“In my wallet, yeah.”
The white cop patted Jackie down with half-hearted slaps against his torso and legs. The black cop walked over to where Jackie had been kneeling. Jackie felt thick fingers in his pockets, clumsy against his buttocks.
“Jackie Gerard?” the white cop asked. “That’s the name your mama gave you?”
“Last I checked, sir.”
“Found something, Brown.” The black cop was holding Jackie’s camera with the tips of his fingers. “What is this you’re carrying around?”
Jackie wanted to punch him in the mouth. Instead, he answered, “It’s a camera, sir.”
“You some kind of photographer?”
“I take pictures up at the club—Fat Red’s.”
“Anything on this camera that we oughta see?” Brown asked, all business, like he was buying a pound of pecans.
Jackie peered at the ground. He felt Brown’s eyes roaming over him. The black cop sighed, then stood on his toes and passed gas.
“Shit, Decroux,” the white cop said, waving his hand in front of his face.
“No sir. No. There ain’t nothing on there but pictures from the club. Folks posing. Maybe a couple of shots I thought was interestin’, stuff like that. Nothing special.”
Decroux dug his hard fingers into Jackie’s shoulder, pulling him forward. Jackie pulled back. But Decroux was like gravity.
“What you know about Willie Coleman getting shot?” he asked. “Come on, nigga, I know you know something. Tell me or I’m gonna take you downtown and beat the black offa yo’ ass.”
“Let him alone,” the white cop said in a whisper.
“What the fuck, Brown?”
“He don’t know nothing. You shake him any more he’s liable to shit himself, and then I’ll have another stinking nigger on my hands. Let him go on home.”
Decroux released Jackie’s shirt. Brown tossed the camera at Jackie like it was a live grenade. Jackie caught it, steadying it against his chest. Decroux spat at Jackie’s feet, headed back to the car.
“Don’t let me catch you out in these streets no more!” Decroux said as the cops sped off, lights still flashing.
Jackie sat down on the curb. He looked at his camera, the plastic and glass and metal that may have been his name or may have been his soul. Something pulled in his chest, like a string reattaching itself.
“Thank you, Jesus,” he said, and smashed the camera against the curb.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Richard J. Alley is a reporter, columnist, and editor from Memphis, where he lives with his wife and four children. His short story “Sea Change” won the grand prize for fiction in the 2010 Memphis Magazine Fiction Contest and his first novel, Five Night Stand, was published in May 2015.
John Bensko’s books include the short story collection Sea Dogs and several poetry books: Green Soldiers, winner of a Yale Younger Poets prize; The Waterman’s Children; The Iron City; and Visitations, winner of an Anita Claire Scharf Award. He was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Alicante in Spain, and coordinates the creative writing program at the University of Memphis.
Laureen P. Cantwell grew up in eastern Long Island and, after living in Astoria, Philadelphia, and Iowa, found her way to Memphis—“the rock ’n’ roll side of Tennessee.” She lived in Midtown for two years while working as a librarian at the University of Memphis and grew to love the darkness of the city—and Elvis.
Stephen Clements left his beloved city after graduating from the University of Memphis to serve in the US Army and take an extended, unpleasant vacation to Iraq. When he got out, he met a beautiful and mean woman, and they fell in love, so things definitely improved. He has three other books, loves foreign travel, and is an avid wine maker and political junkie.
Arthur Flowers is the author of several books, including Another Good Loving Blues, Mojo Rising: Confessions of a 21st Century Conjureman, and I See the Promised Land: A Life of Martin Luther King Jr. He is a Delta-based performance poet, webmaster of Rootsblog, and has been executive director of various nonprofits, including the Harlem Writers Guild. He currently teaches fiction in Syracuse University’s MFA in creative writing program.
Dwight Fryer is a writer, speaker, and storyteller living in Memphis. His historical novels, The Legend of Quito Road and The Knees of Gullah Island, were both critically acclaimed. The Legend of Quito Road shares the tale of a religious man who taught his only son to make white lightning whiskey in 1932, and The Knees of Gullah Island follows the struggle of a family trying to reconnect in 1884 Charleston, South Carolina, after being separated in the slave trade.
Kaye George, a national best-selling and multiple-award-winning author, writes several mystery series: Imogene Duckworthy, Cressa Carraway, People of the Wind, and, as Janet Cantrell, Fat Cat. Fat Cat Spreads Out was published in 2015, as was the second Cressa Carraway mystery. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies, magazines, and her own collection, A Patchwork of Stories. She reviews for Suspense Magazine, and lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Leonard Gill was born and raised in Memphis and today writes about books for the Memphis Flyer, the city’s alternative newsweekly. He also spotlights local writers for a monthly book feature in Memphis magazine.
Jamey Hatley is a native of Memphis. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Oxford American, Callaloo, Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History, and elsewhere. She has attended the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, VONA/Voices Writing Workshop, the Oxford American Summit for Ambitious Writers, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Cary Holladay’s seven volumes of fiction include Horse People: Stories and The Deer in the Mirror. She has received an O. Henry Prize and fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Endowment for the Arts. A native of Virginia, she teaches at the University of Memphis.
Ehi Ike published her first novel, Taken Away, at age fourteen and its sequel, Hidden, at eighteen. She has been given the opportunity to speak at the University of Memphis, Jackson Library, along with other events for organizations. She has received the Creative Writing Award from Hollins University and the 2014 Best Literary Artist FACE Award. She is currently completing her BA in creative writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Lee Martin is the author of the novels The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; Break the Skin; River of Heaven; and Quakertown. He has also published three memoirs, From Our House, Turning Bones, and Such a Life; and a short story collection, The Least You Need to Know. He teaches in the MFA program at Ohio State University.
Suzanne Berube Rorhus attended the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, served as coordinator for the Short Mystery Fiction Society’s Derringer Awards, and is a member of Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers. Her published short fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, the anthology Moon Shot, and in various online and print publications, including Norwegian American Weekly. She recently won a Hugh Holton Award for an unpublished mystery manuscript.
Adam Shaw and Penny Register-Shaw have collaborated on several books, including Bloodstream for Image Comics. Adam’s resumé includes murals, illustration, gallery art, and concept design for film and games. Penny is an attorney and writer of children’s books and scripts for television. They spent most of their childhoods in Memphis where they currently live with two canine daughters and receive occasional visits from their human daughter, Sophie.
Sheree Renée Thomas, a native of Memphis, is the Lakes Writer-in-Residence at Smith College. A Cave Canem and NYFA fellow, her work has appeared in Callaloo, Transition, storySouth, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Moment of Change, 80! Memories & Reflections on Ursula K. Le Guin, Mojo: Conjure Stories, Bum Rush the Page, Bronx Biannual No. 2, and So Long Been Dreaming. Thomas edited the World Fantasy Award–winning Dark Matter anthologies and is the author of Shotgun Lullabies.
Troy L. Wi
ggins is from Memphis, Tennessee. He was raised on a steady diet of Spider-Man comic books and Japanese role-playing games. His short fiction has appeared in the Griots: Sisters of the Spear and Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History anthologies. He lives in Memphis with his wife and their two tiny dogs.
David Wesley Williams is the author of the novel Long Gone Daddies, a Gold Medal winner of the Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Best Regional Fiction. His short fiction has appeared in the anthology Forty Stories and in such journals as The Common and The Pinch. Williams, a veteran Memphis journalist, is a two-time winner of the Memphis Magazine Fiction Contest. He lives in Memphis with his wife Barbara and two retired racing greyhounds.
BONUS MATERIAL
Excerpt from USA Noir: Best of the Akashic Noir Series
Also available in the Akashic Noir Series
Akashic Noir Series Awards & Recognition
INTRODUCTION
WRITERS ON THE RUN
From USA NOIR: Best of the Akashic Noir Series, edited by Johnny Temple
In my early years as a book publisher, I got a call one Saturday from one of our authors asking me to drop by his place for “a smoke.” I politely declined as I had a full day planned. “But Johnny,” the author persisted, “I have some really good smoke.” My curiosity piqued, I swung by, but was a bit perplexed to be greeted with suspicion at the author’s door by an unhinged whore and her near-nude john. The author rumbled over and ushered me in, promptly sitting me down on a smelly couch and assuring the others I wasn’t a problem. Moments later, the john produced a crack pipe to resume the party I had evidently interrupted. This wasn’t quite the smoke I’d envisaged, so I gracefully excused myself after a few (sober) minutes. I scurried home pondering the author’s notion that it was somehow appropriate to invite his publisher to a crack party.
It may not have been appropriate, but it sure was noir.
From the start, the heart and soul of Akashic Books has been dark, provocative, well-crafted tales from the disenfranchised. I learned early on that writings from outside the mainstream almost necessarily coincide with a mood and spirit of noir, and are composed by authors whose life circumstances often place them in environs vulnerable to crime.
My own interest in noir fiction grew from my early exposure to urban crime, which I absorbed from various perspectives. I was born and raised in Washington, DC, and have lived in Brooklyn since 1990. In the 1970s and ’80s, when violent, drug-fueled crime in DC was rampant, my mother hung out with cops she’d befriended through her work as a nearly unbeatable public defender. She also grew close to some of her clients, most notably legendary DC bank robber Lester “LT” Irby (a contributor to DC Noir), who has been one of my closest friends since I was fifteen, though he was incarcerated from the early 1970s until just recently. Complicating my family’s relationship with the criminal justice system, my dad sued the police stridently in his work as legal director of DC’s American Civil Liberties Union.
Both of my parents worked overtime. By the time my sister Kathy was nine and I was seven, we were latchkey kids prone to roam, explore, and occasionally break laws. Though an arrest for shoplifting helped curb my delinquent tendencies, the interest in crime remained. After college I worked with adolescents and completed a master’s degree in social work; my focus was on teen delinquency.
Throughout the 1990s, my relationship with the urban underbelly expanded as I spent a great deal of time in dank nightclubs populated by degenerates and outcasts. I played bass guitar in Girls Against Boys, a rock and roll group that toured extensively in the US and Europe. The long hours on the road not spent on stage gave way to book publishing, which began as a hobby in 1996 with my friends Bobby and Mark Sullivan.
The first book we published was The Fuck-Up, by Arthur Nersesian—a dark, provocative, well-crafted tale from the disenfranchised. A few years later Heart of the Old Country by Tim McLoughlin became one of our early commercial successes. The book was widely praised both for its classic noir voice and its homage to the people of South Brooklyn. While Brooklyn is chock-full of published authors these days, Tim is one of the few who was actually born and bred here. In his five decades, Tim has never left the borough for more than five weeks at a stretch and he knows the place, through and through, better than anyone I’ve met.
In 2003, inspired by Brooklyn’s unique and glorious mix of cultures, Tim and I set out to explore New York City’s largest borough in book form, in a way that would ring true to local residents. Tim loves his home borough despite its flagrant flaws, and was easily seduced by the concept of working with Akashic to try and portray its full human breadth.
He first proposed a series of books, each one set in a different neighborhood, whether it be Bay Ridge, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Fort Greene, Bed-Stuy, or Canarsie. It was an exciting idea, but it’s hard enough to publish a single book, let alone commit to a full series. After we considered various other possibilities, Tim came upon the idea of a fiction anthology organized by neighborhood, each one represented by a different author. We were looking for stylistic diversity, so we focused on “noir,” and defined it in the broadest sense: we wanted stories of tragic, soulful struggle against all odds, characters slipping, no redemption in sight.
Conventional wisdom dictates that literary anthologies don’t sell well, but this idea was too good to resist—it seemed the perfect form for exploring the whole borough, and we got to work soliciting stories. We batted around book titles, including Under the Hood, before settling on Brooklyn Noir. The volume came together beautifully and was a surprise hit for Akashic, quickly selling through multiple printings and winning awards. (See pages 548–550 for a full list of prizes garnered by stories originally published in the Noir Series.)
Having seen nearly every American city, large and small, through the windows of a van or tour bus, I have developed a deep fondness for their idiosyncrasies. So for me it was easy logic to take the model of Brooklyn Noir—sketching out dark urban corners through neighborhood-based short fiction—and extend it to other cities. Soon came Chicago Noir, San Francisco Noir, and London Noir (our first of many overseas locations). Selecting the right editor to curate each book has been the most important decision we make before assembling it. It’s a welcome challenge because writers are often enamored of their hometowns, and many are seduced by the urban landscape’s rough edges. The generous support of literary superheroes like George Pelecanos, Laura Lippman, Dennis Lehane, and Joyce Carol Oates, all of whom have edited series volumes, has been critical.
There are now fifty-nine books in the Noir Series. Forty of them are from American locales. As of this writing, a total of 787 authors have contributed 917 stories to the series and helped Akashic to stay afloat during perilous economic times. By publishing six to eight new volumes in the Noir Series every year, we have provided a steady venue for short stories, which have in recent times struggled with diminishing popularity. Akashic’s commitment to the short story has been rewarded by the many authors—of both great stature and great obscurity—who have allowed us to publish their work in the series for a nominal fee.
I am particularly indebted to all sixty-seven editors who have cumulatively upheld a high editorial standard across the series. The series would never have gotten this far without rigorous quality control. There also couldn’t be a Noir Series without my devoted and tireless (if occasionally irreverent) staff led by Johanna Ingalls, Ibrahim Ahmad, and Aaron Petrovich.
* * *
This volume serves up a top-shelf selection of stories from the series set in the United States. USA Noir only scratches the surface, however, and every single volume has more gems on offer.
When I set out to compile USA Noir, I was delighted by the immediate positive responses from nearly every author I contacted. The only author on my initial invitation list who isn’t included here is one I couldn’t track down: the publisher explained to me that the writer was “literally on the run.” While I’m disappointed
that we can’t include the story, the circumstance is true to the Noir Series spirit.
And part of me—the noir part—is expecting a phone call from the writer, inviting me over for a smoke.
Johnny Temple
Brooklyn, NY
July 2013
___________________
More about USA Noir
The best USA-based stories in the Akashic Noir Series, compiled into one volume and edited by Johnny Temple!
“All the heavy hitters . . . came out for USA Noir . . . an important anthology of stories shrewdly culled by Johnny Temple.” —New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice
“Readers will be hard put to find a better collection of short stories in any genre.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“A must read for mystery fans, not just devotees of Akashic’s ‘Noir’ series, this anthology serves as both an introduction for newcomers and a greatest-hits package for regular readers of the series . . . There isn’t a weak story in the collection . . . Strongly recommended for readers who enjoy mysteries published by Hard Case Crime, as well as for fans of police procedurals.” —Library Journal (starred review)
“The 37 stories in this collection represent the best of the U.S.-based anthologies, and the list of contributors include virtually anyone who’s made the best-seller list with a work of crime fiction in the last decade . . . a must-have anthology.” —Booklist (starred review)
“It’s hard to imagine how the present anthology could be topped for sheer marquee appeal . . . Perhaps the single most impressive feature of the collection is its range of voices, from Joyce Carol Oates’ faux innocent young family to Megan Abbott’s impressionable high school kids to the chorus of peremptory voices S.J. Rozan plants in a haunted thief’s head. Eat your heart out, Walt Whitman: These are the folks who hear America singing, and moaning and screaming.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A less enlightened Temple cover collection of crime and mystery stories could easily reduce itself to stereotypical cartoons about white detectives with a whiskey bottle and a gun in the drawer but Akashic’s series takes itself very seriously in its mission to represent all aspects of a city’s dark side.” —Kirkus Reviews, Feature Story/Interview with Johnny Temple
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