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This was survival strategy number one. Knowing how to wait. But now, of course, waiting was not a survival strategy. Hope was not a plan. As I leave the conference room to go back to my office, Budd finds me. “There’s been a glitch,” he says. ” I say, surprising even myself by the tone of surprise in my voice. ” Budd’s matter-of-fact tone does not hide his frustration. “Apparently the clerk faxed in the wrong form and the lock-them-all-up-for-life guy in Albany got wind of the release so it’s all touch and go now.

Tugboat lights headed north up the East River toward Roosevelt Island. Sparkling yellow lights from Manhattan stretched as far to the north as you could see. Once she was across the bridge, she was on known territory. She had been “placed” on the Lower East Side two years earlier. There wasn’t a block, bodega, or pizza shop she didn’t know in the area, from Delancey Street to 14th Street. Avenue C in Alphabet City had been her home base. It would be good to be out of a Brooklyn she was unfamiliar with—each neighborhood a crazy quilt of angled streets, different languages, street gangs, drug dealers, hustlers, hipsters, and old folks sitting on their stoops.

He was fed from two dog bowls on the floor, one for water and one for dog food. He was beaten if he cried and if he didn’t cry. He was whipped and watched this couple smoke crack. His mother would bring up other men for ten dollars. He would whimper and they would beat him. One day they dropped him in front of the hospital. After he was admitted, we fed him ice cream, candy bars, McDonald’s hamburgers, Rice Krispies, and anything else he wanted. Then he was sent to the ACS, Administration for Children’s Services, for disposition to a family that would look after him.