Sutton: A Novel Part 35

Plank nods. But he looks crushed.

Later Willie tells Eddie that they can do better than Plank.

If we picked some guy out of a soup line, Ed, he'd be better than Plank.

Eddie unwraps a stick of Juicy Fruit, bends it into his mouth. Willie thinks of Centre Street, remembers Big Cop and Bigger Cop. Flinches.

I'll admit, Eddie says, Plank doesn't make the best first impression. But he's a right guy, Sutty. You'll see.

Bartender puts his elbows on the bar, motions for Sutton to lean in. What I always liked about you, Willie, is the way you stuck it to those f.u.c.kin banks.

Sutton smiles vaguely.

Kids today, Bartender says, they don't understand how evil banks were back then. And everyone back then agreed they were evil, am I right? Editorials, cartoons, sermons, everywhere you looked someone was making the point that banks were bloodsuckers, that we needed to protect people from them. You remember, right?

Sure, sure.

And they're still bloodsuckers, Bartender says, but nowadays bankers are respected. The f.u.c.k happened?

One of the men asleep at the bar raises his head. He looks angrily at Sutton, Bartender. My brother, he says, is a banker.

Oh, Sutton says. Sorry friend.

My brother is a c.u.n.t.

Go back to sleep, Bartender says. We'll wake you when we decide to take a survey of morons.

They meet Plank at a neutral location. Stash Willie's car, pile into Plank's. Eddie rides shotgun, Willie sits in the backseat. They change into their cop uniforms while Plank drives. Willie looks at Plank's reflection in the rearview. He looks at his own reflection in Plank's suit. Another metallic suit-does the man buy them in bulk?

How you feeling, Plank?

Good, Willie. Good.

Willie studies the back of Plank's neck. A wad of fat surges over his collar. He stares hard at the back of Plank's head, wonders what goes on in there, what led Plank down so many wrong roads that he ended up a cabdriver for bank robbers. Willie sighs, looks out the window at the gray Philadelphia morning.

Course, Plank adds, I see you fellas in your costumes and I just wish- Don't, Eddie says. Don't start.

Plank frowns at the speedometer. I just don't see the harm, he says.

Eddie buffs his police badge. We've been over this a hundred times.

Plank grunts.

No one's going to see you, Plank. Don't you get that?

That's my point, Plank says.

What is?

No one's goin to see me, so what harm is there in me wearin a costume?

I've known Sutty all my life, Eddie says, I told him you're a right guy. Don't make me sorry.

You can't be a right guy and wear a costume? You hear the illogic, Ed?

Illogic?

Plank smiles. My wife bought me a book on buildin vocabulary.

Lose the book. No one wants a wheelman with a vocabulary.

Willie rubs his forehead. Quiet. Both of you. Please. The bank is five blocks up on the right.

Plank parks. They sit in silence, the motor purring. At eight-thirty Willie steps out, walks to the bank, knocks. Routine check, he tells the guard, what with the recent rash of robberies and all.

Sure, sure, the guard says, throwing open the door-would you like a cup of coffee, Officer?

That'd be nice, Willie says, stepping in, lithe as a dancer, pulling his Tommy from under his greatcoat. Right behind him comes Eddie, sawed-off shotgun shoulder-high. Eddie pulls the guard's gun from its holster, ties him up. Then he and Willie tie up the employees as they arrive. There are twelve in all.

The manager, as always, is the last. The touch of the Tommy against his belly makes him tremble. He looks into Willie's blue eyes. You're-the Actor.

Never mind. The safe. Move.

The manager takes a step, stops. He looks sheepish. I need to iron my shoelaces, he says.

What?

Make water.

Safe first. Water second.

I'm not going to make it, Mr. Actor. I had an extra cup of joe at the house. I should've, you know, before I left. But I was running late, and now the sight of your Tommy there has-well. Sped things up.

Open the safe, Eddie says, his voice rising, or we start shooting your employees.

You're going to kill my employees because I need to make water?

Willie sighs. Eddie sighs. That does seem harsh, Sutty.

Willie walks the manager to the bathroom. He waits with the door open. The old boy sounds like a garden hose.

He goes and goes. And goes.

Jesus, Eddie mutters. Now I gotta go.

At last the manager emerges. He takes Willie to the safe, turns the dial, jerks the door. Suddenly it's Willie who needs to make water. Most safes are only partially full. This one is packed. There isn't room to slide a flick knife between all the green stacks.

Later, back at Willie's room, Willie and Eddie and Plank sit before the coffee table, the haul piled into a pyramid. They've counted it three times. Each time it comes to a quarter of a million dollars. Again and again Plank asks, Did you fellas know? Willie and Eddie don't answer. It's got to be one of the biggest hauls ever in this city, Plank says. Still they don't answer. This calls for a party, Plank says. Willie nods dumbly. Can I invite my wife? Plank says. Again Willie nods without thinking.

Mrs. Plank comes by train from East New York. A bookkeeper for a butcher, she looks the way Willie expected her to look-the only way Plank's wife could look. White blond hair, large sensuous mouth, no-one-home stare.

Eddie invites his girlfriend, Nina, a fashion model. She was on the cover of McCall's last summer. She dated Max Baer, the heavyweight heartthrob, Eddie says, and Clark Gable once made a play for her in a Schrafft's. She wears a tight sweater and a silk scarf knotted around her neck and a hat that slopes up and then sharply down and then up again, like a golf course. Willie can't take his eyes off her. He tries. He can't.

Everyone drinks too much. Plank and his wife drink much too much. Soon the girls begin shedding their clothes. In their garters and bra.s.sieres they dance around the coffee table. Mrs. Plank grabs a fistful of hundreds, throws it at Nina, who grabs two fistfuls and throws them in the air.

Willie sees Eddie laughing, slapping his thigh. He goes to him, wraps an arm around his shoulders. Hey, partner.

Hiya, Sutty.

Willie leers at Nina. How about letting me have a turn, he says.

Eddie stiff-arms Willie, looks at him with confusion. What?

Willie lowers his head, trying to think. He looks up. Sorry, Ed. I don't know where that came from. I'm drunk.

Forget it, Eddie says. He walks away.

Willie sits heavily on the floor, lies back. He puts a pillow under his head, tries to balance his gla.s.s of whiskey on his chest, spills half of it. His eyelids. He can't keep them open. Moments before letting them close he sees Eddie maneuvering Nina over to the window. Silhouetted against the fading daylight they look like Gable and Lombard on the big screen. Willie tries to stay awake, to read their lips. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Plank chasing Mrs. Plank toward the bedroom. He sees Mrs. Plank's a.s.s, big and round, her bright purple garters, her disheveled white blond hair waterfalling down her back. A split second before pa.s.sing out Willie sees something else.

In the morning he won't know if he actually saw it or dreamt it.

Plank-wearing Willie's cop uniform.

Bartender: The other thing I always admired about you, Willie, was the nonviolence part. If only more crooks were like you the world would be a better place. These days they think nothing of grabbing an old lady on the subway, hitting her on the head, taking her pocketbook.

Sutton: You're telling me. The kids I saw coming into Attica the last few years. You wouldn't believe. Violent, hooked on drugs. And lazy? They'd seek me out, ask me to teach them the secret of bank robbing. I'd tell them, The secret is hard f.u.c.kin work.

Bartender: Now you got these radicals running around, planting bombs outside banks, government buildings. They say they're protesting-they're just hurting innocent people.

Sutton: I used to get up at five, fill a thermos with hot coffee, walk down to the bank, freeze my a.s.s off. I'd take reams of notes. I'd memorize them. I planned every job to the T so no one would get hurt.

Bartender: When I got back from Europe in '19, shrapnel in my hip, I couldn't find a job for two solid years. I got so angry, I had to fight to keep from putting my hands around someone's throat. I kept asking, What was the point? I might've thrown in with a guy like you. I almost did, to be honest. But I never could've thrown in with punks like we've got running around today.

Reporter: Mr. Sutton?

Sutton: Yeah?

Reporter: I'm just looking at this file here, and it says you and Eddie, while robbing a bank, fired off machine guns? And tear gas? Then led cops on a high-speed chase through the heart of midtown? That doesn't sound so-nonviolent.

Bartender: What's with this kid?

Sutton: I wish I knew.

Reporter: But I just-it's in the files.

Sutton: Have you never known newspapers to get anything wrong?

Bartender: What's the next stop on the nickel tour, Willie?

Sutton: Broadway and One Hundred Seventy-Eighth.

Photographer: Uptown again. Right by the stadium. I can't help mentioning that we just came from there.

Sutton: Patience and Fort.i.tude here are miffed that I'm taking them through my story in chronological order.

Bartender: How else would you tell a story? What happened there, Willie?

Sutton: That's where they shot poor Eddie.

The soda jerk from the corner drugstore comes to Willie's door, says Willie has a phone call. Willie bundles up, walks down to the drugstore, slips into the phone booth.

Sutty, it's Eddie.

How's tricks?

I need to go to New York.

How come?

I need new license plates.

Seems awfully far to travel for new plates.

What choice do I have? I can't show residence here in Philly.

Mm. Okay. Call me when you get back?

Will do.

Be careful.

So long.

December 1933. One year since Willie escaped Sing Sing. He holes up in his apartment, drinking brandy, playing Christmas records on an old Victor. Feeling nostalgic. Thinking of Happy, Wingy, Daddo. And Mr. Untermyer. Willie wonders if Cicero has read about the exploits of his former gardener.

Now he thinks of Bess. He pours another brandy. What he wouldn't give to spend Christmas with her. Ah Bess. My heart's darling. The door blows off its hinges. Ten cops burst into the apartment. Willie jumps out of his chair just in time to catch a right cross from a detective with a flattop haircut, then a haymaker from another detective with a face like raw meat.

Willie, cuffed, comes to in the backseat of a cop car. Detective Flattop is driving, Detective Meatface is riding shotgun, doing all the talking.

Might never have found you but for your friend, Plank.

Plank? Who's Plank?

That's a hot one. He's only the dumbest guy in East New York. He aint got no job but he drives a brand-new Cadillac and wears hunnert-dollar suits, that's who Plank is. His neighbors noticed sump fishy, called us. We put a tap on his phone. Bingo bango, here we are.

Doesn't sound like the kind of moron I'd have anything to do with.

Your pal Eddie Buster Wilson aint winnin no brain contests neither. He got you and Plank on the blower this mornin, shot the breeze like it never occurred to him the line might be tapped. You he told he was goin to New York. Plank he told to meet him at Motor Vehicles. So-two and two together. Four. A little Welcome Wagon we ranged frim. He shoulda give up, but he chosed to lead us on a merry chase. Too bad frim.