Jerome Charyn - Bronx Noir

Lewis and I walk around the corner to the Palomino, which is mentioned as the genesis of Slattery’s story that is now all over town. He’s very proud of himself, this Hollywood producer. My friends buy him drinks.

I tell Lewis I need a minute to make a discreet phone call. So I slip out into the street with my cell. But I don’t call right away.

I wait for the cars I know are going to show up. The dark blue, unmarked Chryslers with the no-nonsense guys inside. They get out of the cars with their hands firmly inside of their coats, where they’re wearing shoulder holsters and federal badges.

I dial my kid’s number out in Los Angeles.

She’s on the line right when Lewis is bum-rushed out of the Palomino Club.

“You should come home, kiddo.”

“We’ve been all over that—”

“Your big client, Blake Lewis, he’s been arrested.”

“Where are they taking him?”

“Search me. Maybe Guantánamo.”

I walk back to my building on the Concourse and I slip into bed and sleep like a dead person.

Thomas Adcock, an Edgar Award — winning novelist, was born in Detroit, raised in the Inwood section of upper Manhattan, and schooled just across the Harlem River in Fordham, the Bronx. A staff writer for the New York Law Journal , he has also worked on television drama projects in Los Angeles for Aaron Spelling Productions and NBC. He is coeditor with Tim McLoughlin of Brooklyn Noir 3 (forthcoming).

Kevin Bakeris a novelist and historian. His latest book, Strivers Row , is set in Harlem in 1943. His father was born on Fordham Road, and many of his father’s people lived (and died) in the Bronx.

Thomas Bentilworks as a case manager on Rikers Island for Fresh Start, a vocational training and re-entry program. He was first bitten by the writing bug while “doin’ time” in that very place and as a participant in that very program. While incarcerated, he wrote and was the managing editor for a jail-based literary magazine known as the Rikers Review . In a previous life, Thomas was a mildly successful scam artist as well as a full-time methamphetamine addict.

Lawrence Blockis an MWA Grand Master and a recipient of the Diamond Dagger life achievement award of the UK Crime Writers Association. He lives and writes in Manhattan.

Jerome Charyn’smost recent novel, The Green Lantern, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. A former Guggenheim Fellow, he lives in New York and Paris, where he is Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris. He was born and raised in the Bronx.

Suzanne Chazinis the author of the Georgia Skeehan mystery series, including the novels The Fourth Angel, Flashover, and Fireplay . In 2003, she received the Washington Irving Book Award for both The Fourth Angel and Flashover . A New York native, Ms. Chazin has taught fiction writing at New York University and Sarah Lawrence College. She is married to Thomas Dunne, a senior chief in the FDNY who oversees fires in the Bronx.

Terrence Chengis the author of two novels, Sons of Heaven and Deep in the Mountains . He earned his MFA at the University of Miami, where he was a James Michener Fellow, and in 2005 he received a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches creative writing at Lehman College, part of the City University of New York. For more information, visit www.tcheng.net.

Ed Deewas born and raised in Yonkers on the northern border of the Bronx. He spent ten years of his NYPD career as a street cop in the South Bronx. Today these same streets can make him laugh and cry, but mostly wish he could do it all again. He loved this opportunity to write about the old neighborhood, the old songs, the gang, the redhead… da Bronx. Ed’s latest novel is The Con Man’s Daughter .

Joanne Dobson, author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mysteries, spent her formative years on Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx — as far away culturally as one could possibly get from New England’s elite Enfield College where Pelletier solves crimes — and occasionally teaches a class. She has spent the large part of her teaching career as an English professor at the Bronx’s Fordham University.

Robert J. Hughes’novel Late and Soon was published in late 2005, and his next, Seven Sisters , will be out soon. He is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal , where he writes on the arts, philanthropy, and publishing. He lives in Manhattan now, but spent many merry hours as a youth raising a perfectly law-abiding ruckus with friends in the parish of St. Nicholas of Tolentine.

Marlon Jameswas born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1970. He graduated from the University of the West Indies in 1991 with a degree in literature. His debut novel, John Crow’s Devil , a New York Times Editors’ Choice, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. James teaches creative writing and literature at Macalester College, St. Paul. He lives in Kingston, Jamaica.

Sandra Kitt’snovel The Color of Love , released in 1995, was optioned by HBO and Lifetime. She has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award in Fiction. A native of New York, her artwork is displayed in the African American Museum of Art in Los Angeles. She lives in Riverdale, the Bronx.

Rita Lakingrew up in the East Bronx on Elder Avenue. She attended Hunter College on the Bronx campus and then worked in Los Angeles as a writer/producer in television for twenty-five years. Now she is happily writing mysteries about a group of geriatric lady P.I.’s, including Getting Old Is Murder, Getting Old Is the Best Revenge , and Getting Old Is Criminal .