Pete Hamill - Tabloid City

He and Helen start walking east. The snow is thicker now.

— Sam, we’ll never get a cab around here.

— We gotta try.

— We could both end up in St. Vincent’s.

— Eventually. Not tonight.

The snow keeps falling. Helen Loomis starts to shudder, then shake, as if ice has pierced her body. Briscoe hugs her, until the shaking stops. She grips his arm and they resume walking. Across the street, mannequins in bikinis pose in the bright window of a place called La Perla. They pass the dark shop of the Ground Zero Museum Workshop. Briscoe looks back and sees photographers and TV cameramen shooting from the rails of the High Line. Two different TV guys are doing stand-ups. He sees signs on the street now:

LOFTS FOR LEASE

And

RETAIL SPACE

MADE TO MEASURE

Lights still burn in clothing stores. Hugo Boss. Moschino. No customers are gazing at the clothes. At the corner of Ninth Avenue, there are some people in the Apple store. Briscoe thinks: I should be calling in notes to the city desk. Helen should be taking them for tomorrow’s paper. Instead, we are here on a night of brutality, escaping like lost members of Napoleon’s army, Moscow behind us. Looking for a taxi.

Two ambulances from St. Vincent’s go by, making a slow throaty sound in the wet snow, followed by a vehicle from the fire department rescue squad. Each heading west. Into the snow. Briscoe and Helen cross Ninth Avenue to a small triangle of a park, the benches piling with snow. Across the street to the left is the Old Homestead Steakhouse, where there were usually cabs, even in snowstorms. But Briscoe can see whirling dome lights two blocks uptown, just past the Chelsea Market, sealing the avenue from any new traffic. There are no cabs arriving at the Old Homestead or waiting to depart. A car with NYP press plates turns into 14th Street, and the unseen driver taps the horn in greeting but keeps moving past them to Aladdin’s Lamp.

— I wish I could write tonight, Helen Loomis says in a sad blurred voice.

— You will. In your memoirs.

She chuckles. Then from 15th Street, a car turns, and a uniformed cop wearing an orange vest uses his club to point it downtown. The car moves slowly past the Old Homestead, aimed at 14th Street and what becomes Hudson Street on the far side. Briscoe steps out of the park, Helen behind him. The car slows, then stops on the far curb, the engine still pumping exhaust fumes into the falling snow.

— Christ, Helen, I hope these aren’t folks from “Vics and Dicks.”

— My people.

A young woman steps out of the back door. There are other people in the car, which has snow gathered on its hood and roof.

— Helen! Hey, Helen, it’s me, Janice!

Helen squints hard, then relaxes.

— It’s the woman who loaned me the cell phone, she says.

The young woman shouts, Where you going?

— Second Avenue and Ninth Street, Briscoe shouts.

— Come on! Janice shouts. We have room for one more.

Janice waddles awkwardly across the snow in a lumpy way to Helen, takes her arm.

— Go, Briscoe says. I can walk to the subway.

— I can’t leave you here alone, Sam.

— I’ll be fine, Briscoe says. Go.

Helen allows herself to be pulled to the open door of the car, where he can see the heads and blurred faces of others, packed tightly. Helen is shoved in by Janice, who follows her, and slams the door.

— Go, Briscoe whispers.

He waits until the car pulls away, crossing 14th Street, moving into Hudson Street, becoming two more dirty red eyes in the snow. Briscoe stands there for a long moment.

9:10 p.m. Beverly Starr. Pastis restaurant, Meatpacking District, Manhattan.

She is at the bar in the crowded restaurant. Waiting for the guy from the car service. Some streets blocked. Sipping a tequila and tonic. Her heart still beating fast. Her right cheek is scraped, and she pats it with a cloth napkin soaked in peroxide that the maitre d’ brought her. Other refugees from the benefit are at various tables, faces somber with a kind of blankness. She thinks: Post-traumatic stress disorder? They are whispering. Holding hands. Waiting for something that is not food.

She stares at her drink, closes her eyes. Sees her own slide show. A woman’s snapped ankle flopping like a sock. A gaping older man who has lost his front teeth. A fat guy in an Ali Baba suit falling back under a high-heeled stampede. Opens her eyes. Snow still falling.

This is the kind of night when I need some guy to hold me. To whisper to me. To tell me that everything’s gonna be all right.

Then smiles, and wonders who won the auction.

9:11 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Fourteenth Street.

He crosses the wide street to the downtown side, and begins to walk east, toward Eighth Avenue, where he can find a subway. The A or the C. He looks up at the buildings. Lights are burning in about half of them, with the shades drawn. Others are shadeless, windows on the storm. He sees one woman alone, watching the street, not moving. In another, there is diffused light from a television set. On the street, a lone woman walks a small dog. He steps around a Mega Millions sign, with a printed image of a man peering from behind the day’s prize. His face is hidden, but his hairline recedes. Can it be Rudy Giuliani?

He slows now. His feet in their socks and boots are losing feeling. His gloved hands are numb. He imagines Helen Loomis in her apartment now. Or soon. Warming. Smoking a good-night cigarette. He wonders if her friend Federico the mambo dancer is across the street, moving to Tito Puente while the snow falls harder. He hopes so. He imagines Matt Logan, at home with his wife, wondering whether he can handle the brave new World of a website. Of course he can. News is news.

Maybe Fonseca will file for the site tomorrow. Maybe he can talk to Ali Watson before the snow stops falling. Or do a portrait of the guy he shot. Whoever the hell he was. The best story? It’s his nutjob son. And he can be traced to Patchin Place. But maybe they don’t connect. Maybe he’s just a pissed-off former employee. Some neighbor says the music was too loud? An architecture critic? Who the hell knows? Maybe Fonseca will discover the guy had a co-conspirator, a backup, the one who dropped that MAC-10. Or discover what was most likely: the guy was alone. The story now is that one night after his wife was murdered, Ali Watson killed a guy in the line of duty. Those are the known facts. So far. No theories, please.

The dead guy will soon be on a slab somewhere. Maybe even in the same freezing morgue as Mary Lou Watson. And Cynthia.

Cynthia.

I could not pray for her down at Patchin Place, Briscoe thinks. Backed up to the library fence twenty feet from Sandra Gordon, seeing the grief in Ali Watson’s eyes. And here I am in front of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. When Briscoe was young, it was called St. Bernard’s. The gate is open. He looks up the wet stone stairs at the red church doors. A light is burning above the arch. He starts up, then pauses. One door opens, and an older Mexican woman emerges, pulls her zipper to the top of her coat, buries her jaw in her scarf. He goes up a few more steps. She nods in a welcoming way. He goes to the top. He opens the red door and goes in.

9:15 p.m. Sandra Gordon. Her apartment.

The local news from New York 1 is on the set in her study. For possible news about Myles. The sound is off. She sits in an armchair, nibbling salted almonds, sipping a beer. Then she sees pictures of Aladdin’s Lamp, police cars, panicky crowds, a woman reporter with a microphone. She turns on the sound.

… possible terrorist attack. At least one alleged terrorist is dead. Scores were injured fleeing the scene, when the armed terrorist displayed a suicide vest in the crowded club. Police say…