Rey and Allison Rivera
I turn right, away from the edge, stretch, walk out into the sun, and look around me. A lot of work has been done since I was last here. A new white protective coating has been added to the surface, the chimney has been rebuilt, and the gutters have been unclogged.
The sun feels warm against my skin, and the city shines below me in the sunlight. If I were ready to die, I think, it would not be difficult to jump off the roof on a bright, clear day like this. I imagine how it would feel: like leaping into the sunshine. People rarely acknowledge how comforting the thought of suicide can be, especially the thought of suicide by jumping from a height. To launch oneself into the abyss is to give the finger to the world; it is a way to cause trouble, to make an impact, to snub quiet discretion and an open casket. How tempting: to simply bring down the curtains on one’s life. If I were to do it, I think, I would first get rid of my possessions, write a note to D., make sure my dog was well taken care of, then take a couple of Valium and a big shot of vodka. I think of opening my arms, closing my eyes, and running forward, straight off the edge of the building and out into the brilliant blue sky.
Rey and Allison Rivera
I have every reason to live, yet I can still feel the pull of the edge. When I lived in London, there was a time when I could not use the Tube. It was irrational. I was not unhappy. But as soon as I got to the platform I would become mesmerized by its edge, lose focus, miss my train, think about nothing but my body on the tracks.
I remember Poe’s lines from “The Imp of the Perverse”: “And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we the most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus meditates a Plunge.”
It is time to go. Forcing myself to turn from the edge, I return to the door and turn the handle. It does not move. I turn it again. Still nothing. I push. I kick. Nothing. I shove my hip against it. I throw my whole body weight against it. It will not budge. The facts set in. The door has locked itself behind me. I am trapped.
My phone is downstairs. Nobody knows where I am. D. is out of town. How long before he gets back? Three hours? Four? Even then, will he assume I have gone for a hike or to visit a friend? If I wave my arms around, will anyone see me? If I scream, will anyone hear? In truth, I could be here for five or six hours before I am missed, and five minutes has been enough to make me feel the pull of the edge.
I turn around, and that’s when I see it: another door, about three feet to the left of the one I’ve been trying to open. I turn the handle, and it gives immediately. I’d been trying to open the door to the elevator shaft. Weak with relief, I climb down the ladder and back through the loft.
I no longer go up to the roof.
XV
IT IS NOW eleven years since Rey Rivera was killed. In the Belvedere, life goes on. People move in. Others move out. A terrible smell has been pervading the fifth floor, like rotting meat or fish. It is especially bad at weekends. The couple on six are going through a nasty divorce. Someone’s dog takes a dump in the freight elevator. A random drunk leaving the Owl Bar beats up James, the gentle concierge, and puts him in the hospital. After his Baltimore benefit concert following the riots in summer 2015, the singer Prince takes his entourage to the 13th Floor. Everyone says he is humble, extremely polite, and asks for vegan-friendly food.
On the steps of the New Deliverance Cathedral on the corner of Chase Street and St. Paul, I find the toe tag from a corpse. Cause of death: rosary pea poisoning. The jequirity bean, or rosary pea, is commonly used in West African witchcraft in order to ward off curses.
At a wedding, an ambulance pulls up and someone is carried out of the Belvedere on a stretcher. It’s the chef, suffering from an allergic reaction to jalapeños. Inexplicably, no jalapeños are being served.
* * *
Stein’s final report is a big nothing. I realize he had nothing to offer me to begin with, and I as should know by now, nothing will come of nothing. I get the sense he gave up on the case long ago. What is left of my retainer is spent on a straggling trail of useless questions, failed connections, and unanswered phone calls. The report, like much police writing, is a masterwork of pointless detail and redundant precision. I would have tossed it aside and happily forgotten about Stein were it not for one detail. In the email to which the document is attached, Stein says he has something to say that he can’t include in the report. Something “off the record.” Can we meet in the Owl Bar on Thursday at six thirty?
That will be fine, I reply. But then I begin to wonder: What can he have to tell me that he cannot include in the report? Even if it’s “off the record,” why not just tell me on the phone? Why do we have to meet in person? And why is he so eager to get together when he was so reluctant before, and when he is no longer being paid?
When I have talked to them about this case, with its wide-ranging conspiracy theories, police involvement, scary coverups, and anonymous emails warning me off, friends have sometimes asked me: Aren’t you frightened?
The answer has always been no, I’ve never been frightened—that is, until now. Stein, I keep thinking, is an ex-cop. If the police were involved in a coverup of Rivera’s death and Stein has learned about it, I do not believe the private investigator would be on my side. As he admits, Stein, with his half-eaten soul, is a troubled character. As our final meeting draws closer, fear creeps into my life and will not let go.
A few days before our final appointment, I find an abandoned wooden trunk on the Belvedere’s loading dock. I take it up to our apartment to restore, and become temporarily obsessed with vintage trunks. The wood of this one is very thick, and it has a flat top, which, I learn, makes it a steamer trunk, intended to fit snugly into the tight space of a ship’s passenger cabin. I add brass studs, a decorative brass lock, and rope handles, and I line it with pretty paper and put incense inside to get rid of the moldy smell.
A stiff upholstery fabric, something like calico, would have lined the hat trunks or half-trunks owned by Victorian ladies, whereas gentlemen’s trunks were generally lined with leather or hide. In the early years of the twentieth century, there were trunks for all occasions: bevel-top trunks, dome-top trunks, and barrel-top trunks; wardrobe trunks and dresser trunks; stagecoach trunks; Saratoga trunks with complex compartments; and Jenny Lind trunks with hourglass curves like those of the famous Swedish singer.
Eventually, the infinitely cheaper and more portable suitcase replaced the trunk, and although trunks are still made today, mostly as military footlockers, they are generally made of metal or composite wood. For today’s commercial travelers, trunks are far too heavy, expensive, and inappropriate to be of any use; they suggest the more measured and deliberate journeys of the past. And the decline of trunk production marked the end of the classic trunk murder.
Bodies will always be found in barrels, boxes, suitcases, and the trunks of cars, but the golden age trunk murder followed a very particular plot. The crime would first come to light when a porter at a railway station smelled a foul odor coming from a locked trunk in the cloakroom. When it was forced open, inside would be found a dead body, usually that of a young girl.
The standard shipping trunk measures from 30 inches to 36 inches long and 16 to 22 inches wide; it comes in a variety of heights. In 1912, the average Western female was around 65 inches high and her hips, the widest point of her body, were, on average, 32 inches wide (compared with 37.5 inches today). If she was short enough, a dead girl could be folded in half like a magician’s assistant and stuffed in a trunk intact. Most of the time, however, this is not how trunked bodies were packed.
The best-known trunk murders occurred in France, but it is a different pair of crimes that I find particularly intriguing. The first involved a foul-smelling trunk left in a cloakroom at Brighton railway station in England on June 17, 1934, which, when opened by police, was found to contain the torso of a pregnant woman,
aged around twenty-five, wrapped in several layers of blood-soaked paper and cotton wool. The next day a suitcase containing the same woman’s legs was found at King’s Cross railway station. No one ever learned what her face looked like, because her head was never found; she was known in the press as “the girl with the pretty feet.” Neither victim nor murderer was ever identified, though a local abortionist was strongly suspected.
A month later, as part of their investigation into the King’s Cross trunk murder, police knocked on the door of a house close to the railway station. The house was being repainted, and the contractor mentioned a disgusting smell coming from the basement apartment. Police traced the offensive stench to a cloth-covered trunk at the foot of the bed. The smell came from the fluid that was leaking from it. Opening the trunk, police discovered a decomposing corpse, this time intact, later identified as a forty-two-year-old former music hall dancer who went by the name of Violet Kaye. At the time of her death, Kaye been working as a prostitute, drinking heavily, and living as the common-law wife of a violent petty criminal and boxer named Tony Mancini, who claimed he had accidentally killed Violet during a domestic fight two months earlier. He had been living with her decomposing body in his small basement apartment ever since. Surprisingly, Mancini was acquitted.
The Violet Kaye trunk murder, discovered in the investigation of the King’s Cross trunk murder, turned out to be completely unrelated to it.
* * *
On Thursday, I get to the Owl Bar on time, knowing that Stein will be early, as usual. The place is crowded, which is a relief, as it means I can get help if he forces me to leave at gunpoint. I look for him at the corner table; he is not there. It takes me a while to find him sitting at the bar, his briefcase on a barstool by his side—a barstool that he is saving for me. His two drinks are already lined up. This time, he is dressed casually; in fact, as I squeeze onto the barstool beside him, I realize he looks shabby, unshaven, and a little unkempt. He must have noticed my glance, because as I am trying to get the bartender’s attention, he apologizes for his appearance. He tells me he been staking out the wife of a well-known football player.
“This guy thinks his wife is cheating,” says Stein. “And as I told you before, if you think someone’s cheating, they probably are.”
“Is he right?” I ask.
“He is right,” says Stein. “Boy, is he right.”
After a few minutes of conversation about the football player’s wife and her lovers, Stein says he has something for me.
“I’m not supposed to be giving this to you because it’s against the rules,” he says, with a wink, “but I trust you’ll keep it confidential.”
He holds up a medium-sized manila envelope. My heart lifts. No longer afraid, I become excited, my mind racing. My first assumption is that he’s managed to get hold of the homicide file. When I realize the envelope isn’t big enough for that, I think it must be the police photographs from the death scene. But when I take the envelope from Stein, I discover it’s empty. I turn it over, and there’s something written on the back: his name and phone number.
Obviously, I already have Stein’s name and phone number.
I take a sip of my drink, give myself time to think about it, but I still don’t get it. I look at Stein, waiting for him to explain, but he acts as though nothing has happened. He starts talking about the football player again.
“Maryland has no-fault divorce laws,” he says, “but this guy was smart. He has a prenup with an infidelity clause. If you ask me, prenups are the best thing the legal system ever invented. I should have got one myself. My wife left me two weeks ago.” He takes a swig from his beer.
“Really?” I don’t know what to say.
“It’s been a long time coming.” Stein wipes the froth from his mustache. “We tried marriage counseling, therapy, everything. There was infidelity on both sides. Yesterday, she told me she’s filed for divorce.”
I look at him. He smiles. I think it is the first time I have seen him smile.
“My wife’s left me,” he says. “You’re not a client anymore. I’m just saying.”
Suddenly, I get it. I look away. The weight of the letdown is enormous. I am so disappointed I think I might cry.
“I’m sorry, I have to leave,” I tell Stein, without looking at him. “Thank you for the drink.”
Our meeting lasted twenty minutes, at most.
In the elevator, I blink, and two fat tears roll down my face. I am crying because a man came on to me rather than trying to kill me.
Later, when I look back over my encounters with Stein, I realize we have been at cross-purposes all along. I had pressed him to meet with me. I told him we could get together in the evening. When I asked questions about his job, he must have thought my interest was personal. In fact, it was personal, but not in the way he had imagined. In Stein’s world, I realize, a woman who shows an interest in a man must be looking for something more than mere conversation. On my part, I had misunderstood his interest in me as a threat, which seemed deeply personal—unlike a sexual interest, which did not seem personal at all.
If I had been kidnapped, on the other hand, people would have paid attention. They would have made “Missing” posters with my picture on them. Smiling uncharacteristically, with my dog on my lap, I would look like someone who needed urgently to be found.
Missing people are like absent friends at a wedding, or the corpse at a funeral. They are attention-grabbers. Even if they are already dead, they are not excluded, as I often feel myself to be, from the world of the living. But if I were to go missing, I would be the center of attention. For once, I would be mysterious and sensational.
* * *
When I was in college, a boyfriend introduced me to his grandmother. Afterward, with a grin, he told me what the old lady had said about me: “I’d watch out for that girl if I were you. She’s trunkable.”
His grandmother had a saying, my boyfriend told me: “An innocent girl is never found in a trunk.” I do not know what it was about me that had made his grandmother say this. Maybe she had some kind of intuition.
I should not have been flattered, but I was.
* * *
A friend, horrified by what I tell her about Stein, arranges for me to meet a colleague of her husband’s, a former investigative reporter for the Village Voice. “He’s golden,” she emails me. “I think it will be really great. He’s a knowledgeable researcher with years of good relationships with crime and cops and access to a lot more useful stuff.” This friend, she insists, is reputable and meticulous and just an all-around good guy. He is also a “brilliant crime reporter” and she knows he will be able to help me. Her husband endorses him, too: “He knows pretty much every criminal investigative research channel around. He’s also a genuine good person and the reporter with the most integrity I’ve ever met.”
I arrange to meet this man in the Owl Bar on Tuesday, December 13, 2016. “I’ll be the 40-something guy in the Orioles shirt,” he emails me. “I’ll be the person looking anxious and disheveled,” I reply. We meet at three o’clock in the afternoon. After my recent letdown with Stein, I am eager to discuss details of the case with someone who shares my interests. But I am taken aback to discover that the investigative reporter has brought his daughter with him, a girl of around eight or nine. He does not apologize. On the contrary, he seems almost proud. He tells me the girl is home from school due to illness, although I notice she has already polished off a bowl of chili and is now playing with the packets of crackers that accompanied it, crumbling them up in her sticky little fist. I stand looking at the pair of them, feeling flat and vacant, reluctant even to sit down. How can I possibly talk about the details of a bizarre and violent death in front of this little girl?
Mustering my strength, I join them, turn my chair to face away from the child and toward the reporter, and begin to tell him the story, lowering my voice when it comes to the gruesome parts. But he is not listening. He is distracted; his daughter is wr
ithing and whimpering, and unable to ignore her, he tries to include her in our conversation, as if this were an educational project.
“You can talk to her,” he tells me, speaking to me as to someone who understands nothing about children (he is right about that, at least). “She’s really smart. She’s old enough to understand. I’ve already explained to her what this is about.”
He smiles at the girl.
“There was this man,” he says, as though beginning a fairy tale, “and he lived here in this building, and he jumped out of one of the windows.” As he continues, confusing all the details, I wonder why he did not call me when he found his daughter was sick, and postpone our meeting. Why did he agree to it in the first place? He seems to have no interest in the case, or in me. After this brief and useless meeting, he never contacts me again.
I am sure my friends were right—I believe he is a brilliant reporter, and full of integrity. The problem was me. I am invisible.
* * *
Stein, for all his problems, said something that stuck with me. In his experience, he told me, the motive for a crime is always one of three things: love, drugs, or money.
Everyone who knew Rivera said he kept away from drugs, and neither Stein nor anyone else found evidence of any extramarital affair, straight or gay. But I have to admit that I have never been able to make much sense of Rey’s relationship with money.
Neither Rey’s nor Allison’s family was in a position to help the couple out financially in any significant way. It is difficult to know how much money Rivera had made in the two years he spent working for Stansbury, but it was enough for Rey and Allison to get married in Puerto Rico, take out a mortgage on a $280,000 home, and buy a wedding ring and $15,000 worth of film production equipment. Later, I learned from Allison that when Rey died, he owed over $90,000, but around $70,000 of this debt was expenses that were to have been reimbursed by Agora. He paid all his own expenses for the Oxford Club conference up front, and would have been given a refund check, along with his pay, when he submitted the tape. Allison handed over the tape to Agora when the police returned it to her, but this was ninety days after Rey’s death; by then, the investment advice given at the conference was useless, and the tape could no longer be used.
An Unexplained Death Page 22