Charlie Shafer

Interviewed by Eddie Duggan

Charlie Shafer is a retired Chicago detective. After hanging up his badge five years ago he started writing short stories which have appeared in Crime Time and Blue Murder Magazine. Eddie Duggan's short stories have also appeared in Crime Time and Blue Murder Magazine and, after Charlie read one of Eddie's stories in Crime Time, they began corresponding via email. Charlie's first novel, On Cabrini Green, is published by Crime Time Publishing. Eddie read an early draft of the novel and, as the correspondence continued, Crime Time supremo Barry Forshaw suggested that Eddie shape it into an interview. What follows is the result of a series of emails that passed between Ipswich and Chicago 'whan that Aprill with his shoures soote the droghte of March hath perced to the roote'.

Hi Charlie, I've just finished reading a draft of On Cabrini Green and would like to ask you a few questions for an interview-style piece in Crime Time. First then, can you tell me how much of On Cabrini Green is based on the Chicago that you patrolled?

Hi Ed. The Cabrini Green Housing Project is a real place. As a young cop I spent a lot of time working there. The Drake Hotel is also real, as are all the main locations in the book.

What else can you tell us about Cabrini Green?

Recently Chicago gave up on the Cabrini Green. Just impossible to police. The buildings remain, but most of the tenants have been moved out. Originally it was set up for senior citizens, but it quickly became a series of high rise apartments for the poorest of the poor, and the street gangs took it over. Murders and shootings were an everyday occurrence. Even cops took their lives in their hands with each visit. When I worked there, you couldn't leave your patrol car unattended for fear that it would be demolished upon your return. A scary place.

The uniformed cops in On Cabrini Green are willing to interfere with evidence, to 'get one over' a rival, or to finish a shift on time. This is all made up, isn't it?

On Cabrini Green is total fiction, but taken from my own true-life experience as a Chicago cop. I've never seen anyone interfere with evidence to 'get one over' a rival. Most cops are honest and hard working. But some are incompetent, just as there are incompetent lawyers and doctors. So yes, rushing through work can happen. Also, sometimes a case can get personal, as in your partner getting hurt or even killed. Still, you wouldn't interfere with evidence - it's not worth it. It's a criminal offence, and you could end up in jail. But should an incompetent cop get in the way, you might very well hold back information from him or her in order to further the investigation. I'm not saying this is right, I'm just saying that's how it is.

So this is something you might have seen happen on the force?

Yes. I worked with the same partner most of my years, both while assigned to the Task Force, and as a detective (the auto-theft detectives in On Cabrini Green - Herman and Stash - that's us). We worked professional car thieves, and over the years learned their habits inside out; not because we were so very bright, but simply because, for us, this was the best way to get the job done. Often, a supervisor would want us to target a certain suspect when we knew it had to be another. Well, we would work the case our own way, and tell the supervisor we had done it his way. Sometimes we'd even make the supervisor happy by giving him credit for the arrest. Other times we'd get information that led us to places we weren't supposed to go, such as to other cities where we had no real police authority. We knew that if we asked for permission it would be denied, so we just went and didn't tell anyone. No harm, no foul. I'm not suggesting our supervisors were incompetent. Far from it. It was just that they worked in an office while we were on the street, swamped with work, so we did things our own way. And let me tell you, there were times when we ourselves turned out to be dead wrong. But police work is like writing in the respect that cops have to use the methods they find that work and writers have to find their own voice and go with it.

The detective in the novel, Kyle Debolt, is a bit of a fool. Other characters laugh at him, not least because of the language he uses ('perps' for example) Was there anyone on the force as stupid as Debolt?

Debolt comes purely from my own imagination. And while the other cops laugh at what Debolt does, his old partner and the book's main character, Sergeant Paul Kostovic, also does his best to protect Debolt whenever he can. He doesn't want to see Debolt embarrassed and is even ready to give Debolt credit for the pending arrest until things go awry.

The plot in On Cabrini Green is classic stuff - a complex set of twists follow from the initial jewel robbery. The plotting, dialogue and atmosphere come over really well. Are you drawing on any influences, any of the classic writers?

I'm probably influenced by Elmore Leonard more than anyone. For me, dialogue is what gets a story over, and his is second to none. Chester Himes is another of my favourites. He grabs you on page one, and doesn't let go until The End.

There's humour in there too. Did you find much humour in policing?

I'm one of those characters that finds humour in everything. But, yes, police work is full of humour. Like the day I got home from work, and went to empty my revolver. Only I didn't have to because I had forgotten to load it in the first place. Like when as a rookie I found heroin on a drugged-up suspect. Only I didn't know what heroin looked like, and had to be told what it was. Like the time I stopped an old lady for speeding, and she told me she was Catholic, that if I didn't let her go, she'd see me burn in hell. Even when things aren't so funny, you still have to laugh. It's that or go bonkers. Like the first time I handled a dead body, and grabbed its arm only to have about three layers of dead skin slide off in my hand. As a matter of fact, I'm a walking encyclopaedia on cop humour. Maybe you know a good publisher who might be interested?

There's the old familiar tension in On Cabrini Green between the uniformed cops and the detectives. Was it pretty much like that when you were a cop?

Tension isn't so much between all uniformed cops and all detectives, it's an individual thing. Personalities and egos get in the way - ambition too, as in On Cabrini Green, where the main character doesn't trust one particular homicide detective. The Task Force is a different story. They're uniformed men whose main objective is fighting street crime. They span the city, and invade the regular patrol officers' assigned beats arresting purse snatchers, muggers, drug offenders, while the beat officer is busy answering radio calls. Naturally tensions arise.

How long were you a cop?

Twenty-eight years. A year or so as a beat cop, three in the Task Force, the rest as a detective.

Do you also have a Marine background like the main characters in On Cabrini Green?

I served four years in the Marines. One of those years was in South East Asia, but never did I see combat.

On Cabrini Green is your first novel. Do you have another novel in the works?

Actually, On Cabrini Green is my second. The first, also crime fiction, is awful. It's what I learned on. Yes, I'm just now finishing another crime fiction novel, called Chicago Stretch. It's about a cop who has it made, driving for the mayor, a lowlife politician who is constantly getting illegal contributions to his re-election campaign. The cop sees his chance to get rich, and sets up a robbery of the cash, knowing the mayor can't possibly report missing money that he isn't supposed to have. Meanwhile a family of not-so-smart wrongdoers is hired by the mayor's campaign manager to do the same thing… at the same place and at the same time. Things get messy. It's funny, too, I hope.

You've had short stories in Crime Time and in Blue Murder Magazine. Anywhere else?

No. And no more short stories from me. None on the horizon, anyway. I must say, though, writing shorts is an excellent learning tool. You have only so many words to spin a tale, develop characters, and at the same time hope to entertain the reader. And for me, shorts are so very time consuming, which is time I need to write novels. I do applaud those who write shorts, both exclusively, and when they're not writing novels, but shorts take too much discipline, discipline this old man doesn't come close to. Besides, I'd rather play golf. Or in my case, goof.

So you consciously started in shorts as a way of progressing to longer stuff, a kind of deliberate apprenticeship, like Hammett and Chandler, who started on shorts and worked up to longer pieces?

I wish I had. That's the road I'd suggest for any hopeful author. Like a dummy, I started out with a novel: no training, no understanding of plot development. I just started writing… and thought I had a masterpiece. When no publisher was interested, I took it to a creative writing instructor who taught me a thing or two dozen. So then I knocked out On Cabrini Green and took it back to the instructor: all it got me was a sad shake of the head, because I had given point of view to eight separate characters. That was when a writer friend suggested I try shorts. Can you believe it? I sold everything I wrote! Along the way I learned that to keep the reader turning pages a story has to be kept to the point. Meanwhile, I pored back over On Cabrini Green, eliminating a few characters, and limiting point of view to the cop and the master criminal. I kind of thought I had something I could sell, and about then Peter Dillon-Parkin at Crime Time asked to see the manuscript. A few months later he took the bait: up until then I thought he was fairly bright!

So you've given up on short stories now?

Yeah. Like I said, shorts are great. They're also lots of fun to write, but too time consuming, what with me trying to knock out novels, plus being committed to writing columns for a couple of magazines.

I know you have a column in Blue Murder: how did you get into that? And what's your other column?

Dave Firks, the editor of Blue Murder, asked me to write what real life police work is like. I mostly just tell old war stories. It wasn't long after I started the column for Blue Murder that Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine asked me to do the same for them. I've done a couple of columns for Ed Gorman's Mystery Scene Magazine too, and am supposed to do a few more (for as long as I can fool Gorman into taking them, anyway). Really though, non-fiction isn't my thing, but it is nice to get up on a soapbox every now and again, especially when nobody can argue back at me.

Did you read the classic cop books, like Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh, as a cop?

Sure, I've read both. Wambaugh's Onion Field is about as good as they come. He's not afraid to tell it like it really is, too. Wambaugh likes to add a lot of humour, as does McBain. Most important, each keeps the plot moving. To each his own, but for me plot hold-ups to describe every doorknob or to go into every minor character's background earns a book a dusty place on the shelf.

Has your reading changed since you hung up your service revolver?

I wouldn't say my reading has changed. What has changed is that since I've supposedly learned a few things about writing, I can't enjoy a book like I used to. Before, I just read for the story and let it go at that. Now I'm constantly watching for writing technique, styles. I run up to my wife yelling, "Wow, this guy breaks all the rules and still knocks out good stuff."

What current writers do you find exciting?

Besides grabbing everything Elmore Leonard has written, any western by Larry McMurtry is a must; he's a real genius. And Tom Clancy is something too, although I need a dictionary at my elbow for all the high-faluting words he likes to throw in. My theory is the man's a closet comedian - either that or he has stock in Webster's.

Charlie, thanks for taking time out from your busy schedule to talk via email. I look forward to seeing the novel launched sometime soon.

It's been a pleasure… and thanks for asking some great questions!