Sutton. J. Moehringer R.

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СКАЧАТЬ GUARDS MARCH SUTTON BACK TO ADMIN. A CLERK CUTS HIM TWO checks. One for $146, salary for seventeen years at various prison jobs, minus taxes. Another for $40, the cost of a bus ticket to Manhattan. Every released prisoner gets bus fare to Manhattan. Sutton takes the checks—this is really happening. His heart begins to throb. His leg too. They’re throbbing at each other, like the male and female leads in an Italian opera.

      The guards march him back to his cell. You got fifteen minutes, they tell him, handing him a shopping bag.

      He stands in the middle of the cell, his eight-by-six home for the last seventeen years. Is it possible that he won’t sleep here tonight? That he’ll sleep in a soft bed with clean sheets and a real pillow and no demented souls above and below him howling and cursing and pleading with impotence and fury? The sound of men in cages—nothing can compare. He sets the shopping bag on the desk and carefully packs the manuscript of his novel. Then the spiral notebooks from his creative writing classes. Then his copies of Dante, Shakespeare, Plato. Then Kerouac. Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live. A line that saved Sutton on many long nights. Then the dictionary of quotations, which contains the most famous line ever spoken by America’s most famous bank robber, Willie Sutton, a.k.a. Slick Willie, a.k.a. Willie the Actor.

      Carefully, tenderly, he packs the Ezra Pound. Now you will come out of a confusion of people. And the Tennyson. Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone. He says the lines under his breath. His eyes mist. They always do. Finally he packs the yellow legal pad, the one on which he was writing when the guards came for him. Not his novel, which he recently finished, but a suicide note, the one he began composing an hour after the parole board’s rejection. So often, he thinks, that’s how it happens. Death stands at your door, hitches up its pants, points its baton at you—then hands you a pardon.

      Once Sutton’s cell is packed, the dep lets him make a few phone calls. First he dials his lawyer, Katherine. She’s incoherent with joy.

      We did it, Willie. We did it!

      How did we do it, Katherine?

      They got tired of fighting us. It’s Christmas, Willie, and they were just tired. It was easier to give up.

      I know how they felt, Katherine.

      And the newspapers certainly helped, Willie. The newspapers were on your side.

      Which is why Katherine’s cut a deal with one of the biggest newspapers. She mentions which one, but Sutton’s mind is racing, the name doesn’t register. The newspaper is going to whisk Sutton aboard its private plane to Manhattan, put him up at a hotel, and in exchange he’ll give them his exclusive story.

      Unfortunately, Katherine adds, that means you’ll have to spend Christmas Day with a reporter instead of family. Is that okay?

      Sutton thinks of his family. He hasn’t spoken to them in years. He thinks of reporters—he hasn’t spoken to them ever. He doesn’t like reporters. Still, this is no time to make waves.

      That’ll be fine, Katherine.

      Now, do you know anyone who can pick you up outside the prison and drive you to the airport?

      I’ll find someone.

      He hangs up, dials Donald, who answers on the tenth ring.

      Donald? It’s Willie.

      Who’s this?

      Willie. What are you doing?

      Oh. Hey. Drinking a beer, getting ready to watch The Flying Nun.

      Listen. It seems they’re letting me out tonight.

      They’re letting you out, or you’re letting yourself out?

      It’s legit, Donald. They’re opening the door.

      Hell freezing over?

      I don’t know. But the devil’s definitely wearing a sweater. Can you pick me up at the front gate?

      Near the Sleeping Beauty thing?

      Yeah.

      Of course.

      Sutton asks Donald if he can bring him a few items.

      Anything, Donald says. Name it.

      A TV VAN FROM BUFFALO ROARS UP TO THE GATE. A TV REPORTER JUMPS out, fusses with his microphone. He’s wearing a two-hundred-dollar suit, a camel-hair topcoat, gray leather gloves, silver cuff links. The print reporters elbow each other. Cuff links—have you ever?

      The TV reporter strolls up to the print reporters and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas. Same to you, they mumble. Then silence.

      Silent Night, the TV reporter says.

      No one laughs.

      The reporter from Newsweek asks the TV reporter if he read Pete Hamill in this morning’s Post. Hamill’s eloquent apologia for Sutton, his plea for Sutton’s release, addressed as a letter to the governor, might be the reason they’re all here. Hamill urged Rockefeller to be fair. If Willie Sutton had been a GE board member or a former water commissioner, instead of the son of an Irish blacksmith, he would be on the street now.

      The TV reporter stiffens. He knows the print guys think he doesn’t read—can’t read. Yeah, he says, I thought Hamill nailed it. Especially his line about banks. There are some of us today, looking at the mortgage interest rates, who feel that it is the banks that are sticking us up. And I got a lump in my throat at that bit about Sutton reuniting with a lost love. Willie Sutton should be able to sit and watch the ducks in Prospect Park one more time, or go to Nathan’s for a hot dog, or call up some old girl for a drink.

      This sets off a debate. Does Sutton actually deserve to be free? He’s a thug, says the Newsday reporter—why all the adulation?

      Because he’s a god in parts of Brooklyn, says the Post reporter. Just look at this crowd.

      There are now more than two dozen reporters and another two dozen civilians—crime buffs, police radio monitors, curiosity seekers. Freaks. Ghouls.

      But again, says the Newsday reporter, I ask you—why?

      Because Sutton robbed banks, the TV reporter says, and who the hell has a kind word to say for banks? They should not only let him out, they should give him the key to the city.

      What I don’t get, says the Look reporter, is why Rockefeller, a former banker, would let out a bank robber.

      Rockefeller needs the Irish vote, says the Times Union reporter. You can’t get reelected in New York without the Irish vote and Sutton’s like Jimmy Walker and Michael Collins and a couple Kennedys in one big Mulligan stew.

      He’s a fuckin thug, says the Newsday reporter, who may be drunk.

      The TV reporter scoffs. Under his arm he’s carrying last week’s Life magazine, with Charles Manson on the cover. He holds up the magazine: Manson glares at them.

      Compared to this guy, the TV reporter СКАЧАТЬ