Sutton Read Online Free Page A

respectfully.
    You’ve come back to a different world, Willie.
    Donald orders a Schlitz. Sutton asks for Jameson. The first sip is bliss. The second is a right cross. Sutton swallows the rest in one searing gulp and slaps the bar and asks for another.
    The TV above the bar is showing the news.
    Our top story tonight. Willie the Actor Sutton, the most prolific bank robber in American history, has been released from Attica Correctional Facility. In a surprise move by Governor Nelson Rockefeller …
    Sutton stares into the grain of the bar top, thinking: Nelson Rockefeller, son of John D. Rockefeller Jr., grandson of John D. Rockefeller Sr., close friend of—Not yet, he tells himself.
    He reaches into his breast pocket, touches the envelope.
    Now Sutton’s face appears on the screen. His former face. An old mug shot. No one along the bar recognizes him. Sutton gives Donald a sly smile, a wink. They don’t know me, Donald. I can’t remember the last time I was in a room full of people who didn’t know me. Feels nice.
    Donald orders another round. Then another.
    I hope you have money, Sutton says. I only have two checks from Governor Rockefeller.
    Which will probably fuckin bounce, Donald says, slurring.
    Say, Donald—want to see a trick?
    Always.
    Sutton limps down the bar. He limps back. Ta da.
    Donald blinks. I don’t think I get it.
    I walked from here to there without a hack hassling me. Without a con messing with me. Ten feet—two more feet than the length of my fuckin cell, Donald. And I didn’t have to call anyone sir before or after. Have you ever seen anything so marvelous?
    Donald laughs.
    Ah Donald—to be free. Actually free . There’s no way to describe it to someone who hasn’t been in the joint.
    Everyone should have to do time, Donald says, smothering a belch, so they could know.
    Time. Willie looks at the clock over the bar. Shit, Donald, we better go.
    Donald drives them weavingly along icy back roads. Twice they go skidding onto the shoulder. A third time they almost hit a snowbank.
    You okay to drive, Donald?
    Fuck no, Willie, what gave you that idea?
    Sutton grips the dashboard. He stares in the distance at the lights of Buffalo. He recalls that speedboats used to run booze down here from Canada. This whole area, he says, was run by Polish gangs back in the twenties.
    Donald snorts. Polish gangsters—what’d they do, stick people up and hand over their wallets?
    They’d have cut the tongue out of your head for saying that. The Poles made us Micks look like choirboys. And the Polish cops were the cruelest of all.
    Shocking, Donald says with dripping sarcasm.
    Did you know President Grover Cleveland was the executioner up here?
    Is that so?
    It was Cleveland’s job to knot the noose around the prisoner’s neck, drop him through the gallows floor.
    A 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