Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

— Mister, this is Joaquín, the woman says. He was in the war too.

The man smiles, salutes.

— You wan’ to go to church, soldier? he says.

Josh hesitates, then shrugs his okay. He wants to be warm.

— Thanks, man.

The two men lift the wheelchair, and the woman goes forward, waving people out of the way. They go up the stairs, and gently place the chair on stone blocks, facing large doors. The woman is on point, the officer of the patrol, followed by Josh and the two Mexican men. The grunts. She speaks to them in a low, soft voice. They pause, while the woman opens one of the two large doors. Josh is wheeled into a long, high-ceilinged church, with rows of wooden pews, a Mass under way on a distant altar. The rear pews are mostly empty. Josh thinks: That figures, these people work in the day. The space is warm, with an aroma of food and incense and the sound of a hymn being sung by a chorus. He doesn’t see a chorus. Must be a CD. Nice, though…

— Make yourself comfortable, soldier, the older man says, and both men walk away.

Josh sits on the aisle beside a pew. The woman touches his hand with her own warm bare fingers.

— Goo’bye, she says. You be okay here, okay? Warm. Safe. I go to work now. The guys, they’ll check when you want to leave.

And she hurries away too, leaving Josh Thompson alone.

2:35 p.m. Sandra Gordon. Her apartment.

She comes around the corner, after leaving the office and grabbing a fast lunch. And sees two men in overcoats waiting at the door of her apartment house. Aw, shit. One in a trench coat, the other in tweed. Each is hatless, with neatly trimmed hair. She has never met an FBI man in her life but has seen plenty of movies. She wonders what took them so long.

— Miss Gordon? says the one in the trench coat.

— Yes?

— I’m Special Agent Roberts from the FBI and—

— Can we step inside? she says.

— Of course.

The agent in the tweed coat opens the door, Sandra follows him, and Roberts steps in behind her. The day doorman looks up from behind the desk, his eyes wary. Sandra goes directly to him.

— Anything for me, Andy?

— Yes, ma’am.

He places a package of magazines, junk mail, letters, on the counter before her. He smiles thinly, even protectively, and glances at the FBI men. Sandra lifts her mail, turns to the two men.

— Can we talk down here?

— We’d prefer your apartment, ma’am.

— Why not?

They go up in the elevator. No words are spoken. She knows the men are her own age, even younger, and must have seen the same movies she did. They follow her out of the elevator, all of them pausing as she unlocks her door. They follow her into the apartment and she flicks on a light switch. She puts the mail on a chair, then shrugs off her coat and places it over the mail.

— Well? she says. What do you want to know?

— We’re looking for Myles Compton. Your friend. He was due in court this morning — a federal grand jury — and didn’t show.

She shakes her head slowly, gestures for the men to sit on the couch. She eases into a chair facing them. Before them on a low table is a large volume of photographs by Annie Leibovitz. Sandra tells the FBI men about Myles’s visit the night before, and how he said he had to go away, to Miami. And how he left. And how she hasn’t heard from him since then. No, he didn’t stay here for the night. No, she didn’t know where in Miami, or any connection to another flight. He was always vague.

— Did you know about the grand jury?

— Of course. It was in the papers. He said it was all about people connecting dots that don’t connect. I guess he meant you. Or the Justice Department.

— I see. Did he mention a certain Bulgarian?

— Not really, but it was in the papers. Yes. He said he was one of the investors. When I asked him about the newspaper story.

— Nothing else?

— We had a deal, Sandra says. He didn’t talk about his business, I didn’t talk about mine.

The silent man in the tweed coat makes notes, holding a small tape recorder against his pad with his thumb. Roberts says:

— Did you have a business relationship with him?

— Absolutely not. But look, if you think I’m involved somehow, I’d better get a lawyer, right?

She stands up, folds her arms as if she has nothing more to say. Sandra thinks: This is as spontaneous as one of those goddamned reality shows.

— I understand, says Roberts, standing, then taking a wallet from under his coat, and sliding out a card. Just like all the movies. She takes it, lays it on a small table, leads the two men to the door, and closes it after them.

For a long moment, she leans her back against the door. Her arm aches from the fall. She has a headache. She will lie down, and read a book about strangers, and take another Aleve, and hope the pain goes away. Then she’ll call Sam Briscoe to find out about the funeral of Cynthia Harding. Thinking: Oh, Myles, wherever you are, don’t drag me after you. And sees the face of the Bulgarian in the newspaper, his eyes full of ice.

3:15 p.m. Malik Shahid. Orpheum 7 Movie House, East 86th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan.

He squirms in his aisle seat in an orchestra row halfway from the entrance. The backpack is under his seat. His back and shoulders are sore from walking with the pack all the way from 104th Street. Damned ticket cost twelve-fifty. Paid with money for Glorious. Wanted just to borrow the money. Took it instead. Oh. There are old people scattered around in the darkness, most of them white, but the theater is mainly empty. Malik is jellied with exhaustion. He sees glimpses on the screen of a white infidel whore unbuttoning her blouse, and closes his eyes. The music is loud. He sees Glorious in the darkness of the house in the Lots. Her breasts fat with pregnancy. Her skin. Always in the dark, because they could not use lights or some fucking cop might notice.

Glorious.

Dead.

Waiting for me.

He remembers in high school at Tech, reading about Lee Harvey Oswald, and how after shooting JFK he got away but then shot some cop and ran into a movie theater. What happened then? Can’t remember. Malik’s fingers touch the pistol in his belt. The tire iron down a sewer. The.38 is better. If I gotta use it, I use it.

Now he has to rest, and then go to visit Aladdin. To rub the magic lamp. To summon the djinni. To turn the lamp into that place in the Bronx he saw on television when he was three or four, sitting beside his mother on the family couch. First thing he can remember. Seeing all the fire engines and the hoses and hearing talk about ninety people dead, or something, and they were watching because his father was there. One of the cops. They even saw him once on TV, in his overcoat, a badge pinned to his chest. Badge of dishonor. They were still his mother and father then. “This is mass murder,” his mother said. “Mass murder!” And Malik didn’t know what she meant by that, not then, didn’t know the word “murder.” Or, truth be told, the word “dead.” Except that a lot of people were dead and nothing else, no weather, no sports, nothing was on TV except that. Dead. What were the words they kept saying? Over and over?

Happy Land.

Yeah, that was it:

Happy Land.

Tonight he will create some happiness in this land. For Allah.

He opens his eyes. The infidel white whore on the screen is weeping into a pillow. The guy is smoking. Never read a word of al-Quran. But he and the whore hate the Prophet, and Allah too. They never learn anything. Not in Iraq. Not at Fort Hood. They don’t know that they will all die, unless they submit to Allah. They will die one at a time. Then fifty at a time. For now. Then more and more and more. Malik imagines a great white blinding light, a rumble that gets deeper and deeper, then the howl of a ferocious cleansing wind: and then nothing. Allahu akbar!