Part 24 (2/2)

Can't say as I do.

For his old lady. He was crazy in love. But then she croaked before they was done. Old Man Untermyer lives here all by his lonesome.

Sad.

That's life.

The workman points to a winding path that leads to a gazebo at the edge of the cliff. Mr. Untermyer calls that the Temple of Love.

Now the workman on Willie's left chimes in. Don't listen to this mug, he's talkin through his hat. These gardens aint just for Mrs. Untermyer. Old Man Untermyer also wanted to one-up the Rockefellers. They live just north of here. Mr. Untermyer hates Rockefellers worse than he hates rabbits.

At noon the foreman hands out onion sandwiches, bread, a cup of thin vegetable soup. Willie takes his lunch and climbs to the Temple of Love. He sits on a green metal bench. To his left are the gardens, to his right is the river. At his feet, painted on the floor of the Temple, are pale pastel nymphs and naiads, sporting and calling to sailors. Beyond, at eye level, are the palisades of Jersey. He looks at the water, watches a yacht gliding upriver. He makes a note to send Eddie some cigarettes and magazines when he gets his first paycheck.

He lies back, opens Cicero. An essay on happiness. What is it about the great men, all they can think about is happiness? A line jumps off the page. But no one can be happy if worried about the most important thing in one's life. Willie mulls this line, trying to see how it applies to his experience, and suddenly a clammy feeling comes over him. He's being watched. He lowers the book, sees a second foreman thirty feet away, staring. Where the h.e.l.l did that second foreman come from? He must live here on the estate. Willie sits up. He has twenty minutes remaining on his lunch break, but he wads up his bag and shuts his book and hurries back to work.

The first foreman sends him to help plant boxwoods along the front path. Before long he feels a p.r.i.c.kling gaze on his neck. He turns. The second foreman again. He barks at Willie: Careful, those boxwoods are a century old.

Yes sir.

Gentle with that one.

Yes sir.

Cicero had boxwoods on his estate, you know.

Willie stops, peers from behind a boxwood. He sees the trace of a smile on the second foreman's face. At least Willie thinks it's a smile. Hard to know exactly what's going on behind that mustache, which is so wild and furry that it must have its own full-time gardener. Above the mustache sits a ma.s.sive nose, sheer as the cliff that forms Greystone's western border.

Can I ask sir, is this by chance your boxwood?

My boxwood. My house.

Very pleased to meet you, Mr. Untermyer.

I must say-we haven't had many gardeners reading Cicero during their lunch breaks.

Brilliant man sir.

Indeed.

Wish I could have known him.

Why is that?

They say he was the best lawyer who ever lived.

He was.

In which case, he might have kept me from getting sent up that river down there.

Willie can't believe he said it. Something about Mr. Untermyer's gaze made him forget himself. He waits for Mr. Untermyer to flinch, maybe call over the first foreman and have Willie fired on the spot. Instead Mr. Untermyer smiles with his eyes.

If I may ask-what was your crime?

Bank robbery sir. Attempted.

Mr. Untermyer stares. When was this?

Nineteen twenty-three sir. Ozone Park.

When did you get out?

This month sir.

What's breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?

Sir?

It's a line from a new play. Bertolt Brecht.

I haven't been to the theater in a while, Mr. Untermyer. Though I was Regan in a production at Sing Sing. Jesters do oft prove prophets.

Mr. Untermyer tugs his mustache, not unlike Mr. Endner. What's your name son?

Sutton sir. William Francis Sutton Jr.

Photographer double-parks on Madison, just off Eighty-Sixth. Sutton looks out the window at the former home of Funck and Sons. I'll be d.a.m.ned, Sutton says. It's still there.

What is?

I got a job with a landscaping firm in that redbrick building. Forty-two years ago. The boss sent me to Greystone, a famous estate. Terrible soil. We had to dig out and blast out truckloads of rock. I don't know how much p.o.o.p we had to mix into the topsoil.

Sutton opens the car door, puts one foot outside. He smiles. The place was so beautiful, I begged the boss to put me on permanent. I actually got down on my knees.

Get off your knees, Funck says. I'm not putting you on permanent.

Why not?

I don't need you there. My man with the rupture is back.

Please sir. This is the right job for me. The grounds, the air, the owner. After prison a man needs to heal-they should send prisoners straight to the hospital-and Greystone is a place where I can do just that.

Heal on your own time.

Willie doffs his cap. If that's how you feel sir.

It is.

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