Happy had the blackest hair you ever saw, Sutton says. Like he was dipped in coal. He had one of those chin asses like yours kid. A smile like yours too. Big white teeth. Like a movie star. Before there were movie stars.
And Eddie?
Strange case. Blond, real All-American looking, but he never felt like an American. He felt like America didn’t want him. Fuck, he was right, America didn’t. America didn’t want any of us, and you haven’t felt unwanted until America doesn’t want you. I loved Eddie, but he was one rough sombitch. You did not want to get on his wrong side. I thought he’d be a prizefighter. After they banned him from the slaughterhouse, he hung out in gyms. Then the gyms banned him. He wouldn’t stop fighting after the bell. And if you crossed him in the streets, Jesus, if you did not show proper respect, God help you. He’d give you an Irish haircut quick as look at you.
Irish what?
A swat to the back of the head with a lead pipe wrapped in newspaper.
Their luck changes in the fall of 1916. Eddie lands a construction job at one of the new office towers going up, and Happy’s uncle arranges jobs for Happy and Willie as gophers at a bank. Title Guaranty.
The bank job will require new clothes. Willie and Happy find a haberdasher on Court Street willing to extend them credit. They each buy two suits—two sack coats, two pairs of trousers, two matching vests, two silk cravats, cuff buttons, spats. Walking to work his first day Willie stops before a store window. He doesn’t recognize himself. He’s delighted not to recognize himself. He hopes he never recognizes himself again.
Better yet, his coworkers don’t recognize him. They seem not to know that he’s Irish. They treat him with courtesy and kindness.
Weeks fly by. Months. Willie loses himself in his work. He finds the whole enterprise of the bank exhilarating. After the Crash of 1893, the Panic of 1907, the smaller panic of 1911, the Depression of 1914, New York is rebuilding. Office towers are being erected, bridges are being laced across the rivers, tunnels are being laid underneath, and cash for all this epic growth comes from banks, which means Willie is engaged in a grand endeavor. He’s part of society, included in its mission, vested in its purposes—at last. He sleeps deeper, wakes more refreshed. Putting on his spats each morning he feels a giddy sense of relief that Eddie was wrong. The whole thing isn’t rigged.
They pull up to the former home of Title Guaranty, a Romanesque Revival building on Remsen Street. Sutton looks at the arched third-floor windows where he used to sit with Happy and the other gophers. In one window someone has taped a sign. NIXON/AGNEW. This is where I had my first job, Sutton says. A bank robber whose first job was in a bank—imagine?
Photographer shoots the building. He turns the camera, dials the lens, this way, that. Sutton shifts his gaze from the building to Photographer.
You like your work, Sutton says. Don’t you kid?
Photographer stops, gives a half turn. Yeah, he says over his shoulder. I do, Willie. I dig it. How can you tell?
I can always tell when a man likes his work. What year were you born kid?
Nineteen forty-three.
Hm. Eventful year for me. Shit, they were all eventful. Where were you born?
Roslyn, Long Island.
You go to college?
Yeah.
Which one?
I went to Princeton, Photographer says sheepishly.
No kidding? Good school. I took a walk around the campus one morning. What did you study?
History. I was going to be a professor, an academic, but sophomore year my parents made the fatal mistake of buying me a camera for Christmas. That was all she wrote. The only thing I cared about from then on was taking pictures. I wanted to capture history instead of reading about it.
I’ll bet your folks were thrilled.
Oh yeah. My father didn’t speak to me for about three months.
What do you like so much about taking pictures?
You say life’s all about Money and Love? I say it’s all about experiences.
Is that so?
And this camera helps me have all different kinds of experiences. This Leica gets me through locked doors, past police tape, over walls, barbed wire, barricades. It shows me the world, brother. Helps me bear witness.
Witness. Is that so.
Also, Willie, I dig telling the truth. Words can be twisted but a photo never lies.
Sutton laughs.
What’s funny? Photographer says.
Nothing. Except—that’s pure horseshit kid. I can’t think of anything that lies more than a photo. In fact every photo is a dirty stinking lie because it’s a frozen moment—and time can’t be frozen. Some of the biggest lies I’ve ever run across have been photos. Some of them were of me.
Photographer faces straight ahead, a slightly miffed look on his face. Willie, he says, all I know is, this camera took me to the bloodbath in Hue City. Tet Offensive—those aren’t just words in a book to me. It took me to Mexico City to see Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists. It took me to Memphis to see the chaos and the coverup after they shot King. No other way I would’ve gotten to see all those things. This camera lets me see, brother.
Sutton looks at Reporter. How about you kid?
How about me?
Did you always want to be a reporter?
Yes.
How come?
I’m a yeshiva student from the Bronx—in what other job would I get to spend the day with America’s greatest bank robber?
FBI agent.
I don’t like guns.
Me neither.
I admit, Mr. Sutton, some days I don’t love this job. No one reads anymore.
I do nothing but read.
You’re the exception. TV is going to make us all extinct. Also, a newsroom isn’t exactly the happiest place on earth. It’s sort of a snake pit. Politics, backstabbing, jealousy.
That’s one nice thing about crooks,
