Now’s the Time … Again

 

For quite a while after I’d published a batch of novels, I remained wary of the short story. Writing one, I mean. It always seemed a little too difficult: the need to be precise while simultaneously working through inference; the ability to create an atmosphere with a minimum of folderol and faff; and then the ending – clever without seeming tricksy, with an element  of surprise that nevertheless satisfied expectations.

Perhaps I’d been thinking about it a little too much. All that analysis and not enough action. It was Maxim Jakubowski – editor, author, and, at the time, proprietor of the eminent London mystery bookstore, Murder One, who got me to change my mind.

How?

Looking back, I suspect he did it simply by asking. I would have been more than a little flattered, eager to oblige.

The result, published in London Noir (Serpent’s Tail, London,1994) was “Now’s the Time”, set, somewhat perversely, in Nottingham, and featuring an encounter between my by then well-established series character, Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick, and an alcoholic jazz musician, Ed Silver.

I remember how surprised I was at the pleasure I derived from the process, the actual writing, and the small but real feeling of satisfaction when the final sentence was set down. Since then, I’ve written and had published a further thirty five stories, one of which – “Fedora”  – was awarded the Crime Writers’ Association Short Story Dagger for 2014. And “Now’s the Time” itself has been reprinted in a number of other collections: Das Grosse Lesebuch Des Englischen Krimis, Goldmann, Germany, 1994; Now’s the Time, Slow Dancer, London, 1999 & Heinemann, London, 2002; Opening Shots, edited by Lawrence Block, Cumberland House, Nashville, 2000; First Cases, Vol. 4, edited by Robert J. Randisi, Signet, New York, 2002 and  Great TV & Film Detectives, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Reader’s Digest/Orion, New York/London, 2005.

 

All this is the background to “Yesterdays”, my contribution to Invisible Blood, a new collection of stories that Maxim claims will be his last as compiler and editor. I wanted, in some way, to refer back to that first story and acknowledge Maxim’s role in its creation. Thus, in the opening paragraphs, Resnick recalls a key incident from that earlier story …

“They’re all dying, Charlie.”

Ed Silver’s words echoed across the years, across the near-empty room in which Resnick stood, remembering. He had been about to go off duty when he’d been called to a disturbance at Emmanuel House: a man threatening to take a butcher’s cleaver to his own bare feet – first the left and then the right and heaven help anyone who tried to stop him.

At first Resnick hadn’t recognised him and then he did. Silver. Ed Silver. Up on the bandstand at the Old Vic on Fletcher Gate, shoulders hunched, alto sax angled off to one side, fingers a blur of movement as he blitzed through an uptempo blues with sufficient speed and ferocity to make the eyes water. Now the same hands, purple and swollen, were scarcely able to hold the cleaver steady, never mind a saxophone; Resnick had reached out slowly but firmly and taken the cleaver safely into his own. Taken Silver home and fed him, made coffee strong and black, talked long into the night.

“They’re all dying, Charlie. Every bugger!”

Invisible Blood will be published by Titan Books in July, both here in the UK and in the States, and includes stories by Lee Child, Stella Duffy, Jeffery Deaver, Denise Mina, Cathi Unsworth and others, seventeen in total.

 

Short Stories 1: “Now’s the Time”

It’s always a good day when an envelope falls onto the mat, the telephone rings (both of those events increasingly rare) or an email pings into my Inbox, asking me if I would like to contribute a short story to a forthcoming collection. This especially if it means my work will be published alongside that of other writers whose work I admire and if the person doing the asking as an editor or publisher who ranks high in my estimation. Oh, and mention of a small fee is always a bonus.

One such message arrived earlier this year from the esteemed Maxim Jakubowski – a man, who by his own admission, has been responsible for over a hundred anthologies over the years. But in the world of writing and publishing, all good things (as I well know) approach an end, and, according to Maxim, the volume of all-new crime stories he is currently putting together – provisionally titled Invisible Blood – will be his last. Could he, he asks, convince me to contribute a story? Could he stop me?

It was Maxim who first persuaded me to write a short story – a form I had spent a good many years avoiding – the result being “Now’s the Time”, which, title borrowed from  Charlie Parker, first appeared in the collection, London Noir, in 1994.

This is how it begins …

“They’re all dying, Charlie.”

They had been in the kitchen, burnished tones of Clifford Brown’s trumpet, soft like smoke from down the hall. Dark rye bread sliced and ready, coffee bubbling, Resnick had tilted the omelette pan and let the whisked eggs swirl around before forking the green beans and chopped red pepper into their midst. The smell of garlic and butter permeated the room.

Ed Silver stood watching, trying to ignore the cats that nudged, variously, around his feet. Through wisps of grey hair, a fresh scab showed clearly among the lattice-work of scars. The hand which held the glass was swollen at the knuckles and it shook.

“S’pose you think I owe you one, Charlie? That it?”

Earlier that evening, Resnick had talked Silver out of swinging a butcher’s cleaver through his own bare foot. “What I thought, Charlie, start at the bottom and work your way up, eh?” Resnick had bundled him into a cab and brought him home, stuck a beer in his hand and set to making them both something to eat. He hadn’t seen Ed Silver in ten years or more, a drinking club in Carlton whose owner liked his jazz; Silver had set out his stall early, two choruses of “I’ve Got Rhythm” solo, breakneck tempo, bass and drums both dropping our and the pianist grinning, open-mouthed. The speed of thought: those fingers then.

Resnick divided the omelette on to two plates. “You want to bring that bread,” he said. “We’ll eat in the other room.”

The boldest of the cats, Dizzy, followed them hopefully through. The Clifford Brown Memorial album was still playing. “Theme of No Repeat”.

“They’re all dying, Charlie.”

“Who?”

“Every bugger!”

And now it was true.

The story I’m going to write for Maxim’s last anthology, it had better be a Resnick story, I think. One that involves him in some significant way, at least. Resnick in retirement, kicking his heels a bit. Harking back. Thinking of Ed Silver, perhaps …

SILVER Edward Victor. Suddenly at home, on February 16, 1993. Acclaimed jazz musician of the be-bop era. Funeral service and memorial meeting, Friday, February 19 at Golders Green Crematorium at 11.45 am.

A story that begins, perhaps, with the line …

“They’re all dying, Charlie.”

Get to Resnick’s age and they’re starting to fall like ninepins.

If anyone wants to read (or re-read) “Now’s the Time”, it’s included in the Arrow paperback of the same name, along with ten other Resnick short stories.

 

Now’s the Time …

 

… borrowed as a title from Charlie Parker, was the first Charlie Resnick short story I wrote – just about the first of any kind. It was first published in London Noir, a collection edited by Maxim Jakubowski for Serpents Tail in 1994; since then it’s been reprinted several times, twice in the States, once in Germany, once in France, and on two more occasions here in the UK, notably in the collection of the same name, first published by Slow Dancer Press in 1999 and then, in an extended edition, by William Heinemann in 2002 and still in print as an Arrow paperback, I believe.

This is how it begins …

“They’re all dying, Charlie.”

They had been in the kitchen, burnished tones of Clifford Brown’s trumpet, soft like smoke from down the hall. Dark rye bread sliced and ready, coffee bubbling, Resnick had tilted the omelette pan and let the whisked eggs swirl around before forking the green beans and chopped red pepper into their midst. The smell of garlic and butter permeated the room.

Ed Silver stood watching, trying to ignore the cats that nudged, variously, around his feet. Through wisps of grey hair, a fresh scab showed clearly among the lattice-work of scars. The hand which held his glass was swollen at the knuckles and it shook.

“S’pose you think I owe you one, Charlie? That it?”

Earlier that evening, Resnick had talked Silver out of swinging a butcher’s cleaver through his own bare foot. “What I thought, Charlie, start at the bottom and work your way up, eh?” Resnick had bundled him into a cab and brought him home, stuck a beer in his hand and set to making them both something to eat. He hadn’t seen Ed Silver in ten years or more, a drinking club in Carlton whose owner liked his jazz; Silver had set out his stall early, two choruses of ‘I’ve Got Rhythm’ solo, breakneck tempo, bass and drums both dropping out and the pianist grinning, open-mouthed. The speed of thought; those fingers then.

Resnick divided the omelette on to two plates. “You want to bring the bread>” he said. “We’ll eat in the other room.”

The boldest of the cats, Dizzy, followed them hopefully through. The Clifford Brown Memorial album was still playing ‘Theme of No Repeat’.

“They’re all dying, Charlie.”

“Who?”

“Every bugger!”

And now it was true.

SILVER Edward Victor. Suddenly at home, on February 16, 1993. Acclaimed jazz musician of the be-bop era. Funeral service and memorial meeting, Friday, February 19 at Golders Green Crematorium at 11.45 a.m. Inquiries to Mason Funeral and Monumental Services, High Lanes, Finchley.