out of Sing Sing? There’s very little in the files.

  Sutton puts a Chesterfield between his lips. Everything you ever saw in a prison movie, it started with me. Before me, you never heard about guys using hacksaws. After me, it was all the rage.

  What I wouldn’t give, Photographer says, for a hacksaw right now.

  I made a friend, Sutton says. Johnny Egan. He got me some saws, picks. Then it was just a matter of arranging for someone to be waiting outside the prison.

  Who did you get?
r />   Bess.

  Reporter hits the brakes. Photographer sits up. You’re shitting us, Willie.

  She read about my trial, of course. She came to see me my first month in the joint. Back then the visiting room at Sing Sing was pretty lax. No partitions, no guards monitoring conversations. So I told her straight, I was going crazy, I was crashing out, and I needed her help. I said I’d write her the exact date in a letter. Our mail was censored, so I promised to put it in code. Few weeks later, middle of a long rambling letter, I wrote: Do you remember that time we went walking at Coney Island, the stroke of midnight, December 12? She told her husband she had a bridge game with some girlfriends, snuck up to Sing Sing, picked us up outside the wall. She drove me and Egan down to Times Square, dropped us at the Sundowner—even brought us a change of clothes and some cash. And she was back home in four hours.

  What was it like, Mr. Sutton? Seeing her again?

  They stop at a red light. Sutton looks across the street. A coffee shop with a neon sign flashing in the window. COCKTAILS. COCKTAILS. COCKTAILS. Outside the coffee shop sits a double-parked Dodge, no one in the driver’s seat, a woman in the passenger seat. Sutton can tell. He can see it in her eyes. The woman is waiting for a man. A man that she loves.

  Mr. Sutton?

  Willie?

  It felt like a dream, boys.

  SIXTEEN

  Willie signs the register Mr. Joseph Lamb. He tells Egan to sign as Edward Garfield. Then he walks Egan up to his room.

  That was a real nice lady who picked us up, Egan says.

  Yeah.

  Awful pretty. How do you know her again?

  Look, Egan, just go in your room and stay there. Don’t come out for anything. I’ll come get you in the morning.

  What if I want to go for a walk?

  Absolutely not.

  What if I need some air?

  Open a window.

  I get claustrophobic, Willie.

  You were just in prison, Egan.

  Willie looks hard at Egan, realizing how little he knows about this kid. Most of their time together has been spent playing handball. They’ve barely spoken fifty words. Willie doesn’t even know what crime landed Egan in Sing Sing. A sick feeling comes over Willie. He remembers the first time he saw Egan, how he was reminded of Marcus.