Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

— Pray for me.

— I will.

— And above all, for my wife.

Ali walks blindly now to the wall of the tiny room in the JTTF, feels for the light switch. Flicks it on. He blinks in the hard blue light of the fluorescent ceiling bulbs. The pale green walls are blank. Then he steps to the sink, turns on the tap. Thinking: This is like a cell in a very good prison. I am sentenced to solitary.

Never thought I’d survive Mary Lou. Not because I’m older, because of this job. You race to a domestic dispute and a man and a woman stop beating the shit out of each other and turn on you. Both of them. A knife or a gun, that’s part of the deal. Or there’s a robbery of a jewelry store in Chinatown, and you see the guy running through the screaming crowd, and a truck blocks his way, and he turns and fires. Over and over again. Day by day, year by year. Life in this job is a goddamned lottery, with odds against. Ali Watson always thought she would bury him. Why you, Mary Lou? Why not me?

He dries his face, runs a comb through thinning hair. He sees that his eyes are rimmed with red. And turns away from the mirror. Now I have to do the clerical stuff. There’s nobody else. Just me. Arrange a funeral. In Brooklyn. Pick the cemetery too. Dodge the press. Plead national security or some goddamned thing. Ask Ray Kelly to help. Call the lawyer about insurance.

First I gotta find someone else.

8:50 a.m. Sam Briscoe. Publisher’s office, Lipstick Building, Manhattan.

He is sitting on a leather couch in the reception area, casually scanning the New York Times. His hat and coat are in the closet. He is warm in his suit jacket. Behind him on the wall are raised letters in Caslon bold, spelling out the name chosen long ago by Elizabeth Elwood: “World Enterprises, Inc.” Simple and modest. There is a large portrait of her by Everett Raymond Kinstler on the right side of the lettering, placed there after her death. The portrait perfectly captures her intelligent, sympathetic eyes. It was commissioned by her husband long ago, and hung over the fireplace in the living room on Sutton Place until he died. Then she moved it into the library. Her son Richard moved it here, after the apartment was sold. He donated most of her books to the public library, but Briscoe is certain that he chose none of them for himself.

He has been waiting now for twenty minutes, and the receptionist has explained with chilly vagueness that the publisher knows he is here. The door into his office remains shut and Briscoe knows why. He glances at Forbes, New York magazine, and the lone copy of the Friday edition of the World, with its wraparound and the faces of the two women. He wishes he could stretch out and sleep.

The door opens. And a man and a woman emerge, holding coats before them in laced fingers. They are obviously from Homicide, but too young for Briscoe to know them. Richard Elwood is behind them, his white shirt open, tieless, looking solemn.

— Thanks again, Sergeant, he says. It’s a horrible, horrible tragedy, and I hope you catch whoever did it very soon.

— We will, the male cop says, while the woman nods. They shake hands with Elwood, glance at Briscoe, and go to the outer door leading to the elevators. Elwood gestures to Briscoe to come in. They shake hands briskly and Elwood closes the door behind them.

— Hello, Sam, Elwood says. Great paper today. You were right to do the wrap.

— Thanks, Richard.

— I just wish it had never happened.

— Me too.

The office has more square feet than the old apartment on East 49th Street. Briscoe glances around and sees that everything remains as it was a few months earlier, when he last came for a visit. The bar. A cork wall behind Elwood’s desk, busy with a collage of index cards, newspaper clippings, Post-its, business cards. A wall with framed photographs of his mother with Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary, Mike Bloomberg, Bush the Father, and young Elwood himself. One of him as a little boy. Through a wide window Briscoe can see Queens. Elwood leads the way to the sitting area, with a couch, two wing chairs, and a low table. A Mark Rothko rises above the couch, all reds and yellows. The table is bare except for a single copy of the World. Elwood sits in a corner of the couch, and gestures for Briscoe to take the near chair.

— Cynthia Harding was a wonderful woman, Elwood says.

— She was. Did the cops tell you anything new?

Elwood stares at his hands.

— Not much, he says. They have two theories. One, a guy saw guests leaving the party, waited, took a chance on the door being open, and got lucky. He finds the Watson woman in the kitchen. She runs up the stairs, yelling. He stabs her. Then Cynthia comes out of the bedroom, and he stabs her too. Then starts a fire and runs.

Briscoe waits. Then:

— What’s the other theory?

— It was somebody one of them knew. Maybe both of them knew.

Briscoe stares at Elwood.

— The Watsons have a son, Briscoe says. In his early twenties.

Elwood shakes his head slowly.

— They didn’t mention that. I mean, would a son kill his mother? Like that? I guess, maybe. Like you told me once: It’s a tabloid city. But, ah, hell, I know they never tell everything to people like us. Until they’re, like, sure.

Elwood rises abruptly.

— You want coffee, Sam?

— Sure.

Elwood goes to the door, opens it, whispers to the receptionist. He comes back, but remains standing. He breathes in heavily.

— Sam, I hate to say this. But I’m closing the paper.

A pause.

— When?

— Now. Today.

He lifts the paper, holding each corner with thumb and forefinger.

— This is the last issue of the New York World. My mother’s paper.

He bends and lays the newspaper on the low table. He turns his back and faces Queens. Briscoe rises, removes his jacket, and drapes it on the back of his chair.

— That’s a mistake, Richard. We own this story. They’ll want more.

Elwood turns, a smile on his face.

— On Saturday? Maybe snow coming tonight? Come on, Sam. Get real.

Briscoe comes up beside him. They can each see the dumb blank faces of high-rise apartment houses, a sliver of the East River, condos where there once were squat fuel tanks on the Queens side. A fragment of the 59th Street Bridge. A shard of distant Citi Field. Briscoe thinks: Where is the Pepsi sign?

— It’s inevitable, Sam. Closing the paper.

The door opens behind them and the receptionist crosses the room holding a tray with two cups, a silver pot, some pastries.

— Just leave it on the table, please, Elwood says.

— Yes, sir, she says, and goes out.

Elwood is quiet for a beat. Then:

— Where was I?

— Inevitable.

— You know, the delivery system is changing, very fast. The ads have dried up. And eighty percent of our expenses go to paper, ink, and delivery. Eighty percent. Not to journalism.

— You need to—

— I need to close the thing, Sam. But that won’t be the end of the World. I’ve been working for months on the plan.

— What plan? I haven’t heard about any plan.

— Let me show you. We have a website already, as you know, so—

Briscoe has almost never looked at the website. Thinks: The kids who do the mechanics work right here, in this building. The three of them combined as old as I am. He has met them once but can’t remember a single name. He wonders if they smoke. Elwood walks to his desk, Briscoe behind him, and sits before the computer to the side of his desk. Briscoe knows what’s coming. Then it’s before him, the home page, in handsome Caslon, bold and medium, a photo from Afghanistan, a local angle on health care.