Murder at the Falls

by Stefanie Matteson

  “I don’t know. Probably in his more lucid moments, but only subconsciously. In his less lucid moments everything I did contributed to his general paranoia. I hang out at the Question Mark Bar. It’s right down the street: flat all the way, with curb cuts at all the intersections. I play pool there; it’s one of the physical activities I can indulge in. Anyway, Randy used to come in sometimes, and I cultivated his friendship. It was part of the game for me.”

  “Was your ultimate aim to drive him so crazy that he would kill himself?” asked Charlotte.

  “I never thought that much about my ultimate aim, as you put it. For me, the medium was the message. If I had wanted him to kill himself, it wasn’t a conscious wish.” He thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “But he was killing himself anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered, would it?”

  “Would it have mattered if you had killed him directly?”

  Spiegel looked up in surprise at the accusation. “I don’t know. Killing him wasn’t part of my game plan.”

  “Then you didn’t kill him?” asked Charlotte.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t.”

  Spiegel claimed that he had been at the Question Mark Bar on the night that Randy was killed. It was an easy enough alibi to check—the Question Mark was right down the street from the Essex Mill—a straight run, as Spiegel had said. As the Nag’s Head Bar, the Question Mark had been famous in Paterson history as the headquarters for the Wobblies during the 1913 Silk Strike. It was at the Nag’s Head that Wobbly leaders had plotted the strike by twenty-four thousand workers that had closed three hundred silk mills for seven months, and dealt a crippling blow to the silk industry. This information was imparted to Charlotte by Tom, her expert on local history, as they headed toward the bar, which was located in a formerly Italian neighborhood—the home turf of Lou Costello. Judging from the signs, it was a neighborhood that was changing over to Hispanic. The store next to the Question Mark served its Italian clientele with “Pizzas to go” and its Hispanic clientele with “Comidas criollas.”

  The door of the Question Mark stood open, and they walked in. It was a dingy, dimly lit gin mill, with a long, padded bar in the shape of a question mark covered in black leatherette, a map of Puerto Rico hanging on the wood-paneled wall, and a scattering of beat-up Formica tables. An elderly Hispanic man sat at the bar, and two others played cards at a table in the back.

  The bartender was a thin Hispanic with a heavy accent. The name Ed Verre didn’t ring a bell with him, but Tom’s description of a man in a wheelchair with white hair and a white beard did.

  “Oh, sí,” he said, nodding. “He come in four, five nights a week. Se artista. During the day, the neighborhood people come here”—he waved an arm at the card players—“por la noche, estan las artistas.”

  “Was he here last Saturday night?” he asked.

  He thought for a moment, and then nodded: “Sí. He play billar.” He nodded at the pool table at the back. “He like play billar. He say is the only sport he can enjoy. Because of the”—he moved his hands at his sides as if he were rotating wheels—“silla de ruedas.”

  “What time did he leave?” Tom asked.

  “He stay until we close.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Two-thirty.”

  At this point, they decided that they were obligated to pay a call on Voorhees. Spiegel’s presence at the Question Mark was a good alibi: it would have taken him at least half an hour to make it up to the diner in the wheelchair, plus another half an hour to tie Randy up and toss him in, which would have put the time of death well past the hour that the medical examiner had set as the outside limit. Then there was the fact that all of this would have been difficult, if not downright impossible, for a paraplegic, and the fact that someone surely would have noticed. A man in a wheelchair was invisible unless he happened to be moving a body around in the wee hours of the morning. But whether or not Spiegel’s alibi held up (Voorhees would probably want to question the patrons of the bar who had been there that night), the fact that he had come back from the dead hell-bent on revenge was highly pertinent to the case. He might not personally have killed Randy, but he might have been linked to his death. Then there was the question of the decomposed body that had been pulled out of the river. If it wasn’t Spiegel’s, whose was it? Voorhees would probably want to tie up that loose end, if nothing else.

  For Charlotte, the fact that Spiegel appeared to have a solid alibi was a big disappointment. From the beginning, she had felt that Randy’s murder was linked to his reaction to the painting. If that assumption was wrong, then she had to go back to Square One. And the only player on Square One at the moment was Arthur Lumkin. She made a mental note to show John the photo of Lumkin to make certain it was he who had driven around back. Apart from that, she had no idea how to proceed other than to revisit the scene of the crime, which was always a good idea when you were stuck. And since the scene of the crime—in the form of the raceway where Randy’s body had been found—was only a block up the street, they decided to do that first.

  Charlotte wanted to retrace the route the body had followed. She had been prompted by the many hours that she was spending in Paterson, as well as by Diana’s and Jason’s references to it, to re-read William Carlos Williams’ book-length ode to the city, Paterson, which compared the city to a man. Since their visit to the Question Mark, a line from the poem—a kind of refrain—had been running through her head: “No ideas but in things.” Though its meaning was obscure, she took it as urging the reader to consider those things—those incidents from the past—that give a city, and a life, its meaning. The incident from the past that they were dealing with here was Randy’s death, and Charlotte couldn’t help but feel that the clues lay in its particulars. Though Tom thought it was a waste of time, he indulged Charlotte in her whim, not out of any generosity of spirit but because the promise of two hot Texas wieners “all the way” lay at the end of their little expedition.

  From the spot where the body had been found, they followed the path along the bank of the raceway at the edge of the rubble-strewn lot opposite the Gryphon Mill. They had company, a crew of prisoners in orange jumpsuits who were picking up the garbage. A sheriff’s deputy stood guard over them with a rifle. Most of them were Hispanic, and Charlotte was surprised at how young they were. Just babies, really. One especially baby-faced prisoner was picking up cans on the other side of the raceway, from among some tall weeds. As she watched, Charlotte realized that the weeds were bamboo. So much for its only growing behind the diner. Perhaps that was the only place where it could be found along the river, but the raceway was thick with it. At the back of the Gryphon Mill, the raceway made a 90-degree turn past the little brick building that was used as a crack den—crack vials littered the doorway—and then continued past the rear of a giant mill that was still in use. It was a beautiful day, and Charlotte welcomed the walk. Graceful sycamores overhung the raceway. Queen Anne’s lace bloomed at the edges of the path, and the blue, jewel-like flowers of pickerel weed brightened the waters of the canal. Even the presence of the prisoners and the garbage that had been tossed into the race—an old shopping cart, an open umbrella, countless bottles of cheap wine—couldn’t spoil the lazy, pastoral mood. At Spruce Street, the raceway ran under the street and opened up on the other side into the pond at the foot of the Ivanhoe Wheelhouse spillway. The body must have come over this falls, Charlotte thought.

  Crossing the street, they headed toward the Falls. The Upper Raceway was on their left, the river on their right. At the head of the Upper Raceway was an old gatehouse bearing a billboard for the Falls View on its roof that proclaimed: “Hot Texas Wieners since 1939.” Just below the gatehouse was a concrete dam, on which a maintenance worker (identifiable as such by the DPW truck parked at the curb) stood, pulling on a long-handled lever. As he moved the lever from a 90- to a 45-degree position, the flow of water on the downstream side of the dam gradually increased. As Charlotte watched the water stre
am through the opening, she was struck by a thought: in order for Randy’s body to have reached the bridge by the Gryphon Mill, it must have passed through this opening. But judging from the size of the area that was disturbed by the inflow of water, the opening couldn’t be that big.

  “Hello down there,” she yelled to the DPW worker. “How big is the opening?” she asked, pointing down at the dam.

  “Thirty-six inches square,” he replied.

  “Big enough for the body of a man to fit through?” she asked.

  “If the valve was all the way open. But it never is.” He gestured at the angle of the lever. “Halfway is the most we ever open it. The upper sections of the retaining walls are in bad shape; if we fill the raceways to the top, we get too much leakage.”

  “When was the last time the valve was opened all the way?—

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Ten, twelve years. The last time I remember for sure was when President Ford came here in 1976 to dedicate the historic district. Now we just open it enough to flush out the junk.”

  “Thanks,” said Charlotte.

  “The city’s applied for money to repair the walls, but …” He shrugged as if to say that nothing would ever come of it. “It’s a shame. The water used to really race through here.” He wrapped a chain around the lever, and locked it. “Now it’s just a glorified ditch.”

  “Good work, Graham,” said Tom as they continued on.

  From the beginning, Charlotte had had the feeling that there was something not quite right about the theory that Randy’s body had been tossed into the river behind the diner. She supposed that feeling had been behind her wanting to retrace the route the body had followed. Now that she knew the body had been tossed directly into the raceway, she knew what was at the root of that hunch: if the body had gone over the Ivanhoe Wheelhouse spillway, it would have been bashed up. There would have been lacerations and contusions, at the least. But Randy’s corpse had looked pretty good, apart from the bloating and the turtle bites. It wasn’t a body that had gone over a twenty-four foot spillway. She wondered why this hadn’t occurred to her earlier. Why it hadn’t occurred to the medical examiner was beyond her.

  The diner was back to normal, with John working the grill and Helen behind the cash register, but an air of gloom hung over the place as a result of John’s arrest. It seemed to have lost its spit and polish; the shine of the stainless steel seemed less bright, the glow of the mahoghany less warm.

  They took a seat at the same booth in which they had sat the other day with Patty—down at the end, away from the crowd.

  “What do you want to hear?” Charlotte asked Tom after they had placed their orders with the waitress, who must have been an Andriopoulis—she looked just like Patty. Her quarter was poised above the slot in the tabletop jukebox. “How about some Glenn Miller?”

  Tom made a face, as she knew he would.

  “I know, Chuck Berry,” she said. She flipped through the selections. “Well, there’s ‘Sweet Little Sixteen’; ‘Johnny B. Goode’; ‘Go, Johnny, Go’; ‘Maybellene’; ‘No Particular Place To Go.’”

  Tom handed her some more quarters. “Here. Just play all of them.”

  After dropping the coins in the slot, Charlotte pressed the series of numbers. “I’ve always wondered how these things work,” she said, as the opening refrain of “Sweet Little Sixteen” blared out of the speakers. “Are there a bunch of little records in there, or what?”

  Tom smiled, and proceeded to explain the intricacies of the wallbox system. Then the waitress appeared with their orders—two hot Texas wiener platters—and they turned their attention back to the case.

  “What I wonder about is this—” Tom said, as he sank his teeth into a wiener heaped with the special sauce. “If the body was thrown into the raceway instead of into the river, why did the murderer wrap it up in aprons that had come from the diner?”

  “I’ve been wondering about that too. Anyone who knew the raceway system would realize that the body would be found. The flow isn’t strong enough to carry a body out to the river. In fact, it petered out to a trickle just below the Essex Mill. Did you notice that?”

  Tom nodded.

  She continued: “I think it must have been a deliberate attempt to make it look as if the murderer had been at the diner.”

  “From the murderer’s point of view, the more suspects, the better.”

  “Exactly. What I think happened was this: we know that Randy was probably unconscious when he was tossed in. I think he must have passed out on his way home. The murderer came across him, and took advantage of the situation.”

  “Then went back to the diner to get the aprons.”

  Charlotte nodded. “They were kept in a bin that John had put out back for the laundry service. Anybody could have taken them.”

  “But they would have to have known they were there.”

  “Yes, but anybody who frequented the diner a lot, which seems to include most of Paterson, might have seen the bin. Especially if they ever went out back to look at the river. Or drove around the building,” she added, in reference to Arthur Lumkin.

  “Now what?” he said. “Do we interview every wino and crackhead on the west side to see if anyone saw Randy that night?”

  “That might not be such a bad idea.”

  12

  They were on their dessert—lemon meringue pie for Charlotte and banana cream pie for Tom—when Patty slid onto the seat next to Tom. She was wearing her sequined Mickey Mouse jacket over a T-shirt and blue jeans.

  “I’m off today,” she said. “But I wanted to talk with you. I saw you come in from across the street.” She nodded at the house across the way, whose picture windows—one up and one down—stared out at the diner. “Anything new?”

  “We had one lead, but it looks as if it’s going to turn out to be a dead end,” Charlotte replied, referring to Verre/Spiegel. “But we did just run across something else,” she added. She explained about Randy’s body being thrown directly into the raceway.

  “That’s something, anyway. Everything helps. I just came back from the lawyers’. It looks like the value of the estate, exclusive of the paintings, is about four hundred thousand. With the paintings—and the lawyers say they’ll go to us—it’ll be eight million more.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Charlotte.

  “The estate lawyers. I thought Marty told you. I’m the heir to Randy’s estate. That’s one of the reasons he arrested Daddy.”

  “What!” said Charlotte.

  “He figured that I—and, by extension, Daddy—stood to profit from Randy’s death. He thought that Daddy was planning to use the money to buy out Uncle Nick. In other words, he killed Randy to save the Falls View. But why arrest Daddy? Why not arrest me?”

  Charlotte set down her wiener and leaned her head against the back of the seat. “This is a surprise, to say the least,” she said. Damn Voorhees for keeping them in the dark.

  “It was to me, too. The biggest surprise of my life. I still can’t fathom it. It’s hard for me to get my head around any amount that exceeds a day’s worth of tips. At this point, it’s actually Randy’s postcard collection that I’m most excited about.”

  “You had no idea?” asked Charlotte.

  “Not the slightest. It was like winning the lottery. But with some unpleasant complications.” She glanced over at her father, who looked like Gene Krupa, so fast were his arms flying around, flipping hamburgers, scrambling eggs, heaping up mounds of home fries.

  As they watched, his arms seemed to slow down, as if the speed of a film were being decelerated. Then they fell to his sides, and he crumpled to the floor. Then Helen screamed. “Oh my God! John’s having a heart attack.”

  “Daddy!” cried Patty, rushing to his side.

  Charlotte and Tom were right behind, as were a dozen other diner patrons. John lay on his side between the grill and the counter. The arm with the tattoo lay outstretched on the floor. Helen was crouched down next to hi
m.

  Charlotte didn’t have to be a doctor to know that it didn’t look good. John’s skin was gray, and he wasn’t breathing.

  Patty took charge. “Carlos, call the ambulance!” she shouted to one of the cooks in the back. Then she crouched down next to her mother, and said: “Tom and Joe, help me turn him over on his back.”

  He was a heavy man, and it took Tom and two others to turn him over. Once he was on his back, Patty removed his glasses, which had been smashed in the fall, checked for a pulse, and then started CPR. She was cool and calm—she knew what she was doing—but her trembling lower lip revealed her fear.

  “Don’t die, Daddy,” she chanted as she pressed, arms straight and elbows locked, against her father’s sternum. It was a mantra that she repeated in time to the pumping action: “Don’t die, Daddy. Don’t die, Daddy. Don’t die, Daddy.”

  They never did get around to seeing Voorhees. After John’s heart attack they didn’t feel like going back to the detective bureau. And after the stunt Voorhees had pulled about Randy’s will, they weren’t especially eager to rush right down there, anyway. Besides, Tom was about to depart on a promotion tour for his most recent book. After driving him to the airport, Charlotte dropped his car off at his garage, then had a light dinner at a café in his neighborhood and took a cab home. All she wanted to do was mix herself a drink, put her feet up, and think things over. Which is exactly what she did.

  As she sipped her drink and munched potato chips, she reviewed the suspects in her mind. At this point, the front-runner was Arthur Lumkin. He had the strongest motive: jealousy. He had been on the scene, and he could have spotted the laundry bin when he drove around the back. Moreover, he might have followed Randy home in the expectation that Xantha would be meeting him there. Then there was Spiegel. Another strong motive, revenge; a good knowledge of the diner; and, unfortunately, an alibi—maybe. Hopefully Voorhees would let her know what he found when he checked it out. Then there was John. Though she hated to think ill of someone who at that very moment was fighting for his life, the news that Patty was Randy’s heir cast a new light on him as a suspect. The diner was his life. He had worked there three hundred and sixty-odd days a year for fifty years. His occasional days off were spent—where else?—the diner. The prospect of losing it must have seemed worse than death; he had said as much himself. And though in most people’s minds it was usually passions such as jealousy or revenge that provided the motive for murder, Charlotte knew that in actual fact it was more often just plain greed. In this case, not so much greed as the desire to preserve a business that represented a lifetime of hard work and devotion. John had admitted to being on the observation bridge that night. He could very well have seen Randy walking down the street—seen him, and maybe followed him home.