King 2 Not a lot to go on
On
On Monday, June 22, the rev and Mrs. Cummings climbed the
hundred steps to the solid ledge overlooking the falls and the cataract of
white froth ensuing from its top. Both remarked on the marvels of nature. Both
stationed themselves at the brink of the brow where thousands had stood before.
When they had looked for a while, the reverend suggested they go and turned
towards the path ‑‑ then he heard the scream.
A young man grabbed the reverend from leaping after his
fallen wife, leading the man down the stairs to the foot of the falls. Here the
reverend broke free and ran towards the surging waters of the basin. The young
man tackled him.
The search for Sarah continued through the day and night,
and the next morning searchers found her body stuck on rocks 42 feet down the
chasm from the top. After they recovered the body, the reverend took her back
with him to
Central Processing had to drag up the box from the
basement, where old rusted filing cabinets held most of the records prior to
the move to the new station house on Broadway.
The box smelled foul from two decades of mildew and roach
spray, and contained a relatively thick file, several audio tapes, and a reel
of inch thick video tape from a stone age technology no longer used by the
department. The paper work contained numerous cross references to the quite
extensive Puck Fetterland juvenile activities file.
According the summary sheet, Zarra had been arrested by
Totowa Police in late November, 1967, and held as a suspect in an armed
robbery. Charges were eventually dropped, although a stipulation of the
agreement required him to maintain contact with a probation officer.
The court, apparently, wanted to make certain that Zarra
broke off his association with Fetterland.
There were gaps in information in both files, because
Fetterland had not yet seemed important enough a figure in the local crime
scene to maintain surveillance.
"He was just a pain in the ass,"
"Puck Fetterland was one of those boys constantly in
trouble,"
Fetterland was a street urchin, a product of a split
family. His mother was a local prostitute; his father, one of the characters
who gave downtown some of its color, a part-time tour guide for The Great
Falls, who tended to stick his curious nose into local history without getting
himself too deeply in trouble with the local hoods.
"His old man had a reputation in the faggot
crowd,"
"Zarra?" the detective said, looking startled.
"He didn't know anything about the old man's sexual
preference. In fact, he didn't seem to know much about Puck either. From what I
gather, the old man took Zarra after the court gave him probation."
"A strange coincidence, wouldn't you say?"
"About what?"
"About helping to ruin his own son. Maybe he figured
he'd make up for it by saving Zarra. They lived together for a few years before
the old man moved out of town.”
**********
Fetterland had been arrested for shoplifting at a local
candy store near the
"You're were seen with another kid near Crooks and
Vernon Avenues," the interviewing office named Martin said.
"So what?" Fetterland asked his voice so cocky
another cop might have belted him for lack of respect. But it would have done
little to alter the attitude. At sixteen years old, Fetterland had already
slipped over the edge of respectability. He wouldn't be climbing back to the
socially acceptable side. His mug shot from back then showed a slight, arrogant
tilt of the head and a smirk testifying to his lack of fear. He had been busted
so often, he had grown bored with it.
"So who was he?" Martin snapped. "And
accomplice?"
"That fool?" Fetterland laughed. "Don't
make me laugh. He was just somebody I met."
"Come off it, Puck," the officer said.
"You're hardly the kind that makes friends."
"I didn't say he was a friend, I said he was
somebody."
"That you happened to stop and talk to for a half
hour."
"Yeah."
"Just like that."
"Hey man, don't lean on me about it. He was going in
the store, I was coming out. I was just curious about him that's all."
"What was he doing there?"
"Buying shit, what else."
"Don't give me sass, boy," Martin said.
"Just answer the questions."
"He said he was on an errand for his uncle,"
Fetterland said.
"An errand?"
"That's how he put it. He had to get coffee or
something."
"And you'd never seen him before."
"Sure I'd seen him before. He was always going in
that joint, and running back out carrying a paper bag full of shit. He always
made me wonder what he was up to."
"You mean as far as stealing merchandise?"
"I thought he might be," Fetterland admitted.
"That's why I stopped and asked him that time. I was just curious. That's
all."
"And was he?"
"Man, that's the last thing on earth he'd be
doing."
"I don't understand."
"He was a straight arrow, man. He wouldn't steal
anything, even if you told him he wouldn't get in no trouble for it."
"So what did he think about you're talking to
him?" Martin asked.
"Not much, I guess," Fetterland said. "We
were sort of nodding acquaintances for a while, and I suppose he was as curious
about me as I was about him."
"Did he say that?"
"Not in so many words. But he stared at me when I
come out, and when I asked what he was staring at, he shrugged and asked me my
name."
"And you just stopped and talked to him, holding
stolen goods as you were. Weren't you concern the store keeper would nab
you?"
"I could give two shits about that creep,"
Fetterland growled. "Even if he was bright enough to know I'd stolen
anything -- and he wasn't bright -- he didn't have balls enough to do anything
about it."
"So what did you say to this -- Maxwell Zarra when
you stopped?
"I asked him what the fuck he was looking at."
"What did he say?"
"He said, `Nothing much.' and I said, `Am I suppose
to take that as some kind of insult?'
"Sounds like a good way to start a conversation. Was
he afraid when you said that?"
"Nah, that's the creepy part about that kid, he
didn't seem afraid of me or nothin', when he should have been."
"Why should he have been afraid of you?"
"Because of where I came from and where he came
from."
"I don't understand."
"He's a house boy, living in a big old place up at
the top of the hill."
"How do you know that?"
"He told me. He pointed right up at the place and
said he lived up there with his family, and that he was supposed to get back
there with coffee for his uncles at the boat store."
"And that made him soft in your eyes."
"Well, he certainly wasn't sleeping on the street
like I was, and he didn't have no marks on his face and hands to say he had to
fight or anything."
"So you wondered why he wasn't afraid?"
"Wondered nothing, it pissed me off. I let it get
around that some wimpy little house boy could stare me down, I'd be dead meat
inside a week."
"Did you want to beat him up?"
"I wanted to do something like that."
"Why didn't you?"
"I don't know."
"What else did you say to you?"
"He said I stank."
"What?"
"He said I needed a bath."
"Did you?"
"Of course I did. You try sleeping under cars for
weeks at a time and you'd stink, too."
"Did that get you mad?"
"Sure it did."
"Then what?"
"He asked me if I wanted to come home and have a
bath at his house."
"What did you say to that?"
"I told him to get the fuck away from me."
"But you didn't try to beat him up."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't know why not."
"What happened after that?"
"I asked him if he could get me any money."
"And his response?"
"He said he didn't have any, and I told him he was
full of shit. Him living up in that house like that. All rich folks had
money."
"What did he say to that?"
"He said his family wasn't rich. They built boats
and stuff. To me that was rich, and I said I would have to come and take a look
for myself sometime -- meaning to visit him at night when no one was looking so
I could cart off a thing or two."
"He must have loved that."
"He didn't get my meaning. He said I should come
over any time I want, provided I washed up some first. He seemed to think his
uncles would like me better if I washed my face and wore clean clothes. I told
him to fuck off."
"Did he get angry?"
"No. He asked me why my mother let me sleep on the
street. Didn't she ever make me take a bath? I told him my mother didn't make
me do anything I didn't want to do."
"Did he ask where she lived?"
"Sure, and I pointed out her apartment above the
bar."
"Did he find that odd?"
"No, but he asked about my old man and why he didn't
make me do things the way his uncles made him do what he was supposed to do. I
told him my old man split from my mother a long time ago, and couldn't have
made me do nothing, even if he hadn't.
"`That faggot wouldn't lay a hand on me or I'd break
it off at the wrist,' I said."
"`Then who do live with?'
"`Who says I have to live with anybody?'
"`You're a kid. You've got to live with somebody
somewhere.'
"`Well I don't.' I said. The whole conversation was
giving me the creeps. Then he starts asking me how I eat and who mends my
clothes and where I went to school."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him he asked too many questions. But then,
he got all excited because he had spent too much time talking to me. He said he
uncle wanted him straight back. He waved at me and then ran off like a little
dog."
************
Christopher Martin had retired from the police department
a dozen years before I looked him up. He had opted for an early retirement
package, and with the exception of his nearly completely gray head of hair,
seemed too young for the shelf.
He sat across from me at his kitchen table eyeing the
photographs I had provided him, his large fingers lingering at the edge of the
contemporary mug shot of Zarra.
Martin's six foot six size and his experience on the
tough streets of Paterson had left him with plenty of employment opportunities
in various security and private investigative firms, some of which he dabbled
in part time, but for the most part, spent his days reading detective novels.
"I know it seems a little strange, but I get a kick
out of taking them apart," he said. "You'd be amazed how little most
of these writers know about detective work."
Wambaugh, he noted, was a delightful exception, and he
had that writer's complete collection in hard bound signed copies.
Martin had no trouble in remembering Zarra and
Fetterland.
"They played a big part in my life for a
while," he said. "But I'm not sure how much I can tell you, since no
one knew much about either one of them."
Martin said Fetterland was a particularly disturbing
character in those days.
"He was nothing but trouble," Martin said.
"If a store got broken into or a man got mugged anywhere near the Farmer's
Market, you can rest assured Fetterland had a hand in it. Even at 16, he had
hardened into quite a criminal, and I spent a lot of time collecting reports
about him. Most of it was useless in court, but interesting reading none the
less. I've pondered putting it into a novel. I just don't think any reader
would be convinced anyone was so evil as Fetterland was."
"What about Zarra?"
Martin's eyes brightened. "He's just as interesting,
but in a whole different way."
"How so?"
"How he could have survived the streets the way he
did and be as naive as he was."
"Naive?"
"To a fault," Martin said. "A bigger
mystery is how the two of them hooked up the way they did. I saw them as a
matched set, one evil, one good, although good and evil were relative
terms."
I mentioned the taped interview I had listened to about
their meeting, drawing a nod from Martin as if he recalled every word of it
without having heard the recording in two or more decades.
"Do you know what happened to them after that?"
I asked.
"Some of it," Martin said. "Reports claim
they ran into each other from time to time in various parts of the city. From
what I could tell, they didn't do anything more than nod at each other during
those times.”
The next significant
encounter happened around June, 1967, Martin said. One of the storekeepers saw
the two boys down near
This sudden appearance apparently startled Zarra, and the
storekeeper thought for a moment the two of them were going to have a fight.
"`Don't you say nothing to nobody?' Fetterland
asked, half his thin body still stuck under the body of the car. He wore a torn
t-shirt thickly stained with grease. He had a wrench in one hand, and his
knuckles bled a little from his labors.
The storekeeper told Martin that Zarra stood funny, one
foot planted behind him on an angle, with his hands slightly raised, not in
boxing position, but a little looser, as if prepared to wrestle.
Martin was unaware of Zarra's martial arts training at
the time or he would have recognized the description.
" `You scared of me or something?' Fetterland asked.
"Fetterland -- although slight in statute -- could
pose an intimidating figure when he wanted to. He was like a rat, most vicious
when cornered. But he had a mean streak that caused him to take advantage of
frightened people. He obviously misread Zarra's mood.
“You startled me, that's all,” Zarra told him.
“You scare easy,” Fetterland said, working his way free
of the car so he could stand.
Fetterland had small, mean eyes.
“There are kids who'd like to beat me up,” Zarra told
him. “But I'm not scared of them.”
“You mean they like picking on you?” Fetterland asked.
He kept licking his lips as if he was hungry.
“They like to try. Usually I don't let them.”
“What do you do, run away?”
“Sometimes, Other times I make them go away.” Zarra said.
“What are you doing under there anyway, fixing your car?”
“This isn't my car. I wouldn't be caught dead in no
station wagon.”
“Then what are you fixing it for?”
“I'm not fixing anything, I taking it apart.”
“What for?”
“For money, stupid. The parts shops on
“You mean you're stripping the car?”
“Not all of it. Most of it isn't worth shit. I'm just
getting what will sell.”
“Aren't you afraid of getting caught?”
“Na! The cops around here are all too stupid, and anyone
walking along is going to think like you did, that I'm just fixing something.
That's why I pick on old clunkers like this. If this was a new Nova or any
Corvette, you bet I'd be in jail. But nobody steals parts from cars like these.
And even I wouldn't do it, if I couldn't trade some of this stuff for parts on
my own car.”
“Then you have your own car?”
“Sure I do. What do you take me for, a slug?”
“And you fix it up?”
“Man, I'm building it myself, one part at a time. It's a
sweet machine, too, a 1960 Chevy Impala Supersport.”
“1960? Isn't that kind of old?”
“Sure it's old. It's a classic. That's the whole point.
But it's a lot better than most new cars on the road.”
“Not my Uncle Charlie's car.”
“Oh? What's he driving, a Rambler?”
“Uncle Charlie's got himself a GTO.”
Fetterland’s frown testified to his disbelief.
“You ain't got no goat, “he said.
“I said my uncle did.”
“A new one?”
“Still got the sticker in the window.”
“Does he let you drive it?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why aren't you driving it now?”
“I don't have my license yet.”
“What do you need a license for? I don't have one.”
Fetterland said, looking even more incredulous.
“You know what I think? I think you're scared of me. I think you don't
even have an Uncle Charlie, and if you, he doesn't have no GTO, and he isn't
waiting to let you drive, neither.”
“I do to have an uncle Charlie and he is going to let me
drive!”
“Prove it.”
“How?”
“Take me with you. Let me see you driving this brand new
GTO.”
“I don't know if I can.”
“I thought you was full of shit.”
“I'm not! I'll tell you what. You wait right there and
I'll drive by and wave.”
“You will? You're not bull shitting me, are you? I'm not
gonna find myself standing around her for an hour and have you not show up, am
I?”
“I'll be here.”
“You'd better be.”
Martin did not know if Zarra ever showed up.
“We never got a report about it at that time,” he said. “But
Zarra's uncle did have a GTO. If figured prominently in the charges filed
against Zarra later on. It was the getaway car from the armed robbery. By the
way, you didn't tell me why you're so interested.”
“We're investigating new charges against him.”
“Against Zarra?”
“That's right.”
“For what?”
“Murder,” I said.
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