Suppose on a rainy night you are walking near a street corner lit only by a single streetlamp. You notice a large hole near one of the drains by the curb. As you approach, you hear water dripping somewhere deep down in the sewer. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a large, wet, brown, furry creature scurrying along the curb dragging its tail in the gutter. The animal turns and disappears down into the hole.
Instinctively, you know it was a rat, a large rat. In your mind, you try to imagine what you’d find if you were small enough to crawl down into that hole. For sure you would find other rats and of course their numerous feces. You shudder to think of the awful conditions you might find down there. Because of their voracious appetites, you can image battles raging between rats clawing and biting one another for a better piece of food.
Ernie Lijoi and Larry Matthews book, Street Business, will take you into human rat holes where the fetid conditions described above for rats apply to human beings caught up in the underworld of drugs, stolen goods, and illegal weapons.
At the beginning of their tale, Ernie Lajoi is a police officer who works for the force in Quincy Massachusetts. A large, muscular fellow, Lijoi has an imposing presence in his uniform adorned with the badge for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority. He spends his day riding public buses and trains, watching for pickpockets, gropers, gangs, and riffraff.
Somewhat bored, Lijoi gets off the subway at one North Quincy station, climbs the steps toward the street exit and buys a cup of coffee. As he stands scanning the crowd of moving bodies, he sees a young man jump a turnstile without paying. The kid dashes down the steps toward a station platform. Instinctively, Lijoi chases the vagabond and cuts him off.
At first, he scolds the youth ordering him to pay up; but when the lad gives him bad mouth, officer Lijoi expertly cuffs him and calls for a patrol car to pick him up. While patting him down for any concealed weapon, Lijoi finds a bag of blue pills. The kid has no prescription so the officer now considers this a narcotics case.
Not long after this incident, Street Business tells how Lijoi is asked by his superiors if he would consider working undercover, trying to help bust the drug trafficking in the area. He knows the job will be hazardous - - possibly life threatening. But having grown up in an area where fists, guns, and street smarts were necessary to survive, after talking over the job with his wife, Lijoi takes on the narcotics trade.
Article comments
1 - Book Reader
This is an awesome book. It starts slow and you wonder where its going and then WHAM, it hits you. Its easy to get into these real life characters.