Sutton (30 page)

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?

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.

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.