Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  Then he saw Mr. Briscoe. Wondered why he was here. The boss. Fonseca saw pain in his face. Gave him a fill. Heard his directions. Saw him walk off. Thinking: Who the fuck am I to feel sorry for Briscoe? But I do. And I don’t know why.

  Victoria. Hey, there she is.

  2:36 a.m. Sam Briscoe. A taxi.

  His head throbs. Two dead. Stabbed and sliced. Fresh blood on the floor. Eyes wide in shock, for sure. Oh: my Cynthia.

  And turns the switch in his head. Thinking. What’s the wood? Think about wood. VILLAGE HORROR. No. Maybe. VILLAGE SLAUGHTER. Too many letters in “slaughter.” Think about wood. Page 1, page 1… BLOODBATH, with a subhead, Socialite, Cop’s Wife Killed in Village. And the press run. Gotta tell Billygoat at the plant. A hundred thou more. Maybe two, if we replate completely for another edition. A head shot of Cynthia Harding. And Mary Lou Watson. Side by side. Back page, the kid’s photo of Ray Kelly and Ali Watson. Maybe the kid shot them from the rear. Ray with his arm across Ali’s back. The wet street. Cynthia smiling.

  Then thinks: Stop, you asshole.

  Stop.

  You loved this woman for three decades…

  The cab pulls up at the newspaper. West Street now busy with groaning early-morning trucks. He pays, rushes through the one unlocked door, is waved to the elevator by the black security guard. Into the city room. Almost running. Right to Logan.

  –How much time we got?

  Logan glances at the old clock.

  –Maybe forty-five minutes.

  Briscoe pulls off his hat, coat, and jacket, throws them on a desk. He waves at Helen Loomis. She is smoking. Flourishing the cigarette, nodding thanks.

  –The kid got the guest list, Logan says.

  –Great.

  –Guess who’s on it?

  –Tell me.

  –Our brave publisher.

  Briscoe makes a percussive sound with his mouth. Pah!

  –You’re kidding me.

  –I’m afraid not.

  –Give me some time. I’ll call him and get details. What’s the wood?

  –Maybe THE LAST DINNER PARTY. No gore, except in the subhead.

  –You’re a fucking genius, Matt.

  Briscoe walks away and stops at the desk of Helen Loomis. She looks up, a smile on her face. She’s using a coffee container for an ashtray.

  –Matt tell you about the party list? he says.

  –Yeah, I’m calling them now.

  –I’ll call the publisher, Briscoe says.

  –That’s what I figured.

  –I’ll read the obit at my desk.

  –Sure. By the way, Sam. You’re in it. Among the various boyfriends.

  –Not in this edition, Helen.

  –Sam, it’ll be in the News, the Post, and the Times. You can’t leave it out.

  Briscoe sighs.

  –But I buried it with the names of other boyfriends, Helen says. The ones that made the gossip columns. And by the way, the Fonseca kid just dictated a scene sidebar. Very good—tight, great details. It ends with the cops carrying off two computers. I figure one for each vic.

  He thinks: One of them contains the last e-mail I ever sent her.

  –Thanks, Helen. For everything, but especially for showing up.

  He hurries to his office, dumps his clothes in a chair, turns on the lights, opens the computer. Still standing, he checks the Times website. Nothing yet. Same with the Post. He doesn’t bother with the News website because he can never figure it out. Then he sits down, looks for the phone number. Richard Elwood. He dials. Busy signal. Christ, the news is spreading.

  He looks at the paper. The wrap will take a while. Fonseca’s story about the murdered kid from Stuyvesant. The Doom Page. All old news now. He dials Elwood again. This time the young man answers.

  –Yes? he says, his voice distracted.

  –Briscoe here. I’m at the paper, Richard. You might have heard about what happened on Patchin Place.

  –Yes, he says, his voice lowering. I was just on with some cop. It’s a horror, Sam. She seemed like a nice woman.

  Briscoe thinks: You mean Cynthia, of course, not Mary Lou.

  –Do you want to give some sense of the dinner party to a reporter? Just atmosphere. What they talked about. No direct quotes, or I.D.

  –I don’t know. Let me think about it.

  –We’re on deadline, Richard.

  –Deadline? I thought the deadline had passed.

  –We’re doing a wraparound. Four pages.

  –A wraparound? How much will that cost?

  –You can sell a hundred thousand more. We have stuff nobody else has. They’ll blow it out on the morning news shows. If we can get it to them around nine.

  –A hundred thousand more copies? That’s a lot of paper.

  –It’s a lot of news.

  Elwood exhales, pauses.

  –All right, give me a few minutes to gather my thoughts. And Sam? We’re still on for eight-thirty. It’s very important.

  Elwood hangs up. Briscoe writes his name and number on an index card, walks out to the city room, and hands it to Helen Loomis. She is lighting a fresh Marlboro Light.

  –Call him in about five minutes, Briscoe says. As much detail as possible. Who was there, what was said, what was served for dinner, what they talked about. Everything.

  She nods, focused by nicotine and urgency. Briscoe walks over to Logan.

  –Tell Billygoat to print a hundred thousand more, with the wrap, he says. And be ready for a replate, if they make an arrest.

  –Yes, Logan says, smiling and making a fist.

  Neither mentions the tabloid joy of murder at a good address. But Briscoe feels the rush, the adrenaline pumping. And then walks to his office consumed by shame.

  2:37 a.m. Malik Shahid. The Lots, Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

  There was no time to wash the body. No washing table there in the mud. No time to braid her hair either. No need to squash out the shit or piss or other filth; there was nothing inside her at the end, not even the baby. Malik knows he should have washed her three times, or five, or seven, always an odd number. But he is sure that the rain has washed her pure. He is sure of that. She was pure enough for Allah. Cleansed by rain sent by Allah.

  Standing above the grave, he spoke scraps from the takbars too. O Allah: let the one thou causeth to die from among us die as a believer…

  Malik wants to believe that Glorious died as a believer. When he covered her with the wet dirt, he whispered, Minha khalaqnakum. And added, And into it we deposit you… He wants Allah, in all of his mercy, to forgive Glorious Burress. For her puppy’s doubt, for her scorn. She was a child herself.

  But nothing has been easy, on this night of death. He dug the trench with a shovel from the hallway, grunting, moaning. Losing feeling in his hands. He brought down the bloody sheets and wrapped her in them, making a shroud. The boy’s flesh was already cold, still tied to her by the cord. He placed the boy facedown on her rain-washed body, both of them like ice, moved her arms so that she was holding the baby, hugging the boy into eternity. Then he moved the sheet over her head, covering her face, and tied the ends beneath her neck. Praying all the while. Ending with Allah is most great, four times.

  Then he climbed the stairs one final time, gathered what he needed into a backpack, scattered what was there as if it had been a crack house. He thought about spreading alcohol and setting it all on fire. And decided, No, that would attract police and firemen. Then he came down through the dark hallways, paused for a final prayer. Now he sets off into the night without end. Night of godly avenging horror. Night of red rain.

  2:42 a.m. Myles Compton. New York State Thruway.

  There is almost no traffic on the thruway. The driver is following orders: driving just above the speed limit, because his passenger doesn’t want a delay caused by a state trooper. No ticket either. No record. Myles doesn’t explain any of this to the driver and the two men don’t chat. The digital clock on the dashboard changes by the second. Myles ke
eps repeating his new name, silently, like beads in a rosary. Martin Canfield, Martin Canfield, Martin Canfield… And in a silent echo of long ago, adds an ironical coda: Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of thy death…

  For a while in the past two months, he even thought of going back to his real name, his birth name, his baptismal name. Michael Cooney. The one he changed when he arrived on Wall Street. The name that was too Irish. Who the hell would invest money with a mick? At least in those years before the Celtic Tiger roared in Ireland. Now that’s gone too. And if he became Mike Cooney again, then some smart little prick from the FBI could trace it, and trace me. Martin Canfield, Martin Canfield…

  –How much longer, driver? he says.

  The driver pauses, taps a finger on the GPS, says: Maybe ten minutes, sir.

  –Okay, Myles says. They’ll wait. Just don’t speed.

  –Yes, sir.

  Myles slouches lower as the interior of the limo suddenly brightens. He feels a moment of fear. The Bulgarian’s eyes. But a pickup truck passes on the left. No passenger. The driver in his thick plaid shirt doesn’t look. Within seconds, the truck becomes two red eyes far ahead of them.

  Martin Canfield.

  He looks at tree branches whizzing above him, a stretch of emptiness, more trees, conical, dark and full, pine without Christmas ornaments. He thinks: My guys will be pissed at me today. All charged as co-conspirators. They’ll probably think I was turned. All except the fucking Bulgarian. Sorry, guys. Blame me, okay? Just don’t come looking for me. Don’t find me.

  He knows that Sandra won’t even try. Too proud. She would no more pursue a man than she’d stick up a blind news dealer. Maybe that’s why… Does he love her? Maybe. Probably. Whatever the hell love means. For sure, she didn’t want a dime from him. Never asked for stock tips. Never asked about his business. A lot of women he knew were creatures of appetite and opportunity. Sandra, no. Maybe later, a year from now, the man formerly known as Myles Compton can call from somewhere. He could ask her to meet him in another place, and they could drive to Martin Canfield’s house, and… Nah. She’d hang up.

  Christ, he thinks, it’s harder to run from a woman than to run from an indictment.

  The driver passes an exit sign and begins to slow. He pulls right, onto a ramp. Myles glances behind him through the tinted rear window. No other cars have turned off the thruway. He leans back, closes his eyes. In his mind, he sees the Learjet waiting on the landing strip. The pilot is standing by the door, glancing at his watch. The limo pulls over, and Myles gets out. No bags. A briefcase is all. Business trip to Toledo. The pilot says: Mr. Canfield? Then he sees himself tightening the seat belt and hears the engine revving up.

  The limo driver makes several turns, and then is on a dark country road. Two lanes. Myles watches now. They pass houses whose windows are all dark. They pass some shuttered country stores. Another turn.

  Then the driver leaves the two-lane road, into a lane with a painted sign for a place that ends in “Farms.” He drives slowly now, then passes a dark house, moves into a parking area just beyond, and stops. The area is fenced by trees.

  –One moment, sir, the driver says.

  He steps out, leaves the door open, walks back toward the house.

  Myles thinks, sucking saliva: This is not an airfield.

  He pushes a button to lock the door beside him, his heart pounding now. He reaches across the front seat for the open front door.

  Then a hand is in the car, and it’s holding a pistol.

  –Out of car, a voice says.

  –Who are you? Myles says.

  –Out.

  The pistol is aimed at his head. Myles lifts the door button, pushes down on the handle, steps out into the rain.

  There’s a second man on the far side of the car. He walks around to face Myles.

  –We take walk, he says.

  And gestures to the woods.

  3:10 a.m. Ali Watson. Fort Greene.

  He can smell her everywhere in the house. Aromas more powerful than when he left, an hour or so ago. In the kitchen. On the stairs. In the sweetness of hand soap in the parlor-floor bathroom. There are traces of her cooking in the air, her breath, her skin. The perfumes of Mary Lou Watson. His body is clenched as tight as a fist. He knows he will have to leave.

  His gun lies on the kitchen table, jammed into the holster that fits under his arm. He stares at the pistol. He knows he must carry it back into the night. And use it to find the person who stabbed his wife to death.

  And remembers many of the people he has met after slaughter in this city, wives, lovers, husbands, boyfriends, children: the whole broken lot. All wrecked by the death of love. Life blown out of the ones they loved, or sliced out of them, or battered, or gouged. In their presence, working his imperfect craft, Ali was always low-key, knowing that force or threats or accusations never worked when the goal was to find out what happened. He wonders now how long it took the survivors to find sleep. He imagines them reaching for pills or whiskey, reefer or smack, anything that would obliterate memory or consciousness. In memory, every one of them talks about revenge. Some loudly. Some bitterly. Most often in whispers. The baffled children simply weep. But every one of them must have known that there were some problems you could not shoot.

  He opens the refrigerator, looking for the bottle of Diet Coke that would scour the ash in his mouth. And sees Mary Lou there, too, in the neat Ziploc bags of cold cuts, the jars of sugarless jam on the door, the plastic cup of fake butter: the armory of her campaign against his cholesterol problem and her diabetes. He takes a bottle of water and closes the door. He cannot yet climb to the bedroom. He cannot stare at her shoes and clothing in the closet, or her dresser with its vials and combs and brushes and powders, or the sink with her mouthwash and toothbrush and tube of Crest.

  He should not have come here alone. Ray Kelly offered to drive him home in his own car. “We can talk on the way,” said Ray, who had talked to many survivors too, starting in Vietnam. But Ali Watson insisted that the commissioner had too much to do. Implying that this horror would be in all the papers. Kelly would have to speak in front of cameras and lights, maybe at the side of the mayor. So Kelly hugged him and whispered that he was very, very sorry. Malachy Devlin, his young partner from the task force, arrived in a raw angry mood, and used Ali’s car to drive him back to Brooklyn. He wasn’t angry at Ali. He was angry at whoever had caused Ali such pain. Everything was arranged, the kid said. A local squad car would return Malachy to Manhattan. All the way to Brooklyn, they talked very little. Ali Watson didn’t want to sound like another mourning example of collateral damage. The kid offered to stay the night. No, Ali Watson said, I’ll be all right.

  Both of them knowing that he was lying.

  Thinking now: I’ll have to leave. But for where?

  For a moment now in the kitchen, he imagines Mary Lou at the morgue. On her slab. Permanently silenced.

  He forces himself to see her when she was twenty-three. Her skin glowing gold in the dim light of that little one-bedroom place in Bed-Stuy, framed by white cotton sheets. He forces himself to feel her warmth again as he held her tightly, full of need, and she again helped melt the ice jam in his heart, the one he had formed to protect himself from the horrors of the world that he was paid to police. She helped him on many nights to build a fence around all of that, to keep it in a separate place, far from home, far from here, far from all these rooms that bear even now the aromas of Mary Lou Watson. Now he has to build his own fences.

  Just like that. Gone forever. They will not grow old together. They will never live on a beach by the sea, their hair turned white, dancing in a living room to Billie Holiday or Nat Cole. They will not enter a New York club at midnight and show the poor hip-hop fools how to dance. They will not chuckle together over the endless folly of the world, its vanities and stupid ambitions. They will not hug each other in any chilly New York dawn.

  Oh, Mary Lou.

  My baby.

  My
love.

  He leans forward now on the table, his forehead pressed upon his folded arms, and his body unclenches, and he begins to weep.

  When he is finished, when there are no more tears left in him, Ali Watson sits up. He reaches forward and taps the cold steel of the revolver.

  3:45 a.m. Lew Forrest. Chelsea Hotel lobby.

  He knows it’s late because the lobby is empty. He can see it with his ears. Even Harry, the night man behind the desk, is dozing. He can hear the man’s faint snoring, a papery flutter. Or the sound of someone blowing into an old Chiclets box. At this hour, it’s just Forrest and Camus. At this hour, whatever time it is, the dog is usually a no-no. He’s the gentlest and most noble of creatures, but there’s always a chance that some knucklehead will barge through the door and Camus will read him wrong and go for his balls. But on nights when Lew Forrest can’t sleep, the owners let them both sit here. A comforting solitude, in the best of company. No odors of paint or turpentine. No demands to keep working.

  After Camus walked him to 24th Street and back, Forrest did sleep for a while. Then he was suddenly awake, his heart racing, and he knew he’d been dreaming about the war. There were no images alive in his head, no scenes, no faces, but he knew what they must have been, for they had been coming to him across more than sixty years. He was lost in the fog of the Hürtgen Forest. The artillery was roaring. And he was running, running, running. With no way out.

  Now he is in the lobby of the Chelsea. No running. No panting. No artillery. From the street, he can hear a few cars, and one bus, all moving east and west on wet asphalt. He can hear Harry’s snoring. There is no sound of fresh rain, but he can smell the wetness sliding under the front door. In the old days, the empty lobby was alive with tobacco smells, from cigarettes, cigars, pipes. All banished now by the triumphant armies of reform. There is a trace of disinfectant in the air, so he knows the lobby has been mopped.