Phillips - St. Louis Noir

Introduction

High and Low Collide

The St. Louis region has had a rough time over the past few years. A number of our school districts are unaccredited. A large section of a North St. Louis County landfill is burning uncontrolledyes, its on fireand said fire is only yards away from a World War IIera radioactive waste dump. Theres the matter of the regions de facto segregation, a persistent pox on the city and county decades after the explicit, institutional variety became illegal. A number of our suburban municipalities have lately been exposed in the act of strong-arming their poorest citizens, running what amount to debtors prisons. In recent years one of those cities, Ferguson, has become a national synonym for police misconduct and institutional racism. At the same time we are preparing to build a billion-dollar football stadium (40 percent of that sum taxpayer-funded) in an attempt to try and hold on to our hapless and unloved Rams, who may have already decamped for Los Angeles by the time you read these lines.

The region can seem closed off to outsiders. The inevitable question locals ask upon meeting a stranger is, Whered you go to high school? It took me years to understand the geographical, ethnic, and religious subtexts hidden in that question, but I realized early on that responding Wichita, Kansas was a quick way to lose my interlocutors sympathy and attention. Side streets tend to be haphazardly marked, so much so that my wife and I used to joke that this grew out of a stubborn philosophy that if youre not from here, you dont need to know. This was proven a few years back when the federal government demanded that the route to LambertSt. Louis International Airport be better indicated on area freeways. The classic response in the media from the spokesman for the local agency responsible for the missing airport signage was something along the lines of: We just figured everybody knew where the airport was.

Amid all this is a rich, multicultural history of art and literature both high and low, stemming from conflict and passions running hot. The ballads Stagger Lee and Frankie and Johnny are each based on actual murder cases from St. Louis in the 1890s, a far cry from the wholesome turn-of-the-century version depicted in Meet Me in St. Louis. But the highbrow and low meeting head-on are part and parcel of the St. Louis experience. Tennessee Williams got his ass out of here as soon as he was able, but Chuck Berry still lives down the road in Wentzville, and until he turned eighty-eight in 2014 he still played a monthly gig at Blueberry Hill in the Delmar Loop.

Maybe the quintessential yin/yang St. Louisan in the arts was Lee Falk, who created the comic strips The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician (both of which still run today); in a loftier vein he was also a theatrical director who worked with Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, and Basil Rathbone on the New York stage.

This collection strives for some of that same energy that the collision of high and low can produce. From L.J. Smiths smoky ballad Tell Them Your Name Is Barbara to S.L. Coneys brutal Abandoned Places, these writers have staked out the far ends of the noir spectrum and hit most of the key points between them. The first story I requested for the anthology was Fools Luck by LaVelle Wilkins-Chinn. Id read an early draft of the story and loved it, but when I asked if shed be willing to include it here she wasnt sure it qualified as noir, since, though its central character is certainly criminal, it isnt a crime story in the most obvious sense. But one of the definitions of noir (and I hesitate to open that particular debate here, so please dont write to tell me the proper definition) is that it traffics in fatality and doom and bad luck and characters who persistently, knowingly, act against their own best interests. And thats what Fools Luck is all about.

Some of the writers included here will be new to you, at least in this context, though you may be familiar with them from their day jobs. Umar Lee is a prominent local activist and has become a fixture in the national media since the tragic death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Jason Makansi wears many hats but I first knew him as a publisher; we have not one but two accomplished film critics providing stories: Calvin Wilson (who is also a jazz deejay) and Chris Barsanti.

Some of the other writers in the book are well known nationally. Laura Benedict and John Lutz, both of whom produced fine stories with good humor, need no introduction here. I hadnt realized, though, that Colleen J. McElroy had lived in St. Louis until Akashic Books publisher Johnny Temple suggested we approach her about submitting. Jedidiah Ayres is recognized by aficionados of noir fiction as one of the originators (along with Peter Rozovsky and my own bad self) of the now-ubiquitous reading series Noir at the Bar. Paul D. Marks is fast becoming a major force in crime fiction. And Im very proud to be able to include four poems by St. Louiss Poet Laureate, Michael Castro.

All these writers come at their work with different perspectives and styles but all with a connection to and a passion for our troubled city and its surroundings. I am immensely pleased to have been able to collect them in this volume.

Scott Phillips

St. Louis, Missouri

May 2016

PART I

THE CITY

Abandoned Places

by S.L. Coney

Dogtown

Your dads a bastard, kid. You should be mad. Hell, you should be madder than me. The fucker ran off and left you with someone you hardly know. You know what I think?

He knew what Vickie thought. Hed heard it over and over the past couple of days. Tuning her out, he pressed his forehead into the window, the dust along the edge tickling his nose as he watched the cars pass through, hoping to catch a glimpse of curly blond hair and his dads wide, wide smile; the one he called his fuck me smile. Hed never seen it fail to bring a girl to her knees. Sometimes he locked himself in the bathroom and practiced that smile, trying to make it reach his eyes so they crinkled at the corners and blue shined.

She slammed the door on the washer, the vibration tugging at him through his hip. He turned, studying her short black hair spiked like porcupine quills, her eyes squinted against the cigarette smoke as she flapped one of her shirts. He didnt understand why she bothered to wash them. They stank like smoke before they even made it to the closet.

Vickie was only seven years older than Ian and had been married to his dad for two. She hadnt been thrilled with him before his dad left; now he kept waiting for her to call social services and have him taken to a home.

Everybody needs a vice. Val couldve had the decency to leave me some damn money. Dropping her cigarette to the concrete floor, she ground it under her heel, hand digging her pack out of her pocket. Are you listening to me?

Yes. He didnt call her maam because that usually pissed her off.

She paused long enough to light her new cigarette, cheeks hollowing as she sucked against the filter. I saw that look you gave me.

He turned back to the window, staring through the grime to the world outside, wondering how it could keep functioning when everything in his life had turned upside down.

Vickie stopped hiding her smoking the day Valentine left, moving from behind the shed to lighting up inside the house, and every day since then she kept accusing Ian of giving her looks. Maybe she just felt guilty for ruining her lungs, but every time he saw her light up, the pit in his stomach opened just a little wider. Either shed stopped caring if his dad found out, or she knew he wasnt coming back.