Part 48 (1/2)

What?

Eddie. Margaret. Arnie.

Sutton stares at the rearview. Please, he says. No more.

Dr. Fialka went through Arnie's billfold, Reporter says. Arnie still had fifty-seven bucks on him. So clearly this was no robbery. Then Dr. Fialka found Arnie's ID and someone screamed, Oh G.o.d it's Arnold Schuster.

No more, Sutton says. Let's get out of here, boys.

Moments later Arnie's family heard the news on TV. A bulletin. Good Samaritan Arnie Schuster has been gunned down outside his Brooklyn home. All the Schusters ran outside and found Arnie a hundred feet away-on his back, blood running into the gutter. Arnie's mother, inconsolable. Arnie's kid brother, wailing. Arnie's father, running up and down the sidewalk, that sidewalk right there, screaming: They took my son, I don't want to live. Here's a picture. Look at the anguish in those faces. And if the whole scene wasn't strange enough, according to this clip-the joyful music of Purim wafted over all.

Willie. Arnold Schuster is dead.

Willie blinks. Schuster?

He stares at Warden, who stares back in disbelief.

Schuster? Schuster, Schuster. Then Willie remembers. The kid from the subway. The Boy Scout. Dead? How?

Shot.

Willie's mind goes reeling. Why would anyone shoot Schuster? Mother of G.o.d, because Willie is a hero and someone in that chanting crowd outside the jail, or someone in sympathy with that crowd, thought they were striking a blow on Willie's behalf. In fact it's a blow against Willie, a heavy blow, because it will surely turn public opinion. All these thoughts quickly dawn on him, and lead him to one terrifying and inescapable conclusion, which he blurts out like a cry for help, causing Warden to recoil with horror, with disapproval, with shame for his race.

That sinks me.

Photographer and Reporter step out of the car. Sutton doesn't follow.

Please, Sutton says. No.

Mr. Sutton, we've gone everywhere you wanted to go. We've held up our end of the bargain. It's your turn.

Sutton nods. He steps out. He walks between them across the street. They stop at the alley. Photographer tries to shoot Sutton but can't get a good angle. Also, Sutton refuses to look at the alley. He looks at the sky, trying to find the moon.

Reporter opens his briefcase, pulls out a stack of crime scene photos. He hands them to Sutton, who puts on his gla.s.ses, shuffles through them quickly. Arnie on the sidewalk. Cops standing over Arnie. Arnie's blood-soaked suit. Arnie's blue suede shoes.

I remember these, Sutton says. From the papers.

Reporter hands him a sheaf of front pages. The headlines are enormous. One catches Sutton's eye. He adjusts his gla.s.ses. DEATH OF A SALESMAN.

I remember this one, he says. The headline writer earned his money that day.

How so?

Because Death of a Salesman was still in the theaters. Margaret and I had just seen it. And because Willie Sutton sounds like w.i.l.l.y Loman. And because Schuster was a salesman.

He was, Reporter says. But did you know, Mr. Sutton, that when he wasn't selling clothes, Arnie was in the back of his dad's shop, running the presser. Above it he'd tacked the FBI Most Wanted list. That's how he recognized you. The FBI made sure to hand out that list to every clothing store in Brooklyn, Mr. Sutton, because you were known to be a sharp dresser. Like Arnie. Another thing you two had in common. Did you know that Arnie was engaged?

He was?

He met his fiancee, Leatrice, on the Boardwalk in Coney Island?

Mermaid Avenue.

Pardon?

Nothing.

Of course, many people suspected you were involved in Arnie's murder.

Reporter and Photographer freeze, waiting. Sutton says nothing.

The search for Arnie's killer, Reporter continues, is the largest investigation in the history of the New York Police Department.

The largest?

No manhunt has been larger.

I'm not feeling well, boys.

The commissioner called this case the department's top priority: We have nineteen thousand cops in this city, and all nineteen thousand know what their Number One job is today-to trap the rats involved in this outrage. But they never did solve it.

How crazy is that, Photographer says, catching a shot of Sutton glancing quickly at the alley. That the commissioner would use that word-rats? And how crazy is it that they never solved it? Okay, Willie, let's walk up the street, get a shot outside the Schuster house, and we're done.

Sutton walks, Reporter and Photographer on either side.

Mr. Sutton, Reporter says, public opinion really turned on you after Arnie's death.

Yeah.

New York did a one-eighty. People reconsidered everything they ever thought about heroes, rats, crime. You.

I remember kid, I remember.

An enormous crowd gathered at Arnold's funeral. Look at this picture.

I wrote his parents. Maybe that was a mistake.

This is it, Photographer says. Nine four one. Arnie's house.

They stop. A narrow brick row house, it's exactly like the ones on either side and up and down the street. A small front stoop, a white door. There's no sign that it was once the most talked about address in the city, in the nation.

The lights are off. Either no one lives here, Photographer says, or no one's home.

As the hea.r.s.e carrying Arnie pulled away from the cemetery, Reporter says, the cantor asked, Why? And the mourners took up a baleful chant: Why? Why? Why?

Sutton murmurs: That's what I want to know.