Sutton (14 page)

Later that night Willie calls a summit. In a booth at McCool’s he puts the case before Eddie and Happy.

Looks plain and simple to me, Happy says.

Me too, Eddie says. Either you clean out the safe or you lose her, boy.

You ready to lose her? Happy says.

I’ll die, Happy. I swear I’ll die.

The old man has brought this on himself, Eddie says. He could’ve welcomed you into the family. He could’ve given you a job. What can you expect from a friend of Rockefeller? Fuck him, I say.

Will you help me, fellas? I can’t do it alone. I’ll cut you in, make it worth your while. You’ll only be out of town a few days. A week tops.

Eddie would love to help but he’s landed a part-time job. As a driller, alongside his old man. Twenty a week—he can’t walk away from that kind of dough. Willie understands. He turns to Happy, who takes a long drink of beer and snaps a salute: You can count on me, Willie.

We have to move fast, Willie says.

How fast?

Tomorrow. It’s the day before payroll. Bess says the safe will be stuffed with cash.

Sutton steps into Meadowport, followed by Reporter and Photographer. The cedar walls are covered with graffiti. Photographer lights a Zippo, holds it aloft
.

Sutton reads. Fuck the Pigs. Nixon Equals Stalin
.

Power to the people, Photographer whispers
.

Reporter reads. Sergio Sucks Balls. Spicks Must Die
.

So much anger in the world, Sutton says
.

Righteous anger, Photographer says. The anger of the oppressed
.

Reporter reads. Aryell plus Jose
.

Sutton smiles. They sound like a nice couple—you think they made it?

February 4, 1919. Midnight. Bess sneaks out of her house and meets Willie and Happy at Meadowport. Willie carries a plaid grip with bolt cutters from his father’s shop. Happy carries a jimmy. They hail a horse cab, tell the driver not to spare the whip.

At the shipyard Willie clips the padlock on the fence. Happy jimmies the door to Mr. Endner’s office. The safe is made of wood. The three of them stand before it, looking at it, then at each other, for one long moment.

The safe splinters with two chops from a fire ax. As the door swings out Happy whistles. Would you look at this, Willie. It’s like the vault at Title Guaranty.

Sixteen rolls of cash. Each wrapped in brown paper. Each labeled
$1,000
. Four times more than Bess told them it would be. They shovel it into the plaid grip, run up Beard, hail another horse cab.

Once upon a time, Sutton says, Happy and I met Bess here. Then we went down to her old man’s shipyard and cleaned out his safe
.

How much did you take?

Sixteen large. That’s a nice sum today, but back then the average Joe made fifteen bucks a week. So. You know. We were rich
.

Then what did you do?

Went hell for leather to Grand Central
.

And then?

Poughkeepsie. My first trip outside the city
.

Why Poughkeepsie?

That’s where the next train was headed
.

The train pulls in at dawn. They ask a cabdriver to take them to the best hotel in town. He takes them to the Nelson House, a redbrick fortress.

Willie, trying to steady his hand as he holds the hotel’s heavy black fountain pen, scratches the register: Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Lamb. Happy signs as Mr. Leo Holland. The name of his neighbor back in Irish Town. The prosecution will call this hotel register Exhibit A.

Since Willie and Bess plan to marry in the morning, Bess says there’s no longer any sense in waiting. She closes the door of their suite, undoes the top two buttons of her dress. Then the bottom two. Willie glimpses her corset. It looks harder to open than her father’s safe. She begins the process, untying one silk ribbon after another.

He lies back. He can’t resist her anymore. He reminds himself, reassures himself, that he doesn’t need to. She slips into the bathroom. He counts backwards, trying to calm himself.

Ready or not, she calls.

Not, he thinks.

She walks out naked, palms on her thighs, pantomiming shyness, though there’s no shyness in Bess. She’s got power, the vast power of beauty and youth, and she wants to use it. It’s like money burning a hole in her pocket. Willie stares at her angles and curves, her pinks and ivories, the flush of rose along her collarbone. He stares at the points of her nipples, the creamy roundness of her hips, the smooth plane of her stomach. Loving Bess has already caused him agonies of pain and anxiety, but now he sees that what comes next will be a far greater test. Bess, her power, is a giant wave. Willie’s boat is small.

You’re staring, Willie Boy.

I am?

They’re not much, I know.

What?

My breasts. I’m flat as a pancake.

No. You’re perfect.

She walks to the bed, puts one knee on the mattress. She pretends to hesitate. He undoes his belt, she slides off his pants.

Are you going to have me, Willie?

If you’ll let me.

I don’t want to let you. I want you to take me.

Okay. I’ll take you.

Is it going to hurt?

It might, Bess.

I hope it hurts.

No.

They say the hurt is how you know you’re a woman.

Then I’ll hurt you.

In the years ahead, in cells, in lonely rooms, whenever Willie replays this night, he’ll struggle to remember his thoughts. He’ll have to remind himself that there were no thoughts, only impulses and flashing images and tidal surges in his heart. That may be why it all passes so fast. Time is an invention of the mind, and with Bess his mind is off. Which is part of the joy. And the danger.

In one motion they finish and tumble into sleep as if falling down a well. He wakes three hours later to find Bess stroking his hair. I thought it was all a dream, he says. She smiles. He wakes two hours later to find Bess sliding her head onto his chest. He sighs. She kisses his fingers. He wakes an hour later to find Happy sitting on the edge of the bed. Happy—what time is it?

Happy smiles at the bloodstained sheets. Time to skedaddle.

Bess looks at the sheets, puts a hand over her mouth. We can’t leave these. They’ll think there’s been a murder.

They strip the bed, stuff the sheets into the plaid grip. Blood money, Happy jokes.

Over breakfast in the hotel dining room they take stock. Surely the safe has been discovered by now. Surely Bess’s father has called the police. So the chase is on. They’ll need to stay off the trains, and that means buying a motorcar.

Can we afford a motorcar? Bess asks.

Willie and Happy laugh. We can afford eight, Happy says.

They find a dealership at the edge of town. Francis Motors. They pick out a brand-new Nash, open-topped, pine green, with shining nickel headlamps and a spare tire covered in white leather. The salesman chortles when Willie says he’ll take it. The salesman stops chortling when Willie counts out two thousand on the hood.

Son, I don’t know—and I don’t
want to
know.

They drive to the next town, shop for clothes. Four new suits for Willie and Happy, eight new dresses for Bess. They pass a store with a three-quarter-length squirrel coat in the window. Bess presses her face to the glass. Nine hundred, she says, marked down from fifteen hundred—that’s a
steal
.

It’s a steal all right, Willie says.

The coat is a drab gray, the color of rain clouds, of dishwater—of Mr. Endner’s mustaches. But Bess is already inside the store, burying her face in the fluffy collar.

Standing before the astonished salesman Willie counts nine hundred on the counter. Don’t bother wrapping it, Willie says, taking the receipt, which the prosecution will call Exhibit B, she’ll wear it out.

They head northeast, to Massachusetts, where the age of consent is younger. So they’ve heard. The motor-roads are bad. They’re not motor-roads, but Indian trails. The Nash gets a flat. Happy wrestles with the jack and the spare. Bess wrestles with Willie. He catches her hands, tells her to be good. My being-good days are over, she says.

At dusk they stop at a four-room inn. There’s still an hour of daylight. Bess wants to go right away to the nearest justice. Happy says he’s worn out from changing the flat.

We’ll go without you, Bess says.

Happy’s offended. How you going to get married without the best man?

Willie hugs her. First thing in the morning, Bess. That way we’ll be able to buy you a proper wedding dress.

Oh Willie. Yes.

Then, he thinks, Niagara Falls, and on to Canada, far beyond her father’s reach. Willie’s not sure what they’ll do with Happy at that point.

They all turn in early. Big day tomorrow, they say at the top of the stairs. Willie falls asleep instantly. Hours later he wakes, Bess nudging him. Willie Boy, I can’t sleep.

Yeah. Me either.

She laughs. He gropes for his suit on the floor, finds his cigarettes. Lights one, lies on his back, takes a long drag. Bess confiscates the cigarette, puffs it, hands it back. The room is ice cold. She spreads the squirrel coat across them as an extra blanket, lies on her side facing him. We’re outlaws, she says.

I guess so.

Never thought I’d be an outlaw.

It wasn’t in my plans either.

She jabs a finger into Willie’s ribs. Stick em up.

Bess.

You heard me.

He puts the cigarette in his mouth, raises his hands.

Put the money in the bag, she says.

Say, you’ve got the act down pretty good.

Your money or your life?

Those are my options?

Yup.

My life.

She props herself on one elbow. Have you ever committed a crime, Willie?

He sighs. Not for a while.

What’d you do?

Eddie used to shoplift, break into stores. Happy and I would stand lookout sometimes.

She twirls his chest hair. Have you ever been with anyone else, Willie Boy?

He blows a smoke ring. It encircles her face like a cameo. I don’t know.

Who? Who was she, Willie?

Ah, no one, Bess. She was just—no one.

Who, Willie?

If you must know. A whore lady. On Sands Street.

Sands
Street?

Happy. He took me and Eddie.

Figures.

It wasn’t anything.

What was she like?

Skip it.

Tell me.

She was nothing like you.

How did she do it?

Ah come on.

Tell me.

What’s it matter?

How?

Bess.

Willie.

God you’re stubborn. Your old man said you were willful.

You don’t know the half. How?

On top mostly. There. You satisfied?

Bess takes the cigarette from his hand, puts it in the ashtray on the nightstand. She climbs on top, the squirrel coat around her shoulders. She takes him, guides him. He doesn’t last. She falls on top of him, buries her face in his neck. He holds her tight. She’s trembling, her hair is damp with sweat. This is what the whole world is after, he says, breathless. Yes, she says. This is why everyone’s trying to beat everyone else, Bess, this is why people are ready to lie, cheat, kill. For this, Bess. This is what makes the world go round. This, Bess. This.

Sutton adjusts his glasses, brushes away the dirt on the cedar wall. Ah—I knew it’d still be here
.

Reporter moves closer. What?

Bess’s initials. I carved them. There
.

Photographer moves closer. I don’t see anything, brother
.

Right there. S-E-E. Sarah Elizabeth Endner
.

Photographer hands his Zippo to Reporter, takes a folding knife from his back pocket. He scrapes at some dirt on the wall. There’s nothing there, he says
.

You’re blind, Sutton says
.

Photographer closes his knife. He fires the flash on his camera, illuminating the wall. Nothing, he says
.

Get your eyes checked kid
.

In the morning they go for a walk around town, wearing some of their new clothes. Bess has never looked more dazzling—black cloche hat, black silk skirt, white blouse with a chou of chiffon. She wears the squirrel coat like a tunic. They buy the papers, read them on a bench in the square. The headlines are grim. Half the country looking for work, the other half striking. Nearby, Boston cops are incensed about their wages. They’re threatening a walkout.

Willie folds back the newspaper, smoothes the page. Says here the average cop earns a thousand bucks a year.

Happy pats the plaid grip. We could buy ourselves thirteen cops.

Bess points at a photo of Calvin Coolidge, the governor of Massachusetts. What a sourpuss, she says.

Willie can’t find one line in any of the papers about a robbery in Brooklyn. Which seems ominous. How could it not be in the papers?

I have no doubt, Bess says, that my father is doing all he can to keep it quiet.

He has that kind of influence?

She frowns. They look around the square, as if Bess’s father might jump out from behind a tree or the Civil War cannon.

They spend the rest of the morning shopping for a wedding dress. Bess doesn’t see anything she likes. She stomps her foot. The stores were so much better back in Poughkeepsie, she says.

Then we’ll go back, Willie says. Whatever my Bess wants.

Willie drives. Bess sits in the passenger seat, Happy in the rumble. They pass through virgin forest filled with overnight snow. The ancient trees look as if they’ve been splashed with white paint. And yet the air is warm. February thaw, says the young attendant at the Esso station when they stop for gasoline.

Bess lights one of Willie’s cigarettes. The attendant stares as if she’s removed her blouse. Women don’t smoke in public in 1919. Especially not in backwoods Massachusetts. As they chug away from the Esso station, Bess gives the attendant something else to remember. She stands and arches her back and whips her hair in a circle. She looks like the hood ornament, Happy says.