The Big Apple Posse

by Wendy R. Williams

  “That would be great. We have not had anything to eat except snacks since Saturday and it’s Monday now,” said Amanda.

  Mr. Garvain was rustling about the kitchen, taking eggs from the refrigerator and quickly closing the door. He started cracking the eggs and pouring them into a large green pottery bowl.

  “Well, I don’t have any fresh vegetables. Miss Virginia and I eat out for lunch and dinner so we just have breakfast food,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “That’s okay. I don’t like vegetables,” said Peter.

  “I always eat organic vegetables,” said Cindy.

  Amanda looked at Cindy, thought about how annoying she was and almost said something, but stopped. She could start fighting with Cindy again after they were safe.

  Thibodeaux walked out the French doors to the garden and picked up a mug and poured himself a cup of coffee from the percolator on the hibachi.

  “Oh my,” asked Mr. Garvain. “Does your mother know you drink coffee?”

  “Sure, she put it in my bottle.” Thibodeaux looked at Mr. Garvain. “I’m just kidding about the bottle, but she knows. I’m from New Orleans and I grew up drinking coffee.

  “I drink coffee too,” said Amanda as she walked over to the stove.

  “You do?” Cindy was incredulous. “Does your mother know?”

  “No, and don’t you tell her. She thinks I order fruit drinks when I go to Starbucks. And don’t you tell either, Peter,” said Amanda.

  “Okay. But you two are all the coffee drinkers we are having this morning. Children should not be drinking coffee, I’m pretty sure. Peter, Cindy, those are your names right, would you two like a coke?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  Amanda rolled her eyes. “Sure, they would love to have a coke.” Connecticut mothers did not let their children drink cokes.

  Mr. Garvain gave Cindy and Peter a coke and continued preparing the eggs and pancakes.

  Mr. Garvain’s kitchen was very old fashioned. It did not have any new appliances. Everything was old, but there were shelves filled with pottery, a fancy looking cappuccino machine, and lots of old silver.

  Everyone sat down at the kitchen table to drink their drinks and wait for breakfast.

  “May I help you?” asked Amanda.

  “No, you are my guests and in my home, guests are treated like guests,” said Mr. Garvain.

  He finished the eggs and put scrambled eggs on four plates and handed them to the children. He then put a plate full of pancakes, some butter, and maple syrup in the middle of the table. And then Mr. Garvain gave each of the children some heavily engraved silverware and a thick linen napkin with an individual napkin ring.

  The children were famished and ate quickly, as did Mr. Garvain. Amanda sat at the table and thought about how grateful she was that they had been able to sleep safely and now they were eating. She felt so responsible for all of them, even Thibodeaux.

  Thibodeaux walked upstairs and got the video camera and came back downstairs. He sat back down at the table and tested it to see how much room there was on the card and to see if the battery was charged.

  “Looks like we are good to go.” Thibodeaux stood up and started packing the camera in its case.

  “And just where do you think you are going, my fine young fellow?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  “We are going to save the city,” said Cindy.

  “You are going to do what?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  “There are some bad men who blew up some buildings and put white powder all over the place with some anthrax mixed in the white powder in a few buildings downtown so everyone would evacuate the city and they could steal all the diamonds in the city,” said Peter.

  “What? Is he always like that?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  “Yes,” said Amanda.

  “We have proof. We have their plans on a flash drive but we don’t know what they look like so we need to go film them so we can show the cops and the cops can arrest them and everyone can go home,” said Peter.

  “Well, that is the craziest thing I ever heard. I think we better wait for the authorities to tell us what is going on,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “But the authorities left and we are the only ones still here,” said Thibodeaux. “If the authorities had not left, we would have gotten on a bus and been in New Jersey by now, not sitting around your kitchen table trying to fix this mess.”

  “But why do you think this mess was caused by diamond thieves? And what’s a flash drive?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  “Peter, got get your computer and show Mr. Garvain. Peter picked up a flash drive from one of the bad guys and we have their plan.” Amanda saw the perplexed look on Mr. Garvain’s face. “A flash drive is a small file for a computer.”

  “Well, you go get your computer and I will get Miss Virginia. She taught school and she knows about things like computers. Long ago, I made a decision to live my life without a computer. Life is much more elegant without things like that email and people sitting around looking at other people’s faces,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “He means Facebook,” whispered Cindy.

  Peter left to go upstairs to get his computer followed by Mr. Garvain, who slowly climbed up the two flights of stairs it took to get to Miss Virginia’s room and the room where the children had slept.

  Mr. Garvain paused outside Miss Virginia’s bedroom door and knocked. “Miss Virginia, the children and I need your guidance. Would you please come downstairs and assist us?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  Mr. Garvain stood by the door and listened. He knocked again. “Miss Virginia, would you please join us in the kitchen.”

  There was a loud thumping sound. Something had been thrown at the door from inside the room.

  “She’s awake now. We should go back downstairs; she will be down shortly,” Mr. Garvain told Peter.

  Mr. Garvain and Peter climbed back down the stairs and went into the kitchen. Peter put his computer on the table and inserted the flash drive. The computer was still hooked up to the portable battery charger.

  There were thumping sounds on the stairs. “Don’t you know a lady needs her beauty sleep?” said Miss Virginia as she walked into the room. Miss Virginia was wearing a pink and orange silk kimono and her hair was rolled in pink foam hair curlers. There was a purple satin sleep mask pushed back into her curled hair.

  “Sorry, sister. These children have something to tell us that involves video cameras and computers and I need your help,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “Very well. But first I must have my coffee.” Miss Virginia walked outside to the garden, and using a mitt, picked up the now empty percolator.

  Miss Virginia turned around and gave everyone in the room a baleful stare.

  “Where, may I ask, is my cup of coffee?”

  “Here, let me make some coffee for you. I think Amanda and I drank the last cups,” said Thibodeaux..

  “Now, now. I will make coffee for my sister. Everyone please have a seat while I attend to the niceties of life. Elegance is not simply a choice, it is a necessity,” said Mr. Garvain. “There are some eggs and pancakes on the table dear.”

  “Am I supposed to eat eggs before I have a cup of coffee?” snapped Miss Virginia.

  “Of course not. That would be entirely too uncivilized,” said Mr. Garvain.

  Mr. Garvain scurried about and made another pot of very strong black coffee, placing the percolator on the hibachi. Everyone in the room was quiet, not wishing to upset Miss Virginia.

  Finally the coffee was finished percolating and Mr. Garvain brought a cup to his sister.

  Miss Virginia raised the coffee to her mouth and took a sip. Everyone watched intently.

  “Well, good morning, dears,” said Miss Virginia. “How did you sleep last night? Did you have enough to eat for breakfast?”

  “We slept very well, thank you,” said Thibodeaux.

  “Wonderful. Now my dear brother said you needed my assistance. What can I do to be helpful?” asked Miss Virginia.

  Amanda was amazed. Her
own parents were not worth much before their first cup of coffee, but Miss Virginia was a different person before and after she had her first sip of coffee.

  “Well, we need to save the city and here is what we need to do,” said Thibodeaux.

  “First, you need to listen to this recording that I made with my video camera. We were hiding in a restaurant in Grand Central station, we were sleeping there, and these two bad guys came in to drink the scotch and I recorded them,” said Amanda.

  “I downloaded Amanda’s camera recording into my computer,” said Peter.

  Peter played the recording from his computer and Mr. Garvain and Miss Virginia listened intently.

  When it was over, Mr. Garvain said, “Well, that is very interesting but how do we know they were not just engaging in a bit of ‘bar talk’?”

  “We have more. Peter picked up a flash drive they left on the bar counter and it has all their plans,” Cindy said.

  Peter put the flash drive into the computer and showed all the burglars plans to Mr. Garvain and his sister—the plan for the explosion, the placement of the anthrax in the buildings downtown, and the plans to burglarize all the jewelers in the city.

  “Well, that is just terrible,” said Mr. Garvain. “But just why were you planning on leaving to take their photos? Like they say on Law & Order, ‘You have them cold.’”

  “But we don’t really know what they look like. I saw the men by the light of a lantern at the Grand Central bar, but all I could see is that they were tall and blond. And the cops won’t know who to arrest if we can’t show them what the bad guys look like,” said Amanda.

  “And if we don’t prove that the explosions were just some robbers trying to scare everyone into leaving the city, we will never get to go home,” said Cindy. “I love my home. I want to see my Mom and I want to sleep in my room.”

  “Me too. I just started a fashion line, that silk bomber jacket I wore last night was my design, and I can’t be missing too many more days of design work,” said Thibodeaux.

  Everyone looked at Thibodeaux in utter amazement.

  “Hey, if you snooze, you lose. That’s what my Mamma says,” said Thibodeaux.

  “My father works in the city and if he can’t go to work, he can’t pay child support, so he needs to go to work. It’s the least he can do for us,” said Amanda.

  “When my father comes back from Iraq, I will tell him to spend more time with you and Peter. I have the best father in the world, he is smart and he would know what to do and I miss him so much.” Cindy was starting to cry. She had never realized how much Amanda missed their father.

  Miss Virginia walked over to Cindy and put her arm around her. “It will be all right, sweetie.”

  “So what do you want to do?” said Mr. Garvain.

  “On the flash drive, it says they are going to rob Tiffany’s today at noon. We want to go to Tiffany’s and film them and then come back here. Then we can wait for an internet connection and send everything to the police. We have the email address of the cop who came to our room, but we can send it to everyone we can find an email address for once we are on the internet,” said Peter.

  Mr. Garvain looked stunned to hear how Peter explained what they were about to do.

  “So we are going to go on a ‘mission’? Miss Virginia, we are going on a mission!” said Mr. Garvain.

  “No, you can stay here. We will take care of it,” said Thibodeaux.

  “But we can’t take these two younger children with us. Peter, that’s you name, right, Peter. Well Peter may be the smartest boy I have ever met but he is still young. Peter and Cindy have to stay here,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “Well I am going. I am a boy and boys do brave things,” said Peter.

  “If Amanda goes, I am going. We are a posse, The Big Apple Posse,” said Cindy.

  “A posse? Okay, so we will all go. But where are we going?” asked Miss Virginia.

  “But you can’t go. You are…..old. And we may need to run,” said Peter.

  “We may be old, but you are children and you are alone in the city and we found you and we are going to take care of you. So if you are going to save the city, we are going to go along and save you. And that is the end of that argument, right sister?” said Mr. Garvain.

  “Of course. We are the adults and you are the children,” said Miss Virginia.

  “So what are we going to do?” Mr. Garvain sat down at the table next to Thibodeaux.

  “Well we need to work up a plan to film them stealing the diamonds,” said Amanda.

  “Tiffany’s is on the corner of 57th and Fifth Avenue. We can go north on Third Avenue until we get to 57th and then go west until we are at Fifth Avenue,” said Thibodeaux.

  “But what about all the bad guys who are on the street? You can’t run and Amanda can’t run,” said Cindy.

  “I can run. I won’t slow us down. But what are you doing to do about the bad guys who try to chase us?” Amanda asked Mr. Garvain and Miss Virginia.

  “Sister, do you think you can run?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  Miss Virginia looked at him and shook her head.

  “Do you have any more pepper spray?” asked Mr. Garvain.

  “Yes, we have four canisters,” said Cindy.

  “We really need to go by ourselves,” said Thibodeaux. “We have to be able to run. If we are going to do this we need to move fast.”

  “Thibodeaux is right. But can we come back here after we film them? As soon as we can use the internet, we can send all the information out and then all we will need to do is wait for someone to come get us,” said Amanda.

  “Of course you can come back, but I don’t think you should leave,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “Brother. The children are right. If we go with them, we will slow them down because we can’t run, but I still don’t think they should go,” said Miss Virginia.

  “But you have to let us go. I want to go home and no one will be able to go home and no one will be able to live in this city until the cops realize that it wasn’t terrorists who set off all those bombs, just some stupid thieves,” said Amanda.

  “They were not stupid,” said Peter.

  “Well, they got drunk and left their flash drive in a bar. That is pretty stupid,” said Amanda.

  “Well, the crooks who made this plan were not stupid. They got everyone to leave the city so they could rob all the jewelry stores,” said Peter.

  “And that, folks, is not stupid,” said Thibodeaux.

  “So they are not stupid. But we still need to know what at least some of them look like,” said Amanda.

  “Yes, I watch Law & Order and when they catch part of a gang, they make them turn on the others,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “Oh, brother,” said Miss Virginia.

  “Well, they do,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “So we need to leave right now,” said Amanda.

  “We will see, but you will need better clothes than the ones you are wearing if you are going to go out on a mission—oh what a thrilling idea that is. I can dress you as stage burglars,” said Miss Virginia.

  “Stage burglars?” asked Thibodeaux

  “The people who dress in black and change the stage between scenes,” said Cindy.

  “Okay,” said Thibodeaux.

  Miss Virginia led the children back upstairs to her costume room and after digging through the racks for about ten minutes, she handed them four pair of pants and four shirts that were all in black. Some of the pants were too big but Miss Virginia told them to put them on and she tightened the waists with belts and rolled up the pants legs and taped them with a lot of black tape. Soon they were all dressed in black from head to toe.

  “I will wash your clothes today and hang them in the backyard to dry so you can wear your own clothes when you get back home. We have our own water tank on the roof so I think I can spare a sink full of soapy water,” said Miss Virginia.

  “So it’s okay if we go by ourselves?” asked Amanda.

  “I gues
s you are going to have to go alone. I can’t run,” said Miss Virginia. “But why don’t you leave Peter and Cindy with me?”

  “I need their help,” said Amanda.

  Peter and Cindy looked at Amanda and smiled.

  Amanda looked at Miss Virginia as she put the costumes they wore last night into a neat pile and thought how much she missed her mother. Miss Virginia and Mr. Garvain were doing all the mom things that she took for granted and never appreciated.

  “Thank you for letting us use these clothes,” said Amanda.

  “Of course. I am glad to do anything I can to help,” said Miss Virginia.

  “After you have your first cup of coffee,” said Cindy.

  Amanda glared at Cindy but Miss Virginia just laughed. “Yes, after I have my first cup of coffee.”

  Everyone went back downstairs to Mr. Garvain’s kitchen.

  “Brother, these children need to go alone. We will only slow them down. I can’t run,” said Miss Virginia.

  “Oh,” said Mr. Garvain.

  “Okay. But if we are going to do this, we cannot carry all of our stuff. We need to carry just water and the camera,” said Cindy.

  “Why do you keep on telling us what we should pack and carry?” asked Peter. “You’re not an adult.”

  “My grandmother taught me. She was always saying you can never be too prepared,” said Cindy.

  “Our Grandmother never said that. She only gets prepared to go shopping,” said Peter.

  “Not our grandmother. My mother’s Mom. She grew up in China and she came here by herself. She told me she learned very quickly that you better plan ahead,” said Cindy.

  “I never knew she said things like that,” said Peter.

  “When this is over, come visit when she is at our apartment. She will be happy to tell you how to do everything you are supposed to do. She has lots of instructions,” said. Cindy.

  “So that’s why you are so bossy,” said Peter.

  “Peter did not mean that. I am glad your grandmother taught you to plan ahead,” said Amanda.

  “Okay,” said Peter.

  “May we fill our water bottles?” asked Amanda.

  “Of course.” Mr. Garvain pulled a full bottle of water from the pantry and taking each one of their water bottles, filled them to the top.