Sutton

by J. R. Moehringer

  Willie laughs. No sir. Is it true sir that you planted these gardens for your wife?

  It is. Every time they bloom, I grieve anew.

  Yes sir. Sorry sir.

  Mr. Untermyer clears his throat. May I ask you something, Willie?

  Sure thing.

  What’s it like to rob a bank?

  Willie starts to answer. He sees the look on Mr. Untermyer’s face, stops himself. He wipes his brow, stabs his spade into the ground.

  Honestly, Mr. Untermyer, it’s a job. Other bank robbers in the joint, they like to say how thrilling it is to rob a bank, how nothing makes a man feel more alive. That’s the bunk sir. The idea is to do it well, do it fast, get home safe.

  Mr. Untermyer smoothes his mustache. I thought you might say that.

  May I ask you something sir?

  Of course.

  What’s it like to make a Rockefeller squirm?

  Mr. Untermyer smiles upriver. Nothing makes a man feel more alive, he says, then walks away.

  Sutton takes one last look at the former home of Funck and Sons. Okay, he says. Let’s scram. Next stop: New York Public Library, Central Branch.

  Photographer shakes his head. Honestly, Willie, I can’t think of anything less visually compelling than the damn library.

  Visually compelling.

  Yeah. I’d rather shoot you talking to some more prostitute ghosts. I mean, a bank robber in front of a library? I don’t see the point, brother. And my editor won’t either—unless you happened to hit the library back in the twenties.

  I would have, if they’d kept books locked up the way they did money.

  Also, while we’re at it, I’ve got no idea why we needed to come here.

  I wanted to tell you about Mr. Untermyer, the owner of Greystone. He was an American Cicero.

  You couldn’t tell us about him at Yankee Stadium?

  I wouldn’t have remembered everything without seeing this building. I wouldn’t have remembered that Mr. Untermyer killed J. P. Morgan. I think he secretly wished he’d offed Rockefeller too.

  Photographer squints at Reporter. Reporter shrugs. They all get in the car.

  Sutton taps Photographer. You’d have loved Mr. Untermyer kid. He really spoke your language. Boy did he hate banks. He told me once that the Founding Fathers worried more about banks than they worried about the British. They knew that banks had been causing chaos, bringing empires to their knees, for centuries, all in the name of free enterprise.

  Photographer snorts. Willie, are you—a Communist?

  Fuck no kid. They asked that question once of Capone and he went crazy, almost brained somebody, and I know how he felt. Commie? I don’t want to give ninety percent of my nick to the government. Mark me down as a believer in small government. Mark me down as a believer in free enterprise. But when a few greedy bastards make up the rules as they go, that aint free enterprise. It’s a grift.

  You sound at least a little socialist.

  What’s your political bent kid?

  I’m a revolutionary, Photographer says.

  Sutton laughs. Of course you are. That’s a grift too. Did you boys know that old man Morgan was obsessed with his nose? It was covered with carbuncles, pockmarks, veins—it was the bane of his existence. He couldn’t stand having his picture taken. If he’d seen you coming with your camera he’d have run away like a little sissy. A camera scared Morgan more than Communism.

  Photographer laughs, pulls into traffic. J. P. Morgan running away from me. Now that I’d like to see.

  They begin to head downtown. Photographer lines up Sutton in the rearview:

  Hey Willie—you told us Untermyer hated banks. But I haven’t heard you say that you did.

  Haven’t you?

  Sutton looks out the window at the sky. Look, he says. The moon is rising.

  THIRTEEN

  Willie in the reading room, his head under one of the brass lamps. July 1929. He scans the headlines in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

  COOLIDGE SUMS UP HIS ACHIEVEMENTS

  FORMER SLAVE DIES AT 109

  BESSIE ENDNER HAS HUSBAND ARRESTED

  The light from the brass lamp grows blurry. Willie’s line of vision narrows. He brings the newspaper closer to his face, reads as fast as he can, but the words don’t make sense. He has to read the first paragraph four times before it sinks in.

  Bessie Endner is again in trouble. She tells a judge that her husband has mistreated her, threatened her life …

  Next comes the boilerplate reference to her criminal past. The pretty young woman, who astounded friends and the public by running off …

  Then a bit of reporter snark. She tells a judge that shortly after she married she found that life instead of roses was a mere hail of ripe chestnut burrs.

  Finally the newspaper lists her new address, where she’s said to be hiding from her abusive husband—15 Scoville Walk, Coney Island.

  Willie staggers home to his flop. He takes a tepid shower, the only kind possible in the communal bathroom, shaves his jaws carefully. Combs Wildroot into his hair. Splashes lavender water on his cheeks. Puts on his release suit. Lights out for the subway to Coney Island.

  Stepping off the train he realizes he’s a wreck. Too emotional, too keyed up to see Bess right now. In this state he’ll scare her. He walks up and down the beach, taking long draughts of sea air. He stops at Luna Park, stands outside the front gate and relives that triple date of a decade ago. Eddie and Happy. First and Second Girlfriends. He lingers beneath the giant heart-shaped sign above the park entrance. THE HEART OF CONEY ISLAND. He watches the moon slowly rise out of the sea.

  He walks to the brand-new Half Moon Hotel, at the far end of Coney Island, its golden dome shining in the twilight. He sits in the lobby, watching people come and go. Most seem to be honeymooners. They stroll arm in arm through the lobby, up to their rooms, out to the beach. He can’t bear it. He flees the hotel, walks until he finds a dark, divey little speak. Two whiskeys, bang bang, now he’s ready. He strides up Mermaid Avenue, hangs a right on Twenty-Fourth, left on Surf, turns down Scoville, comes to Number 15. A salt-stained bungalow. The wind is picking up. It blows sand into his eyes. He looks once more at the moon. At the library he read an article that said there’s no wind on the moon.

  He knocks on the screen door.

  No answer.

  He opens the screen door, knocks on the main door.

  No answer.

  He closes the screen door, backs away. He turns, walks slowly up Scoville. At the corner he hears his name in the wind.

  Oh Willie.

  He wheels. She’s fifty feet away. He takes one step toward her, she takes two toward him. She’s wearing a sundress, green and blue, form-fitting, like a tail fin. She looks as if she rode the moon out of the sea. They both break into a run, colliding in the middle of the street. The feel of her taut body under the thin sundress—Willie has never known such desire. He didn’t know that he was prey to such desire.

  He sets her on the ground, looks at her.

  Ah Bess. No.

  Her eye is black, her lip bloodied.

  Sutton touches the base of the lion outside the New York Public Library, stares at the lion on the other side of the entrance. I can never remember which one is called Patience, which one is called Fortitude.

  I didn’t even know they had names, Photographer says.

  You know who named them kid? Mayor LaGuardia. During the Depression. He said that’s what New Yorkers would need to survive the hard times—Patience and Fortitude.

  Photographer tries to shoot Sutton from the sidewalk. A line of tourists gets in the way. They’re speaking what sounds like German. They notice Photographer shooting Sutton and assume Sutton must be famous, so they take out their cameras. Reporter and Photographer yell at them, shoo them away like pigeons.

  No pictures! Ours! Exclusive!

  Sutton watches the Germans scatter. He laughs. Now he turns to the lion. The old lion, he says. The old lion perisheth for lack o
f prey.

  Say something, Willie?

  No. Mustve been the lion.

  Mr. Sutton, what happened here? In what way was this a—what did you call it? Crossroads?

  This is where Willie ran out of patience and fortitude.

  They walk along the ocean. Bess tells Willie that Eddie was right, her father did force her into the marriage. Heavily in debt, her father faced losing his shipyard, so he found a rich family with a dissolute bachelor son.

  A match made in economic heaven, Bess says. If Daddy could’ve married me off to old Mr. Rockefeller, he would have.

  She might have said no. She nearly did. But she felt beholden to her father after the scandal with Willie and Happy, which was the start of his health problems.

  She went into the marriage with no illusions. Every bride and groom are strangers, she says. But on my wedding night my husband was literally a stranger. Still. The yelling, the beatings, that I never expected.

  Bess.

  I thought it would stop, she says. When I got pregnant.

  Pregnant?

  She touches her stomach. It didn’t, she says. It got worse. So I went to the police. Then came here. Coney Island was always a special place for me.

  For us.

  She rubs his arm. Happy memories, she says.

  They sit on the sand and watch the moonlight spill like milk across the water.

  How are the other two merry fishermen? she asks.

  Eddie’s still in Dannemora. Happy got out of Sing Sing a while ago but no one’s seen him.

  All my fault, she says.

  Nah.

  They talk until the wind turns colder, then retreat to the bungalow. Along the way Willie tells her about his time at Sing Sing, the horror of Dannemora, his job with Funck.

  Bess warms a can of soup, opens a bottle of bootleg wine. Willie lights a fire using driftwood and a Brooklyn Daily Eagle. There’s a suitcase open on the sofa and beside it a canvas bag filled with books. He looks through them. Tennyson, he says. Still?

  Always, Bess says. Once I’m in love, it’s forever.

  He reads: And ah for a man to arise in me, That the man I am may cease to be. He sets down the book, picks up another. Ezra Pound?

  Bess comes toward him, swirling wine in a glass. She hands the glass to Willie, closes her eyes: You came in out of the night, And there were flowers in your hands, Now you will come out of a confusion of people, Out of a turmoil of speech about you.

  Willie stares at the book. A confusion of people, he says.

  They put pillows on the floor and sit by the fire. When the embers turn to ashes, when the clock on the mantel says three, Willie has to go. He’s due at Funck’s in two hours. Bess walks him outside. They stand, shivering.

  Run away with me, Bess.

  She throws back her head. We both know that’s not possible.

  Why not?

  No money.

  There are places where that won’t matter.

  Places where money doesn’t matter? Make me a list.

  Poughkeepsie.

  She gives a pained smile. My husband’s family is powerful. They’ll see to it that your parole is revoked. They’ll have you locked up forever. I won’t be the cause of that. I’ve done enough damage to your life.

  He looks at the sky. He tries to think of something to say that will change her mind. He tries to put his feelings into words. She stops his thoughts with a touch, tracing her finger down his sideburn.

  He takes a pad and pencil out of his breast pocket, writes the number of the telephone in the lobby of his flop. I’ll be back tonight to check on you, he says. Until then be careful.

  I’d feel a whole lot safer if the newspaper hadn’t printed my address.

  He nods. Damn newspapers, he says. On the other hand, if they hadn’t printed your address, I never would have found you.

  She kisses him on the cheek, then steps back and aims a finger gun at his chest. She smiles. Your money or your life?

  My life, Bess. Always.

  Her smile fades. Oh Willie.

  That night, as soon as the Funck truck returns from Greystone, Willie leaps off, dashes to the subway. Still wearing his gray coveralls, he rides to Coney Island and finds the door to the bungalow flapping open. The empty wine bottle is on the floor. Bess’s things, her books, are gone. He picks up the bottle, sets it on the table. He walks down to the Half Moon and watches the honeymooners come and go.

  Oh no, Photographer says. Guess who’s crying again.

  No.

  Look.

  Reporter walks toward Sutton timidly. Mr. Sutton? You okay?

  Sutton, leaning against the lion: Do you know the Half Moon Hotel kid? In Coney Island?

  Where that mob hit happened? Back in the forties?

  Yeah.

  That nut job, Albert Anastasia, killed some informant?

  Yeah. Abe Reles. Rat of all rats.

  Anastasia tossed Reles off the hotel roof, didn’t he?

  Right, right. Imagine—the Half Moon used to be the place to honeymoon in New York.

  Did you know Anastasia?

  We had—mutual friends.

  What brought the Half Moon to mind?

  I was bumped off there too. In a manner of speaking.

  Willie punching the time clock at Funck and Sons. February 1930. From Funck’s office he hears maniacal laughter. He walks down the hall, finds the frosted door standing open, Funck sitting with his feet on his desk, cradling a bottle of something. Well well, he says to Willie, if it isn’t Mr. Blackmailer! Come in, come in. Guess what, Mr. Blackmailer, you can be blackmailing me all you want, it don’t matter. We’re out of business. You want to call my wife? It don’t matter neither. She’s going to divorce me anyhows.

  But why?

  The market, genius. Half our clients is canceling. When bad times is coming, gardens is the first to be going. No azaleas in recessions. Fuck the daisies in Depressions. Motherfuck the peonies. Cocksuck the daffodils. Nice knowing you. Here’s your last check, Mr. Blackmailer. Hope you’re having a nice life. I should’ve stayed in Amsterdam.

  Funck puts his head on the desk, starts to cry.

  Willie walks straight to the library, holes up in the reading room, opens the wants. But there are no wants. Just pages and pages of people looking for work, advertising themselves, their skills. The few available jobs listed are for specialists, professionals, people with spotless pasts. Willie lights a cigarette. Banished from another garden. He wishes there had been time at least to say goodbye to Mr. Untermyer. Then he thinks—maybe there is.

  The next morning he takes a bus to Yonkers. He walks from the bus stop to Greystone, asks the guard at the gate if he can see Mr. Untermyer.

  And who might you be?

  I’m a—friend.

  Aint you one of the landscaping crew?

  Yeah. But also a friend.

  Fuck off.

  If I could just see Mr. Untermyer for five—

  Look, pal, everyone’s hurtin. Everyone’s workin an angle. But I’m not gonna lose my job pesterin Mr. UN-tuh-my-uh about some fuckin gardener. Screw.

  Willie rides the bus back to Manhattan. He walks from the Port Authority to his flop. Along the way he sees a newsboy waving an extra.

  HOOVER URGES CALM.

  He grabs the paper from the newsboy’s outstretched hand. President Hoover insists that the American economy is solid. The fundamentals are sound. Willie would like to buy the paper, but he knows it will only make him angrier. Besides, he needs to save his nickels.

  In his room Willie stands at his bureau and counts his savings. He stacks the coins, puts the bills in neat piles. One hundred and twenty-six dollars. Enough for four months’ rent and food. If he eats sparingly. He sits down, writes a letter to Mr. Untermyer, explaining that he tried to see him, that he’d like to continue at Greystone, even at reduced pay.

  He never will get a reply.

  Starting at sunrise he hits the streets. He visits landscaping firms, f
actories. At every gate and loading dock he finds one hundred, two hundred men already waiting. He goes to employment agencies. The buildings in which they’re housed are so mobbed, so crammed full of people begging for work, he can’t get inside.

  Every few days he swings by the library to check the wants. Chauffeur-mechanic—must have best of references. Paint salesman—only those with first-class experience need apply. Junior bank clerk—fair wages, luncheon provided, high school degree a must.

  He asks himself why he keeps checking.

  One foggy morning, walking in a daze down the library’s front steps, Willie trips, nearly faints. He hasn’t eaten in two days. But he can’t bear the thought of rummaging through a trash can—again. He sits heavily under the lion, puts his head in his hands, prays.

  He hears his name.

  He looks up. A familiar face floats out of the fog. A triangular face. Waterbug eyes. It’s Marcus Bassett—from Dannemora. He’s running up the steps with a book tucked under his arm. Now you will come out of a confusion of people. Willie stands, surprised how glad he is to see someone, anyone he knows.

  How’s tricks, Marcus?

  Willie! How you doing, old pal?

  Willie takes the book from under Marcus’s arm. The Decline of the West.

  It’s due today, Marcus says.

  Sorry, Marcus. Library just closed. You’ll have to pay the fine.

  That’s about how my luck’s running.

  Same here.

  Marcus invites Willie back to his place uptown. He has a pint of bathtub juniper juice he’s been saving.

  Another time, Willie says. I’m not feeling well.

  Marcus isn’t taking no for an answer. He drags Willie up Fifth Avenue.

  Along the way they pass a silver-haired man in a bespoke suit selling apples. They pass a group of soot-faced kids selling pencil stubs. Penny apiece, mister? They pass a woman in a stained housecoat and bedroom slippers, talking to her slippers. They pass a conclave of men at a taxi stand, newspapers spread across the hood of a cab, deep worry lines etched in the corners of their eyes.

  They come upon an ambulance parked outside a rooming house. Willie asks a roly-poly man with cauliflower ears what’s going on, though he already knows. He can smell the gas.