Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Grace Notes

Imagining Murder at a Cold War Command Post With Harlan Coben

The author Harlan Coben has used a decommissioned Nike antiaircraft command base in New Jersey as the setting for a pivotal scene in his latest novel.Credit...Bryan Anselm for The New York Times

LIVINGSTON, N.J. — The road up the hill was narrow, the pavement old and a little cracked, the feeling was vaguely sinister — and the tall man in the T-shirt knew it. “You can almost sense the secretive nature already,” he said as the sport-utility vehicle edged along. “How does this not spark your imagination?”

This was before the S.U.V. stopped, before the man climbed out and before he headed off into the woods, through a break in a rusty fence.

It was not a moment in a Harlan Coben novel; it was a moment with Harlan Coben, the novelist. One morning last week, he spent an hour nosing around a place now known as Riker Hill Art Park. It figures in his latest novel, “Don’t Let Go,” not for what it is now but for what it once was: a Nike antiaircraft missile base from the duck-and-cover days of the Cold War, when “Nike” was synonymous with missiles and foreboding, not athletic shoes.

The base was supposed to protect New York against a Soviet attack.

It was not the only one. The Army built Nike bases from the Rockaways to the Hamptons in the 1950s. Here in New Jersey, 12 bases stood ready. Other bases had nuclear missiles. The one here was the command-and-control center for a missile installation a few miles away, on what had been a farm in East Hanover.

Mr. Coben grew up here in Livingston, like Myron Bolitar, the law-school-educated sports agent in some of his novels, and lives in Ridgewood, a town farther north. Thirty thrillers have established him as something of a balladeer for North Jersey, but the landscape in his novels is “my own sort of mishmash” of suburban places, he said — diners and parks, condominium complexes and basketball courts. But his readers recognize the landmarks, or they think they do.

“People from Ridgewood say it’s definitely Ridgewood,” he said. “People from Livingston say it’s definitely Livingston. People from West Orange and Chatham and Westfield — they’re all in there.” And, on Page 300 of “Don’t Let Go,” a “dumpy no-tell” in East Orange.

Mr. Coben remembers a Livingston that was changing from “farmland to classic American split-levels, which is what I grew up in.” And, as he wrote in “Don’t Let Go,” he grew up with two legends: that a “notorious Mafia leader lived in a baronial mansion” and that a Nike missile base was right next door.

“I found that both were true,” he said on the way to the former Nike base.

The mob boss was Ruggiero (Richie the Boot) Boiardo, the long-lived patriarch of organized crime in North Jersey. One book about the mob described him as “a bruiser who modeled himself after Al Capone.” A federal judge described him as “societal scum.” He was said to have been an inspiration for Tony Soprano in the HBO series.

As for the mansion, a Life magazine piece identified the architecture as “Transylvania traditional.” Rumor had it that an incinerator out back was “where they burned the bodies,” Mr. Coben said.

“Think how strange that is,” he said. “A military base next to a leading mobster’s house. No wonder this town is inspiring.”

What he finds on the fringes of the former base is also unsettling. In the woods are concrete towers with rusted underpinnings, apparently platforms for the long-ago radar installations.

“You could see the shooting in the book right here,” he said.

So much for spoiler alerts. Yes, there is a shooting in the book — more than one, in fact. But the shooting Mr. Coben is referring to is definitely fiction, according to Donald E. Bender, an amateur expert on Nike bases who also grew up here.

“Oh, gosh,” Mr. Bender said when asked if anyone had ever been killed on the grounds of the Nike base. “Livingston’s not a particularly violent town.”

Like Mr. Coben, he remembered seeing, from a distance, a white radome at the base. It sat atop the hill like a giant golf ball. Like Mr. Coben, he did not know much about the base when he was growing up. He did not start digging for information about Nike bases until about 20 years ago, after he discovered documents about a base in Franklin Lakes, about 30 miles away. Mr. Coben thanked him in the acknowledgments of “Don’t Let Go,” but Mr. Bender said they had known each other only “through, like, distant contact.”

“I went to school with his brother Larry,” he said. “I know Harlan only distantly via Facebook and email.”

In its 19 years, the Nike base was operated by Army units and, later, the New Jersey National Guard. It closed in 1974, after the Nike system was decommissioned nationwide. Essex County soon bought the 42-acre site for $1.

Mr. Coben was a couple of years away from high school then. “I went there a couple of times and saw the fences,” he said. “When I got older, it was ruins. In my mind, it was always about what could’ve gone on there.”

Before he let his imagination run, he turned to a Facebook page about Livingston in the 1960s and 70s. Many commenters said the base was the worst-kept secret anywhere. Some insisted a missile had ridden through town in a parade.

One said a missile had flown through her house, according to Mr. Coben. This would suggest that he is not the only person from Livingston with an imagination.

The county imagined the former base as a complex of artists’ studios. Outside what was once the enlisted men’s barracks, Mr. Coben encountered Sue Sachs, who works in metal, making jewelry and serving spoons.

“We once invited a former commander here,” she recalled. “He said it was the hardest job he ever had. The code words changed every day.”

She also remembered that the commander had said “he had a great relationship with the Boiardos.”

“He said Boiardo gave him cigars,” she explained.

A couple of buildings away, Leonard DiNardo showed Mr. Coben his glassblowing studio. “This was the launch room” when the base was in operation, he said, standing in a room with finished pieces.

“They had these big trailers they pulled right up to the building as adjuncts to their electronics capability,” he said. “They had so much electronic gear they couldn’t fit it all in.” “When you drove up the hill, you were greeted by an M.P. with a .45.”

Mr. Coben was animated. “It’s like visiting ruins,” he said, mentioning ancient Romans, ancient Egyptians and Aztecs. “This is our Cold War ruin right here. Feels like history.”

A moment later, he said, “My whole life, I wanted to write about this,” Mr. Coben said. “I don’t know why it took me so long.”

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 21 of the New York edition with the headline: Roaming the Woods, Imagining Gunfire on a Cold War Base. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT