The Most of Nora Ephron

by Nora Ephron

  In the bar, MICHAEL DALY stands.

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) Michael Daly. I was a columnist at the Daily News. I’d known McAlary from when he was covering sports and when he went to Newsday we started hanging around together—

  A group of reporters sit at a table. McALARY joins his pretty wife, ALICE, and MICHAEL DALY at the bar.

  McALARY: (Lifts his glass.) Gentlemen, the former Alice Argento of North Massapequa—

  ALICE: —which is not to be confused with Massapequa.

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) I was crazy about McAlary’s wife.

  ALICE: Michael and I first met in college.

  McALARY: At Syracuse.

  ALICE: At this mixer.

  McALARY: She caused me to spill my drink.

  ALICE: Accidentally.

  McALARY: So I said—

  ALICE: He had the nerve to tell me I had to buy him another drink. Which I did! And for the rest of the night we talked and laughed—

  McALARY: We had a great time—

  ALICE: And agreed to meet a week later.

  McALARY: On an official date.

  ALICE: I showed up looking really good—

  McALARY: Here’s the thing, there was this sophomore named Lisa—

  ALICE: Here’s the thing, I found him dancing with another girl! I’m not a doormat. So I grabbed my coat, very dramatic, and walked out.

  McALARY: Nice view. I followed.

  ALICE: We’ve been together ever since.

  McALARY: My wife can recite all the stops on the Long Island Railroad in a conductor’s voice—

  MICHAEL DALY: She could. She absolutely could—

  McALARY: Do it, babe—

  ALICE: I’m not doing it.

  McALARY: I love it when you say Ronkonkoma. C’mon, do it. Okay, she’ll do it.

  ALICE: (Long Island accent.) The 7:01 to Babylon, now departing on Track 16. Woodside, Jamaica, Saint Albans, Lynbrook, Rockville Center, Baldwin, Freeport, Merrick, Bellmore, Wantagh, Seaford, Massapequa, Massapequa Park, Amityville, Copiague, Lindenhurst, and Babylon.

  McALARY and DALY are entranced. But:

  McALARY: What about Ronkonkoma?

  ALICE: It’s not on the Babylon Line.

  McALARY looks at her imploringly.

  It’s not.

  McALARY: Sweetheart, honeybunch, love of my life—

  ALICE: Ronkonkoma.

  McALARY: Beau-ti-ful.

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) We all said that. Bee-you-tee-ful. Because Breslin said it. Jimmy Breslin was the greatest newspaper columnist who ever lived.

  BOB DRURY: Remember his columns on Marvin the Torch and Fat Thomas, and the one on the guy who dug Kennedy’s grave?

  MICHAEL DALY: If we had some cop on the line, he had the chief. While we were grilling some flunky, Jimmy had the governor on hold.

  JIM DWYER: He had the story while the rest of us were still chasing the facts.

  MICHAEL DALY: He was Irish, we were Irish. We were all trying to be him, every minute of the day—

  BOB DRURY: —especially Mac.

  MICHAEL DALY: So there we were, at the bar one night—

  McALARY: Hey, is that Jimmy over there?

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) It was. It was Breslin himself. (To McALARY.) Want to meet him?

  McALARY: Nah.

  ALICE: You don’t want to meet Jimmy Breslin?

  McALARY: I already met Breslin.

  MICHAEL DALY: When?

  McALARY: Last week. We were covering that mafia murder in Coney Island.

  MICHAEL DALY: And?

  McALARY doesn’t even want to tell the story.

  MICHAEL DALY AND ALICE: What? Come on. Tell us, etc.

  McALARY: I go up to him, say my name, tell him how when I would come stay with my uncle Tim in Brooklyn, he would never even say good morning when you came down for breakfast, he would just say, “Read Breslin.” I’m prepared to quote Breslin to Breslin, and you know what he says to me?

  MICHAEL DALY: What?

  McALARY: Nothing. He just grunts.

  MICHAEL DALY: That’s what Breslin does. He grunts. It’s his way of hello.

  McALARY: It wasn’t a hello kind of a grunt. It was more of a fuck-you kind of a grunt. I worship the guy, I always have, and he turns out to be a total prick, so fuck him, and then the next day I read his piece, and it’s about a hundred times better than my piece, it’s a hundred times better than anything I ever wrote, or ever will, and it’s not even one of his best columns—

  ALICE: Well, he’s Jimmy Breslin.

  McALARY: And I’m not, fuck.

  They look over at the bar where a group of reporters is standing.

  MICHAEL DALY: Hey, be Breslin for a minute.

  The ensemble opens and we see one of them, as Breslin.

  Light up.

  Breslin lights a cigar.

  Lean back.

  Breslin exhales.

  A big guy in a haze of smoke.

  Hands behind your head.

  He puts his hands behind his head, leans against the wall.

  McALARY watches, entranced.

  (To audience.) And McAlary said—

  McALARY: One day.

  Ryan’s Bar

  McALARY surrounded by a group of detectives, dressed similarly in trench coats. They are all smoking.

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) In 1986 I decided to take a leave of absence to write a novel. McAlary had helped me on a couple of stories so I took him around and introduced him to all of the detectives I knew. I told him, if you have five detectives, one in every borough, you can cover the entire city.

  McALARY: Detectives are heroes. My father was from East Flatbush out by Holy Cross Cemetery. He moved us up to New Hampshire when I was a kid, otherwise I would have been a cop—

  MICHAEL DALY: He looked like a cop, walked like a cop—

  McALARY: I even eat like a cop, fast. Growing up, everybody I knew was either a cop or married to one. Half-Stitch Delaney, this reporter with the Journal American, was married to a lady cop, Pussy Bumper Delaney. She made lots of arrests. She got the nickname because, on the subway, she would bump up against guys and arrest them as perverts. She never stopped. Story is, even on their anniversary, they wound up in Night Court instead of a restaurant, because Pussy Bumper Delaney nailed some guy on the subway. Pussy Bumper Delaney!

  They all toast to Pussy Bumper Delaney.

  MICHAEL DALY: They loved him and he loved them.

  McALARY: The best training for writing about cops is writing about sports—

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) —which is one of the things that got him into trouble eventually. Because sports is all black hats and white hats and New York City is way more complicated than that. But in 1986, nothing got in his way. He just ripped through the whole crack era.

  Bronx Montage

  As McALARY works at his desk, a series of projections of front-page headlines. Projection: SIX KILLED IN QUEENS CRACK DEN by Mike McAlary.

  McALARY: “On the east side of Phelan Place you have a row of crack houses. On the west side, a drug rehabilitation center. Only in the Bronx where good and bad are on opposite sides of the same street can there be such a thin line between the saved and the doomed.”

  MICHAEL DALY: —He’d go places cops wouldn’t go. Bed-Stuy, the Bronx; climbing stairs, banging on doors.

  Projection: CITY ON CRACK by Mike McAlary.

  McALARY: “Today with nearly 900 murders in the first three months, this promises to be the city’s most murderous year. Seven years ago there were 1,826 murders in New York City total. But that was B.C.—before crack.”

  More headlines, and then, projection of a newscast:

  SUE SIMMONS: (A recording.) They began turning in their badges and guns tonight. All are accused of shaking down drug dealers.

  MIKE TAIBBI: (A recording.) It reportedly began about a year ago when a couple of drug dealers in this neighborhood started talking and making noises about cops shaking them
down. The internal affairs division of the police department listened to those noises and then began questioning some of the cops. Two specifically, we are told, who agreed to cooperate with an investigation that continues to this day. But tonight cops from this Brooklyn precinct, cops in civilian clothes, consoled and perhaps protected each other. We were told the shorter man, the one in the blue shirt, was among those suspended.

  Newsday Newsroom

  HAP HAIRSTON at his desk. Also in the room: BOB DRURY, LOUISE IMERMAN, McALARY.

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) When you have a breaking story like the Seven-Seven, which was the biggest police scandal in years, you’ve got to get the cops to talk to you. So the first day we sent everyone out. Bob Drury went to find this cop who was one of the two key guys in the case. His name was Henry Winter, he was a total lowlife, and he’d worn a wire and gotten half the precinct indicted—

  BOB DRURY: (To audience.) I went out to Henry Winter’s on Long Island, and there’s a big boat sitting in the driveway, and three sets of his daughters’ pink sneakers drying in the sun. So I write a story about how could this guy afford a boat like this on a cop’s salary. And I put in the little pink sneakers.

  DRURY exits.

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) The next day the phone rings, and the guy on the other end says he’s calling “as a friend of Henry Winter’s,” and on behalf of his “friend” Henry Winter he wants to say why the fuck did we have to drag in the little pink sneakers, and it’s clear the guy’s not a friend of Henry Winter’s, he’s Henry Winter. Which he finally admits. So I tell him I’ll send one of our finest reporters—

  HAP HAIRSTON looks around the city room, waves LOUISE over to the desk.

  (To audience.) —and I call Louise over to give it to her. Because she had seniority. The night before, she’d taken the Deputy Police Commissioner to dinner and managed to get the list of cops who were being indicted and faxed it from the restaurant.

  LOUISE IMERMAN comes over to the desk and looks at HAP.

  LOUISE IMERMAN: Yeah, what is it?

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To LOUISE.) I’ve got one of the cops. He’s in the D.A.’s office in Brooklyn. (To audience.) So by now you know what Louise is going to say.

  LOUISE IMERMAN: (To HAP.) Fuck you, kiss my ass, I’m not doing another fucking thing on this story. I was up all night getting that list, I’m not going home late again because I had to spend the day holding some cop’s dick. (To audience.) And by the way, that is the end of me in this story.

  She starts to exit, stops.

  Although—

  HAP HAIRSTON: What?

  LOUISE IMERMAN: He spoke to my journalism class at CUNY. McAlary. Years later.

  HAP HAIRSTON: You taught a journalism class? You’re shitting me.

  LOUISE IMERMAN: Kiss my ass, fuck you.

  LOUISE exits.

  HAP HAIRSTON looks around. There’s McALARY. Pointing to himself with his index fingers.

  HAP HAIRSTON: So the point is—

  McALARY: I got the story.

  McALARY exits.

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) An hour later—

  DRURY walks in.

  Your cop called. He’s mad. He wants to talk.

  BOB DRURY: Great. Where is he?

  HAP HAIRSTON: At the D.A.’s office. You weren’t in yet, so I sent McAlary.

  BOB DRURY: You gave it to McAlary?

  HAP HAIRSTON: You weren’t in. He was.

  BOB DRURY: I don’t believe this shit.

  HAP HAIRSTON: You weren’t. He was.

  BOB DRURY: You couldn’t wait an hour?

  HAP HAIRSTON: How did I know you were going to be here in an hour?

  BOB DRURY: Shit! Fuck!

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) And he kicked over his wastebasket.

  DRURY walks away, kicks over his wastebasket. Bang.

  Then he turns back to HAP.

  BOB DRURY: Oh, wait a minute, that’s not really what happened. I wasn’t that mad, Hap. (To audience.) I wasn’t. Swear to God.

  HAP HAIRSTON: Sure you were. Admit it. If you’d been there an hour earlier, you would have had McAlary’s career—

  BOB DRURY: (Overlapping.) Bullshit, bullshit—

  HAP HAIRSTON: Did that ever cross your mind? Come on, tell the truth.

  BOB DRURY: (Overlapping.) No, it never crossed my mind. And I did not kick over the wastebasket. Fuck you.

  HAP HAIRSTON: Fuck you. (To audience.) The point is, McAlary went up to see Henry Winter and say whatever you want about McAlary, the guy could get you to talk. Winter told him everything.

  The other REPORTERS read from McALARY’s article—

  MICHAEL DALY: “Henry Winter let it be known to everybody: We’re bad in the Seven-Seven. Whatever you got to sell, we’ll buy.”

  JIM DWYER: (Reading.) “You got drugs, we’ll buy drugs. You want to get guns, we’ll buy guns.”

  BOB DRURY: (Reading.) “You got stolen property, we’ll buy stolen property. If there’s a break-in at night at a video store, we’ll buy tapes. That’s how it worked.”

  HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) McAlary wrote one story after another about this group of cops in the Seven-Seven who called themselves the Buddy Boys and who turned out to be the biggest drug dealers in the city.

  Lion’s Head

  The newsstand guy tosses the tabloids on the bar, everyone dives into them.

  McALARY: You pussies at the News and the Post are going to shoot yourselves when you see what we’ve got.

  JIM DWYER: (To audience.) McAlary started to live for the wood.

  McALARY: (Flashing the headline.) “Rogue Cop Talks” by Mike McAlary.

  JIM DWYER: The wood is slang for the front-page headline. The type was so big they had to make the letters out of wood.

  McALARY: “Buddy Boys of the 7-7” by Mike McAlary.

  JIM DWYER: It was cops and scandal, cops and scandal, nothing else mattered. The Mets won the World Series that year, I don’t even think he cared.

  McALARY: “It’s Worse: Probe Goes Beyond Drugs to Guns, Hot Cars, Stolen VCRs; At Least 49 Officers Involved; Federal Agencies Join Inquiry” by—

  ALL BUT DRURY: Mike McAlary.

  High fives from everybody. McALARY and his friends all sing an Irish song:

  McALARY/FRIENDS: (Sing.)

  Look at the coffin, with golden handles.

  Isn’t it grand, boys, to be bloody-well dead.

  Let’s not have a sniffle,

  Let’s have a bloody good cry,

  And always remember, the longer you live,

  The sooner you’ll bloody well die.

  HAP HAIRSTON: The wood became his drug of choice. Making headlines during the day—

  JOHN COTTER: McAlary!

  HAP HAIRSTON: And then staying up all night with Cotter.

  McALARY sits at a table in the bar with COTTER.

  JOHN COTTER: Mac! McAlary, my boy. What reporters think, okay, is that there’s this thing called the truth, and their job is to go out and get it.

  McALARY: Right.

  JOHN COTTER: Wrong. Any story you’re on has only one real truth. Go to the morgue and count the bodies. Count the bodies.

  McALARY: That’s great. That’s great. (A beat.) What does it mean?

  JOHN COTTER: You’re born, you die. Everything in between is subject to interpretation.

  McALARY: Everything?

  JOHN COTTER: (Overlapping.) Everything in between is how you tell the story and who’s telling the story and what they think is important and which order to put it in and where they’re coming from.

  McALARY: What about facts? We believe in facts. Don’t we believe in facts? We’re journalists. Who, what, where, when. We write, like, the first draft of history. The voice of da people. If it wasn’t for us, we’d be living in a dictatorship.

  JOHN COTTER: You’re making me sick. I may throw up. McAlary, I want you to try to wrap your thick skull around this philosophical point I’m trying to make—

  McALARY: Oh,
philosophical. Fuck you.

  JOHN COTTER: Except for a few hard-core things, which for want of a better word we will call facts, like what time it was when the shot was fired, and is the guy alive or dead, everything’s a story. For example, what’s your story? The story of McAlary.

  McALARY: I’m a newspaper reporter. I love my job. I’m doing God’s work, serving the public, telling people what happened yesterday, telling them the facts, rewarding the good guys and putting the bad guys away, and fuck you, Cotter, there is such a thing as the facts. That’s my story.

  JOHN COTTER: Your story is you’re a kid with a bad case of Breslinitis and you’re probably never going to get over it.

  McALARY: That’s how you tell the story.

  JOHN COTTER: Exactly. You’ve also got a gut for red meat, you get people to talk who don’t want to talk, and someday you’re going to have your own column.

  McALARY: You think so? ’Cause I swear, that is all I ever wanted. Writing a column in New York. Everything else is second place—You really think it might happen?

  JOHN COTTER: I do.

  McALARY: And when it does, that will be a fact. (Beat.) I got a wife and kid. You left that out of the story.

  JOHN COTTER: So did you.

  Queens Diner

  MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) One night I got a call from McAlary. He was going to see one of the Buddy Boys, a cop who’d been indicted named Brian O’Regan. By now I’d finished my novel and I was working at New York magazine. So we go out to Queens and we meet O’Regan, and we do our thing.

  DALY and McALARY sit at a table with BRIAN O’REGAN. McALARY and DALY stand, circle, double-team him, blow smoke.

  McALARY: We’ll take care of you.

  MICHAEL DALY: We’ll tell your story.

  McALARY: You’ll have a Michael Daly piece in New York magazine.

  MICHAEL DALY: A Mike McAlary story in Newsday.

  McALARY: You could not be in better hands.

  MICHAEL DALY: You think you’re the only guy in the department who had your hand out?

  McALARY: Everybody makes mistakes.

  MICHAEL DALY: We all fuck up.

  McALARY: Pressures of the job—

  MICHAEL DALY: Pressures of the culture—

  McALARY: More coffee?—