Sutton (5 page)

I won’t be your wheelman.

Fine. No hard feelings.

We’re meeting a shooter. He’ll be driving.

A what?

A photog. Sorry—photographer. In fact he’s probably downstairs by now.

So you’re in?

You give me no choice, Mr. Sutton.

Say it.

Say what?

Say you’re in.

Why?

In the old days, before I’d go on a job with a guy, I always needed to hear him say he was in. So there’d be no misunderstandings later.

Reporter takes a gulp of coffee. Mr. Sutton, is this really—

Say it.

I’m in, I’m in.

Sutton steps on the elevator, cursing under his breath. Why did he stay up all night? Why did he drink all that whiskey with Donald? And all that champagne this morning? And what the hell is wrong with this elevator? He was already feeling unsteady on his feet, but this sudden free fall to the lobby, like a space capsule plunging to earth, is giving him vertigo. In the old days elevators were manageably, comfortably slow. Like people.

With a ping and a thud the elevator lands. The doors clatter open. Reporter, not noticing Sutton’s pained expression, looks left and right, making sure no other reporters are lurking behind the lobby’s palm trees. He takes Sutton by the elbow and guides him past the front desk and past the concierge and through the revolving door. There, directly in front of the Plaza, stands a 1968 burnt sienna Dodge Polara, smoke gushing like tap water from its tailpipe.

This your car kid?

No. It’s one of the newspaper’s radio cars.

Looks like a cop car.

It’s a converted cop car, actually.

Reporter opens the passenger door. He and Sutton look in. A large man sits behind the wheel. He’s roughly Reporter’s age, twenty something, but he wears a fringed buckskin jacket that makes him look like a five-year-old playing cowboys and Indians. No, with his shoulder-length hair and Fu Manchu mustache he looks like a grown man pretending to be a five-year-old playing cowboys and Indians. Under the buckskin jacket he’s wearing a ski sweater, and around his neck a knitted scarf the colors of a barber pole, all of which spoil whatever Western look he was going for. He smiles. Bad teeth. Nice smile, but bad teeth. The exact opposite of Reporter’s teeth. And they’re as big as they are bad. His eyes are big too, and flaming red, like cherry Life Savers. Sutton would kill for a Life Saver right now.

Mr. Sutton, Reporter says. I’d like you to meet the best shooter at the paper. The
best
.

Reporter says the photographer’s name but Sutton doesn’t catch it. Merry Christmas, Sutton says, reaching into the car and shaking Photographer’s hand.

Back at you, brother.

Sutton climbs into the backseat, which is covered with stuff. A cloth purse. A leather camera bag. A pink bakery box. A stack of newspapers and magazines, including last week’s
Life
. Manson glares at Sutton. Sutton flips Manson over.

Maybe you’d be more comfortable up front, Reporter says.

Nah, Sutton says. I always ride in the rumble.

Reporter smiles. Okay, Mr. Sutton. I’m happy to ride shotgun.

Sutton shakes his head.
Riding shotgun
—civilians use the term so blithely. He’s actually driven countless times with men riding shotgun, holding shotguns. There was nothing blithe about it.

Photographer squints at Sutton in the rearview. Hey, Willie, man, I’ve just got to say, it’s a trip to meet you, brother. I mean, Willie the Actor—holy shit, this is like meeting Dillinger.

Ah well, Sutton says, Dillinger killed people, so.

Or Jesse James.

Again—killed.

Or Al Capone.

A pattern seems to be developing, Sutton mumbles.

I
asked
for this assignment, Photographer says.

Did you kid?

Even though it was Christmas. I told my old lady, I said, baby, it’s
Willie the Actor
. This guy’s been fighting the Man for decades.

Well, I don’t know about the Man.

You fought the law, brother.

Okay.

You were an antihero before they invented the word.

Antihero?

Hell yes, man. This is the Age of the Antihero. I don’t have to tell you, Willie, times are hard, people are fed up. Prices are soaring, taxes are sky high, millions are hungry, angry. Injustice. Inequality. The War on Poverty is a joke, the war in Vietnam is illegal, the Great Society is a sham.

Same old same old, Sutton says.

Yes and no, Photographer says. Same shit, but people aren’t taking it anymore. People are in the streets, brother. Chicago, Newark, Detroit. We haven’t seen this kind of civil unrest in a long long time. So people are crazy about anyone who fights the power—and wins. That’s you, Willie. Have you
seen
today’s front pages, brother?

It’s a nonstarter, Reporter whispers to Photographer. I already went down this road.

Photographer is undaunted. Just the other night, he says, I was telling my old lady all about you—

You know
all about
Willie?

Sure. And you know what she said? She said, This cat sounds like a real-life Robin Hood.

Well, Robin Hood
was
real life, but anyway. She sounds lovely.

Oh, I’m a lucky guy, Willie. My old lady, she’s a teacher up in the Bronx. Studying to be a masseuse. She’s changed my life. Really raised my consciousness. You know how the right woman can do that.

Your consciousness?

Yeah. She knows all about the trigger points in the body. She’s really opened me up. Artistically. Emotionally. Sexually.

Photographer starts to giggle. Sutton stares at the Life Saver eyes framed in the rearview—Photographer is stoned. Reporter is staring too, clearly thinking the same thing.

Trigger points, Sutton says.

Yeah. She’s studying the same techniques they used on Kennedy. For his back. I got a bad back—this line of work, it comes with the territory—so every night she works out my knots. Her hands are magic. I’m kind of obsessed with her, in case you couldn’t tell. Her hands. Her hair. Her face. Her ass. God, her ass. I shouldn’t say that though. She’s a feminist. She’s teaching me not to objectify women.

You had to be taught not to object to women?

Objectify
.

Oh.

Reporter clears his throat. Loudly. Okay then, he says, shutting his door, spreading Sutton’s map across the Polara’s dashboard. Mr. Sutton has kindly drawn us a map, places he wants to show us today. He insists that we visit them all. In chronological order.

Photographer sees all the red numbers. Thirteen, fourt—
Really?

Really.

Photographer drops his voice. When do we get to, you know? Schuster?

Last.

Photographer drops his voice lower. What gives?

It’s his way, Reporter whispers, or no way.

Sutton bows his head, tries not to smile.

Photographer throws up his hands as if Reporter is robbing him. Hey man, that’s cool. It’s Willie da Actor—he’s da boss, right? Willie da Actor don’t take orders from nobody.

Reporter pulls the radio from the dash. City Desk? Come in, City Desk.

The radio squawks: Are you guys garble leaving the static garble Plaza?

Ten four.

Photographer puts the car into drive and they lurch forward, toward Fifth Avenue, cruising slowly past the former sites of two banks Sutton hit in 1931.

Traffic is light. It’s seven o’clock Christmas morning, the temperature is twelve degrees, so only a few people are on the street. They turn onto Fifty-Seventh. Sutton sees three young men walking, debating something intensely. Two of them wear denim jackets, the third wears a leather duster. They all have long shaggy manes.

When exactly, Sutton says, did everybody get together and decide to stop getting haircuts?

Reporter and Photographer look at each other, laugh.

Sutton sees an old man rooting in a trash can. He sees another old man pushing a shopping cart full of brooms. He sees a woman—youngish, pretty—having a heated argument. With a mannequin in a store window.

Reporter peers into the backseat. Was the homeless problem bad before you went to prison, Mr. Sutton?

Nah. Because we didn’t call them homeless. We called them beggars. Then bums. I should know. When I was your age, I was one.

Hey Willie, Photographer says, if you’re hungry, man, I bought donuts. In that box on the seat.

Sutton opens the pink box. An assortment. Glazed, sugar, jelly, crullers. Thanks kid.

Help yourself. I bought enough for everybody.

Maybe later.

Donuts are my weakness.

You’d have loved Capone.

Why’s that?

Al used to hand out donuts to the poor during the Depression. He was the first gangster who gave any thought to public relations.

Is that so?

That was the rap against him anyway, that it was all for show. I met him once at a nightclub, asked him about it. He said he didn’t give a shit about PR. He just didn’t like seeing people go hungry.

Sutton feels a burst of pain in his leg. It flies up his side, lands just behind his eyeballs. He lets his head fall back. Eventually he’s going to have to ask these boys to stop at a drugstore. Or a hospital.

So, Photographer says. Willie, my brother—how does it feel to be free?

Sutton lifts his head. Like a dream, he says.

I’ll
bet
.

Photographer waits for Sutton to elaborate. Sutton doesn’t.

And how did you spend your first night of freedom?

Sutton exhales. You know. Thinking.

Photographer guffaws. He looks at Reporter. No reaction. Then back at Sutton’s reflection.
Thinking?

Yeah.

Thinking?

That’s right.

You didn’t get enough time in prison to
think
?

In the joint, kid, thinking is the one thing you can’t let yourself do.

Photographer lights a cigarette. Sutton notices: Newport Menthol. Figures.

Willie, Photographer says, if I was in prison for seventeen years, and they let me out, thinking is the last thing I’d do.

I have no trouble believing that.

Reporter starts to laugh, pretends it’s a cough.

Photographer squints at Sutton in the rearview, runs two fingers down the stems of his Fu Manchu.

Sutton sees signs for the tunnel. In a few minutes they’ll be in Brooklyn. Jesus—Brooklyn again. His heart beats faster. They pass a movie theater. They all look at the marquee.
TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE
. Reporter and Photographer shake their heads.

What a coincidence, Photographer says.

Of all the films to open this week, Reporter says. I’ll have to work that into my story.

Sutton watches the marquee until it’s out of sight. Who plays Willie Boy? he asks.

Robert Blake, Photographer says. I saw the coming attractions. It’s a Western. About a guy who kills his girlfriend’s father in self-defense, then goes on the run. There’s a huge manhunt for him, the largest in the history of the West—it’s based on a true story. Supposedly.

They pass the corner of Broadway and Battery Place.

Canyon of Heroes, Reporter shouts over his shoulder. Seems like, this year, we’ve had a ticker-tape parade along here every other week. The Jets, of course. The Mets. The astronauts.

Isn’t it telling, Sutton says. When someone’s a hero, they shower him with little pieces of the stock market.

Photographer laughs. You’re singing my song, Willie.

Sutton sees some ticker tape still in the gutters. He sees another bum, this one curled in the fetal position. Bums lying in ticker tape, he says. They should put that on a postage stamp.

I covered every one of those parades, Photographer says. Got beaucoup shots of Neil Armstrong. Cool guy. You’d think a guy that just walked on the moon would be stuck up. He’s not. He’s really—you know.

Down to earth, Sutton says.

Yeah.

Sutton waits. One, two. Photographer slaps the wheel. I just got that, he says. Good one.

Everyone praises Armstrong and Aldrin, Sutton says. But the real hero on that moon shot was the third guy, Mike Collins, the Irishman in the backseat.

Actually, Reporter says, Collins was born in Rome.

Photographer gawks at Sutton. Collins? He didn’t even set foot on the moon.

Exactly. Collins was in the space capsule all alone. While his partners were down there collecting rocks, Collins was manning the wheel. Twenty-six times he circled the moon—solo. Imagine? He was completely out of radio contact. Couldn’t talk to his partners. Couldn’t talk to NASA. He was cut off from every living soul in the universe. If he panicked, if he fucked up, if he pushed the wrong button, he’d strand Armstrong and Aldrin. Or if they did something wrong, if their lunar car broke down, if they couldn’t restart the thing, if they couldn’t blast off and reconnect with Collins forty-five miles above the moon, he’d have to head back to earth
all by himself
. Leave his partners to die. Slowly running out of air. While watching earth in the distance. It was such a real possibility, Collins returning to earth
by himself
, that Nixon wrote up a speech to the nation. Collins—now that’s one stone-cold wheelman. That’s the guy you want sitting at the wheel of a gassed-up Ford while you’re inside a bank.

Reporter looks searchingly in the backseat. Seems like you’ve given this a lot of thought, Mr. Sutton.

In the joint I read everything I could get my hands on about the moon shot. The hacks even let us watch it on TV—in the middle of the day. A rare privilege. They put a set in D Yard. It was the first time I didn’t see black guys and white guys fighting over the TV. Everybody wanted to watch the moon landing. I think some of you people on the outside might have taken the whole thing for granted. But in the joint we couldn’t get enough of it.

Why’s that?

Because the moon shot is mankind’s ultimate escape. And because the astronauts were in one-sixth gravity. In the joint you feel like gravity is six times stronger.

The car windows are fogging. Sutton wipes the window to his right and looks at the sky. He thinks of the astronauts returning from the moon—250,000 miles. Attica is at least that far away. He lights a Chesterfield. Some nerve, he thinks, identifying with astronauts. But he can’t help it. Maybe it’s that setup in a space capsule—two in front, one in back, like every getaway car he’s ever ridden in. Also, he’d never say it out loud, not if you hung him up by his thumbs, but he sees himself as a hero. If he’s not, why are these boys chauffeuring him through the Canyon of Heroes?