A Long Line of Dead Men

We left when the mass was over, without having taken Communion. The sky was still overcast but no rain was falling. Mick's Cadillac was where he'd parked it, in the reserved space in front of Twomey's funeral parlor. Twomey was out in front and gave us a wave when he saw us. Mick gave him a smile and a nod.

"It's good days for Twomey," he said. "His business is more than twice what it was, now that they're dying of AIDS all around him. It's an ill wind, eh?"

"That's the truth."

"I'll tell you another," he said. "Every wind's an ill wind."

* * *

He dropped me at my door. I went upstairs and tried to make as little noise as possible opening the door, not wanting to wake Elaine if she was still sleeping.

When I opened the door she was standing there, wearing a robe I'd bought for her. The look on her face told me right away that something was wrong.

Before I could ask, she said, "You don't know, do you? You haven't heard?"

"Heard what?"

She put a hand out, took mine. "Gerard Billings was killed last night," she said.

24

For a full twelve years, Gerard Billings had been the weather reporter for an independent New York broadcast channel. While he was officially known as the chief meteorologist, his function was primarily reportorial. His colorful clothing, his irrepressible personality, and his evident willingness to make a fool of himself on camera were more important factors in his rise than his ability to read a weather map.

He was on the air twice a day, at 6:55 P.M., just before the close of the 6:30 news program, and again at 11:15, right in the middle of the late news and before the extended sports summary. Typically, he would arrive at the station at five in the afternoon, work out what he was going to say and get his maps and charts in order, and go out for dinner after the broadcast. Sometimes he would linger over dinner for a couple of hours, then return to the studio. Other nights he'd go home for a nap and a change of clothes, then go back to the studio for his second stint of the day. He'd get there between 10 and 10:30; he didn't need as much time to prepare, because he would be using the same charts and giving essentially the same report.

At seven that Tuesday night he went straight home to the apartment on West Ninety-sixth where he'd lived since his divorce four years previously. He ordered Chinese food from a restaurant on Amsterdam Avenue. Shortly after ten he went downstairs and caught a cab driven by a recent Bengali immigrant named Rakhman Ali. As the cab waited to make a left turn into Columbus Avenue, it was sideswiped by a car that was attempting to pass it on the right. The driver leaped from his car and got into a loud argument with Rakhman Ali, at the climax of which he drew a handgun, shot Ali three times in the face and upper chest, then yanked open the door of the cab and emptied his gun into Ali's passenger. He then sped away in his own vehicle, which was variously described as anywhere from two to twelve years old. Witnesses seemed to agree that it was a four-door sedan, that it was dark in color, and that it had seen better days.

Elaine, watching the news, knew something was wrong even before they introduced a substitute weatherman to fill in for Billings. There were no jokes about the absent forecaster being under the weather, and all of the reporters in the studio seemed to be keeping a grim secret. It turned out that they had learned of Billings's death moments before they went on the air and decided to hold the story pending notification of kin. This decision was overruled toward the end of the broadcast when they realized they were in danger of getting scooped by their competitors; accordingly, the anchorwoman made the unfortunate announcement right after the sports wrap-up.

"I didn't know what to do," Elaine said. "I knew you were at Grogan's and I looked up the number and thought about calling, but what were you going to do in the middle of a rainy night? Besides, for all I knew it was just what it looked like, an argument over a traffic accident that got out of control. It happens all the time, and everybody's got a gun these days, and maybe they'd catch the poor loser who did it within the hour, and why ruin your evening with Mick over that?

"So instead I turned the radio to WINS and stayed up for hours. I had the radio turned down low and I had a book to read, and I heard the same half hour of news over and over, and when they got to the Billings story I would stop reading and turn the volume up, and it would be the same thing as before, word for word. And I wound up falling asleep with the radio on and woke up at seven with it blaring away.

"Should I have called you? I didn't know what to do."