SHOT IN DETROIT-Wylie Edwards

In SHOT IN DETROIT, twelve African-American men under forty die. At one point in its long gestation, I composed back stories for each man, not sure if I would use them or not. 

I decided not. The story belonged to Violet Hart, the photographer, and these long pieces diluted that--and it made for too many characters, something I personally don't care for. 

But I do feel their stories are worth telling. The stories are all basically fictitious but mirror the sort of deaths that take place in any urban area. 

And THEN THERE WERE THREE: Wylie Edwards

His whole life was about cars, and it was a flat tire that landed him here—that was one of his final thoughts as he lay dying on a deserted road outside Jackson. Deserted except for the two dudes who’d just stabbed him and were about to steal his truck. At least, that’s what it looked like from his view from the ground. What else could they want? It wasn’t even dark yet—he’d bet they were high on something. It was a back road, but someone could possibly come along.

            A huge fist had jabbed him as he put the jack away.  The hand was so quick he hadn’t spotted the flash of metal as the knife went into his chest. Only got a look at them as they walked away: two white guys with bullet-shaped heads, black tee shirts, swastikas on the backs of their necks. Nobody’d believe it. Except maybe they would. Hadn’t one of those Oklahoma City bombers come out of Michigan? He’d been a kid then, but he’d heard later they came from Lapeer or some farming community. Or deer-hunting country like this was.

 Wasn’t even a new truck they were hi-jacking—he’d bought it used, if not used up, last year. Made the mistake of fixing it up, drawing attention to it: decals, cool paint job. Well that’s what he’d done since he graduated in June. Fixed trucks up. He was learning how to customize vans right now. Don Blake, guy he worked for, was showing him the ropes.

“You got an artistic bent,” Don said, encouraging him with the personal use of the garage’s tools and paint ‘cause he couldn’t afford to pay him much. “You’re a decent mechanic but a better artist.” Don built a special down-draft paint booth for him and brought a fellow in from Indianapolis to give him some tips on the air-brushing technique. He picked it up quick. Too bad he hadn't been half as good at math.

Sometimes Wylie imagined putting his pictures on a canvass. Maybe not the graphics that looked like cartoons or tattoos, but the ones he sometimes was asked to do of nature. Last month he painted sand dunes and beach grass on a van. Those  dunes would look awesome on a piece of wood.

He guessed his future as an artist was coming to a quick end—along with everything else. Funny thing. He didn’t even feel that bad. Probably in shock. If someone—like his Mom, a nurse—was around he could probably be saved. She’d stick a tube in his chest and stop the air flow out. Keep his lung from collapsing; stop his insides from kinking up. He’d read a textbook or two when he wasn’t looking at car magazines or Playboy. No Mom around to save him today though; she was doing the night shift just a couple of miles away. No way to call. First thing the guy did after sticking a knife in him was take his cell and toss it.

 Knowing some medical stuff from living with a nurse, he thought he was probably a goner. He also couldn’t help but wonder what the guys were going to do with him. Probably leave him here to bleed out or die of an obstruction before bleeding to death.

If his whole life had been spent around cars, his whole life had also been spent around guys like those two. One of those guys was ripping the tab off a can of beer, lighting weed from the smell of it. Other one was examining the contents of Wylie’s toolbox. He heard a wrench fall, clattering against the side of his truck.

Cons—he could pick up the smell of the prison down the road from the ground he lay on. He’d bet they’d been out of the place less than a month. They still had the kind of haircuts men got at Jackson though. Everything about these guys shouted Jackson. Could have even climbed the wall, but he'd have heard the sirens.

He could hear the two guys debating what to do with him now. Telling each other that he’d probably be okay if they just let him lie where he was. But maybe someone would see him on the roadside before they could get away. He’d be alive to identify them, one of them said. Maybe it was better to take him along. Get out of here before someone else came along.

 Suddenly they were picking him up, dumping him in the back of the truck. The wind whistled through his chest as they fled down the road.

Saturay Music: Beth Orton

Nothing Compares 2 U

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 29, 2016

                                   NEXT FRIDAY, SPECIAL TOPIC: FIRST BOOKS
 

Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (from Ron Scheer in the archives)

I guess you’d call this creative nonfiction. A former colleague recommended this book to me after reading some of my thoughts on the life-affirming and health-inducing aspects of listening to jazz as I deal with a visitation of brain cancer. The great irony is that the joyous practice of improvisation in smoky clubs of the bebop era was so virulently self-destructive for its musicians.

In Dyer’s evocative and impressionistic character sketches of several of its iconic figures (Lester Young, Bud Powell, Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Ben Webster, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus) we witness mostly downward trajectories, as drugs, prison, racism, alcoholism, mental illness, and violence take their toll. Whether or not you think of them as survivors, you come to understand that the music they invented and played was an act of defiance and subversion in the face of demons both internal and external.

I don’t want this to sound over dramatized. Dyer immerses the reader in an imagined subjective world of each musician, and that world is seldom as harrowing as it appears from outside. Like some, Lester Young floats in the isolation of an alcohol haze, never quite sure if he is living or already dead. Thelonious Monk glories in an ongoing rage against fellow musicians and the instrument he plays. 

Meanwhile, some escape to Europe, where they find an appreciative audience and are granted a reprieve from the vestiges of Jim Crow discrimination. If anyone fares badly in the book, it is Chet Baker, who is portrayed musically as someone whose seductiveness as a performer was always in the form of promises he never kept—a self-absorption that verged on coitus interruptus. 

Dyer bases his book on biographical and historical accounts, but is more interested in impressions than facts. The end result is a cross between dream and documentary. While representing jazz composition and performance as driven by the effort to capture evanescent and transcendent moods (think of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo”), Dyer’s lucidly clear prose is a wonder of poetic expression.

He closes the book with a stimulating essay on mid-century jazz, with an overview of the wave of high-profile jazz musicians who followed in the decades since (e.g., Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett), while illuminating some of the key issues that have animated the discourse of musicologists who have never lost their love for the genre. There is also a discography and a lengthy bibliography.

Sergio Angelini, DEAD MEN DON'T SKI, Patricia Moyes
Yvette Banek, MURDER AT ARROWAYS, Helen Reilly
Les Blatt, THE SIRENS SANG OF MURDER, Sarah Caudwell
Bill Crider, THE LAST TALK WITH LOLA FAYE, Thomas H. Cook
Martin Edwards, THE CHISTLEHURST MYSTERY, E. L. Mann
Curt Evans, CAPE COD
Ed Gorman, BONJOUR TRISTESSE, Francoise Sagan
Rich Horton, TWO BLACK SHEEP, Warwick Deeping
Jerry House, EARTH'S LAST CITADEL, Moore and Kuttner
Nick Jones, STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, Patricia Highsmith
George Kelley, THE SALIVA TREE, Brian Aldiss
Margot Kinberg, THE CASK, Freeman Wills Crofts
Rob Kitchin, JAPAN 1941,  Ari Hotta
B.V. Lawson, MURDER AT THE FOUL LINE, edited by Otto Penzler
Steve Lewis/Barry Gardner, MAKE NO BONES, Aaron Elkins
Todd Mason, FANTASTIC, February 1969, edited by Barry N. Malzberg; F&SF, February 1969, edited by Edward L. Ferman; STARTLING MYSTERY STORIES, Summer 1969, edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes
J. F. Norris, DEATH MY DARLING DAUGHTER, Jonathan Stagge
Mathew Paust, WHAT'S WRONG WITH DORFMAN? John Blumenthal
Reactions to Reading, THE DROWNED BOY, Karin Fossum
James Reasoner, LIAR'S KISS, Eric Skillman
Richard Robinson, First Contacts, The Essential Murray Leinster by edited by Joe Rico
Gerard Saylor, WEST TEXAS, Al Sarrantonio, THE COLD. COLD GROUND, Adrian McKinty
Kerrie Smith, THE BARRAKKE MYSTERY, Arthur Upfield
Kevin Tipple, SHAKEN: STORIES FOR JAPAN, Tim Hallinan
TomCat, THE GREAT MERLINI, Clayton Rawson 
TracyK LIVE AND LET DIE, Ian Fleming 

Nothing Compare 2 U

SHOT IN DETROIT: Ramir Obabie

In SHOT IN DETROIT, twelve African-American men under forty die. At one point in its long gestation, I composed back stories for each man, not sure if I would use them or not. 

I decided not. The story belonged to Violet Hart, the photographer, and these long pieces diluted that--and it made for too many characters, something I personally don't care for. 

But I do feel their stories are worth telling. The stories are all basically fictitious but mirror the sort of deaths that take place in any urban area. 

PORTRAITS OF DETROIT: RAMIR OBABIE

Ramir watched his father die in ’93, swearing he’d never touch the stuff. Not drugs, nor drink. The smell in Daddy’s room was enough to put him off. Daddy never got past Nam, talked about it for the next twenty-five years, dreamed about napalm, Agent Orange, rounds quickly jammed into a gun, jungle stuff. Hot sweaty nightmares, bone-chilling ones, waking everyone up with his moaning, yelling, thrashing. A bed board pounding the wall didn’t mean sex in the Obabie household. Daddy went to a Vet’s group once or twice, but no one down there encouraged his return. Tyrone was too damned angry for anyone to deal with. Except his wife—and not always her.

The three kids could hear Mama soothing Daddy in a sing-songy voice on those nights. “Gonna be alright, Baby. Gonna be alright.”
 
It wasn’t all right, though. Tyrone Obabie, who’d picked up the habit during his 1969 tour, cashed out because he couldn’t remember how much heroin he’d already put in his veins.
 
“Would’ve killed a horse,” the White Coat in the ER said.
 
“Maybe he wanted it that way,” Ramir’s older sister told White Coat in the corridor in her sassiest voice. She never was any good at dealing with men like him.
 
“Thirty years of drug use—should’ve done him in years ago.”
 
Ramir’s older sister had no quick comeback for that. White Coat turned his back on the Obabies.
 
“Your Daddy wasn’t meant to be a solider.” The children turned to look at Mama. Mama had never said a bad word about Ty, even if she was pretty much used-up by then. Was anyone meant for war, Ramir wanted to ask.
 
Ramir’s two sisters grew up to be school teachers—one teaching math in a community college. They married, even when nobody else was doing it. Had kids. Moved to Southfield—bought ranch houses with deep back lots that their husbands mowed on Saturdays. Put their father and his ranting and his drug use behind them. Helped their Mother out when she needed an extra twenty, a weekend away, a grandkid to hug.
 
Ramir—well nothing worked out the way he expected. Didn’t finish high school—even 11th grade—despite his sisters’ team-ragging him whenever they could. Him being the baby only got Ramir so far, and he was just a no-count drag on them eventually.
 
Mama—she finally tossed him out too— tired of finding his drug shit everywhere—scared of cars stopping outside the house late, sick of coming in from her job book-keeping at an auto parts supplier to find him unconscious on the sofa, weary of dialing 911, sitting by his hospital bed to see if he was gonna join his Daddy.
 
The only thing Ramir had going for him was his looks. Sometimes girls did tricks, then turned over the money. Not that he was a pimp. They did it without him asking—least most of the time. Put a ten or a twenty in his hand, stuck their hand down his pants. He put their hard-earned money in his nose or his vein. Had a girl out in Troy, white girl too, who earned a hundred dollars a pop. Fixed him up with a new dealer when his old one got sent to Wayne Country Correctional. Said this guy had some sweet stuff for him to try. Something new. Sheila, she was his favorite coochie all right. Took care of him good.
 
He did everything right, new needle, cleaned the vein, but that drug—that sweet stuff Sheila found—took him to another place, place he’d never been. Couldn’t move, couldn’t shout, couldn’t blink his eyes even. And eventually, he couldn’t breathe.

Author's Note: Although this is in a larger font on my compose function, I can't get it to be larger here. Sorry. 

Nothing Compares 2 U

Series

I believe that in a series-and I am thinking as much of series like Ferrante's Neopolitan books as in crime fiction- that each book should basically function as a standalone. You should not have to read the second book to understand the first one. It's okay to do this on a TV show, but not in a book or even a movie. Now Book 2 can give you a greater understanding of the characters or extend the plot but it should not be necessary to read it to understand the story.

What do you think?

Prince: Nothing Compares

Forgotten Movies: RAISING ARIZONA

I loved this movie from the Coen Brothers when I saw it in 1987. Now, not so much. What seemed clever then seems cloying now. Hi (Cage)and Ed (Hunter) steal a baby from parents who have five of them. The theft yields little happiness for them and various other people get in the way. There is too much racing around, too many alternative southern accents, too much screaming. There were so few scenes of them with their baby, it never felt real. Hunter was in it too little for it to become the screwball romance it wanted to be. This was very disappointing. Was my taste in 1987 bad or am I jaded now? It was easy to find places that better lines and better situations could have saved the day. I don't know. Maybe it's me.Have you seen it lately?
What movie did not hold up for you thirty years on?

SHOT IN DETROIT: Pete Oberon

In SHOT IN DETROIT, twelve African-American men under forty die. At one point in its long gestation, I composed back stories for each man, not sure if I would use them or not. 

I decided not. The story belonged to Violet Hart, the photographer, and these long pieces diluted that--and it made for too many characters, something I personally don't care for. 

But I do feel their stories are worth telling. The stories are all basically fictitious but mirror the sort of deaths that take place in any urban area. 

PORTRAITS OF DETROIT: Peter Oberon

            A female reporter stuck a mike in Pete’s face on Christmas morning, after the fire was out. “How many years have you been with the DFD?” 

Seventeen, he told her. Most of them spent in a 109-year old firehouse that was a fire hazard itself. No one knew about the condition of the wiring, but who had the money to replace it? Not Detroit. He didn’t tell her that, of course. They’d been read the riot act about dissing the City.

            “I hear you’re the one they call on when a fellow fire fighter is buried under debris.”

Pete was 6”4 and weighted 270. He could yank floorboards out if it took that. Hoist fallen walls, loosen joists, carry two people at once. 

 “Done it once or twice.”

“Like today, right? You pulled someone out today? On Christmas.”

He nodded.

 “How do you feel about risking your life to put out a fire set by arsonists? Torched a house that’s been scheduled for demolition for five years.”

Suddenly she sounded angry; her eyes dark holes. Pete was flummoxed for a second, still taking in the face he’d watched for years on the nightly news. A black woman with lighter freckles that he saw now. He guessed the heat had melted her makeup. Was she angry with him or was it just for show? Did she want him to rant about it?

 “Breaks your heart. Breaks your heart,” he answered senselessly. Then he caught the jittery look of his crew commander and tried to come up with something better. “And  these guys here today—man—they do whatever they can for the people  in Detroit. Today and every day.  ‘Specially on Christmas.” He stopped short, seeing she’d already pulled the mike away.

The Christmas wreath with bells on her lapel jingled as she walked away. He wondered how she could navigate the icy sidewalk in those high heels.

They didn’t show much of what he said on the news that night. Instead the shot was of the rubble from the vacant house burned to the ground, a comment on the DFD failure or the vicissitudes of this city. But the fire hadn’t spread to the house next door, inhabited by an elderly woman and her grandson. That was their success.                
Sephia and he watched the whole thing after they finished off the holiday ham and exchanged gifts. Just the two youngest looking on with saucer eyes.

“That bitch,” Sephie said, switching the TV off. “She didn’t have to show that trashy yard. Made it look like you guys failed."

“Doubt it was her decision,” Pete said, defending the woman he’d spent two minutes with. The face familiar to him from years of watching the TV news—except for those freckles. “Don’t they have bosses to decide that?”

“Damn, I wish I’d taped it,” Sephie said, jumping up. “Maybe they’ll show it again at eleven. I wonder if any of the neighbors saw it”   

That hadn’t, of course. Didn’t watch the news. And Channel 8 didn’t air the segment again. There were new fires, robberies, and deaths to report. The Free Press story the next morning was on page 6 and didn’t even mention him. The headline read EARLY MORNING CHRISTMAS FIRE ON THE EASTSIDE. It barely got a column.

It was a vacant house again just a few weeks later. Another on the list for years. Maybe inhabited by a squatter. Sometimes a squatter would torch a house he knew was due for demolition—just out of pique.

Place was a dump. And also an inferno by the time they arrived. Flames and smoke were already blowing out the windows on the second floor. Engine 28 and Squad Car 2 arrived, joined by two more pumpers, a ladder truck, and a battalion chief. An additional crew stood ready. Engine 28 fired a surge of water that knocked back the fire. The crew stormed the house seconds later, a Detroit fire-fighting tactic not shared in many cities where the approach was more cautious. They advanced up the stairs, hose in hand. Pete in front, ready to knock down whatever got in the way. He was high on adrenalin. That’s the way it worked, the reason they went forward. The men doused hot spots as they moved up the steps and into the attic.

It happened quickly. There was a creaking sound, and few pieces of wood from the ceiling dropped to the floor. Less than two seconds later, the entire roof collapsed. Pete Oberon was pinned to the floor. He made it out of there on a stretcher, made it a few weeks more in a hospital bed. But the pain was too enormous, the infections too great. Septicemia killed him as much as the burns. 

He made the headline this time.

Review from Publisher's Weekly

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-940610-82-5

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 22, 2016

 Happy Eighth Birthday Friday Forgotten Books

Here is what it looked like then.

FRIDAYS: The Book You Have to Read

This is the first of what I optimistically hope will become Friday recommendations of books we love but might have forgotten over the years. I have asked several people to help me by also remembering a favorite book. Their blog sites are listed below. I also asked each of them to tag someone to recommend a book for next Friday. I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next. Here's my choice.

Desperate Characters by Paula Fox
It's difficult to remember, thirty years on, New York in the seventies, The City was facing bankruptcy, the streets were dangerous, frequent strikes left unattended garbage for the rodents, buildings crumbled. Paula Fox's novel Desperate Characters perfectly captures that time along with the similarly disintegrating marriage of Sophie and Otto Bentwood. The story begins with an unexpected cat bite. "Because it's savage," Otto answers Sophie's puzzled, "why?" It was a cat she was trying to feed that bit her. This well-intentioned act, this McGuffin, sends the couple off on a weekend odyssey, where ominous events continue to haunt the childless couple. They find little solace in each other and there is no easy resolution at the end. The quiet desperation that suffuses their story is heart-breaking. The writing is haunting, lucid, and succinct.
Fox has also written two books about her life (Borrowed Finery and The Coldest Winter), a few other novels (The Widow's Children) and many children's books. But nothing is finer than this one for me.

Check out other recommendations here:
http://billcrider.blogspot.com/
http://bofexler.blogspot.com/
http://anthonyneilsmith.typepad.com/crimedog_one_the_internet/
http://sandrascoppettone.blogspot.com/
http://patrickshawnbagley.blogspot.com/
http://sandrablabber.blogspot.com/
http://josephinedamian.blogspot.com/
http://traviserwin.blogspot.com/
http://randomactsofunkindness.blogspot.com/

http://eudaemoniaforall.blogspot.com/

http://crimespace.ning.com/profile/BrianL

 Here it is now


Yvette Banek, DEATH AS A DINOSAUR, Frances and Richard Lockridge
Joe Barone, STICK GAME, Peter Bowen
Elgin Bleeker, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, William Lindsay Gresham
Les Blatt, RICHARDSON'S FIRST CASE, Sir Basil Thomson
Brian Busby, Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Jean Rivard [Vida Bruce, trans]

Bill Crider, WIPED OUT, John D. Newsome

Martin Edwards, THE RIVERSIDE VILLAS MURDERS, Kingsley Amis

Curt Evans, DEATH OF A BUSYBODY, George Bellairs
Ed Gorman, CROSS COUNTRY: THE BOOK BIZ. Herbert Kastle
Rich Horton,  Ace Double Reviews, 95: The Genetic General, by Gordon R. Dickson/Time to Teleport, by Gordon R. Dickson
Jerry House, THE BIG BOOK OF ADVENTURE STORIES, ed. Otto Penzler
Nic Jones,  DEATH OF A CITIZEN, Donald Hamilton
George Kelley, COLOR OUT OF TIME, Michael Shea
Margot Kinberg, THE PAGE 3 MURDERS, Kalpana Swaminathan
B.V. Lawson, A TIME FOR PIRATES, Gavin Black
Steve Lewis/Barry Gardner, DEATH OF A RUSSIAN PRIEST, Stuart Kaminsky 
Todd Mason, THE COMPLETE HUMBUG, edited by Harvey Kurtzman et al.
J. F. Norris, I'LL BE JUDGE, I'LL BE JURY, Elizaberth Hely
Mathew Paust, JACKSTRAW, Ron Faust
Reactions to Reading, SIX FOUR, Hideo Yokoyama 
James Reasoner, PHANTOM RAIDERS, Peter Dawson
Gerard Saylor, PARADISE SKY, Joe R. Lansdale
Kerrie Smith, PROHIBITED ZONE, Alastair Sarre
The Rap Sheet, Steven Nester. THE FEARMAKERS, Darwin L. Teilhut
Kevin Tipple/Barry Ergang, SON OF A WANTED MAN, Louis L'Amour
TomCat, THE MYSTERY OF THE INVISIBLE DOG, M.V. Carey
TracyK, WHAT IS MINE, Anne Holt; TROUBLE ON THE THAMES, Victor Bridges 
Westlake Review, ONE OF US IS WRONG, Samuel Holt

R.I.P Prince

About UNLOADED

This anthology was conceived and put together by Eric Beetner through Down and Out Books. Here is an article with Eric at the Washington Post where he explains the concept behind asking writers for crime stories that do not feature guns as a weapon. Any profits from the collection will be sent to organizations working for better gun control in our society.

My story is called "Stark Raving" and concerns two elderly siblings fighting over the disposition of their mother's collection of beanie babies. I had a lot of fun writing it. About as close to a cozy as I have ever gotten.

You can find it in the usual places. 

My First Library (Well almost)

This was my first library. Well, almost. Earlier we had a mobile library because my section of Philly was considered almost a suburb. Most of the houses were built in the forties. What was your first library?

What I remember most about this glorious library was that I went every Friday after school and took out the number of books I was permitted often.  I have told this before but the children's librarian was an African-American woman named Mrs. Robinson. She was the smartest person I knew and tried to steer me from reading Cherry Ames and Sue Barton books and on to more classical works. A hard thing because I was wedded to reading dull books about nurses instead of exciting ones about going into space of boating down the Mississippi or Amazon. When I was twelve, I moved into the adult section and waved longingly to Mrs. Robinson who was trying her best with other kids by then.
I never had an overdue book and still dread having one today.

Tuesday Night Music: PRESSURE

Forgotten Movies: A NEW LEAF

One of my absolute favorites. Elaine May directed this film about a man (Walter Mathau) who loses all of his money due to his profligate ways and must marry to avoid an impoverished existence. Who cannot love both the klutzy botanist, Elaine May, and the rehabilitation of a man who becomes her most devoted admirer. Truly magical. It can never be remade and please keep Ben Stiller away from it.

Megan's Mother's Day Piece for REAL SIMPLE

http://www.realsimple.com/magazine-more/inside-magazine/life-lessons/surprising-way-movie-brought-me-closer-my-mom

Friday's Forgotten Books, April 15, 2016

Check for the links with Todd Mason.

Movie Stars

This is the title of a new Jack Pendarvis collection of stories, which I don't yet own. But it got me to thinking about the importance of movie stars for me in my childhood. I sent away for their photos and they were sent back properly machine autographed. I spent most of my allowance on magazines such as PHOTOPLAY and MODERN SCREEN. I was especially enamored of (with?) Clark Gable, who was exactly my grandfather's age. More suitable candidates (but still the age of my father) were Tony Curtis, George Maharis, Richard Chamberlain and Troy Donahue. (Notice the prevalence of men who turned out to be gay)
I spent a lot of time fantasizing about how we might meet up when I was old enough to take off for Hollywood.

I know you are mostly male, but who was your teen fantasy figure.

National Theater Live

Find out about the National Theater Life which may be in your neighborhood theater.
http://crimespreemag.com/hangmen-reviewed/