Easy Waters

     I exited the office building on Court Street, paused briefly to gather my bearings and take in my surroundings.  It was well after noon and the lunch hour crowd buzzed by me, walking fast and furiously, some purposely.  I loved downtown Brooklyn in the summertime.  Reminded me of my youth.

There was activity across the street in Columbus Park.  A statute of the explorer stood watch over the park and the lunchtime activities.  The Office of the Borough President of the County of Kings sponsored these events every summer across Brooklyn, but of course something seemed to almost always be happening in downtown Breukelen, the “center” of the “broken land,” as the Dutch named it.  A makeshift stage was set up in front of the Municipal Building and a group of kids in blue tee shirts was singing something with a Caribbean beat, moving rhythmically as one. I looked from the stage to the court, which was practically across the street from the office building I leased space.  Many a day I had spent in the court when I was a police officer and then a detective, waiting to testify, offering support to victims.  I watched a few people go through the revolving doors.

I walked south on Court Street and turned right on to Remsen Street to head to the promenade.  I walked one block, passed St. Francis College, “the small college of big dreams.” Students, mostly young white women in small groups, were in front of the building for the length of the block.  Many were smoking cigarettes, holding them with fingers with fingernails painted every color of the rainbow as they chattered away like parakeets, their faces flush with the excitement of youth.The next block featured some of Brooklyn’s most beautiful brownstones, many dating back to the 1800s.  Brooklyn Heights, where some of the most expensive real estate in the borough exists.

I quickly walked the couple of blocks to the promenade, walking by both young and older Black women pushing strollers with white kids in them.  Most of the women had Caribbean accents.  It sometimes seems like the more things changed, the more they remained the same.  I couldn’t, wouldn’t, though, knock what people did for a living if it was honest.

I am a born and bred Brooklynite, and ever since I was a teenager, when I worked summer jobs in downtown Brooklyn, I would walk to the promenade.  The view, overlooking Manhattan, was probably one reason why the real estate was so expensive in Brooklyn Heights.  If you couldn’t afford to live in certain parts of Manhattan, then perhaps this was the next best thing: a great view of it. The World Trade Center dominated the skyline.  There were a couple of small boats on the East River, probably some residents from Brooklyn Heights on some of them on this beautiful summer day.

I sat on a bench, became part of this scene, and withdrew my mobile phone from its case, speed-dialed my cousin’s office.

“You have reached the voice mail of Khandi Johnson of the Administration for Children Services…”

I hung up, speed-dialed Khandi’s mobile.

“Hell-o, General Alexander,” Khandi answered in a melodious voice.

Growing up my brother and I were called the “little generals.”  This, however, was a reference to my military service, though of course I didn’t attain a rank anywhere near general.  Right out of high school, to escape the projects, I enlisted with the Marines, did two tours, saw combat at the beginning of my second tour, was part of Operation Urgent Fury, the invasion of Grenada in 1983.  Part of the 22^nd Marine Expeditionary Unit.

“How may Private Johnson assist you, sir?”

“Hello, Khandi.”

“Hell-o, Alex!”  She giggled.  After all these years, she still got a kick out of this routine.

“My first client walked into my office today.”

“Ah, that’s great!”

“A grandmother, wants me to find her granddaughter, who ran away from a foster home.”

“What agency was she placed with?”

“Children Are Our Future.  I need to talk to someone over there.”

“Wilhelmina Coles.  She’s one of the directors over there.  Good people.  Got your pad, General?”

“Shoot.”

She gave me the number, which I wrote down in a  small pad, continued this practice since I was a beat cop. 

“Thanks, Khandi.”

“No problem.  Gotta go.  Love you, General.”

She hung up before I could reply in kind.

I started walking back toward Court Street.  If you grew up in New York City, three things you shouldn’t be averse to: crowds, public transportation and walking.  I liked walking.  Nowadays, it seemed like the only exercise I got.  When I got to Court Street, I decided to walk the couple of blocks to Children Are Our Future.  I could’ve called ahead, but that would give whomever I wanted to talk to the opportunity to talk to superiors, put red tape in the way.  I knew from experience that it was always better to talk to people in person rather than on the phone.

It took about twelve minutes to walk the couple of blocks east on Fulton Street, despite the buzz of activity, people shopping and window shopping during their lunch hour, which mostly meant stalling on the sidewalks and preventing one like me, a non-shopper, from walking without side-stepping, stopping on a dime, excusing one’s self when one nearly ran over someone, out of politeness, not because one meant it.  Such was the lunch hour in downtown Brooklyn.

I stood in front of Children Are Our Future.  It was a three-story building, owned by the agency, I had learned from the NYNPP article, which I had re-read shortly after the Blacks left my office.  I walked through two glass double doors.  There was a big Latino sitting at a desk.  Security.  He didn’t look like an ex-cop or ex-military.  He didn’t look like an ex- anything.

“I’m here to see Wilhelmina Coles,” I said in my cop tone, which was deeper than my normal tone.  I pulled out my badge, flashed it quickly, an indicator that I was looking to be discreet.  The big guy picked up the phone.  I looked around and took in my surroundings.  The walls were painted light blue, with orange trim.  There were framed posters with children and uplifting legends beneath them.  To my right there was a winding spiral stairway leading to the second floor.  Many young women, dressed casually in jeans and bright colored short-sleeved blouses, were moving about, revolving through a door where I spied comfortable-looking orange chairs in which people were seated, parents, I guessed, mostly women, and their children, visiting.

The big guy was still on the phone.  In a hushed tone in a slight Puerto Rican accent he said, “Ms. Coles, you got a detective down here to see you.”  A brief pause.  He looked up at me.  “Alexander Jones?”

I nodded my head.  He hung the phone up a minute later, pointed to the elevator.  “Go to the third floor.  Ms. Coles will be waiting for you at the elevator.”

“Thanks,” I said.

The elevator was old and reliable.  Otis.  Elisha Otis.  He invented the first modern elevator in 1853.  Incorporated Otis Elevator Company.  Nearly 150 years in the elevator business.  Old and reliable.

The elevator stopped on the second floor and two very young women, probably right out of college, got on.  They held enormous case files, probably why they were taking the elevator up one flight.  In their conversation they referenced birth parents and foster care parents, talked about how both were driving them crazy.

The elevator door closed and when it opened on the third floor, a woman, whom I presumed was Wilhelmina Coles, was standing there, as the big Latino had said.  The young women exited the elevator first.  “Hi, Willie!” they both said in unison.

“Hello, ladies,” the woman replied.  She then addressed me.  “Alexander Jones.”  She was short, light-complexioned,  with short hair framing a perfect oval face.  She quickly scanned me, from head to toe, quite discreetly.

“Yes.”

She extended her hand, which I shook.  “Wilhelmina Coles.  Call me Willie.  Khandi called and told me to expect you.  Please, this way.”

I followed Willie to her office.  She sat behind a desk piled high with paper.  She beckoned for me to sit in one of the two burgundy chairs in front of her desk.  I sat.  Behind her was a collage of pictures of children framing her MSW degree from Hunter College.

She cut right to the chase.  “This is about the Alston case.”

Despite the fact that the case was against the father and his girlfriend, ACS designated all cases that came into care with the mother’s name – mother’s baby, father’s maybe?

“Yes.”

“Capri in particular.”

“Yes.”

“The paternal grandmother, Erma Black, had stated that she was hiring a private investigator to find her granddaughter, and that we should cooperate.  But more importantly, Khandi gave me a call.  So how may I help you?”

“Off the record: what’s your assessment of this family?”

“I’ve worked in this field for longer than I care to tell you.  I try not to be jaded.  But I think of that opening line from Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’  I minored in English,” she said by way of explanation.  “Maybe I’m saying this because Capri seemed so sad, and unhappy.  Working in this field, you see this unhappiness in every case, and despite the broad categories of abuse and neglect, each case is unique.  And this case, as with all cases and all families, comes with history and family secrets; some of these ‘secrets’ we know.  For example, this isn’t the first time the girls were in care.”

Of course Mrs. Black had neglected this part of the family history when she had told me that the mother had abandoned the girls.  “Mrs. Black told me that Capri and her sister Caymani were abandoned by their mother when they were very young.”

“Yes.  And Mrs. Black was the kinship foster parent.  A case was also opened against her but was unfounded.”

I would find out more about this from Mrs. Black.  I was tempted to ask Willie why a case was brought against Mrs. Black, but thought I’d be pushing her ethical boundaries.  “I will need to talk to the case worker.”

“I checked.  He’s in court.”

I reached into my inside jacket pocket, passed Willie a business card.  “Please have him call me.  His name?”

“Ernest Williamson.”

The named stirred something buried deep within me.  I never forget a name, could quickly put names to faces.  “Please have him call me first thing in the morning,” I said with more of a sense of urgency.

“Will do.”  She paused.  “May I ask a personal question?”

“Yes.”

“What branch of the military were you in?”

“Marines.”

“You have perfect posture.”

“Thank you.”  The military instilled things in you that you’d take to the National Cemeteries.  I can’t say it’s my posture, because family and friends, since I could remember, had commented that I stood and walked just like my father.

One of the two phones on Willie’s desk rang urgently.  It literally shook on the receiver.  She picked it up, shortly groaned, “Oh, God.  I’ll be right down.”  She stood.  “Sorry, but we have a situation, a birth mother going ballistic.  We get this at least once a day, on a good day.”  She smiled.

“Maybe you should’ve majored in English,” I said.

“We’ll walk downstairs together.”

We were out of the office, walked quickly down one flight of stairs and then the spiral stairs.  The big Latino, in a soft voice, was trying to calm a big Black woman wearing what was obviously a wig, which was askew on her head.

“You motherfuckers take my babies, say I can’t see them unless it’s supervised, so I come down here to visit my babies and the goddamn foster motherfucker isn’t here!”  She was gesturing with her hands, shadowboxing.  The big Latino was bobbing and weaving, surprisingly light on his feet

“Esther,” Willie said in a firm but respectful voice, as if she was talking to a friend, “your visit is scheduled for 3 o’clock.  It’s barely five after.  Your children will be here shortly.”

It couldn’t have been scripted better.  “Shortly” was followed by three children running through the agency’s double doors, ice cream mostly on their faces but in their hands on cones, to their mother.  The foster mother was right behind them.

“Sorry, Esther,” the foster mother said quickly in a Caribbean accent as the children huddled around their mother, “but the kids made me stop for ice cream.  You know how they love ice cream.  If I didn’t get them their ice cream…”

The big Black woman broke down, crying hysterically –hopefully out of shame, I thought.  Nevertheless, she had the presence of mind to straighten the wig on her head.  Then I witnessed something absolutely sweet: the three small children group hugged and comforted their mother.  She stopped crying as quickly as she had begun.

Willie smiled and winked at me.

             I was sitting in my small office in downtown Brooklyn on Court Street when the buzzer buzzed.  It didn’t annoy me, as the solitary fly had been for the past hour, buzzing by my ears, nose, and eyes.  It was the first time since I had set up shop as a P.I. that it had buzzed.  I hit the Esc key on my keyboard and the game of Klondike Solitaire I was playing disappeared from the screen and on it was the image of a middle-aged Black couple standing in front of my door.  So much for the typical P.I. novel.  No sole sexy lady of mystery and intrigue in distress at my office door.  I stood, put my pin-striped blue jacket on, part of the suit, Perry Ellis America, walked to the door and let them in.

“Good afternoon,” I said.  “Alexander Jones, P.I.”  It was the first time I had said this out loud to a potential client.  It sounded good.  It was good being your own boss.

The woman extended her hand.  “Erma Black,” she said, looking up at me, directly in my eyes.  A no-nonsense woman, I presumed.  Looking back at her, I thought how people are sometimes their names.  She was very dark, with chiseled features, like an African statute.  Her hair was short and tightly curly, and she seemed to wear it proudly.  She had on a blue business skirt suit, slightly worn, but well-maintained. We shook hands quickly.  Hers were soft and warm.  She turned to the man at her side.  “And my husband, Cornelius.”  He extended his hand after a brief pause.  He had a very hard calloused hand and a firm handshake.  He wasn’t as tall as I, but had a laborer’s physique.  As if making this statement, he had on jeans, pressed, and a soft white collared shirt smartly starched, rolled up on forearms that gave Popeye a run for his spinach.

“Come,” I said, my arm extended, guiding them to the two royal purple chairs in front of my desk, courtesy of Miko, my current lady love and  self-styled interior decorator, who watched too many of those design shows on TLC.  After they were seated I sat down behind my secondhand mahogany desk.  “How may I help you?”

“My granddaughter, Capri, was placed in foster care.  She ran away from the foster home, a month later was arrested for…soliciting.  She was returned, placed in another foster home and ran away again.  It’s been a month.”  Erma Black spoke quickly, needing to get this story out of her, as if that would expedite finding her granddaughter.

I looked from Mrs. Black to the Mister.  He was on the edge of the seat, facing and leaning toward her, hanging on her every word.

“I see,” I said, like a psychologist.

Cornelius turned to me, was looking directly at me, perhaps for answers, but then I realized that he was poised to read my lips.  He was deaf, partially deaf, or hard of hearing.

As if reading my mind, or my body language, Mrs. Black said, “Cornelius is hard of hearing.  All those years working construction.”

“What foster care agency was Capri placed with?” I asked.

“Children Are Our Future,” Mrs. Black said.

Children Are Our Future is one of the biggest foster care agencies in New York City, had one of its many offices in downtown Brooklyn on Fulton Street, not too far from where I had set up shop.  A couple of months ago, in the New York Nonprofit Press, it was featured as “Agency of the Month.”  One of my first cousins, my late mother’s sister’s daughter, Khandi Johnson, worked for the Administration for Children’s Services.  We got together for lunch or dinner once a month, and she often talked about her work.  She has been working for ACS for about fifteen years, had started as a Child Protective Specialist, one of the hardest jobs in ACS, one of the hardest in the world, if you asked Khandi.  CPS’ went to the homes and were responsible for “taking” children away from their parents.

“I hated doing that!” Khandi once told me over lunch.  “Mostly Black kids are taken away from their birth parents.  Don’t get me wrong, when you look at the best interests of the children, many had to be taken away, even if just to give parents a ‘time out.’”

Khandi had told me about Children Are Our Future, had said that it was not only one of the biggest foster care agencies in the City, but also one of the best, so I had Googled it and come across the NYNPP article.  I was always interested in how people and entities got something right.  There were some very bad foster care agencies, which I knew of not only from Khandi’s stories, but from far too many cases that had made the news, and also from my years in the NYPD, the last couple with SVU in Brooklyn.  There was never a shortage of runaway cases where teenage girls ended up “dancing” in strip clubs and selling sex on the streets, and inevitably becoming victims of every sex crime imaginable.

“Why was Capri taken into care?” I asked.

“Excessive corporal punishment,” Mrs. Black said softly.

I detected guilt in her voice.  “And the case was brought against?”

“Her father and her father’s girlfriend.”

“What are their names?”

“My son – Carlton.  Carlton Black.  And his girlfriend – Shaquanda Smith.”

“And the girls’ mother?  What’s her name?”

“Pat – Patricia Alston.”

“Where is she?”

“In jail in California.”

“I see.”

“She left the girls years ago, when they was babies.”

“Girls?”

“Capri has a sister, Caymani.”

“And she was taken into care, too?”

“Yes.  After her sister ran away from the first foster home they were in, she was placed with my daughter, in kinship foster care.”

“I see.  How old is Caymani?”

“Twelve.  Two years younger than her sister.”  Mrs. Black opened her black Coach bag – looked like the real McCoy to me, but then again, I wouldn’t be able to identify a knockoff in a lineup, meaning that some were almost as good as the original, which was evidenced by the hordes of shoppers on Canal Street buying knockoffs  – fished around in it, brought out a black clutch – Coach again, I presumed – opened it, found a small picture and handed it to me.

The girls were unmistakably sisters, though Capri was shades darker than Caymani, as dark as her grandmother.  Cute girls. They still looked like girls, their hair in braids, but they were both on the brink, not quite women, but no longer girls, getting ready to morph into very young women, probably before their time, as far too many of these girls seem to be doing, or should I say becoming.  “How old are they in this picture?”

“It was taken about a year ago.”

I looked at the picture again.  That’d make them 11 and 13.  They were both smiling, though Capri’s looked forced, like, give me a reason to smile.  I detected a mischievous look in her eyes.

“Who took this picture?”

“Their father.”

“Do you have a more recent one?”

“No.”

“So both the father and the girlfriend used excessive corporal punishment against the girls.”

“Well, Capri told the school’s guidance counselor that…”

“The school called this in to ACS.”

“Yes.”

“She had bruises.”

“Well, yes.  Old bruises.”

“Explain, please.”

“Well, Capri got into some trouble in school and she probably thought once her father and her girlfriend was notified, that they would…”

“…beat her,” I finished.

“Well, yes.”

“So she informed the guidance counselor.”

“Yes.”

“I see.”

“Capri’s always been a handful.”

What teenage girl isn’t, I thought.  How critical these years, the make or break years.  One false step could alter one’s life, forever.  The fly buzzed by my nose, bringing me back to the Blacks.

Mrs. Black was sliding a white business envelope across the mahogany desk toward me.  “A retainer,” she said uncertainly, “to work with us to find my granddaughter?”

“Of course,” I said, grabbing the envelope and placing it inside the top right corner desk drawer.  On a virgin sheet of lined white paper I wrote Erma Black.  “A number where I can reach you,” I said.

She reached into her bag again, withdrew a business card, handed it to me.  “You can reach me at the number listed, anytime.”

I quickly studied the card.  “How did you find me?” I asked Mrs. Black.  I had a website and was listed in the Yellow Pages.

“My uncle has a friend, a poker buddy, who has a son who works for the po-lice.  He asked around and your name came up.”

“What precinct?”

“The Nine-0.”

When I was a police officer I worked out of the Ninetieth Precinct.

I stood up and the Blacks joined me.  I walked them the short distance to the door, handed both of them my business card.

“I’ll be in contact shortly,” I said, shaking their hands as they exited.

After the Blacks left I took off my jacket and sat back down, began to write a to do list.  I start out with a list, and then circle and box items on the list, draw arrows to and from the circles and boxes, place question marks above the circles and boxes.  During this process it turns into what resembles a flow chart.  When I’m further into the process, it begins to resemble hieroglyphics.   If I don’t revisit my notes shortly after I have written them, even I can’t understand them.  Probably an Egyptologist wouldn’t understand them either.

I hit the Esc key on the computer, clicked on the Internet icon, looked up a few things.

The fly buzzed by my nose again, disrupting my flow.  “Catch fly,” I added to my list, circled the two words.  For the next couple of minutes I sat still, breathing slowly, as Miko had instructed me.  It was amazing how controlling the breath is essential to so much, even well-being.  It was also amazing how slowing one’s breathing seemingly slowed everything happening around one.

I saw the fly, its flight path at the level of my eyes.  If this was a movie, it would all happen in slow motion.  I raised my left hand like an air traffic controller signaling a plane, put it across the fly’s flight path, swiped my hand across my eyes and closed it.  The buzzing went silent, but I knew it was in my hand.  I crossed out “catch fly” on my list.  I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door, opened it and exited.  I opened my hand and released the fly.  “Strike one,” I said to it as it buzzed off.

The late great Bill Webber, President Emeritus of New York Theological Seminary, once told me that the closest a man comes to experiencing giving birth is writing a book.  Therefore, I wasn’t surprised that it took me nine months to write my first book, Black Shadows and Through the White Looking Glass: Remembrance of Things Past and Present.  This novel I’m working on though, The Summer of Capri, I feel, will be premature.  She wants to be born.  I am writing furiously.  First thing yesterday morning I typed the six pages I had written the previous morning.  Ever write a story in the first person and you come to embody the character, giving birth to him (or her)?  (Aren’t these characters we create composites of us and everyone we’ve ever come in contact with?  Or who we want to be?)

I believe I can fly!

Work on the novel is going well.  Just wrote a scene, a flashback.  The main character, Alexander Jones, a P.I., is thinking about his brother, killed in a gang war in the mid-’70s.