Imagine spending months gaining the trust of a gang for a story, only to have a court order turn you into their number one target. In Jay Atkinson's new thriller, 'Storrow Drive,' reporter Joe Dolan's branded a narc and hunted through Boston's underworld by a kingpin who wants him silenced. To survive, he has to stop reporting the story and start fighting for his life.
Carrie Healy, NEPM: In journalism we're taught to be flies on the wall, invisible [and] objective. But Joe's shield vanishes at the moment that he's labeled a narc. Did you want to explore that moral hazard? The closer a reporter gets to the truth, the more they lose the protection of being that outsider?
Jay Atkinson, author: Yeah, and, I mean, I have an anecdote that is really like the first chapter of the book, but it happened in real life!
I was teaching at a university before I came to BU [Boston University]. I was walking across campus pretty much alone. Somebody was following me. And every time I try to look over my shoulder, they would move a little bit out of range. I knew from previous experience like I was being tailed, and then as soon as the campus started to get crowded, the person caught up to me and asked me if my name was Jay Atkinson and he looked like a bad guy. Yeah [wearing a] scally cap...he's smoking a cigarette on a college campus!
He had a tattoo on his neck and I said, "No, I'm not."
I kept walking. And so when I got to the building, I thought, okay, I'm going to duck him. I'm going to get into the building. And then he won't be able to find me.
Well, he did find me. And within five minutes after I entered that building, he entered my classroom.
And then he slapped a subpoena on my desk and he said, "You know, you shouldn't [bleepin'] lie to people."
And then I looked down at the subpoena and I said, "The person's name that you have here, he has three different passports. He has three different identities. And he's wanted in four states. Who's the worst offender here? Like me or him?"
Oh, wow.
The students were, like, aghast!
They were looking... right, and so the guy stuck his finger down on the subpoena and he says, "I'm going to be seeing you again!"
I said, "I don't think so, dude."
And he left the room... All the students applauded.
They thought that he was an actor that I hired for creative writing exercise, and I said, "No, that just happened. I got a subpoena. I have to go to court."
At Hynes Auditorium, a broad-shouldered youth wearing a Red Sox cap got on the train. About six-two and two hundred pounds, he was accompanied by a fierce looking bulldog on a chain. The kid held onto about five feet of chain, which allowed the dog to sniff around. It was like getting on the T with a machine gun. They paced up and down rattling the chain, and after five minutes, I decided I'd had enough. Besides, I wanted to know if any of my sources had heard about some college kids getting ripped for a big score.
(from Part 1: October. Chapter 2, Morrissey Blvd)
Wow.
In addition to the Boston neighborhoods and the T stations in your book, there's also at least three references to the reservoir that provides drinking water to Boston, the Quabbin. What makes the Quabbin important to both you and to your main character, Joe?
The funny thing is that I live north of the city. I don't live in Boston, so I've been to the Quabbin maybe once, and so I just know the name. And I think the name was like so good for the book that I worked in the Quabbin. I say, like I say a couple times, but it wasn't, if you think about it, it wasn't a central location for the characters.
No it wasn't. Sometimes the wheels of law enforcement move slowly. How did you balance that real world accuracy with being an author and having to write a breakneck speed that people expect in a thriller?
Well, I mean, there's the note taking is long and I was out, you know, I was out on the street with different elements within the gang task force. Some were like, um, state police detectives, some were local detectives, some were FBI's.
What you would do when you go on surveillance is it's a lot of nothing. It's a lot of like six hours staring at the front door of a house where nobody's coming and going.
So, I just had to have the patience to stick with the story until something happened. That's why it took a year and change to be at the right location when somebody showed up, that was a player, not just somebody that was going to buy a bag of heroin.
So, there was a lot of downtime, and I think that gave me a great appreciation for how much surveillance they do and how little it garners, how little they get from it. It takes a long time to build a case.
Shaggy's mother died from a heroin overdose. He didn't know who his father was, and his older brother, Triggy, was shot dead when he was seventeen. Shaggy's aunt worked as a teacher's aide in Chelsea, and was trying to get him into the Edington School in Great Barrington, Mass.
I'm gonna be an architect,' he said.
Foley smiled. 'You're going to jail unless you give me a name.'
(from Part 3: November. Chapter 3, Memorial Drive)
You went into this a journalist, you came out of this a journalist. How did that experience change you?
After about a month of going out on surveillances, I started to see that it was not just a couple of pieces I was going to write for the [Boston] Globe [newspaper].
It was a deeper story about these gang members that are 15-years-old, 16-years-old. Their girlfriends were even younger. They take guns that have been used in shootings, and they pass them to their girlfriends, and the girlfriends hide them under their bed. I deal with kids all the time and I teach kids power skating...
Power skating.. is that hockey?
Yeah, it's a hockey technique.
I have kids [on the ice that are] the same age as these gang members, and I just couldn't believe how callous they already were to the world's problems. Like it was really like... moving.
But also the law enforcement people are very practical. They just want to turn the kid to get the kid's guns off the street. And so, I had to sort of balance that. I just think they're doing it for the public good, you know?
And that kept me up at night. I started thinking about that. This was something that the book just had to be written, and I wrote it. It took about three-and-a half-years.
Jay Atkinson’s latest novel is "Storrow Drive."
