I remove a freshly washed, white chef’s apron and slip it on. Then I head into the alley behind the restaurant. When I reach the café’s rear service entrance, I see it’s propped open with an empty wooden vegetable crate, and so I head inside.

Like most professional kitchens, this one is a swirl of heat, noise, and chaos. Prep cooks and sous chefs in a rainbow of skin tones are chopping and dicing—and sweating buckets in the process. I wend my way through, keeping my head down and acting like I belong there, hoping I can spot the fellow I’ve come to see—if he even still works there, that is.

But after reaching the end of the kitchen, I don’t. So it’s time to open my mouth.

“You’re trimming those pork chops real nice,” I say to one of the prep cooks nearest me. He’s African American, looks about twenty-five, and wears a red, black, and green bandana over his thick mane of dreadlocks.

He makes a quizzical expression and grunts, “Thanks.”

“Hey, lemme ask you, does a guy named Ibrahim Farzat still work here? Mid-thirties, black hair, beard, accent. He washed dishes. Maybe he—”

“Naw, man. And I got work to do.”

I can’t tell if this guy really doesn’t know Farzat, if he’s too busy to talk to a stranger, or if he’s hiding something. I decide to try someone else.

“’Scuse me,” I say to a tough-looking Hispanic fellow in his forties, julienning a pile of carrots. “Do you know a dishwasher who works here named Ibrahim Farzat?”

Without stopping cutting, he flashes me a suspicious look. “You a cop or something?”

“More like a private eye.”

“Is Abe in some kinda trouble?”

“No, nothing like that. But I really have to speak to him. It’s a family emergency.”

The man shrugs, ignoring me.

“Look, I don’t want any trouble,” I say. “I just want to talk to him. When’s the last time you saw him here? Does anybody have an address, or a number I can—”

“You don’t want any trouble, huh?” the cook says, his voice thickening with menace. He finally stops his chopping, but tightens his grip on his knife. “You come in here in your little chef costume, start bothering people, asking questions. Get out.”

I glance around the kitchen. A few other sous chefs nearby have stopped their work, too, to watch this brewing confrontation. They also seem to be readying their blades. It’s been decades since I worked in a brick-and-mortar restaurant like this and I forgot how strong the brotherly bonds among kitchen staff can be.

“You’re making a mistake here,” I insist. “The man you used to know might be—”