So I started where any reporter or cop would when they had nothing.
When in doubt, talk to everybody.
I walked straight into Tompkins Square Park looking for young families and older pedestrians. I figured those were people most likely to come to the park because they lived in the vicinity. And if they lived nearby, there was a greater chance they might have seen Stephen
Gaines at some point.
But what if they had seen him? That hardly meant they saw him being killed, or even knew who he was, what he did, or anything about him. Still, it was the best shot I had.
Walking around, I noticed a couple in their early thirties sitting on a bench. A baby stroller sat in front of them. I hated bothering nice people who looked like they just wanted to spend their afternoon relaxing with loved ones, but I hoped they'd understand.
Of course not too many people could sympathize with trying to hunt down the man who'd killed your brother, while your father sat in prison.
I approached the couple in as nonthreatening a manner as possible. Smiling, even. They paid no atten tion to me until I got closer and it was clear they were my targets. The husband looked up at me, and I noticed his hand slowly plant itself on his wife's leg. Guarding her. Nobody trusted young people these days.
'I'm so sorry to bother you,' I said, putting my hand out in apology. 'I was wondering if you happened to have seen this man in the area.'
I showed them the picture from the paper. They looked at it long enough and with enough confusion to show they didn't know him.
The wife said, 'No, I'm sorry.'
I thanked them for their time. Then it was on to the next stop.
I approached an older black man sitting at a chess table. The other seat was unoccupied. He was studying the board, perhaps planning out moves in his head. I crouched down at the other side of his table, cleared my throat awkwardly.
'Excuse me,' I said.
'Have a seat, young man,' he said, his mouth breaking into a smile. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a cloth containing numerous chess pieces.
'Pick your poison. Speed chess? I've got a killer Danish
Gambit, so hold on to your hat.'
'I'm not looking for a game,' I said somewhat apolo getically. 'I was wondering if you might have seen this man before.'
He looked at the picture, a blank expression on his face. He said he'd never seen Gaines, and I believed him.
I spent the rest of the day questioning every person
I could find in the park, until by the end people started to recognize me as having pestered half the lot and they began to move away before I even approached them.
One couple I asked twice within half an hour.
Nobody had seen Gaines. Nobody had noticed him.
He was a ghost in his own neighborhood. Or at least to these people.
When people asked what I was looking for, I mumbled something about him having gone missing. If they knew I was looking into a murder, they'd clam up faster than a vegetarian at a barbecue.
The sun began to set. So far my efforts had yielded nothing. I took a seat on a park bench. Desperation had come and gone, and I was left holding a crumpled photo of a man I barely knew, who'd lived a life seemingly nobody had known. Several days ago none of this mattered. Work was good. My relationship seemed to finally be on stable ground. And now here I was, bother ing strangers, hoping they might have happened, by some ludicrous hope, to have seen someone other than my father shoot a man in the back of the head. Or at least knew more about Stephen than I did which was next to nothing.
I was searching for a needle in the East River, with no clue which way the current was flowing.
I was about to give up, to try to think of a new angle to attack from, when a shadow fell over me. I looked up to see a young woman, late twenties or so, standing in front of me. She was reed thin, one arm dangling limp by her side while the other crossed her chest, holding the opposite shoulder. Her hair was red and black, mascara haphazardly applied. Perhaps twenty pounds ago she'd been attractive, but now she was a walking, painted skeleton. She was wearing a long-sleeved sweater, but the fabric was dangling off her limbs. It allowed me to see the bruising underneath. The purplish marks on her skin immediately caught my attention. My pulse sped up. Her lip trembled. I didn't have to show her the newspaper clipping. I knew what she was going to say even before she opened her mouth.
'I knew Stephen.'
A cup of steaming tea was set in front of me. It smelled like mint. She offered me milk, which I politely declined. I watched her sit down, a cup of the same at her lips. She'd poured both from the same kettle, so I didn't have to worry about being poisoned. I began to think about how much more paranoid I'd become over the years.
'Thanks,' I said.
'Don't mention it. I brew three pots a day.'
I nodded, took a look around.
This woman, Rose Keller, had taken me up to her apartment after I told her who I was and what I was doing. She seemed apprehensive, but once convinced of my authenticity she was more than happy to help.
She lived in a studio apartment at the top of a fourstory walk-up on Avenue B and Twelfth Street. The floor was covered with gum wrappers, the walls deco rated with posters of vintage album covers and artsy photographs, usually of frighteningly skinny women shaded in odd pastel light. The room smelled like patch ouli and cinnamon. Our tea rested on what appeared to be an antique trunk, covered in customs stickers from every corner of the earth. Portugal, Greenland, Syndey, Prague, the Sudan. This woman didn't look like she traveled much. Odds were she'd bought the pieces, stickers already applied.
The bed was unmade, and I noticed a large box sticking out from underneath. She saw me looking at it, said, 'Clothes. I keep meaning to donate them.'
She was lying, but I wasn't here to judge.
'So how did you know Stephen?' I asked.
'We used to…' She looked away from me. Then she pulled a lighter from her sock, took a bent cigarette from a drawer. 'You mind if I smoke?'
'Go right ahead.'
She took out a glass ashtray and set it on the table.
It was crusted with old butts and ash. Flicking the lighter, she lit the cig and took a long puff, holding it aloft between two fingers.
'We used to get high together,' she said.
'Used to?' I asked.
'I met him when I moved to the city eight years ago.
Wanted to be on Broadway, you know? All that kicking and dancing. I was voted 'most likely to succeed'in high school. Starred in all the drama shit. Figured I'd come here and show those Rockette girls how things are really done.'
'And then?'
'It's a tough gig,' she said like a woman who'd given up the dream long ago and had come to peace with it.
'Too tall. Too fat. Too short. Nose too big. Tits too small.
There's always an excuse. So I started waitressing in
Midtown, cool little Irish pub. Some of the actors used to go there for a drink after the shows. Then I'd come back here, get high and crash. That's how I met
Stephen.'
'How exactly did you meet him?'
'Funny story,' she said, taking another long drag. 'I used to call this guy named Vinnie when my stash
