Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

— You waitin’ on something, man?

— I’m not, Lieutenant Watson.

Ali Watson brushes snow off his eyelashes and squints. Then smiles thinly in recognition.

— Hello, Sam.

— Ali. I’m so sorry about what happened. Mary Lou was a wonderful human being.

Ali sighs.

— The same with Cynthia. I know, uh, that you and her…

— Yeah. A lot of years.

— What are you doing here, Sam?

— Trying to pray.

A pause.

— That’s not easy, is it?

— Not anymore.

They are both silent for a long moment. The snow is blowing east.

— I heard about you and the newspaper, Sam. It was on the radio.

— What the hell. I had a long run.

— So did me and Mary Lou.

They stand in silence.

— You got a suspect?

— Yeah. But I can’t talk about it. Not yet.

— Of course.

Briscoe removes a glove, takes a card from his wallet, writes his home number on the back and hands it to Ali.

— When this is over, Ali, you want to talk, we’ll have dinner somewhere.

— That’s a deal.

Ali walks slowly back to the police car. He did not produce a card and Briscoe knows why. Briscoe turns. The woman who was waiting down the block is gone.

He moves to Greenwich, passes the small garden, and turns left onto Sixth Avenue. She’s on the corner, trying to flag a taxi. And then he sees her face. He hurries to her side.

— Sandra Gordon…

She looks startled. Then relaxes.

— Oh, Sam. I thought that was you, but—

— Were you praying too?

— Sort of… Really just telling her how, as long as I’m alive, she’s alive.

She has the same vocal rhythm she had when she came to New York, at once clipped and melodic. The sound of the islands. He remembers her going with Cynthia to buy clothes for interviews at colleges, and later for job interviews. He remembers her at Cynthia’s old place uptown, and then in Patchin Place. For lunches. For parties. Never for fund-raisers, even after Sandra started making good money. Polite, but never servile. Able to speak when asked questions, but not a performer. A listener.

— Want some dinner? he says.

— Of course, she says.

They cross Sixth Avenue and walk east on 8th Street. She hooks a gloved hand to his arm. The snow falls heavier. Driven by a wind off the North River. Coming from Jersey. The Great Lakes. Canada. They pass shops for rent, and a pair of middle-aged women, their heads lowered as the snow blows in their faces, and three drunk college boys, one of whom looks at Sandra, shouts a sentence as he passes that ends with “Obama.”

— It’s comforting, Briscoe says, to know that young guys are still assholes.

Sandra Gordon laughs.

— They get worse, Sandra says, as they get older.

They cross Fifth Avenue. To the right through the snow, the lights make the Washington Square Arch lovelier than ever. A man stands at the corner, staring into the whitening park, holding skis. They move on to the east, passing more empty shops, and others that are closing early because of the storm. A scrawny man in a camouflage jacket and worn jeans stands huddled in a doorway, holding a cardboard cup. He says nothing. His eyes are dead. Briscoe has no change. They move on. Briscoe thinks: How many times have I walked this street? Five thousand? Ten? More? How many times with Cynthia Harding?

Here at last is University Place. Across the street was where the Cookery stood for so long, with Barney Josephson running it.

— Didn’t Alberta Hunter sing there? Sandra says. I was too young to ever see her. But I heard she was great, here in the Cookery.

— You’re right. It was full of life, that place.

— She’s gone too.

— She is.

Sandra squeezes his arm a bit harder. He doesn’t mention the Cedars, doesn’t try to explain that it stood right here, where this ugly fucking white-brick building is now, that Pollock used to come here, shit-faced, and Franz Kline, with his grace and good manners, and how Briscoe was infatuated one winter with Helen Frankenthaler, and her big swashbuckling paintings, and her beautiful face, and how Frankenthaler was in love with a critic. A critic, for Chrissakes!

At the corner of 9th Street they cross University Place. Sandra releases her grip. Briscoe takes her elbow and opens the door to the Knickerbocker. They go in. To the right, in the bar, five or six people are watching New York One and images of the storm. He turns away. He doesn’t want to see the rest of the news, and he’s sure Sandra doesn’t either. The large dining room is half empty. Sandra unzips her coat and smiles as the maitre d’ comes to greet them. Sandra has a beautiful smile.

They are led to a booth for four, lots of room for coats and hats and a handbag, and out of the sight line to the TV. Sandra is wearing a black sweater, black slacks, no jewelry, no lipstick. He doesn’t stare at her. But when she speaks, he can see her full lips, her cheekbones, the many variations of ebony. He flashes on the ebony pencils that copy editors used for marking stories written on paper by typewriters.

— For the first time in my life, Sandra says, I fainted this morning.

She tells him about seeing the front page of the World in the lobby of the Lipstick Building, and coming to with men leaning over her.

— It was like someone had punched me in the heart, she says.

— Yes. I know.

— Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say this is about me. Above all, it’s about Cynthia. That means it’s about you too. In a different way, a larger sense, it’s about a lot of people who never met her.

— That’s the truth, Sandra. But it is about you too.

— We have to make sure that her… work goes on.

— It will.

A waiter comes and takes a drink order. White wine for Sandra. Diet Pepsi for Sam.

— How long since you stopped drinking? she says, smiling.

— I don’t know. Years. Maybe thirteen?

— So you were drinking still, that time in Jamaica, when I got my first job as a waitress?

Sam smiles.

— I was. You did a hell of a job.

She smiles again.

— Thanks. That’s when I first met Cynthia too. That same party. And she got me to talk about books. Above all, about the pictures in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I couldn’t even read yet.

— Books were her favorite subject.

The past tense again. Drinks arrive. She stares into her wine.

— Oh, Sam, what are we going to do?

The question hangs there. The waiter returns and takes their food orders. Shrimp for Sam, arugula salad for Sandra. Lentil soup for both. Then he remembers the slip of paper with her number, plucks it from his shirt pocket, shows it to her.

— I was going to call you when I got home.

— To tell me what?

He recites the clerical details. About the possible Mass at Old St. Patrick’s, and the burial up in Woodlawn in the Bronx, as close as possible to Herman Melville. He tells her that the library on 42nd Street would surely have a memorial service too. There’ll be a scholarship at NYU in Cynthia’s name, he says, for students of library science. This while they sip on soup.

— What about the house on Patchin Place?

He pauses.

— She told me once that she wanted it to be used by poets, from all over the world. Maybe four or five at a time. Poets who need time off, just to brood. Now—

He shrugs. Now the house is one of the most notorious murder scenes in the city. He doesn’t need to tell her that. Or that some poets might actually be inspired by the ghosts.

— And you? he says, changing the subject. How are things, otherwise?

She tells him about Myles Compton, how he left, how the FBI came to visit, how she had to get a lawyer, and how she has not heard from the man, not yet. She doesn’t know if he’s in America or Europe or Peru, doesn’t know if he’s dead or alive. He feels an unstated sadness in her voice, but says nothing.