The following is an edited excerpt from local writer Jay Atkinson’s new crime novel Storrow Drive, out now from Livingston Press. Joe Dolan, the protagonist of Atkinson’s 1997 debut Caveman Politics, returns as a 47-year-old adjunct professor at Boston’s fictional Kenmore Square University, who also moonlights as a freelance investigative journalist.
Currently, Dolan has leveraged contacts in the federal government to gain access to the FBI’s Anti-Gang Task Force, embedding himself over 18 months inside surveillance operations, field investigations, and the delicate, frequently absurd management of paid informants working Boston’s heroin trade. The proximity earns him a front-row seat to the machinery of the city’s criminal underground.
In this selection, Dolan is riding with Massachusetts State Trooper Jimmy Ford and a confidential informant named Harry Fabian as they attempt an undercover heroin buy targeting a mid-level dealer connected to a larger network operating out of Revere and Chelsea. The operation unfolds not in the dramatic fashion of a police procedural, but in the register Atkinson knows best: borrowed cars, unreliable snitches, and a deal that keeps almost happening across a succession of rainy fast food parking lots—until, briefly and bracingly, it does.
…
Jimmy Ford and I were going to buy heroin. My palms were sweating and I tugged at my collar, gazing out the window. The drizzle was falling over the fast food joints and check cashing places as we cruised down the Revere Beach Parkway.
The money was burning a hole in Jimmy’s pocket. He had swung into the state police barracks in Danvers at four o’clock to sign it out. Throwing a thick envelope in my lap, he gunned the Crown Vic and took a left onto Route 62. Despite the pelting rain he cut around the traffic, going over the centerline to pass other cars. Jimmy didn’t want to take the Crown Vic to the buy, so I’d arranged to borrow my landlord’s car. We had to pick it up in Arlington, cutting through rush hour traffic to meet Fabian at six o’clock.
“If we’re late, he’ll get high and I’ll be fucked,” Jimmy said.
We got to Columbia Avenue in Arlington. I ran in, got my landlord’s keys, and got behind the wheel. “This’ll be the first heroin buy in a fuckin’ hybrid,” Jimmy said.
Livingston Press
Heroin is a lucrative, tax free business, and in Boston hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash whizzed around from street corner to bodega to parking lot in Everett and Chelsea and Revere, lining the pockets of gangbangers and mob associates like Marco and Felix Dominical, who we were trying to set up. Going back to the city’s earliest days, when fur trading instigated vicious rivalries between the English, French, and various native American tribes, there was always something for sale on the streets of Boston. First it was slaves, then beaver pelts, scrimshaw, whale oil, bootleg whiskey, LSD, heroin, Oxys, and so on down the line.
Exactly when we were going to meet Dominical was unclear, but the one constant among dope peddlers is greed—they want the money. If this deal went down, Jimmy Ford would let Dominical walk. The goal for the initial buy was to establish the informant’s reliability—”the C.I.’s information led to convictions in previous heroin cases I developed with the C.I.’s assistance”—and to create a basis of knowledge—”I had observed drug sales on five occasions at the address provided by the C.I. prior to this instance.”
Witnessing Fabian’s buy would help Jimmy later, when he had to establish probable cause for the warrants, surveillance, and pinch.
Riding along, Jimmy was cracking his knuckles and staring out the windshield. He was right on the edge of doing violence, itchy for something to happen. Ford was dressed in ripped jeans and a Boston Bruins hoodie with the collar sliced open to allow for his thick neck. Now that I was driving, Jimmy fidgeted in the passenger seat, sighing when I let another motorist cut in. He flipped open his cellphone to call Fabian.
“Hey numb nuts, where are you?”
“I’ll be there in a half hour,” said Fabian, in his nasally voice. “I had to take my mother to a doctor’s appointment.”
Ford hung up. “What a humanitarian.”
Although I had never done this before, Jimmy had purchased heroin and coke and Oxycontin dozens of times, meeting shit birds in abandoned buildings, cemeteries, and rat-infested tenements. Guys like Fabian were the guides to this dimly lit underworld, shifty, chain-smoking Virgils who knew their way around the sub-basements of Hell.
Today, Jimmy was posing as Vinnie from Providence, a junkie who was Harry’s usual coke supplier. The story was that Vinnie was dope sick and wanted to score, and I was a friend who needed a ride to the airport. As we rolled along Ferry Street, Ford took the Sig Sauer pistol from his hip, ejected the seven-shot magazine, checked the breach, and replaced the clip.
Leaning forward, he tucked the Sig Sauer into the back of his jeans, pulling down his sweatshirt to cover it. At the sight of the gun, my heart quickened.
“You should get a license to carry,” Jimmy said. “Only a fuckin’ idiot shows up at a drug deal without a gun.”
Author Jay Atkinson. / Courtesy
Five minutes later, Jimmy indicated that I should turn into the Taco Bell on the Revere Beach Parkway. “Let’s get out,” said Ford, once I’d parked the car.
The rain had softened to a damp gray mist. We stood beneath the edge of Taco Bell’s roof, the mist billowing across the Parkway. A kid came riding up on a bicycle, dropped it on the sidewalk, and went into the restaurant.
Jimmy nudged me, and I watched as the kid, a Latino about sixteen years old wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball hat, marched through Taco Bell and out the other side.
Jimmy said, “Stay on the kid,” as a Mercedes turned into the lot, swung around the restaurant, and hovered for a moment.
The kid in the Cardinals hat walked past the driver’s side window. There was a brief touching of hands, and the Mercedes banged a left against traffic while the kid circled the restaurant, remounted the bike, and pedaled away.
“That’s your first heroin deal,” Jimmy said.
“Are you gonna pinch him?” I asked.
Jimmy shrugged: “Go with the flow.”
While we were standing there, a cream-colored Cadillac eased up, the sunroof open despite the rain and loud hip-hop pouring from the windows.
“Motherfucka get paid/motherfucka get laid/old times ain’t forgot/mothafucka got shot”
“Hey, tell everyone we’re here,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy climbed into the Cadillac’s front seat and I got in the back, gagging on the stench of body odor and cologne. “What the fuck are you listening to?” Jimmy said.
“That’s Patrick, from Southie,” shouted Fabian. He killed the music. “I represent him.”
“Where, at his arraignment?” Jimmy asked. “You should get a cowboy hat and call yourself Colonel Tom Parker.”
Harry Fabian was a swarthy, heavyset man in his early forties, with thinning hair and the plastic shell of a hands-free phone in his ear. He wore loose nylon shorts, his wrists covered in thick black hair and the flesh hanging from his arms like suet. His protruding lips made him look like a talking frog in a children’s story.
“What’s that?” asked Ford, indicating a Styrofoam cup between the seats.
“Try it,” Harry said.
“I’m not drinking that fuckin’ thing,” said Jimmy.
Fabian gestured toward the cup. “It’s banana hazelnut coffee with whipped cream,” he said. “And low-fat chocolate.”
“Low fat chocolate,” Jimmy said. “What’s the fucking point?”
“I have to pretend I’m trying,” Fabian said.
Jimmy said my name and I thrust my hand between the seats and Fabian shook it. His hand was like a dead octopus, and when he drew it back, I wiped mine on the seat.
Fabian’s driving was worse than Jimmy’s. As we careered along the Parkway, the C.I. juggled several phone conversations while avoiding a Toyota pickup that jumped out from a side street.
“Let’s try not to get killed,” said Jimmy, slamming his hands against the dashboard.
Although I knew a few things about Jimmy Ford and Fabian’s history, I lost track of what they were saying when we passed Everett High. “Did you talk to that guy about that thing?” asked Fabian.
“What guy?”
“The guy who knows my guy,” Harry said.
“I talked to my guy but he says his guy doesn’t know a thing about it,” Jimmy said. “Besides, if my guy gets involved with this thing, he’s gonna want something from the guy and that’s a whole ‘nother thing.”
During this Suffolk County version of Waiting for Godot, Felix Dominical buzzed to say his guy couldn’t find our car. “I’m right fuckin’ here,” said Fabian. “Do you want the money, or what?”
Fabian wheeled the Caddy into the KFC parking lot. His other phone chimed and I heard Marco’s voice saying he’d send Angel with a couple of $40 bags, but that he couldn’t do a big deal today—not enough product.
Fabian switched off the walkie-talkie function. “Wait a fuckin’ minute—” he said, opening his door. The snitch heaved his bulk out of the car, swearing into his phone.
Jimmy picked up Fabian’s coffee. “What are you doing?” I asked.
Jimmy’s lips nearly touched the cup. “He said it’s good.”
“You’ll probably get TB. Put that fucking thing down.”
Jimmy pushed the cup back into its holder, drumming on the dashboard with his hand. A minute later, Fabian rolled himself back into the Caddy.
“His guy saw you guys,” Harry said. “He’s spooked.”
“He didn’t see a fuckin’ thing,” Jimmy said.
Jimmy and I exited the car, crossed the lot, and stood beneath a dripping willow tree. Buying heroin from Felix Dominical was a necessary step toward getting eyes on his boss. Intelligence on Marco was slim. He went around with a big dude named Muscles, which was pretty much all Jimmy knew.
Shivering beneath the tree, we tried to dodge the rain. “What do you think?” I said, gesturing toward Fabian.
Jimmy shook his head. “He’s like a fuckin’ hobo on a ham sandwich.”
“You should refrain from making disparaging remarks about the culinary habits of the disenfranchised,” I said.
Jimmy laughed.
Finally, Harry waved us over. “Marco says Felix is having car problems. So Angel is bagging up the heroin. We’re meeting him in ten minutes.”
“Who the fuck is Angel?” Jimmy asked.
“Marco can only do a couple bags, so he’s sending Angel.”
Over the car radio, Stevie Wonder was singing about the devil being on his way. “Fuck it,” said Jimmy. “We’ll do a hand-to-hand.”
Fabian drove to Taco Bell, where the VW was parked. Jimmy looked over his shoulder. “Get out,” he said to me.
“Aren’t I going?”
Jimmy said to wait in the VW. Then Fabian pulled away and I sat with the rain pattering on the roof. Two minutes later, Jimmy phoned. “Turn left at the light, and look for us a half mile down.”
“What am I doing when I get there?”
“Everything is fluid,” said Jimmy, and hung up.
Chelsea Street was a battered collection of three-deckers opposite a dilapidated playground. The park rose up from the sidewalk behind a fence made of rusty iron spears.
I spotted Fabian’s car and got out of the VW and began walking along the fence. Jimmy emerged from the Caddy, went across the street, and sat on a low brick wall. He had the hood of his sweatshirt up, his hands thrust in his pockets, staring at nothing. No one was around.
With my heart booming, I went through a gate into the park. There was a swing set just ahead. Facing the street, I sat on a swing with my feet in the dirt. A short distance away, Fabian climbed out of his car and gazed up and down the street. It was so quiet, I could hear the jingle of his platinum chains.
Finally, a station wagon cruised up Chelsea Street. I was looking straight into the vehicle, which hovered nearby. The sole occupant was a Hispanic male in his late 20s, with close-cropped hair. His head was so small it looked like an afterthought.
Angel, I presumed.
Fabian glanced in the window, then opened the door and shoved himself inside. As Angel put the car in gear, I heard Fabian say, “My engine’s running. Let’s do it here.”
Angel reached into his pocket, accepting some bills with one hand and passing the dope with the other. Nearby, Ford was perched on the wall, his face obscured by shadows. In just thirty seconds, the deal was over and Angel drove away.
A few minutes later, we were back at Taco Bell and I hopped into Fabian’s car. “I done good, right?” asked the informant.
“You deserve a fuckin’ medal,” Jimmy said.
Fabian held two Baggie ends filled with soft brown powder. “What’s in it for me?” he asked, as Ford took the heroin from him.
“For this? Fuckin’ zero,” Jimmy said. Unexpectedly, he handed the bags to me. “Set up the deal for fifty grams, and I’ll give you a thousand bucks.”
Fabian looked like a little kid who expected a bigger ice cream. “That’s it?”
“There’s a war on,” Jimmy said. “The government’s broke.”
The heroin was weightless in my palm, the Baggie points knotted at one end. In all likelihood, Jimmy said, what I was holding began as poppies in the Golden Triangle straddling Burma and Laos, was routed across Europe by the Sicilian mafia, and then shipped to drug lords in the Dominican Republic, where Marco’s thugs picked it up.
Fabian leered at me. “Want some?”
Looking down, I realized the bags were coated with a fine brown dust. “No fucking way,” I said.
I passed the heroin back to Jimmy and spit on my hands and wiped them on the seat like Lady Macbeth. Harry Fabian started up the Caddy.
“Gimme,” said Ford, thrusting out his hand.
“What?” Fabian asked.
“My change, and the rest of the fuckin’ dope.”
“Me no take metaga,” said Fabian, using the Spanish word for heroin.
Jimmy laughed. “Yeah, and me no breathe air.”
The informant gave Jimmy a wad of banknotes and another Baggie point of heroin. “He won’t send Angel next time,” Fabian said. “For fifty grams, Felix and Muscles will deliver.”
“That’s the fuckin’ idea,” Jimmy said.
We said goodbye to Fabian, and Jimmy asked if I’d give him a ride to Carson Beach where he’d left his car. The next day, his partner would drive him to Arlington to pick up his cruiser from my driveway.
On the way home, the sky was black and glittering with stars. As I emerged from the O’Neill Tunnel, the buildings downtown glowed with an unearthly light.
The Red Sox were playing over at Fenway, an early season game on a cold, raw night. My story for the Boston Globe magazine was finally coming together. Adrenaline is the most powerful drug in the world, and at that moment, I felt like I could unlatch my seatbelt and float over the Zakim Bridge into the night sky.
