My deepest thanks go out to Sharon Pelletier and David Pomerico, who got Gilda right from the start, to Bethany Johnsrud for pointing me to Sharon, and to the wonderful women of Squeaky Bicycle—Kathryn McConnell and Brandi Varnell—not just for introducing me to Bethany, but for nearly a decade of support, encouragement, and inspiration as I figured out how to be a writer good enough to dream up Gilda Carr.

Beyond those five, there is no one who deserves thanks more than my parents, who are magnificent; my brother, who’s not bad either; and my wife, Yvonne, who is supreme. And although they were more hindrance than help, I’d like to say a final word of thanks to Dr. Baby—named Dash the Flash after this book was first dedicated—and Follow-Up Baby, who turned out to be August all along.

An Excerpt from WESTSIDE SAINTS

One

On a night of hard frost, in the ruins of a burnt church, I found a body in the snow.

Its hand poked through the powder, gripping a crumbling stone altar. When I touched the wrist, a fistful of white tumbled away, exposing a derby hat and a tuft of thin orange hair spotted with blood.

“Find it?” called the woman I traveled with.

I wiped my hand on my black dress, which had seen much worse than the residue of a corpse, and walked back to her.

“There’s nothing here,” I said, and left the dead man behind. It was no feat. I’d been walking away from corpses all winter long. This was March 1922, when our bodies refused to stay buried.

Ten days prior, I was spitting off the ledge of Berk’s Third Floor. Owned by one of the rare Westsiders as short and uncompromising as myself, Berk’s was a shabby saloon on the Westside half of the stem whose eastern walls and roof had, some years back, simply melted away.

The exposure to the elements made it a pleasant summertime beer garden. In the winter it remained popular only with the committed few: those antisocial types who would happily freeze for a peek over the top of the fence and the chance to drink illegal liquor in full view of the Eastside throng. The people on the far side of Broadway were fat, happy, honorable, and safe, but when they cast their sober eyes up at us, all we saw was thirst. We raised our glasses to say that though west of the fence we had no electricity, no heat, and no conveniences, that though there were no guns on our side of the island but countless murders just the same, that though we lived in what they called hell, we had liquor, and some nights that made it okay.

On the other nights, we spit.