Part 25 (1/2)

Willie gets off his knees, walks toward the door. So long, Funck. I hope the missus doesn't make too much trouble.

So long ... Wait. Why trouble?

When I shoot her a wire-relating our conversation about Chapin? When I tell her that her husband thinks it's a swell idea to blast a wife in her sleep?

Funck turns the color of a poinsettia. You wouldn't.

Willie leans against the door's frosted panel. Wouldn't I?

She won't believe.

Probably not. She sounds like a very sweet woman.

He's laughing, Photographer says to Reporter. He's just standing in the middle of Madison Avenue, laughing.

Mr. Sutton, why are you laughing? And would you please be careful-there are cars coming.

I was remembering how I got the boss to put me on full-time at Greystone. Ah boys, score one for Willie. Finally things were turning around for me. A job I loved. A job I was good at. Money in my pocket. I started getting in shape, putting on weight, and on my day off I'd spend hours and hours at the library. Reading. What bliss.

Reading what?

Everything.

Photographer holds the map against the wind. Oh brother, holy s.h.i.+t, is that why our next stop is-the library? Seriously? Willie-we're going to the library?

The first chance Willie gets, he pulls newspapers, magazines, business journals, everything he can find in the library about Mr. Untermyer. He's shocked by what he learns. Willie and Eddie thought they were pretty slick, breaking into a bank, but Mr. Untermyer breaks up banks. As a special prosecutor, Mr. Untermyer became the all-time bank buster, the scourge of America's most notorious robber barons. During tense hearings before the United States Congress, hearings that riveted the nation, Mr. Untermyer, a fresh orchid from Greystone in his lapel, called one banker after another to the stand and exposed them as conspirators, liars, thieves. Over a span of several years, through a secret money trust, the bankers had hijacked the financial system. They'd appointed one another to the boards of their various banks and corporations, essentially merging them all into one secret superbank. Mr. Untermyer had the audacity to expose this skulduggery, to publicly interrogate the perpetrators, who happened to be the richest men in America, among them J. P. Morgan and one of the Rockfellers. What was more audacious to Morgan than the questioning itself-Untermyer was a Jew.

The hearings didn't end in criminal charges, but they did ruin Morgan's health. Shaken, humiliated, he fled to Europe. Weeks later, in a lavish hotel suite in Rome, he breathed his last. His heirs and partners openly blamed Mr. Untermyer. While Mr. Untermyer never accepted the blame, he never denied it either.

Whenever Willie sees Mr. Untermyer on the grounds of Greystone, he tries to catch his eye. Now and then Mr. Untermyer comes over and chats. Willie can't believe a man so important, a man busy slaying Morgans and shaming Rockefellers, makes time. But Mr. Untermyer seems amused by Willie, intrigued by his stories about Irish Town, Sing Sing, Dannemora, Eddie. When Willie runs out of real stories, he makes up new ones. In the middle of just such a story, a querulous look comes over Mr. Untermyer. Willie, he says, I think you're a modern seanchai.

Willie, kneeling in the shadow of the Temple of Love, planting delphiniums, looks up. He can see the nymphs dancing behind Mr. Untermyer. My grandfather used to talk about the seanchai sir.

I don't doubt it. Your grandfather was from Ireland of course.

Yes sir.

The seanchai was a holy man in Ireland. He made the long nights shorter. And he didn't always care if his stories were true.

Is that bad?

Not necessarily. Truth has its place. In a courtroom, certainly. A boardroom. But in a story? I don't know. I think truth is in the listener. Truth is something the listener bestows on a story-or not. Though I wouldn't recommend you try that argument on a wife or girlfriend.

Willie laughs. No sir. Is it true sir that you planted these gardens for your wife?

It is. Every time they bloom, I grieve anew.

Yes sir. Sorry sir.

Mr. Untermyer clears his throat. May I ask you something, Willie?

Sure thing.

What's it like to rob a bank?

Willie starts to answer. He sees the look on Mr. Untermyer's face, stops himself. He wipes his brow, stabs his spade into the ground.

Honestly, Mr. Untermyer, it's a job. Other bank robbers in the joint, they like to say how thrilling it is to rob a bank, how nothing makes a man feel more alive. That's the bunk sir. The idea is to do it well, do it fast, get home safe.

Mr. Untermyer smoothes his mustache. I thought you might say that.

May I ask you something sir?

Of course.

What's it like to make a Rockefeller squirm?

Mr. Untermyer smiles upriver. Nothing makes a man feel more alive, he says, then walks away.

Sutton takes one last look at the former home of Funck and Sons. Okay, he says. Let's scram. Next stop: New York Public Library, Central Branch.

Photographer shakes his head. Honestly, Willie, I can't think of anything less visually compelling than the d.a.m.n library.

Visually compelling.

Yeah. I'd rather shoot you talking to some more prost.i.tute ghosts. I mean, a bank robber in front of a library? I don't see the point, brother. And my editor won't either-unless you happened to hit the library back in the twenties.

I would have, if they'd kept books locked up the way they did money.

Also, while we're at it, I've got no idea why we needed to come here.

I wanted to tell you about Mr. Untermyer, the owner of Greystone. He was an American Cicero.

You couldn't tell us about him at Yankee Stadium?

I wouldn't have remembered everything without seeing this building. I wouldn't have remembered that Mr. Untermyer killed J. P. Morgan. I think he secretly wished he'd offed Rockefeller too.

Photographer squints at Reporter. Reporter shrugs. They all get in the car.

Sutton taps Photographer. You'd have loved Mr. Untermyer kid. He really spoke your language. Boy did he hate banks. He told me once that the Founding Fathers worried more about banks than they worried about the British. They knew that banks had been causing chaos, bringing empires to their knees, for centuries, all in the name of free enterprise.

Photographer snorts. Willie, are you-a Communist?

f.u.c.k no kid. They asked that question once of Capone and he went crazy, almost brained somebody, and I know how he felt. Commie? I don't want to give ninety percent of my nick to the government. Mark me down as a believer in small government. Mark me down as a believer in free enterprise. But when a few greedy b.a.s.t.a.r.ds make up the rules as they go, that aint free enterprise. It's a grift.

You sound at least a little socialist.