job’s a job, Donald says.
They called him the Hangman of Buffalo. Then his face wound up on the thousand-dollar bill.
Still reading your American history, I see, Willie.
They arrive at the private airfield. They’re met by a young man with a square head and a deep dimple in his square chin. The reporter presumably. He shakes Sutton’s hand and says his name, but Sutton is drunker than Donald and doesn’t catch it.
Pleasure to meet you kid.
Same here, Mr. Sutton.
Reporter has thick brown hair, deep black eyes and a gleaming Pepsodent smile. Beneath each smooth cheek a pat of red glows like an ember, maybe from the cold, more likely from good health. Even more enviable is Reporter’s nose. Thin and straight as a shiv.
It’s a very short flight, he tells Sutton. Are you all set?
Sutton looks at the low clouds, the plane. He looks at Reporter. Then Donald.
Mr. Sutton?
Well kid. You see. This is actually my first time on an airplane.
Oh. Oh. Well. It’s perfectly safe. But if you’d rather leave in the morning.
Nah. The sooner I get to New York the better. So long, Donald.
Merry Christmas, Willie.
The plane has four seats. Two in the front, two in the back. Reporter straps Sutton into one of the backseats, then sits up front next to the pilot. A few snowflakes fall as they taxi down the runway. They come to a full stop and the pilot talks into the radio and the radio crackles back with numbers and codes and Sutton suddenly remembers the first time he rode in a car. Which was stolen. Well, bought with stolen money. Which Sutton stole. He was almost eighteen and steering that new car down the road felt like flying. Now, fifty years later, he’s going to fly through the air. He feels a painful pressure building below his heart. This is not safe. He reads every day in the paper about another plane scattered in pieces on some mountaintop, in some field or lake. Gravity is no joke. Gravity is one of the few laws he’s never broken. He’d rather be in Donald’s GTO right now, fishtailing on icy back roads. Maybe he can pay Donald to drive him to New York. Maybe he’ll take the bus. Fuck, he’ll walk. But first he needs to get out of this plane. He claws at his seat belt.
The engine gives a high piercing whine and the plane rears back like a horse and goes screaming down the runway. Sutton thinks of the astronauts. He thinks of Lindbergh. He thinks of the bald man in the red long johns who used to get shot from a cannon at Coney Island. He closes his eyes and says a prayer and clutches his shopping bag. When he opens his eyes again the full moon is right outside his window, Jackie Gleasoning him.
Within forty minutes they make out the lights of Manhattan. Then the Statue of Liberty glowing green and gold out in the harbor. Sutton presses his face against the window. One-armed goddess. She’s waving to him, beckoning him. Calling him home.
The plane tilts sideways and swoops toward LaGuardia. The landing is smooth. As they slow and taxi toward the terminal Reporter turns to check on Sutton. You okay, Mr. Sutton?
Let’s go again kid.
Reporter smiles.
They walk side by side across the wet, foggy tarmac to a waiting car. Sutton thinks of Bogart and Claude Rains. He’s been told he looks a little like Bogart. Reporter is talking. Mr. Sutton? Did you hear? I assume your lawyer explained all about tomorrow?
Yeah kid.
Reporter checks his watch. Actually, I should say today. It’s one in the morning.
Is it, Sutton says. Time has lost all meaning. Not that it ever had any.
You know that your lawyer has agreed to give us exclusive rights to your story. And you know that we’re hoping to visit your old stomping grounds, the scenes of your, um. Crimes.
Where are we staying tonight?
The Plaza.
Wake up in Attica, go to bed at the Plaza. Fuckin America.
But, Mr. Sutton, after we check in, I need to ask you, please, order room service, anything you like, but do not leave the hotel.
Sutton looks at Reporter. The kid’s not yet twenty-five, Sutton guesses, but he’s dressed like an old codger. Fur-collared trench coat, dark brown suit, cashmere scarf, cap-toed brown lace-ups. He’s dressed, Sutton thinks, like a damn banker.
My editors, Mr. Sutton. They’re determined that we have you to ourselves the first day. That means we can’t have anyone quoting you or shooting your picture. So we can’t let anyone know where you are.
In other words, kid, I’m your prisoner.
Reporter gives a nervous laugh. Oh ho, I wouldn’t say that.
But I’m in your custody.
Just for one day, Mr. Sutton.
TWO
DAYLIGHT FILLS THE SUITE.
Sutton sits in a wingback chair, watching the other wingback chair and the king-size bed come into view. He hasn’t slept. It’s been five hours since he and Reporter checked in and he’s nodded off a few times in this chair but that’s all. He lights a cigarette, the last one in the pack. Good thing he ordered two more packs from room service. Good thing they had his brand. He can’t smoke anything but Chesterfields. He always, always had a footlocker of Chesterfields in his cell. He washes down the smoke with the ice-cold champagne he also ordered. He puts the cigarette in his mouth and holds the white envelope to the daylight. He still hasn’t opened it. He won’t let himself until he’s ready, until the time is right, even though that means he might not live to open it.
His body is doing everything the doctor warned him it would do in the final stages. The vise feeling in the small of his back. The toes and legs going numb. Claudication, the doctor called it. At first you’ll have trouble walking, Willie. Then you’ll simply stop.
Stop what, Doc?
Stop everything, Willie—you’ll just stop.
So he’s going to die today. Within a few hours, maybe before noon, certainly before darkness falls. He knows it in the same way he used to know things in the old days, the way he used to know if a guy was right or a rat. He’s given death the slip a hundred times, but not today. He invited death in with that suicide note. Once you let death in, it doesn’t always leave.
He turns the envelope slowly, shakes it like a match he’s trying to extinguish. He sees the one sheet of loose-leaf inside, covered in Donald’s scrawl. He sees Bess’s name, or thinks he does. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s seen Bess when she wasn’t there. Has she already heard about his release? He pictures Bess standing before him. Conjures her. It’s easier to conjure her in a suite at the Plaza than in a cell at Attica. Ah Bess, he whispers. I can’t die before I see you, my heart’s darling. I can’t.
A faint knock makes him jump. He slips the white envelope into his breast pocket, hobbles to the
