Part 47 (1/2)

Shy, earnest, the kid says these things with a thick Brooklyn accent, just like Willie's.

Reporters ask him how old he is.

Twenty-four, he says, as if it's an accomplishment.

In fact he celebrated a birthday just days before spotting Willie on the train. He was born in February, of course, the month of all momentous occurrences in Willie's life. Twenty-four years ago, just after Willie left Dannemora and returned to the world, the kid was entering the world. His parents, Max and Ethel Schuster, named him Arnold.

Arnie to his friends.

The cops stonewall for a day or two, but they can't win against Arnie's Boy Scout face. They're forced to admit that the first official version of events-vigilant beat cops, crackerjack police work-wasn't quite accurate. With gritted teeth they usher Left Cop and Right Cop offstage and embrace Arnie Schuster, the Good Samaritan. For the cameras anyway.

If Arnie has irritated the cops, he's infuriated parts of Brooklyn. To many he's the rat who squealed on a hero. He's the stoolie who put the finger on Willie the Actor. And he's Jewish. Many of the death threats he receives are addressed: Dear Judas.

People know where to write him because every newspaper prints his address: 941 Forty-Fifth Street.

Meanwhile, the cops continue to search for Willie's crew. They sift through the contents of his wallet, find his address, barrel into the boardinghouse on Dean Street. Landlady leads them upstairs to Willie's room, where they discover tens of thousands of dollars, a small a.r.s.enal, and a bookcase overflowing with books. What shocks them most are the books. Newspapers publish the list. The bank robber's syllabus.

Within a day bookstores sell out of Proust.

The room is also full of Willie's paperwork. Sketchbooks, notebooks, a draft of a novel-and one slim address book stashed under the mattress. The cops find and arrest Mad Dog and Dee. And Margaret. When they kick in her door she's lying in bed, a hand over her eyeball, now twice its normal size. Anguished, she pleads for a doctor. The cops won't let her have one until she gives them information. She swears she knows nothing.

Cops and reporters fan across the city, visiting all the banks mentioned in Willie's notes. They get a call from Head Nurse and race over to Staten Island, where they learn about Joseph the Porter, the Angel of the Farm Colony. Landlady helps fan the flames of Willie's growing myth, telling one reporter that Willie was always a perfect gentleman, that he gave her money for a doctor when her son was sick, that he bought her roses for her birthday. The cops want to question her daughter, who was tutoring Willie in Spanish. The daughter tells the cops to suck eggs, which makes her a heroine in the barrio.

A week after his arrest Willie is lying on his bunk. He lifts his head. He hears something. It sounds at first like the breakers at Coney Island.

Guard?

Yeah.

What is that?

Crowd.

Where?

Outside.

What are they doing?

Chanting?

What for?

You.

Me?

Willie cups his ear, trying to make it out.

WILL-ie, WILL-ie, WILL-ie.

The guard turns, eyes him through the bars. With heavy sarcasm he says, You're a hero.

Willie hears only the word, not the sarcasm.

Photographer turns left on Ninth. Reporter, rifling through files, speaks quickly: Arnie Schuster's poor mailman. That guy was busy in February and March of '52. Death threats started pouring into the Schuster house. Crude, unpunctuated, misspelled. Here's a nice one. Mac-Your number is up. You stooled on Sutton. You know what happens to double-crossers. You're finished. Signed, One of the boys.

The newspapers printed the threats, Sutton says. Which encouraged more people to make threats.

Here's another one, Reporter says. A model of simplicity: Rat Rat Rat.

Photographer looks in the rearview. Hey-what happened to Margaret? Your girlfriend?

Sutton lights a Chesterfield, looks out the window.

Willie?

Her eye, Sutton says.

What about it?

It just-I don't know how to say it. Exploded.

It did what?

Margaret kept begging to see a doctor, and the cops kept refusing, and the tumor in her eye-that's what it turned out to be-just-exploded. An infection set in. She went blind. She sued New York for negligence. I don't know what became of the suit. I wrote to her many times, but I never heard back. She just disappeared.

Around midnight, when the chanting crowds have gone home, when the jail is quiet, Warden stops by Willie's cell. He confesses to Willie: he grew up in Irish Town. Not far from the corner of Na.s.sau and Gold. He even went to St. Ann's. They talk about the old neighborhood. They talk about swimming the East River.

Most often they talk about books. They love all the same authors. The warden mentions Joyce.

Put two Irishmen in a cell, Willie says, sooner or later they'll talk about Joyce.

Warden laughs. I reread Ulysses once a year, he says. History is a nightmare from which I'm-you know.

I'm partial to the stories. I tried reading Ulysses during my last bit. I only made it as far as Episode 12.

The Cyclops! Sure. The scene in the pub-with the anti-Semite.

Tough sledding. This go around, I guess I'll have time to read it front to back.

Stately, plump, Warden offers Willie a smoke.

Chesterfield, Willie says. My brand.

I know, Willie. I know.

On March 8, 1952, around midnight, Willie is lying on his bunk, reading Dos Pa.s.sos. Warden appears at the door. Willie sits up, slips in a bookmark. His mind is still with Eugene Debs and Henry Ford and William Hearst-he never knew that Hearst's friends called him Willie.

How's tricks, Warden?