FOURTEEN

The High Line Bistro was over in the West Village on Little West 12th Street in an area known as the Meatpacking District. The Meatpacking District had for many decades been the hub of the city’s commercial butchery. And, until the eighties, it had also been known for its many gay clubs. Some of the clubs were notorious for catering to the rough trade segment of the community. But the AIDS epidemic and the city’s insatiable thirst for real estate development remade the Meatpacking District into a chic neighborhood of exclusive shops and designer chef restaurants. Rising above the cobblestone streets of the district, north into Chelsea, was the High Line Park or, as it was more commonly known, the High Line: a long-disused stretch of elevated railroad track that had been converted into an elevated park replete with plantings, artwork, and great vistas on the Hudson River and the Manhattan skyline.

The High Line Bistro was in an old warehouse. The walls were the original brick and the interior post and beam construction was also original equipment. That’s where the quaintness came to an abrupt halt. The tables and chairs, made of train rails and ties, were more sculpture than furniture and each must have cost a small fortune. The walls were covered with historical photographs of the High Line when it was operational and trains were bringing meat to and from the butcheries. There were also original paintings of the High Line itself and of the views of the city it offered. The bar was simple and sturdy, no rails and ties here. But when I sat down on one of the barstools and looked at the wine list just to pass the time, I nearly swallowed my tongue. Their wine list was pretty extensive and absurdly expensive. A bottle of good old vine Zinfandel, which you could buy on sale at one of our stores for under thirty dollars, was listed at one hundred and forty bucks. At that price, I thought, the waiter should not only open the bottle and pour the wine, but hold the glass and pour it into your mouth for you. The lunch menu prices, while not quite as outrageous, were no bargain. I could only imagine what the prices on the dinner menu would be.

Something wasn’t right. I had that prickle on the back of my neck thing going. What were two EMTs doing in a place like the High Line Bistro for lunch? They’d have had to take out a loan just to walk through the door. Not to judge, but I didn’t see Alta or Maya Watson as two women who were going to take a quick lunch of frisee salad with lardon or Thai duck confit with tamarind and pomegranate drizzle, certainly not at these prices. But the media reports had been absolutely consistent about the fact that Alta and Maya had called into dispatch that they were taking their lunch break at this address. I looked around at the half-full restaurant. There were lots of tourists, business types in expensive lightweight suits, women in lovely summer dresses, and not a single person in uniform.

The bartender broke my concentration. She was the ultimate Manhattan stereotype: a beautiful early-twenty-something with rich dark skin, exotic features—vaguely Asian and Hispanic—speaking mildly accented English. She was thin as a blade of grass, but with some curves, and her makeup was flawless. A model or actress who, I guessed, hadn’t come to New York to work behind a bar.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, “what may I get for you?”

I showed her my old badge and put it away before she could get a good look at it. Her youth worked in my favor because she would focus on the badge and what it represented, not on me or my age.

“A glass of sparkling water and lime and five minutes of your time.”

She looked around the bar for any excuse to get away from me, but I was her sole customer.

“Look,” I said, “what’s your name?”

“Esme.”

“Look, Esme, relax. Just get me the sparkling water and talk to me like I was any older man sitting at the bar hitting on you. I’m sure you’re pretty used to it.”

She smiled at that and what a smile: welcoming, sexy, shy, and warm all at once. I couldn’t imagine a camera not loving her. She used the bar gun to fill a tall glass, clipped a lime wedge over the rim, and placed it in front of me.

“What do you do, Esme, I mean besides tend bar? Actress? Model?”

There was that smile again. “Some of both, but I am a senior at SVA, the School of Visual Arts.”

“Really? What’s your major?”

“Film,” she said, seeming to be more relaxed.

I squeezed the lime, raised the glass to her, and sipped. “Thanks. Were you here in March when Robert Tillman died?”

She wasn’t smiling anymore. She looked gut-punched, in fact. “Yes.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“I can’t tell you very much because I was behind the bar here. It all happened over there around the other side of the bar by the kitchen entrance,” she said, her head looking down.

“Did you see the EMTs come in?”

“Yes, I noticed them right away.”

“Why would you notice them? Hadn’t they ever been in here for lunch before?”

Esme, still looking down. “No. We do not get many customers like them at the High Line.”

I played dumb. “Why not?”

She held the menu out to me. “I make good money and I get a discount and even I cannot afford food here. And each meal is always cooked to order by Chef Liu. People do not come here for a fast lunch.”

“But even if you didn’t see what happened yourself, people who work here must have talked. What did you hear about what happened?”

“People talked, yes.”

“Come on, Esme, don’t make this like pulling teeth. Just tell me.”

“The EMTs came in and everyone says they were having an argument.”

“An argument. An argument about what?”

“No one said.”

“Okay, so they were arguing. Where did they go after they came in?”

“Toward the restrooms,” Esme said, again pointing around the bar to her right. “Then as they were passing the kitchen door, Chef Liu came out of the kitchen screaming for a doctor and for the hostess to call 911. The short EMT looked into the kitchen and saw Rob—him on the floor. The tall one, she ran into the bathroom and the other one told the chef to call 911, that they were off duty and couldn’t help. When the tall one came out of the bathroom, they left.”

“You said the short EMT looked into the kitchen. Which one was the short one?”

“The heavier, older woman. The one who was murdered.”

“Alta Conseco?”

“If that is her name, yes, that one.”

“You said she looked into the kitchen. Did she go into the kitchen or just look?” I asked.

“I did not see for myself.”

“I know, Esme, but what did the others say?”

“She just looked at him through the open kitchen door.”

“That’s it? She didn’t touch him or anything?”

“That is what I was told. She just left him to die on the dirty kitchen tiles.”

Except for the argument between Alta and Maya, Esme’s hearsay story pretty much fell into line with the witness statements. I took out a list of names I’d scrawled down before leaving the house. The names were of other restaurant employees who’d given statements to the police. I read the list of names to Esme. None of them were on duty. Most of them, she said, no longer worked there.

“It is Manhattan,” she said, “no one works here for very long. We get parts or roles or gigs or even better jobs and leave. It is nice to work here, but it is no one’s dream.”

I asked Esme to introduce me to Chef Liu. I don’t think I’d ever seen someone so happy to be rid of me. Esme’s introduction saved me the trouble of having to scam the chef. If she said I was a cop, I was a cop. His story included more details about Tillman’s collapse—“Robert was just walking to the grill with a pan of diced onions and fell to the floor”—but was otherwise consistent with Esme’s. He said that Tillman, a prep cook, had only started working there the week prior to his death and that he was good at what he did. Robert hadn’t been there long enough for the chef to really get to know him, but that his death and the controversy surrounding it was a shame nonetheless.

“Has his family been in touch?” I asked. “Any lawyers or investigators come in to take statements?”

“No one from Robert’s family, no,” said Chef Liu. “Only the police and fire departments.”

Uh oh, I could see the chef taking a second look at me, wondering what I was doing there if the cops had already come and gone. I thanked him and left before he could put it together and inquire as to why I was asking questions he’d already answered many times. Questions. Now I had more of them than when I’d walked in.