Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  MAP: NEW YORK CITY, 1969

  For Roger and Sloan Barnett, with love and gratitude

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  After spending half his life in prison, off and on, Willie Sutton was set free for good on Christmas Eve, 1969. His sudden emergence from Attica Correctional Facility sparked a media frenzy. Newspapers, magazines, television networks, talk shows—everyone wanted an interview with the most elusive and prolific bank robber in American history.

  Sutton granted only one. He spent the entire next day with one newspaper reporter and one still photographer, driving around New York City, visiting the scenes of his most famous heists and other points of interest in his remarkable life.

  The resulting article, however, was strangely cursory, with several errors—or lies—and few real revelations.

  Sadly, Sutton and the reporter and the photographer are all gone, so what happened among them that Christmas, and what happened to Sutton during the preceding sixty-eight years, is anyone’s guess.

  This book is my guess.

  But it’s also my wish.

  I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.

  —LEWIS CARROLL,

  THE HUNTING OF THE SNARK

  CONTENTS

  Also by J.R. Moehringer

  Map: New York City, 1969

  Author’s Note

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Part Two

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Part Three

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  Readers Group Guide

  An Interview with J.R. Moehringer

  About the Author

  Copyright

  ONE

  He’s writing when they come for him.

  He’s sitting at his metal desk, bent over a yellow legal pad, talking to himself, and to her—as always, to her. So he doesn’t notice them standing at his door. Until they run their batons along the bars.

  He looks up, adjusts his large scuffed eyeglasses, the bridge mended many times with Scotch tape. Two guards, side by side, the left one fat and soft and pale, as if made from Crisco, the right one tall and scrawny and with a birthmark like a penny on his right cheek.

  Left Guard hitches up his belt. On your feet, Sutton. Admin wants you.

  Sutton stands.

  Right Guard points his baton. What the? You crying, Sutton?

  No sir.

  Don’t you lie to me, Sutton. I can see you been crying.

  Sutton touches his cheek. His fingers come away wet. I didn’t know I was crying sir.

  Right Guard waves his baton at the legal pad. What’s that?

  Nothing sir.

  He asked you what is it, Left Guard says.

  Sutton feels his bum leg starting to buckle. He grits his teeth at the pain. My novel sir.

  They look around his book-filled cell. He follows their eyes. It’s never good when the guards look around your cell. They can always find something if they have a mind to. They scowl at the books along the floor, the books along the metal cabinet, the books along the cold-water basin. Sutton’s is the only cell at Attica filled with copies of Dante, Plato, Shakespeare, Freud. No, they confiscated his Freud. Prisoners aren’t allowed to have psychology books. The warden thinks they’ll try to hypnotize each other.

  Right Guard smirks. He gives Left Guard a nudge—get ready. Novel, eh? What’s it about?

  Just—you know. Life sir.

  What the hell does an old jailbird know about life?

  Sutton shrugs. That’s true sir. But what does anyone know?

  Word is leaking out. By noon a dozen print reporters have already arrived and they’re huddled at the front entrance, stomping their feet, blowing on their hands. One of them says he just heard—snow on the way. Lots of it. Nine inches at least.

  They all groan.

  Too cold to snow, says the veteran in the group, an old wire service warhorse in suspenders and black orthopedic shoes. He’s been with UPI since the Scopes trial. He blows a gob of spit onto the frozen ground and scowls up at the clouds, then at the main guard tower, which looks to some like the new Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland.

  Too cold to stand out here, says the reporter from the New York Post. He mumbles something disparaging about the warden, who’s refused three times to let the media inside the prison. The reporters could be drinking hot coffee right now. They could be using the phones, making last-minute plans for Christmas. Instead the warden is trying to prove some kind of point. Why, they all ask, why?

  Because the warden’s a prick, says the reporter from Time, that’s why.

  The reporter from Look holds his thumb and forefinger an inch apart. Give a bureaucrat this much power, he says, and watch out. Stand back.

  Not just bureaucrats, says the reporter from The New York Times. All bosses eventually become fascists. Human nature.

  The reporters trade horror stories about their bosses, their editors, the miserable dimwits who gave them this god-awful assignment. There’s a brand-new journalistic term, appropriated just this year from the war in Asia, frequently applied to assignments like this, assignments where you wait with the herd, usually outdoors, exposed to the elements, knowing full well you’re not going to get anything good, certainly not anything the rest of the herd won’t get. The term is clusterfuck. Every reporter gets caught in a clusterfuck now and then, it’s part of the job, but a clusterfuck on Christmas Eve? Outside Attica Correctional Facility? Not cool, says the reporter from the Village Voice. Not cool.

  The reporters feel especially hostile toward that boss of all bosses, Governor Nelson Rockefeller. He of the Buddy Holly glasses and the chronic indecision. Governor Hamlet, says the reporter from UPI, smirking at the walls. Is he going to do this thing or not?

  He yells at Sleeping Beauty’s Castle: Shit or get off the pot, Nelson! Defecate or abdicate!

  The reporters nod, grumble, nod. Like the prisoners on the other side of this thirty-foot wall, they grow restless. The prisoners want out, the reporters want in, and both groups blame the Man. Cold, tired, angry, ostracized by society, both groups are close to rioting. Both fail to notice the beautiful moon slowly rising above the prison.

  It’s full.

  The guards lead Sutton from his cell in D block through a barred door, down a tunnel and into Attica’s central checkpoint—what prisoners call Times Square—which leads to all cell blocks and offices. From Times Square the guards take Sutton down to the deputy warden’s office. It’s the second time this month that Sutton has been called before the dep. Last week it was to learn that his parole request was denied—a devastating blow. Sutton and his lawyers had been so very confident. They’d won support from prominent judges, discovered loopholes in his convictions, collected letters from doctors vouching that Sutton was close to death. But the three-man parole board simply said no.

  The dep is seated at his desk. He doesn’t bother looking up. Hello, Willie.

  Hello sir.

  Looks like we’re a go for liftoff.

  Sir?

  The dep waves a hand over the papers strewn across his desk. These are your walking papers. You’re being let out.

  Sutton blinks, massages his leg. Let—out? By who sir?

  The dep looks up, sighs. Head of corrections. Or Rockefe
ller. Or both. Albany hasn’t decided how they want to sell this. The governor, being an ex-banker, isn’t sure he wants to put his name on it. But the head of corrections doesn’t want to overrule the parole board. Either way it looks like they’re letting you walk.

  Walk sir? Why sir?

  Fuck if I know. Fuck if I care.

  When sir?

  Tonight. If the phone will stop ringing and reporters will stop hounding me to let them turn my prison into their private rec room. If I can get these goddamn forms filled out.

  Sutton stares at the dep. Then at the guards. Are they joking? They look serious.

  The dep turns back to his papers. Godspeed, Willie.

  The guards walk Sutton down to the prison tailor. Every man released from a New York State prison gets a release suit, a tradition that goes back at least a century. The last time Sutton got measured for a release suit, Calvin Coolidge was president.

  Sutton stands before the tailor’s three-way mirror. A shock. He hasn’t stood before many mirrors in recent years and he can’t believe what he sees. That’s his round face, that’s his slicked gray hair, that’s his hated nose—too big, too broad, with different-size nostrils—and that’s the same large red bump on his eyelid, mentioned in every police report and FBI flyer since shortly after World War I. But that’s not him—it can’t be. Sutton has always prided himself on projecting a certain swagger, even in handcuffs. He’s always managed to look dapper, suave, even in prison grays. Now, sixty-eight years old, he sees in the three-way mirror that all the swagger, all the dapper and suave are gone. He’s a baggy-eyed stick figure. He looks like Felix the Cat. Even the pencil-thin mustache, once a source of pride, looks like the cartoon cat’s whiskers.

  The tailor stands beside Sutton, wearing a green tape measure around his neck. An old Italian from the Bronx, with two front teeth the size of thimbles, he shakes a handful of buttons and coins in his pocket as he talks.

  So they’re letting you out, Willie.

  Looks like.

  How long you been here?

  Seventeen years.

  How long since you had a new suit of clothes?

  Oh. Twenty years. In the old days, when I was flush, I’d get all my suits custom-made. Silk shirts too. D’Andrea Brothers.

  He still remembers the address: 587 Fifth Avenue. And the phone number. Murray Hill 5-5332.

  Sure, Tailor says, D’Andrea, they did beautiful work. I still got one of their tuxes. Step up on the block.

  Sutton steps up, grunts. A suit, he says. Jesus, I thought the next thing I’d be measured for would be a shroud.

  I don’t do shrouds, Tailor says. No one gets to see your work.

  Sutton frowns at the three reflected Tailors. It’s not enough to do nice work? People have to see it?

  Tailor spreads his tape measure across Sutton’s shoulders, down his arm. Show me an artist, he says, who doesn’t want praise.

  Sutton nods. I used to feel that way about my bank jobs.

  Tailor looks at the triptych of reflected Suttons, winks at the middle one. He stretches the tape measure down Sutton’s bum leg. Inseam thirty, he announces. Jacket thirty-eight short.

  I was a forty reg when I came in this joint. I ought to sue.

  Tailor laughs softly, coughs. What color you want, Willie?

  Anything but gray.

  Black then. I’m glad they’re letting you out, Willie. You’ve paid your debt.

  Forgive us our debts, Willie says, as we forgive our debtors.

  Tailor crosses himself.

  That from your novel? Right Guard asks.

  Sutton and Tailor look at each other.

  Tailor points a finger gun at Sutton. Merry Christmas, Willie.

  Same to you, friend.

  Sutton points a finger gun at Tailor, cocks the thumb hammer. Bang.

  The reporters talk about sex and money and current events. Altamont, that freaky concert where those four drugged-out hippies died—who’s to blame? Mick Jagger? The Hells Angels? Then they gossip about their more successful colleagues, starting with Norman Mailer. Not only is Mailer running for mayor of New York, but he just got one million dollars to write a book about the moon landing. Mailer—the guy writes history as fiction, fiction as history, and inserts himself into all of it. He plays by his own rules while his rule-bound colleagues get sent to Attica to freeze their balls off. Fuck Mailer, they all agree.

  And fuck the moon.

  They blow on their hands, pull up their collars, make bets about whether or not the warden will ever be publicly exposed as a cross-dresser. Also, they bet on which will happen first—Sutton walks or Sutton croaks. The reporter from the New York Post says he hears Sutton’s not just knocking at death’s door, he’s ringing the bell, wiping his feet on the welcome mat. The reporter from Newsday says the artery in Sutton’s leg is clogged beyond repair—a doctor who plays racquetball with the reporter’s brother-in-law told him so. The reporter from Look says he heard from a cop friend in the Bronx that Sutton still has loot stashed all over the city. Prison officials are going to free Sutton and then the cops are going to follow him to the money.

  That’s one way to solve the budget crisis, says the reporter from the Albany Times Union.

  The reporters share what they know about Sutton, pass around facts and stories like cold provisions that will have to get them through the night. What they haven’t read, or seen on TV, they’ve heard from their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. Sutton is the first multigeneration bank robber in history, the first ever to build a lengthy career—it spans four decades. In his heyday Sutton was the face of American crime, one of a handful of men to make the leap from public enemy to folk hero. Smarter than Machine Gun Kelly, saner than Pretty Boy Floyd, more likable than Legs Diamond, more peaceable than Dutch Schultz, more romantic than Bonnie and Clyde, Sutton saw bank robbery as high art and went about it with an artist’s single-minded zeal. He believed in study, planning, hard work. And yet he was also creative, an innovator, and like the greatest artists he proved to be a tenacious survivor. He escaped three maximum-security prisons, eluded cops and FBI agents for years. He was Henry Ford by way of John Dillinger—with dashes of Houdini and Picasso and Rasputin. The reporters know all about Sutton’s stylish clothes, his impish smile, his love of good books, the glint of devilment in his bright blue eyes, so blue that the FBI once described them in bulletins as azure. It’s the rare bank robber who moves the FBI to such lyricism.

  What the reporters don’t know, what they and most Americans have always wanted to know, is whether or not Sutton, who was celebrated for being nonviolent, had anything to do with the brutal gangland murder of Arnold Schuster. A fresh-faced twenty-four-year-old from Brooklyn, a baseball-loving veteran of the Coast Guard, Schuster caught the wrong subway one afternoon and found himself face-to-face with Sutton, the most wanted man in America at the time. Three weeks later Schuster was dead, and his unsolved murder might be the most tantalizing cold case in New York City history. It’s definitely the most tantalizing part of the Sutton legend.

  The 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?