Tabloid City

by Pete Hamill

  Ali goes up the steps two at a time, and the uniformed cops greet him. The right-hand door is now fully open. He asks a sergeant where the SWAT team is. On the way. No time, Ali says. I’m going in. Cover my back.

  Then Ali is inside. A dozen men and women are huddled against the far edge of the empty dance floor. Faces frozen. Others peering from behind the bar. Maybe more upstairs, hiding in bathrooms or lounges. Son of a bitch.

  He looks up the stairs and sees his son near the top.

  Malik.

  The only person who matters now.

  Eyes wide. The suicide belt across his chest. Red Semtex. His lips are saying words, full of reverence and farewell.

  Salem al-Hazmi.

  Hani Hanjour.

  Satam al-Suqami…

  In his right hand, the detonator. Thumb on the button.

  –Put that thing down. Malik, Ali says in a soft voice.

  Waleed al-Shehri.

  Abdulaziz al-Omari.

  He is staring now at Ali, his voice rising in defiance as he recites the names of the September 11 hijackers.

  –Malik, don’t do this.

  –Who are you to tell me what to do?

  –I’m your father. I still love you, son.

  –My so-called father.

  –No, your only father.

  Ali raises his .38 and aims it at his son. Thinking: Don’t hit a Semtex charge.

  Hamza al-Ghamdi.

  Mohand al-Shehri.

  Malik is breathing more heavily now, coming to the end of his private rosary. His eyes are calmer. Then he laughs.

  –One more, Malik says. God’s commander.

  Before he can say “Mohamed Atta,” Ali fires.

  Malik looks frozen. There’s a small hole in his forehead. His eyes are wide. Then he crumples, falling down the stairs like a mannequin. His head hits several steps. His hands are open and still and empty.

  Ali Watson exhales. So does the room. Malik is not moving. His open eyes see nothing and Ali knows that he is dead.

  He walks over to Malik, looks down at his face. No longer masked with a thick beard. The face of his son, whom he often had bounced on his knee. Bright blood is leaking from his brow, running to the side of his nose, down his cheeks. Ali sits on a step, and drapes an arm over Malik’s shoulder, hugs him tightly, feeling his vanishing warmth. Tears fill Ali’s eyes.

  He whispers: Oh, Mary Lou. I am so goddamned sorry.

  8:54 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Fourteenth Street.

  At the foot of the whitening staircase to the smoking area, he raises a hand to Helen Loomis and she takes it, coming down one step at a time. She’s unsteady. The side of her left cheek is scraped. Her eyes are blurry. He hugs her. She has heard the same sound. A single blam. Like a punctuation mark. Then silence. Then the uniformed cops relax. Opening both doors wide now.

  –That’s that, Sam whispers. The snow is finer now and icier, blowing harder.

  Now firemen in full gear are at the scene. The SWAT team has arrived, looking frustrated in dark blue combat gear as the sergeant waves to them that it’s over. Plainclothes cops are talking to the people now leaving, most wearing coats, witnesses now, showing identification. Some of them are weeping. Briscoe saw Ali Watson go in. He has not seen him come out. Most of the paparazzi have fled, to send out what they captured on their cameras, but a few remain, and reporters are arriving from other papers. Fonseca comes over to Briscoe, glancing at his watch, making notes in a spiral pad.

  –Stick around, Briscoe says. This isn’t over.

  –I know, Mr. Briscoe. Did you see the guy who ran in?

  –No.

  –Neither did I. I was flat on my ass. But one of the cops told me he might have been wearing a suicide vest. I did see the cop that went in to get him. The cop that must’ve shot him. It was Ali Watson.

  –The kid with the vest might be his son, Malik…

  –Jesus Christ.

  –Check it out. Even a website needs wood.

  Briscoe taps Fonseca lightly on the shoulder, then leads Helen to the street. He sees three cops near the far wall. Four photographers are shooting in a kind of frenzy, leaning in, squatting, aiming at something on the wet sidewalk, while a young plainclothes cop tries to control them. Briscoe moves past them slowly, guiding Helen by the elbow. They are looking down at a gun. To Briscoe, it appears to be a MAC-10. The contras loved it in Nicaragua. So did the crack dealers here at home. Maybe there was an accomplice? Nobody touches the MAC-10, not even a cop. Briscoe looks back at the rubble of shoes, hats, torn or discarded clothes, a handbag. No sign of Fonseca. He should see this. Maybe they let him inside.

  He and Helen start walking east. The snow is thicker now.

  –Sam, we’ll never get a cab around here.

  –We gotta try.

  –We could both end up in St. Vincent’s.

  –Eventually. Not tonight.

  The snow keeps falling. Helen Loomis starts to shudder, then shake, as if ice has pierced her body. Briscoe hugs her, until the shaking stops. She grips his arm and they resume walking. Across the street, mannequins in bikinis pose in the bright window of a place called La Perla. They pass the dark shop of the Ground Zero Museum Workshop. Briscoe looks back and sees photographers and TV cameramen shooting from the rails of the High Line. Two different TV guys are doing stand-ups. He sees signs on the street now:

  LOFTS FOR LEASE

  And

  RETAIL SPACE

  MADE TO MEASURE

  Lights still burn in clothing stores. Hugo Boss. Moschino. No customers are gazing at the clothes. At the corner of Ninth Avenue, there are some people in the Apple store. Briscoe thinks: I should be calling in notes to the city desk. Helen should be taking them for tomorrow’s paper. Instead, we are here on a night of brutality, escaping like lost members of Napoleon’s army, Moscow behind us. Looking for a taxi.

  Two ambulances from St. Vincent’s go by, making a slow throaty sound in the wet snow, followed by a vehicle from the fire department rescue squad. Each heading west. Into the snow. Briscoe and Helen cross Ninth Avenue to a small triangle of a park, the benches piling with snow. Across the street to the left is the Old Homestead Steakhouse, where there were usually cabs, even in snowstorms. But Briscoe can see whirling dome lights two blocks uptown, just past the Chelsea Market, sealing the avenue from any new traffic. There are no cabs arriving at the Old Homestead or waiting to depart. A car with NYP press plates turns into 14th Street, and the unseen driver taps the horn in greeting but keeps moving past them to Aladdin’s Lamp.

  –I wish I could write tonight, Helen Loomis says in a sad blurred voice.

  –You will. In your memoirs.

  She chuckles. Then from 15th Street, a car turns, and a uniformed cop wearing an orange vest uses his club to point it downtown. The car moves slowly past the Old Homestead, aimed at 14th Street and what becomes Hudson Street on the far side. Briscoe steps out of the park, Helen behind him. The car slows, then stops on the far curb, the engine still pumping exhaust fumes into the falling snow.

  –Christ, Helen, I hope these aren’t folks from “Vics and Dicks.”

  –My people.

  A young woman steps out of the back door. There are other people in the car, which has snow gathered on its hood and roof.

  –Helen! Hey, Helen, it’s me, Janice!

  Helen squints hard, then relaxes.

  –It’s the woman who loaned me the cell phone, she says.

  The young woman shouts, Where you going?

  –Second Avenue and Ninth Street, Briscoe shouts.

  –Come on! Janice shouts. We have room for one more.

  Janice waddles awkwardly across the snow in a lumpy way to Helen, takes her arm.

  –Go, Briscoe says. I can walk to the subway.

  –I can’t leave you here alone, Sam.

  –I’ll be fine, Briscoe says. Go.

  Helen allows herself to be pulled to the open door of the car, where he can see the heads and blurred faces of other
s, packed tightly. Helen is shoved in by Janice, who follows her, and slams the door.

  –Go, Briscoe whispers.

  He waits until the car pulls away, crossing 14th Street, moving into Hudson Street, becoming two more dirty red eyes in the snow. Briscoe stands there for a long moment.

  9:10 p.m. Beverly Starr. Pastis restaurant, Meatpacking District, Manhattan.

  She is at the bar in the crowded restaurant. Waiting for the guy from the car service. Some streets blocked. Sipping a tequila and tonic. Her heart still beating fast. Her right cheek is scraped, and she pats it with a cloth napkin soaked in peroxide that the maitre d’ brought her. Other refugees from the benefit are at various tables, faces somber with a kind of blankness. She thinks: Post-traumatic stress disorder? They are whispering. Holding hands. Waiting for something that is not food.

  She stares at her drink, closes her eyes. Sees her own slide show. A woman’s snapped ankle flopping like a sock. A gaping older man who has lost his front teeth. A fat guy in an Ali Baba suit falling back under a high-heeled stampede. Opens her eyes. Snow still falling.

  This is the kind of night when I need some guy to hold me. To whisper to me. To tell me that everything’s gonna be all right.

  Then smiles, and wonders who won the auction.

  9:11 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Fourteenth Street.

  He crosses the wide street to the downtown side, and begins to walk east, toward Eighth Avenue, where he can find a subway. The A or the C. He looks up at the buildings. Lights are burning in about half of them, with the shades drawn. Others are shadeless, windows on the storm. He sees one woman alone, watching the street, not moving. In another, there is diffused light from a television set. On the street, a lone woman walks a small dog. He steps around a Mega Millions sign, with a printed image of a man peering from behind the day’s prize. His face is hidden, but his hairline recedes. Can it be Rudy Giuliani?

  He slows now. His feet in their socks and boots are losing feeling. His gloved hands are numb. He imagines Helen Loomis in her apartment now. Or soon. Warming. Smoking a good-night cigarette. He wonders if her friend Federico the mambo dancer is across the street, moving to Tito Puente while the snow falls harder. He hopes so. He imagines Matt Logan, at home with his wife, wondering whether he can handle the brave new World of a website. Of course he can. News is news.

  Maybe Fonseca will file for the site tomorrow. Maybe he can talk to Ali Watson before the snow stops falling. Or do a portrait of the guy he shot. Whoever the hell he was. The best story? It’s his nutjob son. And he can be traced to Patchin Place. But maybe they don’t connect. Maybe he’s just a pissed-off former employee. Some neighbor says the music was too loud? An architecture critic? Who the hell knows? Maybe Fonseca will discover the guy had a co-conspirator, a backup, the one who dropped that MAC-10. Or discover what was most likely: the guy was alone. The story now is that one night after his wife was murdered, Ali Watson killed a guy in the line of duty. Those are the known facts. So far. No theories, please.

  The dead guy will soon be on a slab somewhere. Maybe even in the same freezing morgue as Mary Lou Watson. And Cynthia.

  Cynthia.

  I could not pray for her down at Patchin Place, Briscoe thinks. Backed up to the library fence twenty feet from Sandra Gordon, seeing the grief in Ali Watson’s eyes. And here I am in front of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. When Briscoe was young, it was called St. Bernard’s. The gate is open. He looks up the wet stone stairs at the red church doors. A light is burning above the arch. He starts up, then pauses. One door opens, and an older Mexican woman emerges, pulls her zipper to the top of her coat, buries her jaw in her scarf. He goes up a few more steps. She nods in a welcoming way. He goes to the top. He opens the red door and goes in.

  9:15 p.m. Sandra Gordon. Her apartment.

  The local news from New York 1 is on the set in her study. For possible news about Myles. The sound is off. She sits in an armchair, nibbling salted almonds, sipping a beer. Then she sees pictures of Aladdin’s Lamp, police cars, panicky crowds, a woman reporter with a microphone. She turns on the sound.

  … possible terrorist attack. At least one alleged terrorist is dead. Scores were injured fleeing the scene, when the armed terrorist displayed a suicide vest in the crowded club. Police say…

  That’s the place Janice wanted me to go to! Yes. Is she okay? Did she get hurt? Where the hell is she? A terrorist attack? On a disco? Makes no sense.

  Then the anchorman is on. Making a clumsy segue. Meanwhile, the investigation of the murders in Greenwich Village of… She clicks off the sound and looks away, sips the beer, gets up, walks to a window to watch the driving snow. She counts to fifty and turns to the set. The anchorman again. Then a head shot of Myles! A kind of mug shot, without numbers underneath. Flicks on sound. Police in Putnam County believe they have found the body of a Wall Street man who failed to show up at a federal grand jury today. The man: Myles Compton. The body was found by two snowboarders. The man was shot twice in the head. Federal investigators had no comment but—

  She turns off the set.

  Sits there in silence.

  Thinking: God, I’m too old for this.

  Refusing to shed even one more tear.

  9:16 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Our Lady of Guadalupe, 14th Street.

  There is no Mass under way, but the lights are shining. He has slipped into a pew in the rear. The familiar image of the Lady of Guadalupe is high on the altar, her dark Indian skin a sign of triumphant consolation, with some kind of painted blue stream spreading beneath her. He has seen her in many places. In Mexico, above all. In the old Mexico City cathedral where pilgrims come each December to celebrate her goodness, hundreds doing the last few miles on their knees, to leave painted tin retablos asking for her intercession. The lights in this church do not burn now at full strength, except on the Virgin herself. Green-painted pillars rise to the high dark ceiling. But Briscoe can see people scattered through the pews. Everyone is alone. No couples. No mothers and children. Few men at all. Up near the front on the right, there’s someone in a wheelchair. Out in the aisle. To the right and left of the altar, candles burn in rows, and one older woman goes up and drops a coin in a slot and lights a fresh one.

  Briscoe is certain he can smell the burning wax. Even here, far from the altar. He considers lighting some candles of his own. For Cynthia and Mary Lou. Of course. But for Ali Watson too. For Sandra. For her asshole boyfriend. For all the others, in those solitary rooms above the streets. For women scrubbing offices until the midnight hour. For baffled junkies in doorways. For my long-dead wife. For everyone at the paper. For the Fonseca kid, who thought he’d wear the same press card for years, and now… For all of them. People of the night.

  He hears the elegance of Gregorian chant seeping into the dark places of the church, imposing grace and order out of the past. A CD, for sure. Briscoe thinks: Maybe we could bury Cynthia out of this place.

  Maybe.

  She would like that.

  Briscoe tries again to pray. Once more, the words won’t come. And he can’t convince himself to walk up to the rack of guttering candles. He stands and hurries back to the doors. The cold hits him hard. He shudders, moves his hands like a prizefighter, snorts. Then goes down a shoveled path on the steps. He starts walking east, into the snow-drowned city. The wind is at his back.

  Pete Hamill is a novelist, journalist, editor, and screenwriter. He is the author of twenty previous books, including the bestselling novels Forever and Snow in August and the bestselling memoir A Drinking Life. He lives in New York City.

  www.petehamill.com

  Reading Group Guide

  TABLOID

  CITY

  A NOVEL BY

  PETE

  HAMILL

  A conversation with Pete Hamill

  Pete Hamill’s apartment is a New York bibliophile’s dream. It has high ceilings, wall-to-wall books (loosely organized by global region), and priceless natural light. When I arrive to talk with him about
his latest novel, Tabloid City, he apologizes for not having any coffee to offer, explaining that his wife, the novelist Fukiko Aoki, is currently in Japan. (She is apparently the coffee lover of the two.) I tell him that “it’s cool” and also that “water will be fine.” And it is.

  Hamill’s book takes place in a manic twenty-four-hour span in present-day New York City, and it’s a singularly bad day for newspaper editor Sam Briscoe. His beloved newspaper is being turned into a website, the love of his life has met with horrible tragedy, and the city is changing faster than he can adapt to, even assuming he wants to. Add to that the threat of an imminent terrorist attack and a vindictive blogger, and you have the makings of a tabloid experience in novel form, something that Hamill, the lifelong newspaperman, knows a little something about.

  On your website, you describe yourself as a generalist and not a specialist. This book, Tabloid City, seems to encapsulate many of your diverse interests, including newspapers, art, comics, and New York. You’ve reported on many of these things throughout your career, so what’s the benefit of putting them into fiction for you?

  Well, obviously one great advantage of fiction over journalism is the great difference between them. Fiction is an act of the imagination. I can go into the interior lives of people, which I can’t do in journalism. I can’t do that. People can tell me what their internal lives might be, or suggest them, but people lie, too. [Laughs.] And so as a journalist, you’re always skeptical about what people tell you. In this particular novel, I did use the tools of journalism. It’s a cliché about suspending the reader’s disbelief by getting the reportable world down as accurately as possible. And then within that, getting the imaginative sense of these characters, who can be anything—they can be composites, they can be lives that are suggested by people you knew long ago but who are dead and gone—you can take parts of their character and use them the way you want to. And that’s why I think so many journalists do eventually write fiction. Stephen Crane, Charles Dickens, Hemingway, and a whole slew of other much greater writers than I am. But they learned something from the journalism about its limitations. And then you try to use fiction to make some of that work in a believable way. So that’s what I try to do.