Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  Then he hears the elevator kicking in, humming as it rises in its shaft. A pause, as someone boards. Maybe it’s that Irish guy who has a hit novel out that I can’t even read now. Seems like a nice fella. Another guy who wakes up in the night and needs the air to unlock a paragraph. There’s been a lot of those guys here over the years. Now the elevator is coming down. He hopes the passenger is not leading a strange dog. Camus knows all the regulars. But he brooks no arrogant hounds. Particularly phony tough guys. Those runty little dogs with teeth like critics. Camus, after all, was once a member of the Resistance. Or his namesake was.

  Lew Forrest hears the elevator stop, with a jerk and a thump. The doors open. Harry whispers his good morning. Then he hears the klok-klok klok-klok of knobby heels. He knows who it is.

  –Oh, Mr. Forrest.

  Lucy from ARTnews. Down from the third floor.

  –Good morning, dear, Forrest says.

  She comes around and sits next to him. Camus exhales, returning to his position with paws stretched out, head between them on the tiled floor.

  –I couldn’t sleep, she says.

  –Good. That’s the best time to work. Wear yourself out and sleep till noon.

  –It’s not that easy.

  –The key is, Forrest says, leave the television set off. It scrambles the brain, whether you’re painting or writing.

  –Funny, that’s exactly what happened.

  –See what I mean?

  –There was an awful story on New York One. I had it on to check the weather, to see if the rain would end. And there was this story. Very upsetting. Two women were murdered in the Village. One of them was a cop’s wife. The other was a woman named Cynthia Harding.

  –Cynthia Harding? Forrest whispers, shock in his voice.

  –Did you know her, Mr. Forrest? New York One said she was a patron of…

  He inhales, then exhales.

  –I knew her, yes.

  –The TV said she raised money for the arts and—

  –She did a lot more than that.

  –Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Forrest.

  –She owned some of my paintings and hung them down at her home in Patchin Place. She bought them in, oh, nineteen eighty-five? Before anybody was buying them. Before the dough started rolling in from buyers, before I was suddenly hip after fifty years of painting… But I first knew her back in the sixties, after I came home from Paris… Or was it Mexico? Anyway, I knew her. She was the same age you are now, maybe. Beautiful, and very smart… Oh, God. Oh, goddamn it all to hell.

  She touches his face with both hands.

  –I didn’t mean to hurt you, she says. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  –Yes, the hurt… But it’s not about me, Lucy dear. Not even close. It’s about her. Lovely Cynthia…

  He stands up. So does the dog, who stretches, then shakes.

  –Can we go for a little walk? Forrest says. The rain’s over, isn’t it?

  –Yes, Lucy says. But it’s pretty wet out there.

  –Eh, let’s try.

  Lucy opens the door, and Camus moves through it, pulling Lew Forrest after him.

  Harry is with them. Awake now. Protective.

  –Don’t go too far, Harry says.

  –We’ll be all right, Harry, Forrest says.

  Then he, the dog, and Lucy are outside under the awning. Each inhales the freshness of the rain.

  –Just beautiful, he says.

  –Yes, it is.

  They walk in silence toward Eighth Avenue, following the lead of the dog.

  –Can I ask your permission for something? Forrest says.

  –Of course.

  –Can I touch your face?

  She giggles.

  –Of course, she says.

  He uses his right hand, and runs his fingertips lightly, gently over her brow, her cheekbones, her chin, her nose, and her lips.

  –You’re beautiful, he says. I thought so.

  –Come on, Mr. Forrest.

  –You are, he says. I wish I could draw you.

  They are still walking toward Eighth Avenue, and stop under the marquee of the movie house.

  –But you live alone, he says. How come?

  –Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’m not as beautiful as you think. Guys are… you know.

  –Yeah, I know. Are you lonely?

  –Sometimes, she says.

  Forrest thinks: That means all the time.

  –Don’t let it get to you, he says. It’s part of the deal, especially in this goddamned city.

  He turns to go back to the Chelsea. She holds the crook of his arm. Then he stops again.

  –How bad was it? he says. The killings, I mean.

  –Pretty bad, she says. If New York One has it right.

  –Both of them shot?

  –No. Stabbed.

  –Oh, God.

  He pauses, feels tears welling in his ruined eyes. He flashes on Cynthia Harding’s smooth skin, her delicate neck.

  –I’m so sorry, Mr. Forrest, Lucy says, squeezing his arm. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  –No, no. Don’t apologize. Please.

  –But I—

  –It’s not you, Lucy. It’s her. And the son of a bitch who did it to her.

  Camus senses that something is wrong. He nuzzles Forrest’s leg, pulls gently on the leash. And leads him home.

  3:50 a.m. Freddie Wheeler. His apartment, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

  He sits barefoot in a bathrobe, leaning back in the chair, staring at the blank screen. He has checked the news bulletins online, and they are alive with the killing of Cynthia Harding and Mary Lou Watson. He wants to write, and can’t. He knows nothing about Mary Lou Watson. She doesn’t even have a Facebook page, f’ fuck’s sake. But neither does Cynthia Harding. He has never spoken with her, but he does know her. Rich bitch with a press agent. Her name in the papers, the columns, fund-raising for the library, a Brooke Astor knockoff. Never gives interviews. Didn’t even know that books are over, that words on paper are over, that nobody goes to the fucking library in the age of Google. Still, why kill her? Why slice her up? Nobody deserves that…

  –Stop, he says out loud.

  Céline would laugh at you, you mushy airheaded sentimentalist! What makes you think Cynthia Harding was not just another New York hustler, chiseling her piece from the charities, lying on her taxes, and always nasty with the help? What makes you think she didn’t deserve it? For Chrissakes, she was the girlfriend of that son of a bitch Briscoe. That should have been enough motive, right?

  And laughs, thinking: Oh, my Céline: I’ve been doing this too long.

  He stands up and stretches. He places a hand on the window frame and stares across the street at the converted four-story tenements, with their black metal chimneys rising from the rooftops like hooded night watchmen. Water drips from cornices. Fire escapes cover the facades… a kind of iron calligraphy… cluttered with dead flowerpots… and one soaked denim shirt that has been there for months. A few lights burn in yellow rectangles behind drawn shades… still awake, or living in fear. He senses the city beyond the corniced rooftops… the sleepless… block after block of loveless imperfect fortresses that have lasted now for a century. So many people are awake… like the rats within the walls. The lucky ones are fucking… risking everything… even their lives. The rest are plotting… scheming… seething.

  The way I do.

  The way Céline did.

  Even Céline needed sleep, he thinks. I must sleep now… be ready to celebrate. In a few hours… must raise a fist in the air… and curse Briscoe… and proclaim the end of the World.

  3:50 a.m. Malik Shahid. Sixth Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn.

  He is stretched across the backseat of the car, thinking that all we have is the past. The long-ago past. Medina in the seventh century. The immediate past. Two days ago. An hour ago. The blue Toyota is about eight years old, with a rusting scar on the hood. Definitely not a car worth stealing, either for resale or joyriding. It smells too
of cigarette smoke and stale Chinese food. The filthy perfume of corruption. All the way from Sunset Park, Malik had been careful, never speeding, never trying to beat a red light. On Fourth Avenue, he drove all the way in the center lane. Looking casual. Middle-class. Yeah. Some graduate student from CUNY. Yeah. That’s me. Even when a police car eased past him and made a right on 9th Street. He didn’t play the radio, didn’t want to hear news bulletins on 1010 WINS. No weather report. The rain stopped. The sky gray.

  He drove past Jamal’s street, went three more blocks, and turned on 3rd Street toward the Gowanus Canal. Pulled over beside a shuttered clothing factory, just past a loading bay. Turned off lights and engine. He pocketed the key, left by some drunken asshole. He wasn’t worried about the license plate. Nobody would report this heap of shit stolen. Waited, battling sleep, exhaustion eating his flesh. Alert for cruising patrol cars. Or anyone else who might spot him. Then he climbed into the backseat. The floor littered with beer cans mixed with a child’s plastic earthmover toy and a scuffed pair of women’s shoes. He opened a window on the right side, about a quarter inch, to allow air to enter. And stretched out to rest. He did not truly sleep.

  Sleep would have to wait until he entered Jamal’s house on 6th Street, three blocks to the south. Jamal, his closest friend in the years after his conversion, Jamal, who traveled with him to Philadelphia, to Buffalo, to Canada, to all the stops in what they both called the Network. He was my brother then, the older brother I never had. His father was a doctor in Philadelphia, maybe still alive, practicing. Making money off sick black folks. Whites too. After September 11, Jamal was convinced that jihad was the only way. He and Malik started collecting the things they needed. A few guns. Powder. Accelerants. Bomb stuff. Getting ready for a rising.

  Even after Jamal married an unbeliever, even after his father helped him buy the Brooklyn house, he still believed that day was coming, the moment when Allah’s punishing wind would blow again through America. Malik believed too.

  Then Jamal went on the haj. And when Jamal came back, he called Malik and said: Malcolm was right, brother. Malik was sure he knew what Jamal meant. Malcolm came back from making his own first haj believing that Elijah Muhammad and his Black Muslim cult was a bunch of shit. Pure Islam, Jamal said, was all that mattered. Malik agreed. But Jamal said that pure Islam didn’t necessarily include jihad. Their friendship started drying up. Jamal’s marriage helped it happen. They stayed in touch for a while. But it wasn’t the same.

  After services at the mosque in Cobble Hill, even the imam, that timid man, asked them to stay away, insisting that suicide was against the Quran, that if you kill yourself in some action it is haraam and you cannot enter Paradise. Later that afternoon, walking in Brooklyn, Malik ranted to Jamal, shouting that the imam was a mushrig, a Muslim who betrays other Muslims. He should be killed. Jamal disagreed, softly, politely, a consoling arm upon Malik’s shoulders, but Malik raised his voice even higher and they went their separate ways. Malik traveled different roads. Longing for Iraq. Longing for Pakistan. Longing for Tora Bora. For training. For sacrifice. And never going. Finding Glorious Burress instead.

  Now Jamal is a designer, a graphic artist, who uses his talent to sell the worthless shit that corrupts the world, even the Muslim world. His infidel whore wife won’t allow Malik into their house. They have a child, now about four years old, and the wife is too busy for visitors. Or so Jamal said once when Malik called from Denver. “You’re my brother, Jamal,” Malik said. “I miss you, man.” Jamal chuckled and said, “Yes, but I’m my little girl’s father and my wife’s husband.”

  Malik couldn’t tell anyone all that he felt about the old friendship. The endless nights of talk. The dissecting of the Quran. The discovery of the work of Sayyid Qutb. The sense of mission, and purpose, and fierce shared anger at all the corruption in America. He never had another talk as intense as the talks with Jamal. Not with anyone. Certainly not with Glorious Burress, that beautiful heathen puppy. Jamal was the one, the channel into truth. He did try to keep Jamal alive in his life. When he called Jamal, the infidel whore wife almost always answered and Malik always hung up. One Friday evening in the previous July, Malik even went to Jamal’s street, taking the R train, walking to their block. Looking casual as he passed their house. Hoping he would bump into Jamal as he took a morning walk. Watched for a long time from the doors of the abandoned garage up the street. Rehearsing words. After twenty minutes, he saw them placing bundles and suitcases and a folded stroller into the trunk of a BMW. The wife held the little girl by the hand, the two of them whorish in bare legs and flip-flops. Heard the wife calling to Jamal: “Jerry! Jer-ry! We’re late!” Jamal now called Jerry. Malik turned and walked around the corner, out of sight into Third Avenue, thinking: Maybe they are picking up the imam to drive to the Hamptons.

  Fatigue gnaws at him now. Eating the sore muscles in his arms and legs and hands. Reducing him to this boneless body flattened against the backseat. He thinks: I have nobody at all left to talk to. Nobody in the whole wide godless world. Unless Jamal talks. One last time. I will lie here, empty, until the sun comes over the ridge behind me and warms the morning and dries the rain. Then I will rise too, he thinks. To walk the short blocks to 6th Street. To look, to see, to go to Jamal and retrieve what I know is in his house. The stuff of cleansing.

  He begins to pray.

  Khalid al-Mihdhar.

  Khalid al-Mihdhar.

  Majed Moqed…

  And sleeps.

  5:25 a.m. Bobby Fonseca. Avenue B and 12th Street, Manhattan.

  They lie together in the dark, spent, breathing deeply, Victoria’s breasts against Fonseca’s back, a down blanket pulled tightly to their necks. Gray street light seeps from the bottom of the window shades. The sound of rain has stopped. Both are awake.

  –Thank you, she whispers.

  –I promise I’ll get better.

  –Not that, dummy. Thanks for taking me with you. For making me feel like a reporter, instead of a goddamned waitress. For three hours, at least.

  He turns to face her, breaking into a smile. His black hair is spiky.

  –I’m glad I did, he says. You kicked ass. Made me look good. I told them to give you a credit line.

  –Now you tell me?

  She sits up.

  –I gotta tell my father!

  –Not now, he says, leaning on his bent elbow, head in hand, as if addressing her right breast. We don’t know if they’ll give you the credit. I can’t order it, y’know.

  –He’ll increase today’s circulation by at least ten papers, Fonseca.

  Then she laughs and slides back beneath the covers. And is silent.

  –I’ll be right back, Fonseca says. Where’s the, uh—?

  She switches on a muted bedside lamp. In the yellow darkness, framed photographs cover a wall, with some front pages too. Times. Daily News. Post. HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. A stove. A sink. One wall of books, CDs, DVDs. She points.

  –Right there. The blue door.

  Fonseca walks naked to the blue door, shivering in the cold. The wood floor is cold too when he steps past the rug. A small narrow john. Just a toilet, a roll of paper attached to the wall, the seat down. Like an airline toilet, without the sink. He lifts the seat. Staring at a framed browning photograph of a blonde woman. Eyes that miss nothing. From the thirties, maybe? Her grandmother, maybe? Finishes. The woman in the photograph seems to demand he wash his macho hands. No sink.

  He steps out, closes the door behind him.

  –The sink is beside the stove, she says, her head showing above the blankets. Shoulda warned you.

  He washes his hands, uses a towel on a rod above the sink.

  Then hurries back to the warmth, the aroma of Victoria Collins. Reaches past her back and holds one of her hands. Silence for a beat. Then:

  –A question, he says.

  –Yeah?

  –The woman in the bathroom: who is she?

  –My hero. Martha Gellhorn. She’s in
the bathroom so I’ll see her every morning. And night.

  A vague memory stirs in him. Professor Norman’s class at NYU…

  –She was married to Hemingway, right? Fonseca says.

  –Wrong. He was married to Martha Gellhorn. As a journalist, Hemingway wouldn’t make a pimple on her ass.

  And laughs. So does Fonseca. She squeezes his hand. His flesh is warm now. They are quiet. Finally, she clears her throat.

  –Did you read CelineWire tonight?

  –Life is too short for that asshole. He’s a nasty little prick that Briscoe fired a couple of years ago. Why should I read his crap?

  –He says the World is folding this weekend.

  –He’s always saying that. He wants it to be true, even if it isn’t.

  –Just thought you should know, she whispers.

  They are silent again.

  –Would Martha Gellhorn read CelineWire? he whispers.

  She giggles.

  –If it was about Hemingway, she would.

  And pushes her butt against him.

  DAY

  8:10 a.m. Sam Briscoe. Third Avenue and East 53rd Street, Manhattan.

  HE STANDS WITH HIS BACK to the Citibank Building, a steel and glass structure too big to fail. After three hours napping on the couch in his darkened office, a quick shave in the john, a fresh shirt, a glance at the papers, Briscoe is twenty minutes early for his appointment with the F.P. The Dominican driver from the car service explained that traffic is thinner now, with fewer limousines, not as many cars coming in from Brooklyn and Queens and New Jersey. Briscoe doesn’t mind being early on this bright cold morning after too much rain and too little sleep. He would not want to give the publisher an edge by being late. And he needs to get out of his solitude, to look at other people, to stop thinking for a little while about Cynthia Harding and Mary Lou Watson and the dark horror of the night.

  Across the avenue, the publisher’s office is halfway up the more than thirty stories of the Lipstick Building, the gleaming tower where Bernie Madoff pulled off his immense robberies. Thus achieving tabloid immortality. Hell, even immortality in the Times and the Washington Post. Briscoe imagines the gullible rich arriving in a steady, discreet stream to be conned with a smile and a shoe shine. Except Madoff didn’t have the soul of Willy Loman. Madoff knew that his victims were rich by most standards, certainly by the standards of his own Far Rockaway childhood. And so they came to him during the boom, believing that Madoff would make them even richer. Acolytes of the religion of more. Obese capitalism. They knew from whispery chats that he had done it for some select friends. He had done it for universities. He had done it for Holocaust survivors and their children and even for Elie Wiesel. Why not ask him to turn their spare ten million bucks into sixteen? His reputation made them believers. And once again, Briscoe remembers Paul Sann’s ancient city room creed: “If you want it to be true, it usually isn’t.”