Part 39 (1/2)

It takes eight weeks. Cops in New York City finally catch Freddie and Botchy in a nightclub. Botchy is wearing a tuxedo. Freddie is wearing lifts. Hardboiled removes the tunnel crew from the Klondikes. They're all near death. He has them clothed, scrubbed, fed, then s.h.i.+ps four of them, the worst of them, to Holmesburg, a maximum-security prison ten miles up the road.

Sutton looks around. Where's your partner?

Reloading.

He's reloading all right.

Yeah.

Is he a good-what did you call him? Shooter?

The best.

You like working with him?

That's a different question.

Mm.

Talent aside, he's like all the other shooters at the paper. No more, no less.

Faint praise. Listen kid, I left my smokes in the car. Why don't you walk me back, leave me with Bad Cop, then you can run and call your girlfriend.

Sounds good.

They walk through Rockefeller Plaza to Fifth Avenue. The Polara isn't where they left it. They look up and down the street. There it is-fifty feet away, in the shadow of the statue of Hercules. Windows up, Photographer talking on the radio. Why did Photographer move it? They approach warily. Reporter opens the pa.s.senger door. The cloying, giddy odor of marijuana wafts out.

Photographer lowers the radio. Cop made me move the car, he says.

Uh-huh, Reporter says.

I'm talking to the City Desk. They want us to shoot Willie at some bank a few blocks from here.

Fine. I need to leave him with you for two minutes.

Cool.

Sutton climbs into the pa.s.senger seat. Reporter runs back across the Plaza to the pay phone.

We'll head there in a few, Photographer says into the radio. Yeah. Manufacturers. I got the address. Yeah. Ten four.

He sets the radio on the dash, looks at Sutton. Sutton looks at him. Life Saver eyes again. You look-happy, Sutton says.

Happy?

Peaceful. Almost.

Photographer laughs nervously. If you say so.

You been smoking that s.h.i.+t a long time?

What s.h.i.+t?

Kid. Please.

Photographer sighs. Actually, no.

What made you start?

Photographer unwinds his barber pole scarf, rewinds it slowly around his neck. Once upon a time, he says, I was pretty good at not letting this job get to me. I was bulletproof. I was known for it. I took pictures of the most horrible s.h.i.+t you can imagine, and none of it stayed with me. But a couple years ago the paper sent me up to Harlem. A young mother with too many kids to feed, not right in the head, threw her baby daughter out a sixth-floor window. The reporter and I got there before the cops did and we found the girl, this beautiful one-year-old girl, lying in the street. Eyes open. Arms spread wide. I did my job, fired off a roll of film, same as always, but when I got home I couldn't sit still, couldn't stop shaking. So I went out, asked the guys on the corner for something, anything, to get me through the night. They sold me a few tabs of acid. I dropped one, and instead of getting better, I got worse. A whole lot worse. I had what they call a death trip.

What's that?

I won't describe it. It wouldn't be fair to you. And besides, I honestly can't. Let's just say I went to a very messed-up place. I felt like I was in the land of the dead. I felt like, for the first time, I really and truly understood death, understood how awful, how bottomless, death is. Which was about the last thing I wanted to feel at that moment. I started freaking out, started screaming, crying. My old lady wanted to call an ambulance. I wouldn't let her. I thought it might cost me my job. She went back down to the corner, bought some weed, and that mellowed me out. Stopped the sweats, the horrors. Weed brought me back, got me over the memory of that little girl. So I started turning on every night. Right after work. Then before. Then during the day. Weed is still the only thing that works.

They sit quietly for a minute.

There used to be a guy, Sutton says. At Attica. He grew a little weed in his cell.

No kidding.

The hacks thought it was some kind of fern.

Photographer laughs.

The guy told me weed made him feel like he wasn't in Attica. Like he was floating above Attica.

Yeah. That sounds about right.

Sutton looks at his Chesterfields, looks at Photographer. I may have misjudged you kid.

Thanks, Willie. Me too.

So-you got any of that s.h.i.+t left?

Really?

Sutton stares.

Photographer looks down Fifth Avenue, looks back at Sutton. They both look at Hercules, ready to hurl the world down on them. Photographer opens his cloth purse and Sutton shuts the Polara door.

NINETEEN.

Willie is keep-locked. Freddie too. Meaning they're kept in their cells all day, all night, even during meals. Their only break is a half hour every morning, when guards let them into a small yard for exercise. And mockery.

Welcome to Holmesburg, ladies. Welcome to the Burg.