The Sun's Nightside

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Title: The Sun's Nightside

Author: Liam O'Connell

ISBN: 0966788397

Description:

In the early 1970s, New York City woke up to the consequences of aging factories, a failed welfare system and corruption that corrodes the heart -- no matter the noble intent. This book features F. X. Quill, Nightside reporter for The Sun, New York City's must-read tabloid, as a chronicler of a world that lies around the corner, behind closed doors and hidden from the light. Quill works at a time when the tools of the reporter's trade were notepads, pens, typewriters and dial phones that cost only a dime. This story follows Quill as he exposes crime for the city's working people who are devoted readers of The Sun. Quill digs into the truth behind the unexplained death of an unidentified teen in a Queens flophouse and uncovers a web of deceit and corruption in the city's welfare system, a street gang used as enforcers by a shadowy religious cult, its charismatic leader and greedy politicians bent on dominating the city treasury who will use murder, kidnapping and torture to get their way. 
    The Sun's Nightside introduces reporter F. X. Quill and his world of Queens and Manhattan and the life he leads at night exposing crime for the city's must read daily tabloid The Sun.  A sequel to this volume entitled is Still Life, Still Life. 

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Excerpt from Chapter One:

"Quill!"
    I'd heard that shout plenty that night above the din and clatter of the city room and, like all the others, it got me up and to the head of the long, busy oak table that is The Sun's city desk.
    "Go home." Molloy said. "And on your way, check this out."
    He was holding a teletype message from police headquarters and, like all the other slips, I took it, said nothing and walked back to my desk on the rewrite bank.
    The roman numerals on the clock above the city room's switchboard told me it was ten minutes past midnight, a full 50 minutes until the end of my shift. Maybe the slip will be nothing, I thought, and I could get home a few minutes early. I like a good story as well as the next guy, maybe more than most, but I'd worked hard that night. And Molloy will give you a slide, let you beat the company out of some time, If he thinks you've worked your wages.  As I put on my overcoat and got my gear together, I even felt confident enough to think that Molloy might finally be doing me a favor. Then I read it.

PRESS 46 2230 HRS 100 PCT
AT 2180 HRS RM 29 PALACE HOTEL 35-99 JOSHUA ST CORONA
UNID W/F 209 DOA
NO FUR INFO TS TM ZZZZZZZ
OPR O'BRIEN CSS VIA KEYS 5 8 10 14 BELL

Some favor. I'd be working right up to one o'clock in a neighborhood I didn't like much. Molloy knew I live in Flushing, two miles east of Corona and that I could get off the el four stops early, check the slip out by one o'clock. Getting home would be my problem. He's a real pal.
    Molloy was probably curious why a white girl gets dead in a flophouse where black people live. I guess I was curious too, but not that curious. I was tired. The slip in my hand was the sixth for me that night. The others had taken four hours of phone work and two hours of legwork to find out there wasn't a story in them good enough to bump out another story from the one-, two- and three-stars.
    No matter. To Molloy, even though slips take time and work, all maybe for nothing, he wants them all worked, checked out hard. Slips are about people, like those who read The Sun. We let the Intellectual sheet across town and the chic set that buys it worry about the cosmology of world affairs. The Sun and the working people that buy it worry about the neighborhoods of this town and the people in them.
So when slips come over they get worked, checked out. Only reporters do the checking. Molloy does the sitting. And neither of us knew that doing our job that night would lead to one of the best stories The Sun's ever had.
    I walked back to Molloy. "You want me to call in something for the five?"
    He pointed to the exit in the rear of the City Room. "Just get there and call me with what you've got."
    His expression made clear he wanted me gone two minutes ago, so without further comment from me, I made the five minute walk to Grand Central and waited there a couple more minutes for the Flushing IRT to Queens. There were five people on the platform with me; none got onto the car I did. Except for a drunk passed out by an empty motorman's booth at the front of the car, I was alone.
I ignored him and thought through how much time I had. I'd give it 40 minutes. Even though the five-star doesn't go to bed until maybe 1:15 a.m., whatever I got had to be in Molloy's hands by one.
    Knowing how much time I had, I started to feel the pressure. With Molloy on The Sun's Nightside, you get this thing about the clock, about deadlines. Dayside has all day to make the one-star deadline at five o'clock. That's plenty of time. But news doesn't happen to satisfy Dayside's schedule; plenty happens in this town after sundown.
    Starting at five o'clock, as The Sun's presses roll through two million tabloids downstairs, Molloy's Nightside staff reports, writes and edits stories by press run deadline. At seven o'clock its the two-star, nine o'clock the three-star, eleven o'clock the four-star. We get a bit of a breather with the five-star. Its run isn't until about one fifteen, depending on the number of papers we're printing. But Molloy doesn't believe in overtime, union overtime costs being, what they are; so everything for the five-star has got to be done by one. And we hump it, all night long. As a result, Nightside reporters develop an anxiety rhythm patterned on deadlines at 7 p.m., 9 p.m., 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.
    We'd crossed under the East River and the sound in the car changed as it started to climb out from underground in Long Island City onto the el above Roosevelt Ave.
    Thirty-five minutes.
    The light rain had wet the tracks, shorting out the circuit, causing the lights in the car to blink on and off.  Out of the car's windows I saw the reflection of the Manhattan skyline on the windows of the factories and warehouses of Long Island City, many now abandoned and idle since their owners had moved the work out of town. The wino in the corner groaned and rolled over onto his back. Cracked leather and brown paper bags covered his feet; three overcoats, each one ragged and slick from filth, wrapped his body. Dried vomit was smeared on the left side of his face, matting his beard.
    I looked away and back outside again at the empty factories of eastern Queens. I'd covered more stories that I'd liked about this zipper outfit laying off 500 it didn't want to move to new digs in North Carolina, or that watch band maker pink slipping 370 some who wouldn't leave their homes in Brooklyn and Queens to move to the Mississippi River Delta.
    It all made me point my face into the three-star. My byline appeared once, a signer under a three-graph brief on page forty-six. Big deal. It was a rewrite of a handout from the special prosecutor's office about hiring a bunch of new hot shots. It didn't deserve my name under it. But Molloy says if Nightside does something Dayside doesn't or forgets, the line goes on.
    The train stopped at Junction Blvd. and., when it started up again, I stopped reading, buttoned and belted my overcoat, dropped the tab on the seat next to me and put my hands into my gloves.
    Thirty minutes.
    I reached up and grabbed the aluminum strap-hanger just as momentum swung my body forward as the train slowed, and sharply back, when it stopped at 104th Street. The doors slid open with a whoosh of air. I moved onto the wooden elevated ramp. I could hear that the snow had turned to rain. It fell upon the corrugated tin roof overhead. Thirty feet along and I skipped down the stairway out onto Roosevelt Avenue. I had no hat or umbrella, so I pulled the collar of my overcoat tight around my neck to keep warm and began the trek to The Palace Hotel.
    The best way to avoid getting jumped is to look like you know where you're going, so I kept my gate brisk. I knew anyway. The Palace is in a slimy section of Corona., a no man's land of dirt lawns and trash littered streets, lined with lousy housing.
    I looked for a cab, but the hacks weren't there. Two blocks from Roosevelt Avenue, the street got darker. I could see rusted fixtures in the street lights, which had been shot or blown out and left unfixed. Nobody had bothered to come by and do the job.
    Not long back the neighborhood was okay, and lights like that would have been fixed pronto. The Italians who lived there didn't like crime and had the clout to get their way. That's when I'd done a story about The Palace. It was a hooker joint then where Johns would pay the boss a buck to use a room for a half-hour. But the neighbors got wise, called the cops who then pulled a raid and shut the joint down.
    Things in Corona were like that then. But as poor Blacks and Latinos from down South moved to the city, the whites in neighborhoods like Corona got scared and moved out, taking their money and prosperity with them. It left the newcomers behind in poverty, more and more dependent on government programs more and more businesses moved south to avoid. Old story.
    As for the hookers who'd worked The Palace, I'd heard they'd moved their business to the alleys around Queens Plaza, the railroad switching station in Long Island City. Commuters on the Long Island Railroad would get off the train there, get their rocks off, get themselves back on the train and go home to their families in Nassau or Suffolk. With that The Palace had become like dozens of other flophouses, home to ex-mental patients, welfare types, derelicts, dope fiends and assorted weirdoes. At least that's what I'd heard.
    I turned back again to look for a hack. Nothing, The only cars on the street were parked, abandoned or stripped at curbside. I stepped on a crushed beer can, and the sound of metal ripping against the pavement tore through the air. I quickened by pace. I had four blocks to go.
    Twenty-three minutes.
    I cursed Molloy, sitting there with his bald head and big belly, pulling a suspender slightly as he ordered me to Corona. And he's a pro. Most time he shows good judgement on things, and I don't mind following orders. That's the way things get done. But after midnight to Joshua Street? Held been off the street too long. I had three blocks.
    "Mister."
    It was a feminine voice. But it wasn't soft. It hit me hard as I moved past the darkened doorway of a closed bodega. Instinctively I turned my face to see her just before she stepped in my path, forcing me to stop.
    "Yeah?"
    "Need company?"
    She couldn't have been older than 16; a painted up white kid, dressed in platform shoes, black stockings and leather short shorts held together by lacing on the outer sides. She kept out the cold, if that was possible, by hugging a robust rabbit fur jacket around her upper torso. She was working, looking kinky.
    "No thanks, doll."
    I walked past her but she quickly followed.
    "These streets aren't safe to be alone on, Mister."
    "Thanks for the tip. Not interested."
    "Everybody's interested, mister."
    True. But I draw a line long before I get to teenage hookers. But she didn't seem discouraged any.         She was half-running to keep up with me. We got past a few closed shops like this and then came on an open saloon. Confidently, she snaked her arm around mine and almost led me through a variety of street sleaze, standing around bouncing with varying levels of enthusiasm to raggae music pounding onto the street.
    I tried to shake her but she held on. I was about to give a shove but, as I looked at her to make my move, I saw a few yards down a group of punks. They were all young, feral, dressed in denim and black leather and sporting identical black berets. Like a uniform. Like trouble. I didn't spend time looking at them. They hadn't noticed me.
    "Move," she whispered, indicating with her tone and expression that I'd better, if I wanted to remain unnoticed, which I did. Together we crossed against traffic light. A few steps down, she said: "I just did you a favor, mister."
    "Yeah? Told you. Not interested," I repeated, finally shaking my arm free.
    "I don't mean that," she protested in a soft voice as she came to a halt.
I thought about the punks and her warning to move. My duel curse and blessing - curiosity - got the better of me. "What then?"
    "If I didn't have you, Aces Pack there would've taken you off Mister."
    I tried to make her out. I thought I saw a bewildered look try to make its way through the paint on her face.
    "Yeah, how you know?"
    "Business, Mister. That's the way we serve the word."
    Serve the word? Business? More like a spaced out kid, I decided working a con to shake me down for a pound. Just another street scam. I wanted out.
    "That's so, thanks. I owe you one. Be good, doll. I'm working."
    I started moving again but, this time, she didn't follow. She aimed back at her doorway. She was working too.
    I had two blocks to go, it was dark and people on the street were getting scarce. Hang on a sec. I thought, maybe she's going to turn you over to her partners.
    I ran, turned down Joshua Street and saw, a block down, blinking red lights going around and around. A police cruiser at the DOA. I slowed to a trot and the muscles in my shoulders relaxed. By the time I came to the front stoop of The Palace, I was walking. My watch gave me 20 minutes.
    "What's doing, Sarge?" I casually asked the ranking of two uniforms standing up the steps on The Palace's landing.
    When I identified myself they relaxed a bit too.
    "She's dead. Looks like an overdose. No ID," the sergeant said, waving his arm toward the doorway. "Go on up, though. They're upstairs and can tell you what you want." He shook his head. "Wasting your time. Just a dead whore."
    I said he was probably right and stepped up, past him and the other uniform, and into a small lobby, empty of anybody. There was a half-full glass of beer and part of a cheese sandwich on top of the battered reception desk. The eater was probably up with the cops I thought.
    I climbed the stairs, got to the landing and opened the door on the right and stepped into darkness. The hall lights, if there were any, were out. I couldn't see to read where Room 29 was. So I put my ears to work, turned toward voices, walked down a narrow corridor and around to the right.
    At the end of the hall, I could see light framing a door, open only a bit, and a uniform standing in the dark in front. As I moved down the hall, the uniform's head turned at me and stayed still. Six feet from the uniform, I heard: "What do you want?"
    I stopped. The voice, sounding somewhat threatened, wasn't friendly.
    "F. X. Quill. Reporter from The Sun."
    I lifted the back of my overcoat slowly, so he wouldn't get nervous, and pulled out my wallet. I held up my police department credentials so he could see them.
    "Don't you guys quit, for crying out loud?"
    It wasn't much of a question; so I didn't answer. I figured I'd say something else but was stopped when I heard another voice from behind the door.
    "What's up out there?"
    "Some dopey reporter."
    This uniform was a real comfort but, again before I could get out my opinion of this cop, the door opened halfway and a dark street clothes stood there, his face hidden by light framing his head. I repeated the ID routine.
    "Fran. This is a helluva place to see you. What are you doing here?'
    I recognized the voice right off. Carmine D'Angelo, a detective with Queens Homicide Zone 15, opened the door more so I could see him. He was a good cop. We'd worked together sometime back and respected, even liked each other.
    "Molloy told me to check it out on the way home."
    He jerked his head for me to come in. I did, walking quickly by the uniform, who I hoped at that point felt like But just as that thought came to me it disappeared. She was gray; stretched out in front of me face up, right there in the middle of the room, perpendicular to the rusty bed frame and neatly made mattress.
    I heard behind me: "I haven't seen you around lately, where you been?"
    I stood there for a few moments maybe, and stared. The dead look dead and she was no different. Nothing came from her.
    "Fran?"
    "What" I probably answered.
    She was dressed in faded blue jeans, a tie-died purple sleeveless undershirt and barefoot. Probably collapsed onto herself and fallen straight back on the floor, looked like. Her eyelids were wide open, her blue eyes pointed straight up at the ceiling.
    One of her arms was under her left side and the other lay down and across her front. Her legs were bent at the knees under her. She was pretty, cute even, in a used up kind of way. And she was dead.
    "Fran?"
    I turned to look at him. "What?" I know I answered.
    "Where you been, I said. Haven't seem you around."
    "Transferred to Nightside. Six months maybe."
    I looked back at her. I needed to put reason for me being in the room, seeing this. Questions just shot out: " Got a name? Age? Know who she is? What's a white, girl doing here? How long she dead?"
    "Wait a minute, pal. One at a time," D'Angelo cautioned, holding up his palm. I saw another plain clothes and some other hoople behind him, but I didn't pay much attention to them and instead settled down.
    "All right. Let me know what you can. I've got five minutes."
    He stepped past me, stood by the girl's chest and looked down. He said they figured she overdosed maybe seven to eight thirty some such. There were no needles around so it was probably pills.
D'Angelo squatted down and pointed to the scar tissue on the Inside of the elbow joint on the arm lying across her front. The scars had the gray yellow color of death.
    "A user."
    "No idea who she is?"
    He fingered lightly a silver ID bracelet on the same arm. "All we got is this. Reads: 'To My Little Baby.' Some baby. Some help. We do know it's not her room."
    He stood up and looked over my shoulder to the other two men in the room. I turned and saw a badge hanging from a leather wallet folded backwards Into an outer breast pocket., the one where a hanky ought to have been. I 'was pretty bad because I had to think that the badge node him a cop. The other guy, though, 'wasn't. I figured he was the Manager. After seeing his dead guest I decided I had the right to a question or two.
    "What's he say," I asked of D'Angelo though keeping my eyes on the manager.
    "Ask him yourself," came the answer.
    "How about it," I said the manager, whose was dressed sloppy and whose face hadn't felt razor or water in days. "Who's she?"
    "I don't know." He was definitely a smart guy.
    "All right then, whose room is it?"
    He hesitated. I didn't. "Whose?"
    "Some guy. Name's Jimmy or something. Been here couple maybe three years. Maybe more, maybe. I don't know."
    "You seen her before?"
    "Maybe a few times, maybe. I don't know, sometimes." He was not only a smart guy, he was a creep. He'd seen her before. Anybody who works a hotel desk in a dump like The Palace would notice a white girl with her looks and age coming in to see somebody.
    Three minutes.
    I pulled out my notebook, took down essentials and got everybody's name spelled right. I then worked some theory: "Carmine, this Jimmy guy a suspect?"
    "Not a homicide yet. So we got no suspects. Just want him to help ID the kid, is all."
    To D'Angelo I said, "I'll be in touch." To the manager and the other cop I said nothing, then paced through the darkness downstairs and found a pay phone underneath the open stairway. I pulled out one of the twenty dimes I always carry, put it in the slot and worked the dial.
    "Leah," I said to the city room switchboard operator, "give me Molloy."
    I would have liked to say more, like how are you, but I didn't have time. Two rings later and Molloy. It was 12:55 a.m.
    "Desk."
    "This Is Quill. I got it. DOA's white, maybe 25ish, apparent OD. No ID, except for a dime store bracelet..." I pushed out all the facts without interruption.
    "Suspects?"
    "Not a homicide, suicide or accident. Undetermined, Queens Homicide Zone 15 is looking for an old black guy who lived in the apartment to help ID the DOA."
    "What's the neighborhood like? The hotel?"
    Molloy hadn't worked these streets in a long time, so I told him.
    "Where are you?" came the question.
    "The hotel,"went the answer.
    "Better than a box in the back of the book on some press conference by the governor, what not. Okay. Give me three graphs." That was the assignment.    He shouted over to Leah, "Give Quill into the wire room." He shouted to me, "Write standing up. Goodnight."
    Leah switched me into the wireman. By the time I'd dictated the facts into a three graph formula it was one o'clock on the button, I was off work, story in my deadline and standing at the reception desk of The Palace Hotel, 35-99 Joshua St., Corona with no way home.
    I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. I turned to see a tall, athletic black man dressed In clerics walking towards me. I know this guy, I thought, its whatshisname. Wilson or Watkins. No. That's not it.
    "Reverend Watson?" I asked, finally remembering the name.
    "Yes," he answered, stopping next to me at the reception desk. "I don't believe."
    "F. X. Quill. Reporter for The Sun. I covered a luncheon you spoke at a year back or so."
    "Oh, yes," he said, a smile revealing a healthy set of pearlies. "The Queens Committee of Churchmen luncheon."
    "That's it." Sure, I thought, he was given an award for something or other and gave a talk about brotherhood, love and all. Not bad either. I wrote a piece on it, but it never made the paper.
    "Are you here because of that girl?" he sighed, shaking his large head.
    "Afraid so."
    "Such a shame."
    "You know her?"
    "No. I spoke to the officers upstairs. I'm afraid I wasn't much help."
    Funny place for a preacher, I thought, even this guy. Curiosity got the better of my manners. "Why are you here?"
    "I work with several of the tenants," he answered evenly, "many are troubled, you know, and I try to help any way I can."
    That's what his talk was about, I recalled. He argued that ministers ought to get to the lousy neighborhoods of this town and work with the people, one to one. Not from a pulpit only on Sunday. Made sense to me. He was a very persuasive speaker and everybody at the luncheon listened carefully to this handsome black man with the deep booming voice.
    "Do you know the guy who lives in the room?" I asked, thinking his work might have brought them in contact.
    "Jimmy, you mean?"
    "That's right."
    He shook his head, and said. "No. The police asked me. The name doesn't sound familiar." His face got curious.
    "Why are you here? This kind of thing is barely newsworthy anymore."
    I didn't want to tell him the real reason - racism, like sex and blood and crime, still sells news - so I hedged.  "Fair enough. We check out all we can. I was on my way home and I do what the city editor says."
    "I see. Will a story be in the paper?"
    "Yes, I just called it in."
    "Perhaps it is not a bad thing," he said, almost under his breath. "A story like that might prevent another girl from doing the same thing."
    "Perhaps." I knew better though. Junkie hookers are always taking one too many pills or popping up too much. Like that kid who went for me on my way over to Joshua Street. She'd end up ODing sure. Or murdered by a John. It is too bad, I thought to myself. I went fishing.
    "Reverend, you know any religions around here that talk about serving the word?"
    "Serving the world," he said, incorrectly hearing my question. But then, maybe I hadn't heard the kid right.
    "Yes, perhaps that's it." He thought for a moment and then shook his head.
    "No. I don't think so. Although that doesn't mean there isn't. There are many groups springing up all over nowadays. I don't know them all."
    Naah, I thought to myself, the kid was just pulling a scam. Pure and simple. "Hard to keep track sometimes, Isn't it?" He nodded and smiled ironically.
    "Well, I must be going. Perhaps we can meet again soon under better circumstances, Mr. Quill."
    I said I hoped so, we shook hands and he left. I thought to myself there ought to be more preachers like him around neighborhoods like this, but I dropped all such musings when I saw I was still standing in The Palace Hotel with no way home.