Elmore Leonard's leg man is still up and running, keeping the memory alive

Elmore Leonard would have turned 97 two weeks ago, and Gregg Sutter marked the occasion by doing what he does most days: think about Elmore Leonard.

For 32½ glorious, fascinating, challenging, rewarding years, the last 21 as a salaried employee, Sutter was Leonard's researcher. His leg man. The guy who found a high-diver who dropped 80 feet into a thimble for "Tishomingo Blues," and who bought a fedora from Henry the Hatter to blend in with homicide cops while he helped pour the foundation for "Mr. Paradise."

Leonard freely credited him, the New Yorker profiled him, and as far as he knows, no other author had anyone like him.

At his death at 87 in August 2013, Leonard was 80 pages into what would have been his 46th novel, and Sutter was pondering a memoir about his time with Detroit's busiest beloved author.

Leonard would ask him how the book was coming along. "You're not dead yet," Sutter would respond, his way of saying he hadn't started. "But he knew I had it in me."

Now he's halfway through it. He also operates ElmoreLeonard.com and oversees a Leonard Facebook page, lends periodic expertise to the archivists handling Leonard's papers at the University of South Carolina, and leads the push to put Leonard on a 100th anniversary postage stamp.

Actually, he is the push. His idea, his research into the postal service's Literary Arts series, his three-page nominating letter that will, according to the Oct. 6 response, "be submitted for review and consideration before the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee at their next meeting."

Leonard is nine years gone, and Sutter is essentially still working for him. It's a labor of love, and besides, if you don't count Leonard's five kids, it's a subject he knows better than anyone.

Staying in shape

For the record, Sutter also has other interests, though they tend to track back to Leonard.

He lives in Los Angeles, where he moved when Leonard needed him to poke around the record industry for "Be Cool," and at 71, he takes a 6-mile walk every day. He has lost 70 pounds since 2018, and he's down to his young-autoworker weight, 194 pounds on a 6-foot-2 frame.

He belongs to three gyms along his various routes, and he shoots black-and-white pictures to post on Instagram as noir iPhone photography in Hollywood. In early October, he stumbled across the unveiling of Mama Cass Elliot's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with Stephen Stills and the Monkees' Mickey Dolenz in attendance, and it reminded him of a disappointment.

“I have inquired about getting Elmore a star on Hollywood Boulevard," he said, "but that costs $55,000," and the appetite for a deceased author and screenwriter seems slight.

Sutter's own road to Hollywood has too many twists and turns to list, but it starts in Detroit, where his dad drove a route for Wonder Bread.

In his early 20s, Sutter was a fairly aimless Oakland University student with a history major and a fondness for libraries and Iggy and the Stooges. While working on an Oldsmobile assembly line in Lansing, he developed an appreciation for noir film and fiction, which led a friend and him to ponder launching a 'zine, which led to finding Leonard's number in the phone book and nervously requesting an audience.

In August 1980, he wrote an excellent piece on Leonard for Monthly Detroit, strong enough that Leonard tracked him down five months later and asked him to poke into a Detroit police quasi-hit-squad called STRESS. Then he asked for something else.

"It was all piecemeal for 10 years," said Sutter, whose name rhymes with cutter. "I did other jobs. I was the editor of a quarterly magazine for Cadillac salesmen. ... They'd all be the same guy."

The three-time rule

As Leonard's renown and income grew, so did his need. By the early '90s, Sutter was on the payroll, living in Florida where a lot of the books were set and flying back to Detroit every three weeks with folders of clippings, photos and notes.

A favorite moment came in Palm Beach, where Sutter saw an old Dodge van with “Die Yuppie Scum” written on the back and became immediate friends with the owner.

The van guy took him to a rally of Nazis, Klansmen, skinheads and two bikers in the heart of tony Palm Beach, a celebration of stupidity with probably 10 times as many cops on hand as bigots. “I thought, ‘Be still my heart,’ ” Sutter said.

The rally wound up being an example of “the three-time rule with Dutch,” Dutch being what Leonard’s friends called him. If Sutter particularly loved a detail and the boss wasn’t quite sold, he’d bring it up twice more.

“The third time, I hooked him on it,” he said. “He opened ‘Rum Punch’ with the rally. I was so happy.’”

Marking Leonard's 100th

Sutter used to have a collection of signed first editions of Leonard's books. "Rum Punch" was inscribed, "To Gregg, for putting a lot into this."

The praise was consistent, and treasured. For "Be Cool": "You make it happen." For "Pagan Babies": "My friend, my leg." For "Mr. Paradise": "For doing all the work, as usual."

The archive that owns Leonard's papers now owns Sutter's books as well. He's mostly retired and L.A. is expensive, so he has sold off a few things to the university while donating his advice.

Elizabeth Sudduth, associate dean at the Irvin Department of Rare Books & Special Collections, said Leonard was drawn to the school because it also houses the work of a favorite author, George V. Higgins, along with artifacts from F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. One of his last speaking engagements was there, when he took the stage with his novelist son, Peter.

The collection includes some other purchases from Sutter, among them manuscripts with Leonard’s edits that show the path from early draft to finished product.

Possibly even more valuable was the work Sutter did organizing Leonard’s donated papers before they arrived in Columbia, South Carolina.

“Sometimes collections don’t come to us in a tidy manner,” Sudduth said diplomatically. “That’s on us to do.”

Leonard’s was filed, labeled, buffed and polished.

“When I first met Gregg, my first impression was that he was quite intimidating. I really don’t know why,” Sudduth said. “Maybe because he presented himself as very focused. Maybe he scowled a little.”

She quickly reconsidered, "and he became a good friend of ours.”

The library hopes to build an event around Leonard’s 100^th birthday in 2025, she said, with exhibits, a movie or two, and presentations by Sutter and Leonard’s authorized biographer, C.M. Kushins, who has written books about rockers John Bonham and Warren Zevon.

That will require Sutter to finish his memoir. He says he will, in plenty of time.

Life with Leonard

The original title, “I’d Kill To Have Your Job,” came from something a woman gushed at a mystery writer’s conference.

“Well,” Sutter told her, “you’re going to have to kill me, because I’m not giving it up.”

Each chapter roughly corresponds with a book, he said. He’s up to 1993 and “Riding the Rap,” the second of three novels to feature the Raylan Givens character later played by Timothy Olyphant in the TV series “Justified.”

Leonard's second wife, Joan, died of cancer that year. She'd bring her husband conversations from the ladies' room, Sutter said, and she had the tenure and standing to tell Leonard that a passage wasn't quite right. Back then, a similar suggestion from Sutter might have been met with an arched eyebrow: "Oh, you're an editor now?"

Her passing is a difficult memory among a lot of easy ones. “He would let me in on the process,” Sutter said. “It was like playtime. You were playing with the characters, like playing Army as a kid.”

The difference was that the same person was always the general.

“I don’t want to make it sound too weird,” he said. “It wasn’t like he was my father, or my literary father. But there was always a sense of wanting to please him.”

The new title makes that clear: "My Life Starring Elmore Leonard."

The writer gets top billing, the researcher gathers the facts, and they're working together, one more time.

Neal Rubin would invite everyone with a hardbound copy of Elmore Leonard's "Up In Honey's Room" to turn to page 50. To reach Neal, email NARubin@freepress.com or find him on Twitter at @nealrubin_fp.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Nine years after novelist's death, Leonard's leg man is still on the job