Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

That day he wandered through Chinatown to Cooper Union to Washington Square, avoiding Patchin Place, wandered alone, still bearded, everything a jumble, looking for money, looking for a dropped wallet, an old fool counting his cash at an ATM, a woman with an open purse, any kind of money for Glorious, money for the coming of the baby, money for food. Heading west on 14th Street. Walking, planning, then seeing a Muslim on a prayer mat at five o’clock. Removing his own shoes. Kneeling beside him. On the bare concrete of the sidewalk. Praying. Speaking the words of the Quran. The man gave him ten dollars.

Then walking again.

Toward the river. A cheap market down there someplace. Buy more food for the money.

Until he saw this obscene place.

The next day in a library, he Googled “Aladdin’s Lamp.” Read that it was once a mosque. One of the first in New York! Now a corrupt temple of sins of the flesh! Faggots and whores. He stood for an hour before it, walked to the side, around the back, looking for access, trying to shape a plan. The next day, the plan forming, Allah’s plan, he went up the stairs to the High Line and saw the place from other angles, saw into it when some skinny Mexican was washing the upper windows. Malik tried looking like just another tourist. From Abu Dhabi, maybe. Or Nigeria. Thinking at the time: If I ever need a target, this is it. In other parts of the city, there were cops everywhere, and concrete barriers, and surveillance cameras, and men on high floors with field glasses. Men like his so-called father. Men who had found Islam, and then renounced the Prophet, renounced Allah. Fought jihad. Men who must die.

He looks carefully now through the falling snow at Aladdin’s Lamp. Imagine if a mosque in Kandahar had been transformed into a palace for whores! What would the Taliban do? Make it vanish, that’s what. The corrupted building is set back a good twenty feet from the curb, with a wide space that must have provided for eight or ten cars carrying faithful Muslims, and now serves by day as parking space for beer and drink trucks making deliveries. It’s filled on this night of destiny with photographers and drifters and those who have substituted celebrities for God. They have money. They have homes. They even have umbrellas. I have nothing. Not anymore. No woman, no son, no father, no mother, no friends. I have only my own body. To give you, Allah.

He thinks: I must get through them, and up the three stairs to the platform with the velvet rope held on poles with minarets at the top. Past the bouncer in his costume. Get through the door with my holy container, dash inside, fast. Surprise is everything. He knows from his daytime observations that there is a stairway inside, leading to an upper floor, secret rooms. I am God’s martyr. He thinks: It should be simple. Inshallah. The vest is ready. The detonator is hooked up and ready. I’m ready. He waits for the moment that says now.

8:47 p.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street.

He flexes and unflexes his hands, trying to give them warmth. He feels something ebbing away in him, like a tide going out on a seashore. He gathers himself. Soon all the shithead rich guys will come out. Then…

Across the street, off on the right, a short dark woman eases out of a side door next to some kind of clothing store. Head down. Hat. Walking fast on short legs. And he knows who she is. The Mexican woman who got the guys to carry him into that church. Goo-add-a-luppy. Where it was warm. Her God was a warm God. Not like some of the others. The goddamned Christians back home that want everybody to suffer, except themselves.

For a moment, he thinks about going after her. To that church.

But tells himself: Stay here. This is where it’s at. Where the payback comes.

Over on the left of the front door, there’s an open shed, with people smoking and bullshitting while the snow falls. Christ: There’s even an old lady there, tall and skinny and smoking. Beside her, talking on a cell phone, he sees one young woman who looks like Wendy before she got fat. Could she be his lost wife? Nah. Never. Maybe I should track Wendy down. He wonders where she is and whether little Flora is with her and whether it’s snowing there too. He loved her once. Now he has trouble remembering her face. That fat broad smoking over there? Maybe she’s Wendy.

Nah, he thinks. She couldn’t find her way to New York with a tour guide. She’s somewhere in the sun. Thinking about the guy she’s meeting later. The guy whose joint she’ll cop before the night’s over.

He removes a glove and caresses the MAC-10. Cold. Very cold.

Go, he whispers. To the warmth.

Go.

He doesn’t move.

8:48 p.m. Helen Loomis. Outside Aladdin’s Lamp.

She hasn’t been this cold in years. Where was it? In Gstaad that time, with Willie? He was skiing. She stayed in the bar. The Rolling Stones were on TV. Black-and-white. Some big European music contest. They sang “Satisfaction.” That long ago. And where is Sam? The snow must have the streets screwed up. Can’t feel my feet. I’m still here, Sam. Watching the corner, like you said. Looking at the High Line, which I’ve never visited. The young guys from the paper all inside. Why’d I listen to them? Why’d I come here? An old bag like me?

Across the street, she sees homeless guys. Faceless. Bulky. Carved from black ice. Like the figures in the painting at the top of the stairs inside. Nobody can tell them to go home. What home? Some shelter that smells like piss? She thinks: At least I got whiskey in me. Too much. One more, I’m legless.

Where’s Sam? He always keeps his word. Why’d I call him? To say a proper good-bye, I guess. He’ll be gone in a day or two. Somewhere. Yeah. Wind coming hard now. From New Jersey. Of course. Or Siberia. Blowing snow off the High Line.

She takes out her cigarette pack. Pops one loose. Two left. Lights it with the one she’s smoking. Thinks she hears sirens. Fire engines, maybe. Christ, I’m cold.

8:49 p.m. Bobby Fonseca. Aladdin’s Lamp.

His back is to the bar. He sips a beer. Thinking: Still here. Woozy. The guys coming on to different women, using their dangling blue press cards as conversation pieces. Helen out for a smoke or something. Or maybe gone, the way Barney Weiss split after fifteen minutes in the snow. My brain mushed from the music, the deejay dressed like Ali Baba, waving his hands from the balcony. Where’s his scimitar? No scimitars in Brownsville. The deejay’s to the left of the VIP party. Some are leaving now, in coats, hats, and scarves. Their limos must have a foot of snow on the rooftops. Shit: here’s that small broad again. Too much lipstick. Chewing gum.

— Sure you don’t wanna dance, big boy?

— Not tonight. I’m in mourning, babe.

— In this joint?

She laughs and moves into the thick crowd. Tall women made taller by high spiked heels. Women with impossible breasts. Women giggling, bursting into tequila laughter. The guys all in heat. Some of them sweating. Others talking into female ears. Fonseca thinks: I can almost reach out and grab the lies out of the air. He hopes he can see Victoria Collins before the night is over. Flashes on her thighs. Her wet hair. The feel of her skin.

And across the room, beyond the dancers, he sees Freddie Wheeler again.

Makes Wheeler from some story he read months ago in Wired. His ferrety face. Coat under his arm. Wheeler has seen Fonseca too. He starts pushing through the crowd. Heading to the left door.

Fonseca sets down his beer bottle and goes after Wheeler.

— Hey, you! he shouts in the din. Wheeler!

Wheeler stops as Fonseca reaches him. The two of them moving out the left door to the platform. The snow heavy. Wheeler looking at the photographers and beyond.