New Jersey Noir Read online

  NEW JERSEY NOIR

  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

  ©2011 The Ontario Review Inc.

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

  New Jersey map by Aaron Petrovich

  All photographs inside the book by Gerald Slota

  Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-034-2

  eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-081-6

  Hardcover Library of Congress Control Number: 2011902727

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-026-7

  Paperback Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922958

  All rights reserved

  First printing

  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

  Barcelona Noir (Spain), edited by Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina

  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

  Cape Cod Noir, edited by David L. Ulin

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  Copenhagen Noir (Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaëlis

  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

  Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat

  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 & Johnny 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

  Philadelphia Noir, edited by Carlin Romano

  Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

  Pittsburgh Noir, edited by Kathleen George

  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 Diego Noir, edited by Maryelizabeth Hart

  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:

  Bogotá Noir (Colombia), edited by Andrea Montejo

  Jerusalem Noir, edited by Sayed Kashua

  Kansas City Noir, edited by Steve Paul

  Lagos Noir (Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

  Long Island Noir, edited by Kaylie Jones

  Mumbai Noir (India), edited by Altaf Tyrewala

  St. Petersburg Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

  Seoul Noir (Korea), edited by BS Publishing Co.

  Staten Island Noir, edited by Patricia Smith

  Venice Noir (Italy), edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  PART I: INNER-CITY NEW JERSEY

  S.A. SOLOMON University Heights (Newark)

  Live for Today

  LOU MANFREDO Whitman Park (Camden)

  Soul Anatomy

  S.J. ROZAN Central Ward (Newark)

  New Day Newark

  C.K. WILLIAMS Vailsburg (Newark)

  Newark Black: 1940–1954

  PART II: ROMANCE & NOSTALGIA

  JONATHAN SANTLOFER Hoboken

  Lola

  BRADFORD MORROW Grover’s Mill

  The Enigma of Grover’s Mill

  GERALD STERN Mickle Street (Camden)

  Broken Glass

  SHEILA KOHLER Montclair

  Wunderlich

  RICHARD BURGIN Atlantic City

  Atlantis

  ALICIA OSTRIKER Jersey Shore

  August: Feeding Frenzy

  PART III: COMERCE & RETRIBUTION

  HIRSH SAWHNEY Jersey City

  A Bag for Nicholas

  JEFFREY FORD Dividing Creek

  Glass Eels

  BARRY N. MALZBERG & BILL PRONZINI Rutherford

  Meadowlands Spike

  ROBERT ARELLANO Cherry Hill

  Kettle Run

  PAUL MULDOON Paramus

  Noir, NJ

  PART IV: GARDEN STATE UNDERGROUND

  JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER Princeton

  Too Near Real

  EDMUND WHITE & MICHAEL CARROLL Asbury Park

  Excavation

  ROBERT PINSKY Long Branch

  Long Branch Underground

  JOYCE CAROL OATES Kittatinny Mountains

  Run Kiss Daddy

  About the Contributors

  Miles of black turnpike and parkway pavement

  scrolled out onto the soil of the no-longer farms.

  You could speed now from one place to another

  and not see the slums, the factories in broken-eyed ruin.

  Everywhere ruin—did nobody see it arriving?

  —C.K. Williams, “Newark Black”

  We are happy with the fake, and happy with the real, but the near real—the too near real—unnerves us.

  —Jonathan Safran Foer, “Too Near Real”

  INTRODUCTION

  HOW BLACKLY LOVELY: NOIR IN NEW JERSEY

  During the past several decades, “crime”—as historical fact, as literary subject, as theme and variation—seems to have acquired a mythopoetic status in our American culture. To write about crime is to focus upon American life in extremis: as if distilled, pure. The complex and overlapping worlds of criminal behavior and law enforcement, highly publicized criminal trials, the dissolving of the putative barrier between “business” and “crime”—a subculture of intense interest in the phenomenon of serial killers and a new awareness of “victims’ rights”—these have become significant culture issues; as in a novel by Balzac or Dostoyevsky, in which a dense swath of society is minutely examined, the anatomizing of both high-profile crimes and more ordinary, even quotidian crimes has become a way of exposing the American soul. The considerable success of Akashic Books’ ambitious Noir Series is
both a testament to this American preoccupation with crime as a way of decoding American life and a symptom of the preoccupation.

  Noir isn’t invariably about crime, nor is the subject of crime invariably a noir subject, but the two are closely bound together, as in this collection of original, highly inventive, and disturbing noir stories, poetry, and art set in the “Garden State”—a title meant to be taken literally (for New Jersey is beautifully rural, hilly, and even pastoral—once you are off the Turnpike and out of range of those powerfully pungent smells of industry), though many inhabitants of the state would guess that it’s meant as a cruel irony.

  Noir isn’t subject matter so much as a sensibility, a tone, an atmosphere. Noir is both metaphor and the actual—raw, ravishing—thing. Noir is the essence of mystery: that which cannot be “solved.” Most of all, noir is a place—“a certain slant of light”—in which a betrayal will occur.

  Noir is the consequence of an individual’s expectations, hopes, or intentions confronted by the betrayal of another, often an intimate. Noir is usually—though not inevitably—sexual betrayal: death is a secondary matter, set beside the terrible betrayal of trust.

  Quintessential noir centers around a man—(yes, the genre has been male-oriented, by tradition)—whose desire for a beautiful woman has blinded him to her true, manipulative, evil self: the (beautiful) female as evil, like the primeval Eve. (Unbeautiful women can be evil too, though men are not so likely to be seduced by them, hence betrayed.) But the noir betrayal can range farther and deeper and can encompass, in more ambitious works of art, a fundamental betrayal of the spirit—innocence devastated by the experience of social injustice or political corruption.

  Which is why works of enduring significance—Aeschylus’s Orestia, Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, to name just a few—owe their genesis not simply to crimes but to unspeakable, hideous, taboo crimes: “sins” against humanity.

  Noir as the primary human condition: the betrayal of one’s kind.

  Our indigenous and most glamorous American noir is likely to be identified with the Los Angeles of James M. Cain (The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity), Raymond Chandler (The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely), Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, Red Harvest)—that is, the Los Angeles of the 1930s and ’40s. These are “classic” noir works of fiction in which the femme fatale is a locus of evil, as she is the prime mover of plot: without the primeval Eve, there is no mystery, therefore no story. But they are classic noir works in which the (male) voice of the private detective, and his distinct, post-Hemingway sensibility, are raised to the level of art, not merely pulp entertainment. The private detective as a variant of a crusading knight—the “incorruptible” (male) consciousness seeking to make sense of a labyrinth of lies, double crosses, betrayals, murders. Though in life private detectives are virtually never involved with homicides or crimes of great significance, in noir literature and film the private detective is a successful competitor with the police homicide detective, and is not bound by the officer’s putative code of behavior.

  The private detective is both cynical and, oddly, innocent—open to being deceived, at least temporarily. That the private detective is open to being betrayed makes him our alter ego in the struggle of good-and-evil—the struggle of good to know evil, to name and conquer it.

  These classic noir titles, made into equally classic films, have exerted a powerful influence upon American successors well into the twenty-first century—James Ellroy, Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane, Tom Cook, Patricia Cornwell, and Laura Lippman, among numerous others. These are “crime” writers but the focus of their concern is moral: the knowing, naming, and conquering of evil. Where noir falls beyond the compass of the questing detective as in, for instance, the sequence of graphically violent, neo-biblical allegories of the West written by Cormac McCarthy (from Blood Meridian to No Country for Old Men and The Road), there is only the knowing and naming of evil—there is no conquering of evil. The human hope is for mere survival.

  Noir has flourished in films, particularly in the wake of the influence of displaced European filmmakers (like Fritz Lang) after World War II and the Holocaust—giving to even conventional Hollywood films like Henry Hathaway’s Niagara (1953), with its final, eerie, starkly German Expressionist scene of the killing of the unfaithful Rose (Marilyn Monroe in her breakthrough screen role) by her vengeful husband (Joseph Cotten as a traumatized and “impotent” war veteran), a mythopoetic gravity. Classic noir films—from Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958)—are too many to list; outstanding neo-noir films include Roman Polanski’s Chinatown (1974), Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976), Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential (1997), and the more recent, innovative Memento (2001) by Christopher Nolan. In television, there have been relatively few noir standouts—the Kafkaesque The Fugitive (1963–67), the highly stylized Miami Vice (1984–89) with its pounding, erotic pre-MTV music track, and the more gritty police procedurals Hill Street Blues (1981–87), NYPD Blue (1993–2005), and Homicide: Life on the Street (1993–99). Of the two television series generally named as the greatest achievements in the history of the medium, both are brilliantly original noir dramas—The Sopranos (1999–2007) and The Wire (2002–08). Famously set in New Jersey, suggested in the opening credits as an appendage—that is, a “suburb”—of the more powerful crime families of New York City, The Sopranos is based upon creator David Chase’s inspired adaptation of New Jersey Mafioso history including the careers of the Newark “godfather” Ruggiero Boiardo (1890–1984) and Abner Zwillman, “The Al Capone of New Jersey” (1904–59). (Zwillman was the most famous Jewish crime boss of his era; as C.K. Williams notes in “Newark Black”: Our gangster hero, Longie Zwillman, who had a black car.) It was Chase’s brilliantly original interpretation of the Mafioso legend—the operatic gravitas of Francis Ford Coppolla’s Godfather epic rendered in diminished, often domestic images—that made The Sopranos like no other crime saga in film or TV history. So thoroughly has the iconic thickened figure of Tony Soprano saturated American popular culture in the early years of the twenty-first century, it’s as if the image of “New Jersey” itself has been transmogrified into a set—a backdrop for the ongoing drama of organized crime in collusion with a corrupt political leadership. In place of the archetypal elder godfather Vito Corleone of The Godfather, played with dignity by Marlon Brando, is the distinctly less elevated but very New Jersey Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini.

  (Among Jersey settings memorably used in The Sopranos is the teasingly protracted, mordantly funny sequence titled “The Pine Barrens,” in which Paulie Walnuts and Christopher Moltisanti try gamely to kill a Rasputin-like member of the Russian mob in the wilderness of South Jersey from which they are barely rescued after becoming hopelessly lost. The subtext of the episode seems to be that “organized crime” is an urban phenomenon: lost in the wilderness, if only the relatively tame wilderness of the Pine Barrens, the blustering Mafioso are helpless as children.)

  More recently, Martin Scorsese’s critically acclaimed Boardwalk Empire (2010–11), set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, draws upon Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times, and Corruption of Atlantic City by the New Jersey judge and historian Nelson Johnson; the HBO series is a fictionalization of the flamboyant life and career of the entrepreneurial Enoch “Nucky” Thompson, a Prohibition bootlegger who hosted what is said to have been the first national organized crime syndicate meeting, in 1929, with Al Capone and other mob bosses, photographed companionably together on the Atlantic City boardwalk.

  The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire are noir romances. Boardwalk Empire in particular is rich in 1920s period detail—costumes, automobiles, hairstyles, vernacular speech; unlike Tony Soprano with his loose-fitting sport shirts and careless grooming, Nucky Thompson is the gangster-politician as dandy and visionary. Though frequently and graphically violent, The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire are po
pulated with characters who are domestic and familial; their most intense concerns are with human relations, not “business”—or not exclusively “business.” (It’s a measure of the romance of The Sopranos that the mob boss Tony Soprano is so unfailingly solicitous of his wife Carmella—even when they argue, Tony doesn’t beat her. And his immense patience for his excruciatingly self-absorbed children is equally impressive.) Like the serio-comic mystery series by Janet Evanovich, featuring an unlikely female bounty hunter in Trenton, New Jersey, and particularly popular with women readers, these HBO dramas appeal to an audience for whom the noir quest—the knowing, naming, and conquering of evil—is linked to colorful storytelling. Not even Martin Scorsese would wish to cross the line into the annals of real-life, unorganized New Jersey crime at its most extreme: the infamous rape and murder of seven-year-old Megan Kanka, for instance, in Hamilton, New Jersey, in 1994, by the serial sex offender Jesse Timmendequas (subsequently incarcerated in New Jersey State Prison); the five or more murders committed by the psychopath Richard Biegenwald, of Monmouth County, between 1958 and 1983 (Biegenwald died in New Jersey State Prison in 2008); the slaughter of his family in Westfield, in 1971, by the accountant John List (who died in prison custody in 2008 at the age of eighty-two). Noir is a highly selective art—and such brute ugliness isn’t redeemable by art.

  In this volume, no work of fiction or poetry directly evokes such crude, hellish crimes, but the surreal-nightmare family snapshots of Gerald Slota’s art at the start of each section comes closest to evoking the “pure products of America” (to use William Carlos Williams’s striking phrase) from which these terrible crimes and criminals might spring.

  New Jersey!—“The Garden State”—our fifth smallest state, with only Hawaii, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island below it in land mass, yet it’s the state containing the “most murderous” American city (Camden) and the state generally conceded to be, square mile per square mile, the most densely politically corrupt. (Louisiana has been, by tradition, the most corrupt of all U.S. states, but in recent years Illinois has been closing the lead.) Atlantic City, Jersey City, Hackensack, Hoboken, Secaucus, Newark, Camden (three recent Camden mayors have been jailed for corruption)—in these cities as in others corruption isn’t aberrant but rather a way of (political) life. (Why? The answer seems to be that New Jersey is a maze of overlapping and competing municipalities—556, to California’s 480—that bring with it rich opportunities for political entrenchment, deal-making, and outright thievery.)