Easy Waters

I just re-read the first six chapters of my novel, which is still waiting to be born, and I am committed to working on it, to having a full draft by the end of the year. After all, the whole “story” is in my head. I just have to get it out of my head and onto paper.

There was parking right in front of Erma Black’s brownstone on Macon Street. I perfectly parallel parked the Camry.

I rang the doorbell and Mrs. Black came to the door and opened it. “Thanks for coming,” she said, wiping her hands on a hand towel and extending her right hand, which I shook. She closed the door behind me. I heard banging. “Carlton, one of his numerous projects,” Mrs. Black said by way of explanation. She led me to a kitchen, where I sat on a high stool at an island.

Looking around.Definitely a cook’s kitchen. There was a pleasant aroma of baked goods cooking. Mrs. Black looked at a timer. She sat down across from me.

“Would you like anything?”

“No, thanks.”

“What have we learned?” she asked.

Good question, I thought. School was definitely in session.

“Why didn’t you tell me your son found Capri after she ran away the first time?” The “bad” cop in me sometimes comes out.

She lowered her head. “I’m sorry.”

“And the girls were in kinship foster care with you?”

“Yes.”

“And a case was opened against you. What happened?”

“There were allegations that one of my cousins molested Capri.”

“How old was she then?”

“Nine.”

“You had the girls since they were babies.”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you adopt them?”

“Because their father was still in the picture, when he wasn’t in jail.” She paused after this confession. “Capri might act like she doesn’t like her father, but both of the girls wanted to be with him, be part of a family.”

“Were the girls removed from your care?”

“No. The case was unfounded. But I had to get the girls in therapy.”

“Were there allegations that Caymani was also molested?”

“No.”

“Who made the allegation?”

“Capri.”

“She was checked?”

“No. She wouldn’t let anyone touch her.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t talk about it. She was different though after….”

“Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“How did the girls end up with their father?”

“Well, they were ultimately paroled to me. I let him have them. He seemed to have gotten his life together. My husband had gotten him a job in construction. He had a girlfriend. And the girls wanted to be part of a family.”

“Weren’t they part of a family?”

“Yes. But with a father and mother figure, not grandparents.”

“But Shaquanda is a teenager herself, barely older than the girls.”

“She takes her role as stepmother seriously.”

“That includes beating the girls?”

“She’s in parenting classes at Children Are Our Future.”

One of the timers sounded an alarm.

”Excuse me.”

Mrs. Black put on heavy mitts and took a baking sheet linked with oatmeal raisin cookies out of the oven. She placed it on the far side of the island, sat back down.

“Have you talked to my son yet?”

“No.” I didn’t want to admit that he wasn’t high on my list of people to talk to. It was almost as if I was treating him like a suspect who had invoked his right to counsel. “I need to talk to your daughter and Caymani.”

She got up, got one of her business cards, wrote her daughter’s name and two phone numbers on the reverse side and handed it to me.

“I’ll let her know to expect a call from you.” She paused. “Anything else?”

“Whatever happened to this cousin?”

“After Carlton beat the crap out of him?” She paused again. “I don’t know. He was banned from my home. Never saw or spoke to him again.”

“You had your suspicions?”

“I don’t think a 9-year-old would lie about something like that.”

She scored a point with me for saying that.

“Mrs. Black,” I continued, “you can’t hold any information back from me, no matter how embarrassing.”

“I understand.”

“Great. I’ll call your daughter.” I stood up to leave.

Mrs. Black walked me to the door. The banging had stopped. Mr. Black joined us at the front door before I exited. He shook my hand with his hard calloused one.

“Bye-bye,” Mrs. Black said.

I sat in my car for a moment, gathering my thoughts, composing a mental to do list. I had to talk to the aunt. I had to eventually talk to the father and girlfriend. I wanted to talk to Caymani. Better yet, I had someone I wanted her to talk to. I’d talk with Ernest about that.

I started the car and headed toward home.

Ernest and I emerged on to Court Street, merged right into the lunch hour traffic of people. I spied him looking across the street at Brooklyn Supreme Court. I looked over, at the revolving doors, saw people passing through them. Sometimes one passes through these doors and is not seen ever again, or not seen for a very long time.

We walked north on Court, turned left on to Montague Street. People seemed to part as we walked by, one of the things I like about being a Black man. It never ceases to amaze me, how Black men inspire fear. And how people will give us a wide berth. Even on the train, I am sometimes seated, and there is a vacant seat right next to me and a white woman, who I know wants to sit down because she has glanced at the seat and I caught her eye, would not sit down. I always try to give them a knowing look, but they always look away. I almost have a hatred for people who can’t look you directly in the eye. I know most of this is conditioning. It makes me though think of how we are told and trained not to look a wild animal in the eyes. Now, though, I caught numerous women looking at us, looking at Ernest, catching our eyes.Black women.White women.Latinas. He had that glow, what the ignorant called “the prison glow.” In Ernest’s case, I knew he had this glow before he spent one day in prison.

Women are by far more discreet than men when checking out the opposite sex. Normally men don’t even know they’re being checked out. One reason we miss out on so many opportunities. Women check out men as if they are window shopping, but discreetly. One of many things they have over men. Men generally don’t window shop. We know what we want. We go to the stores we like, go right to the section we know what we want to buy is in, and purchase it. And we’re out. Women, though, will try new stores, go to every section before the section they should be going to first, touch, try on, touch and try on again. Leave the store. Return. And do the same ritual. Miko has told me that women do this because they have greater imaginations than men, that when they look at an article of clothing, they are not simply looking at an article of clothing but that they are looking at myriad possibilities, imagining them, how they go together – accessories, color coordinating, hair styles, etc. Who am I to argue? She’s a very good poet. But I’m a very good observer. As Ernest and I walked on Montague, I observed the women window shopping and smiled, thinking of Miko.

Ernest and I shortly stood in front of Armando’s, an Italian restaurant on Montague. Inside we were ushered to a table for two, as I had requested, by a young white woman.

We were seated. I waved away the menu. I have eaten here many times. Ernest was given one, which he promptly opened. I looked around the restaurant. It was half-filled, mostly with the lunch hour crowd. Shortly thereafter a thin young white woman stood before our table. She gave us a big Colgate smile.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. My name is Marabella, and I’m your waitress for the day.” She spoke clearly, enunciating her vowels, as if she was auditioning for a part. Probably a wannabe actress from Ohio. “What would you like to drink?”

Ernest had put his menu down, was looking directly at Marabella, giving her his undivided attention. “Water, with a wedge of lemon, please,” he said in that deep voice. She blushed for him.

“The same,” I said. She didn’t blush for me but smiled and walked away quickly.

“Life is good,” Ernest said, smiling.

I ordered ravioli and Ernest ordered the homemade lasagna.

I like Italian food, developed a taste for it when I was a kid. Our mother would compel our father to take us to dinner once a month. My father’s favorite restaurant was Anselmo’s, on the other Park Avenue, not too far from the BQE. Actually, this was the only restaurant he took us to. The owner knew my father and always treated us specially, like extended family. There were rumors that Anselmo had mob ties, you know, La Cosa Nostra, that thing of theirs that far too many Italians are wrongly associated with. Anselmo was simply a man who liked to cook who opened a restaurant in Brooklyn that wasn’t in an Italian neighborhood. It was at Anselmo’s that my father had taken the family, Hannibal’s girlfriend, or girl of choice, and Ernest for an early dinner graduation celebration in June of ’76.

As my brother could do, he was holding court – well, it was his day — talking about the uneasy relations between Blacks and Italians. “And people wonder why at schools like Fort Hamilton and New Utrecht, in Italian neighborhoods, Blacks going to those schools get caught up in mini race wars.” He expounded. “This goes back centuries, when Hannibal crossed the Alps.” My brother had a wicked sense of humor, from being too smart, my father would say. But he said this proudly. He adored his little generals in his own way, with his tremendous limitations.

“Is Anselmo’s still there?” Ernest said, as if he was reading my mind, or the fact that being seated in an Italian restaurant with the bother of his deceased best friend triggered the same memory.

“No,” I said softly.

Our food came and we ate silently. If only Hannibal was here holding court. During the meal Marabella returned to our table often, asking us if everything was satisfactory. Each time she got a nod and a smile from Ernest. I believed she was returning for his nod and smile. I wanted to stretch the moment, so ordered desert, cheesecake, before Ernest could protest. He had coffee with his. I took tea.

Marabella brought our tab, put it in front of Ernest. He lightly touched her hand as she placed the tab on the table. “May I ask a favor?” he asked.

She couldn’t get a word out, nodded her head.

Ernest reached into his messenger bag, pulled out a disposable camera, wound it, depressed a button, and said to Marabella, “Please take a picture of me and my friend.”

She took the camera from Ernest as he moved his chair so the two of us were side by side. Marabella took a picture, handed the camera back to Ernest. He wound it again and depressed the button again and handed it back to her.

“Always take two shots,” he instructed her.

She took another shot and handed Ernest back the camera. She turned to leave.

“Marabella.”

She turned and Ernest snapped a picture of her. “One more, please,” he said in that deep, commanding voice. “Now smile for the camera.” She smiled a big smile worthy of a Colgate commercial and the camera took another shot at her. “Thank you, Marabella.”

She nodded and managed to gracefully walk away. I reached for the tab. Ernest attempted to grab it.

“Remember, I asked to take you to lunch.”

“Okay. But I’m leaving the tip.”

The “tip” Ernest left was almost as much as the meal, definitely more than 20 percent for outstanding service.

“They must pay you well at Children Are Our Future,” I quipped.

We exited Armando’s.

“That was the best meal I had in 24 years,” Ernest said, referencing the time he had spent in prison. “And the best company, too. We have to do this again, real soon.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I extended my hand but once again Ernest moved into and hugged me and patted me on the back of the shoulder with a heavy hand.

“I have to make a home visit, in Fort Greene,” Ernest said. “Another teenage girl in care. And what a story she has. She could be out there with Capri, but she’s made of stronger stuff. Smart, too.” He turned to walk off, quickly turned around. “What’s your mobile number?”

I recited it and he repeated it once, committing it to memory. He walked off, east on Montague. He still had that strut, the way people walked who were confident, maybe cocky.

I walked west on Montague, toward the Promenade, which was my second, summer office. The one with the great view of the Manhattan skyline.

On the bench. I speed-dialed Khandi’s mobile.

“Hell-o, General Alexander.”

“That’s the second time today I was called general.”

“Do tell.”

I told Khandi about my meeting with Ernest Williamson. She was silent as I told her everything, even my thoughts.

“I feel like a piece of my brother is alive, has come back to life in the person of Ernest.”

“I have to meet him!”

“You will.”

“Gotta go. Duty calls. Love you, General.”

She always managed to hang up before I could reply in kind.

I had already programmed Erma Black’s number into my mobile phone. I called her.

“Erma Black?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Alexander Jones.”

“Hello! Any news on my granddaughter?”

“Just wanted to give you an update.”

I let Erma Black know that I had talked to Wilhelmina Coles and Ernest Williamson of Children Are Our Future.’”

“The girls love Ernest!” Mrs. Black exclaimed. “He’s really working with my daughter, got Caymani in therapy.”

“Was Capri in therapy?”

“She was…years ago.”

“Mrs. Black, I need to talk to you, in person.”

“Do you mind stopping by our place?”

“Not at all.”

“I run a catering business, out of my home, working on a menu for a small get-together, one of those Oprah book clubs.”

“Say I stop by at around 5?”

“Works for us.”

“Okay. See you then.”

“Bye-bye.”

I hung up. I returned to the office, wrote down a number of things on a virgin sheet of lined paper, worked silently, no buzzing of flies, till about 1400 hours, when I headed out to go pick up my car to drive to the Blacks.

It was 800 hours and I was seated at my desk in my office. There’s a 5” x 7” photo of Mikoon my desk, right near my monitor, which she had placed there as a final, finishing touch, as she had said, when she decorated my office. It’s one way women stake their claim on you. They leave evidence of themselves, of their relationship with you, in your home, in your car, in your office. Could be panties, could be lipstick, could be a picture. I looked at the picture. Miko is that rare beauty, miscegenation at its best: the best of an African-American G.I., and the best of a Japanese woman. She hadn’t called last night. I was a little worried. Well, perhaps a little lonely is a better way to put it. I was used to our nightly calls, looked forward to them. If she didn’t call, then there was a perfectly good reason. But not hearing her voice before I lied down to sleep made my sleep even more uneasy. It was interrupted by the ghosts of my past. The Summer of ’76. The country’s 200th birthday. Shortly thereafter, in late July, the Son of Sam, also known as the .44 Caliber Killer, began his killing spree, which lasted about a year. I am in love for the first time, with Awilda Perez, this impossibly pretty Puerto Rican girl whose father hated Blacks. She is the youngest and prettiest of five sisters, the fairest of them all. I had taken her to the movies to see Mahogany, again. We had first seen it when it had come out in March. Diana Ross was superb. Billie Dee epitomized that Black cool I aspired to. “Do You KnowWhere You’re Going To,” the theme song of the movie, immediately became our theme song. I had walked Awilda home, right to her apartment door, was poised to kiss her when the door flew open and her father grabbed her arm and violently pulled her inside. The look in her eyes, an impossible blue, haunts me to this very day. The door slammed behind her with a sense of finality. Loud, rapid-fire Spanish I heard from behind the door. And then a slap. What I thought was a slap. What I knew was a slap. I banged on the door, banged on the door, banged on the door until the housing cops came and pulled me away. “He’s beating my girlfriend!” I screamed hysterically as the cops pulled me away from the door. They were going to take me down to the precinct, but practically the whole neighborhood intervened, talking about how I was one of the good kids, that they needed to go get some of “the goddamn real criminals! Start with the father who’s beating his daughter behind that goddamn door!” That summer Awilda’s father sent her to Puerto Rico to live with his mother. She wrote me a couple of letters that summer, declaring undying love as only teenagers can. I never saw her again, never experienced that youthful love the rest of my teenage years. But the theme song from Mahogany, that question, became central to my life.

The phone rang. Before it could ring again, I picked it up. “Alexander Jones, P.I.” I glanced at the digital clock on my desk. Exactly 900 hours. I knew it was him. People who have been in prison have this respect for time that is probably only equaled by people in the military.

“This is Ernest Williamson.” A very deep voice.

“Thanks for calling.”

“No problem. This is about the Alston case. Willie told me. Capri.”

“Yes and no.” A pause. He didn’t respond. “Are you from the Marcy projects?”

“Yes.” No hesitation.

“We have to talk, about Capri, of course. What time do you take lunch?”

“Whenever I can.”

“How’s your morning?”

“Have to supervise a visit. I can see you afterwards, say 11:30?”

“Yes.”

“See you then.”

“My address –“

“Willie gave me your business card. Later.”

The line went silent.

August.The Summer of ’76. War was in the air. Marcy Day passed with no incidents. Hannibal let me hang out with him now more than ever, took me uptown to the Rucker. We both thought there were better games in Marcy. He had teased me about being in love. When Awilda was shipped off to Puerto Rico, he stopped teasing me. I remember him telling me that love could be painful. “Pain is a part of life, little brother. Just don’t make it a big part of your life. Life is for living. There’ll be other Awildas.” No, there wouldn’t! There were no more. This is where he was wrong, the only time I could recall such. He had a girlfriend, of course, the prettiest girl in the projects. Girlfriends, I should say. The girls loved him. But this summer, he seemed to be preoccupied with something else. Not girls. He was never preoccupied with girls. He never had to pursue them. They came to him. He had graduated from high school in June, a year early. Was valedictorian. He gave this valedictory speech that, three years later, when I graduated from the same high school, Eastern District on Marcy Avenue in Williamsburg, teachers still spoke about. He had numerous scholarship offers, academic and athletic. He was going to college in a year. My father had sat the family down one of the rare times he was home – he worked two jobs and gambled, numbers and poker, on the side, took his role as provider seriously, which meant we rarely saw him, but we also never wanted for anything – said that he was going to let Hannibal travel for a year before college, see some of the world. Africa. The Caribbean. Europe. Hannibal was excited. He was reading all these history and travel books, said he was going to Italy, Spain and North Africa. “Our ancestors’ stomping grounds,” he joked. And then, one day in August, life as I knew it changed, forever.

The door buzzed. I got up, glanced at the digital clock on my desk. It was exactly 11:30. I didn’t check the monitor on my computer screen. I got up and opened the door. A fly buzzed by my ear, letting itself in.

He stood there for a second, but it seemed like an eternity. “I thought so!” he said in that deep voice, smiling a big movie star smile. I extended my hand but he moved into and hugged me as Black men do, patting me on the back of the shoulder with a heavy hand. Then he held me at arm’s length. “You look just like your brother! Little General Alexander!” He smartly saluted me.

I looked up at Ernest Williamson. He was my brother’s best friend. He had a clean-shaven head and a goatee. He stood about 6’3”, looked taller. I am 6’1”, not much shorter, but those two inches seemed like much more, like the two-year age difference between my brother and I when I was 15. Like my brother, Ernest was a natural athlete. And just as smart. He had on a Khaki suit with a light blue shirt. He carried a brown leather messenger bag that looked decidedly military. He looked like a movie star. He, as well as my brother, was idolized by the younger boys in the projects. Where Billy D. was cool, he was distant, on the silver screen. Almost not real. My brother and Ernest were near. And real.

“Thor,” I said, as if I was a kid again. My brother’s nickname for Ernest. He was called “the Hammer” by everybody else. It was his weapon of choice when he was the Minister of War for the Marcy Chaplains, effortlessly wielded this impossibly big hammer you saw construction workers with. Both he and my brother had been recruited into the gang at the same time. They were not only best friends. They were inseparable.

Ernest closed the door behind him. I watched him look around my small office. He walked to the wall with my degree and other honors from the military and the NYPD. “Your brother would be proud of you,” he said. I detected an unfathomable sadness in his voice. He sat in one of the royal purple chairs in front of my desk, filling it.

I sat down. “When did you get out?”

“A couple of months ago.”

“How did you end up at Children Are Our Future?”

“It was the only door that opened. Willie was willing to give me a chance where so many others wouldn’t. You know how hard it is for an ex-con to find employment? One study says six out of ten employers won’t hire ex-cons. And those six are the honest ones. I think it’s more like eight or nine out of ten. You have no idea how many resumes I sent out into the black employment hole.”

In my mind I calculated the time he had spent in prison. “How has it been, the…transition?”

“Great! I’m not complaining. My worst day out here is a million times better than my best day in there.”

“I can’t even imagine.”

“Don’t even try.” He paused.“There are a lot of things I don’t understand about this not-so-brave new world.”Said in a very serious voice.

“Don’t even try.”

We both laughed.

“Tell me about Capri,” I said, knowing that if we went further down memory lane we’d never get to the business at hand.

“A piece of work,” he said. He reached inside his jacket pocket, pulled out a Polaroid picture, placed it on top of the mahogany desk. “I took this of her when we got her back after she ran away the first time.”

I picked up the picture. She looked much older, more mature, more knowing, in this picture than the picture Erma Black had shown me. Her hair was no longer in braids, but a perm, with a hairpiece attached. And she was really smiling, a little seductively. I attempted to hand it back.

He waved his hand. “No, keep it. Probably the most recent picture of her.”

“You said Capri is ‘a piece of work.’”

“Yes, she came on to me. I mean really came on to me. Strongly.I told Willie, tried to get rid of the case, but she wouldn’t transfer the case to another case worker. Said this is the only thing the girl knows, how to get attention, that she was just seeking my attention and approval.”

“Willie knows about your past?”

“The only one at Children Are Our Future”

“Tell me about the father.”

Ernest laughed, a deep laugh, from the pit of his stomach. “Carlton. A wannabe thug. I’ve seen far too many characters like him. You know, when Capri ran away, the agency got its private investigator, Jack Murphy, involved. But you know who found Capri?” He paused. “Her father. He said he found her on Forty-Second Street, not too far from the Port Authority. You should’ve seen how she was dressed and made up.”

“He brought her back to the agency?”

“Yes. Dressed like a whore. He thought he was making a statement, that this was an indictment of the agency. The whole family has repeatedly said, ‘Capri wasn’t no ‘ho until she came into care!’ He was full of himself when he brought her in. Acted like we should’ve given him a medal.”

Another thing Erma Black had neglected to tell me. “Didn’t this raise suspicions?” This was, of course, rhetorical.

“Of course.”

“What happened when she was placed back in care?”

“We got her to court, tried to get her placed in a higher level of care, but Capri’s law guardian, Shakina Singh – a really good lawyer, wonder why she’s a law guardian — successfully argued against that. We were making plans to place Capri with her paternal aunt when she ran away again.”

“Your P.I. still involved?”

“Yes. Seems like we talk every other day. Jack’s one of the good guys. We both cruised Forty-Second Street two nights looking for Capri.” He paused. “This case just keeps getting complicated. You know that saying: ‘No good deed goes unpunished.’ I didn’t originally have this case. It was transferred to me from another case worker. Carlton was intimidating the previous case worker.”

“A woman.”

“Yes, right out of college. No knock on her. This character would try to intimidate anyone.”

“So you got the case.”

“Yes. I can’t be intimidated.” He stated this matter-of-factly, not bragging. “Willie asked me to take the case. I have all these ‘difficult’ cases, mostly teenagers on my caseload, many fathers are involved in planning, which is rare.”

“What about the girlfriend?”

Another laugh.“Shaquanda.Very young. She says 19, but I’d put her at 16, wouldn’t be surprised if she’s younger.” He reached into his inside pocket again, placed another Polaroid on my desk. I picked it up. “The father, the girlfriend and Capri’s sister, Caymani.” He laughed again. “I took this during one of the supervised visits. I’m the only case worker doing this, telling the families how important it is to record moments, even these moments, even though the children are in care, because as soon as they happen they are gone, forever.”

The father was in the center of the photo, staring hard at the camera, trying to intimidate it, his arms possessively around his two girls. Shaquanda had a very big smile on her glossy lips, bigger than her gold hoop earrings. She was pretty, in that “Around the Way Girl” way, as LL Cool J would say, had on too much makeup, trying to look older. Caymani was smiling shyly but not quite so innocently, her hair still in braids.

“Do you know anything about Erma Black’s history with ACS?” I asked.

“No,” he answered. “ACS is supposed to look to place children with a relative when they are taken into care. The grandmother was looked at, but for whatever reasons ACS wouldn’t place the girls with her.”

“What’s your assessment of the family?”

“Did Willie quote that line from Anna Karenina?” He looked at me and laughed, knowing she had. “I prefer Dostoevsky to Tolstoy,” he continued. “I agree with Willie, but would say, ‘All unhappy families are screwed up in their own way.’”

It was a joke, of sorts, but gave us both pause. I never thought of my family as unhappy or screwed up. Wondered how Ernest thought of his family.

A fly buzzed by me. I had forgotten that it had let itself in when I had opened the door for Ernest. I watched its flight path, heading towards Ernest. It happened so quickly, had I not heard the clap of his hands, which echoed like thunder in my small office, I wouldn’t have known that Ernest had killed the fly.

“Strike three,” I said to myself. “Let me take you to lunch,” I said out loud to Ernest, tossing him a small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer.

He caught it, quickly pumped the gel on his left hand, tossed the bottle back to me and rubbed his hands quickly. “Let’s go,” he said, unfolding himself from the chair.

Back out on Fulton Street, in front of the building owned by Children Are Our Future, a few young women case workers were gathered, smoking and chatting – mostly venting about birth mothers and foster mothers. They both were driving them crazy.

I lived a couple of blocks away, on Washington Avenue, owned a three-family brownstone, paid in full, courtesy of my maternal grandparents, purchased in 1947 for $12,000. It was now worth nearly a million dollars. Well, not in real dollars, but it was valued at around that price. Despite the housing market having slowed, gut jobs in my neighborhood were going for $500,000. My mother had inherited the brownstone from her parents and it was passed on to me, her only surviving child, when she died of breast cancer, shortly following my father’s death, four years after him. They were together, in Long Island National Cemetery. My father was a T/4 in the Army during World War II.

I started heading in the direction of home, to pick up my car, a dark green ‘98 Camry XLE. The Japanese made this wonderful utilitarian car. Ever since America forced what the Japanese called the “unequal treaty,” at the Convention of Kanagawa in March 1854, the Japanese, quick studies, learned how to beat us at our own game. I parked my Camry in a lot, since parking in my neighborhood was impossible and becoming even more so. Before I returned to the office, I had to do a drive by.

No matter where we have been, no matter who we have become, no matter where we live now, there’s the place where we are from, where our roots are planted. My roots are in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn. Like that famous tree from literature.In the Marcy projects.From a kid playing stickball throughout the projects to a Marine on the beachhead of Grenada to a beat cop patrolling the same area I ran around as a kid when “community policing” was resurrected to a detective in the NYPD to a member of SVU to a P.I. chasing down ghosts and runaways. When I finished serving my two tours with the Marines, I attended a Marcy Day or two, always on a hot Saturday in August, would see some of the people I had grown up with. Some still lived there. Years later, when I was a beat cop, they were still there. And all of these years later they remained. And their grown children. It was depressing. The buildings looked smaller, not as tall as my child’s imagination had seen them then, and drab, the red-brick dirty, looking like some mythical, vindictive giant had walked across them with muddy boots on, trying to stomp them out of existence. People in the projects were making a big deal out of Jay-Z, the rapper and businessman, also out of Marcy, proud of him, of course, since he demonstrated that something good could come out of the projects; but he was eight or so years my junior and by the time he was busting beats I was on the beachhead in Grenada, very far from Marcy, as I had planned. I couldn’t get far enough, since the most painful memory in my life lived there, which, of course, kept pulling me back.

In the car I cruised down memory lane, slowed down on Park Avenue, the other Park Avenue, as we learned to say. I turned on to Marcy Avenue. It was here that the ghosts lived, where my older brother, Hannibal, two years my senior, was killed. Hannibal and Alexander. My father named us and called us his little generals. The name stuck. When we were kids, up until when we became teenagers, everyone in the projects called us little generals. My brother was a born leader, probably would’ve grown up to be a general if not for the accident of birth in the Marcy projects. I wouldn’t say it was the next best thing, but my brother was a Minister of Defense or some such title in the Marcy Chaplains. People from Marcy and the surrounding projects, Tompkins and Sumner, still spoke about him. He was the one expected to do good if not great things. He was tall and strong and played every sport effortlessly. And he was smart. An A student bored out of his mind in school, he would come home and read, not watch TV. My father didn’t graduate from high school, but he made it a point to educate himself. Both he and my mother stressed the importance of education, was disappointed that I didn’t go right to college after graduating from high school. In our apartment we probably had a better library than the public schools weattended. Following in my brother’s footsteps, whom I idolized, I read every title he did, right after him. I didn’t read as fast and didn’t comprehend what he did – the two-year age difference between the two of us was a big difference at that age — but when I graduated from high school I was reading at the college level. I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X as well as The Art of War. That’s how diverse my father’s library was. I turned left on to NostrandAvenue. I still hadn’t figured out why my brother had joined a gang. Well, gangs were different then. Gang members were really protecting their turf, protecting the old people and the kids. You never heard of innocent bystanders being casualties of these strange wars. No. Never. I could remember being shooed inside by a gang member when war was in the air, even if there was a hint of war in the air. And now, another ghost from my past had resurfaced, I was certain. I’d check when I got back to the office. I turned left on to Myrtle Avenue, slowed down and looked across the avenue toward what looked like a concrete wasteland. When I was a kid, there were these impossibly competitive basketball games going on every day during the summer and on into fall. People in NYC talked about the Rucker basketball tournament. They needed to come downtown to Marcy projects on any given summer day when I was growing up. I could still hear the basketball pounding on the concrete, the “swish” of the chain-linked net when a long-range jumper was made. “Gimme the ball, gimme the ball, gimme the ball.”The refrain, from my brother, who wanted the ball in his hands at a decisive point in any game. When he got the ball, it was sheer magic. I’ve heard how the great ones, Oscar Robertson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Larry Bird, and of course Magic and Michael, and I can’t leave out the legends from the New York Knickerbockers, Earl “the Pearl” Monroe and Clyde “the Glide” Frazier, and the indomitable Willis Reed, played at a level that others, no matter how good, couldn’t even imagine. Come on! Wilt the Stilt scored 100 points in a regulation game! Mike never got close to that. In one game my brother scored about 70 points. He approached that level of focused intensity. He could shoot from long distance or take it to the hoop. He had this head fake, his eyes looking to the heavens for approval before he defied gravity, that got defenders off their feet and into the air while his feet, in white canvas low-cut Chuck Taylors, were firmly planted on the concrete. As the defender elevated he would go around him, heading to the hoop with so much speed it was frightening. One time, I swear, when he got air bound, he jumped right over this six footer. Okay, maybe the six footer ducked slightly, but in my memory my brother took flight and jumped clean over the “defender” and slammed the winning basket home. Coming back to the present, I saw a solitary kid pounding a basketball on the concrete court, making a move toward the hoop. I smiled. Maybe the next Michael Jordan. I speeded up, turned on to Marcy Avenue. I had circled the projects countless times, now and then, lost in the past lane. I accelerated, turned left onto Park Avenue and headed back toward downtown Brooklyn. Before I knew it, I was under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. This neighborhood was going through a metamorphosis. Converted warehouses into condos, new condo developments going up, big plans for the Brooklyn Navy Yard, one block north from Park Avenue on Flushing Avenue.

Park Avenue turned into Tillary Street. I caught all the lights to Cadman Plaza West which, when you turn left, going southbound, turns into Court Street. I turned right on to Joralemon and then right on to Clinton and saw a car pulling out. Just a block and a half from my office. I fed the hungry meter and made my way up to my office.

Once inside I didn’t even take off my jacket. I sat and booted up the computer. A fly buzzed by my nose. While waiting for the computer to boot up, I took the pad out of the dark drawer and placed it on the desk and wrote the name Ernest Williamson on it, boxed it and placed a question mark over the box. After a second or two I drew a big hammer near the box. I thought about adding a question mark near it.

After the computer was booted, a few keystrokes later I had the answer to one of my questions. Time to call it a day. I closed my eyes and slowed down my breath. The fly landed on my nose. I slowly opened my eyes and it took off. I watched it. It landed on the wall to my left, where my framed undergraduate degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice was displayed, along with other honors I had received in the military and the NYPD. I was most proud of my degree in criminal justice, having obtained it by going to school at nights. Of course the fly landed on it. I stood slowly and silently moved toward the wall. In real time I swiped my had near the framed degree and caught the fly. I shook my hand. This would make it dizzy. I exited the office, closed the door behind me and opened my hand. The fly remained in my palm for a second, perhaps pondering this second chance. It buzzed off. “Strike two.”

Outside in the car, I speed-dialed Khandi’s mobile. It went right to voice mail. I was going to offer to take her to an early dinner, maybe meet her downtown, go to the South Street Seaport. She worked nearby, on William Street. I had to admit I was lonely. Miko was out of town, at a residency at Blue Mountain Center, in the North Country, which was in the middle of the Adirondacks. It had taken me nearly six hours to drive Miko there. Blue Mountain Center was located in such a remote area there were no cell phone towers, and of course there was opposition from the residents to have such among the natural pristine beauty of the place. Additionally, the Center wanted artists to focus on their craft. They were encouraged not to bring their cell phones. Didn’t matter if they did. There was no cell phone coverage. Perhaps the Blue Mountain Center administrators thought that if residents could commit to not bringing their cell phones, which were practically useless anyway, then they could fully commit to their craft. Residents though brought calling cards and used one of the two pay phones to make calls. (There was also limited e-mail access.) Miko called every night. We talked about 30 minutes. Miko is a published, award-winning poet. She teaches at the New School. She was on a sabbatical of sorts, spending thirty days at Blue Mountain.