Variety is spice, so out I strutted on spikes, hiked up the skirt, sucked in, spat out, and caught each tubular from between the legs, shoved each one between the lips, and crunched, hard, the pale, peeled daikon being the finale. Like juggling, with dance.
When I turned forty a few years back, the boss and girls gave me this big party. I look pretty good for my age. You can’t see the lines unless you look close. Makeup works. The girls come and go while I hang on. You have to keep going.
The act keeps me going. These days, we need to be careful. There’s less you can get away with. Mood of the times; a conservative feel’s in the air. That’ll blow over, like disco. Besides, it’s time to think about retiring. Economy’s improving. Ballroom’s hot again and there are gigs at shopping malls and the Y. I could do those. You don’t need to be either young or brilliant to foxtrot or jitterbug. All you need is a partner.
It was a silly way for Ron to exit. I would have supported us forever. He was all the home I wanted, even on those days when he couldn’t get out of bed. If only he hadn’t given up. He would always have been my star.
Show time. Feet hurt.
Funny Face is on later. That’s my favorite. Yes, it is just an earlier Fair Lady, except she does the actual singing. Astaire’s supposed to be this famous fashion photographer who turns plain-jane bookworm Audrey into a top model. Naturally, they fall in love, and their wedding day is the grand finale.
Astaire dances delightfully, and Audrey wears the most delicious dresses. Story’s hilarious. I love it where she’s all in black, among the Parisian pseudo-intellectuals, dancing past their stony faces. And the corny ending makes me laugh. Fred’s way too old for her, of course, and the plot’s quite impossible. But in the movies none of this matters, because it’s always a perfect match, made only the way those can be, in heaven, and never on earth.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS:
CHARLES ARDAI, a lifelong New Yorker, spent his first thirty years living either at 51st and Second or 52nd and First, before packing the Conestoga and lighting out for the wilds of 10021. His first novel, Little Girl Lost(written under the pen name Richard Aleas), was nominated for both the Edgar and Shamus awards. Ardai is also the cofounder and editor of the award-winning pulp-revival imprint Hard Case Crime.
CAROL LEA BENJAMIN, once an undercover agent for the William J. Burns Detective Agency, a teacher, and a dog trainer, is the author of the Shamus Award—winning Rachel Alexander mystery series, as well as eight acclaimed books on dog training and behavior. Recently elected to the International Association of Canine Professionals Hall of Fame, she lives in Greenwich Village with her husband and three swell dogs.
LAWRENCE BLOCK has won most of the major mystery awards, and has been called the quintessential New York writer, although he insists the city’s far too big to have a quintessential writer. His series characters—Matthew Scudder, Bernie Rhodenbarr, Evan Tanner, Chip Harrison, and Keller—all live in Manhattan; like their creator, they wouldn’t really be happy anywhere else.
THOMAS H. COOK is the author of twenty novels and two works of nonfiction. He has been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award five times in four separate categories.
His novel The Chatham School Affair won the Edgar for Best Novel in 1996. He splits his time between Manhattan and Cape Cod.
JEFFERY DEAVER, the author of The Bone Collector and a number of other international bestsellers, was born outside of Chicago but lived in downtown Manhattan for nearly twenty years. He was an attorney on Wall Street before turning to writing thrillers full-time. One of his first novels was titled Manhattan Is My Beat, an Edgar Award—nominee about a crime involving a (fictional) film noire.
JIM FUSILLI is the author of the award-winning Terry Orr series, which includes Hard, Hard City, winner of the Gumshoe Award for Best Novel of 2004, as well as Closing Time, A Well-Known Secret, and Tribeca Blues. He also writes for the Wall Street Journal and is a contributor to National Public Radio’s All Things Considered.
ROBERT KNIGHTLY was an NYPD patrol sergeant in the 1980s and worked at one time or another in every precinct in Manhattan South (below 96th Street, East and West). In the ’90s, he turned to the Dark Side as a Legal Aid Society lawyer in the criminal courts at 100 Centre Street.
JOHN LUTZ has long enjoyed setting suspense novels in his favorite city, New York, one of which was made into the film Single White Female. His latest book is Fear the Night, set in … New York.
LIZ MARTÍNEZ is an editor and columnist for police and security publications. Her short fiction has appeared in Combat, OrchardPressMysteries.com, Police Officer’s Quarterly, and Cop Tales 2000. She was born in New York City and is on the faculty at Interboro Institute, a two-year college in Manhattan. For the record, unlike Freddie Prinze, she is Mexican-American.
MAAN MEYERS (Annette and Martin Meyers) have written six books and multiple short stories in the Dutchman series of historical mysteries set in New York in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and ninteenth centuries.
MARTIN MEYERS grew up on Madison Street, a couple of blocks from the East River where the Manhattan Bridge hovers—the Lower East Side then, Chinatown now. He currently lives on the Upper West Side with his wife, author Annette Meyers. In 1975, when he was still an actor, he wrote the first book in his Patrick Hardy P.I. series, Kiss and Kill.
S.J. ROZAN, author of Absent Friends and the Edgar Award–winning Lydia Chin/Bill Smith mystery series, grew up in the Bronx. Having misspent her youth in lower Manhattan, she always wanted to live there, and now she does.
JUSTIN SCOTT was born on West 76th Street between Riverside and West End, grew up in a small town, and came back to Manhattan to write mysteries, thrillers, and the occasional short story in Midtown, the Upper West Side, the Village, and Chelsea. Twice nominated for Edgar Awards, his New York stories include Many Happy Returns, Treasure for Treasure, Normandie Triangle, and Rampage.
C.J. SULLIVAN grew up in the Bronx and is currently a reporter for the New York Post. Along with writing, the loves of his life are his two children, Luisa Marie and Olivia Kathleen Sullivan.
XU XI is the author of six books, including the novel The Unwalled City and Overleaf Hong Kong (stories and essays), and has edited two anthologies of Hong Kong literature.
She teaches at Vermont College’s MFA program, and lives and writes primarily between Manhattan, upstate New York, Hong Kong, and the South Island of New Zealand. For more information, visit www.xuxiwriter.com.
Also available from the Akashic Books Noir Series
D.C. NOIR
edited by George Pelecanos
304 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, James Grady, Kenji Jasper, Jim Beane, Ruben Castaneda, Robert Wisdom, James Patton, Norman Kelley, Jennifer Howard, Jim Fusilli, Richard Currey, Lester Irby, Quintin Peterson, Robert Andrews, and David Slater.
GEORGE PELECANOS is a screenwriter, independent-indepen-and dent-film producer, award-winning journalist, and the author of the bestselling series of Derek Strange novels set in and around Washington, D.C., where he lives with his wife and children.
BROOKLYN NOIR
edited by Tim McLoughlin
350 pages, a trade paperback original, $15.95
*Winner of SHAMUS AWARD, ANTHONY AWARD, ROBERT L. FISH MEMORIAL AWARD; Finalist for EDGAR AWARD, PUSHCART PRIZE
Twenty brand new crime stories from New York’s punchiest borough.
Contributors include: Pete Hamill, Arthur Nersesian, Maggie Estep, Nelson George, Neal Pollack, Sidney Offit, Ken Bruen, 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 Lip
pman, winner of the Edgar, Agatha, and Shamus awards
DUBLIN NOIR: The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American
edited by Ken Bruen
228 pages, trade paperback, $14.95
Brand new stories by: Ken Bruen, Eoin Colfer, Jason Starr, Laura Lippman, Olen Steinhauer, Peter Spiegelman, Kevin Wignall, Jim Fusilli, John Rickards, Patrick J. Lambe, Charlie Stella, Ray Banks, James O. Born, Sarah Weinman, Pat Mullan, Reed Farrel Coleman, Gary Phillips, Duane Swierczynski, and Craig McDonald.
BALTIMORE NOIR
edited by Laura Lippman
252 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: David Simon, Laura Lippman, Tim Cockey, Rob Hiaasen, Robert Ward, Sujata Massey, Jack Bludis, Rafael Alvarez, Marcia Talley, Joseph Wallace, Lisa Respers France, Charlie Stella, Sarah Weinman, Dan Fesperman, Jim Fusilli, and Ben Neihart.
LAURA LIPPMAN has lived in Baltimore most of her life and she would have spent even more time there if the editors of the Sun had agreed to hire her earlier. She attended public schools and has lived in several of the city’s distinctive neighborhoods, including Dickeyville, Tuscany-and Tuscany-Canterbury, Evergreen, and South Federal Hill.
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR
edited by Peter Maravelis
292 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: Domenic Stansberry, Barry Gifford, Eddie Muller, Robert Mailer Anderson, Michelle Tea, Peter Plate, Kate Braverman, David Corbett, Alejandro Murguía, Sin Soracco, Alvin Lu, Jon Longhi, Will Christopher Baer, Jim Nesbit, and David Henry Sterry.
CHICAGO NOIR
edited by Neal Pollack
252 pages, a trade paperback original, $14.95
Brand new stories by: Neal Pollack, Achy Obejas, Alexai Galaviz-Budziszewski, Adam Langer, Joe Meno, Peter Orner, Kevin Guilfoile, Bayo Ojikutu, Jeff Allen, Luciano Guerriero, Claire Zulkey, Andrew Ervin, M.K. Meyers, Todd Dills, C.J. Sullivan, Daniel Buckman, Amy Sayre-Roberts, and Jim Arndorfer.
These books are available at local bookstores.
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Table of Contents
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction
CHARLES ARDAI: Midtown
The Good Samaritan
CAROL LEA BENJAMIN: Greenwich Village
The Last Supper
LAWRENCE BLOCK: Clinton
If You Can’t Stand the Heat
THOMAS H. COOK: Battery Park
Rain
JEFFERY DEAVER: Hell’s Kitchen
A Nice Place to Visit
JIM FUSILLI: George Washington Bridge
The Next Best Thing
ROBERT KNIGHTLY: Garment District
Take the Man’s Pay
JOHN LUTZ: Upper West Side
The Laundry Room
LIZ MARTÍNEZ: Washington Heights
Freddie Prinze Is My Guardian Angel
MAAN MEYERS: Lower East Side
The Organ Grinder
MARTIN MEYERS: Yorkville
Why Do They Have to Hit?
S.J. ROZAN: Harlem
Building
JUSTIN SCOTT: Chelsea
The Most Beautiful Apartment in New York
C.J. SULLIVAN: Inwood
The Last Round
XU XI: Times Square
Crying with Audrey Hepburn
About the Contributors
Manhattan Noir Page 22