As a writer, I firmly believe that 1) there's nowhere where nothing ever happens; 2) something eventually happens everywhere, even nowhere; 3) everything is bound to happen somewhere; and 4) there's no such thing as nothing whenever you're somewhere.
Nothing ever happens on Staten Island?
Nothing happening on the glitzy Uggs-trodden paths of the Staten Island Mall, no steamy intrigue in Frederick's of Hollywood or in the cinnamon-dusted confines of Auntie Anne's? No memorable drama on the relentless to-and-fro of the ferry? Nothing cool about the counter guy at the neighborhood bodega who always has a great story, or that gay club that opened up for a while then disappeared? How about intrigue in the lives of the dude and dudette of Staten Island stereotype—she orange-tinged, deftly manicured, and helplessly attached to her cell; he muscled, sticky-coiffed, and primping behind the wheel of that aforementioned Camaro?
Nothing interesting at all? I ask, and, after another round of eye-rolling, they're aching to elaborate.
"This place is too damned small."
"Everybody knows everybody else's business."
"Same people you grew up with, all the time. Never anybody new."
"There's no place to go but the mall."
"Being made fun of all the time gets tired real fast. I don't even tell anybody I'm from here."
And until I finally shut them up, all they do is continue to serve up more reasons why Staten Island is an erringly perfect landscape for noir, the ideal hangout for scoundrels, swindlers, liars, thieves, murderers, adulterous vixens, and assorted hooligans. Let's review:
1.
The place was too damned small. On all sides, water ate away at the island. Every day, the brick of the buildings inched closer to him, until Eddie could feel their soft scrape against his skin. Every street seemed to sweat, panting poisons through its many open mouths. There was no street he hadn't seen, no corner that didn't hiss his name. People walked toward him, through him, past him, all smirking on the edge of a smile. Laughing at him. But there it was, the sweet weight of the gun in his pocket. Soon he'd be able to breathe again. Eddie would blow a hole in the way the city touched him, and he'd climb through.
2.
"Everybody knows everybody else's business," Eddie spat, "and I don't want nobody knowin' mine." He held the bartender's wiggling little head in a vise grip until it stopped wiggling. He looked down, and the little guy's scalp was glowing red. Eddie got real pissed real fast because here it was, an interruption in his day, now he had to figure out if he felt like killing this guy. One minute, he's looking forward to the zarzuela and a nice chianti at Espana, now here's this loudmouth prick with his eyes popping out.
3.
Same people you grew up with, all the time. Never anybody new. Alexis could swear she said the words out loud, but there was Eddie, still asleep, snorting, his mouth open, his mountain of belly radiating heat. Just because their families had lived next to each other in New Dorp. Just because he'd given her that stupid ring in high school. Just because he was the first one to ask, she had to say yes, had to stand up in front of God and family and sign up for this? She sighed, fingered the little blade, studied his sweating pink neck.
4.
There's no place to go but the mall. There's no place to go but the mall, and there's no way to walk but in well-lit circles, then ride the escalator with its silver teeth, and the girls. There's no place to go but the mall, and the girls. Sheep boots and sequin skirts, low-cut tops, red-tipped nails, hair color of falling sun, skinny wrists, big perfect mouths, and the girls, swing purses, smack gum, talk the island, girls. Blindfold left pocket this time. Tape on the right. There's no place to go but the mall. There's nothing to do but wait.
5.
I don't even tell anybody I'm from here. I can hit Brooklyn or the Boogie B, sling it like I'm a gangsta, point my ride down the middle of the street. I can flash my piece, hold it against a throat, have a man whimpering my name. I can lay a woman down, then leave her, make her unknow my name if that's what I need. Then I get on that great big boat, and I'm gone. In the Bronx, some guy with a gun is searching the back alleys for me. Some big-hipped redhead in Brooklyn is aching to stake a claim. But I get home and the island closes around me, names me all over again. There's something about water. It cleans you.
* * *
So there.
Staten Island = 0 is a popular equation outside the confines of the borough. During Bouchercon, an annual national crime fiction convention, I sat fuming as a panel on "crime fiction set in New York" went on and on and on, with panelists bellowing darkly about nefarious goings-on and iconic characters in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn, and . . . and . . .
Finally, nudged by an irritated attendee who suddenly knew why her students didn't want to write about their home town, members of the panel acknowledged their omission with what amounted to, Oh yeah, there's crime there too, and went back to a spirited discussion of the Big Four.
Yep, there's crime here too. Good crime. Mystery. Dark, scary stuff. Big crime. The noir kind, without a good guy in sight. Just scan the headlines: Skeleton in Staten Island Basement Points to Unsolved Murder; Staten Island Man Commits Murder after Victim Had Spit in Wife's Face. Then there's the haunted Kreischer mansion on Arthur Kill Road. Mob Wives, for Chrissakes, with all that squalling, hair-pulling, and Botox. A recent spate of hate crimes against blacks, Mexicans, Muslims. Mist-shrouded abandoned psychiatric hospitals. Guys named Eddie. Underground caverns. Willowbrook. The ghostly ship graveyard. The legend of Cropsey. That rolling landfill and all those secrets buried beneath it.
Even the one movie that was named after the borough got it exactly right. Here's the synopsis: A Staten Island mob boss Parmie is robbed by septic tank cleaner Sully who has a pal Jasper, a deaf deli employee moonlighting as a corpse chopper.
That's a damned sunshiny day on the island.
I'm not sure why Staten Island is the borough bringing up the rear in Akashic Books' Noir Series (okay, okay, yes I am), but here we are, the shiny coin in New York's back pocket. (You can't really buy anything with it, but throwing it away would definitely bring bad luck.) We will prove that SI is as rotten, vengeful, unforgiving, and badass as any one of its quartet of brothers.
This gang I've gathered is unrelenting. Among them is island native Bill Loehfelm, who crafts a stark and breathless character study on Snake Hill. In "A User's Guide to Keeping Your Kills Fresh," Ted Anthony chronicles the haphazard adventures of a murderous mob bungler. The blade-edged tenets of street justice rule the day, and night, in Todd Craig's ". . . spy verse spy . . ." Michael Largo's "Paying the Tab" sits the reader on a barstool, then lifts you out of one world and into another. S.J. Rozan's "Lighthouse" moves with a chilling, elegant rhythm, and Linda Nieves-Powell arranges a jazzy introduction to the siren of the Stapleton projects. And lest you think that nefarious island hijinks are a recent development, Bruce DeSilva builds upon a true story of unbridled power and privilege, set in 1858.
That said, I'm slightly disappointed that there are no appearances by corpse choppers, which may be because it's become a perfectly respectable Staten Island job description. Nevertheless, I'd like to meet one.
Patricia Smith
July 2012
PART I
FAMILY AFFAIR
SNAKE HILL
BY BILL LOEHFELM
Eltingville
We came over the top of Snake Hill too fast, and started our drop down the other side at the same speed. My father's giant old station wagon slalomed deep into the snaky curves like a fat skier in wet snow. The tires didn't screech, but they squeaked now and again. Streetlamps were few and far between. The trees were black shadows on both sides, the foliage dense and dark, close to the roadside. I tried to keep the headlights focused on the winding double yellow lines in front of me, keep those lines centered in the crossed beams of light. I hoped to hell that no one was coming up the hill in the opposite lane.
My brother snored over on th
e passenger side of the wagon's big bench seat, having passed out sometime in the first three minutes after we left the Haunted Café back on Bay Street. I hadn't seen him put back more than two or three drinks, less than half of what I'd had, and I got that sick, nervous feeling in my stomach that had been coming on more and more lately, the feeling that he was messing with more powerful stuff than booze. Pills, maybe. Powders. He hadn't, I noticed with a quick glance, despite my insistence and his assurances, fastened his seat belt. Couldn't even do that for me. I wanted to slam on the brakes and bounce his head off the dashboard, just to make a point. But I didn't do it. I kept riding the sharp, blind curves in the road. He shifted in his seat with the back-and-forth motion of the car.
Why, I wondered again, tightening my grip on the steering wheel, was I driving like a maniac to get us home by curfew when there was so much more to worry about? Because, I reminded myself, curfew was what our folks cared about. Curfew and the car. They wouldn't ask what Danny was getting into, because they didn't want to know, and I sure wouldn't tell. Wouldn't say anything about a seventeen-year-old with a grown-up hangover. They never did anymore, not after the past two years in our house. We'd had all the bad news we could handle.
I looked over at my brother again. His forehead was pressed against his window. I couldn't see his face, but I knew he always smiled in his sleep—the benefits of an empty conscience. Another quick check of the road and I glanced at the dashboard clock. One fifteen in the a.m. Well, we'd blown curfew. That was a lost cause. Seemed I was losing causes by the minute. More important now was the matter of getting down the hill. If I couldn't deliver us home on time, I could at least deliver us home in one piece. That plan hit the skids, literally, barely a moment after I had that thought.
I don't know if it was oil, or gravel, or the greasy entrails of something dead and left to rot, but coming out of an especially sharp turn, the back end of the station wagon fishtailed hard left, as if God had flicked the ass-end of the car with his finger. I didn't panic. I didn't overcorrect. I didn't make a sound. I held steady and hit the brakes.
The back left corner of the station wagon slammed into the guardrail, the back tires sliding and scratching on some roadside gravel. A deep thump pulsed through the car on impact, as if someone had whacked an empty pot with a spoon and we were inside the pot. It wasn't that loud, considering, but it lingered in my ears for an extra second nonetheless. The chassis bounced once or twice and the car settled, still, on the side of the road like the collision had knocked the wind out of it. My brother groaned beside me. He touched his fingertips to his forehead. One eye was open, the other still closed. I guess he wanted to make sure the incident was worth the effort of opening both. I was glad he seemed okay. I grimaced in sympathy at the goose egg already rising over his right eye. Maybe that's why that left one had stayed closed.
"What the fuck, Kev?" he said. "We dead?"
"No," I said. "We're fine."
At least he knew we'd had an accident. He couldn't be that far gone.
He nodded as if I'd given him a lot of information to process. He squinted through the windshield with his one open eye then turned and did the same out the back window. He was looking, I realized, for the other car.
"Just us," I said. I turned around too. A cloud of thin gray dust hung suspended in the ruby-red glow of the brake lights. I realized I still had the brake pedal pinned. "I tagged the guardrail coming out of a curve. Too much of a rush, I guess."
"I don't know why you give a fuck about curfew anymore," he said, turning to me, both eyes open now, bewilderment all over his face. He sniffed. "You're the only one who does."
"Who do you hang out with?" I asked.
"You."
"And who else?"
"No one, really," my brother said.
"And how do we get around?"
"In Dad's car."
"Ask me again why I care about curfew."
My brother scoffed: "Dad'll let you have the car whenever we hang out, especially because we hang out, whatever the fuck time we come home. What're you, dense?"
"And you're so wise on this how?"
Danny shrugged like the answer was so obvious he could barely speak it. "Dad thinks you look out for me. He thinks I'm safer when we're together. He wouldn't run the risk of separating us. Mom wouldn't let him."
"You saying you're not safer with me than you would be alone?" I swallowed hard. "Doing what you do these days?"
Danny turned one way in his seat, and then the other, glancing around us. "Didn't you just wreck the car?"
"I didn't wreck it," I said. I didn't know what part of my commentary his crack about the car had been meant to criticize. "Just dinged it up at most."
I decided I should get a look at how bad before I tried continuing the drive home, or continuing my attempt at a conversation with my younger brother about his growing drug problem. Just in case it was worse than I thought, worse than it had sounded. The car, I mean.
I opened the door, cool night air rushing into the car. I realized I'd been sweating, the breeze running up the sleeves of my T-shirt. I took a deep breath. When I turned to hang out the door and look, the seat belt caught. Danny stifled a giggle. I popped the belt free and leaned out of the car.
"You smell gas?" Danny asked.
"No." So far, so good. I hadn't even thought of that. Gas tank was on that side too. I heard the flick of a lighter and smelled cigarette smoke. Glad he was so confident. But things seemed okay. The back tire wasn't flat. I could see the hubcap. No dents that I could see in the back quarter panel, at least in the faint wash of the dome light from inside the car.
"Light me one," I told Danny. Without turning, I reached my arm across the car for the cigarette. The lack of obvious damage had me feeling better, more and more confident that nothing was wrong that we couldn't play off as a parking lot accident and pin on some other idiot driver. Dad would grumble, but he'd forgive. And small dents he could pound out himself in the driveway. He was handy like that.
Danny slipped the cigarette into my fingers. I brought the smoke to my lips, tapped the brake pedal. The taillights ignited, a red burst off the back of the car washing over the wild green bushes and trunks of the trees. Still working, that was good. None of the telltale bright white gave away broken glass back there. Amazing, I thought, how bright those lights actually are. I tapped them again. And then I saw it. My throat went dry.
A shoe. One shoe.
A sneaker, really. A blue Ked, adult sized. The cheap kind you see lined up in flimsy cardboard boxes along those long rows of shelves at the K-Mart or the Korvettes. Like old people wore. No big deal, I told myself, a shoe by the side of the road. Except this shoe stood on its heel, tilted a little to the left. I could see a bony, hairless, blue-veined ankle, the cuff of a pajama leg. An old person. Some poor, senile, old bastard who'd probably wandered away from one of the estates on the hill.
My throat closed and my heart stopped, a fist reaching into my chest and squeezing my heart down to the size of a grape, strangling it.
Fuck me. I'd killed someone.
I heard Danny getting out of the car. Air exploded out of my chest and my heart started again. I lunged for Danny, locking onto his forearm. He glanced down at my hand, not looking all that surprised I'd grabbed ahold of him.
"Get back in the car," I said.
"Lemme go," he said. "I gotta take a piss. Since we're apparently camping out here for the night."
"Get in the car."
I did not want him seeing that body. And I didn't want anybody seeing us anywhere near it. I'd decided to run from the scene. I couldn't even remember making the decision. But I was totally sure of what I wanted to do.
"Dude, I gotta go," Danny said. "One sec."
"Wait till we get home."
"Who're you? Fucking Mom?"
"Someone could see us."
"I'll go back in the woods." He chuckled. "You already took care of the guardrail. Easy-peasy."
He
tried to tug his arm free, half an effort because he expected me to let go. I didn't. He bristled, and for the first time since we'd stopped he looked a little angry.
"There's gotta be a car coming," I said, "either from ahead or behind us."
We'd settled to a stop on the wrong side of the road, facing into oncoming traffic, our headlights burning bright down the side of the hill. It was mid-spring, the trees had only half their leaves. Our car was blatantly visible from every direction. Our voices probably carried far in the quiet night. The sound of the station wagon slamming the guardrail certainly had. People did live up here. They lived nearby over on Todt Hill, and on Lighthouse Road too. The Hill people. Rich people. Rich people who didn't tolerate late-night, side-of-the-road bullshit, people who didn't come to see if you were all right, if there was anything they could do to help. They just called the cops and went back to bed and let the paid help deal with it. That could've happened already. The cops could be on their way up the hill as we sat there bickering like one of us had gotten more chocolate milk than the other at breakfast.
I didn't want to be dealt with. I wanted my brother back in the fucking car. And I wanted both of us home.
Danny settled on the edge of the front seat, one leg in and one leg out of the car, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He had his outside leg in the middle of the road. "What the fuck?" He reached under his seat, moving his hand around under it. "We don't have any beers left in here?"
I thought I saw headlights break through the trees below.
"We're in a hurry," I said, trying to keep my voice light, and failing. "Remember?"
I watched my brother for a reaction to my bullshit. Could I have made it any more obvious that there was something at the back of the car I didn't want him to see? I hoped my guilt and horror, not only over what I had done by accident but what I was now doing on purpose, amplified my fears, like that remorse-ridden lunatic in "The Tell-Tale Heart." I realized gratefully that Danny had most likely never read the story. I also realized I was glad and relieved he was high and therefore if not easily led at least leadable.
New York City Noir Page 112