BROWDERBOOKS
Wild New York
In spite of white prejudice, Junius Fox, a young black man, acquires power as the gatekeeper of the city's most exclusive brothel. But his obsessive need to possess a brownstone involves him in fantasies of arson and murder, and he must choose between the woman he loves and an obsession that has become who he is. Love vs. self-identity. What will he decide?
The fifth title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York.
Death by Water in Central Park
There are so many ways to die in the city – death by fire, death by hit-and-run, death by old age and loneliness – but death by water would seem to be a rare one, especially in Central Park. The park is one of the glories of New York City: right in the middle of noisy, congested Manhattan, a big, long strip of green where New Yorkers go to relax, have a picnic lunch, jog, watch migrating birds and nocturnal raccoons, walk their dogs, or introduce urban school kids to the wonders of nature. But also, it seems, to die. In 2017, for example, there were four deaths within three months, which is highly unusual, and three of them by water. And three were discovered in the spring, which is when the Police Department says it is commonest.
Around noon on Tuesday, May 9, a park worker spotted a man’s body, face down and naked, in the Jacqueline Kennedy Reservoir near East 86th Street in Central Park. The Reservoir is a vast body of water about 37 feet deep, with a strong current. I have often hiked along its rim, marveling at the shimmering sunlight on its rippled waters and observing ducks through binoculars, while joggers and speed-walkers brushed past me: a scene of quiet recreation and calm. Informed, the police came, marked off the area with yellow caution tape announcing POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS, retrieved the body, and examined it. Because it was badly decomposed, they were unable to get fingerprints, but said that the man was probably in his 20s or 30s and appeared to have been in the water at least one month. His clothes had rotted away, but there was no sign of trauma on the body, suggesting that no crime was involved.
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| The Reservoir in June. Joggers, speed walkers, strollers, and occasionally a corpse. Carsten Kessler |
Just one day later, at about 7:20 a.m. on Wednesday, May 10, a man’s body bobbed to the surface of the Pond, in the southeast corner of the park at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue. The police again came, and medical examiner officials took photographs of the body, which was wearing only pants and shoes and had probably been in the lake’s seven-foot-deep water two weeks at the most. An ID was recovered, identifying him as Anthony McAfee, a homeless man. This on the heels of the first recovered body was highly unusual, and for the park’s joggers and tourists, unsettling, but again there was no sign of trauma on the body, except an eye nibbled by turtles or other wildlife.
One month later, at about 8 a.m. on Sunday, June 11, a passerby spotted someone floating in the Conservatory Pond near Fifth Avenue and East 74th Street and jumped in to effect a rescue, only to find that he was rescuing a corpse. The would-be rescuer then phoned 911, but by the time the police and fire department arrived, the fully clothed body had been fished out of the water and was lying on the ground. It was a male African American who appeared to be in his 20s or 30s. Once again, an unusual and unsettling incident in the most tranquil of settings, a pond where children float radio-controlled model boats, or climb over a nearby statue of Alice and various creatures from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
Finally – if one dare say “finally” – the body of a woman was discovered around 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, July 13, lying face down on a rock near the East Drive and East 62ndStreet. Fully clothed and apparently in her late 20s or early 30s, she too showed no signs of violence, but a pill bottle was lying next to the body. At last report she, like two of the others, remained unidentified.
Four deaths in Central Park in a two-month period, three of them in water – unprecedented. Or is it? An article by Lauren Evans in the Village Voice of July 7, 2017, lists deaths in the park since 1884, when the body of a man was discovered in the Reservoir. In 1889 a suicide was reported there of a fashionably dressed young man in patent leather dancing shoes who removed his topcoat and derby, climbed over the Reservoir railing, and walked into the waters to his death. The reason? Lack of funds.
The Evans article also recorded numerous other suicides in the Reservoir, usually motivated by failure in business or love, though in one case by failure as a writer, and in another, because of schizophrenia. Reservoir deaths declined noticeably after a ten-foot chain-link fence topped with barbed wire was installed around its rim in 1926, but even after that, suicide was still an option for those able to scale the barrier. And there were always alternatives: the Conservatory Pond already mentioned, and the Harlem Meer in the northeast corner of the park. If people want to die by water in the park, they will always find a way. Meanwhile joggers and dog-walkers and birdwatchers and picnickers continue to flock to its grassy fields and woods, and people rent boats to go boating on the Lake, unmindful of the deaths that have occurred in its tranquil expanses.
Source note: This post was initially inspired by an article by Benjamin Mueller and Emily Palmer, "2 Bodies Found This Week in Central Park Waters," in the New York Times of May 11, 2017, supplemented thereafter by other newspaper articles, including the one by Lauren Evans in the Village Voice of July 7, 2017, cited above.
© 2021 Clifford Browder
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