JAMES PATTERSON

properties in Manhattan, including 301 East 66th Street. He asked his brother-did Mark want to join him? He did."

Grossberg himself has had his ups and downs. At one point, he worked in a building owned by the Epstein brothers. There, he says, a porter told him a story about a little-known side of Jef- frey Epstein. The porter's wife, who lived in South America, des- perately needed an organ transplant. Epstein paid for the operation.

$ 1 6 6 5 0 1 5

"That's just typical," Grossberg says. "That's who he always was, long as I knew him."

"Lafayette was a city school," says another old classmate, James Rosen. "It was functional. There was nothing special about it."

## Jeffrey Epstein: 19

James Rosen is a retired postal worker. He lives in South Florida now, but, like Jeffrey Epstein, he'd grown up in Sea Gate.

"There was a lot of volatility at Lafayette," Rosen recalls. “It was a blue-collar area that was, at one time, 90 percent Italian. Then a small amount of Jews moved in, and there was anti-Semitism. The Italians didn't want the Jews to be there."

92

Black families were moving in, too, he remembers, and His- panic ones. But he says most of the animosity was aimed at Jews.

"There were fights in the schools. They thought we were going to take over."

But Epstein seems to have made friends easily. Even then, his buddies who called him Eppy-could see he was special. While they hung out on the beach, Epstein played the piano. Did homework. Worked on his prized stamp collection.

"t's the height of tl
lege administrator
long hair collide i
go in for any of that.
math classes at Coop
Village where Abraha
Thanks to a gene
though the applicatio
Epstein sails thro
At Harvard or Yal
tawks like the Brookly
than any Ivy League:
aside from his prodig
starts to make money
he leaves Cooper Un

Innocent times.

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