The natives of the Westchester suburb of Bronxville (35 minutes from, Grand Central) happily accept its moniker as the “Golden Square Mile,” given its exceptionally affluent population of just 6,500 with an average home income of $430,000. They do, though, bristle when people erroneously believe it is part of the Bronx.  (The name comes instead from the Bronx River that flows through it.)

   For a village so small it does have a remarkable number of restaurants of every stripe, from  a Dumpling & Noodle eatery and The Taco Project to a delightful fifties-style Diner (left).  Pete’s Park Place Tavern has been a burger-and-brew favorite for generations of Sarah Lawrence and Iona University (formerly Concordia College) students, and you could film an episode of “The Real Housewives of Bronxville” about those  decked-out  ladies under a white tent toying with a Cobb salad at Underhills Crossing. There's also the requisite sushi restaurant, Hai-Ku and Pan-Asian,  Wild Ginger.

As throughout the county Bronxville is home to several Italian restaurants, from the lively Il Bacio and Rosie’s Bistro Italiano to the shadowy Scalini Osteria and Tredici Social, along with three pizzerias.

    A brand new addition is La Chitarra (7 Pondfield Road), which is part fresh pasta shop (good but very expensive) and part snug trattoria, opened by Randy Restiano, formerly of Gramercy Tavern, and his cousin Peter Diana, along with chef John Poiarkoff.  The shop opens onto the restaurant, with a marble five-seat bar, a wall of wines from a list of 200 mostly Italian labels, blue-and-white patterned floor, sconces and rattan bentwood chairs.

    La Chitarra's menu goes considerably beyond the standard Italian fare with seasonal specials, including wild mushrooms foraged from the Hudson Valley, combined with pastas and risotto. The restaurant’s name references the Abruzzese pasta shape spaghetti alla chitarra, combined with San Marzano tomatoes, parmigiano and basil. 

You’ll be brought some crusty country bread, so there is no real reason  to order focaccia at $9. Slickly grilled octopus comes with potatoes, the mild bite of capers, olives and tomatoes. There’s a slightly heavy hand with salt in some dishes, but if you love roast chicken, La Chitarra's is one of the better versions around.

La Casa (7 Pondfield Road) is located in the former Gramatan Hotel once a retreat for fleeting assignations by Broadway actors, and it has long served a slightly elevated style of Mexican food. Opened by Spencer Pingel (with a newer Casa in Purchase, NY) the space is composed of a glittering bar and large dining room very popular with families.

    There are plenty of appetizers deserving of the name, including excellent octopus grilled on the plancha; a well-seasoned guacamole and warm chips; a ceviche of the day’s catch in lime with cilantro; wonderfully addictive potatoes with spicy chorizo sausage,  beans, lettuce and rice. There are ten taco selections––the carnitas and the al pastor with pineapple were very good,  six quesadillas and a well-rendered, very hearty  posole stew chock full of hominy, pork and cabbage.  The enchiladas verdes were fairly  bland, and no one’s going to find the food here excessively hot with searing chiles. You’ll have to ask for hot sauce, and you pay for rice.

    Pingel also just opened a companion restaurant next door  called Ma Maison (7 Pondfield Road), the first French restaurant in the village in ages. (The first French restaurant I ever ate in––back in the ‘70s––was Le Bon Viveur in Bronxville, now called The Urban Hamlet.)  Ma Maison has been a dream of Pingel since spending three years in Paris, and when the space turned up, it was logical to combine the two restaurants’ hotel-size kitchens into one.

    Straw lamps hang from the ceiling in a main dining room set with banquettes and bistro chairs,  scones, prints of fruits, with fin de siècle French posters and subway tiles behind a copper-topped bar to the rear. Another smaller room painted gray is more cramped than cozy.

    The opening menu is quite short––five starters, six entrees––full of bistro classics like a smooth country-style pâté maison (right) with gherkins and mustard sauce;, an onion soup (left) that needed a more deeply flavorful broth of caramelized onions; tender mussels in white wine with crisp frites; and two double-cut lamb chops, perfectly cooked. For dessert there’s crème brûleé and apple Tarte Tatin.

    The wine list is surprisingly short and composed of rather dull bottlings. I suspect this will improve as Ma Maison gets its footing. I also trust that the menu will rise above the expected cliches like grilled salmon and endive salad, for French bistro fare is so much more extensive. Perhaps Pringale is testing the waters of a conservative clientele, but it would be nice to see more Parisian dishes like wintry cassoulet, blanquette de veau and île flottante.

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

    "I appreciate your seeing me, Mr. Cherico,” said Katie upon meeting the IRS agent, who was wearing a yellow tennis shirt, chinos and deck shoes. He had the appearance of a bureaucrat shy of retirement. Gray, thinning hair in a comb-over, paunchy, a slightly weary look and a forced smile.
         “I’m told you know Terry Rush,” he said. “Good cop.”
         “Actually I don’t but a mutual friend does and helped set up this meeting.”
         “The guy you go on all these adventures with?”
         “Uh, yeah. Same guy. His name is David Greco. You’ve read my articles?”
         “I read the one about Al Capone, because, as you know, it was our office that put him in prison.”
         Katie thought he was trying to sound as if it was this shabby little office in Palm Beach that finally brought the mobster to justice sixty years ago. She wasn’t going to humor him, and asked, “Terry Rush and Al  Barber from the FBI said you might be able to throw some light on Jeremy Epstein’s subterfuge.”
         “You mean his sex parties? I haven’t a clue what goes on inside his walls. I’m only interested on whether he’s a tax felon or not.”
         “Is he?”
         Cherico leaned back in his swivel chair.
         “Didn’t Rush or Barber say I can’t talk about an ongoing case?”
         Katie nodded  and raised her eyebrows, then went silent, the reporter’s trick for making a subject feel ill at ease and want to tell her something.
         Cherico cleared his throat and said, “I can only say that we are pursuing an investigation into Mr. Epstein’s taxes, which we wouldn’t be doing if there was no evidence of fraud.”
         “By ‛pursuing’ you mean it’s an actual open case?”
         Cherico nodded twice but said nothing.
         “So I’m assuming that this might well involve his involvement with banks in the Caribbean?”
          Another nod.
         “And his business deductions for his parties?”
         Another nod and Katie realized that’s how Cherico would indicate what he could not reveal verbally.
         “And you might also be looking into where his money comes from?”
         “I can tell you, because it’s been reported, that his investment business took a huge hit a few years ago with the collapse of that Ponzi scheme with Tower Financial, which lost something like $450 million, yet he seemed to walk away free and clear and was back in the money within the year.”
         “Let me ask you this,” she said. “Do guys this rich get audited every year?”
         “Not all of them. They have extremely capable—let’s make that ‛creative’—lawyers and accountants who file in bulk year round. The IRS only has so many agents.”
         “And you’re one of the most persistent?”
         Now it was Cherico’s time to pause. Then, “I do my job wherever it takes me.”
         “You enjoy your work, then?”
         “It’s a pretty good feeling when you catch the crooks. When you don’t, you just go on to the next file. Anyway, I’ll be retiring next year.”
         “Is that enough time to catch a crook like Epstein?” asked Katie.
         “What with the local police and the FBI looking at him and with us coordinating where it’s of mutual benefit, I think Epstein should be very worried these days.”
         “Well, the local police seem interested only in the sex trafficking, aren’t they?”
         “If it’s trafficking, someone’s paying or making money illegally, so that’s something we’d look at.”
         Cherico glanced at the clock.
         “Ah, time for me to get home for the weekend. My wife and I are having a barbecue with some people coming over. I’m the cook.”
         Katie thought, “Why am I not surprised?”  and thanked him for his time. “You’re helping bring things together for me, Mr. Cherico.”
         “It is a complicated case,” he said. “If you can keep my name out of it, I’d appreciate it. If not. . .”  He waved his hand and got up to shake hers.     

 

         In order to find out what went on at Epstein’s parties, Katie knew she needed to find people who had attended them, some, perhaps, against their will.  She figured Ramona Sanchez would be her best bet, so she asked David to contact her in Miami.
         “I think she’d be eager to speak with you, Katie,” he said. “She gave me a couple of names of big wigs like Prince Andrew and Donald Trump—can you  believe that? —but she’s not going to give us the names of her own clients or the real names of the girls she sent to Epstein. I do think she might tell you how to contact those underage girls she’s so concerned about, assuming she knows who they are.”
         “If it’s true it’s really despicable,” said Katie. “I’m thinking that that’s really the story I’m after, like when we spoke to those poor women who’d been imprisoned in the Magdalene Laundries.”
         Katie was referring to a prior story she’d covered with David in Dublin, where the Magdalene Laundries were hothouses run by the Catholic church until the mid-1990s to take in prostitutes and girls pregnant out of wedlock where they were brutalized and sexually abused by both nuns and priests.
         “Is this a McClure’s story?” asked David.
         “It is if it’s part of a larger corruption involving people like Prince Andrew, finance guys and national politicians. Merely giving out a list of the attendees might be shocking but the fact these girls are illegally procured for men who are supposed to abhor such things is where the story goes further into how power operates and thrives off favors. That’s a story Alan might well go for. So, let’s go see Ramona.”
         David called Sanchez and was not entirely surprised how quickly she agreed to another meeting the next day, yet again at the Versailles.
        Meanwhile Katie and David had dinner at what claimed to be the “oldest steakhouse in Florida,” Ockeechobee Steakhouse, opened in 1947 as a drive-in in West Palm Beach and evolved into an upscale family owned restaurant set within a squat nondescript one-story building with  stone façade, lantern lights and shingled roof.  Inside it was low-lighted, with a salad bar, dark brown tufted booths, dark brown wainscoting and dark brown tables.
        Katie and David looked at the menu and he said, “When in  Rome, go whole hog, or in this case eat like a Floridian.” The menu item descriptions had claims attached: “Colossal shrimp with our famous garlic  butter”; “Famous ‘Old Florida’ crabcake”; a bone-in ribeye—“what steak tastes like in heaven.” All of which David ordered, saying, “My treat. So you want to try a caipirhiña?”
    “Not my favorite,” said Katie, “but if it’s good enough for Ramona, it’s good enough for me.”
    The meal was a good break from the day’s work, and the couple did not brainstorm about the connections of the investigations and agreed to go over some questions for Sanchez while they drove down to Miami the next day.  They skipped dessert and coffee, returned to the hotel and agreed to meet at eight AM. 
    Katie had brought her new laptop, so she looked up information on Prince Andrew. As the third child and second son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Andrew was eighth in the line of succession to the British throne. He dutifully served in the Royal Navy as a helicopter pilot and instructor, and during the Falklands War, he flew on multiple missions.
    In 1986, he married Sarah Ferguson with whom he had two daughters, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie. The couple separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996, with Ferguson receiving £350,000 in cash, £500,000 from the Queen to buy a house for herself and the children, and a monthly allowance.

  As Duke of York, he served as the UK's Special Representative for International Trade and Investment, but his own sources of income beyond the Royal dole were always questionable, as when he paid £18 million for a Swiss chalet in Verbier with help from a mysterious benefactor.

The British press first linked the Prince with Jeffrey Epstein in February 1999, their meeting arranged through Ghislaine Maxwell, flying on Epstein’s private Gulfstream jet to his Little St. James island. A year later both Epstein and Maxwell (as an uninvited “plus one”) were invited to a star-studded guest  at a Windsor Castle party called the Dance of the Decades, hosted by the Queen.

In December 2000 Andrew threw  a surprise birthday party at Sandringham, the Queen's estate in Norfolk, for Maxwell, with Epstein among the guests, which Andrew told the BBC was a "straightforward shooting weekend."

         By then Epstein was publicly boasting that the Prince was his “best friend,” flying off together with Maxwell on trips to Florida and Thailand, and that, according to an Evening Standard report, Epstein had joined the Prince on five such occasions over the previous 12 months. Andrew told the BBC that he used to see Epstein a “maximum of three times a year” but confirmed he had been on his private plane, stayed at his private island and stayed at his homes in Palm Beach and New York. It also came to light that Andrew had arranged in secret to have Epstein pay off £15,000 of Sarah Ferguson’s debts.

         Katie lay back on her bed, telling herself this story was, quoting Alice in Wonderland, “curiouser and curiouser.” The caipirhiña and the red wine from dinner sent her straight to sleep.

 

 

 © John Mariani, 2024