“It’s not a crime to change your name. What do you want?” My voice shook. I could see the gun tucked into the waistband of his jeans, under a blue jacket, and my life that I’d previously thought of as sub-standard suddenly seemed shining and rare, a precious, precious thing.
“I want to walk,” the gangster said. “Let’s go to the beach.”
Rain threatened and the beach was empty. Seagulls dove and screeched, fighting over a ragged piece of food. The gangster looked out to sea.
“The Duna flooded this year. They found Ana’s body buried in a field.”
Ana. My chest tightened.
“She had been beaten to death. Cops were able to tell that, even after all this time.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
“The day she went missing, I felt it in my gut that she was dead.” The gangster put his fist to his stomach. “And that you had killed her. You’d beaten her before and threatened her. That’s why she no longer wanted you as a client. She was frightened of you.”
“Isn’t this a little far-fetched?”
“You were hanging around at nights waiting for her to finish work, so I had Peter walk her home. But the night she disappeared Peter got held up and he didn’t meet her. And the next day she doesn’t turn up for work. I think immediately of you and your threats. I came to your apartment and you had also gone, rather suddenly, the landlord said.”
“I got called away on a job. This is stupid, Istvan. I can understand that you’re upset at losing one of your working girls, but I didn’t kill her. I loved her. I love her still. Look at me, my life’s a wreck because of her.”
“You were obsessed with her,” the gangster said. “Not quite love, something else. Maybe you didn’t mean to kill her, but you did it. And your life’s wrecked because you can’t live with yourself.” He pulled the gun casually out of his jeans.
“Please,” I said. “Even if what you say is true, this isn’t going to bring her back.”
“No. But what I’m doing is for the living, not the dead.” He raised the Glock and pointed it at my forehead. “You see, I loved her too. I guess you didn’t know that.”
He gently squeezed the trigger.
I could have run, I suppose. Or tried to fight him. Could have at least made an attempt to do something. But a strange thing happened: When that bullet began its deadly journey, I had a flash of clarity, the first of my whole life. Time slowed, and then slowed some more, and I could see the bullet speeding toward me, right toward my brain. Life is love. That’s it, there’s no other point, I thought, as I watched the bullet smash into my head. Saw myself fall onto the wet, hard sand. Heard myself think, Perhaps I’ll see her now, and perhaps she’ll forgive me.
A gust of wind carried the sound of the gunshot out into the Atlantic. The seagulls scattered, wings beating. The gangster walked away. He didn’t look back. He didn’t see the body being claimed by the rising tide.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
PEARL ABRAHAM is the author of the novels The Romance Reader and Giving Up America. Recent essays have appeared in the Michigan Quarterly, the Forward, an Dog Culture: Writers on the Character of Canines. Abraham teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College. The Seventh Beggar, her third novel, will be published in September 2004.
NICOLE BLACKMAN (www.nicoleblackman.com) lives in an undisclosed Brooklyn neighborhood where she prefers eavesdropping on unsuspecting people. She is the creator of the innovative “The Courtesan Tales” performance, and author of the poetry collection Blood Sugar (Akashic, 2002). She is currently wanted for questioning in the disappearance of three men in Brooklyn.
KEN BRUEN, author of The Guard and The Killing of the Tinkers, is published around the world. He has been an English teacher in Africa, Japan, Southeast Asia, and South America. He lives in Galway, Ireland.
MAGGIE ESTEP has published four books, including HEX, the first in a series of “horse noir” crime novels. She has written for the Village Voice, New York Press, and Nerve.com, and gives readings of her work throughout the U.S. and Europe on a regular basis. She lives in Brooklyn and likes to hang out at racetracks cheering on longshots. For more information, visit www.maggieestep.com.
NELSON GEORGE is a noted author and filmmaker who has resided in Brooklyn all his forty-six years. His most recent nonfiction work is Post-Soul Nation (Viking), and he is the executive producer of two recent TV projects: The “N” Word and Everyday People, a fictional film made for HBO. For more information visit Nelsongeorge.com.
LUCIANO GUERRIERO is the author of one novel, a noir thriller entitled The Spin, and has been a resident of Brooklyn or Manhattan for twenty-three years. While writing plays, screenplays, short stories and poetry during that time, he has also acted in or directed sixty-five plays and acted in twenty Hollywood and independent films.
PETE HAMILL is for many the living embodiment of New York City. In his writing for the New York Times, the New York Daily News, the New York Post, the New Yorker, and Newsday, he has brought the city to life for millions of readers. He is the author of many bestselling books, including novels Forever and Snow in August, as well the memoir A Drinking Life. He lives in New York City.
KENJI JASPER was born and raised in the nation’s capital and currently lives in Brooklyn. He is a regular contributor to National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and has written articles for Savoy, Essence, VIBE, the Village Voice, the Charlotte Observer, and Africana.com. He is the author of three novels, Dark, Dakota Grand and the forthcoming Seeking Salamanca Mitchell.
NORMAN KELLE is the author of the “noir soul” Nina Halligan mystery series, which includes Black Heat, The Big Mango, and A Phat Death. He is also the author of Head Negro in Charge Syndrome, forthcoming from Nation Books, and he edited and contributed to R&B (Rhythm and Business): The Political Economy of Black Music (Akashic, 2002). He currently resides in Brooklyn.
ROBERT KNIGHTLY is a trial lawyer in the Criminal Defense Division of the Legal Aid Society. In another life, he was a lieutenant in the New York City Police Department. This is his first published fiction, which is a piece of a first novel, Bodies in Winter He was born and raised in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the locale of the story.
LOU MANFREDO was born and raised in Brooklyn. He is a former New York City public school teacher and legal investigator. The father of one daughter, Nicole, he currently lives in New Jersey with his wife, Joanne, and their long-haired dachshund. Mr. Manfredo recently completed his first novel.
ADAM MANSBACH, a resident of Fort Greene, Brooklyn, currently on sabbatical in Berkeley, California, is the author of two novels, Shackling Water and the forthcoming Angry Black White Boy, and the poetry collection genius b-boy cynics getting weeded in the garden of delights. The former editor of the hip hop journal Elementary, he serves as an Artistic Consultant to Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies and is a teacher for Youth Speaks.
TIM MCLOUGHLIN was born and raised in Brooklyn, where he still resides. His debut novel, Heart of the Old Countr (Akashic, 2001), was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and has been optioned for a film. It was also published last year in Great Britain and in Italy, where it won the 2003 Premio Penne award. He is completing his second novel.
ELLEN MILLER is the author of the critically acclaimed bestseller Like Being Killed. Her fiction and essays have appeared in many literary magazines and anthologies, most recently Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge. She has taught creative writing at New York University, the New School, and the women’s unit of a federal prison. She lives in New York City and is at work on her second novel
THOMAS MORRISSEY is an Army brat who grew up in exotic locations like Okinawa, Heidelberg, and Staten Island. He began writing when, as a child, he found great pleasure playing with his mother’s Sears portable typewriter. His first novel, Faustus Resurrectus, is on the way.
> ARTHUR NERSESIAN is the author of six novels, including Suicide Casanova, Chinese Takeout, Unlubricated, and the cult classic bestseller The Fuck-Up. The former managing editor of the Portable Lower East Side, he currently lives in New York City.
CHRIS NILES was born in New Zealand. In the last fifteen years she has lived in Australia, England, and Hungary. She now lives in Brooklyn and does not intend to move for a very long time. She is also the author of Hell’s Kitchen (Akashic, 2001), as well as a series of crime mysteries featuring radio reporter Sam Ridley: Spike It, Run Time, and Crossing Live.
SIDNEY OFFIT is a novelist, author of books for young readers, teacher, member of the board of the PEN American Center, president of the Authors Guild Foundation, and curator of the George Polk Journalism Awards that originate from Long Island University’s Brooklyn center. During the mid-fifties he covered the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, and that other team from New York for Baseball Magazine. His most recent book is Memoir of the Bookie’s Son
NEAL POLLACK is the author of three books: the cult clas-sic The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Beneath the Axis of Evil, and the rock ’n’ roll novel Never Mind the Pollacks A regular contributor to Vanity Fair, GQ, and many other magazines, Pollack lives in Austin, Texas.
C.J. SULLIVAN lived in Brooklyn on the Ridgewood/Bushwick border for seven years and loved the neighborhood. He has worked as a Court Clerk in Brooklyn Supreme since 1994. He has also been a freelance writer for the last ten years. Sullivan has a regular column in the New York Press called “The Bronx Stroll.” He now lives in Ridgewood, New Jersey with his wife Lisa and his twin daughters, Olivia and Luisa.
Also from AKASHIC BOOKS
HEART OF THE OLD COUNTRY by Tim McLoughlin
*A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection*
217 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95, ISBN: 1-888451-15-7
“This novel reads like an inspired cross between Richard Price’s Bloodbrothers and Ross McDonald’s The Chill.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Tim McLoughlin is a master storyteller in the tradition of such great New York City writers as Hubert Selby Jr. and Richard Price. I can’t wait for his second book!”
—Kaylie Jones, author of Speak Now
HELL’S KITCHEN by Chris Niles
279 pages, a trade paperback original, $15.95, ISBN: 1-888451-21-1
“If the Olympics come to New York, apartment-hunting should be one of the events … Nile’s fast-paced Hell’s Kitchen plays with the city’s famed high rents and low vacancy rate to put a new spin on the serial-killer novel. Taking aim at contemporary romance, the media, the idle rich, and would-be writers, Niles has written a thriller that’s hilarious social satire.”
—Detroit Free Press
MANHATTAN LOVERBOY by Arthur Nersesian
*From the author of the bestselling cult-classic THE FUCK-UP*
203 pages, a trade paperback original, $13.95, ISBN: 1-888451-09-2
“Manhattan Loverboy is paranoid fantasy and fantastic comedy in the service of social realism, using the methods of L. Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz or Kafka’s The Trial to update the picaresque urban chronicles of Augie March, with a far darker edge …”
—Downtown Magazine
A PHAT DEATH by Norman Kelley
260 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95, ISBN: 1-888451-48-3
“Nina Halligan takes on the recording industry and black music in Norman Kelley’s third outrageous caper to feature the bad girl PI … Once again outspoken social criticism fires the nonstop action.”
Publishers Weekly
THE BIG MANGO by Norman Kelley
The second installment in the Nina Halligan mystery series 270 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95, ISBN: 1-888451-10-6
“Want a scathing social and political satire? Look no further than Norman Kelley’s second effort featuring ‘bad girl’ African-American PI and part-time intellectual Nina Halligan—it’s X-rated, but a romp of a read … Nina’s acid takes on recognizable public figures and institutions both amuse and offend … Kelley spares no one, blacks and whites alike, and this provocative novel is sure to attract attention.”
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
BLOOD SUGAR by Nicole Blackman
160 pages, a trade paperback; $13.95, ISBN: 1-888451-34-3
“[Blackman’s] best work is a shadow-strewn kaleidoscope of angst, anguish and survivorship … Amazingly, for all the fury in these poems, they are devoid of hatred, and as a result, their ultimate impact is less paralyzing than cathartic.”
—L.A. Weekly
These books are available at local bookstores.
They can also be purchased with a credit card 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 $8 to each book ordered.
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