The Adventures in Manhattan of Alfred Hambie and Wife, Theresa Book 1

By Alfred S. Hamby

A husband and wife team up to fi ght crime in four
neighborhoods in Manhattan- Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Soho
and Tribeca and they organize an investigation group of crime
fi ghters and captains throughout fi fteen (15) neighborhoods in
Manhattan from Inwood, upper Manhattan to Battery Park in
lower Manhattan. The utter destruction of the Statue of Liberty
by terrorists was accidentally solved by the group that had brought
themselves notoriety and more busy

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 18, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477119945

Alfred S. Hamby

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Book preview

THE ADVENTURES IN MANHATTAN

OF ALFRED HAMBIE

AND WIFE, THERESA

BOOK 1

BY

ALFRED S. HAMBY

Copyright © 2012 by Alfred S. Hamby.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

All characters referred to in this novel directly and indirectly are fictional, and any references made to individuals, living and dead, are strictly coincidental. And all historical data and rear footnotes are taken from the computer World Wide Web sites, Internet Explorer and other computer programs with the courtesy of the Wikipedia, free encyclopedia and other programs that are free on the computer.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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115551

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Summary

References

Other books published:

Three Brothers Plus One—series of eight (8) books

1. Three Brothers Plus One—The Beginning and the First Adventure

2. Three Brothers Plus One Book II

3. Three Brothers Plus One Book III—The President

4. Three Brothers Plus One Book IV—Investigating of Unsolved Murders And Auditing-White Collar Crimes

5. Three Brothers Plus One Book V—Genealogy

6. Three Brothers Plus One Book VI—Investigations of Medical Crimes and Other Crimes against Medical Society and Establishment

7. Three Brothers Plus One Book VII—Oil/Secret Service

8. Three Brothers Plus One Book VIII—Part 1 Grace as Plus One Part 2 My memoirs

All of these books were published in the United States of America

Dedication

To my wife Theresa Collins Hamby, the last surviving sister of five (5) sisters, Mary, Ellen, Tina, and Patricia-a twin sister and we have been married over 53 years, February 8, 1958 and still growing strong.

Chapter 1

While still employed by New York State at 160 West Broadway, I was standing in the lobby looking at the directory of the building when a total stranger came up to me and asked me if I would like to go to dinner with him and his private secretary at Fraunces Tavern on Broad and Pearl Street. How often does a total stranger invite you to one of the oldest and exclusive restaurant in lower Manhattan and so I had said Yes I would love to and so I was given a piece of paper by him with the date and time and the reservation was made under his secretary’s name Miss MaryAnn Smith.

1-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraunces_Tavern 8 computer printed pages of Fraunces Tavern-

The reservation was made for Friday night 6 PM after work and since I had gotten off from work at 5 PM it was a short walk to Fraunces Tavern and so on this Friday night. But before I had left for my diner appointment I had called Theresa before I actually had left and also I had called Fraunces Tavern to confirm my reservations.

It was a short walk to Fraunces Tavern on Pearl Street and I had gone to the reservation desk and was directed to the lounge. There was a pretty young woman seated in the far corner of the bar and as I had walked in I had asked the bartender for Miss MaryAnn Smith and he had pointed to the woman at the end of the bar. I had formally introduced myself as Alfred S. Hambie and you are? A private and confidential secretary to the person who you will be meeting this evening and before you ask me about my background, I am a widower, my husband was a police sergeant on Staten Island and was killed in a shootout on the Ferry Boat as he was coming into the landing in lower Manhattan, 5 years ago and was offered the position that I currently have and now being a private confidential secretary of the person that you are about to meet, I cannot tell you anymore and so let’s go to our table.

We were directed to a private dining room and the person who had slipped me the memo was already seated. He had gotten up and had helped his secretary to be seated down and then seated himself down. "He cannot tell me who he was and the only way that he could communicate with him was through Miss MaryAnn Smith. The waiter had come over and had taken only two orders with another round of drinks for MaryAnn and me and none for him because he doesn’t drink. I have been watching you and your activities over the last few months and your great background. I had determined that you as an outsider of my sphere of any influence and can do a great job for me. Here in this envelope are some American Travelers Cheques and more to come when needed, and there is enough money there so that you cannot say no and you cannot look at the sum until after I leave, you both can before you had dinner. He had left just as dinner was being severed. She was an extrovert and very easy to talk to but on the other hand, in comparing myself to her I was very quiet.

I had started off by saying to her," at the age of 5 or 6, I was bitten by an infected mosquito and had gotten Encephalitis that had left me paralyzed on my left side and because I had lost some of my brain memory, speech cells and some of my nerve cells, my IQ had dropped from 180 to where it is currently 127.

In elementary and high school I had attended specialized classes to help me and at Pace College I had broken out of my shell mentally and that is what you are looking at now except while working at a health institution I had the opportunity to get my master degree MBA at Adelphi University in 1978 was an overall grade average of 3.49. My undergraduate average was extremely poor but because the health institution had sponsored the MBA program and because part of the agreement with Adelphi University was they must accept all its workers that have an undergraduate degree."

"She was offered after her husband was killed as private secretary’s position at Police Plaza in lower Manhattan and has a bachelor’s degree in secretarial studies and law from Fordham University. She has been employed there ever since now because she had applied for a secretarial position in your new cooperative apartment and was accepted and will start there in a few weeks.

Your new top sixth (6th) floor cooperative apartment house is a converted apartment building was built about sixty (60) years ago. Ten (10) years ago it had converted to a cooperative and the whole apartment house was guttered out from the inside and all the plumbing, electrical, elevator are brand new and most of the apartments were done over and replaced. There is now on the main floor an exclusive private sports club called, East Side Down Town-Chelsea-Athletic Club. Your membership as well as mine is paid for one year in advance with guaranteed renewable cause with no more than five % (5%) increase each year. Your membership to the cooperative as well as mine was paid for by our benefactor and I am living on the second (2) floors and there are six apartments on each of 2-5 floors and two (2) on the lobby floor and two (2) in the basement for maintenance personnel and the address was 515 w23rd Street off of tenth (10th) Avenue

At long last he was directed by MaryAnn to open the sealed envelope and he had counted in 1,000 individuals bills of Travelers Cheques over $2,500,000. She had said that the cooperative building that I have was paid for at a costs of $5,000,000 with a monthly maintenance of $1,500 per month and it was already reserved under your name for you and one (1) year maintenance was paid in advance for you."

Chapter 2

The canyons of New York City from the Statute of Liberty all the way up Broadway (Broadway runs the length of Manhattan from Bowling Green at the southern end to Inwood at the northern tip to Harlem (the most notable worldwide section of Manhattan) that included Cloisters, Central Park, Grant’s Tomb Museum of Natural History, Museum of Modern Arts, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, All the great department stores and retail shops along fifth (5th) down to thirty-fourth street, Empire State Building, Penn Station, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Times Square, 41st5th Ave (The main public library),The United Nations Headquarters, Radio City Music Hall, Grand Central Station, Circle Line sightseeing Cruises, 42nd Street Manhattan New York City South Street Seaport, Fulton Fish Market, Soho, Chelsea, Tribeca, Battery Park, Union Square, Little Italy, Chinatown, Greenwich Village, Bowling Green and the most known street in the world Wall Street. The population of Manhattan 1,585,873 and of the five (5) borough of New York City is 8,175,133 (April 1, 2010 census). There is an old saying that was written in a song New York, New York sung by Frank Sinatra If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.

2-http://www.neorealty.com/information-neighborhoods_map.h . . .

Manhattan neighborhoods

3-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem

4-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_River

5-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan

6-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadway_(New_York_City)

7-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_park_West_Historical_District

8-http://www.amnh.org/visitors/directions.php

9-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Center

10-http://www.nybeyondsight.org/nypl.shtm1

11-http://www.metmuseum.org/cloisters/

12-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant0001s_Tomb

13-http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square

14-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Square_(New_York_City)

15-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_Tunnel

16-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea0003_Manhattan

17-http://www.nycgovparks.org/chelseapark

18-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Greenwich_Village_map_circa_1 . . .

19-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinatown0003_Manhattan

20-http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Soho

21-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TriBeCa

22-http://www.inetours/New_York?pages/photos/SoStSpt-twr-M . . .

23-http://www.yelp.com/biz/chase-manhattan-bank-new-york-30

24-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/42nd_Street_(Manhattan)

25-http://www.flickr.com/photos/jag9889/4129654870/

26-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Police_Department

27-http://www.nyc-architecture.com/SCC/SCC004.Htm

28-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_green_(New_York_City)

29-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side

30-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_Park

31-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_Line_Sightseeing_Cruises

32-http://www.neorealty.com/information-districts_map.htm

33-http://www.nps.gov/stli/index.htm

34-http://newyork.citysearch.com/profile/7106555/new_york_ny/total . . .

The above is a listing of 34 important places to visit in Manhattan.

After Alfred Hambie had retired from his full time position from the State of New York and he had received the job offer as a very confidential private investigator from some unknown benefactor with an suite on the top floor of a six (6) story cooperative that was basically paid for and had had plenty of money to do whatever he had decided to do but the big question on his mind was what, he had for a very short time lived in a two (2) bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village before he had permanently moved to his current six (6) floor cooperative apartment and he still didn’t known who was his reach benefactor. He had asked his sister Grace (really a very close and dear friend who had married a friend of his from Astoria and is currently living in Princeton New Jersey. Grace had graduated from Pace College, the same graduating class as Alfred 1957 and over the years that they had known each other, he had considered her as his adopted sister what should be doing".

After meeting with Grace and Vic and discussing his future, Terry his Alfred, wife, was spending some time in Middletown before joining him in Greenwich Village she was in the apple orchard, horseback riding and swimming in the lake and getting tan, Alfred had spent some time there also but had become bored and had moved to a two (2) bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village.

Theresa and Alfred had been married over 53 years (February 8, 1958), and had two (2) great children and who in their own rights were very successful and were on their own, with their loving spouse and our five (5) great grandchildren (four girls and one boy-Erin, Lauren, Alexia, Marissa and Dylan) living on Long Island, New York. Even-though he had worship, the grounds that his wife had walked on for standing by him all these years, he had become restless mentally and had to do something else besides staying in Middletown-

35-http://www.nestseekers.com/30487/chelsea-co-op-for-sale—west-27th-street

After he had officially moved in he had invited MaryAnn to lunch in a small but clean Italian restaurant in Greenwich Village. He had asked her to help him furnish and design his apartment here and she had told him do not sign any long term lease in your Greenwich Village apartment because both of us is going to be offered a cooperative renovated building in Chelsea in a few days. Is it that sixth (6th) floor cooperative penthouse apartment that you had shown me? Yes.

I am going to change that lobby after you get off the elevator into a terrarium and the whole apartment into a physically assessable. When you physically get off the elevator you walk into an uninviting lobby small 50x50 lobby. Terry and I went to Miami we had seen south of the city patriots and monkey jungles and I had liked what we had seen, here are some photos that we had taken. There is a florist near where I live that features birds, monkeys and plants from South Florida and so I had invited him to take a look at the area and he had accepted my offer to design it and also I had wanted a gazebo and a few park benches with all kinds of compatible live small fishes swimming in an enclosed oval swimming pool. I had given him an advance of $10,000.

Chapter 3

On a beautiful Spring Day in the morning Alfred had decided to walk up Broadway to Central Park West and had passed the Lincoln Center of Preforming Arts and to the Museum of Natural History and had walked across Broadway and 79th Street through the park to the Tavern on the Green and had continued walking where he finally had found a bench near where the Goldman Band plays and gives concerts three nights a week but today was a special daylight concert, In honor of John Philips Susa. While seated down in the last row of benches, he had a bottle of water and had consumed both sandwiches that he had taken with him and then had taken a short nap. He had carried with him over his shoulder a knapsack in his knapsack he had carried his food, two yellow blue lined writing pads and a dozen sharpened number 2 pencils, and his small recording machine was carried in his shirt pocket. From behind he was hit on top of his head and had fallen to the ground, and was knocked out.

When he had awoken up, he was lying on the ground with two (2) ambulance attendances cleaning and wiping the blood off of his face and arms with a small crowd standing near him with two patrolmen attempting to keep the small crowds that had gather, orderly. As the ambulance attendances had helped him up, he had seen the ambulance and one police cruiser parked on the lawn in back of him, the bench that he was seated on. He was seated down by the ambulance attendances and one of the patrolmen had come over and was writing something, he had guessed in a police report. He had asked do you recall what had happened and are you missing anything and do you want to go to the hospital? He had said, He didn’t want to go to the hospital, the back of his head was hurting, my shirt pocket was ripped open and my recording machine that was in it is missing, his knapsack was missing and his wallet as well. He had asked one of the officers if they could drive him home to Chelsea and he would be okay when he had gotten there.

There was a mid-day concert starting and curious onlookers that had come to listen to the Goldman Band had come over to see what was happening and one person wearing some sport clothing, tan, white and a senior citizen had slipped into his hand his business card and had disappeared into the crowd before he could asked him anything and while the policeman in his cruiser, had called his station and had gotten permission to drive him home to Chelsea.

Chapter 4

The doorman had greeted him as he had gotten out of the police cruiser and had helped him steady myself. Alfred had thanked the officers for their help and driving him home and had memorized his police badge numbers when he had driven off. He had come from the tenth (10th) precinct in Chelsea. The watchman had helped him into the lobby and had helped him walk over to the administrative office. He had asked, MaryAnn, in the administrative office "if I could be helped inside the sport center so that he could be cleaned up and take a steam bath and get a rub down and could she please call his sister Grace and please don’t call his wife Theresa as yet.

An attendant from the gym had come out and had helped him walk into the sports complex. Inside the sport complex he had put him into a wheel chair and then had pushed him over to where the steam room was, he had helped him undress, down to my shorts and had walked him over to a shower. Alfred had taken a warm shower and then he had wheeled me into the steam room to get a rub down. After the rub down, he had felt much better and he was able to walk on my own two (2) feet. Alfred had gotten dressed and had told the attendant that he has no money to tip him with because he had been robbed and he will take care of him later.

Alfred had taken the elevator up to his pent-house apartment. In the lobby just before his apartment door there was an empty space (50x50) with a glass top roof. He had signed a contract with