Sutton Read Free Page A

up at the front gate?
    Near the Sleeping Beauty thing?
    Yeah.
    Of course.
    Sutton asks Donald if he can bring him a few items.
    Anything, Donald says. Name it.
    A TV van from Buffalo roars up to the gate. A TV reporter jumps out, fusses with his microphone. He’s wearing a two-hundred-dollar suit, a camel-hair topcoat, gray leather gloves, silver cuff links. The print reporters elbow each other. Cuff links—have you ever?
    The TV reporter strolls up to the print reporters and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas. Same to you, they mumble. Then silence.
    Silent Night, the TV reporter says.
    No one laughs.
    The reporter from Newsweek asks the TV reporter if he read Pete Hamill in this morning’s Post . Hamill’s eloquent apologia for Sutton, his plea for Sutton’s release, addressed as a letter to the governor, might be the reason they’re all here. Hamill urged Rockefeller to be fair. If Willie Sutton had been a GE board member or a former water commissioner, instead of the son of an Irish blacksmith, he would be on the street now .
    The TV reporter stiffens. He knows the print guys think he doesn’t read—can’t read. Yeah, he says, I thought Hamill nailed it. Especially his line about banks. There are some of us today, looking at the mortgage interest rates, who feel that it is the banks that are sticking us up . And I got a lump in my throat at that bit about Sutton reuniting with a lost love. Willie Sutton should be able to sit and watch the ducks in Prospect Park one more time, or go to Nathan’s for a hot dog, or call up some old girl for a drink .
    This sets off a debate. Does Sutton actually deserve to be free? He’s a thug, says the Newsday reporter—why all the adulation?
    Because he’s a god in parts of Brooklyn, says the Post reporter. Just look at this crowd.
    There are now more than two dozen reporters and another two dozen civilians—crime buffs, police radio monitors, curiosity seekers. Freaks. Ghouls.
    But again, says the Newsday reporter, I ask you—why?
    Because Sutton robbed banks , the TV reporter says, and who the hell has a kind word to say for banks ? They should not only let him out, they should give him the key to the city.
    What I don’t get, says the Look reporter, is why Rockefeller, a former banker, would let out a bank robber.
    Rockefeller needs the Irish vote, says the Times Union reporter. You can’t get reelected in New York without the Irish vote and Sutton’s like Jimmy Walker and Michael Collins and a couple Kennedys in one big Mulligan stew.
    He’s a fuckin thug, says the Newsday reporter, who may be drunk.
    The TV reporter scoffs. Under his arm he’s carrying last week’s Life magazine, with Charles Manson on the cover. He holds up the magazine: Manson glares at them.
    Compared to this guy, the TV reporter says, and the Hells Angels, and the soldiers who slaughtered all those innocent people at My Lai—Willie Sutton is a pussycat.
    Yeah, says the Newsday reporter, he’s a real pacifist. He’s the Gandhi of Gangsters.
    All those banks, the TV reporter says, all those prisons, and the guy never fired a single shot. He never hurt a fly.
    The Newsday reporter gets in the TV reporter’s face. What about Arnold Schuster? he says.
    Aw, the TV reporter says, Sutton had nothing to do with Schuster.
    Says who?
    Says me.
    And who the fuck are you?
    I’ll tell you who I’m not. I’m not some burned-out hack.
    The Times reporter jumps between them. You two cannot get in a fistfight about whether or not someone is nonviolent—on Christmas Eve.
    Why not?
    Because if you do I’ll have to write about it.
    The talk swings back to the warden. Doesn’t he realize that the temperature is now close to zero? Oh you bet he realizes. He’s loving this. He’s on some kind of power trip. Everybody these days is on a power trip. Mailer, Nixon, Manson, the Zodiac Killer, the cops—it’s 1969, man, Year of the Power Trip. The warden’s probably watching them right now on his