Happy- I gave her to you, Willie, didn't I?

Yeah. Sure. But.

Happy sends Willie a hard look, something between a snarl and a sneer. It's a look Willie has never seen on Happy. Who are you? Willie whispers.

I'm the guy who helped you pull off this whole caper, that's who I am.

Yeah. But.

We're like brothers aren't we?

Yeah. Sure.

We share everything don't we? The girls on Sands Street?

This is different.

Happy moves forward. Willie blocks the door, braces himself. Happy puts a hand on Willie's chest, pushes him into the door, hard, then staggers away down the hall to his room.

Lying in bed beside a sleeping Bess, Willie strokes her hair and goes over and over the scene with Happy. At first light there's a knock. It's Happy, ready to apologize. Then Willie remembers. Happy doesn't knock. It's the sheriff. With two private detectives from Brooklyn who drove all night. They put Willie in handcuffs. They put Bess in handcuffs. They drive them in separate cars to the same courthouse where they inquired about getting married.

Handcuffed, standing before the judge, Willie hears a side door bang open. Two cops drag in Happy, who doesn't look frightened, doesn't look worried. They stand him next to Willie.

Young man, the judge tells Happy, do yourself a favor. Wipe that G.o.dd.a.m.n smirk off your face.

We were caught within a week, Sutton says.

How?

We left quite a trail of bread crumbs.

What did they do to you?

Dragged our a.s.ses back to Brooklyn, threw us into Raymond Street Jail. The Brooklyn Bastille they called it back then.

They tore it down. Not long ago.

Good. But we'll still go have a look.

Photographer groans. Willie-why? If it's not there, what's the point?

Sutton rises to his full five foot nine, peers at Photographer. You know kid, a couple years ago, I got to know an old Indian. He was doing a twenty-year bit for setting off bombs to protest the war. He told me that whenever an Indian is lost, or sad, or near death, he goes and finds the place of his birth and lies down on top of it. Indians think that gives a man some kind of healing. Closes some kind of loop.

We've already been to the place you were born.

Each of us is born many places.

Did the old Indian say that?

Sutton stares at Photographer. It just hit me kid. You remind me a little of Happy.

NINE.

Bess is kissing Willie. He feels her eyelash fluttering against his eyelid. He smiles. Stop, Bess, I'm sleeping. He opens his eye. A c.o.c.kroach is crawling across his face. He swats it away, sits up. He's on the floor of a small cell. The only light comes through a Judas hole, but it's enough to see that the floor is alive with c.o.c.kroaches.

A cup of water sits next to the door. He crawls to it. His throat is raw, scorched, and yet he can't drink the water. It smells like p.i.s.s. The cops tell him later: they p.i.s.sed in it.

The cops appear at the Judas hole once an hour and torment him. They ask about his wh.o.r.e. They tell him what they'd like to do to his wh.o.r.e. She's in a cell down the hall, his wh.o.r.e. Any message for his wh.o.r.e?

Mr. Endner bails out Bess right away. Willie's family can't afford bail, nor can Happy's. After several days the cops bring Willie to a visiting room. Mother sits at a scarred wood table wearing her ma.s.s dress. She hasn't slept in years. She's lost another child. First Agnes, now Willie. She asks Willie what he has to say for himself.

Nothing, he says. Not a thing.

It's not just your name in the newspaper. It's ours too. They printed our address. The neighbors, the priest, the butcher, they all look at us different.

Willie lowers his gaze. He apologizes tearfully. But he also asks for her help. He needs a newspaper, a magazine, a book, a pad and pencil-something. He's going crazy in here with nothing to do but swat c.o.c.kroaches and listen to cops say horrible things about Bess.

You want something to do? Mother says.

Yes.

Pray.

She stands, walks out.

Willie, Happy and Bess are charged with burglary and larceny. Willie and Happy are also charged with kidnapping. They're a.s.signed a public defender, who smells of castor oil and liver pills. Stiff white hairs poke from the tip of his pink nose. Willie doesn't catch his name. He's too eager to know if the man has spoken to Bess.

No, Lawyer says. But I've spoken to her family's attorney, who says Mr. Endner is keeping the young lady under lock and key.

Lawyer hands Willie a stack of newspapers. The story is on every front page, though each paper slants it differently. One turns it into a tale of two Irish Town thugs and their gorgeous accomplice. Another makes it a tale of two Irish Town thugs who kidnap an heiress. The one constant in every telling is that Willie and Happy are Irish Town thugs.

The story also makes the papers in St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco. Even Europe, via the telegraph. Everyone, everywhere, can find something of interest in this yarn. Crime, cla.s.s, money, s.e.x. So the trial, months later, is a sensation. As Willie and Happy walk into the courtroom they find hundreds of spectators, roistering, laughing, eating. It's like a d.a.m.n Giants game, Happy says.

Willie and Happy, wearing suits bought with the stolen money, sit on either side of Lawyer. Willie turns, scans the faces in the gallery. Mother and Father, Happy's family, all sit in the front row, frowning. Two rows back, his eyebrows a deep V above the stormy royal blue eyes, is Eddie. He's about to give someone, everyone, an Irish haircut.

A hush falls as Mr. Endner enters. Guided by a nurse, he moves slowly down the aisle. Lawyer leans over to Willie: The man's not well, I hear.

He's well enough to glare. Willie tries to look contrite. It has no effect. Mr. Endner continues to glare. Willie sighs, faces front, counts the stars on the American flag. He senses a commotion behind him. He turns in time to see a blur. Two of the cops who called Bess a wh.o.r.e grab Mr. Endner just before he wraps his hands around Willie's throat.

Willie and Happy will not take the stand. Their codefendant, however, will. Her lawyers have struck some sort of deal for her cooperation. She enters the hushed courtroom, makes her way to the stand. She wears a gray dress with a blue collar and blue cuffs, black patent leather shoes with white tops, and she holds a blue clutch purse with both hands, tight, as she held the steering wheel of the Nash. Her hair is curled in ringlets that brush her shoulders as she leans forward to put a kid-gloved hand on the Bible.

Willie hasn't seen her since the morning they were arrested. Yes sir-those were the last words he heard her speak, when the sheriff of Poughkeepsie said, Put some clothes on, young lady. Not one visit, not one letter or card. Willie wants to leap across the table, run to her, scold her. He wants to caress her, kiss her. He wants to shout, You ruined my life! He wants to whisper, You are my life. He blames her for leading him into this mess. He rues not marrying her when he had the chance.

Do you swear to tell the whole truth and nothing but so help you G.o.d?

I do.

Willie imagines her saying I do in a different courthouse, on a different occasion. If only. He bows his head.

In a halting voice, guided gently but firmly by the district attorney, Bess tells her story. The courtroom is rapt, even though this isn't the story they came for. It's not a salacious story, as Bess tells it, but a chaste story of first love. It's the original human story, the only story. With a capitalist twist. Rich girl, poor boy. They want to get married but her father stands in the way. So they risk everything to be together. And yet they do nothing improper, Your Honor. The boy is a perfect gentleman. Also, it's all the girl's idea. She breaks the safe. She keeps the stolen money on her person at all times. The boy does nothing more than drive.

And this boy's friend, says the district attorney-why bring him along?

We thought we needed a witness, Your Honor. We thought the law required it.

She swears that if she could go back and undo it all, she would. Love clouded her mind. Love made her unwell. Love made her do what she didn't know she was capable of doing.

She pauses, asks for a gla.s.s of water. Willie knows she's not really thirsty. He knows this is purely for effect, for sympathy. But anyone who didn't know Bess would think she was dying from dehydration. It makes Willie wonder if any of this, of her, is real. It makes him think that maybe Bess is a true criminal, that maybe love is a crime. Maybe when lovers say, You stole my heart, it's not just pretty words. As surely as they stole her father's cash, Bess stole Willie's heart. And now she shows no remorse. Not the kind Willie wants to see.

The judge peers over his spectacles at the defense table. Lawyer touches the white hairs on his nose, puts a liver pill on his tongue. No questions, Your Honor.

You may step down, young lady.

Bess stands. She looks at her father. Then Willie. The first time she's looked in his direction all morning, the first time their eyes have met in months. He tries to read her face. He can't. She then floats up the aisle, out of the courtroom, onto the front pages. In Brooklyn, in San Francisco, in London, people will soon read about the little flapper's charmingly innocent tale of first love and heedless crime. She'll share the front pages with the bankers and their proxies haggling over the spoils of war. Because of her stirring testimony, however, there will be little mention of Willie and Happy in the newspapers. Reporters will turn Bess's story of star-crossed lovers into the debut of one beautiful star.

It doesn't matter if the judge believes Bess or not. The judge himself doesn't matter. Mr. Endner and his cronies have already told the judge, over ten-dollar cigars in his chambers, what to do. After some pointless testimony from the sheriff of Poughkeepsie, some dithering about the evidence, the squirrel coat, the receipts, the judge finds the boys guilty and sentences them to three years probation. He further orders Willie and Happy to stay away from Bess.

William F. Sutton is released from Raymond Street Jail a few days before Christmas, 1919. He stands on the top step of the jailhouse, looking at the city. Free at last-so what? The Depression awaits him. It's the only thing that awaits him. Under the best of circ.u.mstances he wouldn't be able to find work. With a criminal record, forget it. Besides which, he's lost Bess. He might as well turn around and ask to stay at Raymond Street.

The reality is a little worse than he imagined. He misses Bess so much that he can barely function. He wants to die. He plans his death. He writes goodbye letters to his family, to her. At the last minute, walking to the river, he tells himself: If only I could speak to her, for even one minute. He goes to the house on President Street. To h.e.l.l with his probation. He stands on the sidewalk. The stained gla.s.s, the fancy bal.u.s.trades, the iron fence. He prays for her to pa.s.s by a window.

They're all dark.

Mr. Sutton? Are you crying?

No.

The Polara is parked outside Kings County Criminal Justice Center. Formerly Raymond Street Jail.

Reporter turns. Mr. Sutton, you're crying.

Sutton puts his hand to his cheek. I didn't know I was crying sir.

Sir?

Kid.

Sutton looks for a Kleenex. He opens the camera bag. Expensive lenses. He opens the cloth purse. Billfold. Baggie full of joints. Armies of the Night. Malcolm X. Photographer has dog-eared page 155. And underlined a pa.s.sage. Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before voting to have other men kept behind bars-caged.

He stakes out Coney Island, finds Bess's girlfriends. They tell him that Mr. Endner has taken Bess out of the country until the scandal subsides.

She sailed for Hamburg last week, First Girlfriend says.

She's going to live with Mr. Endner's family, Second Girlfriend adds. Say-how's Happy?

Willie's parents offer no comfort, no quarter, no mercy. When they speak at all in his presence, it's not to him, but about him. They say he's disgraced them, betrayed them. They won't throw him out, but they want no part of him.

Daddo would understand, but Daddo is failing. Half the time he thinks he's back in Ireland with the witches and the mermaids. The little men-they've stolen Daddo's mind.

Thank G.o.d for Eddie. He's still working at the shipyard, and he's held in such high regard that he's able to get jobs for Willie and Happy. A nice piece of luck, but also strange. Being in a shipyard reminds Willie of Endner and Sons, which reminds him of Bess, which makes him want to cry. Still, he's working. He tells himself that this, this is all he needs. This is all he ever really wanted.

As the new decade begins he's standing on a hooded platform, dangling from the side of a freighter, wielding a purple flame of five thousand degrees. He's cutting the freighter into pieces, cutting the pieces into littler pieces. The job is dangerous, grueling, exhausting, and thus a blessing. At the end of each day he has no choice but to sleep. Also, in his current frame of mind, he finds it therapeutic to destroy, to burn and break stuff apart.

Most mornings, before work, he meets Eddie and Happy at a diner near the shipyard. They clap him on the back, tell him he's good as new. He knows better. He knows that something inside him is broken, something more than his heart, and it's like a sc.r.a.pped freighter, there's no putting it back together.

He earns enough for a furnished room. His parents don't bother to pretend they're sorry to see him go. Mother says good luck, her tone is good riddance. Father stares, eyes filled with Disappointment. On his day off Willie goes for walks along the river. He saves his pennies for a ball game now and then with Eddie and Happy. It's not much, but it's enough. No one will ever hear him complain.

Then he gets laid off. Eddie and Happy too.

With nowhere else to go, the boys meet at the diner every morning. They talk about the Depression as if it were a punk they'd like to rough up. Eddie, on his soapbox: Crops failin, prices fallin, and banks, when they're not goin under, foreclosin on everythin in sight. Banks, he tells everyone along the counter. f.u.c.kin banks.

Willie rations his savings. He has enough for three months, he figures, if he eats once a day, sticks to sardines and crackers. It's some consolation that his pals are in the same fix, until they're not. Eddie and Happy catch on with some high-flying bootleggers, driving beer trucks. Prohibition is now in full force, and though thousands of barkeeps and brewers are thrown out of work, all kinds of new jobs are created, for those not squeamish about the law.

Eddie and Happy are transformed. They have suites at the St. George, bankrolls as big as ham sandwiches. They urge Willie to join them, but no. The newspapers are filled with stories about bad hooch. It's made with rat poison, embalming fluid, gasoline. Fourteen people just died from a batch last month. They were lucky. Others wake up blind. After a night on the town, young men and women grope for the lamp on the nightstand, turn it on-and the room is still dark. I think about my Daddo, Willie tells Eddie and Happy. I don't want to be the cause of someone spending his days in darkness.

Eddie and Happy hara.s.s him, berate him-but they also understand. They float him loans, stand him meals. When the three get together at a chop suey joint, or a steak house near the bridge, they don't even let Willie see the check.

Thanks fellas, Willie says, glum. I owe you.

At every meal Eddie and Happy wear brightly colored ties, fancy hats, pointy shoes. Willie wears pants that need mending in the seat. He p.a.w.ned the suits he bought with Bess.

Sutton sits on the curb across the street from the justice center, between Reporter and Photographer. When I got out of this joint, he says, I just about starved. There were no jobs, boys. None. Except running beer.

Prohibition, Photographer says, rocking back and forth angrily. Big Brother b.u.t.ting into people's personal lives. Back then it was booze, today it's drugs-it's all the same fascist ideology.

Sutton grins. You've got strong opinions kid.

And you know the worst thing about Prohibition, Willie?

Sutton stubs out his Chesterfield. What's that kid?

Banks. Who do you think was laundering all the bootleggers' cash? Banks were always bad, but during Prohibition they went hog wild. The fat cats got fatter. Am I right, Willie?

Sutton shrugs. One thing is for sure, kid, nothing happened quite the way it was supposed to back then. The government banned drinking, but people drank more than ever. Women got the right to vote, but they didn't really use it. The radio was invented-suddenly you could listen to Dempsey wallop a guy two thousand miles away-and they promised it was the end of loneliness. h.e.l.l it only made people lonelier. People sat in their rooms, listening to dance music, and theater plays, and laughter, and they felt more alone than ever. Nothing went according to Hoyle, nothing turned out as advertised. That's when people started to get cynical.

Reporter stands, checks his watch, checks the map. Our next stop is Manhattan, Mr. Sutton?

Sutton nods. Yeah. We're done with Brooklyn.

Until the Schuster thing.