Last month I re-acquainted myself with
Stephen Solomita's New York in the form of
The Striver - my best read in November. Review
here.
After an e-mail or two with the ever helpful Charlotte at his UK (and US) publisher -
Severn House Publishers, Stephen was kind enough to agree to a Q+A session regarding his writing. I pinged him my usual bag of questions and received this fantastic response.........
I’m going to start by wrapping several questions into one (hopefully not
overlong) response. You’ve asked me if driving a cab influenced my writing, and
to recount my scariest moment behind the wheel. You also note that, “New York
almost seems as much a character in your books as the police or the gangsters
that live and operate there.” Finally, you’ve asked me how, since I’m not an
ex-cop, I acquired my knowledge of police procedure.
If you want to familiarize yourself with the geography and ethnicity of
the any locale, there’s nothing like driving through it for twelve hours a day,
going wherever your fares ask to be taken. Are the storefront signs, for
example, in Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese, Spanish or Korean? New York is likely the
most cosmopolitan city in the world, with new immigrants impacting, and
sometimes overwhelming, whole neighborhoods in less than a decade. In The Striver, I describe the ongoing impact
of one such migration, this one by hipsters and young professionals, on the
Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg and Greenpoint.
I passed the better part of six years behind the wheel of a taxicab. I
wrote my first book during those years and I used everything I learned on the
streets to pull it off. Even today, twenty-three books later, I commonly visit
the setting of any important scene in order to pick up the odd detail. Like Devito’s
Paints being located next to Polski Pyza in Greenpoint.
Nothing turns me off faster than New York books that get everything
wrong.
I don’t mean to imply that driving a cab is a pleasant experience, or
even, in the long run, bearable. My six years driving a cab were pretty much
six years of continual road rage. There were a number of frightening moments
along the way, but the one I’m going to describe occurred many years before I
drove in New York. I have to reach back into the 1960’s when, still young and
naive, I briefly drove for the Yellow Cab Company in Los Angeles. My aim at the
time was simple enough. I wanted to accumulate enough money to buy an airline
ticket to New York, the place of my birth. Los Angeles was so big, and so
car-dependent, it seemed almost empty. I missed the crowded sidewalks, the
silent interactions, the implicit understandings, the background hum of a dozen
foreign languages, none of which I spoke or understood.
I drove at night, stupidly as it turned out. Too many drunks, too many
criminals. But I was, as I said, young and naïve. I was also preoccupied with
finding my way around Los Angeles, a city as large as it was unfamiliar. Yellow
Cabs didn’t cruise in Los Angeles the way they did in New York. They were
expected, after dropping a fare, to pull into the nearest cab stand and wait
for a call.
On this particular weekday night, Central dispatched me from one of
those stands to a single-family home in a quiet, residential neighborhood whose
name I’ve long forgotten. I remember pulling up before a well-kept house and
tapping my horn. As a general rule, if a fare didn’t show, we were supposed to
notify the dispatcher. But after tapping the horn a second time, I decided to accelerate
the process by knocking on the door. The man who answered was in his forties
and friendly enough, but I never got a good look at his face. That was because the
women lounging on overstuffed chairs and couches in a large parlor commanded my
full attention. I’d stumbled on a brothel, which was interesting, but….
The man didn’t ask me what I wanted. He glanced at my Yellow Cab Company
hat, then called out someone’s name. A young woman appeared a moment later. She
gave me an address in Watts and off we went. I don’t remember the name of the street,
only that I had no idea where it was. Thus our arrival any time before dawn depended
entirely on the directions she supplied. She took me south on Compton Avenue,
then to a side street, then to another, then instructed me to pull to the curb
before a smaller and meaner home then the one she just left.
The gun came out a moment later, surprising me almost as much as it
scared me. The cops were certain to ask me where I picked her up, as I was
certain to supply the answer, as the pimp was certain to identify her. She had
to know that, right?
I didn’t hesitate when it came to the money. I held the bills out and she
took then, but continued to stare at me for a moment. Then she said, “You’re
probably gonna identify me, aren’t you?”
Scary? It’s a wonder my brain didn’t melt. But I did what I do best,
which was start talking. This was a matter of pure reflex. When in doubt, move
your mouth. The funny part was that everything I told her was true. My stay in
Los Angeles would soon be over and once I got my butt home to the east coast, I
wasn’t coming back. Did I convince her? Or did she decide that shooting me was
just too risky, given the circumstance? I only know that she left a moment
later, taking the keys with her.
I’m proud to say that my trousers remained dry, though I did begin to
shake after she slammed the door. Once started, of course, I couldn’t stop.
I was still vibrating when two cops showed up ten minutes later. Both
were young, white and male. As they were in no hurry, I laid out my story in
detail, including where I picked her up and the nature of the business
conducted there. The younger of the two wrote everything down. The detectives,
he told me before they left, would be in touch.
They weren’t, not for months, not until a few weeks before I finally
left town. Then I received a call from a detective at Parker Center, police
headquarters in Los Angeles. He had, he believed, the woman who robbed me, had
her in custody. Would I be so good as to come down and take a look?
I met him the next day. I don’t remember his face, or exactly where we
met – this was almost fifty years ago - but I do recall the first question he
asked me. Could the woman who robbed me, he wanted to know, really be a man?
Because, he went on to explain, they had this transvestite in custody. He was
being held open, but they’d have to let him go unless they charged him with the
actual commission of an actual crime.
I kept my tone apologetic as I told him that the woman who robbed me was
definitely a woman. Sorry, but…
But look here, detective. If you really
want to get the woman who robbed me, and who came close to pulling the trigger
of a gun aimed at my face, you won’t have to break a sweat. There’s this pimp
see, at the address where I picked up the perpetrator of this crime. If you
confront him, he’s sure to give her up.
The Detective listened to my story, and even took a few notes. I’ll give
him that much. But I never heard from him, which surprised me not at all. By
then, I’d come to assume that the brothel was paying to stay open. The City of
Los Angeles was fabulously corrupt at that time. Pay to play was the name of
the game. As for the transvestite? The prevailing system in Los Angeles simply
assumed that he should be caged.
My first five books featured a protagonist named Stanley Moodrow. Later,
in 1996, I added a sixth volume, Damaged
Goods. You asked if there’s any chance I’d bring him back. Cole, Stanley
Moodrow’s milieu, the Lower East Side of Manhattan, has changed so much that he
wouldn’t recognize it. Then a mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood, the Lower East
Side, including the area gentrifiers call Alphabet City, is now dominated by
students and young professionals come to New York from all over the country.
The crime rate is low and the greatest danger is from drunken twenty-somethings
wending their way home on a Saturday night.
One last note. You were kind enough to praise The Striver, the second book in a series I expect to be ongoing for
some time. I strongly suggest that readers drawn to the series begin with the
first book, Dancer in the Flames. My
two main characters, Detectives Irwin `Boots’ Littlewood and Crazy Jill Kelly
are both quirky, their nicknames bestowed on them by their cop peers. Why and
how are best described in Dancer. I
should add that I’ve written a short story that dramatizes the particular
incident that gave rise of Crazy Jill’s nicknamed. It’s available, free of
charge, one my website: stephensolomita.com.
OK,
that’s it. Thanks for the opportunity to communicate with mystery fans, Cole,
and thanks again for the good review. Feel free to stay in touch.
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My thanks to Stephen Solomita for his time.
Another short, short, short piece.....16 pages, but they all count in my world.
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