Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  Here at last is University Place. Across the street was where the Cookery stood for so long, with Barney Josephson running it.

  –Didn’t Alberta Hunter sing there? Sandra says. I was too young to ever see her. But I heard she was great, here in the Cookery.

  –You’re right. It was full of life, that place.

  –She’s gone too.

  –She is.

  Sandra squeezes his arm a bit harder. He doesn’t mention the Cedars, doesn’t try to explain that it stood right here, where this ugly fucking white-brick building is now, that Pollock used to come here, shit-faced, and Franz Kline, with his grace and good manners, and how Briscoe was infatuated one winter with Helen Frankenthaler, and her big swashbuckling paintings, and her beautiful face, and how Frankenthaler was in love with a critic. A critic, for Chrissakes!

  At the corner of 9th Street they cross University Place. Sandra releases her grip. Briscoe takes her elbow and opens the door to the Knickerbocker. They go in. To the right, in the bar, five or six people are watching New York One and images of the storm. He turns away. He doesn’t want to see the rest of the news, and he’s sure Sandra doesn’t either. The large dining room is half empty. Sandra unzips her coat and smiles as the maitre d’ comes to greet them. Sandra has a beautiful smile.

  They are led to a booth for four, lots of room for coats and hats and a handbag, and out of the sight line to the TV. Sandra is wearing a black sweater, black slacks, no jewelry, no lipstick. He doesn’t stare at her. But when she speaks, he can see her full lips, her cheekbones, the many variations of ebony. He flashes on the ebony pencils that copy editors used for marking stories written on paper by typewriters.

  –For the first time in my life, Sandra says, I fainted this morning.

  She tells him about seeing the front page of the World in the lobby of the Lipstick Building, and coming to with men leaning over her.

  –It was like someone had punched me in the heart, she says.

  –Yes. I know.

  –Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say this is about me. Above all, it’s about Cynthia. That means it’s about you too. In a different way, a larger sense, it’s about a lot of people who never met her.

  –That’s the truth, Sandra. But it is about you too.

  –We have to make sure that her… work goes on.

  –It will.

  A waiter comes and takes a drink order. White wine for Sandra. Diet Pepsi for Sam.

  –How long since you stopped drinking? she says, smiling.

  –I don’t know. Years. Maybe thirteen?

  –So you were drinking still, that time in Jamaica, when I got my first job as a waitress?

  Sam smiles.

  –I was. You did a hell of a job.

  She smiles again.

  –Thanks. That’s when I first met Cynthia too. That same party. And she got me to talk about books. Above all, about the pictures in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I couldn’t even read yet.

  –Books were her favorite subject.

  The past tense again. Drinks arrive. She stares into her wine.

  –Oh, Sam, what are we going to do?

  The question hangs there. The waiter returns and takes their food orders. Shrimp for Sam, arugula salad for Sandra. Lentil soup for both. Then he remembers the slip of paper with her number, plucks it from his shirt pocket, shows it to her.

  –I was going to call you when I got home.

  –To tell me what?

  He recites the clerical details. About the possible Mass at Old St. Patrick’s, and the burial up in Woodlawn in the Bronx, as close as possible to Herman Melville. He tells her that the library on 42nd Street would surely have a memorial service too. There’ll be a scholarship at NYU in Cynthia’s name, he says, for students of library science. This while they sip on soup.

  –What about the house on Patchin Place?

  He pauses.

  –She told me once that she wanted it to be used by poets, from all over the world. Maybe four or five at a time. Poets who need time off, just to brood. Now—

  He shrugs. Now the house is one of the most notorious murder scenes in the city. He doesn’t need to tell her that. Or that some poets might actually be inspired by the ghosts.

  –And you? he says, changing the subject. How are things, otherwise?

  She tells him about Myles Compton, how he left, how the FBI came to visit, how she had to get a lawyer, and how she has not heard from the man, not yet. She doesn’t know if he’s in America or Europe or Peru, doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. He feels an unstated sadness in her voice, but says nothing.

  –And you? she says.

  He tells her about the death of the World, and the wake in the city room, and the website that starts Monday. She squeezes his forearm.

  –Oh, Sam, what a day for you.

  –You too.

  From the bar he hears a burst of whiskey laughter, rising above some music. Lady Day. “Moonlight and love songs / Never out of date…” He thinks: I need to call my daughter again. I need to sleep.

  6:50 p.m. Beverly Starr. Belleville restaurant, Park Slope, Brooklyn.

  Almost time, she thinks. Check paid. Coffee still hot. She is at a corner table on the side of the long bistro, sitting alone on the banquette, with a view of the restaurant from one wood-paneled end to the windows on Fifth Avenue. Snow is falling. Chester Gould snow. Big fat flakes falling on Shoulders or Flattop or Mumbles. She is drawing in a small notebook, making notes. And enjoying the comforts of the familiar. The bar stacked with bottles and a few high stools. Mirrors on both sides of the long room, for tracking waiters or prospects.

  She often comes here in summer, when the doors are open to the air, walking up the hill from her house, then three blocks to the left. It’s always packed with young mothers who park their Hummer-sized strollers outside and hold kids on their laps. On this night of snow, only a half dozen other tables are occupied, three of them by couples. The snow falls steadily on the parked cars.

  To the right of her table, four young women from the Like Brigade are drinking margaritas. The dreaded four-letter word is fired in tremulous salvos. She wishes she could call on the exterminating angel of her graphic novel. She blinks. Blinks again.

  She dials the car service on her cell.

  –Hey, it’s Beverly. How about ten minutes? In front of the Belleville.

  –Sure t’ing, Bev.

  She slides out from behind her table, walks to the coat rack, grabs her coat and hat, and heads for the door. Then goes out into 5th Street. And stands there. The snow is clean. The snow is odorless. The snow doesn’t lie.

  Under a lamp, she pauses and looks up at the snowflakes as they fall. She focuses on one, about fifteen feet above her. Separating from the others. Blinks. The flake has just been born. It sways from side to side, as if hearing soothing music. She blinks again. Then the flake hurries down to the cement of the city. She counts, and at the number two, the snowflake is gone forever.

  A car horn beeps on the corner. She turns.

  6:55 p.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street, Manhattan.

  That Old Guy with the white beard had warned him about the snow. The Old Guy in his own wheelchair. He was outside the church when the Mexicans carried Josh down the steps. Josh looked up at the sky, which resembled water in a glass when you pour some ink in it. The Old Guy pulled up beside him. He told Josh it was coming. The snow. He said, Don’t even think about being out in the snow, soldier.

  Then the Old Guy started giving Josh a short course in living in a wheelchair in New York. Those grades at the corner? the Old Guy said. We call them “cuts.” They are suppose to be one-eighth of an inch at the bottom. Surprise, surprise! Some of them are a full inch! Try to get up one! You need to use your weight! Lean forward, then move the fucking wheels like your life depends on them, which it does. Going down the cuts, lean back and lie low, go slow, don’t let your weight topple you face-first into the fucking street. For sure, some asshole driving a sa
nitation truck will back up and run over your head and turn the chair into an ashtray!

  –When you stop somewhere to admire the view or the ass of some broad, lock the chair. So it don’t roll in any direction! Don’t go near Sixteenth Street. It’s the worst street in New York. And stay off Madison Avenue in the Sixties, where all the rich people live. They don’t want cripples in the neighborhood, so they don’t have cuts. Or they’re at an angle. And late in the day and especially at night, don’t let any young assholes offer to carry you anywheres. Or push you. They think it’s funny to race you along a block or two, then let you roll… I’d like to shoot the fuckers!

  –In the snow you can’t even see the potholes so you’re goin’ along crossing the street and everything looks even and whoof! You go into a fucking hole full of snow and fall on the side and hit your head maybe, and break a fucking arm maybe, and the buses and trucks and cars, especially them Jersey drivers, are all honking and yelling, and you figure: Fuck it, I may as well die. And here in Fourteenth Street, especially with snow, don’t go over past Ninth Avenue. There’s cobblestones there and they get like glass from the snow and you slide all over the fucking place and there’s Pakistani limo drivers don’t know where they are, tryin’ to fine some restaurant in the Meatpacking District, they call it now. And shplat! They kill you too. All right now, soldier, the Old Guy says, his beard as white as the snow. Enjoy New York.

  And he was gone, moving in the other direction. And here is Josh Thompson alone, with fewer people on the sidewalks, fewer cars or buses or trucks. He is aimed at the river, facing the street of cobblestones leading to the old mosque, leading to Aladdin’s Lamp.

  He begins pushing the wheels, slowly. Heading west. To the minarets. He looks back for the old Mexican woman who was so nice to him. She’s nowhere in sight.

  7:10 p.m. Malik Shahid. Muhlenberg Branch of New York Public Library, West 23rd Street, Manhattan.

  Malik is alone at a small table near the windows, the snow falling on the street behind him. Again, he is trying hard to look normal. A solitary man among seven or eight other solitaries. Wearing his coat as if permanently cold. His cheap black beret stuffed in a pocket. Far from the radiator on the far end of the room. He is making marks on a ruled yellow pad with a new ballpoint pen. Both letters have been written and he wants to read the long one again. The envelope is addressed to Michael Daly at the Daily News. The columnist. They’ll put it on the front page, with big fat headlines. The envelope already carries a stamp. It is not yet sealed.

  Malik has a large book open in front of him, and is trying to look as if he is studying it and making notes. The book is The Thousand and One Nights. The heathen book that tells the story of Ala’ad-din, meaning “nobility of the faith.” What faith? Not Islam. He looks intensely at a page, holds a finger to a sentence, then writes on the yellow pad. Like a scholar doing research. Pressing angrily with his ballpoint pen. If the heavy white bitch behind the desk even bothers to look at him, she will see a young black man, doing work toward a degree, maybe. The words written on his yellow pad say something different from the words he fingers in the book. He does not see the words in the book.

  Aladdin’s Lamp.

  Aladdin’s Lamp.

  Aladdin’s Lamp.

  Aladdin’s Lamp.

  In his head, the words are like a chant. From a madrassa. Or like Sirhan Sirhan in his journal, the words used as the name of a book Malik once read.

  RFK must die.

  RFK must die.

  Malik glances at the clock. Thinks: Almost time to leave. He removes the longer letter and reads:

  To Everybody:

  If you read this, I am in Paradise. I have obeyed the commands of Allah to do my best to cleanse the world of sin and corruption. I have chosen to obey the Quran. In the filthy corrupt West, all sin is permitted. I have chosen to follow the command of Allah. To erase. To purge. To cleanse.

  I have purged my own mother, as commanded. I have purged her slave owner. I have purged the sinful imam who defied his faith by collaborating with enemies. I wish I could have purged my so-called father, who is a policeman for the oppressors, and dared to use the name Ali. That will be the duty of some future servant of Allah, some other soldier in jihad. In another few hours I will purge many other sinners who defile what was once a holy mosque.

  In Paradise, I shall live forever in the company of those I love and those who loved me. I shall live with the blessed ones. I shall live with Allah’s heroes and servants. I hope my example will inspire others.

  Allahu akbar!

  His signature is boldly written at the bottom. With the date.

  He folds the letter, slips it into the stamped envelope, licks the gummed edges of the flap, and seals it. He does not need to read the stamped and sealed letter to his so-called father. It’s very short. Addressed to him at the house in Brooklyn.

  All I wanted was to borrow some money to take my woman to a doctor. Your wife sneered at me, told me to leave, threatened to call the police. She is dead now, along with her slave owner, and so is my woman and our child. And the fake imam.

  I didn’t kill them.

  You did.

  M.

  Time to go. He pulls on his beret and closes the book, tears off the top page of the yellow pad, and slips the pad beneath the book. He folds the page and pushes it into his back pocket. Thinking: I don’t care if they find out I did it. After I do it. But some cop stops me on the way, he might wonder what this nigger is doing with a yellow pad. Malik stretches in a feigned sleepy way, zippers his coat, pulls the beret more snugly on top of his head. Then he nods and smiles like a young Uncle Tom at the white woman behind the counter, and goes out into the snow.

  Across the street, Malik sees a young woman leave the Chelsea Hotel with a large black dog on a leash. A Lab. Thinking: Just like the Lab we had at home when I was what? Ten? His name was Sarge. My so-called father trained him. Had a guy come over from the bomb squad to help. Taught Sarge to wait. Taught him to sit. Teaching me at the same time. Telling me to sit. Like it was a joke. Doing that to me all my life, even after Sarge died, only four years old. Blamed me for the dog’s death too. I was walking him down by Myrtle Avenue, and some bitch crossed his path, some bitch in heat most likely, and Sarge lunged for her, I lost the leash, and a bus hit him and killed him. Allah surely had some reason. But I didn’t know that then.

  He walks to Eighth Avenue, drops the letters in a mailbox, crosses the street, heads downtown. Thinking: I better not take another bus. The bus I took to 23rd Street, that worked. A gamble I won. Thinking: They don’t check the buses like they do the subways. They put a cop on every bus, they’d have to start a New York draft. Subways are different. He remembers the signs: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Yeah. Be a snitch. God bless America.

  He sees a black man in the doorway of a shuttered store. Cardboard cup loose in his right hand. His eyes closed. No hat. No gloves. One leg under his ass, the other stretched out, snow gathering on his jeans and his unlaced sneaker. Malik thinks: How you like that fucking Obama now, baby?

  He walks to the next block, steps into a deep doorway of a store with metal shutters covering the windows. Stamps his feet. Flexes his hands. Stands there watching the snow fall. And remembers that meeting he went to, out past Brownsville in East New York. Two years ago? Three? Less? Set up by Aref. Four other believers showed up. No names, please, said Aref. Malik didn’t know one of them. Most of them Malik’s age. Two guys with Paki accents, but all of them arriving separately. Nothing in the room but a table, folding chairs, and couches. A safe house. For believers on the run.

  Then an older guy arrived, maybe sixty, clean-shaven, a little fat, losing his hair. Gray suit and tie. Carrying a briefcase. He looked like a professor Malik had during his first semester at CUNY. Teaching some course in literature. He laid the briefcase on the table, nodded at Aref, who locked the door. Then he snapped open the top of the briefcase and took out a vest. Spread it wide. Said, “You al
l know what this is, right?”

  They all knew. They’d seen the vests on all the filthy anti-Muslim TV shows and the pages of tabloid newspapers. Yeah, they knew. Holding the vest, the older guy gave a brief lecture. Explained that Semtex was a plastic explosive, made in the Czech Republic. That it had no smell, he explained, but even one of those red bars had tremendous explosive power. The vest held six. They could only be ignited by one of these. At which point he held up a small detonator. “You slide the wire inside one of the pouches, attach it to a wire wrapped around a Semtex bar, and then press the button. That’s all.” And if the wearer is shot at, one bullet hitting a Semtex bar would do the same thing. Ka-boom.

  The older man paused, then explained that Semtex was used by various groups around the world. The most famous case, he said in his flat voice, happened in 1988, when a small amount was used to blow up a Pan Am plane over Lockerbie, Scotland. This model, he said, was developed by Hamas. Malik saw two of the other students nodding in approval. Then the man was finished. He folded the vest, laid it back in the briefcase, closed the top. He paused, and said: “Allahu akbar.” And walked to the door.

  Standing in this doorway on Eighth Avenue, staring at the snow, Malik wonders where that man is right now. And the four others who were his audience that night. He knows where Aref is. Tomorrow, all of them, except Aref, will remember that night. No matter where they are. The South Bronx or Somalia. They will see Malik’s face in the papers or on the TV, and know him. And pray for him. And praise him. For rubbing the magic lamp.

  7:20 p.m. Beverly Starr. Washington Street, Manhattan.

  They are making good time. The driver took the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, then West Street, where she saw snow falling through the emptiness of the place where the twin towers once stood. Then side streets. The driver explaining in the rhythms of old Brooklyn: Figget Fourteen’ Street. Cobblestones there, in this weather we’d slide right inta a furniture store… Then here, with the High Line rising to the left. Straight out of Gotham. Bob Kane would have loved it. Jerry Robinson would’ve drawn it. The wind blowing snow from the west.