Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

WORLD ENDS!

And the subhead: Jews, Irish Suffer Most.

A photo from some apocalyptic movie shows floods, toppling skyscrapers.

Briscoe scans smaller headlines in a stack on the left, with page numbers, shaking his head, chuckling at them all, guffawing at a few.

Mexicans Demand New Day of Dead p. 9

Sharpton: Proves God Is Black p. 3

Taliban, al-Qaeda Thrilled p. 28

Health Care Plan Dead p. 11

Glenn Beck, GOP Blame Obama p. 2

Palin Applauds ‘Rapture’ p. 5

Albany Gang Dies in Vegas Debut p. 10

Two-State Solution in Middle East: All Die p. 14

In the lower-right-hand corner there’s a box:

Tomorrow: INSIDE HELL by Richard Elwood, F.P.

The complete back page shows a slack-jawed Jared Jeffries with a basketball bouncing off his chest and the headline:

UCONN WOMEN

BEAT KNICKS BY 23

Here Briscoe guffaws. Then Billygoat has him by the elbow, pushing him toward the pressmen, and the rest of the crowd, and both face the cameras, holding up the front pages with everyone else, the photographers clicking away. Even the photographers are laughing. Barney Weiss photographs the photographers, from the front and from behind. They will all soon have prints, to hang on walls for the rest of their lives.

Janet is now beside Briscoe, grabbing his sleeve with a free hand. She has his coat and jacket under her arm.

— There’s a shitload of messages, she says. But you better call Dick Amory first.

— Yeah, okay.

She grabs his arm, waving off people, guiding him to the office. They both know that Amory is Cynthia Harding’s lawyer. In the office, Janet hangs the coat and jacket on the clothes tree, sits down, starts dialing. Then Janet nods to Briscoe as he slides behind his desk, making a phone sign with her hand. He picks up the phone, gestures to her to close the door.

— Hello, Dick.

— I’m sorry for your trouble, Sam. For our trouble. Our loss.

He’s a decent guy, Amory. And a terrific lawyer. Not a Court Street ambulance chaser. That’s why Cynthia chose him.

— Thanks, Dick. So what do we do?

— For a service, there’s different possibilities. The Ethical Culture place on Central Park West. They can do it late next week.

— Nah. It’s a nice place, but it’s not Cynthia.

— What about a Catholic place? She talked about it a lot. She said she wasn’t religious but she liked the art and the music. Maybe St. Patrick’s—

— Too grand. Maybe Old St. Patrick’s, down by Little Italy. She sent them money once for a library.

— Yeah, Amory says.

— They can have a bigger memorial a month from now, at the library on Forty-second Street.

— Perfect. You got the name of a guy at Old St. Patrick’s?

— Hold on… Janet, go find Farrell and ask him if he has a contact at Old St. Patrick’s, downtown, not the cathedral.

She gets up and moves into the crowded city room.

— I’ll have it for you in a few minutes, Dick. What else?

He hears Amory exhale.

— Big trouble. For you. In her will, she names you as executor. She left you some money too. And some paintings…

— Fuck. I don’t know a goddamned thing about that kind of stuff. I’m a newspaperman, Dick. Or was.

— I’ll help.

— I just want to get the fuck out of town.

There’s a beat of silence. Then Amory speaks.

— Look, Sam, none of this has to be done on a newspaper deadline. Go away. Take a break for a month. When you come back—

Janet returns, hands Briscoe a paper with a name on it.

— Dick, I have the name of a priest at Old St. Patrick’s.

They talk for another minute and agree to meet on Monday. Briscoe hangs up. He sits there gazing into the city room, which is full of rowdy laughter, people slapping fives, shaking their heads, telling lies and war stories and doing anything to hold back tears. A few are wearing the fake page 1 on their chests, held by tape or pins. Briscoe knows what he is seeing. A wake. He notices now that some of them are wearing black armbands. Matt Logan is one of them.

He turns and stands, his reverie over. Janet waves the messages.

— There’s others, she says. Including the F.P.

— If he calls, tell him I’ve caught a boat for Morocco or something.

— You want the others?

He takes the cluster of notes and leafs through them. Imus. The mayor’s office. David Carr. Howard Kurtz. Oreskes at the AP. Liz Smith. Matt Frei at BBC America. Howard Rubenstein. NPR. The Columbia Journalism Review. NYU. Morning Joe. To talk about the future of newspapers. Or any news about services for Cynthia Harding. And there: Sandra Gordon.

Wanting to know about services. About a memorial.

Sandra Gordon . Remembering again that party in Jamaica when she was a child. Cynthia helping her to education and life. A pretty girl. A proud beautiful woman. He folds the note and slips it into his shirt pocket.

He gazes out and sees dozens of them eating pizza. A truly New York wake.

— I guess I have to make a farewell address, he says.

— You’d better, Janet says.

— What are they all going to do? he says.

— Far as I know, every one of them signed up to work on the website. Including me. You gotta reapply, you know. And the F.P. isn’t gonna hire us all. That’s the point. Right?

— I’m afraid it is.

Janet is in her forties. No husband. No kids. Maybe no fella. He never asked.

— What are you going to do, Janet? If the worst…

— If Matt doesn’t need me, maybe I’ll move to Florida. My sister’s there. Who the hell knows? First things first. I gotta get the stuff in this office packed, and then shipped. To your house or storage or—

— My house. I can sort it out later. Some stuff goes up to the museum, the stuff in the hall…

— I know. I got your memo from three years ago somewhere. But we need to seal the office too, so nobody steals anything.

— Perish the thought.

— You better get out there. Or they’ll make a citizen’s arrest.

Briscoe dreads going out to make a speech, but he has to say something. He remembers a guy at the old Journal-American, an editor who used to stand on his desk and wave a pica ruler like a sword, urging his wards to charge the barbed wire. The paper died anyway. But while they lasted, his speeches caused great laughter in Mutchie’s. He thinks: Above all, I will not stand on a desk. Or wave my last pica ruler.

— Let’s go, he says.

Janet follows him into the city room, which now gets quieter. Heads turn to Briscoe. A new song is on the CD player.

Why, oh why, do I

Live in the dark?

And is abruptly clicked off. Briscoe goes to the city desk. Logan is there, wearing his black armband. Briscoe glances at the windows and sees a light snow falling through the purple darkness of West Street.

Then he faces the dense circle of people that has formed around the city desk, more than two hundred of them, many sipping drinks, chewing pizza, some with arms folded, others with hands jammed in pockets. Men, women, some in the rear standing on desks, photographers making pictures, some old reporters taking notes from the habit of a lifetime. Briscoe clears his throat and begins to speak.

— As most of you know, oratory is not my thing. So in the tabloid spirit, I’ll try to be short and, uh, sweet. I want to thank every one of you for giving me the best years of my newspaper life. You also gave New York a newspaper that added to this city’s knowledge and intelligence and — for want of a better word — its genius. Not one of us who worked here ever had to apologize for being part of the New York World. And that was not because of me. It was because of you. Journalism is a team sport. And you were the team.