Part 16 (1/2)

Mm hm.

Mr. Sutton. We made a deal.

Deal. Yeah.

Readers want to know what you have to say about Schuster.

He was a nice kid who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Which can also be said of the rest of us. What else is there to say?

Any idea who might have killed him?

Sutton stands, glowers at Reporter. Chronological order kid.

But Mr. Sutton- Did you ever notice, kid, that the words obit and orbit are separated by one little letter?

Down to his last two dollars, Willie walks into the recruiting center in Times Square. A burly sergeant tells him to have a seat, hands him some forms, asks how many chin-ups he can do.

Plenty, Willie says.

Push-ups?

Stand back, Willie says, spitting on his palms, falling to his knees.

The sergeant asks casually if Willie has a criminal record. Willie, still on his knees, looks off through the gla.s.s door at all the people bustling back and forth through Times Square.

Sorry, the sergeant says, taking back the forms. Uncle Sam likes em squeaky clean.

Eddie and Happy tell him to wise up. He can have pockets full of jack by this time tomorrow.

Quit bein such a G.o.dd.a.m.n Boy Scout, Eddie says.

Do you have any idea how much we're making? Happy says.

Before I peddle poison, Willie says, I'll starve.

From the looks of you, Happy says, that should be about two days.

Then, May 1921. An uncomfortably warm day. Willie is in his room, lying on his bed, reading the sports pages. He's two months behind on the rent. The door bursts open and he reaches for a bat to fend off the landlord, who's barged in before. But it's Eddie, out of breath. Sutty, grab your hat-Happy just got pinched.

s.h.i.+t. The beer truck?

The truck, yeah. And a.s.sault.

Who'd he a.s.sault?

n.o.body. The cops say he mugged some guy in an alley, hit him over the head and took his billfold, but it's a dirty lie.

In the cab to the station house, Eddie explains. The cops saw an opportunity. They figured they could use Happy to clear an old case off the books, and they knew he was good for some headlines, because of the Endner case.

So what can we do, Willie says.

Sometimes, Eddie says, if you just show up at the cop house, the cops know the prisoner has friends. He's not a n.o.body. It keeps them from beating him too bad.

Not this time. The cops nearly beat Happy to death. They keep beating him until he confesses to the a.s.sault, and another one to boot. Weeks later, in the same courthouse where Willie and Happy were tried for kidnapping Bess, a judge sends Happy to prison for five years. Willie and Eddie are in the front row. Happy gives them half a wave as he's led from the courtroom in chains.

Eddie taps Willie on the shoulder. Let's go, Sutty.

Yeah, Willie says, but he doesn't move. He stares at the witness chair. He feels terrible for Happy, and partly responsible, but mainly he can't stop thinking of the gray dress with the blue collar and blue cuffs. And the matching blue purse. She held it like a steering wheel.

They drive half a mile, turn onto the Brooklyn Bridge. Sutton still doesn't like the view from this bridge. He sits in the exact middle of the seat, where he can't see the river below, and where much of the skyline is obscured by the heads of Reporter and Photographer. He does what he often does when he's somewhere he doesn't want to be. He recites a poem.

He lunged up Bowery way while the dawn was putting the Statue of Liberty out-that torch of hers you know.

What's that, Mr. Sutton?

Hart Crane. The Bridge.

What's it mean?

Search me.

Photographer aligns Willie in the rearview. You know any Beats?

What am I, a jukebox?

The Beats are where it's at, brother. I shot Ginsberg once. Meditating.

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live. That's Kerouac-he Beat enough for you?

Photographer nods. Kerouac is cool, he says.

Sutton leans sideways, sneaks a quick look at the city, leans back. Grunts. New York, he says. No matter how many times you see it, you never quite get over how much it doesn't f.u.c.kin need you. Doesn't care if you live or die, stay or go. But that-that indifference, I guess you'd call it-that's half of what makes the town so G.o.dd.a.m.n beautiful.

Reporter turns to look back at Sutton. He opens his mouth, closes it.

Sutton chuckles. You got something on your mind kid? Out with it.

I just have to say, Mr. Sutton, you are nothing like what I expected.

Photographer snorts. Amen to that, brother.

What did you expect?

You just don't seem-like a bank robber. No offense.

None taken, Sutton says.

I didn't expect you to be quite so-romantic, Mr. Sutton. I mean, poetry? Socrates? And so nostalgic-the tears? Honestly, it's just hard to imagine you with a gun, robbing banks, terrorizing an entire city.

At the center of the bridge they hit a wall of traffic. Photographer turns to Reporter: Maybe you picked up the wrong guy in Buffalo last night. Did you ask this joker in the backseat for his ID?