Staten Island Noir
Page 22
Bill Loehfelm is the author of three novels, most recently The Devil She Knows, as well as Fresh Kills, winner of the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, and Bloodroot. All three novels are set in Loehfelm's home borough of Staten Island. He grew up in Eltingville, and is a graduate of Monsignor Farrell High School. He currently lives in New Orleans' Garden District with his wife, A.C. Lambeth, a writer and yoga instructor, and their two dogs.
Linda Nieves-Powell was selected as one of the 100 Most Influential Hispanics by Hispanic Business magazine. She is the author of the novel Free Style, and the writer and director of the award-winning plays Yo Soy Latina! and Jose Can Speak, and is the creator, cowriter, director, and producer of the comedic web series Happy Cancer Chick. She moved to Staten Island when she was thirteen, and still lives there today.
Michael Penncavage won a 2008 Derringer Award for his story "The Cost of Doing Business." He has been an associate editor for Space and Time magazine, as well as editor of the horror/suspense anthology Tales from a Darker State. He has been published in approximately eighty magazines and anthologies, and is a member of the Mystery Writers of America, the Horror Writers of America, and the Garden State Horror Writers.
S.J. Rozan is the author of thirteen novels and three dozen short stories. She has won Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, and Macavity awards, and was a recipient of the Japanese Maltese Falcon Award. She has served on the boards of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime, and as president of Private Eye Writers of America. Her latest book is Ghost Hero. Rozan set a large portion of her book Absent Friends on Staten Island.
Patricia Smith is the author of six acclaimed poetry volumes, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah; Blood Dazzler, a finalist for the 2008 National Book Award; and Teahouse of the Almighty, a National Poetry Series selection. She is a professor at the College of Staten Island and serves on the faculties of the Stonecoast and Sierra Nevada College low-residency MFA programs.
Shay Youngblood is the author of the novels Black Girl in Paris and Soul Kiss and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. She is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Pushcart Prize, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Sustained Achievement Award, and a 2011/2012 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Fellowship. Shay lived in Staten Island from 1995 to 2002.
About the Akashic Noir Series
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The Akashic Books Noir series was launched in 2004 with the award-winning anthology, Brooklyn Noir. Each book is comprised of all new stories, each taking place within a distinct location in the city of the book. Stories in the series have won multiple Edgar, Shamus, and Hammett awards and the volumes have been translated into 10 languages. Each book is available on our website, as e-books from your favorite vendor, and in print at online and brick & mortar bookstores everywhere. For more information on the series, including an up-to-date list of available titles, and information on how to purchase the paperback editions of all titles in the series at a group discount (currently 56 titles) please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm.
ALSO AVAILABLE IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES
BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN
BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA
BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE
BOSTON NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON
BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN
BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK
CAPE COD NOIR, edited by DAVID L. ULIN
CHICAGO NOIR, edited by NEAL POLLACK
COPENHAGEN NOIR (DENMARK), edited by BO TAO MICHAËLIS
D.C. NOIR, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
D.C. NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
DELHI NOIR (INDIA), edited by HIRSH SAWHNEY
DETROIT NOIR, edited by E.J. OLSEN & JOHN C. HOCKING
DUBLIN NOIR (IRELAND), edited by KEN BRUEN
HAITI NOIR, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
HAVANA NOIR (CUBA), edited by ACHY OBEJAS
INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR, edited by SARAH CORTEZ & LIZ MARTÍNEZ
ISTANBUL NOIR (TURKEY), edited by MUSTAFA ZIYALAN & AMY SPANGLER
KANSAS CITY NOIR, edited by STEVE PAUL
KINGSTON NOIR (JAMAICA), edited by COLIN CHANNER
LAS VEGAS NOIR, edited by JARRET KEENE & TODD JAMES PIERCE
LONDON NOIR (ENGLAND), edited by CATHI UNSWORTH
LONE STAR NOIR, edited by BOBY BYRD & JOHNNY BYRD
LONG ISLAND NOIR, edited by KAYLIE JONES
LOS ANGELES NOIR, edited by DENISE HAMILTON
LOS ANGELES NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENISE HAMILTON
MANHATTAN NOIR, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK
MANHATTAN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK
MEXICO CITY NOIR (MEXICO), edited by PACO I. TAIBO II
MIAMI NOIR, edited by LES STANDIFORD
MOSCOW NOIR (RUSSIA), edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN
MUMBAI NOIR (INDIA), edited by ALTAF TYREWALA
NEW JERSEY NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES
NEW ORLEANS NOIR, edited by JULIE SMITH
ORANGE COUNTY NOIR, edited by GARY PHILLIPS
PARIS NOIR (FRANCE), edited by AURéLIEN MASSON
PHILADELPHIA NOIR, edited by CARLIN ROMANO
PHOENIX NOIR, edited by PATRICK MILLIKIN
PITTSBURGH NOIR, edited by KATHLEEN GEORGE
PORTLAND NOIR, edited by KEVIN SAMPSELL
QUEENS NOIR, edited by ROBERT KNIGHTLY
RICHMOND NOIR, edited by ANDREW BLOSSOM, BRIAN CASTLEBERRY & TOM DE HAVEN
ROME NOIR (ITALY), edited by CHIARA STANGALINO & MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI
SAN DIEGO NOIR, edited by MARYELIZABETH HART
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR, edited by PETER MARAVELIS
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by PETER MARAVELIS
SEATTLE NOIR, edited by CURT COLBERT
ST. PETERSBURG NOIR, edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN
TORONTO NOIR (CANADA), edited by JANINE ARMIN & NATHANIEL G. MORE
TRINIDAD NOIR (TRINIDAD & TOBAGO), edited by LISA ALEN-AGOSTINI & JEANNE MASON
TWIN CITIES NOIR, edited by JULIE SCHAPER & STEVEN HORWITZ
VENICE NOIR (ITALY), edited by MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI
WALL STREET NOIR, edited by PETER SPIEGELMAN
FORTHCOMING
BEIRUT NOIR (LEBANON), edited by IMAN HUMAYDAN
BOGOTÁ NOIR (COLOMBIA), edited by ANDREA MONTEJO
BUFFALO NOIR, edited by BRIGID HUGHES & ED PARK
DALLAS NOIR, edited by DAVID HALE SMITH
HELSINKI NOIR, (FINLAND) edited by JAMES THOMPSON
JERUSALEM NOIR, edited by DROR MISHANI
LAGOS NOIR (NIGERIA), edited by CHRIS ABANI
MANILA NOIR (PHILIPPINES), edited by JESSICA HAGEDORN
PRISON NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES
SEOUL NOIR (KOREA), edited by BS PUBLISHING CO.
SINGAPORE NOIR, edited by CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN
TEL AVIV NOIR (ISRAEL), edited by ETGAR KERET & ASSAF GAVRON
Bonus Materials
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Staten Island Noir completes the 5-borough set of Akashic Noir books set in New York City. To follow, please enjoy each editors' story from the previous four volumes (Brooklyn Noir, Manhattan Noir, Bronx Noir, and Queens Noir), presented here with the authors' permission. Each e-book is available independently, and in a single volume (NYC Noir: eisbn 9781617751837.) For more information on the Akashic Noir Series, please visit www.akashicbooks.com/noirseries.htm
Brooklyn Noir Excerpt
The following is editor Tim McLoughlin's story in Brooklyn Noir, the 2004 volume that launched the Akashic Noir series.
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WHEN ALL THIS WAS BAY RIDGE
BY TIM MCLOUGHLIN
Sunset Park
Standing in church at my father's funeral, I thought about being arrested on the night of my seventeenth birthday. It had occurred in the trainyard at Avenue X, in Coney Island. Me and Pancho and a kid named Freddie were working a three-car piece, the most ambitious I'd tried to that point, and more time-consuming than was judicious to spend trespassing on city property. Two Transit cops with German shepherds caught us in the middle of the second car. I dropped my aerosol can and took off, and was perhaps two hundred feet along the beginning of the trench that becomes the IRT line to the Bronx, when I saw the hand. It was human, adult, and severed neatly, seemingly surgically, at the wrist. My first thought was that it looked bare without a watch. Then I made a whooping sound, trying to take in air, and turned and ran back toward the cops and their dogs.
At the 60th Precinct, we three were ushered into a small cell. We sat for several hours, then the door opened and I was led out. My father was waiting in the main room, in front of the counter.
The desk sergeant, middle-aged, black, and noticeably bored, looked up briefly. "Him?"
"Him," my father echoed, sounding defeated.
"Goodnight," the sergeant said.
My father took my arm and led me out of the precinct. As we cleared the door and stepped into the humid night he turned to me and said, "This was it. Your one free ride. It doesn't happen again."
"What did it cost?" I asked. My father had retired from the Police Department years earlier, and I knew this had been expensive.
He shook his head. "This once, that's all."
I followed him to his car. "I have two friends in there."
"Fuck'em. Spics. That's half your problem."
"What's the other half?"
"You have no common sense," he said, his voice rising in scale as it did in volume. By the time he reached a scream he sounded like a boy going through puberty. "What do you think you're doing out here? Crawling 'round in the dark with the niggers and the spics. Writing on trains like a hoodlum. Is this all you'll do?"
"It's not writing. It's drawing. Pictures."
"Same shit, defacing property, behaving like a punk. Where do you suppose it will lead?"
"I don't know. I haven't thought about it. You had your aimless time, when you got out of the service. You told me so. You bummed around for two years."
"I always worked."
"Part-time. Beer money. You were a roofer."
"Beer money was all I needed."
"Maybe it's all I need."
He shook his head slowly, and squinted, as though peering through the dirty windshield for an answer. "It was different. That was a long time ago. Back when all this was Bay Ridge. You could live like that then."
When all this was Bay Ridge. He was masterful, my father. He didn't say when it was white, or when it was Irish, or even the relatively tame when it was safer. No. When all this was Bay Ridge. As though it were an issue of geography. As though, somehow, the tectonic plate beneath Sunset Park had shifted, moving it physically to some other place.
I told him about seeing the hand.
"Did you tell the officers?"
"No."
"The people you were with?"
"No."
"Then don't worry about it. There's body parts all over this town. Saw enough in my day to put together a baseball team." He drove in silence for a few minutes, then nodded his head a couple of times, as though agreeing with a point made by some voice I could not hear. "You're going to college, you know," he said.
* * *
That was what I remembered at the funeral. Returning from the altar rail after receiving communion, Pancho walked passed me. He'd lost a great deal of weight since I'd last seen him, and I couldn't tell if he was sick or if it was just the drugs. His black suit hung on him in a way that emphasized his gaunt frame. He winked at me as he came around the casket in front of my pew, and flashed the mischievous smile that—when we were sixteen—got all the girls in his bed and all the guys agreeing to the stupidest and most dangerous stunts.
In my shirt pocket was a photograph of my father with a woman who was not my mother. The date on the back was five years ago. Their arms were around each other's waists and they smiled for the photographer. When we arrived at the cemetery I took the picture out of my pocket, and looked at it for perhaps the fiftieth time since I'd first discovered it. There were no clues. The woman was young to be with my father, but not a girl. Forty, give or take a few years. I looked for any evidence in his expression that I was misreading their embrace, but even I couldn't summon the required naïveté. My father's countenance was not what would commonly be regarded as a poker face. He wasn't holding her as a friend, a friend's girl, or the prize at some retirement or bachelor party; he held her like a possession. Like he held his tools. Like he held my mother. The photo had been taken before my mother's death. I put it back.
I'd always found his plodding predictability and meticulous planning of insignificant events maddening. For the first time that I could recall, I was experiencing curiosity about some part of my father's life.
I walked from Greenwood Cemetery directly to Olsen's bar, my father's watering hole, feeling that I needed to talk to the men that nearly lived there, but not looking forward to it. Aside from my father's wake the previous night, I hadn't seen them in years. They were all Irish. The Irish among them were perhaps the most Irish, but the Norwegians and the Danes were Irish too, as were the older Puerto Ricans. They had developed, over time, the stereotypical hooded gaze, the squared jaws set in grim defiance of whatever waited in the sobering daylight. To a man they had that odd trait of the Gaelic heavy-hitter, that—as they attained middle age—their faces increasingly began to resemble a woman's nipple.
The door to the bar was propped open, and the cool damp odor of stale beer washed over me before I entered. That smell has always reminded me of the Boy Scouts. Meetings were Thursday nights in the basement of Bethany Lutheran Church. When they were over, I would have to pass Olsen's on my way home, and I usually stopped in to see my father. He would buy me a couple of glasses of beer—about all I could handle at thirteen—and leave with me after about an hour so we could walk home together.
From the inside looking out: Picture an embassy in a foreign country. A truly foreign country. Not a Western European ally, but a fundamentalist state perennially on the precipice of war. A fill-the-sandbags-and-wait-for-the-airstrike enclave. That was Olsen's, home to the last of the donkeys, the white dinosaurs of Sunset Park. A jukebox filled with Kristy McColl and the Clancy Brothers, and flyers tacked to the flaking walls advertising step-dancing classes, Gaelic lessons, and the memorial run to raise money for a scholarship in the name of a recently slain cop. Within three blocks of the front door you could attend a cockfight, buy crack, or pick up a streetwalker, but in Olsen's, it was always 1965.
Upon entering the bar for the first time in several years, I found its pinched dimensions and dim lighting more oppressive, and less mysterious, than I had remembered. The row of ascetic faces, and the way all conversation trailed off at my entrance, put me in mind of the legendary blue wall of silence in the police department. It is no coincidence that the force has historically been predominantly Irish. The men in Olsen's would be pained to reveal their zip code to a stranger, and I wasn't sure if even they knew why.
The bar surface itself was more warped than I'd recalled. The mirrors had oxidized and the white tile floor had been torn up in spots and replaced with odd-shaped pieces of green linoleum. It was a neighborhood bar in a neighborhood where such establishments are not yet celebrated. If it had been located in my part of the East Village, it would have long since achieved cultural-landmark status. I'd been living in Manhattan for five years and still had not adjusted to the large number of people who moved here from other parts of the country, and overlooked the spectacle of the city only to revere the mundane. One of my coworkers, herself a transp
lant, remarked that the coffee shop on my corner was authentic. In that they served coffee, I suppose she was correct.
I sat on an empty stool in the middle of the wavy bar and ordered a beer. I felt strangely nervous there without my father, like a child about to be caught doing something bad. Everyone knew me. Marty, the round-shouldered bartender, approached first, breaking the ice. He spoke around an enormous, soggy stub of a cigar, as he always did. And, as always, he seemed constantly annoyed by its presence in his mouth; as though he'd never smoked one before, and was surprised to discover himself chewing on it.
"Daniel. It's good to see you. I'm sorry for your loss."
He extended one hand, and when I did the same, he grasped mine in both of his and held it for a moment. It had to have been some sort of signal, because the rest of the relics in the place lurched toward me then, like some nursing-home theater guild performing Night of the Living Dead. They shook hands, engaged in awkward stiff hugs, and offered unintelligible condolences. Frank Sanchez, one of my father's closest friends, squeezed the back of my neck absently until I winced. I thanked them as best I could, and accepted the offers of free drinks.
Someone—I don't know who—thought it would be a good idea for me to have Jameson's Irish whiskey, that having been my father's drink. I'd never considered myself much of a drinker. I liked a couple of beers on a Friday night, and perhaps twice a year I would get drunk. I almost never drank hard liquor, but this crew was insistent, they were matching me shot for shot, and they were paying. It was the sort of thing my father would have been adamant about.