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Past Imperfect
Guest Post by James Mullen
I’ve started to sketch out the plot for
my second book. The book is a police
procedural based in Boston, and although I visit the area frequently, I haven’t
lived there in over 20 years. Computer research and phone interviews are
invaluable, you can’t beat putting your eyes on places – even if it’s just a
validation of what’s perfectly remembered.
To be honest though, I went with the idea of visiting not the actual
places I image as crime scenes, because I know them so well, but want to
re-acquaint myself with the more peripheral areas of those scenes that could
serve as description.
I plan to have the opening crime scene
take place at a downtown subway stop, or as we like to say in Boston, a “T”
stop. I’ve found most subway stations
very linear and shaped like, well, the letter “T”; ascending or descending stairs that pour out
to a waiting horizontal platform in front of the rails. Pretty straight forward, pretty simple. Since I was planning a murder, I needed a
place with more complication, more corners.
I need malevolence.
I remember a stop I used back in the
mid-70s when I commuted from the Back Bay to downtown Boston. The station always struck me as up to no
good, and on nights I worked late, felt like I was descending into a film noir
movie set. Mack the Knife or Philip
Marlowe could pop out of the shadows and stick a shiv or a gat in my back
without warning. The place defined grimy
and dark. The layout was more like the
letter “Y”, but with intricate and shadowy angles. Perfect!
So I had my hopes up when I went to
re-visit the street-level environment surrounding the stop two weeks ago. I
almost didn’t enter the stop itself since I knew the details were firmly
embedded in my memory – even 40 years later.
Boston, back then, covered both sides of
the social contract with its ridership.
The city wanted efficient use of its system, so made the environment
extremely unpleasant; searing heat in any season; zero air exchange; squealing
breaks on subways at all times; crowd movements resembling schools of fish in a
Dixie cup; most overhead light bulbs broken – illumination being supplied by
any natural light able to crawl on its hands and knees down the stairs and make
it to the platform area on the first level.
Yes, the city made good on its promise that no matter what slings and
arrows were suffered during a given workday by its citizens, they would take
place in an environment much more pleasant than the station.
But look what I walked into? As you can see from the recent photo; white
tiles on the wall! A wall, recently
cleaned! Posters, and get this, a mural
on the back wall behind the escalators.
Art appreciation! And the
lights! More than adequate ceiling
fluorescents throughout. People holding hands!
I fully expected to see folks alight from arriving subway cars singing
show tunes and then lining up for a dance routine. How could my memory do this to me? Or is it the city’s fault?
The second day I took a boat trip to
another crime scene, Spectacle Island, in Boston Harbor. Although I have never set foot on the island,
it is one of many in Boston Harbor located on a well-used flight path to and
from Logan Airport that I’ve flown numerous times. If you look out a plane’s window enough, you
get to know the landmarks and the approach well. As a precaution, I also
checked maps on the internet prior to my trip and could see that the island’s
view of the Boston skyline would be blocked by several others in the harbor;
that fact being germane to an intended plot point of my story. I give you Spectacle Island:
Lesser men would suffer boredom from
being right all the time. Me, I just
take it in stride.
James
Mullen currently lives in North Carolina.
His first novel, Ketchum and Cobb, can be purchased on Amazon.
Website: Grumpy Gets Better (jimamullen.blogspot.com)
– things literary and not so much.
Also on
Facebook and Goodreads.
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