Philadelphia Noir Read online

  This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  © 2010 Akashic Books

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

  Philadelphia map by Aaron Petrovich

  eISBN-13: 978-1-617-75002-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-936070-63-3

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010922722

  All rights reserved

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

  Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

  Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane

  Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

  Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth

  edited by Tim McLoughlin & Thomas Adcock

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

  D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos

  Delhi Noir (India), edited by Hirsh Sawhney

  Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking

  Dublin Noir (Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen

  Havana Noir (Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas

  Indian Country Noir, edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martínez

  Istanbul Noir (Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

  Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce

  London Noir (England), edited by Cathi Unsworth

  Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd & John Byrd

  Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

  Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lawrence Block

  Mexico City Noir (Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II

  Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

  Moscow Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

  New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

  Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips

  Paris Noir (France), edited by Aurélien Masson

  Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

  Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell

  Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

  Richmond Noir, edited by Andrew Blossom,

  Brian Castleberry & Tom De Haven

  Rome Noir (Italy), edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski

  San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

  San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Seattle Noir, edited by Curt Colbert

  Toronto Noir (Canada), edited by Janine Armin & Nathaniel G. Moore

  Trinidad Noir, edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason

  Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

  Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

  FORTHCOMING:

  Barcelona Noir (Spain), edited by Adriana Lopez & Carmen Ospina

  Cape Cod Noir, edited by David L. Ulin

  Copenhagen Noir (Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaëlis

  Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat

  Lagos Noir (Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

  Mumbai Noir (India), edited by Altaf Tyrewala

  Pittsburgh Noir, edited by Kathleen George

  San Diego Noir, edited by Maryelizabeth Hart

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  PART I: CITY OF BURSTS

  AIMEE LABRIE

  South Philadelphia

  Princess

  SOLOMON JONES

  Strawberry Mansion

  Scarred

  ASALI SOLOMON

  West Philadelphia

  Secret Pool

  KEITH GILMAN

  Grays Ferry

  Devil’s Pocket

  PART II: CITY OF OTHERLY LOVE

  DENNIS TAFOYA

  East Falls

  Above the Imperial

  LAURA SPAGNOLI

  Rittenhouse Square

  A Cut Above

  HALIMAH MARCUS

  Narberth

  Swimming

  PART III: THE FAKER CITY

  MEREDITH ANTHONY

  Fishtown

  Fishtown Odyssey

  JIM ZERVANOS

  Fairmount

  Your Brother, Who Loves You

  CARLIN ROMANO

  University City

  “Cannot Easy Normal Die”

  DIANE AYRES

  Bella Vista

  Seeing Nothing

  PART IV: THOSE WHO FORGET THE PAST…

  DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI

  Frankford

  Lonergan’s Girl

  CORDELIA FRANCES BIDDLE

  Old City

  Reality

  GERALD KOLPAN

  South Street

  The Ratcatcher

  CARY HOLLADAY

  Chestnut Hill

  Ghost Walk

  About the Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  GREENE COUNTRY CRIME SCENE

  C’mon, Ben Franklin and noir? The Framers and noir? George I-Cannot-Tell-a-Lie Washington and noir? According to the national mythology, and even our local creation tale about William Penn’s “Greene country towne,” Philadelphia Blanc makes a more sensible title for a volume of local stories than Philadelphia Noir. This, after all, is where all of America’s greatness and goodness and idealism began.

  Betsy Ross dangling a cigarette from her lip? Abigail Adams two-timing John with a local punk?

  You could say that was then, and this is noir.

  But you’d be wrong. Read any of the eighteenth-century scholars who love colonial Philadelphia more than their own parents or kids, and you know that some pretty bad defecation was going down in our cobblestoned streets back then, and it got even worse.

  By the 1830s and ’40s, Philadelphia’s antiblack and anti-Catholic riots guaranteed a steady number of bashed heads and windows. Readers innocent of the real Philadelphia may want to consult historian Gary Nash’s fine First City (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), and learn of our antebellum street gangs, “the Moyamensing Killers, Gumballs, Bloodtubs, Scroungers, Hyenas, Bedbugs, Swampoodle Terriers, Nighthawks, Flayers, and Deathfetchers.”

  You’ve only heard of the Phillies?

  When local officials expanded Philadelphia in 1854 by merging its two square miles with the hundreds of small towns around it—creating the 135-square-mile municipal behemoth it remains today—the move came largely out of desperation, the need to control a crime scene gone wild.

  And how far we’ve come! Nash’s colorfully named gangs are the spiritual ancestors of today’s “flash mobs”—hundreds of no-goodnik, dumb-as-a-doornail teens (with, we suspect, not-so-hot grades), who congregate somewhere in Center City at the flash of a global Twitter message and start beating the crap out of normal passersby.

  Yes, it sometimes happens in Philadelphia, City of Brotherly Love, not far from Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.

  America’s first great city, first capital, and first industrial metropolis contained from the beginning the mix of poor workers and elite culture, of ethnic enclaves and religious intolerance, of easy skullduggery and flesh-pot possibilities, that led Lincoln Steffens in 1903 to fam
ously rule it “corrupt and contented.” Colonel William Markham, deputy governor of Pennsylvania from 1693 to 1699 (and William Penn’s cousin), was the first official on the take, hiding pirates at one hundred pounds a head, including Captain Kidd himself. We’ve had many similarly devoted public servants since.

  In the early innings of the twenty-first century, Philadelphia needs no PR help as a noir town, not when some of our own best and brightest call us “Filthydelphia” (and not just for the residents who take jump shots at garbage cans and miss). Remember Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981), with John Travolta smoothly recording vehicular murder on Lincoln Drive? And Witness (1985), with its affront to Amish decency in the Men’s Room of 30th Street Station?

  Creepy stuff happens here. The city’s attractions, aside from Independence Hall, the National Constitution Center, and standard guidebook stuff, include more dope joints, brothels, larceny lairs, and related dens of iniquity than Fodor, Frommer, and Fielding could handle even if they pooled coverage (that is, if they ventured into the alternate reality that bourgeois travel guides consider hands-off). Actually, even some of the guidebook stuff is pretty dark. Try the Mutter Museum, with that tumor extracted from President Grover Cleveland’s jaw, the liver shared by the original Siamese twins. How about the barely furnished Edgar Allan Poe House, with the basement from “The Black Cat”?

  Philadelphia noir is different from the mood, the sensibility, the dimensions, of noir encountered in more glamourous American cities. With the national spotlight long since gone—the federal government fled to Washington, the national media navel-gazing in New York, the glitter of the movies permanently in L.A. (even if M. Night Shyamalan fights for our spookiness)—we don’t live a noble, elevated kind of noir. In D.C., that dead body may belong to a senator. In New York, the gumshoe following the scent may find himself suddenly face-to-face with international intrigue. In Philadelphia, we do ordinary noir—the humble killings, robberies, collars, cold cases that confront people largely occupied with getting by.

  How, after all, would you expect normal Philadelphians to operate when this way lies the house where Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and that way offers some smelly street bum doing his business on the sidewalk? We negotiate our lives between Philadelphia Blanc— the city with more higher-ed institutions than any in the country, a sterling concentration of medical and pharmaceutical professionals, an arts tradition that boasts the nation’s oldest theater, an exhaltation of delicate virtuosi at the Curtis Institute of Music—and Philadelphia Noir. In the latter town, a Starbucks barista gets beaten to death on the subway for sport, a lawyer gets gunned down at his regular ATM machine, and two Chinatown officials bite the dust when a maniacal speeder barrels into them by the Immigration Services building.

  You can get cut or smashed at any moment in Philadelphia—see Duane Swierczynski’s taut “Lonergan’s Girl,” or Aimee LaBrie’s caustic “Princess.” It’s a city where pretend glamour falls apart fast, as in Jim Zervanos’s sly “Your Brother, Who Loves You,” a city where the frustrated tumble into bad choices like Laura Spagnoli’s Beth in “A Cut Above.” (Readers who follow Philadelphia’s tabloid tales will recognize familiar elements in Zervanos’s slumming TV news anchor, and Spagnoli’s credit-card swiping couple.)

  Violent crimes in Philadelphia often prove matter-of-fact and of the numbskull sort—the kind of feats by fabulous losers that the narrator of Diane Ayres’s wry “Seeing Nothing” deals with, that Dennis Tafoya’s Jimmy Kelly profits from in “Above the Imperial.” The saddest kind resemble a type of destiny, one captured in the desperation of Solomon Jones’s breakneck “Scarred,” Asali Solomon’s subtle “Secret Pool,” and Keith Gilman’s tragic “Devil’s Pocket,” where good deeds do not go unpunished. It doesn’t matter, in Philadelphia, whether you’re Irish or Italian, Jewish or Black, Latino or Polish, Korean or a hundred other things. It won’t help if you think salvation lies in escape to the privileges of the Main Line, as does Meredith Anthony’s wannabe suburbanite in “Fishtown Odyssey,” or that safety can be preserved in the quiet deceptions of a bordertown like Narberth, as the shifty psychiatrist of Halimah Marcus’s “Swimming” seems to believe. Shit can happen at any time.

  Per capita, Philadelphia matches any city, weirdo incident for weirdo incident. But we trump everyone on history. In this volume you’ll see that a few top writers who know the city best—the kind who can tell you that Schuylkill means “hidden stream,” and that “Mummers” are “people with masks” (okay, with sequins and feathers too)—wind up decades or hundreds of years in the past when asked to channel their inner noirista. Cordelia Frances Biddle’s cocky stroller in “Reality,” Cary Holladay’s eerie bartender in “Ghost Walk,” the neutral narrator of Gerald Kolpan’s “The Ratcatcher”—all experience the Philadelphia truism that if you think you’ve got local history under control, you don’t.

  With apologies, you won’t find the obvious here. Having served as literary critic of the Philadelphia Inquirer for twenty-five years, and written more stories on “Philadelphia literature” than anyone living, I thank my contributors for their very limited references to hoagies, cheesesteaks, water ice, soft pretzels, and waitresses who call their customers “Hon.” There’s no glimpse of Claes Oldenburg’s Clothespin or the rowers by the Waterworks, and only one passing mention of Rocky. Truth is, we don’t talk much about those things. We just live our lives.

  Carlin Romano

  Philadelphia, PA

  August 2010

  PART I

  CITY OF BURSTS

  PRINCESS

  BY AIMEE LABRIE

  South Philadelphia

  It’s Saturday at three a.m. and I’m coming off a hellish shift at Ray’s Happy Birthday Bar. It’s pouring rain, no taxis in this part of town, and the 23 bus runs about every two hours now. My feet hurt from standing and my mood is black after spending most of the night serving a crowd of out-of-towners—a group of prickish frat boys slumming it and cracking racist jokes. I let them get good and drunk, even send a few shots of Jack their way, and then, when one of the jerk-offs slaps his Am Ex on the bar, I add $100 to the tab.

  I know they are too drunk and too cocky to eyeball the final tally. Good thing, too, because they leave behind a five-dollar tip and some change. When one of them asks for directions to Washington Avenue to hail a cab to Center City, I send him south instead of north, deeper into darker territory not so friendly to their kind. But hey, they said they were looking for an authentic Philly experience. I am just making sure they get what they asked for.

  So, I’m standing at the curb, weighing my options, when a car pulls up, splashing filthy rain water over my sneakers.

  Now, I know better than to jump into a car with a near stranger, but it’s raining hard, in the way only a summer night in Philadelphia can deliver—appearing out of nowhere, flooding the sidewalks, sending Styrofoam cups and discarded cheesesteak wrappers from Pat’s careening in a river of water down the curb. Lightning cracks the sky like the end of the world is right around the corner. And I see from his crag-nosed profile that I do sort of know this guy—he’s the uncle of a kid I used to sleep with. Uncle Tony (one of many Uncle Tonys in this part of town). And a former regular at Ray’s before Lou, Ray’s son and the owner, banned him from setting foot in the place ever again.

  He sits in his big maroon Chevy Cadillac, a fat man with a salt-and-pepper crew cut wearing a too-big, shiny Eagles T-shirt. The passenger window rolls down. “Hey, doll,” he says. “Get it the car. You’re soaked.” I hesitate. “Holy Mary, Mother of God, don’t be stupid. It’s not like I’m some douche bag from Trenton you never met before.”

  I check the street again. The back of my T-shirt smells like a cigarette butt after eight hours of serving cheap beer and shots. It sticks wetly to my back. What the hell. I get in the car. He has the heater running full blast, which I appreciate. The interior is a deep plush maroon and stinks of stale cigars and cheap cologne. “You South?” he asks.r />
  “Yeah, just drop me at 8th and Morris, and I’ll hop out.” A rosary hangs from the rearview mirror with a sad-looking Jesus dangling forlornly on the end.

  “Hey, let me ask you something.” The car idles. “You hear what happened to my nephew Johnny?”

  I shake my head. I haven’t seen or thought of Johnny in a couple of weeks, not since I kicked him out of my bed.

  “Smashed by the 147. No helmet, not that it woulda mattered. Run him over while he was on his bike. F-ing SEPTA buses.” He drums his pudgy fingers on the steering wheel. “No chance even for any last words.”

  “Jesus, sorry, Tony.” Too vain to wear a bike helmet. I am starting to remember more about Johnny now. His long curly hair was one of his best features. Though I could be remembering one of the others. They blur together after a while.

  “Yeah, well, what can you do?” Uncle Tony doesn’t seem that busted up about it. “He left his journals behind though. You ever read them?”

  “No.” I am starting to think it’s time for me to take a pass on the ride and be on my way.