King 5
The Beatles song "Fool n a Hill" summed Silk Baron Catholine Lambert, although down deep he was no fool.
Lambert came to America in 1851 when he was 17 years old with less than five Scottish Pounds in his pocket and a younger brother to take care of.
In Boston, Lambert worked so hard that by age 22, he was a partner in the silk firm where he had been employed at which point he got the idea in his head to go to New York. From his perch in Manhattan, Lambert had a vision, predicting that Silk's future was not in New York City -- which had not yet ascended to its throne as the financial capital of the world, nor even in Newark which was the center of America's industry, but in the more humble City of Paterson 17 miles west on New York in New Jersey.
While raw silt still arrived in New York City from Italy and the orient, and New York City still served as the principle marketing center, Paterson had the water power and man power to make the finished product.
Lambert took the money he earned in his New York based business and invested it in a Paterson Mill. Luck aided his endeavor as when the Civil War struck and the Union Army needed silk trimmings for officers' uniforms. By corning the market, he became one of the great silk barons of Paterson, a label he never felt comfortable with, although he did his best to imitate the English Lords he had served when a child.
In this effort, Lambert decided he needed a castle to mark his position and chose Garret Mountain because from its side he could look down on the Mills which had made him rich. His wealth only partly compensated him for the agony life produced. Although married by 1850, Lam0bert had watched eight of his children die before 1870.00
His castle annoyed the masses in a way he never fully comprehended. He did not completely understand their needs or their resentment towards him, as he surrounded himself with fine art. His collection of paintings was so vast he needed the castle to fit it all. While he finished construction of the castle's basic structure by 1893, he was forced to add an extension three years later, just to accommodate this collection of art.
The growing resentment among the masses boiled over not just at Lambert and his castle but at all the master's of silk early in the century and resulted in the 1913 silk strike. This destroyed the city's industrial base and Lambert's empire along with it. Lambert sold his art off to save his castle. He grew bitter, and protested the fact that he had become the strikers' symbol for the evil's capitalism. Those people who knew him best considered him an honorable man, and someone who had cared deeply about his workers.
Lambert remained bitter until his death in 1923. In 1926, his son sold the castle to the city for $120,000. A few years later, the city sold the castle and its associated tower and property to the county for use as a park.
******************
Christian Hutchinson greeted me warmly as I entered his office.
Boxes filled the entire room and the hall beyond, part of the moving process his staff underwent in an effort to relocate to the historical society to the new location on the hill.
Although the green-walled bureaucratic world of the Passaic County Administration building sat in complete disarray, papers sticking up out of very box, dusty books stacked in piles as if poised such a position for years, he looked perfect, his brown suit unruffled by his labors, his cuff links and tie clip displaying the same triangular arrangement of diamonds, and his hair -- prematurely gray -- giving him a air of distinction even the mayor would have envied.
"Good to see you, detective," he said, pushing out a large hand with a thick graduation ring from Central High School -- a school now as much a part of historic Paterson as the silk mills. His wall showed other distinctions, graduating certificates from some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, and yet he maintained the ring that made him most proud.
Hutchinson represented everything that was grand about the current city, a former councilman, assemblyman and state senator whose retirement from public life had led him to take up his true love: history.
Before his arrival here, the historic society had been something of a joke, stuffed in the attic of the county administration building in a space that barely contained the array of documents, but could not allow for adequate organization. The place smelled of aged paper turning to dust and of antiquity itself.
"Pardon the mess," he said, giving me one of the classic smiles I remembered from his campaign posters, slightly tilted, and yet imbued with an image of honesty only Norman Rockwell's paintings could duplicate. "As you see we're in transition."
"Yes," I said. "I heard a lot about your success in getting federal grants for the castle and the tower."
"Not my doing alone," Hutchinson said with a bit of false modesty typical of politicians. "I had a lot of help on every level from the workers here to the members of our congressional delegation. But I'm sure our small successes aren't the reason for you wanting to see me."
"No," I admitted.
"Would you care to sit down?" Hutchinson asked, waving a hand towards the one unoccupied chair in the room, a green upholstered, metal-armed classic that graced countless government offices from coast to coast. I eased into the chair as Hutchinson settled behind his desk, peering at me over piles of documents apparently waiting for him to file. "So what is so urgent that you could not wait until after our move?"
"I suppose you read about the shooting near the Great Falls?" I asked.
Something dark rose into Hutchinson’s otherwise clear eyes. "Yes," he said cautiously.
"I'm investigating some aspects of the murder."
"Murder?" Hutchinson said, sitting so stiffly in his chair he looked like a sneeze might snap him apart. "Are you telling me the county intends to charge that boy?"
"It has gone before a grand jury," I said. "There is sufficient cause to carry it over for trial."
"That is preposterous," Hutchinson said. "If you ask me the boy did us a favor."
"Boy? At 36, Zarra is hardly a boy."
Hutchinson sighed. "I suppose not. I have not seen him in many years. He was a boy during my last encounter."
"Then you had some association with him?"
"Not so much with him, but with the man he lived with for a time."
"You mean Creeley?"
"Yes."
"And what exactly was your association with him?"
"He worked for me for a time."
"Doing what?"
"As a tour guide for the falls park."
"Really?"
"You seem surprised," Hutchinson said.
"Let's say I'm intrigued. Everything seems to lead back to the same place in this case."
"I doubt this has much to do with your case. Creeley is a minor local historian. He taught at the community college for a long time before..."
"Before what?"
"His infliction forced his retirement."
"What infliction was that?"
"I wouldn't be in a position to tell you that. Perhaps Creeley should tell you that himself. Have you talked with him yet?"
"Not yet, but he's on my list. I'm trying to piece together the events leading up to the murder and I'm told that you might be able to help me fill in a particular gap in time."
"What in particular?"
"The night of a series of murders from about twenty years ago."
Hutchinson paled, and nearly cracked. "I'm not certain I should be talking to you," he finally said.
"Why?"
"Because there are implications that go beyond that murder or this murder."
"You mean any revelations might implicate you?"
"That's an outrageous statement," Hutchinson said, his voice rising to a high pitch before he took control of himself. "I have a good reputation in this community and I merely want to keep from tarnishing it because someone might infer something from what happened back then."
"I am not asking about your sexual habits," I said.
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
"Boys grow up, Senator. But they don't forget what happened to them at a tender young age. Your secret is not so much a secret as you let on. I'm not interested in whether not you had sex with Fetterland or Zarra, I'm interested in how the two boys got into the old mansion on the hill that night and what happened after they got there."
Hutchinson looked so pale I thought he would faint. "Zarra wasn't that way," he said after a very long pause. "Neither was Fetterland."
"Yet you felt compelled to give them a key to a historic building? One that Fetterland later took over as his personal abode, I might add."
"It wasn't for that," Hutchinson said. "I gave them the key because I owed Creeley that much."
"Why?"
Hutchinson sighed. "Do we need to go into all that, too?"
"If we don't do it here, the prosecutor might have to drag it out of you in court, and that would be a lot more embarrassing than admitting the truth to me here and now."
Hutchinson’s composure vanished.
"All I did was give them a key."
"That could be considered harboring a fugitive."
"That long ago?"
"There is no statute of limitations on murder."
Hutchinson sighed, and stared down at his shaking hands, the perfect manicure, and the ring.
"Creeley gave me a lot of his research," Hutchinson said.
"Research?"
"Studies on the history of Paterson I took credit for," Hutchinson said. "He did the work, I got the notoriety. He said he didn't mind my using it to get ahead first as a politician, then at the county historian. He told me he didn't want credit, just my thanks."
"And how did you thank him? Money?"
"Some of that. And in other small favors."
"Like giving the key to a building to Fetterland?"
"Creeley didn't ask for it. I did that on my own. The two weren't talking to each other at that point."
"So they came to you? Where?"
"At my home. I lived in the Lakeview section at the time. They were ragged and cold. Something was wrong with Zarra. I later learned he was high on something. But he was upset, too. Fetterland was shivering and scared, and said he needed a place to go to keep warm while his `sugar daddy' got something together for him. I thought about calling the police. But to tell you the truth, Fetterland scared me. He was a mean son of a bitch, and I didn't want to have to keep looking over my shoulder if I didn't help him."
"You make it sound as if you think that was a mistake?"
"Of course it was a mistake," Hutchinson said. "Once you do something illegal for someone like that, it never stops. Over the years he's been to see me numerous times, or sent some of his thugs here."
"Wanting what?"
"Favors. He used me to influence people over the years. I was one reason why he became so powerful in this city. People like that need someone legitimate to make things happen, to warn him if the police might raid one of his establishments or to shape legislation that would protect his operations. Over the last decade or so, he used me frequently because of my close association with the mayor."
"And the mayor knew about this?"
"Of course not," Hutchinson said. "Graves might be a son of a bitch in many ways, but he doesn't tolerate vice."
"So you can tell me what happened to Fetterland and Zarra that night?"
"After a fashion. Much of it I've had to put together from Fetterland's taunting me, some of it has become a kind of myth on the street of how `the boss' rose from the dead."
"So why don't you tell me about it," I said.
Hutchinson glanced at his watch. "There really isn't much time..."
"I can make time in court," I said.
"All right, all right," he mumbled.
***********
"It was a remarkably cold night -- Thanksgiving weekend, I think," Hutchinson said. "I had supplied Fetterland with one of my son's coats. And I agreed to drive them to the foot of the hill provided no one saw me."
Fetterland apparently couldn't get rid of the chill he had taken up from his dip in the river, and cursed the whole time he was in Hutchinson’s house and a good deal afterward. Apparently, he was particularly vexed with Red Bone despite Hutchinson’s
"I'm sick" Fetterland said. "The fucking river made me sick. If Red Bone don't come up with some place warm for me to say, I'm going to die of pneumonia."
"He was not wrong," Hutchinson recalled. "It was a terrible night for anyone to be out. Even with the car heater turned all the way up, I could feel the wind through the car door. Zarra was staring out the window. He was stoned, and very upset, but did not say much, except to mumble something about Fetterland not having to have done something back in the cemetery. I never learned what."
Hutchinson drove towards the mountain taking the back way, passed the Railway Diner and over the tracks, passed the A&P and St. Mary's School for Nuns, and into the backwater of South Paterson where he eventually came out on Hazel Road.
"Red Bone better deliver," Fetterland said, "or I'll have his black hide."
"Do you want to go back there?" Zarra asked, rising out of his daze for a moment.
"And give him the satisfaction of having me crawl to him twice in one night? No way."
"Maybe we should take you to the hospital?" Hutchinson suggested. "You sound very ill."
"And have the cops bust me. That would be the first place they would look. We'll take this place for the moment and see if Red Bone lives up to his side of the bargain."
"But this place won't have heat," Hutchinson said.
"And what is this place?" Zarra asked.
"It's an old mansion," Hutchinson said.
"You mean one of those dumps on the hill?" Fetterland barked. "You expect us to hide out in one of those?"
"It's all I can think of," Hutchinson said.
"It won't be bad," Zarra said. "I've been in a few of them from time to time."
"In them?" Hutchinson said, recalling later his own alarm. He had always presumed the buildings secure, but learned that night that kids routinely wandered in and out of them, crawling through broken windows or up through the basements, often starting fires inside of them.
Zarra had apparently frequently wandered on the rusty cliff side, threading through the barren property and the rotting old mansions that had once served the wealthy silk barons but had fallen into ruin after the great strikes destroyed Paterson's industrial base earlier in the century.
"Those two didn't need me to give them a key," Hutchinson said. "But they took it when I stopped the car at the foot of the mountain to let them out."
"Now don't you go telling anybody where we are?" Fetterland warned, his stare deadly enough for Hutchinson to shake about it two decades later, even after Fetterland's reported death at the falls.
"Who will ask?" Hutchinson said, attempting to act unaffected by the implied threat.
"Someone might, and if you talk, I know how to find you."
Then, they were gone, climbing up one of the side streets leading to the mountain.
Hutchinson sat watching them go, the engine vibrating from the car's need of a tune up. Why he waited, he did not know, but he stayed until they vanished, and then drove home.
Saying nothing about that night to anyone, although Fetterland alluded to it frequently later.
**********
It was not a long walk, as some later described it, but both Fetterland and Zarra stopped often to rest and catch their breath, coming upon Valley Road carefully as this was more regularly patrolled than other streets in the area.
The next leg was at an even stiffer incline. Fetterland worsened during the walk, and seemed to float in and out of a haze, sometimes mumbling about people and things Zarra knew nothing about, other times, surfacing long enough to question Zarra about where they were and how far they still had to go before they found warmth.
"I'm so cold," he complained. "I got river water in my veins."
"It's not far," Zarra assured him, then guided his sick companion up the incline from Valley Road, the mountain rising to their right with the first streaks of dawn painting into Native American Indian colors -- its face cracked and its trees bare, and in the middle of these, two structures: the lower building to which Zarra led Fetterland, and the associated, higher tower sitting atop the hill itself.
Fetterland paused and peered up. "Castles?" he said, shaking his head as if he'd never noticed them before nor new the association with the history of Paterson.
"That's where we're going," Zarra said. "To the castle."
"But no one fucking lives there," Fetterland said. "They're supposed to be haunted."
"Which makes a good hiding place for us," Zarra said. "Just keep moving. I want to get there before morning rush hour. I wouldn't do to have anybody see us climbing the hill."
The lower and larger castle faced East so that streaks of sunlight illuminated its walls, and emphasized its shadows. Even in daylight, it spoke of lost dignity, its features smudged by time -- like a rich man suddenly made homeless. Yet it was not a castle such as Zarra might have expected in movies. It had no mote, nor did its walls encircle it so as to provide a defense from assault. But it had towers -- one tall round one in front and a shorter round tower to the rear, with a rectangular tower prominent. There was a walled off space before this where boys playing castle could have pretended a defense, but was most likely used for tea or some picnic during the years when the master still lived here, a walled patio from which he could stand and survey his city and his mills, and the city -- if perceptive enough -- could see him.
The main door into the place was to the left side nearest the rising drive from Valley Road -- a stone porch protruding from the side wall between the high rectangular tower and the short round tower at the rear. As Zarra led Fetterland up the hill, he aimed for this door. From a distance and in daylight, the castle looked solid, but only as they neared did the flaws of its abandonment show. While the three storied building stood as fixed on the mountainside as ever, its stones quarried from the mountain and placed in a way that would likely survive centuries -- the softer aspects of the building had decayed, the window frames and door frames, rotting from years of neglect. The driveway itself was little better than a moonscape, potholes large enough to swallow any carriage or car that dared make the assent, and Maxwell had to skirt around the bigger holes to keep the fading Puck from falling in.
Behind them, the city woke, and Fetterland rested near the wall to glance back at what the Native Americans had once called "the valley of the Hackensack," which stretched for twenty miles -- a flat space that began with the track to the former Lackawanna rail line at the foot of the mountain and cross three rivers to end at the Manhattan skyline. In between, Paterson gave way to Elmwood Park, which in turn gave way to the dozen other small Bergen County towns through which Route 80 passed.
Route 80 -- with its growing line of traffic -- sliced through all of these communities, a multi-laned white man's trail dedicated totally to the service of the great and distant metropolis. Glass and metal glittered along its lanes like scales to a large, slithering snake. But it was the city on either side of it that grabbed Zarra's attention, the two and three stories houses that made up the heart of Paterson -- filled with men and women just then rising for work, who still struggled to survive in a city where their kind was rapidly becoming extinct.
Fetterland coughed, drawing Zarra's attention back to him.
"We'd better get you inside," he said, and pressed on, straight towards the door, climbing the three stone steps onto the porch where they rested again.
"This place is as bad as the cemetery," Zarra mumbled. Indeed, the building could have been mistaken for a mausoleum. This image seemed to remind Zarra of recent events and made him cringe.
The broken lock to the front door testified to how out of touch with these properties Hutchinson had become. Vandal after vandal had visited the place, seeking out secret treasures here, treasures rumors had manufactured, but time had disproved. The crazy old man, according to some, had buried gold here or cash, or had hidden paintings worth a fortune in the open market. Kids had scrounged around, lifting up old boards, digging up in the basement, knocking holes in walls in the upper floors, all in the vain hope they might look where no one else had looked before them.
The door creaked open when Zarra shoved it in, and the dark greeted them with a musty smell he most associated with stone-walled basements, and even in the dark, he envisioned an interior full of bats and cobwebs. He lighted a match and the front hall came to life, not in the way most old houses might, but as if they had stepped back in time. The hall with its thick cherry wood paneling maintained its dignity, the way an aristocratic bum might, its costume dirty, dented and torn, yet of a fabric unmistakably grand.
Zarra apparently knew the interior well from his own numerous past visits, although he had never believed in the fairytale treasure, and suspected some of the reports about the man who had built the castle itself. He had come here, attracted to the place itself and the fact that few other people could boast a castle of their own, and sometimes, seated on the wall outside staring down at Paterson, he imagined himself king of the place.
Even without a treasure, Zarra found the place amazing, and often wandered through its upper and lower floors, studying each crevice, imagining what the original master had used each room for. The lower floor had a front hall, and a paneled room to its immediate right. To the left was a kind of cloak room, although its round walls testified to its being the bottom of the front tower. Straight through the main door from the hall was the pocket ball room, a three-floor-high masterpiece of a room with a huge leaded skylight at the top. Each of the upper floors encircled it, with a rail along which people could view the dancers below.
On the other side of the ballroom, where more traditional spaces, perhaps used as offices for the master who must have conducted most of his business up here on the mountain. These interested Zarra less than the rooms on the upper floors, bedrooms mostly on the second floor, servants quarters on the third, with stairways connecting all three floors. These were so narrow two people could not pass going up and down. So Zarra imagined certain sets of stairs designed for upward movement, while others dedicated to people coming down.
"In here," Zarra said, directing Fetterland into the paneled room to the left of the front door.
"Why here?" Fetterland asked in a daze. "Why not pick a room upstairs out of the way. We might get discovered sitting this close to the front door."
"I know this place. This is the warmest room. And if the police or somebody should take the trouble to come all the way up to this place, it won't matter where in the building we are."
"You said the room is warm?" Fetterland said. "It's freezing in here. And the bastard Hutchinson said the building had no heat."
"Well, if you hadn't shot the old man, we could have stayed in the graveyard."
"We didn't have any heat there, either," he said.
"Well, if it's any consolation, we can start a fire," Zarra said.
"A fire? You want the fucking cops to see us?"
"The cops won't see it. Not if we fix it up inside one of the old fire places. The whole building is stuffed with them, one in every room."
"Won't the cops see the smoke?"
"Nobody lives close enough to see. This place is always safe this time of year."
Zarra made a quick trip out to get fire wood, careful to keep behind the building on the off chance someone might see movement on the mountain and come see just who was wandering around. He brought back an armful of firewood, and started a small blaze in the large fire place, Fetterland pressing himself close to keep warm, shivering madly no matter how close he got to the flames.
"Later, I'll go out and find food," Zarra said.
"And call Red Bone to find out about my crash pad," Fetterland said.
"Yeah, that, too," Zarra mumbled. "Meanwhile, we ought to get some sleep."
***********
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