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.
NIGHT
6:45 p.m. Sam Briscoe. Patchin Place.
AS THE SNOW FALLS SOFTLY, he stands with his back to the Jefferson Market Branch of the public library. There are still lights burning in the tall former courthouse, rising still out of the nineteenth century. How Cynthia loved having a house a block from a library! On his head is a woven wool cap he found in the office, made years ago by Kevin & Howlin in Dublin. He was in Dublin with Cynthia on a day of sun, showing her the sights. Where Yeats lived on Merrion Square and Shaw not far away and the monument in St. Patrick’s to Jonathan Swift. The bookstores on Dawson Street. The National Library. She said: Sam, I could live here. And he laughed. So could he. “Of all the money that e’er I had…”
He is facing Patchin Place, where two bundled uniformed cops remain on guard and the gates are draped with yellow crime-scene tape. A patrol car is parked on the Sixth Avenue side of the entrance, its windows opaque with steam.
He is not much of a believer but he tries to pray. No words come. Except “sorry.” Cynthia was not much of a believer either, but told him once that she tried to read a poem each night as if it were a prayer. Maybe, Briscoe thinks, memory is a prayer. And he remembers fragments of snowy nights when he walked with her from the Lion’s Head, one long block away, and came here with her and she made tea and they snuggled before a movie on the couch in the den. The snow is now general all over New York. Softly falling into the dark mutinous Atlantic waves. He thinks: No, not Atlantic. It has to be Shannon, two syllables. Joyce was right.
He has entered from the Sixth Avenue end of West 10th Street. He notices that a woman is now standing in the snow-flecked shadows at the Greenwich Avenue end. A heavy fur hat on her head. Long down coat. Heavy boots. Very still. Alone. She is staring into Patchin Place too, where the snow is now gathering on Cynthia Harding’s stoop, tamped down in the center by the feet of cops.
Briscoe moves slightly to the left, stamping his feet as the uniformed cops did. The lights are still burning on every floor. He can see shadowy figures moving in the windows. Technicians. Crime-scene guys. Examining every hair. Down the block the light from street lamps seems spectral. Trucks moan up Greenwich. Buses on Sixth Avenue. The woman is still there. He can’t see her face.
Then a door of the police car opens. A detective steps out. In civilian clothes. With a hat over his black face. He stares at Briscoe. And walks over. The snow pelting him. Briscoe knows him.
— You waitin’ on something, man?
— I’m not, Lieutenant Watson.
Ali Watson brushes snow off his eyelashes and squints. Then smiles thinly in recognition.
— Hello, Sam.
— Ali. I’m so sorry about what happened. Mary Lou was a wonderful human being.
Ali sighs.
— The same with Cynthia. I know, uh, that you and her…
— Yeah. A lot of years.
— What are you doing here, Sam?
— Trying to pray.
A pause.
— That’s not easy, is it?
— Not anymore.
They are both silent for a long moment. The snow is blowing east.
— I heard about you and the newspaper, Sam. It was on the radio.
— What the hell. I had a long run.
— So did me and Mary Lou.
They stand in silence.
— You got a suspect?
— Yeah. But I can’t talk about it. Not yet.
— Of course.
Briscoe removes a glove, takes a card from his wallet, writes his home number on the back and hands it to Ali.
— When this is over, Ali, you want to talk, we’ll have dinner somewhere.
— That’s a deal.
Ali walks slowly back to the police car. He did not produce a card and Briscoe knows why. Briscoe turns. The woman who was waiting down the block is gone.
He moves to Greenwich, passes the small garden, and turns left onto Sixth Avenue. She’s on the corner, trying to flag a taxi. And then he sees her face. He hurries to her side.
— Sandra Gordon…
She looks startled. Then relaxes.
— Oh, Sam. I thought that was you, but—
— Were you praying too?
— Sort of… Really just telling her how, as long as I’m alive, she’s alive.
She has the same vocal rhythm she had when she came to New York, at once clipped and melodic. The sound of the islands. He remembers her going with Cynthia to buy clothes for interviews at colleges, and later for job interviews. He remembers her at Cynthia’s old place uptown, and then in Patchin Place. For lunches. For parties. Never for fund-raisers, even after Sandra started making good money. Polite, but never servile. Able to speak when asked questions, but not a performer. A listener.
— Want some dinner? he says.
— Of course, she says.
They cross Sixth Avenue and walk east on 8th Street. She hooks a gloved hand to his arm. The snow falls heavier. Driven by a wind off the North River. Coming from Jersey. The Great Lakes. Canada. They pass shops for rent, and a pair of middle-aged women, their heads lowered as the snow blows in their faces, and three drunk college boys, one of whom looks at Sandra, shouts a sentence as he passes that ends with “Obama.”
— It’s comforting, Briscoe says, to know that young guys are still assholes.
Sandra Gordon laughs.
— They get worse, Sandra says, as they get older.
They cross Fifth Avenue. To the right through the snow, the lights make the Washington Square Arch lovelier than ever. A man stands at the corner, staring into the whitening park, holding skis. They move on to the east, passing more empty shops, and others that are closing early because of the storm. A scrawny man in a camouflage jacket and worn jeans stands huddled in a doorway, holding a cardboard cup. He says nothing. His eyes are dead. Briscoe has no change. They move on. Briscoe thinks: How many times have I walked this street? Five thousand? Ten? More? How many times with Cynthia Harding?
Here at last is University Place. Across the street was where the Cookery stood for so long, with Barney Josephson running it.
— Didn’t Alberta Hunter sing there? Sandra says. I was too young to ever see her. But I heard she was great, here in the Cookery.
— You’re right. It was full of life, that place.
— She’s gone too.
— She is.
Sandra squeezes his arm a bit harder. He doesn’t mention the Cedars, doesn’t try to explain that it stood right here, where this ugly fucking white-brick building is now, that Pollock used to come here, shit-faced, and Franz Kline, with his grace and good manners, and how Briscoe was infatuated one winter with Helen Frankenthaler, and her big swashbuckling paintings, and her beautiful face, and how Frankenthaler was in love with a critic. A critic, for Chrissakes!
At the corner of 9th Street they cross University Place. Sandra releases her grip. Briscoe takes her elbow and opens the door to the Knickerbocker. They go in. To the right, in the bar, five or six people are watching New York One and images of the storm. He turns away. He doesn’t want to see the rest of the news, and he’s sure Sandra doesn’t either. The large dining room is half empty. Sandra unzips her coat and smiles as the maitre d’ comes to greet them. Sandra has a beautiful smile.
They are led to a booth for four, lots of room for coats and hats and a handbag, and out of the sight line to the TV. Sandra is wearing a black sweater, black slacks, no jewelry, no lipstick. He doesn’t stare at her. But when she speaks, he can see her full lips, her cheekbones, the many variations of ebony. He flashes on the ebony pencils that copy editors used for marking stories written on paper by typewriters.