Part 23 (1/2)

He sounds, from these clips, like a character.

His head was shaped like a triangle, Sutton says. A perfect triangle. Imagine? And his eyes looked like waterbugs. And they never stopped moving. You meet someone whose eyes are like waterbugs, walk the other direction. But somehow I thought Marcus was a right guy. I was fooled, I think, because he was a writer. I had respect for writers back then. I should have wised up when he showed me some of his stories.

No good?

The literary equivalent of undercooked mountain goat. He became a stickup man because he couldn't sell anything.

Sutton stops, takes one last look at the stadium facade. Walled garden, he says. I think it was at Dannemora that I first became angry. A cell is a bad place to be angry. When a man's angry, he needs to move around, burn it off. Lock an angry man in a cell, it's like locking a stick of lighted dynamite in a safe.

Who were you angry at?

Everyone. But mostly myself. I hated myself. The unhealthiest kind of hate.

Were you angry with Eddie? For messing up the good thing you had going with Chapin?

Nah. I could never be angry with Eddie. Not after that wink.

What wink?

TWELVE.

Willie sits before the parole board, fifteen pounds underweight, s.h.i.+vering. He's been s.h.i.+vering for three years. He tells the board that he wants to go straight. He tells them that he wants to get married, get a job, become a contributing member of society. He tells them that the last four years in Sing Sing and Dannemora have been a torment, but also a G.o.dsend, for which he thanks them. He didn't know himself four years ago, but he does now. He knows who Willie Sutton is, and who he isn't. It's June 1927, he'll soon turn twenty-six, and he's sick about how much of his twenty-six years he's wasted. Fighting to keep his voice steady, he tells the board that he's determined not to waste one minute more.

He sees the effect of his performance. He sees the members of the parole board lean forward, soak up his words, conclude that Sutton, William F., no longer poses a threat to society, that he should be released at once.

Days later it is so ordered.

As to the matter of Sutton's accomplice, Edward Buster Wilson. Parole denied.

Willie packs his books into a paper bag. First the Tennyson. He's memorized the ballad Tennyson wrote about the great love of his youth. Come into the garden, Maud. I am here at the gate alone. Next his heavily underlined copies of Franklin, Cicero, Plato-all recommended by Chapin.

A keeper walks Willie over to the prison's parole agent, who hands him a ten-dollar bill wrapped around a train ticket. The keeper then walks Willie to the prison tailor, where he's given a release suit. Gray, with a brown tie. At the front gate Willie stops, asks the keeper: Would you please tell Eddie Wilson goodbye for me?

Hit the grit, a.s.shole.

Willie walks to the station, boards the local, arrives in Grand Central at dusk. He walks to Times Square, marvels at the new signs, the dozens of new marquees. And the lights. Someone apparently decided while he was gone that Times Square should outs.h.i.+ne Coney Island. He sees a towering sign: WELCOME TO NEW YORK, GREATEST CITY IN THE WORLD. He stops at a newsstand, buys the papers and two packs of Chesterfields. Settles into a coffee shop. At a corner booth, not touching a plate of pastries and a cup of coffee, he stares out the window at the men and women pa.s.sing by. The population of New York City must have doubled since he left. The sidewalks seem twice as crowded. And everyone looks different. They're all wearing new clothes, using new words, laughing at new jokes. He wants to ask each of them, What's so funny? What'd I miss?

He wolfs a cruller, opens the Times. He reads the sports page. Gehrig homered, Ruth doubled, the Yanks clobbered the Sox. He reads about Lindbergh's triumphant return to the U.S. The aviator was just in New York City days ago, the papers say, and Mayor Walker and the whole city turned out to shower him with adulation and ticker tape.

Willie turns the page. Ads for vacation packages. A berth on a train to Yosemite costs $108.82. On a train to Los Angeles-$138.44. He thinks of the crumpled dollars in his pocket. He flips to the wants, runs his finger up one column, down another. Griddle man-experience required. Bookkeeper-experience a must. Driller-references only. Store detective-experience, references, background check.

He looks around the coffee shop. People are staring. He didn't realize he was cursing aloud.

He walks around the theater district, reading every marquee, every lobby card, listening to the new jazz spilling out of the clubs. He watches gentlemen and ladies skipping across the street, dancing in and out of new theaters, laughing. They walk past him, through him. When he got out of Raymond Street Jail seven years ago he felt bleak. Now he feels invisible.

Bleak was better.

He stands outside the Republic Theater on West Forty-Second Street. The show is Abie's Irish Rose. He can hear the overture. He pictures the dancers and actors warming up, the audience nestling into their seats for an hour and a half of fun. He stuffs his hands in his pockets, shuffles along. He comes to the Capitol Theater. NOW PLAYING: LON CHANEY AS A FUGITIVE IN THE UNKNOWN. Also, as an added bonus, newsreels of Colonel Lindbergh.

Willie feels as if the world is a novel he set down years ago. Picking it up again, he can't recall the plot, the characters. Or why he cared. He tells himself that he'll remember, he'll feel like part of the world once more if he can just find work. A job, that's the answer, it always was. He has no experience, no education, and no one will hire a guy coming off a four-year bit. But maybe he can find something legit through his criminal a.s.sociates. Maybe in another city.

He snaps his fingers. Philadelphia. He went there often with Doc, and though he only had glimpses late at night from the windows of moving trains, he liked the town. Brotherly Love. The Liberty Bell. Ben f.u.c.kin Franklin. He walks to Penn Station, boards the Broadway Limited. He slips into the barber car, pays a dollar for a haircut and face ma.s.sage, then finds a seat in the parlor car, by a window. He pulls Franklin's autobiography from his paper bag. Chapin told Willie that Franklin built his life around one simple idea-happiness. Before doing anything Ben asked himself, Will this make me happy? Now, reading about Young Ben running off to Philadelphia, Willie grins. He guesses there are worse footsteps to follow in.

Outside the train station in North Philadelphia he asks people how he can find Boo Boo Hoff, the erratic mobster who runs this town. Boo Boo's headquarters, people say, is a gym. He surrounds himself with fighters as a king surrounds himself with knights. Willie walks into town, finds the gym, finds Boo Boo in a humid corner working out a densely muscled featherweight.

Approaching with caution, Willie introduces himself, explains that he's out of work.

Boo Boo grins. He has one of those grins that descend from left to right at a ninety-degree angle, like a knife slash. Yeah, he says with a kind of affected impatience, yeah, yeah, Willie Sutton, Doc mentioned you. Said you was smart. Said you was a right guy.

Yes sir, Mr. Hoff. How is old Doc? Is he well?

He's getting three squares and plenty of rest if you call that well. He was pinched a couple years ago. The judge gave him a long bit. Doc being a repeat offender.

Boo Boo turns back to the featherweight, whose body has less fat than a leather belt. The featherweight stands before a speed bag, thrums it with his fists, makes it purr. He looks well-tuned to Willie, ready to step in the ring right now, but Boo Boo chides him.

Don't make love to the f.u.c.kin bag kid. What are you gun to do next, kiss it?

No, Boo Boo, the featherweight says, smiling, exposing his mouthpiece, which glistens with saliva and blood.

Why don't you kiss it kid? You seem to be kind of sweet on that bag, so gwan, kiss it.

Gee, Boo Boo. I'm doin my best.

Your best? I'm not paying you to do your best, you b.u.m. I'm paying you to hate that bag. Why will you not hate that bag? Why will you not hate and maim and kill that bag like I f.u.c.kin told you?

Okay, Boo Boo, okay. I'll hate da bag.

Boo Boo turns from the featherweight. I might have something for you, he says to Willie.

Really? Say, that's great, Mr. Hoff.

Willie hopes it's something in the fight game. Maybe he can manage some ham-and-egger. Boo Boo is one of the best fight promoters in the country. Impresario, that's what newspapers always call him, though it seems to Willie like an awfully fancy word for a man whose face looks like an a.s.s. Fat, pale, globular, the only thing missing is a line down the center. Boo Boo must know he has an a.s.s face too, which is why he wears that extra-large boater and that bow tie the size of a box kite. He's trying to distract from the obvious, even though it's futile. His face looks like someone took a great big heinie and put a boater and bow tie on it. Talking to Boo Boo, Willie thinks, is like being mooned.

It's a little job, Boo Boo is saying.

No job too small sir.

Real little.

Well. Like I said.

I need for you to b.u.mp someone off.

Uh.

A real little-pest.