It takes eight weeks. Cops in New York City finally catch Freddie and Botchy in a nightclub. Botchy is wearing a tuxedo. Freddie is wearing lifts. Hardboiled removes the tunnel crew from the Klondikes. They"re all near death. He has them clothed, scrubbed, fed, then ships four of them, the worst of them, to Holmesburg, a maximum-security prison ten miles up the road.
Sutton looks around. Where"s your partner?
Reloading.
He"s reloading all right.
Yeah.
Is he a good-what did you call him? Shooter?
The best.
You like working with him?
That"s a different question.
Mm.
Talent aside, he"s like all the other shooters at the paper. No more, no less.
Faint praise. Listen kid, I left my smokes in the car. Why don"t you walk me back, leave me with Bad Cop, then you can run and call your girlfriend.
Sounds good.
They walk through Rockefeller Plaza to Fifth Avenue. The Polara isn"t where they left it. They look up and down the street. There it is-fifty feet away, in the shadow of the statue of Hercules. Windows up, Photographer talking on the radio. Why did Photographer move it? They approach warily. Reporter opens the pa.s.senger door. The cloying, giddy odor of marijuana wafts out.
Photographer lowers the radio. Cop made me move the car, he says.
Uh-huh, Reporter says.
I"m talking to the City Desk. They want us to shoot Willie at some bank a few blocks from here.
Fine. I need to leave him with you for two minutes.
Cool.
Sutton climbs into the pa.s.senger seat. Reporter runs back across the Plaza to the pay phone.
We"ll head there in a few, Photographer says into the radio. Yeah. Manufacturers. I got the address. Yeah. Ten four.
He sets the radio on the dash, looks at Sutton. Sutton looks at him. Life Saver eyes again. You look-happy, Sutton says.
Happy?
Peaceful. Almost.
Photographer laughs nervously. If you say so.
You been smoking that s.h.i.t a long time?
What s.h.i.t?
Kid. Please.
Photographer sighs. Actually, no.
What made you start?
Photographer unwinds his barber pole scarf, rewinds it slowly around his neck. Once upon a time, he says, I was pretty good at not letting this job get to me. I was bulletproof. I was known for it. I took pictures of the most horrible s.h.i.t you can imagine, and none of it stayed with me. But a couple years ago the paper sent me up to Harlem. A young mother with too many kids to feed, not right in the head, threw her baby daughter out a sixth-floor window. The reporter and I got there before the cops did and we found the girl, this beautiful one-year-old girl, lying in the street. Eyes open. Arms spread wide. I did my job, fired off a roll of film, same as always, but when I got home I couldn"t sit still, couldn"t stop shaking. So I went out, asked the guys on the corner for something, anything, to get me through the night. They sold me a few tabs of acid. I dropped one, and instead of getting better, I got worse. A whole lot worse. I had what they call a death trip.
What"s that?
I won"t describe it. It wouldn"t be fair to you. And besides, I honestly can"t. Let"s just say I went to a very messed-up place. I felt like I was in the land of the dead. I felt like, for the first time, I really and truly understood death, understood how awful, how bottomless, death is. Which was about the last thing I wanted to feel at that moment. I started freaking out, started screaming, crying. My old lady wanted to call an ambulance. I wouldn"t let her. I thought it might cost me my job. She went back down to the corner, bought some weed, and that mellowed me out. Stopped the sweats, the horrors. Weed brought me back, got me over the memory of that little girl. So I started turning on every night. Right after work. Then before. Then during the day. Weed is still the only thing that works.
They sit quietly for a minute.
There used to be a guy, Sutton says. At Attica. He grew a little weed in his cell.
No kidding.
The hacks thought it was some kind of fern.
Photographer laughs.
The guy told me weed made him feel like he wasn"t in Attica. Like he was floating above Attica.
Yeah. That sounds about right.
Sutton looks at his Chesterfields, looks at Photographer. I may have misjudged you kid.
Thanks, Willie. Me too.
So-you got any of that s.h.i.t left?
Really?
Sutton stares.
Photographer looks down Fifth Avenue, looks back at Sutton. They both look at Hercules, ready to hurl the world down on them. Photographer opens his cloth purse and Sutton shuts the Polara door.
NINETEEN.
Willie is keep-locked. Freddie too. Meaning they"re kept in their cells all day, all night, even during meals. Their only break is a half hour every morning, when guards let them into a small yard for exercise. And mockery.
Welcome to Holmesburg, ladies. Welcome to the Burg.
Welcome to the Jungle, dumbf.u.c.ks.
Willie and Freddie stand in a windy corner of the yard, hands jammed under their armpits. Willie thinks of the animals in the Hudson slaughterhouse, the way they huddled in the pens.
Where are the others? he asks.
D Block, Freddie says.
f.u.c.kin tunnel, Willie mutters.
Wasn"t worth this, Freddie says.
Nothing"s worth this, Willie says.
One day, at the end of their yard time, as guards herd them back to the cellblock, a feeling sweeps over Willie. He doesn"t want to go back. Of course no prisoner wants to go back to his cell, but Willie really doesn"t want to. He considers pleading with the guards: Please don"t make me go back, I can"t take it. Please! This strikes him as both the most insane and the most sane thought he"s ever had. Instead, when he walks back into his cell, when they shut the door, he throws himself against the wall, hurls his body against it again and again until he falls in a crumpled heap on the floor. His shoulder is dislocated. Days later, with his release from the hospital, his yard privileges are revoked.
He gives up. He lets himself sink into that soft void between apathy and insanity which claims so many prisoners. He hears them at night, the broken ones, his brothers, berating the moon. He joins them. For much of 1946 he"s as broken as they come.
When he"s not screaming, he"s sleeping. He sleeps fourteen, sixteen hours a day. In dreams he can be with Bess, walking the beach at Coney Island, driving through virgin forest. Waking from such dreams is agony. Being returned to the real world is worse than being returned to his cell. And yet it"s a trade he"s willing to make. He sleeps more, and more, and ever deeper.
But slowly, inexorably, he gathers himself. He starts by rebuilding his body. Push-ups, sit-ups, he does hundreds each day. Then his mind. He"s permitted two books each week from the prison library, and he devours them, learns them by heart. He revisits old favorites. Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate alone. He recites them, sings them to the walls. Now you will come out of a confusion of people! Let the others berate the moon, he romances it. Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
Reporter returns to the Polara. Okay, he says, let"s roll.
Sutton gets out, climbs into the backseat. How"s the girlfriend? he asks Reporter.
Fine, Reporter says.
Sutton laughs. But it"s not his typical craggy laugh. More a squeaky giggle.
Reporter notices. How"s everyone in here? he asks.
Good, Sutton says. Never better.
Photographer starts up the Polara, swings onto Fifth, eases into traffic. Reporter opens his notebook. Mr. Sutton, before our next stop-you never finished telling me how the tunnel escape turned out.
Not well. I was only free a few minutes.
And when they recaptured you, they sent you to Holmesburg?
Silence.
Mr. Sutton?
Reporter turns. Sutton is staring into s.p.a.ce.
Mr. Sutton?
Still staring.
Mr. Sutton.
What? Oh. Yeah kid. Holmesburg. They called it the Burg. And I was in C Block, where they kept the worst of the worst. The crazies, the incorrigibles. They called C Block the Jungle. It was a jungle but with more bugs and s.h.i.ttier air. They did medical experiments on us without our knowing. Doctors at the Burg were bagmen for the drug companies. If you wanted to stay alive, you had to stay out of the infirmary. But that wasn"t so easy for me. A third of my life behind bars-it was starting to tell. Acid stomach, bad back, sore knees. And talk about constipated. I"d have shanked you both for a prune. The docs were more than happy to give me a pill or a shot. Sometimes they said it was medicine, sometimes vitamins. But it was poison. I always felt weird afterward. Weird. I felt-weeeird.
Reporter glares at Photographer. Don"t tell me, he says.
Tell you what?
A trusty comes into Willie"s cell each morning to deliver his mail, his books, the latest poisons from the doctors. Twenty-three years old, the trusty talks slowly, walks slowly, and wears his blond hair long and low over his brow, covering one eye. Maybe it"s the hours spent with Shrink, or maybe it"s all the Freud and Jung he"s read, but Willie sees right through this trusty, knows instinctively that the trusty craves an older man"s approval. Knows he"d swim through s.h.i.t for it.
Willie turns on the charm. How"s tricks kid? How you feeling?
Good, the trusty says, thanks for asking. None of the other fellas ask.
The other fellas don"t ask because the trusty is a rat. He was in a smash-and-grab crew, in North Philly, and when he got pinched he gave up his buddies. It makes Willie sick to befriend such a rat, to stroke his ego, but he"s Willie"s only contact with the outside world. Which means he"s Willie"s only hope.
Willie spends months working Rat, mapping his circuits and b.u.t.tons, learning his favorite teams, songs, actors, listening to his bulls.h.i.t stories, all of which end with Rat as the triumphant hero. He laughs at every one of Rat"s inane jokes, frowns dramatically when he leaves Willie"s cell to go finish his rounds.
Gradually, subtly, Willie plies him with questions. Kid did you have a trade on the outside?
I was a house painter.
Is that so? I always thought that seemed like interesting work.
I was good too. That"s why the warden lets me leave the joint on day jobs.
You don"t say. Into the city?
Why sure. Hours at a time. I can even visit friends. Which is good, since I don"t got none in here. All these guys think I"m a rat. But I"m a right guy, Willie.
I can tell kid. I can always tell a right guy.
Anything I told the cops, it was only because they beat me.
You"re lucky they didn"t kill you. Cops.
Man. You really get me, Willie.
I do kid. I do. But you"re dead wrong about one thing.
What"s that?
You"ve got one friend in here kid.