Queens Noir (2 page)

Leave Manhattan (a.k.a., New York City to Outlanders)
and drive over the Queensboro Bridge (a.k.a., the 59th Street
Bridge) that spans the East River. Take the outer roadbed; on
your descent, mark the Citicorp Building (Queens' only skyscraper) looming on your right; then, close in, the Silvercup
Studios sign big and in your face as you touch down in Long
Island City. Overhead is the rotting steel skeleton of beams
and girders that support the elevated tracks for the N, W,
and 7 subway lines, all converging at the Queensboro Plaza
station. The 7 line is sometimes called the Orient Express: Of
the 2.2 million souls in Queens, forty-eight percent are foreignborn, the majority Asian.

Look around this commercial hub. Seedy Queens Central. Note City Scapes and the other two "gentlemen's clubs" within three blocks. At night, the strip joints are lit in neon;
prostitutes work the johns on Queens Plaza South and across
the roadway on Queens Plaza North; all-night donut shops
give sustenance; the bus from the Rikers Island jails disgorges
discharged inmates at the bus stop at 3 a.m. every weekday.
Yet Queens politicians are talking a bright future for Queensboro Plaza, involving $1.2 billion to be invested in development here and on the Long Island City waterfront across the
river from Manhattan. And Silvercup-formerly a baker of
bread, now a purveyor of illusions-is leading the pack. Here,
in Queens Noir, you can visit the movie lots and TV studios
with actress-writer Kim Sykes's Josephine, a security guard in
"Arrivederci, Aldo."

Continue up Queens Plaza South till it intersects with
Queens Plaza, Northern Boulevard, and Jackson Avenue. As
you turn right onto Jackson, catch in your rearview mirror
the clock-face tower of the Bridge Plaza Tech Center, previously named the Brewster Building-built in 1910 to make
horse-drawn carriages-looming above and behind the elevated train tracks (it's our cover photo). Proceed a ways
down the avenue to the core of old Long Island City with its
fine Italian-American restaurants, wood-frame aluminumsided homes, and factories chockablock with the ateliers of
the arrivistes. Make a left onto the Pulaski drawbridge over
the Newtown Creek into Polish Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Take a
left at the foot of the bridge onto Greenpoint Avenue, then
you're riding alongside the creek but it's hidden from view by
the huge wastewater treatment plant, which may or may not
be making a difference. Note the stink. (Greenpoint has always
stunk.) Continue over the Greenpoint Avenue drawbridge-a
hop, skip, and a jump-into Blissville, Queens.

Blissville is a four-square-block neighborhood bounded by Van Dam Street to the west, the Long Island Expressway to
the north and east, and First Calvary Cemetery to the south.
First Calvary was opened by St. Patrick's Cathedral in 1846
to take in the poor Irish who had become too many to be laid
down in Manhattan. "There are more dead in Queens than
alive." (This classically noir line is Ellen Freudenheim's in her
fine guidebook, Queens-told me things I didn't know and
reminded me of what I'd forgotten.) Having spent my first
forty-four years across the waters in Greenpoint and having
worked one summer digging graves in First Calvary (a much
sought-after position), I was led to write my story in this volume about the ghosts that can haunt even a very young life,
shadowed by the high stone walls of First Calvary.

Take Greenpoint Avenue east through small-town Sunnyside till it becomes Roosevelt Avenue, and continue on, with
the 7 train overhead on the elevated tracks. Roosevelt Avenue is a main east-west road that passes through the heart of
Woodside, Jackson Heights, and Corona-Queens' version of
the Casbah. Tibetans, Irish, Mexicans, Filipinos, Colombians,
Ecuadorians, Koreans, Indians, Bangladeshis hawk food, clothing, jewelry, appliances, phone cards, forged or stolen drivers'
licenses, phony Social Security cards-from storefronts, pushcarts, stalls, alleyways, doorways, street corners. The denizens
of the Casbah, and the 100,000 bill-paying customers of Con
Edison in Astoria, Woodside, Sunnyside, and Long Island City
were left in the dark when the Con Ed generators blew on July
17, 2006 during a heat wave. The blackout lasted ten days.
Author Liz Martinez records the terrible consequences for one
compulsive shopper in "Lights Out for Frankie."

Detour to the north on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) to nearby Astoria and Ditmars: the Greek lands.
Other settlers include Egyptians, Italians, Bangladeshis, Bosnians, and a melange of artists and young people fleeing Manhattan rents. The Kaufman Astoria Studios at 36th
Street and Thirty-Fourth Avenue have been making movies for ninety years. They were busy in the late 1920s while
one block away the Irish were taking over the bars from the
Germans who had preceded them. In "Only the Strong Survive," Mary Byrne spins an old Irish morality tale with more
twists and turns than an Irish country road. Moral: Bar owner
is a perilous profession.

The neighborhood jewel of Ditmars is Astoria Park and
its landmark pool that lets in 3,000 on a summer's day. The
park sits on the shore under the Triborough Bridge and along
the Hell Gate channel, the most turbulent and deepest water
in the New York Harbor. In "Last Stop, Ditmars," Tori Carrington has situated the Acropolis Diner at the intersection of
Ditmars Boulevard and 31st Street underneath the last stop
on the N line. It's a small domestic Greek tragedy: Think Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge.

Hop back on the BQE at Astoria Boulevard and then get
off at Roosevelt Avenue/74th Street. You're now in Jackson
Heights, in the epicenter of Little India. Visit the Jackson Diner
for a masala dosa, check out the gold emporiums, pick up the
latest Bollywood flick at the video store. In Shailly Agnihotri's
droll tale, "Avoid Agony," you can walk in the footsteps of Raj
Kumar, who runs the only astrological readings/matrimonial
investigations agency on the street. Raj, from his office above
a sari shop, looks to the heavens for direction while trolling
for prey on the Internet.

Continue up Roosevelt to Junction Boulevard and you
cross into Corona: Colombians, Argentinians, Brazilians, Koreans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians pack the streets and the stores;
the predominant sounds are dialects of Spanish and Portug- ese. Corona is on the doorstep of Shea Stadium, a stop or two
away on the 7. K.j.a.Wishnia's female PI., Filomena Buscarsela,
is tight with her Ecuadorian neighbors. The neighborhood
is awash in Mets fever, as well as diluted antibiotics peddled
from local farmacias and botanicas that have caused a boy's
death. Filomena, tracking their source, is on everybody's case
in "Viernes Loco."

Shea Stadium is located in Flushing Meadows-Corona
Park, site of the 1939 and 1964 World's Fairs. Joe Guglielmel-
li's protagonist is seemingly just another subway passenger en
route to a game, who falls into conversation with a Boston
Red Sox fan. You never heard so much baseball talk in your
life as in "Buckner's Error" . . . until the final inning.

Ride the 7 for one more stop and it's the end of the line
at Roosevelt Avenue/Main Street. Main Street is packed all
the way up to Kissena Boulevard with peddlers, fish markets,
phone stores, fast-food shops-all the signs in Chinese characters. More Chinese live in Flushing than in Manhattan's
Chinatown. Author Victoria Eng, who knows the turf, takes
its off-street to Bowne Park, a tiny oasis in a sea of commerce,
for a coming-of-age story. A bad move in the park, however,
and you might not get any older.

Bayside and College Point are middle- to upper-class
neighborhoods in northeast Queens, off the Cross Island
Parkway. In "Under the Throgs Neck Bridge," Denis Hamill's
two jogging characters cover a lot of Bayside landscape. One,
however, is unaware that it's a race to the death.

College Point sits across Flushing Bay from LaGuardia
Airport. You know you live in Queens if you are airplaneconscious: There's always a flight path directly over your
house. But that's not police officer Jill Kelly's problem; hers is
an itchy trigger-finger. In "Crazy Jill Saves the Slinky," Stephen Solomita spins an Irish domestic drama where family ties run
deep-deep as a grave.

Take the Whitestone Expressway to the Grand Central
Parkway south, exit at Queens Boulevard. You're in Kew
Gardens, the seat of political power in the borough. On
your right is the Queens Criminal Courts building, which
appears to have a piece of a flying saucer buried in its face,
a silvery metallic canopy over the entrance, reminiscent of
The Day the Earth Stood Still. Not a surprise: Both the movie
and the building are from the 1950s. Keep heading west on
Queens Boulevard-a twelve-laner so hard to cross even
with the light that it's called the "Boulevard of Death"-to
Forest Hills and Rego Park, high-income and alike as two
peas in a pod. Typical of both these old communities is block
after block of high-rise co-op and condo buildings lining
both sides of the boulevard. Jews have predominated here
for decades. Recent immigration has added Russian, Israeli,
Middle Eastern, and Bukharan flavors. Alan Gordon opts
for the traditional in "Bottom of the Sixth," setting a tale of
the Hasidim on a Little League baseball field in Rego Park.
Batter up! Watch out for flying lead!

Megan Abbott returns to yesteryear, the 1970s, in "Hollywood Lanes," set in a venerable bowling alley. The building still stands on Queens Boulevard and Sixty-Seventh
Avenue-vacant like a haunted house harboring the violent
passions that erupted therein on a summer's night.

Take the Van Wyck Expressway south, exit at Jamaica
Avenue in Richmond Hill. Before World War II, the Hill
was middle-class comfortable, and its historic district is still
intact with 1,000 Victorian homes. These days, the area is
the center of the city's Guyanese immigration, also home to
Hindus, Sikhs, Pakistanis, and West Indians. Jillian Abbott keys us in to the emotional life and ultimate fate of a misfit
al-Qaeda mole in "Jihad Sucks; or, The Conversion of the
Jews."

Take Atlantic Avenue east to the Jamaica neighborhood,
with the largest African-American community in the city.
It's also the destination-of-choice of Filipinos. West Indians,
Chinese, and Salvadorans also abound. Belinda Farley sets
her story amidst a law-abiding Haitian family in their modest
dwelling on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard and 108th Avenue in
the heart of Jamaica. "The Investigation" has its roots in the
"locked room" mystery.

Move south on Guy R. Brewer to Baisley Pond Park in
South Jamaica, where playground basketball is king, where
Glenville Lovell's second-generation West Indian gangsta has
an out-of-body experience.

Aqueduct Racetrack is due south. You can get there by the
A train or drive along Rockaway Parkway. It's 113 years old,
though it has fallen on hard times; attendance is in the toilet.
The real estate jackals are salivating while the governor sings
that old song: Urban Renewal. But Maggie Estep (the smartest horsewoman on the planet) celebrates the breed in "Alice
Fantastic," a twisty tale of Fatal Attraction among the Usual
Suspects in the clubhouse.

Head south on the Van Wyck to the end: John E Kennedy
Airport. It's huge. Playing against the grain, Patricia King (a
globe-trotter herself) takes us into the mind of an ordinary
woman as she deplanes and makes her way through the terminal to collect her bags. The unexpected intervenes in "Baggage Claim," and suddenly you're in The Twilight Zone.

Last stop: the Rockaways, the southernmost point in
Queens, a ten-mile peninsula flush against the Atlantic Ocean.
A lot of beach. In 1993, a ship loaded with smuggled Chinese foundered off the coast here. A few made it to shore. "Golden
Venture" is the story of one of them-well, not exactly. This
is novelist Jill Eisenstadt's comical riff on what might have
happened later.

Queens!-this sprawling Babel-an ethnic stew best
sampled by dipping into the stories up ahead. You can almost
taste 'em ...

Robert Knightly

Queens, New York City

November 2007

'd been trying to get rid of the big oaf for seventeen weeks
but he just kept coming around. He'd ring the bell and
I'd look out the window and see him standing on the
stoop looking like a kicked puppy. What I needed with another kicked puppy I couldn't tell you, since I'd taken in a
little white mutt with tan spots that my cousin Jeremy had
found knocked up and wandering a trailer park in Kentucky.
Cousin Jeremy couldn't keep the dog so he called me up and
somehow got me to take the animal in. After making the vet
give her an abortion and a rabies shot, Jeremy found the dog
a ride up from Kentucky with some freak friend of his who
routinely drives between Kentucky and Queens transporting
cheap cigarettes. The freak friend pulled his van up outside
my house one night just before midnight and the dog came
out of the van reeking of cigarettes and blinking up at me,
completely confused and kicked- looking. Not that I think the
freak friend of Cousin Jeremy's actually kicked her. But the
point is, I already had a kicked puppy. What did I need with a
guy looking like one?