Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  On the top landing he goes to what was the front door and inserts the key in the lock he installed himself, bought from a locksmith up on Fifth Avenue. The same key can open the bedroom door, with its separate cylinder. Nine hours earlier, Malik locked Glorious in the bedroom, with its tiny closet of a room holding a toilet and nothing else. Afraid that she would go wandering and trip or fall and hurt herself. He lets himself in through the front door, and quickly locks the door again, using his free hand to smother the sound of clacking steel.

  Sleep, my Glorious.

  Be there soon.

  Sleep.

  Some clothes hang from a steel rack outside the hall bathroom, a flannel shirt, fresh jeans, socks looped over the bar. Sleep, Glorious, Malik thinks. We have things to do tomorrow. To get you to a hospital at last. To a doctor. He slips into the narrow bathroom, and begins to undress in the dark. He urinates, hoping the sound of water puncturing water does not escape the room. He is very cold. From a plastic milk crate on the tiled floor, he removes a flashlight and a pair of scissors. He tests the flashlight, then shuts it off. On the chipped sink, he lays out some things from the Korean store: a razor, a small can of shaving cream. He hopes he can remember how to do this, after so many years. And there’s no hot water. The rusted boiler in the ruined basement holds no water. Somehow the pressure still moves cold water to the top floor. Malik holds the bag from the store under his chin and begins to chop away his thick beard. The hair is wet and wiry and tough. His body shakes from the cold. After a while, he runs a hand over his chin, feels a kind of bumpy fuzz, then switches on the flashlight. He doesn’t know the face in the cracked mirror. He covers his jaws and chin with cream and begins to shave. He nicks himself in three places, wipes the blood with the back of a hand. My father’s blood. Her blood. Soon it will be the boy’s blood. The blood of Glorious too. Our blood. Allah’s blood. Then he feels the smooth cheeks, makes a square cut for sideburns, and shuts off the light.

  He shudders again from the cold, lays down the razor and the bag of hair, and steps into the shower. He doesn’t want to do this. He’d rather fight someone in the lot with bare hands. Not this. But he must. He must wash away the filth of infidels. This water will not hurt him. Inshallah. He reaches around for the shrinking bar of Dove, lying on its metal tray fastened to the water pipe. He turns the tap. His body feels a small death. He tells himself: Paradise is a garden with a stream running through it. Hell is another place, which Allah suggests to us through our living. And must be full of ice. Malik starts to pray as the water courses slowly down his body.

  Khalid al-Mihdhar.

  Majed Moqed.

  Nawaf al-Hazmi…

  He lectures himself: When we conquered Spain, we taught the infidels how to wash. And there was no steam heat in Andalusia or boilers in the basement. I would remind Mama when I was twelve or thirteen or fourteen that Islam civilized the world. Taught the filthy Christians to wash, Mama, taught them to read, taught them numbers, Mama, and architecture and music. Taught them for eight hundred years. And Mama would laugh, and say, If the Muslims were so damned civilized, why did they circumcise little girls? And why did they round up your ancestors in Africa and sell them to white folks? How is that civilized? And young Malik would say, Allah knows. Allah was testing all of us. And she would laugh. And say: Allah should get a life.

  Bitch.

  Now he soaps his hands over and over again, digging his nails into the Dove, soaps his hair, soaps his armpits, his ass, and his balls, grunting silently, using motion to warm him. The trickling water falls upon his shoulders and he splashes it roughly, feeling cleansed, purged, ready again for the mission, ready again to go forth as a member of the brotherhood. Ready for one final purge. Ready to die.

  He turns off the shower, steps onto the cold tiled floor, and grabs a towel, the only towel, one that smells of Glorious. He feels his cock getting thicker, harder, and now wants the warmth of Glorious, Allah’s gift; wants to lie behind her, to kiss her neck, to hold her swollen tits, to feel her ass grinding against his groin, to plunge his cock into her wet cave. He takes the key from his trousers, pulls on dry socks for warmth, wraps the damp towel around his shoulders, lifts the flashlight, and pads down the hall to the bedroom. Thinking: She’ll be shocked. She has never seen me without my beard. I must be silent. I must be gentle. Above all, I must not scare her. She’s my woman. She’s carrying my son.

  He unlocks the door and steps into the darkness. The room is full of a black wind. The cold is bitter. The cold is unforgiving. He switches on the flashlight. There is nobody in the bed. The covers are wild and rumpled and stained with something dark that he knows must be blood. A pillow lies on the floor. He moves the light and sees that the window is open.

  No.

  –Baby? You here someplace?

  No answer.

  He walks to the open window, the towel falling. No. He stops a foot from the window. His feet are suddenly sticky. No, please. No… The rain has ended but the wind blows harder. But now he does not shudder. He feels that his body is made of ice. No.

  He steps forward, his feet making a squishy sound, and lays a free hand on the icy windowsill. His breath expels a small cloud of steam. Finally he leans forward and looks down. Four stories.

  He sees the naked body of Glorious on a carpet of rubble. Her luminous brown skin glistens from the rain. She does not move. In the crook of her left arm is a tiny child. Like a doll. The child does not move either.

  Malik jerks backward, then falls hard to his knees. He faces the empty sky, and begins to howl.

  2:29 a.m. Sandra Gordon. Her apartment.

  She’s awake again, out on the balcony, high above the glistening street. The plants are all dead, or dozing through winter. She’s wearing the heavy down coat that Myles Compton bought her that cold spring day a few years back, explaining that it was to keep her Jamaican blood at room temperature. She laughed then. Jamaican blood. Why not New York blood? she said. I’ve been here longer than I ever lived in Jamaica. Longer than you, Myles, ever lived here either.

  Now he’s gone, lugging his credit default swaps and his derivatives or whatever the hell he was into. Gone. A fugitive now like ten thousand other rich grifters. He won’t call me, she thinks. He won’t e-mail. He won’t do anything that will help them track him down. For sure, she thinks, the people on his trail will be listening to me too. Gotta change this number. The e-mail address too. They’ll catch him anyway. The Feds. Interpol. The Bulgarians. Whoever. Ah, Myles.

  Where are you, Myles? She turns and slips back into the dark living room, sliding the balcony door shut. She unzips the coat and drops it on the carpet.

  Thinking: I can’t ever do this again.

  2:31 a.m. Ali Watson. Patchin Place, Greenwich Village.

  He turns left off Sixth Avenue onto Greenwich and sees an open spot along the curb on the right. When he was young and tending bar in a joint called Asher’s, the summer after he took the cops’ test, he often walked past this spot when the little park was one of the saddest buildings in the city: the Women’s House of Detention. Day and night, women in the House of D. would yell down from their cells to young men or older women who were holding babies for them to see. Most of the women in the cells were caught hooking or dealing drugs. Their mothers were scolding them from Sixth Avenue. Many men on the sidewalks were really only older kids. You take care a’ him, Buddy. Feed him good, Momma. No crap now, JoJo…

  The building is now gone: replaced by a park, and on an angle through the wet leafless trees Ali Watson can see two fire engines, three police cars, a gathering of people in black silhouette. He can see the helmets of firemen bobbing in and out of the handheld lights. He pulls down the sun-blind mirror, with its NYPD placard facing the street side, clamps his badge on the top of his coat collar, gets out, pats his cell phone, locks the doors. Thinking: Jesus fucking Christ.

  The rain has stopped now but the street is wet and glassy, reflecting a garish mixture of red lights and bright
s. And there in front of him is Patchin Place, a gated dead-end street between Greenwich and 10th Street, where he has so often dropped Mary Lou or picked her up to go home. The iron gates are open, hoses on the ground. Other residents of the small dead-end street are outside the gates, flanking the entrance, coats pulled tightly over nightgowns and pajamas, drinking coffee, smoking. All alone, a fat bare-legged white guy with a coat on top of a bathrobe seems to be eating a bowl of cereal. Watching. In a separate cluster, men and women aim cameras or cell phones, scribble notes: the reporters. Ali’s breath is coming in tiny gasps. The front door of the house is open. Hoses snake from fire hydrants up the few steps into the Harding house. Three windows are open on the top floor. Lamps move in jerky patterns inside all floors. The air is gritty with smoke and ash.

  Oh, Mary Lou. Let them tell me you’re at St. Vincent’s. Let me know that you’re okay.

  He walks to the front gate. He sees that each corner of the short street is blocked by a squad car with its red dome light turning. A lieutenant from the Sixth Precinct, a guy named Brennan, spots him. And comes up to him, taking his arm.

  –Hey, Ali, he says softly.

  –How bad is it, Joe?

  –Pretty bad.

  Mary Lou. Mary Lou. Let me drive you home now.

  –Exactly how bad?

  –Two dead. Then the fire after.

  –Is—

  –Yeah.

  Brennan hugs Ali, tries to move him away from the house. Ali sags, then stiffens. The reporters, some street cops, an old lady in a man’s overcoat: all are now watching. Tiny orange digital lights flicker like eyes. Ali gives Brennan a soft push and starts for the steps.

  Just as a man in a civilian overcoat, a fedora, collar up, steps out of the building onto the top of the small stoop. Ray Kelly. The commissioner. He sees Ali, removes gloved hands from his pockets. There are two other cops behind him, blocking the narrow doorway. The odor of burned wood and fabric is stronger here. But clearly the fire is out. Kelly comes down the steps and goes directly to Ali Watson.

  –Don’t go in there, Ali, Kelly says softly.

  –For Chrissakes, Ray. It’s my wife!

  –I know. That’s why you’re not going in.

  –I gotta—

  –It’s an order, Ali. Come on. We’ll take a walk.

  2:32 a.m. Sam Briscoe. His loft on Greene Street, SoHo.

  The phone rings in the darkness. From his bed, Briscoe glances at the night table. The bright green phone with caller I.D. From the paper.

  –Sam here.

  –Mr. Briscoe, it’s the desk and—

  –Put him on.

  Briscoe sits up, swings around with his feet on the floor. Then he hears Matt Logan’s voice.

  –Sorry to bother you, Sam. But we got a big one.

  –Tell me.

  –A double homicide in the Village. One of them we think you know. Named Cynthia Harding and—

  –What?

  –And her secretary, a black woman named Watson. Mary Lou Watson. Her husband’s a cop. Fonseca’s at the scene. No details yet. How they died. Suspects. Nada, Sam.

  –Call Helen.

  –She got here ten minutes ago.

  Briscoe switches on the lamp.

  –The paper’s locked up, Logan says. Maybe we can do a wrap, front and back.

  –Yeah. Call Billygoat at the plant. See if we can do the wrap. Have Helen write the lede. Fonseca can write the scene. The clips should have a lot of stuff on Cynthia Harding, charities, the public library. Two husbands.

  –Right.

  –One more thing, Matt. Tonight she had a small fund-raiser at Patchin Place. For the library. I know because I was invited, but couldn’t go. See if Fonseca can get a guest list, then you know what to do.

  –Right.

  –I’ll get dressed and head to Patchin Place for a bit. Maybe call in a few things. Then I’ll come to the paper. And Matt? One more thing.

  –Yeah?

  –Tell Helen she can smoke.

  Briscoe hangs up. Mumbling in the emptiness of the loft. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Cynthia? Dead? Christ Allfuckingmighty. No. It’s bullshit. No. Wrong address. But Matt has Mary Lou’s name too. Oh, Cynthia… If I’d gone to the party, maybe I’d have picked up something, something wrong in the rooms, something about the guests or the mood. But hell: Cynthia’s a grown-up. She knows what to look for too. So does Mary Lou. She sees like a cop. Like her husband, Ali.

  Briscoe moves quickly to the bathroom, splashing water to wake himself up. Dries himself while looking out the back window. The rain is over. Cynthia? Cynthia dead? His heart is beating furiously. His stomach contracts, expands. Cynthia. My Cynthia. He sees fragments of her face. Many angles, always shifting, depending on age, emotions, the light. He sees the intelligence in Mary Lou’s eyes. And her permanent skepticism. But Cynthia… Oh Jesus fucking Christ.

  He pulls on socks, the gray trousers, thinking coldly now, becoming the newspaperman again, the craft that always protects him. Murder at a good address always leads the paper. Then remembers his breakfast meeting with the F.P. Eight-thirty in the morning. Very important. I’ll bet. Yeah. Briscoe knots his tie. He is filled with a sudden rush of things ending. Cynthia Harding is dead. Along with Mary Lou Watson.

  Oh.

  Going cold again. Displacing the human. Displacing the enduring privacy of his life, and hers.

  Cynthia Harding has been murdered.

  He shoves some files in his leather bag, grabs a fedora and trench coat, and goes down to the street. He finds a cab on Sixth Avenue. He and the driver travel uptown in silence. The man doesn’t play the radio as he moves north through the emptiness. Briscoe loops the chain of his press card around the collar of the coat. He gets off at Barnes & Noble on the corner of 8th Street, overtips, hurries toward the aura of bright white police lights and red domes. He sees the group of curious citizens, the cops, the firemen, the huddle of reporters. A few nod. He nods back. Fonseca is there too, and Briscoe motions him aside.

  –How bad is it?

  –Pretty bad, Fonseca says, looking at a notebook. Both women stabbed to death, Mr. Briscoe. Kitchen knife, maybe. There’s one missing from one of those racks. The cops are searching sewers. It looks like the Watson woman got it first, in the hall outside the bedroom door. Then the Harding woman opened the door, they figure. And she got it. She was naked under a bathrobe. The Watson woman was fully clothed. There’s blood all over.

  –God…

  Briscoe inhales the wet ashy air, lets it out slowly.

  –Watson’s husband is a cop, Fonseca says. Ali Watson. Ray Kelly was here and took him away somewhere, I guess to comfort him. Wouldn’t let him in the house, for obvious reasons. I got a picture of Kelly and Watson on my cell phone, sent it already.

  –Ali Watson’s a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Briscoe says. Tell Helen, but tell her I said she shouldn’t put that in the paper. I’ll tell Matt to keep Ali’s face out of the paper too. Who knows what he’s working on. Do they have any suspects?

  He hears his own voice. Cold and flat, with a slight tremble.

  –I don’t know, Fonseca says. They’re not saying much at all. The women were killed, then whoever did it used some kind of an accelerant to cover himself. Maybe from some kind of old-fashioned oil lamp. If it’s a him. The firemen kept the damage to one room, top floor. Mostly scorching.

  The bedroom, Briscoe thinks. Up past the paintings by Kuniyoshi and Lew Forrest.

  –Who’s running this? he says.

  –A lieutenant named Brennan.

  –He’s a good cop. Tell him you know there was a party here last night, a fund-raiser for the library. Ask him if he has a guest list. If he lets you, then write down the names and we’ll call each one of them. Don’t do any of this in front of the other reporters.

  –Right.

  –Also ask if he’s got the name of the caterer. And the waiters. Cynthia Harding always used a caterer for these things. They’d be the
last to leave. Or one of them maybe stayed. If Brennan won’t tell you shit, then do a sidebar right here, while you’re waiting. Neighbors, everything. On the scene itself.

  –Someone said that E. E. Cummings lived here. And John Reed.

  –And a bunch of other people, including Anaïs Nin. I’ll edit your piece and fill in any blanks.

  –Great.

  –See ya, Briscoe says, and slips away, walks to Greenwich and hails a cab.

  2:33 a.m. Bobby Fonseca. Patchin Place.

  He watches Briscoe go, then searches the corner crowd for Victoria Collins. No sign of her. His heart sank when the cell phone found him in the taxi. Matt Logan. Double murder in the Village. Go. He thought Victoria would be furious. Instead, she was excited.

  –I want to go with you, she said.

  –You got a press card? Fonseca said.

  –An old one, a student I.D. from Columbia. Laminated. And—

  –You probably can’t get very close, he said. The cops—

  –Come on, Fonseca. Let me try. I can work the neighborhood. Talk to people who might have known the victims. Whatever. I’m a good reporter. And I got this little recorder too. I can feed you my notes. Please.

  The “please” got him. He leaned forward and told the taxi driver to take them to Sixth Avenue and 8th Street instead, and she squeezed his hand. At the scene, he got past the police line and she didn’t, but he saw her talking to people beyond the line, knowing she held the tiny recorder in her hand shielded by a small notebook. Hands bare. Scribbling notes. As he was soon doing. Fonseca thought: She is a reporter, for Chrissakes. Why didn’t someone hire her? Why’d they hire me?

  The details came fast. From a uniformed cop. From a lieutenant. The air grainy from the fire, which was out. He called in notes as he got them, unloading to Helen Loomis. He went over to the edge of the gathering crowd, found Victoria Collins, took her notes, thanked her, pecked her cheek like a colleague. A Times guy showed up. Somebody from AP. Then Fonseca was back at the gates. Not feeling the cold. Full of the rush. A big one.