But No, You Just Had To Go Where Everybody Knows Your Name, Didn’t You?

It’s unwise to become a regular at a bar that you’ve held up once already:

News of the first holdup spread quickly: On Sept. 23, shortly after 2 p.m., two men entered Red Hook Bait and Tackle on Van Brunt Street, as laid-back a tavern as they come, with lots of mounted fish and taxidermy specimens. The bartender, a woman, was alone in the place, cleaning a restroom and just opening for the day. The men asked to use a restroom, and when they returned, one was wearing a mask and the other a bandanna over his face, and both held black handguns.

. . .

The bartender banged on neighbors’ doors until someone opened up and untaped her, said another bartender at Red Hook Bait and Tackle, who, fearful of a suspect still at large, gave his name only as Chris P., 30.

The following Sunday, Sept. 30, the men struck again, the police said, this time at Moonshine, a bar nearby on Columbia Street. About 3 p.m., one man entered, used the bathroom, left the bar and returned wearing a hat pulled low and with another man in a mask.

“They made my customer lay on the floor,” said the bartender, Marni Ludwig, 31. “They held a gun to my head and I gave them the money. They were angry that I didn’t have more money.” The men fled with less than $1,000, again in an S.U.V., the police said.

But this time, surveillance cameras photographed the first man as he approached the bathroom, showing a distinctive teardrop tattoo on his face, said Sgt. Joseph LaBella of the 76th Precinct detective squad. Officers circulated a sketch of the man in area bars.

The next Sunday passed without incident. Then, this past Sunday, Chris P., the bartender at Bait and Tackle, was killing the last minutes of his shift, which took him into the early hours of Monday, with seven or eight friends.

“It’s about 3 a.m.,” he said yesterday. “I see a man and a woman walk in the bar.”

“I notice he has the teardrop by his eye,” Chris said. “I think, ‘This is definitely the suspect.’ They ordered some shots of tequila. They wanted limes and salt.”

Chris said he went to the end of the bar and told a friend, “who happened to be one of the more sober people in the place, to call the cops. I told him in a hushed voice.”