June 21, 2023

In the late afternoon of Wednesday, June 21, a handful of people in my Greenwich Village apartment lobby were exchanging data points about the murder in Washington Square Park.

It had happened only an hour earlier at 4:25 p.m. Everyone knew something about the murder. Two men had fatally stabbed a third. He was maybe 35 years old. Everyone knew everything about the geography of the Park.

Over the past year, a chalk artist had been drawing circles on the park pavements and labelling them “Bad Spot.” The dead man’s unlabelled Bad Spot was 200 yards away from the iconic Arch in the Northwest quadrant of the Park: a place for the homeless with their bags and blankets and for drug
dealers. The killers had then run West on Waverly Street. Three different security cameras had caught them in full flight. The police had not.

One on-looker had called 9-1-1 to report a stricken body. Others in the park, reports said, were oblivious.

Across the street from the crime scene is 29 Washington Square West: NYU’s most prestigious residential apartment building. Across from it, on the opposite corner of Washington Square West and Washington Square North, is a restaurant that serves as a clubhouse for the neighborhood.

On Thursday, June 22, Liz and I met two friends there for dinner. Police cars were lining the streets. The police themselves were talking in front of 29 Washington Square West.

The restaurant had not stopped its operations on Wednesday. The manager, a woman of about 40, was resigned.

“The police will be gone soon,” she said.

She told us how careful she has to be when she walks to the subway to go home after closing up. Yet, after the pandemic, business is up: coming back.

She has no old master painter or photographer to capture her suffering: the stresses of the job, the need for more paying customers, the nightly thrums of anxiety as she negotiates the affluent streets of Greenwich Village on her way to the subway home. She fears murder less than theft, harassment, and a “mental health guy” who might confront her.

She seemed so lonely in her courage.