Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  In the bathroom, Briscoe turns on the taps of the tub, testing the heat of the water with his left hand. He dons a robe from the 1957 Golden Gloves tournament, where his friend José won the middleweight championship. He pulls on slippers and goes out to the wider loft, looking for something to read in the tub, walking past the tall bookshelves that fill one long wall from floor to ceiling. They are organized like tenements. The French tenement. The Mexican tenement. The Irish tenement. The Jewish tenement. The three tenements of New York histories and old guidebooks, novels and diaries that tried to define the city, and always failed. Each of the tenements were about places he had lived, and people he knew, and they defined him too. His mother was Irish, his father Jewish, both immigrants who met here in New York, and their own past seeped densely from the leathery New York tenement, whispering to him as he walked by. And the Jewish tenement. And the Irish tenement. Not tonight, Momma. Not tonight, Dad.

  He stops in front of the Italian tenement. Should he listen to Calvino in the tub? Or Barzini? Should he take some sentences of Eco to bed with him, or Manzoni, or Moravia, or Pavese? Ah: Machiavelli. The argument for a republic. Perchè no? But then he would be up for hours of dispute and agreement with a man who has been dead for five centuries, and was smarter in death than Briscoe has ever been in life. He lifts down Pavese’s diaries, opens at random. Many pages brightened with a yellow marker. Thinks: No.

  Nobody.

  Alone.

  And goes back empty-handed to the tub, slips off his robe, shuts off the faucets, slides in, and closes his eyes. He always loves this moment, the loft full of a teeming silence, a dense watery solitude. He stretches out. Cynthia. The tub at Patchin Place. The one in Montego Bay that time. The Plaza Athénée in Paris. He erases the images, and begins to think of Rome. The yellow light, the ocher walls, the gurgling of fountains. Talking with Fellini one night about Batman.

  In a city so old that the buildings themselves dwarf the fear of death. What’s a single human life, Rome says, compared to millennia? To be there again, reading Catullus, in some year before Vietnam. And did he really see a man in a combat poncho on Wooster Street tonight? And was it Cynthia who said that she was delighted to know that a street in New York was named after Bertie Wooster?

  A MOTHER WEEPS?

  Ah, shit.

  Briscoe wants to be in the golden city, studying Latin to ward off Alzheimer’s, waiting for Virgil to take him home…

  Now he realizes that the ache is gone from his lower back, sucked away by hot water and visions of Rome. He opens his eyes.

  1:45 a.m. Ali Watson. Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

  Two blocks from home, driving slowly in the Mazda, wary of the rain, he tries the cell phone again. Calling the house. Hears it ringing. He says out loud: Come on, Mary Lou. Pick it up, woman. Come on, baby. Three rings. Four. On the fifth, he hears her recorded voice. For the third time in the last hour. You have reached the Watsons. We are not available. Please leave a—. With his thumb, Ali Watson cuts off the call. He turns into a street with brownstones on both sides, where there is never a parking spot. Some of the cars never leave the block. The owners move them in the morning to the other side of the street, to avoid the ticket, but they are always here. Alternate-side-of-the-street squatting. He clicks the work number at Cynthia Harding’s house. Thinking: Maybe they all stayed late. Drinking, eating, talking. Mary Lou forced to wait until the final bell. No. The Harding lady wouldn’t do that. Mary Lou’s been working there twenty-one years. Definitely not. Mary Lou never did learn to drive, but on party nights at Patchin Place, she always calls the car service for the ride home to Brooklyn, and the Harding lady always pays.

  No answer. He tries the other number. After four rings, the answering machine starts. Again, Mary Lou’s voice. You have reached the office of Cynthia Harding. Please leave…

  He looks at his watch. One forty-eight.

  Shit.

  Something’s fucking wrong.

  He eases the Mazda up the rainy street and pulls into the space beside the fire hydrant outside his house. He stops, turns off the lights. The wet street is empty. Not even a man walking a dog. The jobs are going and maybe the dumb kids will rise again. The stats say no. Crime keeps going down. But lesson number one from the sixties is still true: Never create guys with nothing to lose. Not here. Not Pakistan. Not Iraq. Not Afghanistan. But definitely not Brooklyn. Ali Watson leans across the front seat and gazes up at his house. No lights burning. Not from any of the three floors where he has lived with Mary Lou since he made sergeant. This was where they would live until they died. Ali and Mary Lou and Malik until he finished college and went on to his own life.

  Then Malik comes to him like a jagged scribble in his mind, and Ali Watson’s heart quickens.

  Malik, Malik, my only son. Twenty-three years old, but not yet a man.

  Gone now for months, he thinks, God knows where. Maybe Pakistan, for all the fuck I know. Or Yemen. To become one of those goddamned foreign fighters we always hear about when generals hold press conferences. Or an amateur jihadist, who’ll come home on a U.S. passport. The kind of knucklehead we talk about at the weekly meetings of the task force. He knows just one thing about Malik. He’s gone. The task force has him on the list, and know to call if they pick up a scent. Ali Watson had told them all about his son. Ali became a Muslim because of Malcolm, and Malik became a Muslim because of Ali, his father. Mary Lou never became a Muslim, shouting at Ali once, They were the goddamned slavers who sold us to the English! And she was right. She always is. After the ’93 bombing of the World Trade Center, Ali gave it up. Good-bye, Islam. Fuck you, and Paradise too.

  Malik was seven in ’93. Bright, smiling, an obsessive fan of the Mets and the Knicks. When he was twelve, he discovered the shelf near the top of the bookcase on the second floor. The shelf with all of Ali’s old books about Malcolm and Islam. Books no longer read. Books he should have thrown out. A year later the boy told his mother and father that he was now a Muslim. Mary Lou said, Don’t be ridiculous. But he went his own way, with a few friends that he had converted. Or who had converted him. He went to a mosque not far from here, just as he went to Brooklyn Tech, six blocks in the other direction. Ali tried to talk to him about it, to put doubt in him, or common sense, but he looked at his father with that knowing smile people have when they believe they know the truth, and you don’t. Not a smile. A sneer. And he started looking at his mother with dead, bitter eyes.

  Malik prayed five times a day, shoes off, facing Mecca. Even when he was out among the crowds on DeKalb Avenue. He didn’t smoke or drink, of course, and that was a good thing. But he became more evasive by the day, barely talking to Mary Lou, looking at Ali as if he were a traitor. Ali tried to talk about the Knicks and the Mets, but Malik made a snorting sound with his lips, and retreated into silence. He was living with a secret script. Ali slipped into the boy’s mosque a few times, well to the rear, but never heard any talk of jihad or violence, only the usual stuff about submission and Allah. But as Malik grew up, taller and more muscular than his father, he became more rigid, more fanatical, right up to September 11. After that, he was even worse. He tried to grow out his beard, but the hair was thin and scraggly, a teenaged sketch. He wore a kufi on his head. He had been accepted by CUNY, but when he turned eighteen, he left home. Taking a place with his friend Jamal. A month later, Ali checked with CUNY and discovered that Malik had stopped going to classes. Ali used all of his skills and his craft, his police and FBI friends, his gangster contacts, to track Malik, but all he could find were rumors and maybes. He gave many details to the task force, just in case. There were a few reports. Malik, Jamal, and a few other Brooklyn friends had been seen in Jersey City, or in Miami, or preaching in Compton, out in L.A. If Malik had a cell phone, it was certainly under another name. And serious jihadists didn’t have Facebook pages. Malik called home once and Mary Lou answered. She insisted he come home, he shouted at her in Arabic (or what she thought was Arabic) and hung up. He never ca
lled again.

  Ali told much of this to Ray Kelly when, as police commissioner, Kelly asked him to join the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Ali begged off. “Imagine if you had a son that might be in the Irish Republican Army,” he said. “Not is. But might be.” Kelly smiled and nodded, the way any good police commissioner would, especially a mick. Then he said he needed Ali because he understood the Muslim mind, and the way it worked in New York among American Muslims.

  –Besides, he said. You can keep an eye out for Malik.

  So many years now since September 11, and Ali still did his best for Kelly, every day of the week or, more often, every night. Some asshole shakes Ajax on the steps of a post office in the Bronx, and off goes Ali Watson and his young partner, Malachy Devlin. Three assholes in Crown Heights are bullshitting in a bar about blowing up the Williamsburg Bridge, the tip comes in, off go Ali and Malachy, saying that if these guys succeeded they would win an architecture improvement award.

  Malachy Devlin is a good cop, a good partner, a Fed, smart, cool. The other guys say they are a typical Morgan Freeman–Colin Farrell movie. Sometimes Ali feels that way too. But the partners are not close friends. The younger guy has a wife and a little kid. He likes regular hours, and then goes home. But they work hard on the trail of knuckleheads who might be terrorists. If the evidence is more than just bullshitting, they lock them up, search the dumps where they live, track down their former wives and abandoned sons wherever they might be, set one free and follow him around, and if they realize it’s just another case of three assholes bullshitting in a bar, which ain’t a felony, they let them go. They process tips, calls, anonymous notes, rumors, and the Feds’ reporting once a month about “chatter.” In all of this, there is little to be found about Malik.

  And here is Ali Watson, on his own block, caressing the gun in his holster before getting out of the car. Afraid Malik has come to visit. Afraid he called Mary Lou, out of the blue. Afraid she let him in. Afraid she said something that he thought dissed Allah. The world is full of nutso shit. Maybe it’s a lot simpler. Just some junkie on the prowl. Maybe.

  Ali unlocks the gate under the stoop, pauses, hears nothing, then opens the two doors leading to the garden floor and the kitchen. He does not turn on a light, but he knows every inch of this house, and in each room there are small plug-ins that throw pinpoints of light across the floors. He moves to the rear windows, holds one curtain aside, gazes into the garden. Empty.

  Don’t be here, Malik. Please. Be in fucking Pakistan. Be in Afghanistan. Be in Jersey fucking City.

  Silently, he moves through the house, up two flights of stairs, inhaling the familiar odors of home, of food and old books and couches, of the place where he lives with his woman, the home place. His gun is now in his right hand. He passes the room that once was Malik’s, but the door is open and the shades half drawn. Nobody there. He lifts a leg over the one step that creaks and then is on the second landing. Waits.

  Nothing.

  In the top-floor bedroom he takes the flashlight from beside the bed, turns it on. The bed is crisply made. All clothes are hung in the closets. Books and a clock beside the bed on Mary Lou’s side. The bathroom is as it always is: gleaming and clean. No scrawled message on the mirror or walls. Watson exhales. Warmer here. Heat rising. But no human presence. His mouth is dry now. Holding the flashlight, he turns and hurries downstairs. There are no signs of alarm anywhere. No Arabic graffiti. No blood.

  In the kitchen he takes a Diet Coke from the refrigerator, leaves the door open, stands in the cold shaft of light and swallows a long draft. He screws the cap back on the bottle, places it on the door shelf, closes the door, and stands there in the dark.

  Malik, Malik.

  And oh, my Mary Lou.

  He exhales hard, then switches on the ceiling light.

  1:55 a.m. Bobby Fonseca. Nighttown restaurant, Stone Street, Manhattan.

  When he walks in, the place is almost empty. A pair of bulky guys are at the bar. Maybe off-duty firemen. Laughing with a blonde barmaid. Three Japanese guys are at one table in the front room, looking gloomy in suits and loosened ties. What time zones do their bosses live in? They look like gamblers waiting for results. From the Nikkei, for sure. One has a laptop on his knee, flicking, mumbling to the others. All news all the time. Irish music plays from the sound system, the volume down low. The Chieftains. There is still light in the kitchen. No sign of Leopold Bloom. Or Stephen Daedalus. The large framed photograph of Mr. Joyce looks pensive in the gloom of the empty second room.

  But there’s Victoria, her arms folded, shoulder leaning against an arch. Lost in thought. Jesus Christ, Fonseca thinks, she is so fucking beautiful.

  He peels off his dripping raincoat, drapes it on the back of one chair, lays his wool hat on another, sits at a table. His scraping of a chair against the floor wakes Victoria. She comes to him, smiling broadly.

  –Hey! she says.

  Her eyes are bright. Her breasts masked with the top of a dark green apron bearing the name of the restaurant.

  –Hey, Victoria.

  –You eating? Ya got five minutes to order.

  –First things first, I guess. Three scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, rye toast, and a beer.

  She touches his shoulder, hurries to the kitchen.

  Victoria Collins, he thinks. Why would anyone in Bayside call an Irish kid Victoria? The mother must have picked the name. Or maybe Victoria did. Was she really baptized Bridget? They graduated from J-school at the same time. Last year. Except she was at Columbia and Fonseca at NYU. He got a shot at the World. She was still looking. Her father some kind of union boss. Operating Engineers? Won’t let her be an unpaid intern. Isn’t in favor of free blogging. So she’s a waitress. Waiting. Maybe envious of me.

  She returns.

  –So whattaya working on for tomorrow? she says.

  –A murder. Sad. A bright kid shot dead. A kid from Stuyvesant.

  –Chinese?

  –No, black. When I left the paper, it was the wood. Who knows by tomorrow? The night is young.

  –It is, she says, then hurries to the kitchen.

  He thinks: Forget the eggs. Let me lick your thighs.

  Victoria Collins returns with eggs, toast, beer on a tray. She lays each item gently in front of Fonseca.

  –Heard anything? he says.

  –A friend called, says there might be an opening at the Daily News. I sent a follow-up to my résumé. They must have three of them on file.

  Fonseca lifts some egg on his fork.

  –Maybe call the editor, Victoria. You know, follow-up with a voice attached. Try to see him.

  A pause. She stands there.

  –Want to celebrate the wood? she says. Without a smile.

  Fonseca stops eating.

  –Sure.

  –Eat fast, she says. We’re almost closing.

  She walks back toward the kitchen and turns into a back room. Fonseca crunches a piece of toast. He has been here five times in the past month, and she always laughed when he came on to her. Now… now? Tonight?

  The firemen start arguing with a third man. A short red-haired guy. A regular. Fonseca can hear the names Lee and Gallinari and knows they are arguing about the Knicks. God. Don’t they know that life is short? He eats quickly. Too quickly. Belches. And sees Victoria Collins come out of the back room. The apron is gone but she is carrying a thick coat under one arm. She hands him a bill. He hands her his Visa card.

  –Right back, she says.

  The three Japanese guys are standing now. Fonseca hears a sentence from the bar: You kiddin’ me, Charlie? Nate is great! He sips his beer. And then she is back with the green plastic wallet that holds the check and a pen.

  He opens it, starts calculating.

  –No tip, she says.

  –But I—

  –My turn.

  A minute later, they are out on cobblestones in the rain. Her down jacket has a hood. His wool hat is pulled tight on his skull. They walk toward light but there a
re no cabs.

  –Where do you live, anyway? Fonseca says.

  –East Village. Avenue B and Twelfth Street. And hey, Fonseca, what do I call ya?

  –Fonseca’s fine.

  –I like Fonseca. Three Latin syllables! But, hey, Fonseca: whatever ya do, don’t call me Vicky.

  Victoria Collins laughs.

  –Okay, Collins. Whatever you say.

  A taxi turns the corner. They start waving and shouting. The taxi stops and they get in. The backseat is wet, but so are they.

  As they are crossing Houston Street, Fonseca feels the cell phone thumping in his trouser pocket.

  2:07 a.m. Helen Loomis. Second Avenue at 9th Street, Manhattan.

  She’s been home for thirty minutes now, but after a shower, and four cigarettes, she can’t sleep. The apartment is dark, as always, and she knows it is spotless. Two doors are closed between the bedroom and the windows that open onto Second Avenue but she can still hear the usual sounds of emergency from the street, as she does every night. First, there was the ambulance siren, then heavier screams from a fire engine. They fade away, heading downtown. Then a shout, followed by an answer, then another shout, like a dialogue between angry seals. A new version of Whitman’s barbaric yawp.

  Helen Loomis turns on her side, squashing a pillow over her head, then hears a second fire truck, wilder, more guttural, the ladder. She gets up, pulls on a robe, opens the door to the kitchen, then to the long room with its dining table and bookshelves, and on into the living room. She opens the drapes a few inches, peers out into the rain-lashed avenue.

  Across the street, under an awning, she sees Federico the mambo dancer. It’s his time, and he is dancing. She knows he is seventy-two, knows that his wife is dead, his two daughters living in Miami, one grandson serving in Afghanistan. He should be too old for this. But Federico surges with life. He wears a woven straw hat, a Mets jacket, polished boots with lifts. Wires feed into his ears from a machine strapped to his chest. The wires give him Tito Puente. They give him Machito. They give him El Gran Combo and Cortijo and Rubén Blades and Eddie Palmieri. They give him the Palladium on Broadway in 1958. She knows, because Federico has told her so, on many warm nights when she meets him while hurrying home from the World. He dances alone on the avenue with the precision and lightness of a twenty-year-old. He never looks for applause. He doesn’t ask for loose change. He doesn’t flirt. He dances for himself. He dances to avoid going home to the apartment where the only resident is himself. He dances to ward off loneliness.