Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

Briscoe sees blood on others, torn flesh. Discarded women’s shoes on the wet stone street. A young woman grabs another’s blouse from behind, tears it away, and the woman begins bawling as she covers her breasts. Naked in a snowstorm. Then drops her hands to run. More piling up, nobody looking back. Dozens now. Screaming. Splayed, stomped, bleeding. One hopeless shriek. A bare-chested guy in Ali Baba trousers comes out the door, limping. Too thin to be a bouncer. Maybe a deejay? A waiter? Shaking both fists. In triumph? Or challenging the fallen. Photographers dart around, recording it all.

Helen, Briscoe thinks. Where are you, Helen?

Now four uniformed cops come running awkwardly from the police cars. No traction on the snowy cobblestones. Guns drawn. One goes up the steps to the doors, shoves the gun into his holster, raises one palm toward the people inside, ordering them to halt, to step back, to allow both doors to open. They don’t obey. Looking over their shoulders. Below the platform, another cop points to the far side of the street, gesturing east. Briscoe hears the first cop shout: Run. Run like hell!

Briscoe drapes his press card around his neck and finally sees Helen Loomis over to the left, on the platform rising from the sidewalk. Standing there. Rigid, dazed, as the panicky young tide flows past her. She fumbles with a cigarette, looking toward the High Line. Briscoe calls her name but she can’t hear him in the din. No way yet for him to get up the main stairs to her. Too many people coming down in terrified flight from whatever the hell is happening inside.

He goes to the left, trying to squeeze through the photographers, sees Fonseca making notes at the foot of the smoking shed, wiping with his coat sleeve at blood dripping from his nose. Briscoe calls his name. Fonseca hears nothing. And Briscoe can’t reach him through the wall of cops and photographers. Moving now, like a quarterback, left, then right, then forward. Looking for an opening. He waves at Helen, calls her name, but she doesn’t see or hear him. She is still staring toward the High Line. Washington Street. Briscoe thinks: She’s waiting for me. I told her Washington Street, didn’t I? The cabbie wouldn’t go that way. A woman wearing pearls comes down the main stairs and someone grabs at the pearls and the string snaps. The woman looks down, pain on her face, starts to bend, then chooses to run. Briscoe shouts once more. Nobody can hear.

8:51 p.m. Ali Watson. Fourteenth Street.

Ali walks cautiously on the cobblestones, his eyes fixed on the doors. Alone. Wearing his badge. His gun hanging loose in his right hand. No time for vengeance, he thinks. This is my son. I loved him as a boy and I love him still. Done in by belief. The worst human disease. Only one goal right now: to stop horror. That’s my fucking job. To prevent another Happy Land. Knowing that if he lives, this night will be with him for the rest of his days. And nights.

Behind him, Malachy and some uniformed cops are checking the people against the wall across the street. Homeless guys. Wanding them. Patting them down. Then, finding nothing, telling them to get the hell out of there, this thing could blow. Some move quickly. Others are slower, watching the show.

Ali goes up the steps two at a time, and the uniformed cops greet him. The right-hand door is now fully open. He asks a sergeant where the SWAT team is. On the way. No time, Ali says. I’m going in. Cover my back.

Then Ali is inside. A dozen men and women are huddled against the far edge of the empty dance floor. Faces frozen. Others peering from behind the bar. Maybe more upstairs, hiding in bathrooms or lounges. Son of a bitch.

He looks up the stairs and sees his son near the top.

Malik.

The only person who matters now.

Eyes wide. The suicide belt across his chest. Red Semtex. His lips are saying words, full of reverence and farewell.

Salem al-Hazmi.

Hani Hanjour.

Satam al-Suqami…

In his right hand, the detonator. Thumb on the button.

— Put that thing down. Malik, Ali says in a soft voice.

Waleed al-Shehri.

Abdulaziz al-Omari.

He is staring now at Ali, his voice rising in defiance as he recites the names of the September 11 hijackers.

— Malik, don’t do this.

— Who are you to tell me what to do?

— I’m your father. I still love you, son.

— My so-called father.

— No, your only father.

Ali raises his.38 and aims it at his son. Thinking: Don’t hit a Semtex charge.

Hamza al-Ghamdi.

Mohand al-Shehri.

Malik is breathing more heavily now, coming to the end of his private rosary. His eyes are calmer. Then he laughs.

— One more, Malik says. God’s commander.

Before he can say “Mohamed Atta,” Ali fires.

Malik looks frozen. There’s a small hole in his forehead. His eyes are wide. Then he crumples, falling down the stairs like a mannequin. His head hits several steps. His hands are open and still and empty.

Ali Watson exhales. So does the room. Malik is not moving. His open eyes see nothing and Ali knows that he is dead.

He walks over to Malik, looks down at his face. No longer masked with a thick beard. The face of his son, whom he often had bounced on his knee. Bright blood is leaking from his brow, running to the side of his nose, down his cheeks. Ali sits on a step, and drapes an arm over Malik’s shoulder, hugs him tightly, feeling his vanishing warmth. Tears fill Ali’s eyes.

He whispers: Oh, Mary Lou. I am so goddamned sorry.

8:54 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Fourteenth Street.

At the foot of the whitening staircase to the smoking area, he raises a hand to Helen Loomis and she takes it, coming down one step at a time. She’s unsteady. The side of her left cheek is scraped. Her eyes are blurry. He hugs her. She has heard the same sound. A single blam. Like a punctuation mark. Then silence. Then the uniformed cops relax. Opening both doors wide now.

— That’s that, Sam whispers. The snow is finer now and icier, blowing harder.

Now firemen in full gear are at the scene. The SWAT team has arrived, looking frustrated in dark blue combat gear as the sergeant waves to them that it’s over. Plainclothes cops are talking to the people now leaving, most wearing coats, witnesses now, showing identification. Some of them are weeping. Briscoe saw Ali Watson go in. He has not seen him come out. Most of the paparazzi have fled, to send out what they captured on their cameras, but a few remain, and reporters are arriving from other papers. Fonseca comes over to Briscoe, glancing at his watch, making notes in a spiral pad.

— Stick around, Briscoe says. This isn’t over.

— I know, Mr. Briscoe. Did you see the guy who ran in?

— No.

— Neither did I. I was flat on my ass. But one of the cops told me he might have been wearing a suicide vest. I did see the cop that went in to get him. The cop that must’ve shot him. It was Ali Watson.

— The kid with the vest might be his son, Malik…

— Jesus Christ.

— Check it out. Even a website needs wood.

Briscoe taps Fonseca lightly on the shoulder, then leads Helen to the street. He sees three cops near the far wall. Four photographers are shooting in a kind of frenzy, leaning in, squatting, aiming at something on the wet sidewalk, while a young plainclothes cop tries to control them. Briscoe moves past them slowly, guiding Helen by the elbow. They are looking down at a gun. To Briscoe, it appears to be a MAC-10. The contras loved it in Nicaragua. So did the crack dealers here at home. Maybe there was an accomplice? Nobody touches the MAC-10, not even a cop. Briscoe looks back at the rubble of shoes, hats, torn or discarded clothes, a handbag. No sign of Fonseca. He should see this. Maybe they let him inside.