Box 100

Ross Franklin started a new job in the Box 100 section of New York City's Department of Investigation. Box 100 had been set up by the previous mayor. Any citizen could write in to it with a complaint about wrongdoings in the city government. Ross was a special investigator. And among the first batch of letters he read, there was one from a lady named Ophelia Harm, who said a neighbor of hers, a Mrs. Jones, had cashed a welfare check twice. And had a lover named Bumpy. Ross went to investigate—and he found himself involved with the office of the Well are Commissioner, and a man named Smedlo, and a girl named Aretha, and a rather nice widow named Roberta. As well as a firm of movers named Kowalski. He also ran into a gang of extremely rough little children and spent a considerable amount of time in some broken-down tenements in Bedford-Stuyvesant.