New Haven Noir

by Amy Bloom

  Inside, your eyes wandered the room and you noticed you were the only one not dressed for a workout or an afternoon at the mall. A tall man wearing jeans and a T-shirt walked in, and you wondered if he was picking up his wife or daughter. He sat down. You felt out of place in your bright dress, but this time you’d at least kept up your appearance and you wouldn’t let it go now. You dressed how you wanted to feel. The girls waiting with you appeared no older than Nelly. You could have been their mother. One side-eyed you, her eyelids squinched, her lips pursed, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. You sat up straight, hands folded in your lap, legs crossed at the ankles. The chair was cold and hard underneath you, and you thought back to the hospital the night your mom died. You hoped no one there would recognize you, which is oddly enough something you never thought about as you gulped martinis in dark bars, sniffed coke in bathrooms, and checked into seedy motels off 91 with men like Nelly’s father, this baby’s father. The man shifted in his seat and tapped his foot against the linoleum floor. They called your name and, in a tight, dimly lit room, a nurse walked you through your options, and you gazed out the window and thought about tomorrow and starting over again. You took a breath and began answering her questions. Heat seared your skin and you were melting. You tried to run but had no legs, and rubble rained down on you, and you thought of Nelly, your baby, her baby, and you saw him lying in the bed next to you, his face, her face.

  * * *

  A snatch of color caught my eye. I squinted and focused on it—a shoe. A scorched, light-green slingback. A pale pink rose bloomed from its toe. I knew the shoe because I had photographed it only a few weeks earlier. My mother walked in a tight circle, hugging herself. A breeze blew and carried the reporter’s voice to me as I stared at the shoe: “Now, back to the studio . . .”

  I’d had to ride my bike home as my mom finished talking to the police. When I got there I lay down on the other bed in my room where Aunt V had slept the night before and felt something hard under her thin pillow. A diary with The Queen of Secrets scrawled across its worn cover in Aunt V’s spidery cursive. I opened it and started reading.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  Amy Bloom is the best-selling author of three novels, three collections of short stories, a children’s book, and a collection of essays. She has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and has won a National Magazine Award for Fiction. She lives in Connecticut and taught at Yale University for the last decade. She is now Wesleyan University’s Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing.

  Stephen L. Carter is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor at Yale Law School. He is the author of eight works of nonfiction, most recently The Violence of Peace: America’s Wars in the Age of Obama. He has published six novels under his own name, others under a pseudonym, and over eight hundred short stories, articles, op-eds, and reviews. He could do none of this without the love, support, and deft editing of his wife, Enola Aird.

  John Crowley is a recipient of the American Academy and Institute of Letters Award for Literature and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. His sci-fi novel Engine Summer is listed in David Pringle’s Science Fiction: The 100 Best Novels. His books include Little, Big, the Ægypt Cycle quartet, The Translator, Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, Four Freedoms, and several volumes of short fiction. He teaches fiction writing and screenwriting at Yale.

  Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and Pulitzer Prize), The Snow Queen, Specimen Days, and By Nightfall, as well as the nonfiction book Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown. His latest book, A Wild Swan and Other Tales (illustrated by Yuko Shimizu), was published in November 2015. He lives in New York and teaches at Yale.

  Lisa D. Gray’s writing tackles issues of race and class while highlighting the intersections between identities and groups. She currently teaches at Mills College and earned her BA from Spelman College and her MFA from Mills College. She’s attended VONA, completed a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, and received the Joseph Henry Jackson Award for distinguished writing from the San Francisco Foundation.

  Chris Knopf’s latest Sam Acquillo novel, Back Lash, received a starred review from Booklist. The Last Refuge, Two Time, and Black Swan were reviewed by the New York Times. Dead Anyway drew starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Kirkus, and Library Journal, was named a Best Crime Novel of 2012 by the Boston Globe, and won the 2013 Nero Award. Kill Switch was short-listed for the 2016 Derringer Award.

  Alice Mattison’s most recent book is The Kite and the String: How to Write with Spontaneity and Control—and Live to Tell the Tale. She’s the author of six novels, including When We Argued All Night and The Book Borrower, and four collections of stories, including In Case We’re Separated. She lives in New Haven and teaches fiction in the MFA program at Bennington College.

  Karen E. Olson, a New Haven native, received the Sara Ann Freed Memorial Award for Sacred Cows, her mystery debut set in her hometown, and a Shamus nomination for Shot Girl, the fourth in the Annie Seymour mystery series. A longtime journalist, she was an editor at the New Haven Register and is currently working at Yale while writing her third crime series and enjoying the best pizza anywhere.

  Chandra Prasad has written several award-winning novels, including On Borrowed Wings, a historical drama set at Yale University. She is the originator and editor of Mixed, an anthology on the multiracial experience, which was published to international acclaim by W.W. Norton. Prasad’s shorter works have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, among other places. Her first young adult novel, Damselfly, will be published by Scholastic in 2018.

  David Rich splits time between writing movies, television, plays, and novels. He wrote the feature film Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Phillips, as well as episodes of MacGyver and other shows. Forsaking Los Angeles for small-town Connecticut, David turned to fiction, writing Caravan of Thieves and Middle Man, featuring Marine Lieutenant Rollie Waters and his con-artist father.

  Roxana Robinson is the author of nine books: five novels, including Cost; three collections of short stories; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She teaches in the Hunter College MFA Program and divides her time between New York, Connecticut, and Maine. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation and is the president of the Authors Guild.

  Hirsh Sawhney grew up in Orange, Connecticut, and currently resides in New Haven. He has also lived in New York City, London, and New Delhi. His debut novel, South Haven, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. He is the editor of Akashic’s Delhi Noir anthology, and his articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Guardian, and the Times Literary Supplement. He is an assistant professor at Wesleyan University.

  Jessica Speart is the author of the highly acclaimed narrative nonfiction book Winged Obsession about the world’s most notorious butterfly smuggler. The book was an Indie Next pick and has been optioned for a feature film. Speart also penned a mystery series featuring US Fish and Wildlife Service agent Rachel Porter. The series was created after years of investigating wildlife and drug-trafficking crimes for publications such as the New York Times Magazine.

  Jonathan Stone does most of his writing on the commuter train between the Connecticut suburbs and his advertising job in Manhattan. He has published eight mystery/suspense novels, including The Teller, Two for the Show, and Moving Day, which was an Amazon Kindle First. His short stories have appeared in the 2013 and 2014 Mystery Writers of America anthologies, and in Best American Mystery Stories 2016, edited by Elizabeth George.

  Sarah Pemberton Strong is the author of two novels, including the noir homage The Fainting Room, “a masterful exploration of longing and its consequences” (Publishers Weekly). She
is also the author of a book of poetry. To write “Callback,” her story in this voume, she drew on seventeen years’ experience working as a plumber. She currently teaches writing at Quinnipiac University and lives in Hamden, Connecticut.

  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 h
itters . . . 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