Sutton: A Novel Part 47

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?

He sees in Warden's face, in the set of his mouth, that books could not be farther from his mind. O Warden let me up out of this.

Photographer hits the brakes. The Polara almost rams the back fender of a Buick that's stopped for no apparent reason in the middle of the street. Photographer leans on the horn.

Go around, Reporter says to Photographer.

This a.s.shole won't move, Photographer says. Move, a.s.shole!

Reporter, shouting to be heard over the horn, tells Sutton: Here's an interesting story in the files. After spotting you on the subway Arnie went home and found his mother at the kitchen sink. He told her, Guess what-I just saw a thief. Arnie's mother said, Go away with you, who'd you see? And Arnie said, I saw Willie Sutton. His mother said, Who's that? And Arnie said, He's a man police want, I pointed him out, I played detective today. Arnie's mother recounted this conversation word for word to investigators. After-you know.

Poor Arnie, Photographer says.

He held up like a champ under the pressure, Reporter says. He wrote a pretty stiff-necked letter to one of his best friends, who'd just joined the Army. Want to hear it, Mr. Sutton?

No.

It's dated March 4, 1952. Dear Herb-How are you, boy? How does the Texas weather agree with you? I'm sorry I didn't write any sooner but as you know I've had plenty of excitement these past two, three weeks and I've been pretty busy. Now things are getting back to normal and I'm getting back to the same old grind. But let me tell you-it was murder.

Ah G.o.d, Sutton says.

It's funny how your life can change from one day to the next. One day I'm just plain Arnie Schuster and the next I'm THE Mr. Schuster and now I'm back to just plain Arnie again. Oh well maybe I can realize something out of it. But even if I don't I won't be sorry. Right now I'll just be happy to have the whole thing blow over. Arnie.

The banks f.u.c.ked him, Sutton says.

The banks?

The banks didn't pay him the reward. The banks said they never promised any reward. They said the newspapers made it all up about the reward. Arnie got nothing.

f.u.c.king banks, Photographer says.

Interesting how many things you had in common, Mr. Sutton.

Who?

You and Arnie Schuster.

How do you figure?

Both sons of Brooklyn. Both Dodgers fans. Both folk heroes-and also public enemies. Both unpopular with cops.

Sutton closes his eyes. Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

Sorry?

I didn't say anything.

Anyway, Reporter says, Arnie had a cold. He'd been in bed all week, and March 8 was his first day back on the job. He worked all day at his father's clothing shop. About eight-thirty that night he phoned Eileen Reiter, sister of his best friend, Jay. Arnie and Jay belonged to a Brooklyn bas.e.m.e.nt club-the Knaves.

Knaves? Sutton says.

Yeah. They'd get together once a week, plan social events, talk about girls. They'd fine each other a quarter for bad language.

Boy Scout, Sutton says.

Arnie and Eileen made a plan to meet up later that night. A party. First Arnie was going to head home, take a shower, change clothes. He locked the door to the shop, walked three blocks, boarded a bus on Fifth Avenue, rode to Ninth Avenue and Fiftieth, walked down five blocks to Forty-Fifth. He might've been thinking about the party. Or the reward. He might even have been thinking about you, Mr. Sutton. He had sixty seconds to live.

Photographer turns on Forty-Fifth. Cars are bunched tight along both sides of the street, but there's one s.p.a.ce along the right. Photographer pulls in. Sutton looks up and down the street. Narrow brick apartment buildings, brick stoops, barred windows. Some of the bars are painted white to make them look less like prisons.

Arnie's street, Reporter says. He turned right where we just turned, and crossed the street immediately. He walked the same route he'd walked a thousand, ten thousand times, which took him to that sidewalk over there.

Reporter points directly across the street. Sutton wipes the fogged window with his hand.

Arnie got about eighty feet, Reporter says, and then right there-someone stepped out of that alley. You can see how dark it is. There are still no streetlights. Whoever it was, Arnie wouldn't have seen him until they were inches apart. If Arnie ever saw him.

Perfect spot for an ambush, Photographer says. He lights a Newport, shoots a picture of the alley through the smoke and his window.

The trajectory of the bullets was sharply downward, Reporter says. Which means the shooter shot Arnie once and then stood over him and fired and fired as Arnie fell to the ground or lay on the ground writhing. It was reported that Arnie was shot in both eyes and once in the-you know, groin.

f.u.c.k, Photographer says.

But it's not exactly true, Reporter says. There's a story about the autopsy in this file-wait a sec. Here it is. Arnie was shot once in his stomach, below the navel-that bullet didn't exit. Then once in the face, just to the left of his nose-that bullet exited below his right eye. Then once in the top of his scalp-that bullet exited and burned the back of his scalp. Then once above the back of his left ear-that bullet went through his brain and exited the back of his head below his left ear. The photos, Mr. Sutton, make it look like Arnie was shot in the eyes, and maybe the shooter was aiming for the eyes, since that was a mob thing-sending a message. But there's no way to know.

No one heard the shots, Sutton whispers.

Right. It was so fast, bang bang, bang bang, if anyone did hear they thought it was a bus backfiring. But also-there was loud music playing in that synagogue right there. They were celebrating Purim.

Sutton turns and looks at the synagogue on the corner.

Reporter flips open a new file, reads: Often called the Jewish Halloween, Purim is the Jewish celebration of Esther, whose heroics saved her people from ma.s.s slaughter. Jewish children wear masks, go door to door, pretending to be characters from the biblical story.

Photographer opens his door, flicks out his Newport. Old Testament trick-or-treaters? Not in my neighborhood.

Then you don't live in a Jewish neighborhood. And they're not trick-or-treaters, per se. They ask for money, not candy. And they smoke cigarettes.

Why?

Because it's forbidden. Purim is a holiday when the forbidden is-bidden.

Photographer laughs. Little hoodlums. I'd like to shoot that.

Around nine-fifteen, Reporter says, a woman walking down this street, Mrs. Muriel Galler, tripped over Arnie. He was lying across the sidewalk. It was so dark she didn't know what she'd fallen over. A rug. A log. She got to her feet, saw it was a body, and ran to-let's see-that house.

Reporter points to the brick building beside the alley: Dr. Solomon Fialka rushed outside, checked Arnie's pulse, determined that he was dead-but didn't recognize Arnie. Dr. Fialka didn't recognize his own neighbor, that's what the bullets had done to Arnie's face, eyes. Mr. Sutton, did you know that Arnie had one eye larger than the other? According to the autopsy.

I remember.

Photographer looks at Sutton in the rearview. Everyone who had anything to do with you, brother.