by Nora Ephron
MICHAEL DALY: Have another cup of coffee—
McALARY: We know what you’re going through. An article like this could help you in your sentencing.
MICHAEL DALY: The story’s going to come out anyway, it should be on your terms.
McALARY: Word for word—
MICHAEL DALY: As you tell it—
McALARY: You are safe with us.
MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) So O’Regan tells us the whole thing about how he got involved at the Seven-Seven. How they’d rob drug dealers and then deal the drugs.
BRIAN O’REGAN: Sometimes I used to get a feeling—a deep, deep feeling of guilt. But then I’d get back on patrol, and it would go away. I got so I just didn’t care.
MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) We spent two or three hours with him. After it’s over, we walk out to the parking lot and he opens the trunk of his car. His uniform is in it. He asks if either of us wants it. He’s supposed to turn himself in tomorrow.
Front-page headline: CONFESSION OF A SCARED COP by Mike McAlary, a Newsday exclusive.
(To audience.) The next day O’Regan reads McAlary’s story, drives out to Southampton and checks into a motel, locks the door, and pours himself a Seven & Seven, Seagram’s Seven Crown and 7Up. How corny is that?
A gunshot.
Newsday Newsroom
JOHN COTTER and McALARY.
McALARY: (Stunned.) Cotter! Jesus Christ, Cotter, what the hell did I do?
JOHN COTTER: Don’t flatter yourself. This shit can happen. You gotta divorce yourself from it like cops do.
McALARY: I don’t know how to do that.
JOHN COTTER: Go write the story, or I’ll assign it to somebody else and they’ll get the byline.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) He did a draft. And then he and Hap went through it for adjectives.
HAP and McALARY go through the piece together.
A projection of the computer copy of McALARY’s story as HAIRSTON edits it.
HAP HAIRSTON: How tall was he?
McALARY: About my height.
Projection of McALARY’s story on the computer as HAP HAIRSTON inserts the word “tall” into the text.
HAP HAIRSTON: How many cups of coffee?
McALARY: Six or eight.
HAIRSTON inserts the words “eight cups of” into the text.
HAP HAIRSTON: How hard was it raining?
McALARY: I don’t know. Hard.
The words “pouring down” are inserted.
The word “nervously” is inserted.
The word “all-night” is inserted in front of “diner.”
HAP HAIRSTON: What else did he say? Come on, come on, come on, focus—
McALARY: “You tell me why I did this.”
HAP HAIRSTON: He said that? He said, “You tell me why I did this”?
McALARY: Yeah.
HAP HAIRSTON: Did he really say it? Is that in your notebook?
McALARY: He said it, he definitely said it.
“You tell me why I did this” is inserted.
A beat.
HAP HAIRSTON: The uniform he offered you. Was it, like, on a hanger, in a box, what?
McALARY: On a hanger, in, like, a dry-cleaning bag … Jesus, Hap.
“In a plastic dry-cleaning bag” is inserted.
JIM DWYER: (To the audience.) Mac was devastated—
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) He was. He was devastated. And in the tradition of all truly devastated reporters whose sources kill themselves, he somehow managed to do a bunch of television appearances on the subject that day.
A television crew interviews McALARY.
McALARY: It was pouring rain, and he got into his car and drove away.
Another television crew interviews McALARY.
JIM DWYER: (To HAP.) That’s not fair. He was really upset—
HAP HAIRSTON: —because he thought people were blaming him—
McALARY: I probably should have known, because he opened the trunk of his car and showed us his uniform, in a plastic bag—
JIM DWYER: That’s really not fair. He carried O’Regan’s mass card in his wallet for years.
HAP HAIRSTON: He loved being asked about it over and over again. (To audience.) He even suggested they tape one of the interviews in Battery Park, because he liked the vista.
Another television crew, in Battery Park.
McALARY: (On TV.) I keep asking myself what I could have done.
JIM DWYER: (To HAP.) But he was devastated.
HAP HAIRSTON: I’m just saying.
JIM DWYER: What are you just saying, Hap?
HAP HAIRSTON: You know what I’m saying. It was a great story. He got the wood.
Projection of a front-page headline: A SCARED COP’S LAST ACT OF DESPERATION by Mike McAlary.
The Sound of Bagpipes
A group of pallbearers in police uniform carry Brian O’Regan’s coffin out of the church.
McALARY and DALY, under umbrellas, watch.
The bagpipes continue as the coffin passes.
Brooklyn Bedroom
As the bagpipes end.
ALICE McALARY asleep in a chair next to the bed. She’s wrapped in a shawl.
There’s a double stroller on the way to the bedroom.
McALARY walks in, knocks over the stroller.
ALICE wakes up.
ALICE: Hey.
McALARY: Hey.
ALICE: It’s three in the morning.
McALARY: I was at the funeral.
He sits down near her, on the edge of the bed.
Down at the paper, everyone keeps coming over to me and saying, “How do you feel? You must feel terrible. It’s not your fault.” Then they go over to the water cooler and they say, “McAlary killed the guy.” Then they come over and go, “Oh man, it must be terrible.”
ALICE: Do people think it was your fault?
McALARY: We went and interviewed an unstable guy in a diner and we got what we wanted and then we were done. We had to know what he was going to do.
ALICE: How could you know? You couldn’t know.
McALARY: We had to know. We had to. You should have heard us. “You’re safe with us. You could not be in better hands.”
ALICE: What were you supposed to do? Move in with him? Give him the name of a good shrink, which you yourself do not know the name of?
A beat.
McALARY: He left a note. By the bed. It said, “McAlary wrote too much.”
ALICE: When did you find that out?
McALARY: At the funeral home today. After the funeral.
ALICE: Michael. This is ridiculous. Did you misquote the guy?
McALARY: No.
ALICE: Was he drunk when he talked to you?
McALARY: No.
ALICE: Did you call him or did he call you?
McALARY: He called me.
ALICE: The man was a crook. He was selling drugs to kids—
McALARY: Not really—
ALICE: He stole drugs from drug dealers and where do you think those drugs ended up? With kids. He was going to jail. His life was over. If you wrote too much, it’s because he told you too much.
A beat.
He gives her a little kiss.
McALARY: I love you.
The thing is, I got the story right. And that’s all that matters.
ALICE: You got the story right.
McALARY: Hey, how are you?
ALICE: I have a double stroller in the bedroom, I have two babies in what used to be the dining room, and I walk up and down four flights of stairs at least three times a day with the babies and stroller. Other than that, I’m happy you’re home.
They kiss again.
Newsday Newsroom/Bellport
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) Which brings us to the house.
BOB DRURY: I hated that fucking house. Let’s cut to the part where Mac—
HAP HAIRSTON: Can’t tell the story of McAlary if you leave out the house, ’cause this is where everything starts to turn.
McAL
ARY enters, carrying a copy of the Times Real Estate section, and walks over to COTTER.
McALARY: Hey, Cotter, you know about this guy Eddie Hayes?
JOHN COTTER: Sure. He’s a lawyer. Everybody knows him. He’s a character.
McALARY: He’s selling a house I want to buy for Alice. Is he a good guy or a bad guy?
JOHN COTTER: Good guy/bad guy does not apply when it comes to Eddie Hayes. He’s got a motto. His motto is “I can get you out of anything.”
HAP HAIRSTON: (To ensemble.) Who wants to play Eddie Hayes?
He looks over at the ensemble. COTTER raises his hand while a few ensemble enter, volunteering.
EDDIE HAYES enters. A very dapper man, Turnbull & Asser shirt, tailored suit, a hat.
EDDIE HAYES: Me. I play me. None of these guys can play me. Look at all you. Look at this.
McALARY walks over to the Bellport house, where EDDIE HAYES is waiting. The house should be suggested by a front porch.
McAlary. (Mispronounces as Mick-allery, rhyming with gallery.)
You ever been to Bellport before?
McALARY: Nope. McAlary. (Pronounced Mac-a-lair-ee.)
EDDIE HAYES: The editor of the New York Times, Abe Rosenthal, lives three blocks away. Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, over there. (Waves his hand.) Beautiful front porch, six thousand square feet, someday there will be a lawn and the Dumpster will be gone. I live right down the block. Anything goes wrong, I’ll get you a plumber. You have kids?
McALARY: Two.
EDDIE HAYES: This is good for you, it’s good for you. You could have six kids in this house. Eight, if they aren’t too big.
McALARY: How much is it?
EDDIE HAYES: Five hundred fifty thousand. But for you, five hundred fifty thousand.
McALARY: Okay, explain to me about a mortgage.
EDDIE HAYES: How much are you planning to put down?
The stagehands push a huge sub-zero onstage.
(Indicating the refrigerator.) Sub-zero.
EDDIE HAYES opens the refrigerator.
McALARY looks into its vast, empty interior.
McALARY: Jesus, Mary, mother of God, you could live in this—(Beat.) What do you mean, “put down?”
EDDIE HAYES: Cash cash. Like, say, two hundred thousand, just to pluck a figure out of the air. Then you get a mortgage for the rest. On which you pay interest. Do you have two hundred thousand?
McALARY: No, I do not.
EDDIE HAYES: What’s your salary?
McALARY: Fifty-eight thousand a year.
EDDIE HAYES: How much do you have in the bank?
McALARY: I got about three thousand in the bank.
EDDIE HAYES: This is a five-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar house. You can’t afford it. (Indicating the mudroom.) Mudroom.
McALARY: What the fuck is a mudroom?
HAYES looks at McALARY.
And don’t go on like you grew up knowing what a mudroom was, you were once a dumb Mick just like me—
HAYES laughs.
EDDIE HAYES: A mudroom, you dumb Mick, is the room where you take off your muddy boots if it happens to be muddy outside.
McALARY: Just what we need.
EDDIE HAYES: Trust me, once you have one you’ll never know how you lived without it.
McALARY: I got an idea. I retain you. Isn’t that what people do with lawyers, retain them? I hereby retain you as my lawyer, and now it’s your job to figure out a way for me to pay for this house.
EDDIE HAYES: Get out of here—
McALARY: This is my house, I’m not going anywhere—
EDDIE HAYES: Get the fuck out of my house—
McALARY: You get the fuck out of my house—
EDDIE HAYES: Who are you?
McALARY: You know that scandal at the Seventy-seventh Precinct? I’m the guy that uncovered it—
EDDIE HAYES: You uncovered it?
McALARY: I am that guy.
EDDIE HAYES is impressed.
I’m not going to be a reporter forever. At some point I’m going to have a column.
EDDIE HAYES: The next Jimmy Breslin.
McALARY: Bigger than Breslin. And when it happens, you can do my contract. I want a big expense account, and start thinking now about other things I might want.
EDDIE HAYES: Like a car.
McALARY: Like a car. Only I’ve got a car.
EDDIE HAYES: We’ll get you a better car. What else? A car for your wife. Does your wife have a car?
McALARY: You’re going to get the paper to pay for a car for my wife?
EDDIE HAYES: It’s feasible, it’s feasible. A pied-à-terre.
McALARY: Yeah! What is that?
EDDIE HAYES: An apartment in town.
McALARY: Sure. (Laughs.) Let’s do this.
McALARY walks off.
EDDIE HAYES: (To audience.) So long story short, I lent him the two hundred thousand down payment and deferred the interest and second-mortgage payments. I said at the end of three years he’ll have enough to pay me back. So when I called him, I said, I found a way for you to buy the house. For two reasons: you’re a great writer, and you’re fucking crazy.
BOB DRURY, dressed for a day at the beach, enters—
BOB DRURY: (To audience.) So we all went out there.
Followed by the other journalists, also in shorts, T-shirts, baseball hats, etc. They move in a clump.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) We all went out to see the spec house Eddie Hayes conned Mac into buying.
MICHAEL DALY: It was way the hell out.
ALICE: All right, who’s hungry? I got burgers and franks, lasagna—my mother’s recipe.
A chaise longue is wheeled out. EDDIE, still perfectly dressed, lies on it.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) Eddie Hayes was holding court out back, taking credit for selling Mac the house.
EDDIE HAYES: It’s good for him, it’s good for him, it’s going to force him to make more money, because otherwise he’d spend his life in a Brooklyn apartment looking out at a fire escape—
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) Like all of us. So that went over big.
ALICE: Lemonade? Soda? Beer?
The guys all respond to beer.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) Eddie kept talking about his clothes—
EDDIE HAYES: I like to dress well, I like to spend money on clothes. I think I deserve it.
MICHAEL DALY: And how great it was for Mac—
EDDIE HAYES: It’s good for him, it’s good for him—
McALARY: It’s good for me, it’s good for me.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) Although, by implication, the rest of us were going to be on the breadline—
BOB DRURY: (To audience.) —the rest of us were schmucks—
MICHAEL DALY: (To audience.) —schmucks who had no idea you could get rich in the newspaper business.
HAP HAIRSTON: Which we didn’t.
BOB DRURY: (To audience.) Nobody made much money, but we all made enough money—
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) We all thought we’d succeeded, and suddenly, we all felt like failures.
McALARY: And hey, if you guys ever need anything, Eddie will do it for you, right?
EDDIE HAYES: I’ll get you out of anything. Although not gratis.
The sub-zero refrigerator magically appears. McALARY closes the refrigerator door and then opens it again.
BOB DRURY: (To audience.) He kept showing us the refrigerator.
McALARY: Check this out! It’s bigger than my first apartment. Alice should have a place she really loves. I just need a career to pay for this.
HAP HAIRSTON: (To audience.) All I could think was, not only has this guy mortgaged his whole fucking future, but himself as well.
JIM DWYER: (To audience.) But then Mac, being Mac, luckiest guy on the planet—what happens next?—
Projections: A series of headlines about Breslin winning the Pulitzer Prize and leaving the Daily News.
Bar
JIM DWYER: Jimmy Breslin quits. He’d just
won the Pulitzer Prize, his long-awaited Pulitzer Prize and decided to leave the Daily News and take his column to Newsday. So Cotter called up the editor of the News, a guy named Jim Willse, and said, “Hey, I’ve got this kid over here, I think he could write a column for you guys.”
McALARY: Can you fucking believe this?
McALARY to all the guys—DALY, DRURY, HAIRSTON, EDDIE, a few others.
I got a column. I got a column in New York City. Page three. Breslin’s slot. Fuck. Now I have to write it.
Everybody laughs.
BOB DRURY: Do you know how to write a column, because there’s a big difference between a column and all of that good cop/bad cop bullshit.
McALARY: Don’t rain on my parade, Drury. Whatever I don’t know, Hap will teach me.
HAP HAIRSTON: I’m going there, too.
BOB DRURY: Seriously, you’re going to teach McAlary to write a column?
HAP HAIRSTON: I’m going to be city editor—
McALARY: Willse and I have had extensive conversations and the idea is to combine being a police reporter with being a columnist.
BOB DRURY: Seriously?
McALARY: Seriously, let’s have lobsters tonight. Go someplace really expensive and have two lobsters each!
EDDIE HAYES: I did the contract. One hundred twenty-five thousand a year, plus an expense account, plus a car, and he started dressing better. It was good, it was good.
JIM DWYER: He started out a little shaky at the News, but then he found a rhythm, started getting a lot of big stories and a big—
BOB DRURY: (From McGuire’s.) —head. He was getting a big head.
DRURY is in McGuire’s bar, with a group of journalists.
JIM DWYER: I was going to say a big reputation.
BOB DRURY: I’m going to go and say head.
Daily News Newsroom
McALARY passes WILLSE’s desk, looks at his computer.
McALARY: Hey, Willse, this front page needs something.
WILLSE presses a button. McALARY’s picture appears on the projection, at the top of the front page.
Just the thing.
BOB DRURY: Head.
Subway Station
A poster in the subway with McALARY’s face: MIKE McALARY IN THE DAILY NEWS.
JIM DWYER: One night I was writing about a hot dog stand, the only twenty-four-hour operation left in the subway system that was being shut down and of course because it was a twenty-four-hour operation, you had to cover it at two in the morning. So I’m standing by the newsstand and there’s a guy reading the News, and on page one, there’s this huge McAlary story about Mike Tyson trying to commit suicide. I remember looking at it and wondering what in God’s name was I doing with my life. At which moment this woman comes along and buys a hot dog for her kid. So I decide I’ll interview her about the tragic end of the all-night hot dog stand, and she turns out to be Mike Tyson’s third cousin. McAlary’s on page one with Mike Tyson, and I’m underground in the middle of the fucking night with Mike Tyson’s homeless third cousin, Latifa. I wanted to kill myself. Yeah, I was jealous. Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Nobody wants to cop to that, but yeah.
