Tabloid City

DAY

8:10 a.m. Sam Briscoe. Third Avenue and East 53rd Street, Manhattan.

HE STANDS WITH HIS BACK to the Citibank Building, a steel and glass structure too big to fail. After three hours napping on the couch in his darkened office, a quick shave in the john, a fresh shirt, a glance at the papers, Briscoe is twenty minutes early for his appointment with the F.P. The Dominican driver from the car service explained that traffic is thinner now, with fewer limousines, not as many cars coming in from Brooklyn and Queens and New Jersey. Briscoe doesn’t mind being early on this bright cold morning after too much rain and too little sleep. He would not want to give the publisher an edge by being late. And he needs to get out of his solitude, to look at other people, to stop thinking for a little while about Cynthia Harding and Mary Lou Watson and the dark horror of the night.

Across the avenue, the publisher’s office is halfway up the more than thirty stories of the Lipstick Building, the gleaming tower where Bernie Madoff pulled off his immense robberies. Thus achieving tabloid immortality. Hell, even immortality in the Times and the Washington Post. Briscoe imagines the gullible rich arriving in a steady, discreet stream to be conned with a smile and a shoe shine. Except Madoff didn’t have the soul of Willy Loman. Madoff knew that his victims were rich by most standards, certainly by the standards of his own Far Rockaway childhood. And so they came to him during the boom, believing that Madoff would make them even richer. Acolytes of the religion of more. Obese capitalism. They knew from whispery chats that he had done it for some select friends. He had done it for universities. He had done it for Holocaust survivors and their children and even for Elie Wiesel. Why not ask him to turn their spare ten million bucks into sixteen? His reputation made them believers. And once again, Briscoe remembers Paul Sann’s ancient city room creed: “If you want it to be true, it usually isn’t.”

He turns his eyes away from the rising ovals of the Lipstick Building, with its arrogant red-brown and pink bands, gazes downtown, sees a thirty-ish hatless man in a dark blue overcoat, staring at the page 1 wrap of the World. His jaw is slack. And Briscoe wonders if Cynthia Harding had ever arrived on this corner. To cross into the Lipstick Building and ride up the silent elevator to meet Madoff. To create wealth for the library. To create wealth for herself. And Briscoe thinks: Never.

Cynthia was a reader, one who could read human faces too, including mine, read the practiced smiles of others, the rehearsed patter, the movements of eyes, the posture of hands. She knew that books in neat or disordered shelves revealed the character of their owners too, and as a guest in any luxurious apartment always found her way to the library, and was filled with a kind of joy to discover those leathery older volumes whose pages had never been cut. Briscoe was beside her on two such investigations, moving around the edges of crowded parties. She didn’t say much, showing him a volume that was only a piece of interior decoration. She never needed to italicize a word. She just moved her brows in an amused way. “Henry James would love these people,” she whispered on one such patrol. “His own books have never been opened.”

An imaginary flash of her astonished face slices into his mind.

Oh.

Her beautiful mind drained of life. And irony. And art. And love. With a knife, on a rain-soaked night.

You fucker.

And realizes that he is thinking now about Cynthia in the past tense.

For the first time. And for the rest of his life.

He inhales hard, turns to watch the thickening morning crowds rising from the subway stairs or stepping out of the few limousines, or finishing the last lap from Grand Central. Hundreds of them. And sees past them, or through them, or under them, into a world they don’t know ever existed, right here. Where the Lipstick Building rises like a triumphant sneering monument. Briscoe sees the corner when he lived in this neighborhood as a boy, in another century, another world. He sees the great black steel girders of the Third Avenue El rising above the summer street during the war. He climbs the worn stairs at 53rd Street with his mother and goes through the turnstile. He rides all the way to the last stop in the Bronx, East 149th Street, peering from the front car at the tracks ahead of him, the steel rails stretching to a vanishing point, or making abrupt turns, while Briscoe looks into the windows where other people lived, sipping tea, drinking beer from tin pails, eating or laughing or locked in morose solitude, smoking cigarettes. He sees their heads and shoulders beyond the rooftop canopies, tending flocks of pigeons, or hanging wash.

On another day, he takes the El downtown to Chatham Square and he and his mother have chop suey in Chinatown and walk over to the entrance of the Brooklyn Bridge, his mother gripping his hand, and they are walking across to Brooklyn, just the two of them, high above the crowded river, then walking back that summer afternoon and seeing the skyline for the first time outside of a movie. On the way home, they get off early and stop in St. Agnes to pray for Briscoe’s father, who is off at the war.

And then Briscoe sees V-E Day, when he was seven, and the war is over at last in Europe and everyone who lived on these side streets came surging out to Third Avenue, and out of the saloons, out of P. J. Clarke’s and the World’s Fair and others whose names he can’t remember. Retired cops and old bootleggers, butchers and bakers, shipyard guys. longshoremen, shoemakers, plumbers, ice men, thieves, black marketeers, cabdrivers, all of them roaring, singing, drinking. There were even more women than men, most of them crying for sons and boyfriends and husbands who would now be on the troopships steaming back into the harbor. And his mother said, “Now, Sam, now your father will come home, Sam. He and his friends, they beat that old Hitler.” Nobody said anything about the war in the Pacific that was not over. They took what they could get here, Briscoe thinks. Right where my feet are planted.

And though his father was a New York cop, and could have stayed home, he had to go to the war, his mother explained, because he was a Jew, and Hitler was killing Jews, and so his father had to kill some Nazis back. That’s what his mother told him. On the crowded street now, in the rushing Friday crowds, he can still hear her voice, the Irish curl, the Belfast rhythm.

He sees his father too, months later, coming up the tenement stairs where they lived on East 49th Street, wearing his army uniform, a big lumpy duffel bag on his shoulder. Sam was sitting on the third-floor-hallway steps with his friends, all of them eight years old, waiting and waiting. Until Jimmy Hartigan from the first floor started yelling up at them, He’s here, Sam! He’s here! And Briscoe remembers clomping down the flights of stairs, two steps at a time, leaping to each landing, and on the first flight he saw his father, who saw him, and dropped his duffel bag, and the boy leaped to his father’s arms, and the two of them froze there, bawling and bawling, man and boy. No words said. The father’s body heaving. The boy trembling. The fucking war was over.

Nobody on this Third Avenue morning knows that such a world ever existed. Cynthia Harding knew. She knew because I walked these streets with her and told her all about it. More than once. Blathering away. Hoping I was not coating her with the treacherous paste of sentimentality. We went together often to the only surviving remnant: P. J. Clarke’s, another block uptown. Introduced her one night to Sinatra. And Danny Lavezzo, the owner. When we got back to her house, she said to me, with a hint of envy, You’re such a lucky man, Sam. You didn’t get that world secondhand. You didn’t take a course in it. You lived it. He thinks: I didn’t take a course in Cynthia Harding either. I lived it. We lived it.

Standing now, facing the Lipstick Building, Briscoe checks his watch. Ten minutes more before the meeting. And he remembers walking here with Cynthia one summer afternoon, telling her about walking the same street with his father, who was a cop again. After the war. They passed pawnshops and saloons, full of workers from the slaughterhouses down where the UN now stands. Some of the workers wore aprons covered with bloodstains, drying into darker colors, swatting at horseflies. In summer, the saloon doors were always open, for there was no air-conditioning then, and the joints all smelled of sour beer.

Briscoe described for Cynthia the brick facades of buildings permanently shadowed by the El, the boxy shadows on the cobblestones at high noon, hears the sound of screeching steel, almost painful when trains stopped at 53rd Street. Right there where the Lipstick Building is, his aunt Mary lived in one of the flats, his mother’s sister, her sailor husband dead in the Pacific war, his body never found, and when they went visiting Aunt Mary on Sunday afternoons, for dinner and song and company, Briscoe loved peering at the trains from the front windows of the flat, the faces of the people within, who never looked at him, or even at each other. He wanted to know who they were, and would spend a tabloid lifetime finding out.

Briscoe remembers the day the nickel fare ended in 1948 and how everyone complained bitterly about the increase when he and his father stopped to chat on Saturday mornings. He remembers listening to the radio every day, no television then. Music and serials and news. And baseball. He remembers Giant games playing from open windows, and how everyone hated the Yankees and the Dodgers. He remembers too the day the Briscoes packed up to leave, all they owned put in cartons, or wrapped in sheets of newspaper, then stacked in a truck that was leaving for Brooklyn, where his father had bought the house in Sunset Park. A house with a backyard and a tree and eventually a dog. Bought with a V.A. loan. A different world.

Enough. It’s all gone now.

He crosses Third Avenue, walking quickly. Part of his past is under his feet and the future is right in front of him. He moves into the Lipstick Building, taking his press card from his jacket pocket. Thinking: Now Cynthia is part of the past too.

8:20 a.m. Josh Thompson. The High Line, Manhattan.

He is in the street but he can’t see the sky. There is a man standing off to the side, with a wild gray beard, a heavy plaid shirt.

— Mornin’, soldier, he says.

— Morning, Josh Thompson says, his throat cloggy with phlegm. He grips the MAC-10 under the blanket and poncho.

— Go ahead and hawk up the lunger, soldier.

Josh calls up a wad from his throat, makes a pulpy ball on his tongue, spits it three feet to the side.

— Where is this? he asks, looking around him.

— The High Line. Used to be a railroad spur. Then it was dead for fifty years. Now they planted it with stuff and made a park out of it. Right up above your head.

— A park?

— Yeah, a park in the sky. The High Line, they call it. There’s an elevator down there, you wanna see it. Hey, you must need to piss.

— Yeah.

— Let the brake out and I’ll walk you.

He rolls Josh into a shadowed area, filled with packing crates.

From the darkness, he wonders where the Aladdin is from here. As he does every time he has to piss, he thinks of payback.

— You need a paper to read, soldier?

— Sure.

He takes the newspaper. Two women on the front page. One blonde. One black. The headline says:

THE LAST DINNER PARTY

Who are these people? Josh thinks. Why isn’t Iraq on the front page? Or Afghanistan? They just don’t give a rat’s ass, do they?

The bearded guy leaves him alone. Josh starts unzipping his jeans, unfastening his diaper.

8:35 a.m. Sandra Gordon. Lobby of Lipstick Building.

She walks across the crowded plaza, following others through the revolving doors. She is wearing high boots, a heavy coat, a warm wool hat. The New York Times is under her left arm, home-delivered but unread, and she grips a Mark Cross briefcase. She will open the paper when she reaches her desk. Not an electronic reader for the Times. The Times itself. To see if there is news about Myles Compton. And his co-conspirators. She wonders if Myles made his plane, if that’s what he was taking to wherever he will hide for the rest of his miserable life. The poor son of a bitch.

Then she glances at the newsstand, the newspapers blocked by two men buying nuts or gum or even newspapers. One of the men moves and heads to the elevator banks. Sandra’s eyes fall to the low shelf of newspapers.

She makes a sharp sound of pain, and falls to the polished stone floor.

8:40 a.m. Ali Watson. Office of Joint Terrorism Task Force, Manhattan.

He is still filled with the night, lying on a cot in the small dark back office. Nobody has tried to rouse him with knocks on the door. He knows they are out there in the office, absorbing information, thinking about chatter from many places. For now, they will get along without him. He’s better off here than alone at home. They will let him grieve.

His mind is jagged, alive with crude scribbles he saw from his Mazda, which Malachy parked in front of his house. His brain jangles with the graffiti on the wet walls of empty Brooklyn streets, marks without verbs, just names, the narcissism of vandals. I am, they snarl. I exist, they brag. All the names invented, pseudonyms without warnings or declarations of love. When Ali was young, and he saw the words “Bird Lives” on a subway wall, he knew the message was about Charlie Parker, and the words were saying that his music would live forever. And so it has. This is not like Bird. I want to buy a spray can and write Mary Lou Lives on all the unwashed walls of the city. State it. Shout it. Make the verb clear. Make it about her, not me. Refuse to join the legions of I. All those young fools declaring that they exist. Shouting: I am alone, as lonesome as God, and here is my mark. I exist, and fuck you.

Mary Lou lives, you assholes.

He sits up on the edge of the narrow bed, and remembers the drive at dawn to the mosque, where he spoke to the imam. He woke the man up, and was allowed inside. He said to the imam that if he heard from Malik, please tell him that his mother was dead. That he should call his father. The imam was gentle, trying to console Ali, but shrugged and said he had not seen Malik in a long time. Maybe years now. Ali said: What about Jamal? Yes, sometimes he comes, the imam said. Jamal is still a Muslim. He even made the haj. He has nothing to do now with jihad. Ali knew that, knew Jamal’s address too. He said nothing more to the imam about Malik, but did give him a card.

— Call me, if you hear from my son.

— Yes, sir.

— I’m sorry for waking you up.

— I wasn’t sleeping, the imam says. I was praying.

— Pray for me.

— I will.

— And above all, for my wife.

Ali walks blindly now to the wall of the tiny room in the JTTF, feels for the light switch. Flicks it on. He blinks in the hard blue light of the fluorescent ceiling bulbs. The pale green walls are blank. Then he steps to the sink, turns on the tap. Thinking: This is like a cell in a very good prison. I am sentenced to solitary.

Never thought I’d survive Mary Lou. Not because I’m older, because of this job. You race to a domestic dispute and a man and a woman stop beating the shit out of each other and turn on you. Both of them. A knife or a gun, that’s part of the deal. Or there’s a robbery of a jewelry store in Chinatown, and you see the guy running through the screaming crowd, and a truck blocks his way, and he turns and fires. Over and over again. Day by day, year by year. Life in this job is a goddamned lottery, with odds against. Ali Watson always thought she would bury him. Why you, Mary Lou? Why not me?

He dries his face, runs a comb through thinning hair. He sees that his eyes are rimmed with red. And turns away from the mirror. Now I have to do the clerical stuff. There’s nobody else. Just me. Arrange a funeral. In Brooklyn. Pick the cemetery too. Dodge the press. Plead national security or some goddamned thing. Ask Ray Kelly to help. Call the lawyer about insurance.

First I gotta find someone else.

8:50 a.m. Sam Briscoe. Publisher’s office, Lipstick Building, Manhattan.

He is sitting on a leather couch in the reception area, casually scanning the New York Times. His hat and coat are in the closet. He is warm in his suit jacket. Behind him on the wall are raised letters in Caslon bold, spelling out the name chosen long ago by Elizabeth Elwood: “World Enterprises, Inc.” Simple and modest. There is a large portrait of her by Everett Raymond Kinstler on the right side of the lettering, placed there after her death. The portrait perfectly captures her intelligent, sympathetic eyes. It was commissioned by her husband long ago, and hung over the fireplace in the living room on Sutton Place until he died. Then she moved it into the library. Her son Richard moved it here, after the apartment was sold. He donated most of her books to the public library, but Briscoe is certain that he chose none of them for himself.

He has been waiting now for twenty minutes, and the receptionist has explained with chilly vagueness that the publisher knows he is here. The door into his office remains shut and Briscoe knows why. He glances at Forbes, New York magazine, and the lone copy of the Friday edition of the World, with its wraparound and the faces of the two women. He wishes he could stretch out and sleep.

The door opens. And a man and a woman emerge, holding coats before them in laced fingers. They are obviously from Homicide, but too young for Briscoe to know them. Richard Elwood is behind them, his white shirt open, tieless, looking solemn.

— Thanks again, Sergeant, he says. It’s a horrible, horrible tragedy, and I hope you catch whoever did it very soon.

— We will, the male cop says, while the woman nods. They shake hands with Elwood, glance at Briscoe, and go to the outer door leading to the elevators. Elwood gestures to Briscoe to come in. They shake hands briskly and Elwood closes the door behind them.

— Hello, Sam, Elwood says. Great paper today. You were right to do the wrap.

— Thanks, Richard.

— I just wish it had never happened.

— Me too.

The office has more square feet than the old apartment on East 49th Street. Briscoe glances around and sees that everything remains as it was a few months earlier, when he last came for a visit. The bar. A cork wall behind Elwood’s desk, busy with a collage of index cards, newspaper clippings, Post-its, business cards. A wall with framed photographs of his mother with Ted Kennedy, Bill and Hillary, Mike Bloomberg, Bush the Father, and young Elwood himself. One of him as a little boy. Through a wide window Briscoe can see Queens. Elwood leads the way to the sitting area, with a couch, two wing chairs, and a low table. A Mark Rothko rises above the couch, all reds and yellows. The table is bare except for a single copy of the World. Elwood sits in a corner of the couch, and gestures for Briscoe to take the near chair.

— Cynthia Harding was a wonderful woman, Elwood says.

— She was. Did the cops tell you anything new?

Elwood stares at his hands.

— Not much, he says. They have two theories. One, a guy saw guests leaving the party, waited, took a chance on the door being open, and got lucky. He finds the Watson woman in the kitchen. She runs up the stairs, yelling. He stabs her. Then Cynthia comes out of the bedroom, and he stabs her too. Then starts a fire and runs.

Briscoe waits. Then:

— What’s the other theory?

— It was somebody one of them knew. Maybe both of them knew.

Briscoe stares at Elwood.

— The Watsons have a son, Briscoe says. In his early twenties.

Elwood shakes his head slowly.

— They didn’t mention that. I mean, would a son kill his mother? Like that? I guess, maybe. Like you told me once: It’s a tabloid city. But, ah, hell, I know they never tell everything to people like us. Until they’re, like, sure.

Elwood rises abruptly.

— You want coffee, Sam?

— Sure.

Elwood goes to the door, opens it, whispers to the receptionist. He comes back, but remains standing. He breathes in heavily.

— Sam, I hate to say this. But I’m closing the paper.

A pause.

— When?

— Now. Today.

He lifts the paper, holding each corner with thumb and forefinger.

— This is the last issue of the New York World. My mother’s paper.

He bends and lays the newspaper on the low table. He turns his back and faces Queens. Briscoe rises, removes his jacket, and drapes it on the back of his chair.

— That’s a mistake, Richard. We own this story. They’ll want more.

Elwood turns, a smile on his face.

— On Saturday? Maybe snow coming tonight? Come on, Sam. Get real.

Briscoe comes up beside him. They can each see the dumb blank faces of high-rise apartment houses, a sliver of the East River, condos where there once were squat fuel tanks on the Queens side. A fragment of the 59th Street Bridge. A shard of distant Citi Field. Briscoe thinks: Where is the Pepsi sign?

— It’s inevitable, Sam. Closing the paper.

The door opens behind them and the receptionist crosses the room holding a tray with two cups, a silver pot, some pastries.

— Just leave it on the table, please, Elwood says.

— Yes, sir, she says, and goes out.

Elwood is quiet for a beat. Then:

— Where was I?

— Inevitable.

— You know, the delivery system is changing, very fast. The ads have dried up. And eighty percent of our expenses go to paper, ink, and delivery. Eighty percent. Not to journalism.

— You need to—

— I need to close the thing, Sam. But that won’t be the end of the World. I’ve been working for months on the plan.

— What plan? I haven’t heard about any plan.

— Let me show you. We have a website already, as you know, so—

Briscoe has almost never looked at the website. Thinks: The kids who do the mechanics work right here, in this building. The three of them combined as old as I am. He has met them once but can’t remember a single name. He wonders if they smoke. Elwood walks to his desk, Briscoe behind him, and sits before the computer to the side of his desk. Briscoe knows what’s coming. Then it’s before him, the home page, in handsome Caslon, bold and medium, a photo from Afghanistan, a local angle on health care.

TheWorld.com.

Elwood keeps talking fast, excited now, all about the changing business model, the market share, the younger audience, about availability on electronic readers, about the way the Times now has more hits on its website than it has daily sales, and how the Wall Street Journal is charging money for access and… Briscoe has heard it all before, from all sorts of people, and he flashes on Elizabeth Elwood all those years ago in Paris, her enthusiasm, her sense of possibility and purpose. She never once used the phrase “business model,” although she surely had one. Elwood keeps talking, clicking on a traffic jam in color video, on the sports section, on style and gossip and how you could blow up the pictures of the stars and print them out.

Then both are silent. Elwood turns to Briscoe, who remains standing.

— So?

— It looks good.

Briscoe turns away, hands in his back pockets.

— That’s all? Elwood says.

He rises now, the computer locked on the home page.

— We need the Saturday paper, Briscoe says. We need a chance to say good-bye.

— Sam, you don’t get it, do you? It’s not good-bye. On Monday morning, we say hello. There’ll be no good-byes. We’ll have ads starting Sunday morning on New York One, and every day next week. Right after the weather! Channels Two and Four too. It will be a media sensation. The first month will be free to everybody, then they pay six bucks a month. We’ll be out in front of the pack. We’ll—

Briscoe walks to his chair and lifts his coat.

— Good luck, Richard.

— What? I want you to be part of this, Sam.

— You mean, you want me to be the guy that lays off people?

— There have to be layoffs, Sam. But you are the World.

Briscoe buttons his jacket and smiles.

— Richard, I’m a newspaperman.

He walks to the door.

— Where are you going?

— I’ve got to make some calls. I don’t want my people to hear about this from some fucking blog. And I have to get my lawyer to call your lawyer about severance and all that. Good luck with everything.

He salutes the photographs of Elizabeth Elwood and walks out.

9:20 a.m. Consuelo Mendoza. Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan.

She waits for the light to change, because she always obeys small laws, and when it’s green, she crosses Seventh Avenue. In the distance, Consuelo sees the sign for the Chelsea Hotel, which looms large and brown and dark. It’s on the south side of 23rd Street, but she stays on the north side. The cold wind blows hard from the river. Her breath makes small gray clouds.

She stops in front of a clothing shop but doesn’t look into the window. She stands with gloved hands jammed in her coat pockets and stares at the hotel. This is surely the place whose name he wrote on that piece of paper long ago. That time when he went to New York and came back with his wife and broke her heart. Fifteen years ago, when she was still almost a girl. If you need anything, Señor Lewis said, call me. Three days after he returned with his wife, Consuelo fled to Huajuapan, eight hours on three different buses, full of anger and bruised pride.

On this cold New York morning, she doesn’t know if he is here, and both the anger and the pride have long vanished. Who can insist on pride if the children will end up on the street in the rain? She called the hotel anyway and it was still the right number but the man who answered said that Mr. Forrest was still sleeping, try later. So he was there, and still alive. Y pues, estoy aquí. I’m here. He’s here too, up in one of those rooms with their iron balconies.

Consuelo knows he must be very old now. Un gringo muy viejo. He was old back then too, but full of life. Staring at her nakedness in his studio, wearing shorts and sneakers behind his easel, drawing or painting her breasts, her waist, her buttocks. Her long hair. Her uncallused feet. Her hands. Laughing about how hard it was to sleep now in his cama de piedra. His bed of stone. Singing songs by Don Cuco, singing about the anillo de compromiso, the engagement ring, and wailing, full of lonely hurt, “A dónde estás?” Oh, where are you?

Si necesitas algo, llámeme, he said. If you need anything, call me. Those were his words that time, when she thought he would come back alone, to her.

She thinks: I need help now, Señor Lewis.

A job.

Or a loan.

Now.

Fifteen years later.

She waits, as people go by in both directions, most hurrying, some strolling, more people in twenty minutes than she’d see in Huajuapan in a month of fiestas. Taxis honk and cars too, and the buses push hard, bullying the others. On the sidewalk, nobody bumps into anyone else. They turn sideways, or pause, or stop. But nobody challenges another to get through. A black man with one leg swings by on crutches. Two light-skinned Latinas go by giggling but Consuelo can’t hear the jokes. They are walking quickly so Consuelo knows they have jobs that must start at ten. Nobody looks at her. Ni modo, Consuelo thinks. No matter: I want it that way. I am nothing to most people, to all but a few. Raymundo. The kids. My friends. But she doesn’t move from her place in front of the clothing store, afraid now that if she sees Señor Lewis he too will not know who she is. For good reason. She is no longer the girl he painted long ago.

Then she gathers herself. She walks to the corner of Seventh Avenue, waits again for the light, crosses with a dozen other people, and moves right on the south side of 23rd Street. She goes past the main entrance of the hotel, which is flanked by brass plaques. She peers casually through the glass doors to the lobby. People talking. A desk at the far end. She walks on. Then stops, and turns and walks back, through the doors. Nobody turns to look at her. A young woman is talking to the balding man behind the desk. His beard is trimmed. He wears a necktie and a jacket. Behind his glasses, he has kind gray eyes. She removes her gloves and shoves them into her coat pocket.

— Thanks, Jerry, the young woman says, lifting mail and a newspaper. I’ll see you later.

— Sure thing, he says, as the woman steps into a waiting elevator.

Then he looks at Consuelo.

— Can I help you, ma’am? he says.

Consuelo clears her throat. It’s hot in the lobby.

— Yes, please, she says. I wan’ to see Mr. Lewis Forrest.

The man behind the counter shrugs.

— I’m afraid he…

— Please, Consuelo says. I’m an old friend from Mexico. He painted me many times. I nee’ to see him, please.

The man squints at her.

— Y’know, I think I’ve seen his paintings of you, señora.

— I was much younger then, she says, and smiles a thin smile.

— So was Mr. Forrest, the man says, and laughs. Much younger.

— But he’s here?

— Yes. He just doesn’t answer the telephone.

— Please, I—

The man squints harder.

— Tell ya what, he says. Just go up there and knock on the door. What the hell? It’s eight-oh-two.

— Thank you very much.

She turns to the elevator, presses the button, her heart beating faster now. The doors open. She steps in. The doors close. She presses 8. The elevator jerks, and starts up, rising slowly. Consuelo thinks of getting off at 8, waiting for a moment, then leaving again. The doors open. She steps out.

The hall of the landing is wide and high and badly lit. There is brown wood everywhere, with doors all shut. In the center of the hall, she can see the railing of a staircase. She steps to the railing and looks down. It seems to be descending into hell, or at least purgatory. There are paintings on the walls as far as she can see. She turns away, fighting off a shiver of dizziness. She hears footsteps on stone, from another floor. Then she walks to the first door on her right, sees the number, sees the next, and starts walking toward the bright rectangle of window light at the far end. The numbers must start down there with 802. She can hear talk from the rooms, the sound of a television set, classical music, laughter.

She stops at the last door, within a small dark alcove. Here it is. Eight-oh-two. There is no bell. She knocks. The old knock, from the house in Cuernavaca. En clave. Bop-bop. Bop-bop-bop. Nothing. She knocks again. She hears the low ruff of a dog, the sound of a dog’s nails on wood. Then a shuffling sound. Slippers, perhaps. Or callused feet.

Then from beyond the door:

— Yes? Who is it?

— It’s me, Señor Lewis.

— Who?

— Yo.

She hears a chain falling against wood. Then a heavy lock turning.

The door opens. He’s standing there, as old as the earth. She realizes that his eyes see nothing. Un ciego. Hijole.

— Consuelo? he whispers, disbelief in his low, trembling voice.

— Sí, señor.

He looks frozen.

— No. Is it you?

He reaches with both hands to her face. She takes his hands and places them on her cheekbones.

— It’s you, he whispers. Tú, Consuelo. Mi corazón.

Tears begin leaking from his blind eyes.

He walks her into the apartment, holding her hand tightly, the dog clearly knowing that she is friend, not foe. He helps her off with her coat, and she stuffs her hat in one of the sleeves. The odor of the place seeps into her: dried sweat, socks, stale air, the large black dog. They pass the huge easel, with its wild angry painting on the crossbar, move around chairs, ease past a stained couch. Then Lew Forrest pauses. He points with his right hand, his painting hand, up to the wall, to the portrait of Consuelo as a girl. Beside it is a portrait of his wife. La Señora Gabriela. La Francesa. Both of them are young. Consuelo feels a pang of old hurt. He squeezes her warm bare hand. His hand is cold.

— Eres tú, no? he says. The one on the left. It’s you, Consuelo.

She can see her own smooth younger flesh, her thinner neck, her more delicate shoulders, the green and orange shawl from Huajuapan draped over one shoulder and one breast, sees the hard dark nipple of the other, and remembers sitting for hours on the edge of the bed in the studio in Cuernavaca, while music played, and Señor Lewis stared hard at her, all of her, and made a feathery caressing sound with his brush on the canvas.

— Sí, Señor Lewis, she says. It’s me.

— After my wife died, I could put you both together. First in the lobby. Then here. On that wall. For an audience of one. Me.

It is her turn to squeeze Forrest’s hand. And then they are talking in a mixture of Spanish and English, as they did long ago. The hurt eases. She hopes her English is now better than his Spanish. She can see his lips making words that he does not say. Uncertain. Unable to remember. Then he clears his throat.

— How old were you then, Consuelo?

— Seventeen.

— Diez y siete, he whispers. Seventeen. Hijole!

— Y tú? she says.

— Old, he says, and laughs. Un gringo viejo. Even then.

She laughs too.

— I was madly in love with you, Consuelo. Muy, muy loco.

There’s a beat of grave silence.

— Yo también, she says, her voice lower. Me too.

He must have heard the note of sadness in her voice.

— I… I don’t know why I…

— Ni modo, Señor Lewis. Como se dice, it was a long time ago.

Forrest stands there for a long moment, as if seeing nothing at all. Not the old paintings. Not her. Not anything in the world.

Then he takes her elbow.

— Come, he says. Sit beside me on the couch. I’ll call down for coffee.

— You have a coffeepot and all that? I can make it.

— No, no. I gave the damned thing away. You know, I can’t see much, mi vida, and I keep making a mess. Pouring coffee on the floor instead of in the cup.

He chuckles and then goes on.

— Anyway, I gave the pot away, and kept the cups. I’ll call Jerry, down at the desk. What do you want, querida?

They talk it over. Just black coffee? Sí. A bagel? Sí. Con mantequilla? Sí. How about a cheese Danish too? No, no, Señor Lewis.

He picks up the old black telephone from a table and talks to Jerry downstairs, while Consuelo gazes around the long narrow apartment, at the shelves full of art books and volumes of poetry, at the paintings leaning against each other beside the walls, the long flat metal cabinet that she knows from Cuernavaca must be full of drawings and prints and watercolors. He hangs up the phone and walks her to the tan dirt-streaked couch, which is three cushions wide. The cushion on the far right is stacked with more drawings. Forrest grips the left arm of the couch, turns around to sit with a sigh, and points Consuelo to the center cushion. She sits straight up on the edge, hands clasped on her lap. The dog moves around to the side, and stretches his legs on the floor. There is a silent awkward moment.

— Well, Lew Forrest says, what brings you here, Consuelo?

She waits for a long beat, gathering words, and strength, and will. Telling herself: Just say it. Say it straight out.

— You said, that time, the last time, when you went to New York, you said to me, Consuelo, if you need help, call me. You wrote the name of this place for me. On a small piece of paper. I was so hurt I just went away. I kept the paper.

She shows him the folded sheet from a composition book, but then holds it, for he cannot see.

— I thought I was coming back, he whispers. Alone.

She lets those words grow cold in the stale air.

— Pues. Here I am, señor. I came back to see you again.

— You did. Why?

— I need help.

— What kind of help, Consuelo?

She starts to speak but the doorbell rings. Forrest grips her hand.

— Could you…?

— Sí, Señor Lewis.

— Here, he says, taking bills separately from each pocket.

He hands her four bills.

— That’s a ten-dollar bill, and three singles, verdad?

— Sí, señor.

— Okay, that includes the tip.

She walks to the door, the dog first stretching, then padding after her. She opens the door. The delivery boy is Mexican, wearing a Mets cap. Well, maybe he’s un guatemalteco. He squints at the dog, but seems relaxed. He is holding a gray corrugated cardboard tray with slots for the two coffee containers and the wrapped bagels. He seems surprised to see Consuelo’s face in this doorway that he has come to in the past.

She takes the tray and hands him the bills.

— Gracias, joven, she says.

— Por nada, señora, he says. Then smiles and adds: Y que viva México!

She bows, holding the tray with both hands, and smiles, closing the door with her foot. She moves across the studio to the small kitchen.

— Hay tazas, señor? Cups?

— Sí, sí, Consuelita. On the shelves.

The sink is filthy. She takes two unmatched cups from the shelf, rinses them in the sink, dries them with paper towels from a roll lying on its side. She can hear Lew Forrest singing in a dry choked voice. A scrap from the past.

A dónde estás,

A dónde estás…

She is washing a grimy plate, blue designs on white, her eyes suddenly wet. A song from those days. Cuco Sánchez again. A dónde estás. Where are you? She dries the plate with a fresh paper towel and uses its dry edge to tamp the corners of her eyes. She unwraps the bagels and puts them on the plate. She moves to the couch, pulls over a chair, and lays the plate on the seat of the chair. She goes back quickly for the cups. Forrest stops singing. The aroma of coffee is winning against the sour odor of the room.

— Aquí, señor, she says, taking his painting hand and placing it on the handle of his cup.

— Qué milagro, he says, chuckling. What a miracle! Coffee in a cup! Not cardboard! A true miracle.

— Sí, señor, she says. Y bagels también!

— Watch out for that dog. He might think they’re for him.

He feels for the plate, takes a bagel, and pulls it into halves. Then pauses.

— Okay, what kind of help, Consuelo?

— A job, Señor Lewis.

— Start from the beginning. When you went home to Oaxaca.

She tells him the short version of the long tale. Huajuapan. Raymundo. Marriage. The two of them slipping across the border west of Laredo. The long ride north in a bus. New York. Cleaning houses, then cleaning offices, studying English in the church, teaching English to Raymundo, who found work in a coffee shop, first delivering orders and washing dishes and cleaning grills. Then cooking. Getting paid more each year. Not a lot. But more. After little Eddie was born, they moved to a one-room studio apartment in Brooklyn, and after the second child, the girl Marcela, they found this house in Sunset Park. Two floors. Parlor floor and basement, the Irish woman called it. Pretty high rent, for a place that was a wreck, but with Consuelo and Raymundo both working, they managed. They fixed up the rooms. They made the little back garden bloom with flowers. Then, three years ago, the Irish lady died and they started sending the rent money to some company. Money orders. Then everything started to collapse two years ago, and now she had lost her job. Now they could be evicted. With three kids now. Eddie, Marcela, Timmie.

— I thought you might know about a job. Maybe I could even work here. Clean your place once a week, and the halls, and other apartments. Maybe you know other places, señor. That’s what I thought. Businesses, offices. Anything. Well, not anything. Nothing with… cómo se dice, vergüenza?

— Shame? Never, Consuelo. Never with you.

He is quiet for almost a minute. Maybe longer. She hopes he can’t hear her heart beating. He still holds the bagel. His face says nothing.

— Let me think, Consuelo. You know, this goddamned recession…

— Sí, yo entiendo. I understand, señor. That’s why I lose, uh, lost my job.

He bites the end of his bagel, gnawing it, chewing intently, then swallowing. Thinking.

He says, Do you know the computer?

— Sí. My son, he—

— Good. I don’t have a clue about it.

He leans back, staring at nothing he can see.

— The people I know, he says, the people who buy my paintings — they’re all very quiet right now. Como se dice, laying low. Waiting. The very rich ones don’t give a rat’s ass. The money keeps rolling in. But others, they’re cutting back. They’re afraid. One of them just died. Yesterday. An awful death. A wonderful woman. I guess it’s on television too.

She feels herself going limper, softer. He’s trying to say that he can’t help. Pues. Ni modo, ni modo. No surprise. And looking at the mess of the studio, she is certain that a loan is impossible.

— Even here at the Chelsea, they’re cutting back. Some people, they lived here for years, they can’t pay the rent. Painters give the hotel paintings instead of rent. Others, they just pray, even the atheists. None of them want to live in a homeless shelter.

Consuelo sees his eyebrows tense as he sips his coffee, both hands wrapped around the cup for warmth. She can’t bring herself to press him, and begins to feel regret about coming to see him.

— I need to make some calls, he says.

— Gracias, señor. But don’t, please don’t, uh, go out of your way.

— No, no, it’s no bother. It’s just, you know, it should be a job with a future. You’re young, mi vida. You’re beautiful. You speak English real good, Consuelo. You know the computer. You’re smart as hell… I don’t know… You don’t have to clean up after people. Maybe—

— I’m illegal, señor, she says, in a flat voice.

— What the hell? Half the guys I grew up with were illegal — and they were born here!

He laughs out loud.

— And those malcriados from Wall Street, that Bernie Madoff — what the hell are they? Legal?

Consuelo smiles. She knows three women who worked on Wall Street.

— Sí, pero—

His face is flushed now, the way it used to be in Cuernavaca when something on TV set him off about politicians and the pendejos of the world.

— Your kids are Americans, right?

— Sí, Señor Lewis.

— Well, they ain’t going anywhere. And neither are you. You already cleaned enough offices to make sure they never have to clean them. You need a job that helps you get them into college… I have a lawyer friend. Specializes in immigration cases, Irishmen, Chinese, Mexicans… Named O’Dwyer. I think he can help straighten this out, this illegal stuff…

He sips his coffee. She sips hers too. A slight bitterness lies in the dark liquid at the bottom of the cup. She looks at him, his knotting brow, his slackening jaw. Pity rises in her. A man who loves pictures and cannot even see his own work. A man who loves poetry and cannot read. A man who loves friends and company and women, and is here, in this place, alone.

She places the cup on the chair.

— I mus’ be going, Señor Lewis. My children…

— Of course.

And then, almost urgently, he touches her forearm.

— Consuelo, mi vida. I want to say something. Just to you… I truly loved you… I did… I was way too old for you, even then, but you made me feel younger. More alive. It showed in my work. In my eyes… When you went away, I thought, I should have married her. I should have married you.

— You were married, señor, she says softly.

The sentence hangs there.

— Yes, I was. And the truth? I loved her too. I loved my wife, Gabrielle. And you. Most people don’t understand how that’s possible. Except in some goddamned telenovela… If I could have had both of you, I’d have been happy… In the same house. At the same table. But she would never go for that and neither would you. Pride is always stronger than love. Or maybe love is impossible without pride. I don’t know… But there was another thing. She was sick. The doctors in New York, they said, she… Ah, ni modo. Never mind… I was too old to follow my heart. And all these years later, I still think of you. And here you are.

She tries breathing softly, relieved that he cannot see her face.

Forrest drains his cup, lays it down gently, feeling for the edge of the chair before him. Then he rises, pushing on the arm of the couch, and stands. The dog stands too. So does Consuelo. She wishes she could begin cleaning now. Send him to the lobby with the dog. Open the windows. Call her friends. Bring brooms and pails and soap and mops, bring Pledge and Windex, make everything shiny, make the air as sweet as the house in Mexico, give him a new clean life. Bring music. Bring Don Cuco with his harp. Bring José Alfredo with his cantina songs. Bring him joy.

— You gave me many gifts, Señor Lewis.

— And you… did that for me, Consuelita… After you, I did my best work.

— I’m sorry for coming here to bother you.

— No, no. It’s been a delight. Corazón…

He turns his head to where her voice is.

— Now, mi vida, go to that desk. Write down your married name, your husband’s name, the three children and the years they were born and where. Write your address and telephone number. And what do they call it? E-mail. I want to talk to this lawyer, O’Dwyer. And I want to start calling my friends about work.

— Sí, Señor Lewis.

She begins writing with the lead pencil. The point is blunt. Forrest is silent, but she can hear his dry breathing. He must have stopped smoking. There is no odor of nicotine in the dirty air. He can hear when she finishes writing.

— Now, listen to me, muchacha. When you go downstairs, see Jerry. Make sure you see him. The bald guy at the front desk.

— Señor, I…

— See him.

He embraces her. She kisses his leathery cheek.

— Mil gracias, Señor Lewis. Para todo.

She takes her coat, pulls it on, adds the hat. She feels as if she will never see him again.

— This is not good-bye, he says. No es adios. Es hasta muy pronto. Until very soon.

— Sí, señor, she says. And opens the door.

— Mucha suerte, she whispers.

He chuckles and says: Luck is what we both need.

And she’s gone. Forrest can hear her steps receding on the tile of the hallway.

He picks up the telephone.

10:10 a.m. Malik Shahid. Sixth Street, Gowanus, Brooklyn.

Jamal sits at the kitchen table, his back to the bright garden, facing Malik. He is trying to look relaxed, dressed in a cashmere sweater, white J. Crew turtleneck, slacks, his left foot encased in a desert boot, perched on his right knee. He peers at Malik through slightly tinted yellowish glasses. His beard is neatly trimmed. Buppie of the month, Malik thinks, another infidel fuck. My friend Jamal. My jihadist comrade.

— What are you gonna do, Malik? he says.

— Whattaya think I’m gonna do?

— I don’t know. I know what you should do.

— Yeah? What’s that?

— Call your father. Go see him. Don’t run.

— Shit, Malik says, dragging the word across three syllables.

— You know they’re looking for you, Jamal says.

— Why me?

— Malik, your mother’s been murdered by someone. Along with the woman she worked for. A rich, well-known woman. It’s all over TV. It’s on the radio. The cops want to talk to everyone who might know why. Or who.

— You know how I feel, Jamal. My mother’s been dead for years.

— Stop shittin’ yourself, brother.

Malik goes quiet, his eyes wandering to the sink, the dishwasher, the stove. Jamal has been a dark silhouette against the brightness of the garden. Now he flattens his foot on the kitchen floor, and leans forward.

— You can’t stay here, man. You know how my wife—

— I came for our stuff, Jamal. The box. You know, with—

— It’s not here, Malik. You think I’m nuts?

— Where is it?

Malik’s face hardens. Jamal jerks a thumb to his left.

— Down there, a block and a half. Been there three years, at least. At the bottom of the Gowanus.

— What? You never asked me if—

— You were in the wind, man. How’m I suppose to find you? Facebook? Call information? Google?

— You coulda buried it in the yard.

— You think my wife wouldn’t notice? Get real.

Silence. Jamal stands, folds his arms across his chest. The tree in the garden is skeletal, with an icy sheen.

— Can I sleep here a few hours?

Jamal turns. Without his beard, Malik looks younger, even forlorn, or lost.

— My wife is due back soon. She just dropped my daughter at nursery school, then went shopping. I mean, you said you seen her leave. The house is too small for you to sleep here without her seein’ you.

He doesn’t have to spell out the rest. Malik knows that Jamal’s wife is the kind of infidel bitch would call the cops on a Muslim.

— Why would you want the stuff? Jamal says.

Malik doesn’t answer. He rises, stands aimlessly, folding and unfolding his arms, then leans against the stove.

— I hope you’re not planning some fucking show, Malik. Kill yourself, take a lotta people with you.

— Shut up.

— Like these dumb-ass white guys, all packing heat, walk into a gym or a church or a campus, start shooting, kill a bunch a’ people, then shoot themselves. Two-day wonders in the tabloids. Then nobody knows their names.

Malik whips around from the stove, slicing the air with a carving knife.

— Shut the fuck up, Jamal!

Silence.

Jamal’s face trembles. He eyes the five-inch blade.

Then Malik lowers the knife.

— Sorry, he whispers.

He lays the knife on the stovetop, turns, and walks quickly down the hall to the gate under the stoop. He zippers his coat.

Jamal waits, hears the gate clang. He feels his body go rubbery and boneless. He struggles to breathe.

10:15 a.m. Sam Briscoe. New York Luncheonette, 135 East 50th Street, Manhattan.

The waiter takes the plates away, with their traces of scrambled eggs and crisp bacon and the crust of an English muffin. He puts the check beside Briscoe’s cup and refills the cup with black decaf. Briscoe tries to remember what he has forgotten in his need to fill these coming hours with details. Clerking death. The process he first saw when he was ten and one of his Irish aunts had to arrange a wake for her dead husband. Don’t grieve, or at least not now. Take care of details. Deal with the boring parts. Get too busy for weeping. The aunt said to Briscoe’s mother: I’m too damned busy to feel sorry for anyone, even myself.

Using the hated cell phone, Briscoe had called Matt Logan first, waking him up, telling him what had happened. I don’t want you to hear the news from the new media, Briscoe said.

Logan laughed: I already did. That CelineWire one. You know, Wheeler, the schmuck you fired a couple years ago.

Briscoe laughed, and said, Never fire a guy who can type. He explained that he would cash out, and recommend to the publisher that Matt run the new online version of the World.

— Am I being punished? Logan said.

— No, Briscoe said. But you’ll be getting paid.

Then he called Janet, his secretary, and told her to call a staff meeting for five o’clock today. They’ll all have the news already, he said. But there’ll be forms to fill out, applying for the jobs that will be left. And we have to say good-bye. He told her to call each of them. To meet in the city room. Everybody who could make it. Sportswriters and photographers and advertising guys and pressmen included. Closed to outside press. He gave Janet the news too, of course, and told her not to worry, she’d still have a job.

— Yeah? she said. But I work for you.

In a way, that was true. She’d worked for him about a dozen years, a lifetime in newspapers. He told her everything would be okay. At least for now, he added. But he wanted her to start packing his office things, the books, and photographs, and files. The Hermes 3000. The pica rule. You know, he said. The stuff.

He told her that he would call Helen Loomis himself, later, since she had worked a double shift through the night.

— Let her sleep, he said. Janet started to get weepy, and said, This ain’t right.

— No, it’s not, Briscoe said. But you have to eat.

Then he called the publisher back, making sure that it was okay to name Matt Logan the new editor. Elwood said yes, but only if Briscoe agreed to become editor emeritus, serving as an adviser to TheWorld.com. Briscoe said he wanted to think it over but would have his lawyer call about details. Elwood said: Don’t worry, Sam. Either way, you’ll get everything that’s due you.

Now Briscoe sits in the coffee shop. For the first time in years, he is in a coffee shop without a newspaper on the table. There is nothing else to read except the menu and the check. He thinks: I need a slim volume of Yeats to carry around with me.

He pays the check and walks out into the cold sunshine. The sidewalk is less crowded now. The people with jobs are all squatting above the street in front of their computers, trying to will a Big Score out of the bouncing numbers. But there are very few shoppers entering the stores, and no tourists at all. The sky is now darkening in the west. He starts assembling a list of other calls to make. His daughter, Nicole, first. In Paris. Haberman at the Times. Myron at the Post and Ng at the News. Or just call Mike Oreskes at the AP. Briscoe will call Susan Jones at the museum and ask her to send a crew to pack the cartoons and the old typewriters in the hall. To ask for Janet.

But who does he call about Cynthia Harding? She had no children. Except maybe Sandra Gordon. The girl Cynthia adopted, without papers. That party in Montego Bay… what year was it? The tall blonde woman and the small black girl pulling books off shelves… He pauses, takes a deep breath. Tells himself, Clerk this fucking thing. Now. Will there be a memorial? Surely yes. Probably at the library. Maybe Janet can find out. All of us can walk past the lions, past Patience and Fortitude, and enter her cathedral. Is there a will? Call Cynthia’s lawyer. First thing. Soon as I get home.

Jesus Christ. Stop. Go home.

He hurries down the steps to the 6 train but can’t look at the offerings of the newsstand. He swipes his Senior Citizen Metro-Card, the card he calls his New York passport. Moves along the waiting area, hands deep in his coat pockets. He fingers the card, then imagines sweat ruining its surface, and returns it to his wallet. Thinking: If only I’d gone to Cynthia’s party at Patchin Place. Stayed over. Walked Mary Lou Watson to the car. But no. I had to work. Like so many other nights. Still, if I’d taken the night off, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe I’d be calling Cynthia now, explaining about the World, and asking her out to a late dinner. Instead of snacks in bed. Or takeout. Or dim sum on Saturdays. Maybe… ah, fuck it.

At Grand Central, four graying black doo-woppers come into the car, in rough winter clothes, sneakers, men in their fifties or sixties. They begin to sing.

Why, oh why, do I

Live in the dark?

(day and night, babe)

A woman in her fifties smiles, but won’t make eye contact. A girl in her twenties looks amused in another way. Where she comes from, they never see such an act.

Why, oh why, do I

Sleep in the park?

(can’t pay no rent, babe)

The doo-woppers have the look of men who spent too many years rehearsing in the yard at Attica or Green Haven or Dannemora. They smile but their eyes are sad. One grips a blue plastic bucket. Briscoe drops a fiver into it, and the surprised man smiles brightly, showing yellowing teeth. They keep moving to the far end of the car.

You were my woman

Round and sweet—

Then you took off

With a lowlife creep

They step off at 33rd Street. Briscoe wonders when he first heard someone sing those lyrics. Summer of ’55? No, ’56.

And here I am

A paper wrappin’ my feet—

Frankie Lymon? Didn’t he finish badly? Dying of heroin. What year? Sometime in the sixties. Briscoe was working in Europe, so maybe it was 1964. Thinking: Gotta Google him. Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers. Or maybe the Platters. The flip side of some big hit. Who was I in love with then?

Oh why, oh why, do I

Live in the dark?

He remembers. Betty Haddad. Small, with lustrous black hair, a handsome hooked nose, oval face. Her parents were Syrian Christians. She loved dancing, which they did for a whole summer. Why did they fall in love? It was simple. She wasn’t like all the Irish and Jews and Italians of Briscoe’s tribes. Or more accurately, not like him. It took him another thirty years to realize that was one of the points of New York. Maybe the most important. It’s the city of people who are not like you.

Same with Cynthia Harding. She wasn’t like his people and Briscoe wasn’t like hers.

(day and night, babe)

Why, oh why, do I…

He gets off the 6 train at Spring Street, and feels weariness eating his brain cells. At the top of the steps, he has to pause for breath, settling himself, breathing in the cold air. He walks west, slowly. On Broadway, there in the heart of SoHo, there are more people than he saw in midtown. The usual fat tourist ladies in wide threesomes are ambling down to Canal Street, to buy fake Prada and Gucci handbags. Nobody can get past them. Messengers on bicycles weave in and out of traffic. Horns honk in warning or exasperation. Four young tourists pause on the corner, speaking Italian, squinting at a map, and calling up something on a gadget. Presumably a GPS map. Briscoe considers asking them if they knew what had happened to Frankie Lymon. If not, maybe they could Google him, right there on the corner. Yeah.

He crosses Broadway, heading home. He will call his daughter in Paris and then Helen and then sleep.

10:45 a.m. Sandra Gordon. Lipstick Building.

Her door is open and she sits at her desk, glancing at proofs of the Cash for Clunkers ads. A very big client. Tottering now. Buy our cars, get cash back. Wondering: Did they do this for chariots in the last days of the Roman Empire?

Her right elbow aches. Her right hand trembles. She can’t remember ever fainting before. Not in New York. Not at Columbia. Never in Jamaica. She remembers seeing the front page of the newspaper. Then looking up at the face of Kennedy, the young guy from media analysis, way down the hall, and he’s whispering. “Are you okay, Miss Gordon? You want a doctor?” And she said, “Oh, thanks, Kennedy. I’m okay. I guess I fainted.”

He helped her up and she saw about twenty people in the lobby, all looking at her. Men and women. She still hears Kennedy asking what happened, as he helps her stand. She remembers pointing at the newsstand. The stack of newspapers. The front page of the World. And saying: I knew that woman. The white woman. She gave me my life.

Kennedy went with her in the elevator, gently moving her away from the spectators, and into her office. She kept saying: No doctor, please, I’m okay, I fainted is all… Then the bosses were in her office, and one of them suggested she go home, take the day off, what the hell, it’s Friday. And she smiled and said No, I have proofs to look at, and a lunch appointment and… They all looked uneasy, and the doctor was mentioned again, and Sandra Gordon smiled and shooed them away.

Now she rises from her desk, and looks out the window, south and east, toward where Cynthia Harding lived. The sky is darker than it was when she left home. She hasn’t yet left her office, to walk among the other workers. No longer the mad men of the television series. No martinis at lunch. No smoking at their desks. They’re tweeting, and texting on BlackBerrys, and checking Facebook or MySpace. Not for fun. For ideas. And to gossip.

She wonders if today, they’re tweeting about her.

And out there in the city, Cynthia Harding…

She is thinking: I was gonna call her today. Today. To set up lunch and talk about the endless stupidity of the world, and the men who inhabit it. To make jokes about Myles Compton, wherever he might be. To laugh. To feel alive. And defiant. And let her know that I’m sad too and hurting.

She can’t look over at the three crowded shelves of the office bookcase. Cynthia’s photograph is there on top, along with two photos of Madda. Looking stern and serious in fierce Jamaican sunlight.

She can’t look at the newspaper either, folded in the chair against the window. She can’t go online for breaking news. She doesn’t want to know the details. At least not now. Maybe not ever.

Her secretary eases in without a word. Amanda Burroughs. A crisp British accent. She stands before the bookcase.

— Yes, Amanda.

— So far, no news about the burials, or services. Not at the Times. Not online. I called that Mr. Briscoe, as you asked. His secretary said he’d be available about five-thirty.

— I see.

— And here are three thank-you cards. Mr. Kennedy is out at a meeting, so you have time to choose one.

She lays the cards on Sandra Gordon’s desk.

— Thanks, Amanda.

— Is there anything else, Ms. Gordon?

— Just one thing, she says, smiling wanly. Try to find me an Aleve. My elbow hurts like hell.

Amanda smiles in reply and leaves the office.

Now Sandra glimpses the photograph of Cynthia Harding. She averts her eyes, sees deep green foliage in Montego Bay, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, rainy streets in Paris, that boat in the Greek isles. All with Cynthia. She turns to face her desk.

She feels breath rush out of her. Dry with anguish. But she does not faint.

11:15 a.m. Ali Watson. Brownsville, Brooklyn.

He is driving past the overgrown lots, where Jews lived for years, and then blacks, and now nobody lives at all. He has called Jamal and left his own cell number on Jamal’s answering machine. He has told his partner to scan all chatter to see if Malik has been in New York. Hoping there’s been a whisper from Oakland. Or Pakistan. Montreal or Yemen. Not here. Please God: not here.

But he needs to speak to the other one, the man who dragged them both deeper into the seventh century. Ali for a season. Malik forever.

He needs to speak to Muhammad Ahmad, who two hours earlier whispered the meeting place below the El at Saratoga Avenue. “Around the corner from Moorz Cutz, the barbershop,” the man said. “Noon, okay?” Okay. If anyone knows whether Malik is in New York, and where he is, if he is — it’s Muhammad Ahmad.

In his day, Ali Watson remembers, he was a great fraud, Muhammad was, but a fraud with charisma and savage humor. The most dangerous kind. Ali remembers his young eyes now, the blaze of certainty in them, the ferocity of his language when they met that time in Brownsville in a mosque that had once been a Baptist church and before that a synagogue. His legend was spreading as despair deepened. The year was 1969. Malcolm was dead. Martin was dead. Bobby was dead. Heroin was alive and Brownsville was burning. And there in the lots rose Muhammad Ahmad, aged eighteen, standing in flowing white robes on the roof of a burnt-out Chevy. Singing the early version of his siren song.

His slave name, as they said in those days, was Ben Jenkins, and he was born right here in B-ville. The résumé was the usual pile of clichés. His father took off before he was born. His mother kicked him out when he was fourteen. He was a junkie at fifteen and then sent to the reformatory called Warwick, after Ali, a patrolman then at the 7–3 on East New York Avenue, busted him for dealing heroin. In Warwick, he became a Muslim. Like thousands of other young jailhouse Muslims. Then his life started.

Now Ali pulls over to the curb. He turns off the engine, and sits there, watching, and remembering.

Ben Jenkins took the name of the man who became the Mahdi in the late nineteenth century, the star of a Muslim tale right out of Hollywood. As Muhammad Ahmad, he began preaching in the lots and then on street corners, the way the communists once did in B-ville, and the guys who recruited soldiers for the Lincoln Brigade, and the passionate socialists who wanted to create Israel. As always, the goal was utopia. The big time was a corner on Pitkin Avenue, up the block from the huge movie house. Ben Jenkins, now called Muhammad Ahmad, became a soapbox boy wonder, telling his audiences how the Mahdi built his army in the south of Egypt, gathering thousands of followers, preaching jihad, until he finally surrounded the British at Khartoum. The Mahdi’s army captured the city and killed the British general, and militant Islam seemed clearly on the march. The Mahdi was now famous all over the world.

Listening to this passionate kid then, patrolman Ali Watson imagined the El as the walls of Khartoum, and fought off feelings he had when he first heard Malcolm preach. The song was a vision. He laughs, hearing Mary Lou’s voice: Are you nuts? You’re a grown-up, Ali! He gets out of the car now. Locks it. Shakes off Mary Lou’s sharp, intelligent voice. Stands there trembling for a long minute, but not from the cold.

Still watching.

On all these street corners, now so empty, Ben Jenkins told the bitter crowds, seething with anger, that he had been chosen as the new Mahdi. He was chosen by the Messenger himself in a visitation on the roof of his building in the Marcus Garvey Houses. Then he moved on to his own divine message, his vision, his addition to the many Brownsville utopias. On that windy rooftop, the Messenger told him Allah wanted him to lead a black revolt, inspired and commanded by Muslims, and then to create an Islamic republic in the American South. Start with Mississippi, then get the white infidels out of Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, northern Florida, and replace them with black believers. They could stay, whites and blacks, only if they accepted Allah, and agreed to sharia law. Otherwise, they must go, or die. Hearing all this, most blacks laughed. The way Mary Lou did. Some did not. Particularly if they were young. They saw a future.

He, the new Mahdi, would enlist all those Muslims whose faith died when Malcolm was killed. He would draw blacks to the Mahdi Army from all over the United States. The Panthers. The Five Percenters. America had enslaved them, crippled them, placed them out on the edge without power. America gave them the humiliation of welfare and forgot them. Now they would build the proud Black Zion. Gathering first in Mississippi, where blacks were already a majority. Where whites maintained power through the terrorist gang called the Ku Klux Klan. To meet white terror with black terror.

A kid from City College recorded a few of the Mahdi’s street-corner sermons and, years later, turned the tapes into a very special bootleg. That audiotape, peddled on street corners and then in barbershops and at rallies at schools, attracted many young listeners. One was Malik. Father and son argued bitterly about the message before Malik went away for good. Now Ali has to find him.

Ali Watson begins to walk on streets where he was young too. He wanders to Legion Street and then Grafton Street, where he can hear the screeching of the El, passing over corners where the street gangs once ruled until heroin cut out their hearts. When he married Mary Lou, she insisted that they move. “This place is doomed,” she said. On moving day, black smoke darkened the sky from a burning tenement two blocks away, and doom seemed certain.

Ali knew the B-ville story. He had seen it. The burning gashed every block and turned others into lots. Landlords paid twelve-year-old kids to torch the tenements so they could collect insurance money and buy condos in Fort Lauderdale. Some old dude dies in the building? Tough shit. Burnt-out automobiles were everywhere, stolen from other neighborhoods, driven until the gas ran out, then set on fire to become housing for rats. When Ali came over one time on the trail of a murder suspect, Brownsville looked like Stalingrad or Berlin in the old newsreels on the History Channel. When crack came, the neighborhood truly became a war zone. The infantry was made of young zombies with guns. Killing over ownership of a street corner. Killing old ladies. Killing their own mothers. At least the old junkies nodded out once in a while. The crackheads never did. They wanted more, and more, and more. Real Americans.

Ben Jenkins missed most of that. He was in Leavenworth. In 1980, the Feds nailed him and four others for possession of gelignite, four bag bombs made from boiled and dried horse shit, three AK-47s, fifteen Glocks, two MAC-10s, and plans to blow up the Statue of Liberty. One of the four associates was a rat. Off went the new Mahdi to serve twenty-one years of a thirty-year sentence. He came home in April 2001 to discover that the world he wanted to change as a kid was actually the good old days. Nobody he met remembered him, even those who had heard the audiotape. They were too young, even if, like Malik, they had learned the lyrics of his siren song.

After September 11, Ali tracked down Ben Jenkins. He was living in his sister’s apartment, sleeping on a couch. Another middle-aged black man on welfare. Everything was out of him, including the gaudy illusion of the New Mahdi Army. His face was pouched and lined. White hairs sprouted from his nose and his stubbly beard. He had no woman, no kids, no job, no hope. His drug of choice was Marlboro Lights. Jenkins told Ali that he knew nothing about al-Qaeda or the men who smashed airplanes into the Trade Center, and Ali believed him. He was still in jail when the planning took place, and he had a solid alibi for the day itself.

After September 11, Jenkins became part of Ali’s early warning system, which gave him a few extra dollars every month. Calling from pay phones. Meeting in odd parts of the city. He was still a Muslim, drifting from mosque to mosque, warding off loneliness in the company of other womenless men. But he was useful to Ali and the Joint Terrorism Task Force. He could recognize those young men who resembled his own younger self. And from the photographs Ali gave him, he could recognize Malik.

Now, in the distance, Ali Watson sees him, staring into the window of a hardware store, dressed in a heavy down jacket with a hood. Ali waits a minute, watching for anyone who might be watching Ben Jenkins. Then he hurries across the street. He walks casually past Jenkins, then turns his attention to a display of drill bits. He speaks without turning his head.

— I’m looking for my son, Ali says.

— I heard the other day he was out here a few weeks ago.

Ali feels his stomach moving.

— Why didn’t you call me?

— I been sick, man. Some kind of a flu.

— You should’ve called me, Ben.

— Yeah. Sorry, man. I didn’t actually see him. Some guy—

— Where was he? Malik, I mean?

— At that mosque on Georgia, near Livonia.

— The storefront?

— That’s it.

Ali exhales.

— I’ll take a look.

— I’ll keep looking.

— If you see him, Ben, day or night, call me, hear?

— Yeah.

Ali turns to walk past him. Without turning his head.

— Hey, man, I’m sure sorry about your wife.

— Thank you.

11:20 a.m. Freddie Wheeler. His apartment, Williamsburg.

Freddie Wheeler feels like he’s floating. Two feet above the floor. Ten stories above the street. He moves from bathroom to computer screen to window and back, and his brain is bursting with triumph. More than two hundred e-mails, and it isn’t even lunchtime… The Times three times, looking for a comment… Not David Carr, though… Some reporter… The AP… The Daily News… Howard Kurtz from the Washington Post and CNN, he wants to know how CelineWire.com found out before everybody else that the World was folding as a newspaper and opening as a website… Calling me “Mr. Wheeler”… The London Times sent an e-mail, for fuck sake… Murdoch must be screaming about why the news wasn’t broken in the Wall Street Journal…

He checks the BlackBerry.

Some bitter notes… Of course… Blaming the messenger… Hope you’re happy now, you little prick. McLeod… An old fart from the World copy desk: Ucksay my ickday you uckingfay astardbay. Another hack from the copy desk… Pretty hip.

And, hey: CNN wants to send a crew!

And, holy shit, Morning Joe wants him Monday!

He jumps again… then reaches for jeans and starts dressing… He is starving now. Gotta eat… Gotta eat anything… Even eggs… Even just toast. Celebrate! He pulls a T-shirt over his head, and a heavy wool sweater… Céline would love this… A victory in a time when there are almost no victories… Hey, Briscoe: whattaya gonna do now, you half a Hebe? I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do… You’re gonna die, baby… First the paper, then you.

He imagines his mother turning on Morning Joe… if they even get the show out there… And there he is! Her worthless son! On national television… A Pun-Dit!.. Being asked for his opinions! Whattaya think now, Momma?

Top of the world!

11:40 a.m. Helen Loomis. Second Avenue and 9th Street, Manhattan.

She hangs up the phone, turns, and weeps in a surrendering way into the pillow.

— Oh, Sam, she whispers to herself. What’s to become of you? And me? What’s to become of us all?

She cries until she can cry no more and reaches for a Kleenex. She blows her nose. Then sits up, and lights a cigarette. At least I got to smoke again in a city room, she thinks, even if it was for the last time. Not the last cigarette. The last city room.

Oh, God.

It’s over.

She sits up on the edge of the bed, flicking ash into a saucer on the bed table, pulling her robe more tightly. What will I do now? she thinks. No more “Vics and Dicks,” the long serial she has written for, what? Forty years now? Five dopes a day? Twenty-five a week. The dumbest knucklehead criminals in the history of the city. Twenty-five a week means how many? Fifty thousand? Fifty-five? She thinks that she must do the math, with a pencil, on paper.

Thinking: Or was I Scheherazade?

Telling stories in order to live?

Even if they were not my stories. They weren’t, but I owned them. They could have called the column “Knucklehead News.” No Professor Moriarty among any of them. No Goldfinger. No Dr. Sivana, who called Captain Marvel a “Big Red Cheese.” No Meyer Lansky. No Frank Costello. Absolutely no master criminals. My people were dumbbells all. The smart guys made page 3. But oh, how my guys made me laugh.

She tamps out the cigarette, stands, and shuffles on slippered feet to the bathroom. The shower does not wash away her melancholy. She remembers the feelings that engulfed her after her husband died. Poor Willie. Cancer at fifty-eight. All through the weeks of mourning, she felt like a dot. The kind of period that ends a sentence. And then the newspaper saved her. Again. Sam saved her. Again. The guys on the copy desk saved her. The endless cast of “Vics and Dicks” saved her.

Now…

Drying herself, she is filled with gratitude for what they gave her. They still surround her in the apartment as she dresses in ski pants and wool sweater. Even the ones who got away. The white jerk in Sunnyside with the cape and the wild eyes, raving about killing Obama, and the cops lock him up for disorderly conduct and find eight Glocks and three automatics in his house. I had him for three hours and then they took him up to the front of the paper. She sees another white dumbbell, blond, handsome, in his twenties, a real Amurrican guy, and his real Amurrican blonde wife, with what used to be called an Ipana-toothpaste smile, and how some black guy in a mask carjacked them, and forced them to drive to the Poconos, where the couple had a second home. The masked black dude tied him up, the husband says, then slashed his wife’s throat and breasts while he was forced to watch. She bled to death. The cops listened to the tale for about eight minutes and then locked him up for murder. I lost him too.

Just last week, a knucklehead fresh out of Rikers sticks up an apartment where some woman deals heroin. He’s got the Rikers Island jeans on, the belt taken away on Rikers to prevent suicide. The jeans sliding down toward the crack of his ass, always being yanked up. He runs out with the stash, hears people on the stairs, runs for the roof, the jeans fall to his knees, and he goes right off the roof. Four stories to the yard. Moral of the story: Always buy a belt before sticking up a smack dealer.

She sees them all as minor players in an endless demented version of A Chorus Line… One after the other. The game of Can You Top This? Saying that they didn’t mean to do it. Saying it must have been some other guy. Saying that God told them to do it. A theater would be too small for all of them. They could fill stadiums. All of them proving the theory of original sin. Their tale without end better than anything by Saint Paul or Saint Augustine, John Wesley or Pascal. Like people in traffic court, all of them pleading Guilty, With an Explanation. The title of every human being’s autobiography.

Cynthia Harding and Mary Lou Watson were not part of A Chorus Line.

They were page 1, for sure, and Helen had to write the story. Called in after going home, told she could smoke, with Sam walking around from his office to the news desk to the photo desk and then the news desk again, looking at photographs, or possible wood, or glancing at television sets. She knows that Sam was in love with Cynthia Harding for many years. He told her one night in the Lion’s Head, when he was still drinking. He didn’t have to tell her again tonight. She worked on the story.

Then, twenty minutes ago, he called to give her the news. The paper was being murdered too. His voice down, exhausted, telling her in a few words about the city-room meeting in the afternoon. Five o’clock. Telling her she didn’t have to go. Someone there will be signing up people willing to work for the website. Sam said he would add her to the list if she wanted him to, but she told him she needed to think about it. That was a lie. She knew this was the end of all of it. For Sam. For her. For their whole goddamned regiment. And Sam has another task. Much more important than the paper. He will need time to mourn the woman he loved.

She knows that the gang is sure to go drinking after the meeting in the city room. But where will they go? There is no Mutchie’s anymore, down by the old Journal-American Building on South Street. There is no Lion’s Head on Sheridan Square. There is no Bleeck’s. There is no place left where they can bury their dead. Maybe they should rent a permanent suite at Frank E. Campbell’s funeral parlor. Wherever the drinking spot is tonight, she is certain that Sam Briscoe will not be there.

What did Sam say to her once? Night is for solitaries. The day is for other people. That is why the night has music. Billie Holiday. “In My Solitude.” There are no songs about lunch. Or shopping. Or meetings where everyone whips out laptops.

Today, for Helen Loomis, there can be no Billie Holiday songs. She tells herself, Get out of the house, girl. Maybe she can walk until she is exhausted. That’s the cure. Maybe hike as far as the Metropolitan Museum, where she can look at the new Vermeer, in residence for a while. Maybe find Federico the mambo dancer, in daylight, and just talk. Surely find breakfast. No Second Avenue Deli anymore, not down here, but the stars of the Yiddish theater are still cemented to the sidewalk. Maybe go the other way. Down to the South Street Seaport. To where Sloppy Louie’s was, the waterfront place where they all went after the shift ended at eight in the morning, ordering oysters for breakfast, and beer and whiskey, while the sanitation guys hauled huge garbage cans past their tables, reeking with fish heads and tails and bones. While everyone laughed or bitched or argued and then laughed again. Every one of them smoking.

Gone now.

The laughing boys too.

All of that was so long ago, her mother and father were still alive. Never comfortable with what she did for a living. Wishing she worked for the Times, not some low-life tabloid. Or better, taught literature in the Ivy League. Jane Austen: Myth or Paradox? She never did tell them what the boys in the city room called her column. “Vics and Dicks” they could never get. Mother and Dad. Nice people. And there were so many questions she never asked them, questions she never asked herself until after they were dead.

She gazes out the window at the busy avenue. Many Japanese students from NYU and Cooper Union, heading for the soba place on 9th Street, or the sushi joint, or the St. Mark’s Bookshop on the corner. Delivery men. Lone men in long rough coats walking separately into the old Ottendorfer Branch of the public library. Others hurrying west to the methadone clinic on Cooper Square. A traffic cop writing a ticket for a blue Toyota without a driver. Another old man with a plastic garbage bag slung over his shoulder. A young woman with her gloved hand in the crook of her boyfriend’s elbow. Another woman, alone, middle-aged, walking on the splayed booted feet of an old dancer.

The sky gray.

Desolate.

She thinks: I’m alone now.

At last.

11:50 a.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street, Manhattan.

He wheels on sidewalks cracked and split, across potholed streets, up tapered corner curbs. He pauses. He watches. An older woman looks at him with pity in her eyes. He pushes past her, thinking, Don’t pity me, woman. I’m here for payback. For me. For Whitey. For Langella. For… Most people move around him, with nothing in their eyes. They don’t know what happened to him, and don’t care. They definitely don’t know what is under his tarp, under his cheap new blanket. Fuck it: they are not his targets. A man comes along with a seeing-eye dog. Wearing a long heavy coat. A fat hat, shades turning his face to a masked blank. Is he a vet? From where? Desert Storm? No. Too old. Nam. Yeah. Gotta be Nam. He’s got a limp too. Maybe a prosthetic. Left a leg in some fucking jungle. Join me, man. For some payback. The dog leads the man away.

He sees a young guy, with a big bubbly maroon coat and a Mets cap. Like mine. A large pin above the visor. SAY NO TO THE NEW VIETNAM. Too young to be a vet. Some college asshole. Doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anyone except himself. Definitely not me. Or Whitey. Langella. Alfredo…

Josh pauses near the curb. A Chinese guy sits in a car, smoking a cigarette. The motor is running. The fumes rise in the cold air, heading for the gray clouds. He can see vapor, but can’t smell it. Now he sees a tall black woman, dressed like a boss, striding hard on high red heels. A thinner Michelle Obama. He sees her naked, except for the shoes, striding hard toward him, muscles tight in legs and belly, a triangle of black wiry pubic hair. She glances at him, her eyes cautious. He’s thinking: Don’t worry, woman. I got nothing to slide into you. I got nothing you can suck. I fought for my country, see?

He laughs a small bitter laugh.

The fumes are too strong now, making his throat sore. He starts again, moving on an angle to be closer to the wall. He sees a large concrete building, high, but not a skyscraper, full of contempt and power, like an officer. He looks up. Sees the sign. The Salvation Army. Two homeless women on the steps, one in flip-flops, her cold feet dirty as a sidewalk in this fucking city. The other one is toothless, talking to a third woman about four feet away on the sidewalk. This one is waving a bag of potato chips while she talks. Josh can’t hear what they are saying, except for one word. Motherfucker. They use that word everywhere in New York. Kids use it. Girls. Just like Iraq. Pass the motherfuckin’ salt, Private. Up the dozen steps behind the women, he can see a crumpled cardboard box with booted feet jutting out. The entrance to the building is sealed behind a huge gold-painted gate. There’s a cross on the gate with two crossed swords and a huge S and a slogan: DOING THE MOST GOOD.

Doing good? The most good? Hey, in there, do me some good. Get me a new prick. Get me my wife back. Get me my daughter. Tell God to get on it, okay?

On the side, he sees scaffolding. A good place to crash, maybe? No, one side is open. Anyone can see me. And call a cop. Wanting to know what’s under my tarp.

Josh sees words on the wall.

… While there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I’ll fight — I’ll fight to the very end!

It’s signed “General William Booth.”

General of what?

Did he work with Petraeus on the surge? Does he want to fight in Namistan? Or is he just a general in the Salvation Army? And if he is, why doesn’t God listen to him?

Josh wheels away, going back to where he came from, down by the river. Down there, after breakfast on two slices of pizza, he asked a man to buy him a blanket in some dump of a store. Told him he would pay. Held out two twenty-dollar bills. The man was maybe fifty, smooth face, overcoat with a velvet collar. A black leather briefcase. Surely a Jew.

— How’d you get into that wheelchair, fella? he said.

— Iraq.

— Wait here, he said and went into the store. He came out with a blanket, thick and dark.

— Want me to do it for you, soldier?

— No, no. How much was it?

— Forget it, he said.

He laid the blanket on Thompson’s lap. And walked away without saying another word.

Don’t go soft now, Josh Thompson thought. You ain’t a charity case. Still…

He struggled to pull the blanket over his upper body without showing what else was there. Nobody seemed to notice. Not the blanket. Not the MAC-10. Just another loser in a wheelchair.

Now he moves through all the others, winners and losers, small kids and nannies, more old ladies, a security guard eating cake, another homeless woman with empty eyes. Then he sees a man in full Muslim gear. The little Muslim hat. The flowing robe with a jacket over it. Thick black beard. Holding a book. The only book. God’s book. Remembered seeing guys like him on CNN at Walter Reed. Muslims in New York! He wants to ram the motherfucker. He wants to be challenged by him. His hands feel for the gun. For the trigger. But the man moves on without looking at him, and Josh does nothing. Telling himself: Wait. Wait until nightfall.

He crosses an avenue, cars and buses and trucks idling at a red light. His feet feel cold now, although he has no feet.

He passes a store for rent. Lots of stores for rent down here. An awning. Sees steps to a basement. Nobody inside or out. He thinks: Maybe I could crash here. Maybe I could get down the stairs to the basement. Six steps. Nah. He moves on, sees a place called Passion, selling adult videos for $1.99. Recession special for jerking off. And next door? Are they kidding? Village Kids Nursery. Next door to the jerk-off store! Josh laughs out loud. Then sees that little girl near Fallujah, the blood erupting from the hole in her chest, like a slow pump, her eyes very still, someone screaming. Maybe it was me shot her. I’ll never know.

He hears a siren. An ambulance or a fire engine. And he stops, leans back, facing the dark sky. Josh Thompson starts to scream. No sound leaves his mouth.

12:05 p.m. Sam Briscoe. His loft.

He’s in a gray sweat suit, white socks, slippers. He is fresher after the shower and has made some of the calls. Matt Logan again. Janet. Helen Loomis. But he doesn’t want to call all of them, one by one. He doesn’t want to call anyone. There is one more call he must make. The one he planned to make first, except that the newspaper, as always, got in the way. He goes to the desk, where the important numbers are written in large printed letters on a three-by-five index card. He lifts the phone and dials his daughter in Paris. A framed color photograph of her is beside the printer. Eighteen. The two of them in Monte Carlo that time. She’s smiling, but her eyes, as always, are wary. A different photograph of that same scene is in his office at the newspaper. The photographer was Cynthia Harding.

Two rings. Three. Five. Then her recorded voice in fluent French, followed by English. Please leave a message. The voice cool and smooth in both languages.

— Nicole? Dad. It’s almost noon in New York. I have some dreadful news… Cynthia Harding… and her secretary… were murdered last night. In the house on Patchin Place… And a separate matter, nowhere as terrible. The World is dead, as a newspaper. On Monday morning, it’ll be a website… Without me. Which was my choice… I didn’t want you to read either story in the Herald-Tribune. Or Le Monde. Call when you can and I’ll explain. I’ll be at the paper later in the day, to say good-bye to the troops… I don’t know how to say good-bye to Cynthia. It’s a bad day. Love you, baby.

He hangs up. Then walks to the window. No sounds penetrate the special double-thick glass. Some gulls circling. Gray sullen clouds. It feels like snow.

He goes to the couch. The morning papers lie on the low table. Delivered to the lobby each morning. The television set is dark. He can’t look at the papers. Not even his own. And doesn’t have to anymore. From today he no longer is required to pay attention. A kind of relief, maybe? No more fucking deadlines.

He dozes but is too tired to sleep. He drifts to that time in Monte Carlo. Cynthia Harding’s idea. Nicole a student at the Sorbonne. Cynthia arrived by airplane from New York and went directly to the hotel. Big place. Marble corridors. Black-tie casino. He and Nicole took the train from Paris. The girl was glum, either dozing or staring out the window all the way south to the Mediterranean. On her vacations in New York, Nicole had met Cynthia at parties, fund-raisers, dinners, horseshit events, one trapped weekend at a friend’s house in Southampton. She seemed to like Cynthia, and Cynthia was sweet and smart and never treated her like a child. Certainly not Sam’s child. But in Monte Carlo, Nicole was bitchy to Cynthia, playing an adult, not a teenager. Cynthia smiled a lot, in an amused, patient way, and her cool made Nicole angrier. Finally, in bed in her room, Cynthia said: Sam, don’t you see? She’s got a guy in Paris. Why would she want to be here with us?

They all left in the morning. Briscoe didn’t own a black-tie costume, and Cynthia was never fond of shooting craps. Nicole was clearly happy, so Cynthia was right. She usually was.

She ends up with her flesh pierced, her blood on the floor, not far from Mary Lou. Gotta find Ali Watson. We both need consolation.

Briscoe sits up abruptly, staring at the rows of books, the paintings. The Mexican girl by Lew Forrest. Her glistening black eyes, her luxurious golden flesh tell him again that the painter must have loved her. A gift from Cynthia. When I turned sixty-five. Cynthia’s flesh was not this flesh. It was ivory. The sun could redden it, but she could never tan. And yet in the dark, with light seeping in from Greene Street or the hills of Tuscany, her flesh was golden too.

Nicole’s guy in Paris was a Spaniard, from Barcelona. A medical student, who spoke Catalan, French, English, and some Italian. Cynthia said, Don’t worry, Sam. She won’t marry this guy, he’s too pretty. She was right about that too.

The evening before he and Cynthia were to leave for New York, he went to a bistro with Nicole. They didn’t sit on the terrace. Too cold. Instead, they found a table deep inside. The waiter brought the coffee. She was silent. And he can still hear what she asked when they were settled.

— Dad, why did Mom kill herself?

He squeezed her hand.

— I don’t really know, Nicole.

She stared at him, while he stared at his own coffee. Seeing the troubled face of Joyce Miller. Mom. His wife. Nicole finally asking the question that she must have wanted to ask for years. Her silence demanding a reply.

— She didn’t say anything to me, Briscoe said. She didn’t leave a note.

— How did she do it?

The ice in her voice. Stabbing him still.

— Pills.

Now remembering Nicole’s puzzled squint.

— That’s all?

— No, there were plenty more things that happened. But that was the finale.

Wanting to be honest at last. Wanting to tell Nicole. To unload. To say the unspoken things. But giving her only a dreadful highlight film. Sitting there in the bistro while tweedy academic tourists looked for Jean-Paul Sartre or the ghost of Albert Camus. He told her about the reefer. Acid. Smack for a while. Freebasing cocaine mixed with ammonia. Then angel dust, which made her insane, even dangerous. With booze lacing it all together. He told her about his calls to Joyce’s father in Ohio, pleading for help. Hearing indifference. Joyce in rehab. Then rehab again. Then rehab once more.

Then one afternoon she got a babysitter for Nicole, right here in the loft on Greene Street, and filled half a jelly jar with Del Monte fruit cocktail, put about forty pills in her pocket and a driver’s license, and went off to join the skanks in Tompkins Square Park. The cops found her body hours later. Bent over on a bench with broken slats. No note. No farewell. Then cremation. Another sorry fucking tale that started in the 1960s and ended in the 1970s.

In the Paris bistro, Briscoe signaled to the waiter to bring fresh coffee.

— Where was I? Nicole said.

— After that night, you were at my mother’s house in Sunset Park. In Brooklyn.

— And where were you?

— When your mother died? Covering the Democratic convention in Miami. I flew home as soon as the call reached me at the hotel.

— That’s why we moved here to Paris?

— A few years later. Yes. After my mother died. Remember? She was helping take care of you.

Her jaw slack, Nicole stared out at the street in St.-Germain-des-Prés.

— It’s so sad.

— It is, he said.

She turned and buried her head in his shoulder.

— Oh, Daddy.

— It’s okay, baby, he whispered, while a few people stared at them. We get over almost everything.

We still do, he thinks. And gets up.

12:40 p.m. Ali Watson. Castle Bar, Livonia Avenue, Brooklyn.

He watches the street from a high plastic stool at the front end of the long bar, sipping a beer. Everyone is black. The bartender is large, young, mustached, his skin the color of coffee with lots of milk. His skull is shaved, and he talks with a small group at the far end of the bar. He is polite with Ali, but he knows a cop when he sees one. Ali slides off the stool and stands. The bartender walks toward him. The guys at the other end are silent.

— Take care, Ali says, and moves two singles toward the bartender. The tip.

— Yeah, the bartender says, and watches Ali leave.

Ali steps into the cold air, and turns right toward the far corner. Across the street when he was a boy there was a gymnasium on the second floor. All the Jewish gangsters went there to watch their properties in action. The last years of Jewish fighters. A guy named Bummy Davis was one of the fighters and he got killed going after some dumbbell who stuck up a bar. All of the players were gone by the time Ali was born, so Ali didn’t know the location of the bar. But everybody knew the story. He talked with his partner about it once, but Malachy Devlin had never heard of Bummy Davis. Then, one morning at the JTTF, he arrived in a state of excitement.

— Ali, that Bummy Davis you told me about? Last night, there was a show about him on ESPN. Couldn’t believe it.

— I wish I’d seen it, Ali said.

— I tried to call you, but—

The gym was a Baptist church when Ali was a teenager, and now it was a mosque. A very special mosque. Services were held in the wide-open space of the vanished second-floor gym. Young men moving on polished wooden floors, slamming heavy bags, turning speed bags into blurs, others boxing in a ring: the stuff of neighborhood legends, now replaced by prayer mats and submission to Allah. Mary Lou wondered why free men would bow to someone who wasn’t there and he could never explain to her why even he had once done the same. It was like trying to explain the myth of Midnight Rose’s, the candy store where the killers from Murder, Inc. met each night, down under the El at Saratoga and Livonia. The hit men loved egg creams and sharp clothes and killing people for a living. Laughing all the way. Or so the tale went.

When he took Mary Lou around Brownsville he told her about the place, and she asked, “What’s an egg cream?” Like someone from Minnesota. He had to explain that it was a soft drink, but didn’t have eggs in it, and she didn’t get it until finally he took her to the Gem Spa on Second Avenue and St. Mark’s Place in Manhattan and she sipped her first egg cream, thick with milk and chocolate syrup and seltzer water, and said, “I don’t care what they call it. It’s great.”

Nobody has entered or left the mosque now in an hour. Drifters move along the avenue, passing the front door, lost in a fog of heroin or meth. For sure, not one of them longs for egg creams or for Allah.

Ali crosses the street quickly and walks to the door of the mosque. Blinds drawn within windows and the door. He rings a buzzer hard. Then again. Then knocks. It doesn’t matter who is watching him now. They know he’s a cop. Nobody comes to the door.

He walks to the corner and makes a right, heading for the lots behind the row of buildings. There are two rusting shells of automobiles in the space behind the mosque. And tire tracks in the mud, backing up, turning. He moves to the side, to avoid leaving his own footprints in the mud, and goes to the back door. Locked. He tries knocking again, sensing that nobody will answer. Thinking: Two mosques in one morning, without leaving Brooklyn. I should score some points with Allah. Inshallah.

He uses a Visa card to spring the lock, thinking: Too easy, then takes out his pistol, listens, and steps inside. The door has a wide, thick metal bar across it, but it’s not wedged into its slot. Someone has left and couldn’t close it from outside.

The lights are out, but he can see the large shapes in the leaking grayness of the rooms. He listens. There are the usual creaks from old buildings but no human sounds. No footsteps. No breathing. And yet he feels that someone is here. He moves forward on tiptoe. Pauses. Listens. Moves again, heading to where he knows the stairway is, and the living quarters where the imam named Aref seethes with daily bitterness. Ali has visited him over the years, as part of the job. To let him know he was being watched. Felt the anger that was never spoken. Put him on the master list. He might actually be here. Hidden in a bathroom. Lying flat in the large room upstairs. Holding a pistol. Ready to repel infidels. Or more likely: he drove away in the automobile that left tracks in the mud. Or—

He peers into the living quarters and flicks on a tiny flashlight. Bedclothes unrumpled on the narrow cot. Nothing in the sink of the small kitchen. No water on the floor of the stall shower. Some newspapers in English and Arabic. No signs of a woman or children, no clothes, schoolbooks, or toys. Aref chose to live in purgatory.

Ali goes up the stairs. A few steps creak. Nothing creaks back. He steps into Allah’s gymnasium.

There’s a body on the floor against the far wall. Lying on its back. There are two toppled lockers to the right of the body, their doors open. Ali lets his pistol hang loose at his side and takes out his cell phone. He moves closer to the body while dialing Malachy Devlin. He looks down at the body. It’s Aref, all right. His face has been battered, but it’s him. Blood spreads beneath his head like spilled paint.

— Hey, partner, Malachy says. What’s up?

— I’m in Aref’s friendly neighborhood mosque. He’s here on the floor, dead.

— Jesus.

— Call everybody, starting with the precinct. I’ll let them in.

— Right.

— And in my files, there’s a folder on my son, Malik. With photos. We have to put out a bulletin. Wanted for questioning. The whole Northeast. Use his photograph. Have an artist make a version without his beard or mustache. I think Malik might be driving the imam’s car. And shit, maybe I’m nuts. It could be some other guy. But look in Aref’s file. Get the make and license plate. Pass that on to everyone, starting with NYPD. Bridges. Tunnels. Arrest whoever the fuck is driving.

He glances at the toppled lockers.

— Ali, is this—

— I don’t know anything for sure. It could be about my wife. And the Harding woman. Or just about this asshole Aref. But it could get even worse than a double homicide. We need the bomb-squad guys here. Technical guys. The whole enchilada.

— Right.

— Later.

Ali hangs up. He goes to a wall switch and turns on the lights. He glances down at Aref, whose eyes are wide in shock. He turns toward the shrouded windows. Malik, he says out loud. I’m coming for your ass.

1:05 p.m. Consuelo Mendoza. Sunset Park.

At last, Norma is gone. The babysitting is done, and the talking is over. The older boy will be home in an hour, and now it is only Consuelo and little Timoteo. The four-year-old is watching a cartoon on television, his face serious, his intelligent brown eyes taking in everything, but seeming to doubt what they are seeing. Consuelo is cooking lunch for herself and the little one. Beef patties from the market on La Quinta. Bought two days ago, when she still had a job. Carrots. Boiled potatoes. Avoiding grease. Trying to look normal.

But Consuelo is taut and jittery with confused emotions. She remembers the details of the morning with Señor Lewis and the images of the past that the visit called up in her, the bedroom in Cuernavaca, the girl she was then, the wild passion of her young flesh, the way she felt about this man who was even then un gringo viejo. She had told Raymundo about Señor Lewis long ago, but certainly not all of what had happened. She would never tell him any of that. Even if he asked, she would lie. Men never understand.

She remembers the one named Jerry, the bald one behind the desk at the Chelsea Hotel, and how he asked her to step around to the side, behind the desk, so that nobody in the lobby could see her. And he handed her the sealed envelope.

— Now you have to hide this, Jerry said. Under your clothes. Don’t let anyone see it. Don’t open it until you get home, okay? That’s what Mr. Forrest says. Okay?

— Okay, she said, and turned away and stuffed the thick envelope under her belt. Then she went out into the dark morning and headed for the N train.

All the way to Brooklyn she worried that the envelope would slip. She clasped her hands on her waist, as if she had a tummyache, and tried even harder than usual to look ordinary, to look homely, to look unlikely to be carrying anything of value. The daytime crowd on the subway was less tense than the one at night. A dirty black man was sleeping in a corner seat, three lumpy plastic bags at his feet. Four standing schoolboys laughed and joked, joked and laughed. A uniformed cop leaned against a door. All the way to Sunset Park.

She let herself in with a key, and Norma called from the kitchen, where little Timoteo was staring into the yard. Smiles, laughs, a hug of her thighs from the boy. Consuelo took off her coat and stepped into the bathroom. Closed the door. She removed the envelope, laid it behind jars and small bottles inside the medicine cabinet. Later. Open it after Norma leaves.

Now she’s gone, with besos y abrazos, and the boy is eating. Consuelo goes into the bathroom, takes the envelope, uses her forefinger to open it.

And sees bills.

Not dollar bills.

She slides one out. Crisp and new. It’s a hundred-dollar bill. She has never held one before. She takes the others in thumb and forefinger. She begins to count. They are all hundred-dollar bills. Fifty of them.

Ay, Dios mío.

She holds the bills in her right hand and grips the bathroom sink with her left.

Ay, Señor Lewis.

Ay…

1:15 p.m. Malik Shahid. FDR Drive, Manhattan.

He is again playing a bored young man without cares, as he drives the Lexus uptown on the FDR. All the lanes are jammed, moving slowly uptown and down. The window open an inch. Hot in the car, with his coat. And the vest underneath. The holy vest.

To his right, the river is gray and dirty, with only a few small boats moving on its surface. In a narrow park, three flags are stiff with wind, blowing east toward Queens on the far side of the river. The gas gauge shows a quarter of a tank. Enough. No need to show his face at a gas station. The tire iron back there, in a Brownsville lot. The gun — He sees a police car in the middle lane on the downtown side, red lights turning, trying to push through to an exit. Lots of luck, assholes. Malik can’t push through, so why should they?

He knows that by now someone may have found Aref. Someone else with a key. A wife. A member. Maybe a cop. So what? By the time they get going, he thinks, I’ll be lost again. And I only need hours now to do what I have to do tonight.

He did look for a surveillance camera, out back of the mosque in Brownsville. But he realized a true search would take too much time. He jammed the tire iron in his waistband. Then got in easily: by knocking on the back door. He stared at the Lexus for a long moment, then knocked again. Aref answered. He didn’t recognize Malik with a smooth hairless face. Malik smiled and talked and used Arabic, and Aref remembered and led him inside. Malik said he just wanted to pray. Aref seemed skeptical but they went up together to the big prayer room. It was empty. Malik confronted him.

— Where’s the stuff? he said.

— What stuff?

— The stuff that goes bang.

Aref shook his head, speaking his own version of Jamal’s speech.

— That’s over, he said. We’re Americans now. All of us, Malik.

— Yeah. Until they come to arrest you.

— Maybe you should leave now.

— Maybe not.

Malik took the tire iron from his belt, hefted it, placed it under Aref’s nose.

— Is it in one of those lockers?

— Go look.

Malik shoved him toward the two tall lockers. With his free hand he opened the door of the one on the left. Prayer mats. Some clothes. No canvas bag with its precious contents.

He tried the second locker. Also unlocked. Same stuff. Then his rage took over. He grabbed each locker in turn and jerked it away from the wall. Both made metallic crushing sounds against the polished floor.

Fear rose on Aref’s face. Which is what Malik wanted to see. Aref glanced at the ceiling. Malik understood.

— Where’s the ladder? he said.

Aref said nothing, and stepped past the fallen lockers and opened a closet door. There was a ladder, along with buckets, brooms, two mops. Malik stared at the ceiling, and saw a small ring in a depressed circle.

— Go up and get it, Malik said in a low voice.

Aref did what he was told. He climbed the ladder and pulled on the ceiling ring. A hinged panel opened. He reached in, swung around, and held a dark blue canvas bag.

— Now hand it down, Malik said. Gently.

Aref came down several steps and passed the bag to Malik, who grabbed it with his free hand. His eyes on Aref, Malik hugged the bag with the hand holding the tire iron, and pulled the zipper open with his other hand. Peered into the bag. Felt his blood pulse as he saw what he had hoped for. Closed the bag. And Aref began to run for the door.

Malik dropped the bag and went after him. Wrapped an arm around his neck. Turned Aref violently. And smashed the tire iron against the side of his head. The older man made an incoherent sound, full of shock and fatalism, and fell to the floor. Malik smashed the front of his face. Once, twice, then again. He waited. The older man did not move. Did not breathe.

— Stupid motherfucker! Why’d you do that?

There was no answer. Malik hurried to the blue bag. Unzipped it. Laid the tire iron on the floor. Then lifted out the black polyester object within. Opened it to its full width. Saw the hooks and cords, the small gray device with a white button. Saw the canvas slots snug with red bars. He glanced at Aref, who was not moving. Then he slipped off his coat and tied the vest across his chest and pulled his coat over it. Time to go.

He returned to Aref, and went through his trouser pockets until he found the car keys. And two twenty-dollar bills. He whipped off a scarf from Aref’s neck and wrapped the tire iron in it and then headed down the stairs.

Thinking: Gotta be a gun here somewheres. Into the small bedroom. Feeling around. Lifted the mattress. There it was. A.38, like his so-called father used to have. Loaded.

And now he’s in the Lexus on the FDR, East River Drive, heading to East Harlem, to a parking lot he used back in the day. The.38 under his ass. He sees people in other cars smoking cigarettes, using cell phones, texting on BlackBerrys. They’re all going somewhere. To see wives and friends or friendly neighborhood pushers. Malik is heading for the night. For the finale. Thinking: It’s just me now. Me and Allah. My woman Glorious is dead. My son is dead without ever breathing the air of the world. My infidel bitch of a mother is dead. Her rich blonde motherfucking slave owner is dead. Now Aref is dead, and I’m driving his Lexus. He was dead before I killed him. An imam with a Lexus: that’s why he’s dead.

Thinking: More people will be dead before the midnight hour. Including me. Around the world tomorrow, millions will celebrate when they hear the news. They will pray for me. They will call to me in Paradise.

Now I have my tools. All I need. Now I go on, alone.

1:35 p.m. Helen Loomis. South Street Seaport.

She is out at the end of the pier, in wool hat, long down coat, boots. Smoking a cigarette, her back to the wind. She is alone. Nobody else smokes anymore. Below her, the East River swirls and eddies, the water opaque. A lone gull flies a tour of inspection, searching for scraps to be shared by the sheltering flock. A tug moves north to pass under the bridges, heading for the Bronx. Off to her right, she can see the four masts of the Peking. She knows it was built in 1911 because she wrote about it for the World when two dopes dressed as pirates tried to rob it. There are no people on the wooden deck. Directly behind her is the three-story mall, full of shops, a kind of nautical theme park for people from out of town. Inside, she could have been in Des Moines. Some shops were closed for good. Others catered to the few customers. They were offering maps, New York souvenirs, cheap little versions of the Statue of Liberty or the World Trade Center or the skyline. Junk destined for garage sales in distant cities.

But back there, behind her, a short walk under the FDR Drive, into the square that is now perfectly cobblestoned and perfectly empty, was the place where every Friday was a good Friday: Sloppy Louie’s. She sees them now, all of them, loud and laughing and cocking a hoot at the world. They ordered the freshest fish in New York, cod and fluke and halibut, still icy from the fish market up past the square. They made fun of everybody, including themselves. Newspapermen.

The whole thing is shuttered now. The fish market is gone to the Bronx. The aroma of fish replaced by the exhaust of stalled cars on the Drive.

She tamps out the cigarette on the rail, flicks the butt into the current. What the hell: Al Gore is nowhere in sight. She sees a helicopter rising out of the tumbling grayness over Brooklyn, sees it before she hears it, watches it cross high over the empty harbor, then descend into New Jersey. The ongoing search for terrorists. She turns with her back to the river and gazes at the tops of the buildings on Wall Street. They must be happy up there, she thinks. Then she sees a man slip out a door from the mall. White hair pokes out the sides of his hat, one of those Irish jobs that Sam always brought home from Dublin. The guy is wearing a long tweed coat, a dark scarf, polished shoes. He looks up at the Brooklyn Bridge, the cables like part of an immense harp. Then he peels off his gloves, takes out a pack of cigarettes, and lights up.

Helen looks south at the harbor and the distant Verrazano. She remembers a chilly night with her husband on the deck of the Staten Island Ferry, the two of them holding each other for warmth, and she spoke some of the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay. “We were very tired, we were very merry—/ We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry…” That night they tried again to make a baby, and once again it didn’t happen. She wanted just that, just a tiny boy in a crib playing with his toes. They kept trying until a week before her husband died, and she never tried again. Not with anyone. Across more than thirty years. The little boy still plays with his toes in her dreams.

She turns away and the white-haired man is walking toward her. She hopes he veers away. He doesn’t look like he wants a spare cigarette, or some change. For sure. But he doesn’t veer away.

— Helen, he says. Helen Loomis?

Suddenly she knows him.

— Eddie Gaffney? she says. Is that you?

— I’ll be goddamned, Gaffney says.

— What are you doing here?

He exhales, making a fluttering sound with his lips.

— My wife, she’s in St. Vincent’s, the downtown one, you know: a couple of blocks from here.

— Oh, Eddie. I’m so sorry.

— Yeah, well…

He shakes his head, takes a drag on the filtered Camel.

— And you, Helen? I heard the news about the paper on the TV at the hospital. You all right?

— Not really.

— Want some coffee?

— Sure.

He flips his butt into the river and they turn toward the mall. How long had it been since Eddie Gaffney walked away from newspapers? To become a flack, and then a lobbyist up in Albany? Thirty years, at least. How long since she’d seen him? Twelve years? Some funeral… He opens the door and she steps into the mall. Somewhere, Beatles music is playing. “Hey, Jude.” Maybe the floor below.

— There’s a place over in the corner, Gaffney says.

— Right.

She knows he will start talking about the days when the fish market was still here and they all filled the big table at Sloppy Louie’s in the mornings. He won’t tell Helen about his wife unless she pries. She won’t. Over coffee, they can talk about the years when they each had the best of everything. Without much money. She thinks: The only way to fight nostalgia is to listen to somebody else’s nostalgia.

1:45 p.m. Josh Thompson. Fourteenth Street, Manhattan.

More steps and he can’t climb them. These lead into still another church. Dark faces, men and women, probably Mexicans. The sign says something in Spanish, ending with that word he can’t say. Goo-add-a-luppy? Same as back home. All these Mexicans, it must be Catholic. Figures. But if you look at their faces long enough, they look like Arabs.

He moves the wheelchair closer to the iron spears of the fence, and locks the wheels. People move along the street in both directions, but none of them look at him. Across the street, past the buses and the taxis and the SUVs, he sees the King Food Chinese restaurant. Every kind of people here. Chinese too. This side of the street, they even got an Istanbul Café. Not just Jews and Catholics and blacks and Mexicans. Muslims too.

Then he sees an older woman looking at him. A Mexican. Or Arab. Short and dumpy, hair a little gray, the tan skin a little red from the cold. She has kind eyes. She comes over.

— Señor? Necesita ayuda? You need help?

— No, no, I’m all right.

— You wan’ to go to chutch?

He smiles, shrugs. Then taps the arms of the wheelchair.

— No, no, lady. I can’t. Not with this.

He waves at the high steps.

The woman leans forward.

— Wait a minute.

She turns and hurries to a side entrance, and moves down the steps into a place Josh Thompson can’t see. He thinks he should leave. Go away. Disappear. But he thinks of her eyes. There was no anger in her eyes. In Baghdad, all eyes were angry, even when people smiled.

Now she comes back, with two Mexican men, rough, dark, smiling.

— Mister, this is Joaquín, the woman says. He was in the war too.

The man smiles, salutes.

— You wan’ to go to church, soldier? he says.

Josh hesitates, then shrugs his okay. He wants to be warm.

— Thanks, man.

The two men lift the wheelchair, and the woman goes forward, waving people out of the way. They go up the stairs, and gently place the chair on stone blocks, facing large doors. The woman is on point, the officer of the patrol, followed by Josh and the two Mexican men. The grunts. She speaks to them in a low, soft voice. They pause, while the woman opens one of the two large doors. Josh is wheeled into a long, high-ceilinged church, with rows of wooden pews, a Mass under way on a distant altar. The rear pews are mostly empty. Josh thinks: That figures, these people work in the day. The space is warm, with an aroma of food and incense and the sound of a hymn being sung by a chorus. He doesn’t see a chorus. Must be a CD. Nice, though…

— Make yourself comfortable, soldier, the older man says, and both men walk away.

Josh sits on the aisle beside a pew. The woman touches his hand with her own warm bare fingers.

— Goo’bye, she says. You be okay here, okay? Warm. Safe. I go to work now. The guys, they’ll check when you want to leave.

And she hurries away too, leaving Josh Thompson alone.

2:35 p.m. Sandra Gordon. Her apartment.

She comes around the corner, after leaving the office and grabbing a fast lunch. And sees two men in overcoats waiting at the door of her apartment house. Aw, shit. One in a trench coat, the other in tweed. Each is hatless, with neatly trimmed hair. She has never met an FBI man in her life but has seen plenty of movies. She wonders what took them so long.

— Miss Gordon? says the one in the trench coat.

— Yes?

— I’m Special Agent Roberts from the FBI and—

— Can we step inside? she says.

— Of course.

The agent in the tweed coat opens the door, Sandra follows him, and Roberts steps in behind her. The day doorman looks up from behind the desk, his eyes wary. Sandra goes directly to him.

— Anything for me, Andy?

— Yes, ma’am.

He places a package of magazines, junk mail, letters, on the counter before her. He smiles thinly, even protectively, and glances at the FBI men. Sandra lifts her mail, turns to the two men.

— Can we talk down here?

— We’d prefer your apartment, ma’am.

— Why not?

They go up in the elevator. No words are spoken. She knows the men are her own age, even younger, and must have seen the same movies she did. They follow her out of the elevator, all of them pausing as she unlocks her door. They follow her into the apartment and she flicks on a light switch. She puts the mail on a chair, then shrugs off her coat and places it over the mail.

— Well? she says. What do you want to know?

— We’re looking for Myles Compton. Your friend. He was due in court this morning — a federal grand jury — and didn’t show.

She shakes her head slowly, gestures for the men to sit on the couch. She eases into a chair facing them. Before them on a low table is a large volume of photographs by Annie Leibovitz. Sandra tells the FBI men about Myles’s visit the night before, and how he said he had to go away, to Miami. And how he left. And how she hasn’t heard from him since then. No, he didn’t stay here for the night. No, she didn’t know where in Miami, or any connection to another flight. He was always vague.

— Did you know about the grand jury?

— Of course. It was in the papers. He said it was all about people connecting dots that don’t connect. I guess he meant you. Or the Justice Department.

— I see. Did he mention a certain Bulgarian?

— Not really, but it was in the papers. Yes. He said he was one of the investors. When I asked him about the newspaper story.

— Nothing else?

— We had a deal, Sandra says. He didn’t talk about his business, I didn’t talk about mine.

The silent man in the tweed coat makes notes, holding a small tape recorder against his pad with his thumb. Roberts says:

— Did you have a business relationship with him?

— Absolutely not. But look, if you think I’m involved somehow, I’d better get a lawyer, right?

She stands up, folds her arms as if she has nothing more to say. Sandra thinks: This is as spontaneous as one of those goddamned reality shows.

— I understand, says Roberts, standing, then taking a wallet from under his coat, and sliding out a card. Just like all the movies. She takes it, lays it on a small table, leads the two men to the door, and closes it after them.

For a long moment, she leans her back against the door. Her arm aches from the fall. She has a headache. She will lie down, and read a book about strangers, and take another Aleve, and hope the pain goes away. Then she’ll call Sam Briscoe to find out about the funeral of Cynthia Harding. Thinking: Oh, Myles, wherever you are, don’t drag me after you. And sees the face of the Bulgarian in the newspaper, his eyes full of ice.

3:15 p.m. Malik Shahid. Orpheum 7 Movie House, East 86th Street and Third Avenue, Manhattan.

He squirms in his aisle seat in an orchestra row halfway from the entrance. The backpack is under his seat. His back and shoulders are sore from walking with the pack all the way from 104th Street. Damned ticket cost twelve-fifty. Paid with money for Glorious. Wanted just to borrow the money. Took it instead. Oh. There are old people scattered around in the darkness, most of them white, but the theater is mainly empty. Malik is jellied with exhaustion. He sees glimpses on the screen of a white infidel whore unbuttoning her blouse, and closes his eyes. The music is loud. He sees Glorious in the darkness of the house in the Lots. Her breasts fat with pregnancy. Her skin. Always in the dark, because they could not use lights or some fucking cop might notice.

Glorious.

Dead.

Waiting for me.

He remembers in high school at Tech, reading about Lee Harvey Oswald, and how after shooting JFK he got away but then shot some cop and ran into a movie theater. What happened then? Can’t remember. Malik’s fingers touch the pistol in his belt. The tire iron down a sewer. The.38 is better. If I gotta use it, I use it.

Now he has to rest, and then go to visit Aladdin. To rub the magic lamp. To summon the djinni. To turn the lamp into that place in the Bronx he saw on television when he was three or four, sitting beside his mother on the family couch. First thing he can remember. Seeing all the fire engines and the hoses and hearing talk about ninety people dead, or something, and they were watching because his father was there. One of the cops. They even saw him once on TV, in his overcoat, a badge pinned to his chest. Badge of dishonor. They were still his mother and father then. “This is mass murder,” his mother said. “Mass murder!” And Malik didn’t know what she meant by that, not then, didn’t know the word “murder.” Or, truth be told, the word “dead.” Except that a lot of people were dead and nothing else, no weather, no sports, nothing was on TV except that. Dead. What were the words they kept saying? Over and over?

Happy Land.

Yeah, that was it:

Happy Land.

Tonight he will create some happiness in this land. For Allah.

He opens his eyes. The infidel white whore on the screen is weeping into a pillow. The guy is smoking. Never read a word of al-Quran. But he and the whore hate the Prophet, and Allah too. They never learn anything. Not in Iraq. Not at Fort Hood. They don’t know that they will all die, unless they submit to Allah. They will die one at a time. Then fifty at a time. For now. Then more and more and more. Malik imagines a great white blinding light, a rumble that gets deeper and deeper, then the howl of a ferocious cleansing wind: and then nothing. Allahu akbar!

On-screen, the white guy is now driving alone through a place with palm trees. L.A.? No, no. Miami. Is that Don Johnson? No. Too fat. The sun bright. The sea blue. Miami. A town he’s never seen except in the movies or TV. And will never see now.

3:45 p.m. Sam Briscoe. His loft, Manhattan.

A siren wakes him. An ambulance, for sure. The soprano sax of emergency. The sound fades but he does not return to sleep. He glances at the clock. Three forty-five. Day, not night. He is in bed in the dark bedroom, but doesn’t remember getting there. He was on the couch. Now he is here, in a sweat suit under the covers. He turns, groping for the cool part of the sheets. As if he can find another half hour of warm darkness.

Why, oh why, do I…

He sees Cynthia Harding for the first time, when she was young and he was too. She is on the stage at the Village Gate on Bleecker Street, and Art D’Lugoff is alive, the guy who ran that wonderful joint, and Charlie Mingus too, and the place is packed. Telling himself now: Write all that. Write her on the stage to make the case for books. Speaking for just a few minutes, too quickly, because she is not an actress. Speaking for the library, not herself. For all kids and all old people and everybody in between. For those who need books in order to live. She quotes Robert Louis Stevenson about how young writers must read like predators. And she says that all of us, not just writers, must read like predators too. For books are food, she says, for every single one of us.

Write how the rich crowd stood and cheered her words in a reserved uptown way, while the jazz crowd maintained its permanent cool, and she seemed embarrassed and made a small nervous steeple of her fingers, and bowed, and then smiled, and Mingus fingered his bass, and the group bounced into “If they asked me, I could write a book…” and Briscoe wanted to meet her. And then D’Lugoff waved him over.

He sits up now, wanting to write for the first time in years. Remembering more clearly that first meeting. When he was still married to Joyce. And Cynthia was married to her first husband, a professor at Columbia. When there was not yet a New York World. When his daughter was not yet born. Cynthia at once shy and strong. A lifetime ago. He stares at his hands. He wants to take a yellow pad and a good fountain pen in his right hand and sit with a board in his lap and write. He knows that his hands have memory. But his hands now are blotched with age spots. They carried no spots when he met Cynthia Harding. Nor did hers. Time does the spattering. Later, she seldom complained about the way they lived in the world. She would sometimes erupt in exasperation, and go away, for as long as a year. She even married a guy she didn’t love, and that was another two years. Briscoe would rush to the safety of covering a war. Or the troubles of others. When they were together again, there was never an accounting. Not from her. Not from him. She didn’t speak about him to anyone else. He lived by the same rule. Once, when she mentioned marriage to him, he told her he didn’t think he had the talent for it.

— Maybe I don’t either, she said.

— Maybe nobody does, he said, and they both laughed.

— What’s the line from Chekhov? she said. If you’re afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.

And they laughed again. She tried marriage anyway, that second time, and retained Briscoe as an option to ward off the loneliness. Briscoe — and books too. “With a book in my hands, and a soft light,” she said, “I’m never alone.” And she lived that way, with Briscoe, or without him. She had her year of living dangerously, he knew, but never went into details. He didn’t describe to her his own long series of episodes with women after Joyce died, most of them enclosed in parentheses as part of a longer story. The story that was hers too… At first Briscoe thought she saw him as a book she took down from the shelf, savored, and then returned to a higher shelf. But it lasted too long, like a serial by Dickens that had great gaps and greater and greater richness as it went on. He loved her more last week than he ever had, the richness of her, the plenitude of her that was part of his own consciousness, even when he slept alone. Now, some son of a bitch has torn away the last phase of that long narrative. We’ll never live those final chapters.

He must write it all, Briscoe thinks, good times and bad, cataloging his sins of cowardice and evasion and, yes, cruelty. And all the amazing good times, the laughter, the surprises, the intelligence with which she dissected the world. Write it all, to get it out of his fucking head.

He leaves the bedroom in a heavy robe and walks slowly past the books, wondering how many of them were gifts from Cynthia Harding. Hundreds? Maybe more. She made him promise a few years earlier that in his will he would put her in charge of his collection, and absolutely not allow them to end up on eBay or the shelves of the Strand. He told her that was a deal. He didn’t ask about her collection and where it would go if she died first.

He leans against the bookcase. Fingering the bindings with his spotted hands. He knows that for as long as Cynthia was alive, he was never alone. She’s gone. And now he no longer has the much less intimate comfort of the newspaper. The clock no longer moves without pity to the deadline. No more deadlines. But surely another chapter is beginning in this story without a last act. His story.

4:10 p.m. Bobby Fonseca. Victoria’s apartment.

He wakes alone. The blue door is open, the toilet empty. Nobody sits at the round table, or the narrow desk holding the laptop and printer. Maybe she’s playing games. From under the bed. He speaks her name. No answer. He pads to a chair, finds his cell phone, checks messages. Six of them. One matters. Big meeting in the city room at five o’clock. No guests. Staff only. Maybe that CelineWire prick is right. Maybe…

He returns to bed, lies there. Today’s my day off. Sunday to Thursday. That’s the gig. He closes his eyes. But what if it’s really all over at the World? The Times is laying off people. Who knows what’s up with the Post and the News? I see their reporters on stories, they’re very worried. Except the old guys, the guys in their fifties. They figure it’s all over. Playing out the string. Hoping to latch on as flacks somewhere, until Social Security kicks in, or Medicare. Worried about paying tuition for the kids’ schools. Feeding the family. Paying the fucking mortgages. The World dies, my father will say, Hey, I warned you, Bobby. I couldn’t explain to him why I loved it. Going to work where every single day it was something new, some new story, where I could learn about people, and sudden death, and human pain. Not reading about them. Seeing them. Then telling their stories. I tried to explain to him, Dad, I don’t want to be rich, I don’t want to be famous, I want to be good. And he said, Why can’t you be good at something like banking?

Thinking: Dad doesn’t get it. Maybe he never will. And maybe now I can never show him what it means to me. I’m a newspaperman. I’ve got the clips to prove it. I want to be a newspaperman for the rest of my fucking life. But maybe now, it will end. Just like that. At five o’clock this afternoon.

He thinks: What the hell time is it?

And hears a key turn twice in the door lock. There she is. Victoria Collins. Who just wants the chance that I got at the World. Her back is turned as she relocks the door. Shorter than I thought she was when she stood above me at a table, taking an order at Nighttown. A hard firm body. Small breasts. Short legs. Thighs that might get fat, but not for a while. She turns.

— Hey, Fonseca. I went for the papers. And some coffees.

Cheerful. She lays a paper bag on the table. Hefts about six newspapers.

— What time is it, anyway? he says, trying to smile.

She removes coat and hat, drops the newspapers on the foot of the bed. Glances at her watch, tells him it’s four-fifteen.

— Jesus, Fonseca says. I gotta go.

— Oh, no ya don’t, she says, in a cheeky growl.

She starts pulling her sweater over her head. Black bra showing. She picks up the World.

— Ya got the wood twice, Fonseca. The wraparound. The main paper. Gotta be a record! I bought the last five copies. And guess what? They gave me a credit line!

He sits up, blanket pulled to his shoulders.

— But—

She is slipping off her jeans, uses thumbs to remove her black panties. Then bounces onto the bed.

— We gotta celebrate, man.

She carries a copy of the World into bed, folded back to the second page of the wraparound, and slides it under her.

— Don’t worry about making a mess. I’m gonna carry this paper to my grave.

She moves a hand under the covers.

— Oh, Fonseca, you’re ready.

— I am, he says, and pulls her to him.

4:15 p.m. Ali Watson. JTTF office, Manhattan.

He is in his office with Malachy Devlin, Eddie Taylor, Frank Harris, and Mary Prescott. The squad. He feels that he has been given a part in some Off-Broadway play, or an episode of Law & Order. There is no script but everybody knows the lines. The meeting is a performance, even for Ali. The big shots told him he could excuse himself from all this, take a few weeks off. He insisted on being here. They are discussing, after all, his son.

Malachy has led the briefing. The city police have found the Lexus and are combing it for traces of Malik. That will take a while. There are hairs. Prints. They are examining several different video cameras on the block, one in the parking lot itself, another above the doors of a small repair shop across the street. NYPD is looking at the images, trying to find Malik in them and see how he was dressed. There are advisories ready for release, drawings showing his face with and without a beard. A press release should be ready by five o’clock, after it’s cleared in Washington. Then it will go out to the media.

— Once that happens, Malachy says, the shit will hit the fan.

— Yeah, Ali says. Thinking: What the fuck else can I say?

— The press will go nuts, Mary Prescott says, in her cool thirty-ish way. That would make three homicides and the possibility of a terrorist act.

— Yeah, Ali says. And we’re looking for a cop’s son.

They sit there for a silent moment.

— I’ll have to disappear, Ali says.

The others look at him. His jacket hangs behind him on the back of his chair. His tie is unknotted. His cuffs are unbuttoned and folded above his wrists.

— Suppose it’s not him? Mary says.

— It’s him, Ali says.

He stands. Inhales. Breathes out.

— We have to figure out the target, he says.

Ali turns his back.

— The target will mean something… personal… to him. That’s what Patchin Place was. Something personal.

He faces them again. Groping for a few more lines in a script that doesn’t exist.

— Leave me alone for a while. Maybe I can remember something.

They all stand. Malachy clears his throat.

— If anyone calls for you…

— Lie. Tell them I’m mourning.

4:35 p.m. Sam Briscoe. City room.

He hears them when he is still in the hall, passing by the cartoons and the typewriters, hears the low rumble of many voices, meshed into one growling atonal baritone chorus, punctuated by stabs of high laughter and an occasional surprised yelp. Then he smells them: the odor of burnt tobacco, like a fog from the past. He turns into the corridor leading to the city room, and there they are: faces creating a blur, like a mural splashed and daubed in a fierce rush, from a palette of pink, ivory, black, brown. From some distant part of the city room, Sinatra is singing “Come Fly With Me.” “If you can use some exotic booze, / There’s a bar in far Bombay.”

Someone spots him.

— Sam!

And others yell his name, and they are coming forward to embrace him, blocking his passage. Then he hears applause. Sees some of them clapping soundlessly, with glasses in one hand, bumping their wrists, and more coming forward. He removes his coat, holds it. He sees steam on the windows overlooking West Street. A dark late afternoon.

Hey, Sam… Hey, where’s the Fucking Publisher?… Drink, Sam? What the hell!

His sense of dread vanishes. They are all here. From the Queens and Brooklyn bureaus; from the police shack; Warren up from Washington; the old photographers and the young; Heidi and Albert from the library; four old printers from the days when the World had a composing room; the techies who tend the computers; the whole damned crew from advertising. Across the room he sees the tall balding man who designed the World. There’s Scott Gellis, the sports editor, and what looks like his whole goddamned team, sitting on desks in the sports department, bottles on the desks. Gellis is smoking a plump cigar. Now Sinatra is singing “You Make Me Feel So Young.”

Here comes Matt Logan, pushing through the crowd, flapping a hand at the pale blue nicotine fog. Briscoe remembers: Logan never smoked. One of the few. They embrace.

— It’s all yours now, Matt, Briscoe says, and chuckles.

— Yeah. Goddamn it.

— It could be fun.

— That remains to be seen. Is the F.P. coming?

Briscoe laughs.

— Never. He doesn’t want to land on his back on West Street.

Logan smiles.

— Thank God. One hug from him and I’d never be forgiven.

Then he motions with his head.

— This lot here, Sam? Logan says. We could put out a hell of a paper.

— We already did, Briscoe says.

One of the older photographers, Barney Weiss, is moving around with his Nikon. Some of the younger reporters are using cell phones as cameras. Others reach over to tap Briscoe on the shoulder or exchange fist bumps.

— Whatever you do, Matt, don’t pick your nose. You’ll end up on YouTube.

Logan laughs, and angles away, and Briscoe sees Janet, making a secretarial face that demands his attention. He nods to her. Slowly he pushes through, smiling, explaining that he has to get rid of his coat, hears an outburst of laughter, sees a Mexican pizza delivery man looking baffled, holding at least five stacked pies. No sign of the Fonseca kid. I hope he’s getting laid. He sure earned it. Here comes Dorfman, the city hall guy, smoking a pipe left to him by Murray Kempton. He says something that is lost in the general chaos of words. Sam, hey, Sam, let’s… No deadline tonight, baby… Who’s got a bottle opener?… I’m not shittin’ ya. The Iverson deal is… Where’s Helen? Anybody seen Helen?

Briscoe knows Helen isn’t coming. Or said she wasn’t. She’d love the aroma of this version of a city room. Christ, fourteen years since I stopped cigarettes, he thinks, and I want one now. A whiskey too. Cynthia helped me stop both. There’s a clear spot now and he eases toward his office, where Janet is at the door. He shrugs off his jacket while he moves. Now another voice is playing on the CD player, wherever it is. “Well, since my baby left me, / I found a new place to dwell…”

And here coming into the city room is Billygoat, followed by a brigade of pressmen. They are all carrying bundles of newspapers. Briscoe stops, turns back into the city room. They plop the papers on desks, cut the cords, and start handing them out. Everybody is laughing. Briscoe sees the wood, and laughs out loud too, reaching for a copy.

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.

They applaud. Briscoe hopes they are applauding themselves, not him.

— Now everything has changed. I don’t have to tell you why. Don’t have to explain that the delivery system is changing by the hour. That the recession has killed too much advertising revenue. You know all that. But I hope every one of you gives everything to the World online — everything that you gave to the newspaper. Make it real journalism, reported, edited, where the facts are beyond dispute.

He pauses and turns to Logan.

— In Matt Logan, you have one of the greatest editors I ever worked with, and he’ll make sure that happens.

They applaud some more.

— Wherever the hell I am, I’ll be reading you. And remember to kick ass, and take names. Thank you — every single one of you.

Logan nods to the left, where Fonseca is paused before the CD player. Briscoe thinks: Good, the kid made it. Then, from out of the past, from the vanished beery walls of the Lion’s Head, from other saloons now gone, from many snowy nights when nobody went home, come the Clancy Brothers. A ballad. A lament.

Of all the money that e’er I had

I spent it in good company

And all the harm I’ve ever done

Alas ’twas done to none but me…

Logan is singing hard, and so is Briscoe, and so are others who were formed by those nights on Sheridan Square when all of the Clancys were still alive. Fonseca is not singing. Too young to know the words. Briscoe sees Sheila McKibbon from the dayside copy desk off near the windows, singing, her face dark with melancholy. Another graduate of the Lion’s Head. And there, taller than some of the men, wearing a down coat that is wet on the shoulders, newly arrived, is Helen Loomis. She is smoking. And singing.

And all I’ve done for want of wit

To memory now I can’t recall

So fill to me the parting glass

Good night and joy be with you all…

Briscoe starts moving through the crowd, hugging every one of them, whispering his thanks. The singing goes on. He makes his way to Helen. Her eyes are mildly glassy, from cold, or sadness, or whiskey. It doesn’t matter to Briscoe. Or to her.

— Thank you for coming, Helen, he whispers.

— Thanks for everything, Sam.

— You okay?

— No.

— Neither am I.

— Yeah. I can see.

— We’ll have lunch next week.

— That would be great, Sam.

— Sloppy Louie’s, okay?

— We’ll have to settle for dim sum, Sam.

Briscoe hugs her again, and feels her loneliness pushing into his own lonesome heart. He kisses her cheek, and then starts walking to his office to retrieve his jacket and coat. Still singing. The wake still building.

But since it falls unto my lot

That I should go and you should not

I’ll gently rise and softly call

Good night and joy be with you all…

Logan is outside the office as Briscoe leaves. Briscoe hugs him.

— Sam, see ya, man, he says. May the wind be always at your back.

5:20 p.m. Bobby Fonseca. City room.

Leaning on the edge of a desk in the city room, music playing, everyone milling around, he wants to cry, but knows he won’t. Reporters don’t cry. Someone told him that the song at the end, “The Parting Glass,” was out of the Lion’s Head and he wishes he had known such a place. He wasn’t even born when they had all those nights of song and argument. Neither was Victoria Collins. She wanted so much to come here today, but the message said no outsiders, and even with her credit line, she was an outsider. He’ll see her tonight. Maybe take her to his place in Brooklyn. Where will Mr. Briscoe go? He wonders what kind of sickness leads someone to slash a woman’s flesh. Any woman’s flesh. Cynthia Harding’s flesh. Mary Lou Watson’s flesh. Or Victoria’s flesh. So that all the passion and desire and laughter flow to the floor.

— Don’t be glum, Bobby.

Matt Logan. A consoling hand on Fonseca’s shoulder.

— I need you, kid. I need you to kick ass. I need you to help make this a great, professional website.

— Thanks, Matt.

— Call the desk Sunday at nine. I’ll be here. I want you to do a follow on the Patchin Place murders. Unless something else is breaking.

— Will do. And Matt? I’ll try hard to kick some ass.

A fist bump on the shoulder, and Matt Logan moves to a knot of the others. Fonseca thinking: We’re not orphans yet. So why do I want to cry?

And here comes Barney Weiss, Nikon hanging from a strap.

— Hey, kid, we’re going drinking and you’re invited.

— Where?

— We’re tryin’ to figure that out. There’s some kind of benefit someplace near the High Line… Remember what Bernie Bard once said: If it ain’t catered, it ain’t journalism.

Fonseca chuckles. He doesn’t know who Bernie Bard was, but he loves the tabloid attitude. He moves across the city room, in search of a Coke.

5:50 p.m. Lew Forrest. Chelsea Hotel, Manhattan.

He signed the papers without being able to see them clearly. Jerry from the front desk guided his hand to the place where he must sign. Jerry, my personal banker. The lawyer said, Yes, that’s it, Lew, and Forrest scribbled the name. He did this on three more copies. Then Jerry stamped each copy with his notary machine, signed his own name, and it was done.

He had called the lawyer around one o’clock, told him he wanted to change his will, fast, because who knew at his age? He dictated the changes, and the lawyer came to the Chelsea around five. He took the elevator with Jerry. They sat at the big table. The lawyer filled in the names and addresses of the people, and the phone numbers. Lew Forrest signed. They left. As simple as that.

And now, sitting in the room, longing for the aroma of oil and turpentine in a time of acrylics, he is filled with a sense of relief. Everything is now settled. There are clear instructions to the gallery that handles his work. The lawyer knows his role, which is to defend Forrest’s intentions. Even Lucy from ARTnews and Jerry from the front desk will have their shares. Of what’s in the bank. Of what might come into the bank from future sales. Forrest knows there’s always a bump in sales when an artist dies. He has nobody else on the planet to take care of. And most important, Consuelo Mendoza will be safe for the rest of her life.

The growing silence tells him that snow is falling. He hears an iron shutter banging gently somewhere, so there must be wind. For me, he thinks, snow is the most treacherous condition, even with Camus taking me for my walk. Maybe Lucy can take him, and I can wait in the lobby. I wish I could see the snow.

Then in his mind he sees Consuelo’s kids heading for Sunset Park, lugging a sled. And he knows she will call. She has to explain the money to her husband. He might think there was something shameful that brought this windfall. He thinks: I will have to come up with a consoling lie. That I failed to pay her when I left Mexico. Something like that. Like a book that’s overdue at the library for fifteen years. And tell Consuelo to bring her husband and the kids to visit me. Once the husband sees me, his jealousy will die. I’m a fucking wreck. Maybe the kids could take home some of the books. Maybe, if I die first, and they have a yard, they can take Camus home too. Like all Labs, he loves kids.

Then thinks: If she comes here with her husband, I’ll have to take the painting of Consuelo off the wall. Hide Consuelo when she was young and in my bed, with her golden skin, her hard dark nipples, her silky pubic hair, the hair beneath her arms, the hair on the back of her neck, the delicate calligraphy of hair. Her heat seeping into me. Warming me. Heating my heart and my blood.

Hide all that, he thinks. Save it here in my head, in the cave of memory, like a secret pulse. To die when I die.

6:15 p.m. Consuelo Mendoza. Sunset Park.

The lock clicks. Raymundo is home. The girl starts shouting, Papi, Papi, Papi, and the two boys leave the television set to greet him. Raymundo is smiling, and hugs each kid, then turns to Consuelo, and hugs her too.

— Ah, mi amor, cómo estamos? he says.

She whispers in his ear: Good news, mi amor.

She pulls away, while the kids race around, and Raymundo removes his coat and looks at her. He makes a move with his head, raising it an inch to say, What’s wrong?

She takes his coat and says, Ven.

They go to the bedroom together. She hangs the coat, then opens the top drawer of the bureau, her drawer, and removes the envelope.

— There’s a story here, she says, holding the envelope.

He looks puzzled. And she tells the story of the old gringo she worked for in Cuernavaca, a sweet man, old then, older now, blind, a painter. Señor Lewis. She does not say what they did in bed. She never will. But she tells Raymundo that she reached out to the gringo viejo today. For help, finding a new job. The first time she had seen him in fifteen years. Then she hands him the envelope.

— Open it, she says in Spanish. He takes it, a wary look on his face. Then opens it.

— Hijole, he says, holding the thick wad of hundred-dollar bills in thumb and forefinger. Then he falls back on the bed. He looks up at her.

— This is true? he says in a soft doubting voice. Not a lie?

— You know me better than anyone in the world, Raymundo.

— I just, I mean, who does such a thing?

— A good man. Old now. With no children. We can go over to see him tomorrow. Bring the kids. You can meet him. We can bring him flowers. Help him clean up. Make him eat.

She sits beside Raymundo on the bed. There are tears in his eyes.

— How much money is it? he whispers.

— Five thousand dollars.

He grabs a pillow and sobs into its soft thickness.

Then Marcela pushes into the bedroom.

— Papi, let’s go to the snow!

He pulls the pillow away.

— Sí, mi querida, pero primero la comida, he says. Yes! But food first!

He starts to laugh then, and sits up, and hands the envelope back to Consuelo, and hugs the little girl, and says in English, Food first! And then the snow.

Consuelo thinks, Yes, the snow. All of them. And thinks: Then we can return exhausted to sleep in our own beds.

6:20 p.m. Bobby Fonseca. The A train.

He holds the pole in his gloved right hand, the other World guys close around him. They are packed together in the rush-hour train, maybe eight of them, including Helen Loomis. Murmuring jokes. Chuckling. Fonseca is silent. Thinking: I get a double wood and the paper folds. Fuck. He flashes on the faces of the night: Harding, Watson, the woman whose son had been killed. Remembers a professor at NYU, an old reporter, telling him: Ya gotta learn to forget. Ya gotta leave all the pain in the city room. Report it, write it, and go home.

Not that easy. Maybe if I had Victoria Collins with me every night. Maybe then it would be a home, instead of a place to sleep. Now it’s a fixed-up Brooklyn tenement full of college kids, with a view of a red-brick factory turned into condos. Growing up in New Jersey, Fonseca imagined Brooklyn before he saw it. From movies. From photographs. Saw its light. Its beautiful brownstones. He found his pad in his last year at NYU, paid $350 a month for a chopped-off slice of a railroad flat. Too much, for a place the size of a small attic in Montclair. Still, it’s bigger than Victoria’s place. The bathroom has a sink, for fuck’s sake.

His father and mother came once to visit and his father said, “For this, I spent all that money?” And never came again. But it was Brooklyn, in a neighborhood renamed the South Slope by the real estate guys, with the subway three blocks away and places to eat on all the corners. It just never became a home, even after I got hired at the World. Where I wanted to work fifteen hours a day. For the rest of my fucking life.

He hears Barney Weiss mention CelineWire and that nasty shit Wheeler who writes it. That asshole probably even thinks he brought us down. Not the recession and the loss of ads. Not the delivery system. Him. Well, at least I had it for a while. He remembers what Mr. Briscoe told him when he handed Fonseca his first working press card. When I got mine, Briscoe said, I wore it to bed for a month, like it was a dog tag. Fonseca did the same thing. And that first week his father called, after seeing Fonseca’s byline in the paper, and said, “Damn, Bobby, I am so goddamned proud of you.” He could hear a tremor in his father’s voice, and then heard him say, “Maybe now you can get a decent place to live.” And Bobby Fonseca laughed.

The train slows. The World crowd faces the doors as the 14th Street station appears. Fonseca sees the sign: IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Nah, if I see something, I write something. I’m a reporter, man.