Because tempers rose with the temperature, muggings, burglaries, assaults, and murders were now statistically up all over the city. And Mike Quinn had been clocking a lot of overtime at the NYPD’s Sixth Precinct.
Here in East Hampton, on the other hand, police work appeared to be limited to public drunkenness, auto accidents, or the occasional actress-turned-pathological-shoplifter. Delicate breezes refreshed the residents with the vigor of salt spray. And the nights were cool, quiet, and dark enough to actually see the constellations.
This place was a dreamland, Trump-meets-Thoreau, with an ocean view. And New Yorkers who had no roots in its history bought their way in with oodles of money, staking their million-dollar claims. They had indeed violated the laws of physics, as my friend Detective Quinn had put it, and created a completely separate universe.
So what the heck was I, middle-class working stiff Clare Cosi, doing here? At the moment, I was whipping up frothy coffee concoctions for David Mintzer’s illustrious party guests.
I know, I know…in America the term “barista” has come to be associated with out-of-work actors and college coeds—never mind that Americans consume half the world’s coffee supply, about 100 billion cups a year, and on a typical day seventy percent of the population drinks it. Here barista is not the highly-respected job title it is in, for example, Italy, a country with over 200,000 espresso bars.
The truth is, I’d gotten my coffee start early. My paternal grandmother taught me how. She raised me back in Pennsylvania, where I practically lived in her little grocery, making espressos for her customers and friends with the battered stovetop pot she’d brought with her from Italy. With every cup I poured, there was always a pat on the head, the pressing of a quarter into my palm.
My father, a flamboyant, constantly wired little guy who loved a good cigar and a shot of anisette with his morning demitasse, ran an illegal bookie operation from the back of Nana’s store.
My mother never sampled my coffee-making skills. She’d left when I was seven, and although for years I’d thought it was because I hadn’t been a good enough little girl, I eventually realized she’d become fed up with my father’s running around.
One day when a man from sunny Miami came to our town to visit a friend, Mom ran off with him, leaving nothing but a hastily scrawled note, which made her intentions clear. She wanted to erase her past completely, which unfortunately included me.
That’s when my grandmother stepped in. Making espresso in Nana’s grocery was one of my fondest childhood memories. So it was no big mystery why I associated the best of things with the rich, warm, welcoming aroma of brewing coffee—the essence of home, of Nana’s hugs, of unconditional love in the face of an incomprehensible rejection.
Even after my collegiate studies and successes as a culinary writer, I ultimately decided making the perfect cup time after time for a person who might be tired, weary, thirsty, or down, was not an insignificant thing.
Despite my function at this East Hampton party, however, my job title was not in fact “barista to the stars.” My actual occupation was full-time manager of the Village Blend, a landmark, century-old coffeehouse in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village, which was where David Mintzer and I had gotten to know each other in the first place.
In his mid-forties, David was one of those men who could be described with a list of features that had “slightly” in front of almost every one: slightly paunchy with slightly thinning dark hair, and slightly bulbous eyes. There were other things about him, however, that were far from slight: his wit for one, which was quick and wry; his business acumen for another.
David was an unqualified genius at whatever he attempted to do. He’d designed successful lines of men’s and women’s clothing, luggage, shoes, fragrances, and bed-and-bath products that were distributed internationally. He ran three successful magazines, two restaurant chains, and he periodically appeared on Oprah to give advice on “seasonal trends” to her television audience.
We had first met at a fashion-week party last fall. David had bought a townhouse in Greenwich Village, and he’d become a regular customer at my coffeehouse. He was so impressed with our exclusive blends and roasts, not to mention my espresso cocktails, that he made me an offer. If I would train and oversee his barista staff at “Cuppa J,” his brand new East Hampton restaurant, he would not only pay me a generous salary, he would give me a room in his oceanfront mansion all summer as his guest.
After some persuasion, I’d finally agreed that between June and September, I would split my time between Cuppa J and the Village Blend, using assistant managers to look after things at the Blend while I was gone.
Don’t get the wrong idea here. David and I weren’t lovers—not even close. At the moment, we had one of those gray-area personal/business relationships. And, frankly, even if I’d wanted there to be more between us, I wasn’t even sure it was possible. Sometimes he flirted like a straight man and other times he struck me as, well, slightly effeminate (there’s that “slightly” again). In the end, his sexuality seemed ambivalent at best.
The thing is, besides being very wealthy, David was also very sweet—or, at least, he’d been sweet to me. At the start of the evening, for instance, his Cuppa J chef (Victor Vogel) and manager (Jacques Papas) had arrived at the mansion with food they’d prepared at the restaurant. David had made a big fuss about personally serving me two flutes of his imported champagne and an outrageous portion of sixty-dollar-a-pound lobster salad.
For the rest of the night, I continued to remain entranced by the bewitching seaside setting—and, of course, the ever-flowing French bubbles. What can I say? Back in the city, I could barely afford an occasional lobster tail. Out here, sterling sliver serving trays—one of which my daughter, Joy, was now carrying—overflowed with seemingly endless rounds of seafood canapés and miniature French pastries that resembled works of modern art.
David had graciously encouraged all of his servers to eat, drink, and be as merry as his guests, and I most definitely took him up on that offer. While it was true that I was just “the help,” and it was also true, when you got right down to it, that this whole Hamptons thing wasn’t a whole lot different than your average backyard “kegger,” I just couldn’t talk myself out of being impressed. I’d never before been to a July Fourth party in the Hamptons (a New York City social accomplishment so noteworthy you’d think it would come with a military campaign ribbon), and I was secretly thrilled.
It’s no wonder that violence and decay were the last things I expected to encounter that night. Certainly, they were the last things on my mind before I found the body. The time of death, I would eventually learn, was around the same time the evening’s fireworks began. But I wouldn’t actually find the corpse until long after the show ended. So, at this point in the evening, I was still relatively carefree.
The same could be said of my twenty-one-year-old daughter who had come with me to David’s while on summer break from her Soho culinary school (she came at my insistence for reasons I’ll get to later). Joy was as thrilled as me about being at this party—but for her own particular reasons.
“Mom, Mom, did you see Keith Judd?” she bubbled, rushing over with her empty serving tray.