Part 38 (2/2)

Almost a year. Things started going faster when we finally intersected with the sewer, so we could throw loose dirt in there. Before that we had to bring the dirt out in our pockets, scatter it in the yard.

Sutton watches a group of children skating backwards, figure-eighting, spinning. Look, he says. They're so graceful. So innocent. Was I ever that innocent?

Reporter spots a pay phone next to the snack bar. Mr. Sutton, I need to call my girlfriend.

Go ahead. Free country.

Um. Well.

I'm not going to take a run-out powder on you kid. I'll be here when you get back.

Maybe you could come with me?

I'm not sitting with you in a phone booth while you call your ball and chain. Besides, better you don't call her. Ever.

Mr. Sutton.

You don't love her.

Because I hesitated when you asked me?

You're wasting your time. A thing you should never waste. And you're playing with fire. You're putting yourself in a position where you might have to leave hot. Never leave hot.

What does that mean?

When I started running my own crew, taking down banks, I had a rule. Never leave a bank hot. I always made double sure we'd walk out nice and easy, our wits about us. Before the alarms went off, before the cops showed up-before there was any gunplay.

This relates to my girlfriend how?

Banks, broads-always leave on your terms, before you can't. With a girl, that means before she's seeing someone else and you marry her out of jealousy. Or before the rabbit dies and you're trapped. Never leave a bank hot, never leave a broad hot.

Sutton glowers at Prometheus. Bottom line, kid, choose your partner carefully. The most important decision you make in life is your partner.

And what should one look for in a partner?

Someone who won't rat.

I mean a life partner.

So do I.

Sutton looks down, sees a young girl, five or six, wearing thick blue ski pants, a hat with a furry red ball on top. She's inching around the rink, held by her father. As if feeling the weight of Sutton's gaze, she looks up. Sutton waves. She waves back-nearly falls. Sutton flinches, turns away. He looks at Reporter for several long seconds. I have a daughter, he says.

Really? I didn't see anything about that in the files.

When I first walked out of Dannemora, in '27, I b.u.mped into a girl from the old neighborhood. I was fresh out of the joint, angry, lonely, living in a flop, and this girl was crowding twenty-five, which was old maid territory back then. It was like when I b.u.mped into Marcus. The fuse meeting the flame.

Reporter jots a note.

My daughter, Sutton says-then stops himself. I don't let myself start too many sentences with those words. I've got a long list of regrets, G.o.d knows, but she's near the top. Early on, her mother would bring her to see me in Sing Sing. You know what smells the opposite of a prison? A three-year-old girl. Those visits were torture. They say a child makes you want to be a better person, but if you're already a lost cause, if you're facing a fifty-year bit, a child just makes you want to dry up and blow away. Hard as they were on me, the visits were harder on the kid. And her mother. So they stopped coming. Her mom filed for divorce. Disappeared. I didn't blame her.

I wonder why there's nothing in the files about that, Mr. Sutton.

Sutton shrugs, points at his head. I pulled all the files on that subject from my own mental filing cabinet-long ago.

He rubs his leg, grimaces. People who say they have no regrets, that's the bunk, that's a grift. Like living in the present. There is no present. There's the past and the future. You live in the present? You're homeless. You're a b.u.m.

Sutton takes one last look at the skaters. My daughter, he says. She must be about forty now kid. She probably wouldn't know me if she walked past us right now.

Sutton turns, looks at Reporter, winks: But I'll bet you all the money I ever stole-I'd know her.

Willie and Freddie are the first ones who spot roots. April 1945. Willie sees Freddie's face light up, then Freddie frantically pointing. Roots mean gra.s.s, and gra.s.s means they're directly under the strip of lawn that runs along Fairmount Avenue. At the same moment they both understand-technically they're free.

Freddie starts clawing upward. Willie holds him back.

We have to wait for the others, Freddie.

But Freddie won't stop. Six feet from the surface, four feet, he's clawing up, up. Willie grabs Freddie around the neck, pulls him back down into the tunnel. Freddie pushes Willie away. Willie grabs Freddie by the collar. By the hair. Freddie turns, swings, hits Willie in the nose, grabs a fistful of Willie's s.h.i.+rt and punches him again in the nose, and again. The nose would be broken if there were anything left to break.

Freddie resumes clawing. He's nearly at the surface. Willie, his nose streaming blood, yells at him: You can't do this, Freddie. You're betraying the others. We're all in this together. If you do this, you're no better than a rat.

Freddie stops. He slides down, slumps against the muddy wall of the tunnel. Heaving, gasping, his rash-covered face bright pink, he says: You're right, Willie. I lost my f.u.c.kin head. The idea of bein out. I got crazy.

They crawl on all fours back down the tunnel and spread the word among the tunnel crew. It's time.

The next morning everyone gathers in Kliney's cell. They've always planned for the escape to take place right after breakfast, when the greatest number of prisoners are moving about. Now, with no discussion, no need for discussion, they line up and jump through the hole, one by one, like paratroopers over the target. Kliney takes the lead, then Freddie, then Botchy, then Akins, then seven other guys, then Willie. One by one they slide down the shaft, into the tunnel, crawling crab-like toward freedom.

Nearing the hole, seeing the sudden shaft of white daylight, Willie is overcome. A kind of religious ecstasy floods his heart. He erupts in a prayer of thanks. Oh G.o.d I know that I'm a sinner and I know that I've led a sorry life but this moment is clearly a gift from you and this shaft of light and this fresh air is your blessing and I can't help but believe it means you haven't given up on me yet.

He climbs up up up, through mud, roots, gra.s.s, pokes his head out of the hole. It's one of the first warm days of spring. He smells the moist earth, the new flowers, the warm sweet syrupy suns.h.i.+ne. He pushes his shoulders through the hole, then his hips, his chest, and flops onto the ground, covered with blades of gra.s.s and mud. A second birth. He wasn't born, he escaped. He lies on his side and blinks up at the black walls of the century-old prison. Hand-cut stone, jagged battlements, long narrow slits for windows. He's been inside this place for more than a decade and he never knew how hideous it was.

He gets to his knees, looks up the street, catches a glimpse of Freddie and Botchy rounding a corner. He looks across Fairmount and sees a truck driver, mouth agape, who chose this moment to pull over and open his thermos and check his map. He hears heavy footsteps behind him. He turns. Two cops. He jumps to his feet and runs.

Bullets spark along the pavement beside him. He dashes around a car, across a lawn, leaps a child's tricycle, sprints down an alley, bursts through a door that leads into some kind of warehouse. He shuts the door, crouches in a corner. Maybe they didn't see him.

Come out or we'll shoot you through this f.u.c.kin door.

He walks out, drenched, filthy, inconsolable. All that work, all those months of chipping, sc.r.a.ping, digging, for a three-minute jog in the spring suns.h.i.+ne.

Along with Willie, eight of the others are captured right away. One manages to stay free for a week, then knocks at the front gate of the prison. Tired, hungry, he asks to be let back in. That leaves just Freddie and Botchy still at large.

Each member of the tunnel crew is brought in chains before Hardboiled. The crash-out is front-page news across the country, around the world, and Hardboiled sees that this will be his legacy. He'll forever be the laughingstock who let twelve prisoners dig a hundred-foot tunnel under his nose. He's not the sort of man who can shrug off being laughed at. Someone must pay.

There are ancient punishment cells at Eastern State. Prisoners call them Klondikes. They're belowground, barely larger than sarcophagi, and they haven't been used in decades. Hardboiled orders each member of the tunnel crew stripped and dropped into a Klondike.

They will stay there, he decrees, until the last two are recaptured.

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