We hung a right on 92nd Street and pulled up to a disaster area known as the Second Avenue Subway project.
The grand idea to bore a subway tunnel under Second Avenue from Harlem to the financial district was first proposed decades before I was born. They finally broke ground in 2007, and if they ever fund and finish the entire eight mile run, it will be long after I’m dead. In the meantime, Second Avenue from 63rd to 96th looks like Baghdad after the shock and awe.
We parked on First and walked back. Fall was in the air. The temperature had dropped to the low forties, and the bars along Second were in full-scale Halloween promotion mode, their windows adorned with posters of goblins, ghosts, vampires, and Sam Adams Octoberfest beer.
Our first stop was the Foggy Goggle, which is typical of the cutesy bar names on the Upper East Side. When I was a kid, our local gin mill was Chop’s Tavern, but nobody in this zip code is going to pay fifteen bucks for an appletini at a joint called Chop’s.
Monday nights during football season are as busy as Fridays, and even though neither of the New York teams were playing, the place was packed with fanatics hoping to see the New England Patriots get clobbered by Miami.
We had flyers of Evelyn and started with our best bet—the smokers outside the bar. A few had seen her on the evening news, but nobody had seen her walk past the bar on Friday night. Nobody inside was any help either.
The next stop was Sticks and Balls, where there were almost as many people in the back room watching the Monday night pool tournament as there were rooting against the Patriots.
Kylie and I split up to work the room. At least half a dozen guys, their testosterone fueled by alcohol, thought they “just might know something” and offered to discuss it with Kylie over a drink.
Kylie had a stock answer: “Great. How about my place—Nineteenth Precinct. You can spend the night.”
After ten minutes, we knew we’d struck out again and moved on to Not a Health Club. The name must have resonated with their target audience, because there were at least twice as many smokers outside as there had been at the first two bars.
One by one, they looked at Evelyn’s picture and shook their heads. We had questioned about half of them when one of the smokers walked up to Kylie and said, “I’m Romeo. You been looking for me?”
He was five feet six, 250 pounds, with thinning, curly hair and a thick, unruly beard that made his moon-pie face even rounder. I seriously doubted if any woman was looking for him—especially if his pickup line was “I’m Romeo. You been looking for me?”
“Am I looking for you for what?” Kylie said.
“You’re the cops, right? You’re looking for information about her,” he said, pointing at the flyer in Kylie’s hand. “I’m the guy who called you. Joe Romeo.”
“When did you call?” Kylie said.
“Tonight, right after I heard about this Evelyn Parker-Steele murder on the six o’clock news. I called the crime stoppers hotline number on your website. The one where they give you a two-thousand-dollar reward if my tip helps you nail the killer. Then I called them back at seven thirty and told them I can’t hang around my apartment all night, and you could meet me here.”
When there’s a page-one homicide, our tip line logs hundreds of calls. Eventually the department follows up on all of them, so there was no sense telling Romeo his message was buried at the bottom of a slush pile.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “We got both calls. Tell us what you know, Mr. Romeo.”
“It was Friday night around eleven. I’m out here having a smoke, and I see this Evelyn Parker-Steele walking up Second. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I was checking her out. I’m in the rag trade, and this woman knew how to dress. Gray pantsuit, burgundy silk blouse, Brian Atwood slingbacks—not cheap.”
“Did you see where she walked to?” Kylie asked. “Did she turn the corner? Pop into another bar?”
“No, a car pulled up alongside her,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “A black SUV.”
“Did you see the driver?” I said.
“No, but the guy in the backseat rolled down the window, and he called out to her.”
The guy in the backseat? Kylie and I looked at each other.
“You’re sure the man was in the backseat?” I asked.
“Yeah. I could tell she didn’t know him. I figured he was just some douchebag hitting on random chicks, but she walked over to him. Now I’m totally tuned in, because I’m waiting for her to tell him to fuck off, but she listens for maybe ten seconds, opens the door, and gets in.”
“She just got in?” I said. “He didn’t step out of the car and help her in?”