Alex said: “Go on downstairs. Wait for me outside. Baja. Baja. El taxi está in the parking lot.” He had lost all of his words and his jaw hurt. He was tired. Arcia glanced at him over her shoulder and moved outside to the railing of the concrete overhang. He pulled on his pants. He walked out the door where she was standing. He was barefooted and with only his pants on. He was very white. His hair was gray. The green taxi was downstairs in the parking lot. Number 107. Pete waved at him, and Alex waved back. He had known either Pete or Tony would be there because he owed them fifty dollars. That was part of the deal. Arcia saw the taxi too. She hung her purse on her shoulder and walked toward the stairs, her hips casually moving back and forth. She was very young and very beautiful in the desert’s morning light.
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
MILTON T. BURTON is a fifth-generation Texan, born in Jacksonville, Cherokee County. He has been variously a cattleman, college history teacher, political consultant, and an assistant to the dean of the Texas House of Representatives. His third crime novel is Nights of the Red Moon.
BOBBY BYRD-publisher, poet, and essayist-is the copublisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso. Byrd is the recipient of the Lannan Fellowship for Cultural Freedom, an NEA Fellowship, the D.H. Lawrence Fellowship awarded by the University of New Mexico, and an International Residency Fellowship (NEA/Instituto de Belles Artes de México). He is also the coeditor of the nonfiction anthology Puro Border:
Dispatches, Snapshots, & Graffiti from La Frontera.
JOHNNY BYRD is copublisher of Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso, and the coeditor of the anthology Puro Border: Dispatches, Snapshots, & Graffiti from La Frontera. As a Spanish-to-English translator, he translated the novel Out of Their Minds: The Incredible and (Sometimes) Sad Story of Ramon and Cornelio by Luis Humberto Crosthwaite. Byrd is also a freelance essayist, writing articles for online publications about culture and music.
DAVID CORBETT is the author of four acclaimed novels:
The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for an Edgar Award, named a Top 10 Mystery & Thriller of 2007 by the Washington Post; and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book), and Do They Know I’m Running? Corbett’s story “Pretty Little Parasite” (from Las Vegas Noir) was published in Best American Mystery Stories 2009.
SARAH CORTEZ was born and lives in Houston, where she is a police officer. Of Mexican, French, Comanche, and Spanish descent, her roots inform her poetry, fiction, and essays. Edward Hirsch described her award-winning collection How to Undress a Cop as “nervy, quick-hitting, street-smart, sexual.” She is the editor of Windows into My World: Latino Youth Write Their Lives, Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery, and Indian Country Noir.
JAMES CRUMLEY (1939-2008) has been described as “one of modern crime writing’s best practitioners” and “a patron saint of the post-Vietnam private eye novel.” His characters Milo Milodragovitch and C.W. Sughrue have become part of the pantheon of the hard-boiled heroes of the noir genre. Do yourself a favor and read The Last Good Kiss, one of “the most influential crime novels of the last 50 years.”
DEAN JAMES, a Mississippian long transplanted to Texas, has published numerous mystery short stories and has coauthored a number of award-winning works of mystery nonfiction. Writing under his own name and three pseudonyms-Miranda James, Jimmie Ruth Evans, and Honor Hartman-he has published fifteen mystery novels. He’s earned a PhD in medieval history and an MS in library science. He currently works as a librarian in the Texas Medical Center in Houston.
JOE R. LANSDALE is the author of thirty novels and twenty short story collections, and has won an Edgar Award, seven Bram Stoker Awards, the British Fantasy Award, and the Grinzoni Cavour Prize for Literature. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep has been made into a cult movie directed by Don Coscrelli. His latest novel is Vanilla Ride.
JESSICA POWERS is the author of The Confessional, a murder mystery set on the U.S.-Mexico border which “morphs silkily into a clever noir adaptation” (Library Journal). She grew up in El Paso, Texas, and currently lives in California.
ITO ROMO was born on the border in Laredo, Texas, in 1961. His recent work, dubbed “Chicano Gothic,” shows the dark and gritty life along Interstate 35 through South Texas, where the road finally ends at the international bridge. Romo, a writer, painter, sculptor, and teacher, holds a PhD from Texas Tech University and is an associate professor of English at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of a novel, El Puente/The Bridge.
LISA SANDLIN was born in Beaumont, Texas, and grew up in that bayou refinery town near the Louisiana border. The Famous Thing About Death and Message to the Nurse of Dreams, both published by Cinco Puntos Press, reflect her background. Her book In the River Province (Southern Methodist University Press) is set in New Mexico, where she went to live after college. She teaches at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
CLAUDIA SMITH grew up in Houston and spent many childhood summers in Galveston. Her collection The Sky Is a Well and Other Shorts won Rose Metal Press’s short-short competition. Her second collection, Put Your Head in My Lap, is available from Future Tense Books. Her short-shorts and stories have been published in numerous places, including New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond. She now lives and writes in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
JESSE SUBLETT, a native Texan, is a novelist and musician living in Austin. His Martin Fender detective novels are set in that city, and his band the Skunks is credited with helping put Austin on the international rock and roll map. Sublett has also written for film and television. James Ellroy described his memoir Never the Same Again: A Rock ’n’ Roll Gothic as “a harrowing, wrenching, spellbinding work of great candor and soul.”