by Bobby Byrd
“The face of God?” He had reached up and touched her breast. Then he said: “Where is the face of God?”
“I don’t know,” his wife said. “But I think the face of God is right here in this room. I think we’re staring at the face of God.”
“How can that be?” he said.
“I don’t know,” she said, and she continued cleaning his genitalia with the damp, warm cloth.
The bathroom door opened, and Arcia stood there staring at him. She was barefooted. She was wearing only her bra and slip. Her hair was wet and her face was scrubbed clean. She let him look at her but she didn’t say a word. She simply turned and faced the mirror. She studied herself and Alex watched her from his chair across the room. He knew Arcia also wore the face of God. This is what his wife would have understood. His wife had always been wiser than him. Arcia bent down over the hot running water and scrubbed her face some more with a scrub brush that magically appeared. Then she went to work with powder and mascara and eye shadow and lipstick. She carried all of the required tools and ingredients in her large leather purse. He picked up his chair and moved closer to her so that he could watch. She ignored him, but that was okay by him. He just wanted to watch. She worked for twenty minutes crafting her face.
When she was done, she turned and looked at him. She looked ten years older, she looked like a veterana. Her lips twisted into a smile. Or maybe it was a sneer.
She said: “¿Quieres más?”
“No,” he said. He was lying. He could feel warmth in his face and he knew he was blushing. She was beautiful. But she was not the young girl he watched wake up in the darkness only an hour or so ago. “Maybe next month. En el mes que viene. The dead man is dead. You killed him last night. Remember? Pero estás muy guapa. Muy beautiful.”
She screwed up her face. She knew what the word “dead” meant. This worried her. She didn’t want him to be one of the strange men. She knew the stories about the dead women. But she knew he had more money. She always needed more money. She stepped into her black skirt and pulled it over her hips. She watched him while she did this. It was her performance. Then she put on her black blouse. She left all the buttons except one undone.
He looked at her. He could feel his sex moving inside him. And he felt ashamed.
He said: “Hay que tener cuidado. You must be careful.”
“¿Cuidado?” she asked. She was sneering at him. “Soy cuidado. Todo el tiempo.” And she shut the door in his face. He could hear her pissing into the toilet. It flushed, and she washed her hands. She was very careful. She opened the door. She was ready to go. The night was over.
He said: “¿Tienes hambre? ¿Quieres algo para comer?”
“¿Porque no?” she said with a little laugh. “Pero no estas listo. Ponga tu ropa, viejo.” He still had on only his boxer shorts. His stomach was hanging over his legs. The hair on his chest was gray.
He said: “Okay. Okay. Dame un momento.”
He started searching around for his clothes. She opened the door, and let the heat and light fill the room. He looked out the door and he wanted to go home. A man his own age with a belly protruding over his belt walked slowly past the window and by the door. He was wearing a cowboy hat and boots and a clean white shirt with gold cuff links. He looked at Arcia who was leaning against the doorjamb in her black clothes and high heels. The man peered inside the room like he was looking inside a refrigerator. He saw Alex in his boxers.
The man turned back for his wife who followed behind him. At least Alex assumed it was his wife. She was wearing slacks and a shirt. A straw hat was perched on her head to protect her from the sun. The man in the cowboy hat said: “Come on, honey. Hurry yourself along.” He grabbed the woman’s hand. The two women looked at each other, they were looking across a distance they couldn’t comprehend, and then the man pulled his wife away.
Alex said: “Go on downstairs. Wait for me outside. Baja. Baja. El taxi está in the parking lot.” He had lost all of his words and his jaw hurt. He was tired. Arcia glanced at him over her shoulder and moved outside to the railing of the concrete overhang. He pulled on his pants. He walked out the door where she was standing. He was barefooted and with only his pants on. He was very white. His hair was gray. The green taxi was downstairs in the parking lot. Number 107. Pete waved at him, and Alex waved back. He had known either Pete or Tony would be there because he owed them fifty dollars. That was part of the deal. Arcia saw the taxi too. She hung her purse on her shoulder and walked toward the stairs, her hips casually moving back and forth. She was very young and very beautiful in the desert’s morning light.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
MILTON T. BURTON is a fifth-generation Texan, born in Jacksonville, Cherokee County. He has been variously a cattleman, college history teacher, political consultant, and an assistant to the dean of the Texas House of Representatives. His third crime novel is Nights of the Red Moon.
BOBBY BYRD—publisher, poet, and essayist—is the copublisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso. Byrd is the recipient of the Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom, an NEA Fellowship, the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship awarded by the University of New Mexico, and an International Residency Fellowship (NEA/Instituto de Belles Artes de México). He is also the coeditor of the nonfiction anthology Puro Border:
Dispatches, Snapshots, & Graffiti from La Frontera.
JOHNNY BYRD is copublisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, and the coeditor of the anthology Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots, & Graffiti from La Frontera. As a Spanish-to-English translator, he translated the novel Out of Their Minds: The Incredible and (Sometimes) Sad Story of Ramon and Cornelio by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. Byrd is also a freelance essayist, writing articles for online publications about culture and music.
DAVID CORBETT is the author of four acclaimed novels:
The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for an Edgar Award, named a Top 10 Mystery & Thriller of 2007 by the Washington Post; and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book), and Do They Know I’m Running? Corbett’s story “Pretty Little Parasite” (from Las Vegas Noir) was published in Best American Mystery Stories 2009.
SARAH CORTEZ was born and lives in Houston, where she is a police officer. Of Mexican, French, Comanche, and Spanish descent, her roots inform her poetry, fiction, and essays. Edward Hirsch described her award-winning collection How to Undress a Cop as “nervy, quick-hitting, street-smart, sexual.” She is the editor of Windows into My World: Latino Youth Write Their Lives, Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, and Indian Country Noir.
JAMES CRUMLEY (1939–2008) has been described as “one of modern crime writing’s best practitioners” and “a patron saint of the post-Vietnam private eye novel.” His characters Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue have become part of the pantheon of the hard-boiled heroes of the noir genre. Do yourself a favor and read The Last Good Kiss, one of “the most influential crime novels of the last 50 years.”
DEAN JAMES, a Mississippian long transplanted to Texas, has published numerous mystery short stories and has coauthored a number of award-winning works of mystery nonfiction. Writing under his own name and three pseudonyms—Miranda James, Jimmie Ruth Evans, and Honor Hartman—he has published fifteen mystery novels. He’s earned a PhD in medieval history and an MS in library science. He currently works as a librarian in the Texas Medical Center in Houston.
JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of thirty novels and twenty short story collections, and has won an Edgar Award, seven Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzoni Cavour Prize for Literature. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep has been made into a cult movie directed by Don Coscrelli. His latest novel is Vanilla Ride.
JESSICA POWERS is the author of The Confessional, a murder mystery set on the U.S.-Mexico border which “morphs silkily into a clever noir adaptation” (Library Journal). She grew up in El Paso, Texas, and currently lives in California.
ITO ROMO was born on the border
in Laredo, Texas, in 1961. His recent work, dubbed “Chicano Gothic,” shows the dark and gritty life along Interstate 35 through South Texas, where the road finally ends at the international bridge. Romo, a writer, painter, sculptor, and teacher, holds a PhD from Texas Tech University and is an associate professor of English at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of a novel, El Puente/The Bridge.
LISA SANDLIN was born in Beaumont, Texas, and grew up in that bayou refinery town near the Louisiana border. The Famous Thing About Death and Message to the Nurse of Dreams, both published by Cinco Puntos Press, reflect her background. Her book In the River Province (Southern Methodist University Press) is set in New Mexico, where she went to live after college. She teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
CLAUDIA SMITH grew up in Houston and spent many childhood summers in Galveston. Her collection The Sky Is a Well and Other Shorts won Rose Metal Press’s short-short competition. Her second collection, Put Your Head in My Lap, is available from Future Tense Books. Her short-shorts and stories have been published in numerous places, including New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond. She now lives and writes in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
JESSE SUBLETT , a native Texan, is a novelist and musician living in Austin. His Martin Fender detective novels are set in that city, and his band the Skunks is credited with helping put Austin on the international rock and roll map. Sublett has also written for film and television. James Ellroy described his memoir Never the Same Again: A Rock ’n’ Roll Gothic as “a harrowing, wrenching, spellbinding work of great candor and soul.”
TIM TINGLE, a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, is a storyteller and writer. His collection of short stories Walking the Choctaw Road traces the history of the Choctaw Nation from the “Trail of Tears” until now. His illustrated book Crossing the Bok Chitto: A Choctaw Tale of Friendship and Freedom won numerous national awards, among them the 2008 American Indian Library Association Award for Best Picture Book. Tingle grew up in Pasadena, Texas.
LUIS ALBERTO URREA has written many books, including the national best-sellers The Hummingbird’s Daughter and The Devil’s Highway (a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist). He has also won the Kiriyama Prize for fiction, a Lannan Literary Award, an American Book Award, a Christopher Award, and a Western States Book Award. Urrea lives with his family in the Chicago area, where he teaches creative writing at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
GEORGE WIER works and lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife Sallie. He is a writer, researcher, historian, and speaker in the narrow yet rich field of Texas crime history, as well as an up-and-coming author of crime and adventure novels.
Also available from the Akashic Noir Series
LOS ANGELES NOIR
edited by Denise Hamilton
360 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*A Los Angeles Times best seller and winner of an Edgar Award.
Brand-new stories by: Michael Connelly, Janet Fitch, Susan Straight, Patt Morrison, Emory Holmes II, Robert Ferrigno, Gary Phillips, Naomi Hirahara, Jim Pascoe, Héctor Tobar, Diana Wagman, and others.
“Akashic is making an argument about the universality of noir, it’s sort of flattering, really, and Los Angeles Noir, arriving at last, is a kaleidoscopic collection filled with the ethos of noir pioneers Raymond Chandler and James M. Cain.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin
350 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of Shamus Award, Anthony Award, Robert L. Fish Memorial Award; finalist for Edgar Award, Pushcart Prize.
Brand-new stories by: Pete Hamill, Sidney Offit, Arthur Nersesian, Ellen Miller, Maggie Estep, Adam Mansbach, Nelson George, Chris Niles, Pearl Abraham, Norman Kelley, Nicole Blackman, and others.
“Brooklyn Noir is such a stunningly perfect combination that you can’t believe you haven’t read an anthology like this before. But trust me—you haven’t. Story after story is a revelation, filled with the requisite sense of place, but also the perfect twists that crime stories demand. The writing is flat-out superb, filled with lines that will sing in your head for a long time to come.”
—Laura Lippman, winner of the Edgar, Shamus and Agatha awards
INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR
edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martínez
288 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: Joseph Bruchac, Kimberly Roppolo, Jean Rae Baxter, David Cole, Lawrence Block, A.A. HedgeCoke, O’Neil De Noux, Mistina Bates, Melissa Yi, R. Narvaez, and others.
“In what comes as a pleasant surprise, most of the tales selected by [the] editors take place in a broader conception of America as Indian country—the entire northern continent, in fact …”
—La Bloga
BOSTON NOIR
edited by Dennis Lehane
240 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
*Finalist for Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity awards.
Brand-new stories by: Dennis Lehane, Stewart O’Nan, Patricia Powell, John Dufresne, Lynne Heitman, Don Lee, Russ Aborn, J. Itabari Njeri, Jim Fusilli, Brendan DuBois, and Dana Cameron.
“In the best of the 11 stories in this outstanding entry in Akashic’s noir series, characters, plot and setting feed off each other like flames and an arsonist’s accelerant … [T]his anthology shows that noir can thrive where Raymond Chandler has never set foot.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
CHICAGO NOIR
edited by Neal Pollack
260 pages, trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand-new stories by: Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Achy Obejas, Joe Meno, Amy Sayre-Roberts, Adam Langer, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, Todd Dills, and others.
“Chicago Noir is a legitimate heir to the noble literary tradition of the greatest city in America. Nelson Algren and James Farrell would be proud.”—Stephen Elliott, author of The Adderall Diaries
LAS VEGAS NOIR
edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce
320 pages, trade paperback original, $15.95
Brand-new stories by: John O’Brien, David Corbett, Scott Phillips, Nora Pierce, Tod Goldberg, Bliss Esposito, Felicia Campbell, Pablo Medina, Lori Kozlowski, Preston L. Allen, Janet Berliner, and others.
“Just because mystery fans will be unfamiliar with many of the 16 contributors to Akashic’s latest entry in its acclaimed noir series doesn’t mean the quality isn’t up to volumes boasting bigger names … This anthology does a fine job of illuminating the dark underbelly of Sin City.” —Publishers Weekly
These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased online through www.akashicbooks.com.
To order by mail send a check or money order to:
AKASHIC BOOKS
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009
www.akashicbooks.com, [email protected]
(Prices include shipping. Outside the U.S., add $12 to each book ordered.)
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I: GULF COAST TEXAS
LISA SANDLIN
Beaumont
CLAUDIA SMITH
Galveston
DAVID CORBETT & LUIS ALBERTO URREA
Port Arthur
TIM TINGLE
Ellington AFB
PART II: BACK ROADS TEXAS
JAMES CRUMLEY
Crumley, Texas
JESSICA POWERS
Andrews
JOE R. LANSDALE
Gladewater
GEORGE WIER
Littlefield
MILTON T. BURTON
Tyler
PART III: BIG CITY TEXAS
SARAH CORTEZ
Houston
JESSE SUBLETT
Austin
DEAN JAMES
Dallas
ITO ROMO
San Antonio
BOBBY BYRD
El Paso
About the Contributors