Why Did the Human Cross the Road?

Recent reading has me contemplating human nature and destiny. Before we get to the actual books that inspired this thinking, we could warm up our minds by looking at Shakespeare for Cassius's ideas about being our own masters versus the fault in our stars or King Henry IV's desire to peek at the book of fate; however, it's Monday, and our heads are already spinning without the stimulus of the Bard. Let's ask instead why the chicken crossed the road. And no, we can't say it's simply to get to the other side.

I love the answers Harvard's David Morin attributes to physicists such as Einstein ("The chicken did not cross the road. The road passed beneath the chicken.") and Schrodinger ("The chicken doesn’t cross the road. Rather, it exists simultaneously on both sides . . . just don’t peek."), but those answers are observational. They don't really examine the nature of the chicken and the road or the roles played by the chicken's motivations and choices, as well as fate, in its crossing.

Sorry, Dr. Martin Luther King, but we're grilling these birds.

For those answers, we'll turn to philosophers. We'll skip Kierkegaard, who would no doubt attribute the chicken's crossing to a leap of faith, and Freud, who would likely blame your mother or your own underlying sexual insecurity for whatever interpretation of the chicken's behavior. I imagine Kant declaring, "The chicken, being an autonomous being, chose to cross the road of his own free will"; but Orwell disagreeing: "Because the government had fooled him into thinking that he was crossing the road of his own free will, when he was really only serving their interests." Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas point to a different inspiration: "The possibility of 'crossing' was encoded into the objects 'chicken'' and 'road,' and circumstances came into being which caused the actualization of this potential occurrence." Sartre, on the other hand, would observe that in order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Let's interpolate from the philosophers' ideas about a chicken's behavior in crossing the road to the behavior of the characters in books I've recently read.

If David Bowie can look like a Polish chicken,
Sal Cupertine can pass for Rabbi David Cohen.

In Tod Goldberg's Gangsterland (Counterpoint, September 9, 2014), we follow two characters who eventually meet up: One of them is Chicagoan Sal Cupertine, age 35, the younger cousin of a Mob-connected used-car king, Ronnie Cupertine. Sal is the doting father of little William and loving husband to Jennifer, who turns a blind eye to Sal's job as the Chicago Mob's best pro killer. The other character is Jeff Hopper, whose childhood dream was to wear a beautiful suit that concealed a gun, to catch bad guys, and to save America. When Jeff got older, he became more cynical, but he's still one of those guys you'd like to see coach your kid's Little League team. He is working for the FBI when he makes a mistake that leads Sal to kill three FBI agents and their confidential informant.

That sort of thing doesn't just slip unnoticed into the night. Jeff is placed on administrative leave. In the meantime, the Mob hustles Sal out of town for a series of plastic surgeries and quiet time for studying the Talmud (not difficult for Sal, who is known as "the Rain Man" for his memory), and then resurrects him as Rabbi David Cohen in Las Vegas. Las Vegas isn't what it used to be for organized crime, what with the corporatization of gambling and casinos, but there are still ways for connected guys to muscle in on the action in secondary markets, including construction, strip clubs, and drugs not handled by the Bloods and Crips. Believe it or not, there's even a place for a man like Sal at Temple Beth Israel, whose growing complex houses two rabbis, a mortuary, a cemetery, and a private school.

Tod Goldberg

What makes Gangsterland irresistible is its noirish look at the immutability of an individual's nature and the consequences of choices made long ago, as the sequelae of Sal's massacre ripple through the world of criminals, informants, and law enforcement. Writer Goldberg unspools his character-driven tale as if there's no other way it could happen. It's not surprising Sal becomes a killer in the first place: his dad was a gangster who died when he was thrown off a building, and Sal grew up committing crimes for his cousin. What were his options, and how were choices made by and for him? Sal doesn't get any pleasure from murdering people, but his bosses are always finding someone whom they think needs killing. Sal's life motto can be summed up with the words, "Everybody dies," and he knows it will be his turn one of these days.

Currently, he's stuck in Las Vegas, forbidden to call his wife and unable to look in the mirror without surprise, but he has plenty of time to think about who's pulling whose strings, how he got where he is now, and what the Talmud says about starting over. The Temple's members love Sal as David. Does this change him? Does the demonization of Jeff Hopper in the press and the lack of support from his former FBI superiors stop him on his quest to find Sal Cupertine? Everyone in Gangsterland does what he or she has gotta do, or at least what they think they gotta do. Sartre, anyone? They all gotta cross that road.

The Long Island Red symbolizes Achilles and his
lover, Briseis, both of whom have flame-colored hair.

It's a long road in time and space from 1990s Las Vegas to the Trojan War in the 12th century BC. It's also a leap from the noir of Goldberg's Gangsterland to the historical fiction/romance of Judith Starkston's Hand of Fire (Fireship Press, September 10, 2014), but both books tackle human nature, fate, and self-determination.

We can't discuss the humans of Greek mythology without mentioning the gods, who like to venture down from Olympus and meddle in mortals' lives. Favored mortals sometimes become pawns in the gods' Machiavellian games, although as famous Greek warrior and half-god Achilles says, "The gods and goddesses can do many things as suits them, but they cannot alter fate. Goddesses must bow before fate no matter how much it grieves them." Achilles doesn't have far to look for an example: his mother, the sea nymph Thetis, didn't succeed at burning away all his mortality when he was a baby. They are both aware of the prophecy that he will not return from the Trojan War.

As we know from Homer's Iliad, the Trojan War was prompted by Aphrodite's promise that Trojan prince Paris could have the world's most beautiful woman. Thus, Paris abducted––or eloped with––Queen Helen of Sparta. Her husband's brother, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, led forces gathered from around the Hellenic world to lay siege to Troy and get her back. While the Greeks are waiting, Agamemnon orders Achilles to pillage some nearby cities for treasure and women captives. While sacking Lyrnessos, Achilles meets Briseis, a beautiful young healing priestess and wife of Prince Mynes, when she tries to kill him. Of course, they fall in love.

Judith Starkston

While Hand of Fire may be too heavy on the romance for some readers, it is a carefully researched and beautifully written portrait of Briseis, one of the Iliad's minor characters, beginning with the death of her mother and her growth as a healing priestess to her life as a captive and Achilles' lover. It's been a while since I've read Ovid and Homer, but Starkston makes Briseis and Achilles and their world come alive. The ending invites a promised sequel, although classicist Starkston plans a novel about Queen Puduhepa of the Hittites as "sleuth" first.

Oh, and so why would Starkston's characters cross the road? For Achilles, I'll go with Emily Dickinson's reasoning for a chicken's crossing, "Because it could not stop for death." Through dying, Achilles achieves immortality in legends. As for the independent-minded Briseis, I think Captain James T. Kirk of the Starship Enterprise has her number: "To boldly go where no chicken has gone before."

Note: If you love chickens, as I do, you might be interested in Stephen Green-Armytage's Extraordinary Chickens, a book of gorgeous photographs of unusual chicken breeds from around the world.

Nuthin' Says Lovin' Like Sumpthin' from the Oven

I admit it. I'm not the world's best or most organized cook. While I'm rushing pasta from stove to sink I bump into my kids as they're setting the table. When a dinner guest cuts my chocolate cake I spill coffee beans all over the kitchen floor. I'm as apt to chop my finger as the scallion I'm holding.

This might explain why I'm more fond of reading cookbooks than I am of cooking from them even though I love good food and enjoy messing around in the kitchen. I'm fascinated by glimpses into the mysterious lairs of professional chefs where culinary miracles are produced and served. As a fan of crime fiction, however, I most enjoy witnessing something lethal in those kitchens and I'm not talking about the artistic arrangement of dead carrots on a plate.

After all, a well-equipped professional kitchen is a natural place for violence and death. Glittering knives, sharp tools whose use I can only guess, heavy pans and flaming dishes. A walk-in refrigerator. Large plastic bags. Drāno for the sink. A butcher's block. What better place for hot tempers to boil over into homicidal rage? A good place for a waiter to debone another with a fish knife or a wine steward to clobber the pastry chef with the Châteauneuf du Pape.

I'm not a fan of TV chef Anthony Bourdain, but his book Bone in the Throat: A Novel is a very grisly yet merry caper set in the Dreadnaught Grill of Manhattan's Little Italy. Everyone in the Dreadnaught kitchen is caught in the cross-currents of food, entrepreneurship and crime, including the dentist in legal trouble who is forced by loony feds into becoming a restaurateur as part of a farcical sting operation to ensnare loan shark Salvatore "Sally Wig" Pitera, who bankrolls the eatery; the dope-using chef; and sous-chef Tommy Pagano, Pitera's nephew. Tommy isn't fond of the Mob, but Uncle Sal raised him, so Tommy allows him and some other mobsters to use the kitchen for after-hours "business" and is caught in a squeeze by the FBI as a result. Oh, boy.

If you think that a grease fire or getting cut while chopping onions is the worst that can happen in a kitchen you're in for an eye-popping, stomach-churning experience when you read Bone in the Throat. This is a delectable satirical novel; maybe not for reading while eating, although the knowledgeable talk about ingredients and savory recipes stoked my appetite and kept me munching as I peeled the pages of this book. Bourdain graduated from the Culinary Institute of America, but he deserves an honorary degree from the Homicidal Institute of America as well. Clever gangsterese, hearty servings of SoHo culture, entertaining characters and over-the-top kitchen mayhem. Black humor en croute. Bon appétit!

P.S. If this book promises to be too violent for your taste but you're looking for a food-infused mystery, former Washington Post restaurant critic Phyllis Richman's first Chas Wheatley book, The Butter Did It, is a fun traditional mystery and may satiate your appetite.

The Russian Prisons Must Be Empty

Why do I say that? Because the only conclusion I can reach after reading these books is that all the Russian bad guys are elsewhere.

Barbara Nadel writes the excellent Inspector Cetin Ikmen series that takes place in Istanbul, Turkey. Once known as Constantinople (and even if you paid no attention in geography class, you would know this if you ever listened to the They Might Be Giants song "Istanbul"), the city overlies the Bosporus and is the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

In Nadel's Petrified, Ikmen's junior colleague Mehmet Süleyman is wandering around the Grand Bazaar and is sickened by the men in the "mobster" uniform of leather jackets, whatever the weather, and a gaudy display of gold jewelry. Alongside them are their even more ostentatiously bedecked women, and Süleyman wonders: when had this become normal? There had always been gangsters in the city but this, the Russian mafia, was crime on a different level.

Süleyman is investigating crime boss Valery Rostov, suspected to be the head of Istanbul's Russian organized-crime ring that has its fingers in every dirty pie in the multicultural city. The big case on the plate of Süleyman's superior, Cetin Ikman, is the disappearance of the twin children of a famous, and infamous, local artist. As Mehmet worries that Süleyman is being manipulated by Rostov, he also begins to see links among the Russians, the lost children and the bizarre artwork of the children's father.

Five thousand miles away in Detroit, the Motor City, in Michael Koryta's first book, Tonight I Said Goodbye, PIs Lincoln Perry and Joe Pritchard are trying to save what remains of a family from another set of vicious Russian mobsters. This book's page-turning suspense made Koryta a finalist for the 2005 Edgar Awards' Best First Novel category.

Let's move west, out to Phoenix, Arizona, where they say it's a Dry Heat (Jon Talton). Talton's series features David Mapstone, a history professor turned cold-case expert for the Maricopa County sheriff's department. His wife Lindsey is in the department's cybercrimes unit, which has just had a triumph against—you guessed it—the Russian mafia. But don't start the Stolichnaya toasts too soon. When three members of Lindsey's unit are killed in a hit, David and Lindsey are forced to go into hiding. They must keep their heads down while he works on a 50-year-old murder of an FBI agent, and they try to figure out how to stay alive long enough to bring justice to both the past and present.

New York City has always been a mecca for all the world's peoples. Reggie Nadelson tells us that it's knee deep in Chechens, Azerbaijanis and, of course, Russians. In her Red Hot Blues, Artie Cohen is an NYPD cop who grew up in Moscow. When former KGB general Gennadi Ustinov is killed while appearing live on a New York talk show, Artie is put on the case. After all, Artie speaks Russian. Not that it's so easy for even a Russian-speaking New York cop to try to find the truth when it leads to the Russian mafia enclave in Brighton Beach. Artie's investigation reveals secrets involving small Russian nuclear devices and requires him to return to Moscow, where he must confront his secret past as the son of a KGB superstar father and a Jewish mother.

These days, Eurocrime is very popular, and we read crime fiction from all over the continent. In Siren of the Waters, by Michael Genelin, Jana Matinova is a commander in the Slovak police force and a woman with a difficult past during the Communist era. Matinova teams up with a Russian colleague to track Koba, a ruthless and sadistic Russian master criminal they suspect of directing a sex slave network. Their investigation takes them to Ukraine, Strasbourg, Vienna and Nice, all places caught in the octopus-like tentacles of the Russian mafia, hunting for Koba as he, in turn, levels his sights on a beautiful young Russian woman as his next prey.

In Three Seconds, by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström, it's the Russian mob's little brothers, the Polish mafia, who keep an active presence in the Swedish prison system. The perverted theory that benefits both the mob and certain elements of the state is to provide drugs gratis while the felon is imprisoned, and he will do anything required to keep the goods coming. The drugged-up inmates are more easily controlled and help save money on prison guards. The numbers of these men coming out of prison then swell the ranks of the mafia.

After reading these books, I began to wonder if there is any place where purely home-grown crime predominates now. It looks like it takes an island for that. Someplace like Iceland, Australia or Antarctica. Cuba might be out for the Russians these days. They don't seem to have much love for the Russians there now and there isn't much money to be made there. Anyway, all the getaway cars were made before 1950 and are held together with duct tape.

But now that I think about it, plenty of Russian bad guys have kept their dirty work at home. After all, Martin Cruz Smith's Arkady Renko and Stuart Kaminsky's Porfiry Rostnikov seem to be just as busy fighting crime in Moscow today as they were 20 years ago. And to be completely fair, I seem to recall that in Smith's Gorky Park, the main bad guy was actually an American.

**************************

I enjoy listening to music while I read and ponder. I am including a part of of my iPod playlist that reflects some of the ambiance of the locations of these mysteries:

"Arabesk" by Kiraç
"Motor City" by Neil Young
"Torn" by Creed
"Fear" by Sarah McLachlan
"Marche Slave" by the New York Philharmonic
"Mon Dieu" by Edith Piaf
"Porque" by Raul Malo
"Como Baile Marieta" by Orestes Vilate
"The Name of the Game" by ABBA

[Unfortunately, the embedded HTML coding that allowed the music to actually play was creating problems for some Chrome and Internet Explorer users, so we've removed it. We'll replace it after troubleshooting. We're sorry for your inconvenience!]

Who Ya Gonna Call?

There are some chores we perform ourselves without much thinking. Washing the dishes. Cleaning the junk drawer.

There are other tasks most of us wouldn't dream of tackling. Subduing a rogue elephant. Performing a do-it-yourself appendectomy.

Then there are jobs like changing the oil in the car or tiling a kitchen counter. Some folks do these things themselves while others call in an expert.

Murder is that type of job.

A premeditated murder can be undertaken by a determined amateur but there are times a mere dilettante or gifted dabbler simply won't do. The potential victim is enveloped by security. The pool of potential suspects is shallow. The potential murderer is too fastidious to perform such a dastardly deed or not fastidious enough to plan and execute it without getting caught. Whatever the reason, the work is outsourced to a pro.

I've been reading about those times and meeting one assassin for hire after another. Fictional bodies have been dropping like autumn leaves from the trees. Let me take a breather from watching the rain of corpses to introduce you to some industrious professional killers.

The opening scene of Lenny Kleinfeld's Shooters & Chasers finds a freshly recruited pro criminal, sweet but dumb Emilio ("Meelo") Garcia, working at the absolute pinnacle of his abilities—he's waiting in a Chicago hotel room. His new boss, the man Meelo knows as Oscar, told him to stay put unless he wants a bullet through his brain. In a valiant effort to follow orders yet cope with his boredom, Meelo struggles to smoke only a "professional" amount of weed and literally gets lit.

Meanwhile, a famous Chicago architect climbs into a taxi to go home. When he arrives, a mugger kills him just feet away from the horrified cabbie. Cops Mark Bergman and John Dunegan easily follow evidence straight to Meelo but he insists he was in his hotel room and didn't murder anyone. The two conscientious cops are uneasy with contradictory statements by witnesses and Meelo's crazy story involving Oscar. Is it possible that a deadly mugging is really an extraordinarily elaborate professional hit-and-frame job? Of course!

Yeah, yeah, I promised an intro to the hitters but handed you the fall guy instead. Listen, you should meet those memorable baddies (Arthur Reid, Dina Velaros and Hector B) yourselves. I will tell you this: A more witty, rambunctious, hip and hilarious, soft-hearted hard-boiled book is impossible to imagine. Assessing Shooters & Chasers as if it were a wine I'd say it offers up an enthralling bouquet of Quentin Tarantino, the Muppets, Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen. Complex, savory and unadulterated pure fruit. Don't. Miss. It. Kleinfeld's sequel is in the works with a probable publishing date of 2013 and I am dying to get my hands on it.

Richard Straight took an unexpected career path to hit man. He was a Tchaikovsky-loving, Kant-reading New York City policeman with a good reputation until his wife was killed by a car bomb meant for him. Straight decided if he couldn't lick 'em, he'd join 'em so he called the boss of the Mafia soldier he'd been pursuing and asked for a job.

In Straight, the first book by Steve Knickmeyer, he is sent to Solano, Oklahoma to kill jeweler Arthur Taber. Straight's boss insists that Hamilton Coady join him there so Straight can give Coady some on-the-job training. The two hit men do not hit it off. Eliminating Taber doesn't go as planned and this summons two Oklahoma City private investigators, tough Steve Cranmer and his womanizing young sidekick, Butch Maneri. Events in Solano don't go smoothly for them either because the town's citizens aren't statues content to stand quietly in the park while two hit men mess around.

This well-written book is for readers who like theirs served hard-boiled with lashings of clever dialogue and sprinklings of humor. Despite their cynicism, the characters deliver some tender insights into the human condition. I liked this book and you can bet I'll read Knickmeyer's next one, Cranmer.

"It's a lot of work being me." Frank Machianno begins his narration of Don Winslow's non-series book The Winter of Frankie Machine with this lament and he ain't kidding. Frank is a Vietnam vet who now runs a bait shop on the pier in San Diego. He also furnishes linen and fish to restaurants and manages rental properties. A relaxing dinner out with his girlfriend means that while Donna powders her nose, Frank slips into the kitchen to ask the chef if he's happy with his current fish supplier.

Frank has a daughter entering medical school and an ex-wife to support. Yet he finds the time to make life good. Perfectly made coffee and pasta. Surfing with friends. Everybody likes and respects Frank but nobody respects him like those who knew him before he retired from the Mob. He was Frankie Machine. Efficient pro killer, honorable "made" man, no squealer. One night Frank the bait man has no choice but to perform a favor, meeting with a Detroit mobster, for the son of a West Coast Mafia boss. The meeting is a setup that forces Frank on the run from the Mob, the cops and the FBI. To bail out of trouble he looks back at his decades as Frankie Machine to figure out who in the Mafia now wants him dead. It's a gripping, tightly plotted and cinematic tale about a surprisingly sympathetic character and I cheered for Frank all the way.

Have you ever been caught with your mental pants down during an introduction? Not this time. I feel no humiliation admitting I don't know the real name of Thomas Perry's hit man. When his parents died he was raised by the local butcher. "The Butcher's Boy" is how the neighborhood knew him and how the Mafia knows him now. He's highly skilled in the arts of murder and life on the run, thanks to his now-deceased mentor Eddie. The Boy runs Eddie's advice almost constantly through his head as if he's fingering a talisman.

He needs more than luck in Perry's first book, The Butcher's Boy, when everyone is out to get him. Bad guys include Mafiosi and their connections, one of whom hired him. Good guys include the U.S. Justice Department's Elizabeth Waring, who analyzes computer printouts listing fishy deaths and whose expertise is the Mafia. She has long suspected the existence of a prolific pro killer. A pickup full of fertilizer that detonated in California, killing its union-member owner, catches her attention. Justice begins an investigation that explodes in scope.

It's a complex plot, engagingly told, well paced and suspenseful. The reader alternately accompanies the Boy as he ingeniously and energetically murders and copes with being chased by ramping up the mayhem, and Waring as she doggedly follows his trail. (I coped by taking the book into the bathtub and ingeniously and energetically splashed around. When I sensed Waring's frustration I ate Lindt truffles to deal with it.)

In Sleeping Dogs and again in The Informant, the Boy is flushed out of retirement in England, where he's been living as Michael Schaeffer. Certain Mob bosses are not ready to bury the hatchet with Schaeffer so he sets his jaw and travels back to the States to mow them down until they are. Waring picks up his scent in Sleeping Dogs and she's in full cry after him in The Informant. She wants him in the Witness Protection Program and Schaeffer wants to pick her brain about the Mafia don who's pursuing him. Neat, huh?

This is a series best read in order. The second and third books clarify events in the first and give more background about the Boy. I enjoyed these books very much. Elizabeth Waring is an appealing character, a dedicated fed who balances motherhood with her career and struggles with the Justice bureaucracy. I rooted for the Butcher's Boy because his enemies are plug uglier than he is. He's a pro assassin humanized by his desire to stay alive, an attachment he develops in England and most of all his bond with Eddie. It's a fitting memorial to Eddie that his Boy endures. I suggest you resist temptation to read one right after another or you'll be dodging bullets as you water your petunias. All the Boy's nonstop scrambling and inventive slaughtering made me walleyed and driving the car risky business but I've survived. Thanks, Eddie.

There are other hitters I want you to meet but they'll have to wait. I'm exhausted from evading capture. In coming weeks I'll tell you about these books:

Barbara Paul: Kill Fee; Teri White: Max Trueblood and the Jersey Desperado; Josh Bazell: Beat the Reaper; J. A. Konrath ed.: These Guns for Hire; Jerome Charyn: Elsinore; Frederick Forsyth: Day of the Jackal; Max Allan Collins: Primary Target; Lawrence Block: Hit and Run; Loren D. Estleman: Something Borrowed, Something Black.

I hope you'll try some of the books I've described above. Tagging along with these hired guns as they calmly dispatch their targets and fade quietly back into the woodwork can be very interesting. But pro hitters' lives are like yours and mine. Things don't always go without a hitch. The victim's neighbor pops over with a meat loaf or a solid citizen sideswipes the getaway car and stubbornly insists on an exchange of information. A pesky private eye decides to poke her nose in. What causes a blinding headache and more extemporaneous work for gunmen can cause rejoicing for us ignoble readers as we take unseemly pleasure in watching them desperately run up the death toll and run hell for leather outta there. Isn't it something, how exhilaratingly ignoble we can be?