Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

— Sí, Señor Lewis.

She begins writing with the lead pencil. The point is blunt. Forrest is silent, but she can hear his dry breathing. He must have stopped smoking. There is no odor of nicotine in the dirty air. He can hear when she finishes writing.

— Now, listen to me, muchacha. When you go downstairs, see Jerry. Make sure you see him. The bald guy at the front desk.

— Señor, I…

— See him.

He embraces her. She kisses his leathery cheek.

— Mil gracias, Señor Lewis. Para todo.

She takes her coat, pulls it on, adds the hat. She feels as if she will never see him again.

— This is not good-bye, he says. No es adios. Es hasta muy pronto. Until very soon.

— Sí, señor, she says. And opens the door.

— Mucha suerte, she whispers.

He chuckles and says: Luck is what we both need.

And she’s gone. Forrest can hear her steps receding on the tile of the hallway.

He picks up the telephone.

10:10 a.m. Malik Shahid. Sixth Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Jamal sits at the kitchen table, his back to the bright garden, facing Malik. He is trying to look relaxed, dressed in a cashmere sweater, white J. Crew turtleneck, slacks, his left foot encased in a desert boot, perched on his right knee. He peers at Malik through slightly tinted yellowish glasses. His beard is neatly trimmed. Buppie of the month, Malik thinks, another infidel fuck. My friend Jamal. My jihadist comrade.

— What are you gonna do, Malik? he says.

— Whattaya think I’m gonna do?

— I don’t know. I know what you should do.

— Yeah? What’s that?

— Call your father. Go see him. Don’t run.

— Shit, Malik says, dragging the word across three syllables.

— You know they’re looking for you, Jamal says.

— Why me?

— Malik, your mother’s been murdered by someone. Along with the woman she worked for. A rich, well-known woman. It’s all over TV. It’s on the radio. The cops want to talk to everyone who might know why. Or who.

— You know how I feel, Jamal. My mother’s been dead for years.

— Stop shittin’ yourself, brother.

Malik goes quiet, his eyes wandering to the sink, the dishwasher, the stove. Jamal has been a dark silhouette against the brightness of the garden. Now he flattens his foot on the kitchen floor, and leans forward.

— You can’t stay here, man. You know how my wife—

— I came for our stuff, Jamal. The box. You know, with—

— It’s not here, Malik. You think I’m nuts?

— Where is it?

Malik’s face hardens. Jamal jerks a thumb to his left.

— Down there, a block and a half. Been there three years, at least. At the bottom of the Gowanus.

— What? You never asked me if—

— You were in the wind, man. How’m I suppose to find you? Facebook? Call information? Google?

— You coulda buried it in the yard.

— You think my wife wouldn’t notice? Get real.

Silence. Jamal stands, folds his arms across his chest. The tree in the garden is skeletal, with an icy sheen.

— Can I sleep here a few hours?

Jamal turns. Without his beard, Malik looks younger, even forlorn, or lost.

— My wife is due back soon. She just dropped my daughter at nursery school, then went shopping. I mean, you said you seen her leave. The house is too small for you to sleep here without her seein’ you.

He doesn’t have to spell out the rest. Malik knows that Jamal’s wife is the kind of infidel bitch would call the cops on a Muslim.

— Why would you want the stuff? Jamal says.

Malik doesn’t answer. He rises, stands aimlessly, folding and unfolding his arms, then leans against the stove.

— I hope you’re not planning some fucking show, Malik. Kill yourself, take a lotta people with you.

— Shut up.

— Like these dumb-ass white guys, all packing heat, walk into a gym or a church or a campus, start shooting, kill a bunch a’ people, then shoot themselves. Two-day wonders in the tabloids. Then nobody knows their names.

Malik whips around from the stove, slicing the air with a carving knife.

— Shut the fuck up, Jamal!

Silence.

Jamal’s face trembles. He eyes the five-inch blade.

Then Malik lowers the knife.

— Sorry, he whispers.

He lays the knife on the stovetop, turns, and walks quickly down the hall to the gate under the stoop. He zippers his coat.

Jamal waits, hears the gate clang. He feels his body go rubbery and boneless. He struggles to breathe.

10:15 a.m. Sam Briscoe. New York Luncheonette, 135 East 50th Street, Manhattan.

The waiter takes the plates away, with their traces of scrambled eggs and crisp bacon and the crust of an English muffin. He puts the check beside Briscoe’s cup and refills the cup with black decaf. Briscoe tries to remember what he has forgotten in his need to fill these coming hours with details. Clerking death. The process he first saw when he was ten and one of his Irish aunts had to arrange a wake for her dead husband. Don’t grieve, or at least not now. Take care of details. Deal with the boring parts. Get too busy for weeping. The aunt said to Briscoe’s mother: I’m too damned busy to feel sorry for anyone, even myself.

Using the hated cell phone, Briscoe had called Matt Logan first, waking him up, telling him what had happened. I don’t want you to hear the news from the new media, Briscoe said.

Logan laughed: I already did. That CelineWire one. You know, Wheeler, the schmuck you fired a couple years ago.

Briscoe laughed, and said, Never fire a guy who can type. He explained that he would cash out, and recommend to the publisher that Matt run the new online version of the World.

— Am I being punished? Logan said.

— No, Briscoe said. But you’ll be getting paid.

Then he called Janet, his secretary, and told her to call a staff meeting for five o’clock today. They’ll all have the news already, he said. But there’ll be forms to fill out, applying for the jobs that will be left. And we have to say good-bye. He told her to call each of them. To meet in the city room. Everybody who could make it. Sportswriters and photographers and advertising guys and pressmen included. Closed to outside press. He gave Janet the news too, of course, and told her not to worry, she’d still have a job.

— Yeah? she said. But I work for you.

In a way, that was true. She’d worked for him about a dozen years, a lifetime in newspapers. He told her everything would be okay. At least for now, he added. But he wanted her to start packing his office things, the books, and photographs, and files. The Hermes 3000. The pica rule. You know, he said. The stuff.

He told her that he would call Helen Loomis himself, later, since she had worked a double shift through the night.

— Let her sleep, he said. Janet started to get weepy, and said, This ain’t right.

— No, it’s not, Briscoe said. But you have to eat.

Then he called the publisher back, making sure that it was okay to name Matt Logan the new editor. Elwood said yes, but only if Briscoe agreed to become editor emeritus, serving as an adviser to TheWorld.com. Briscoe said he wanted to think it over but would have his lawyer call about details. Elwood said: Don’t worry, Sam. Either way, you’ll get everything that’s due you.

Now Briscoe sits in the coffee shop. For the first time in years, he is in a coffee shop without a newspaper on the table. There is nothing else to read except the menu and the check. He thinks: I need a slim volume of Yeats to carry around with me.

He pays the check and walks out into the cold sunshine. The sidewalk is less crowded now. The people with jobs are all squatting above the street in front of their computers, trying to will a Big Score out of the bouncing numbers. But there are very few shoppers entering the stores, and no tourists at all. The sky is now darkening in the west. He starts assembling a list of other calls to make. His daughter, Nicole, first. In Paris. Haberman at the Times. Myron at the Post and Ng at the News. Or just call Mike Oreskes at the AP. Briscoe will call Susan Jones at the museum and ask her to send a crew to pack the cartoons and the old typewriters in the hall. To ask for Janet.