King 6

 

The patrol car reported seeing a suspicious figure easing off the property at about 6 p.m. The officers might have follow-up on the matter except for a call for their response to a more urgent matter downtown. By the time, they responded, their shift ended. They put a one-line notation in their shift report and forgot about the matter.

This was nearly 24 hours after the initial liquor store robbery and the subsequent shootings, and though still a pressing matter, the figure the officers saw did not fit the description of the shooter. They did not bother to check description for the driver of the get away car.

Besides, it had started to snow, leaving the streets slick and increased the number of traffic accidents.

Federal authorities, whose own investigation of Red Bone had resulted in a wire tap of his phone recorded a call from a public phone.

"Hello?" a female voice said.

"I want to talk to Red Ball."

"One minute," the woman said and put down the phone.

Music sounded from the apartment as did the woman calling the black man to the phone, and the subtler slap of bare feet.

"Who is this?" Red Ball barked. "And how the hell did you get this number?"

"It's Maxwell and Puck gave me the number. He wants to know if you found a place for him to go."

"No, and I won't be finding one," Red Bone said. "Nobody wants to put up with the stupid bastard."

"So what do we do?"

"I'd say he should stay where he is."

"But he's sick and we hardly have any heat."

"That's not my problem, it's his, if he hadn't made so many enemies in this town, he'd get the best of care. As it is, the people who don't want to kill him or arrest him, couldn't care less if he dies on his own."

"You expect me to tell Puck that?"

"No," a kinder-voiced Red Ball said after a pause. "You'd better tell him I'm still working on it. Just understand, I won't likely find anything, so you ought to help him make other arrangements on his own."

"Thanks." 

"It's the best I can tell you."

*************

The store clerk at the Army and Navy store believed he was about to be robbed when the boy fitting Zarra's description slipped in through the door a few minutes before closing.

"I didn't want to serve him," a written report later quoted him as saying. "With all the trouble that goes on in our neighborhood, someone like him scared me, white, black or green skinned."

Zarra, however, appeared to have a wad of cash -- which Hutchinson later told me he had given the boys.

"I remember the boy shoving the moist money over the counter at me and saying he wanted to buy a few things. I saw he had a bag of stuff from the Bodega up the street, filled with cigarettes and food. So I figured he was actually here to buy something."

The clerk recalled Zarra purchasing a backpack into which he stuffed the food and cigarettes, and some sleeping bags, a knife, an axe, matches, Sterno, a portable radio, batteries, several pairs of work gloves, two knit hats and an assortment of other items.

"He also asked to buy my newspaper," the clerk recalled. "I told him I didn't sell newspapers, but he could have that one if he didn't mind reading one I'd already read. He seemed particularly fascinated with the stories about the killings. He kept mumbling `the police think he's dead. They think he died when he leaped.'

The clerk said Zarra looked remarkably relieved when he left, even giving him a tip.

"No body ever gave me a tip before," the clerk recounted.

***********

While no one actually saw Zarra climb back up the hill. The snow had grown significantly worse and one early evening patrol noted a trail in the snow headed in the castle's direction, and marked that much in their report -- although as usual the officers did not wish to exit their car or climb up the steep embankment in the snow to actually search out possible intruders. Their report suggested notifying the county to have the sheriff's department horse patrol check it out.

Weather reports were not optimistic. The storm grew worse as the night deepened so that even the footprints vanished a short time later. Zarra, burdened with backpack and sleeping bags, must have struggled to make his way up the steep incline. He might even have noticed the lights of the few nearby houses or smelled the scent of their wood fires. A storm that furious would have pierced his clothing and soaked him well before he reached the castle.

Zarra might not even have seen the castle in the storm, except as a looming black shape to which he steered himself. He might have seen the subtle flicker of orange through the main window from the dull fire ongoing inside the main room. Witnesses would have thought nothing of this light, mistaking it for the reflection of passing headlights.

Zarra, however, did get there and eased open the front door with his foot -- only to get greeted by the click of a pistol's safety and the cold sting of the metal against his neck.

"What the fuck are you up to?" Fetterland's weak voice hissed. "I sent you out to make a phone call and it takes you three hours?"

"I had to get some things."

"Why?"

"Because Red Ball can't find you a place and you have to stay here."

"Son of a bitch!" Fetterland snarled, withdrawing the weapon from Zarra's neck as he hobbled back to the fire place, his sweaty face visible by the reflected fire light. "I ought to go down and blow that nigger's head off."

"I don't think you're in a position to go anywhere right now," Zarra said. "If you hadn't noticed, there's a blizzard going on outside."

Fetterland glanced out into the dark.

The glow of the city showed the growing cover of white and the streaking curtain pressing down on a slant, adding to the accumulation. Puck sagged a little.

"I'll kill him later," he mumbled. "Shut the door, will you, it's getting cold in here."

Zarra shut the door with his foot then carried his packages into the den, dropping them onto the floor near the fire place.

"There are sleeping bags and blankets. You'd better get yourself wrapped up," he said. "I'll go get more wood and cook up some food."

"I'm not hungry."

"You'll have some soup."

"Say, what do you think you are, my mother?"

"No, I'm nobody to you," Zarra said. "But I'm certainly not going to carry your dead body off this mountain when this storm is over. You'll eat soup and take aspirin like I tell you, or I'll go back home and let you rot here."

"All right, all right, go get your wood," Fetterland grumbled and weakly pulled open the brown paper that covered one of the sleeping bags. His fingers fumbled to unzip the bag, and eventually, Zarra did it for him, covering over the shivering boy as he laid down, as if putting a shroud over him.

Zarra apparently made one more trip out into the cold to resupply their fuel from a patch of fallen trees near the foot of the next rise in the mountain. When he returned, he dropped the twigs near the fire place, then fitted himself into the other sleeping back and joined Fetterland in sleep.

*********

Old man Creeley stood in the front yard waiting when I pulled up his narrow street. The drive out Route 80 west to the Lake Hopatcong exit were easy enough, but without the detailed instructions from there to his small house on the lake I might not have found him.

He looked nothing like he sounded on the phone, a thin man with sharp facial features, and a slump to his shoulders that added decades to his chronological age. At 67, he looked 97, except for his sharp stare – which fixed on me the moment I halted the car and followed each movement I made until I reached where he stood.

He made no effort to shake my hand even when I extended mine.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said moodily, his silver hair gleaming in the twilight the trees around his house created.

“You want to talk here?” I asked.

“Here? And have the entire town know my business?” Creeley barked. “We’ll talk on the porch. But you can’t come farther into the house unless you have a search warrant.”

“Do I need one?”

“Not for talk,” he said, holding open the door for me to enter. He glanced back at the street, studying the deeper shadows before following me in.

The house was a converted bungalow, one of those post war constructions that had gone up at every summer resort – built to be occupied only between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, and closed up for the harsh winters that lake life produced. Over time, many people – especially those retiring to these communities, paid to have these places converted to year-round use, adding heating systems and enclosed showers in which pipes did not freeze. But even with these changes and the addition of storm windows, the place remained cold – even this late in Spring, with the porch allowing draught of cold wind to pass through.

Creeley had loaded the porch with plants, potted items clearly destined to get replanted out of doors once the temperature permitted the risky operation. Every flat surface contained a pot of some sort with green branches sprouting out. Each of the windows had their own accumulation, pots hung from hooks out of which the leaves spread like the legs of spiders. There was a couch situated near the windows looking into the inner house, but so overgrown was the air around it, when I sat I felt as if in a jungle.

Creeley sat in a straight kitchen style chair that he swung around to face me.

“I was wondering when you would get around to me,” he said, crossly.

“It seems natural since you were among the people closest to Zarra.”

“Close?” the old man said, almost chuckled to himself. “Maybe, and maybe we weren’t close at all. There appears to be a lot that he neglected to tell me. By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette I could have?”

I felt into my jacket pocket and produced a pack of Marlboro and flicked out one for him to take. His nicotine-colored fingers shook as he attempted to take the cigarette – failing in their first attempt before finally grasping the filter and drawing it towards his mouth. The flick of my cigarette lighter lit up his craggy features, shaping his face into some strange mythological creature. The flame seemed to linger longest in his eyes as he glanced up at me during the process. He sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, held it there, and sighed out the slim remains.

At this point, he stared at me again, his gaze harsh despite my giving him the cigarette.

“So where do you want to start?” he asked.

“There is a lot of ground to cover,” I said. “But I’m trying to fit in the details of one particular sequence of events when Zarra was still young, several nights during a blizzard he spent with Fetterland up in the old castle on the hill. Did he ever talk to you about that time?”

Creeley gave a thoughtful nod. “Eventually,” he said. “But it took many years for me to get it all out of him. He didn’t want to admit he had helped save someone I cared so little about.”

“Then you admit Fetterland was your son?”

“It would be difficult to deny it now that he is dead.”

“But you denied it in the past when you thought he was dead.”

Creeley shrugged. “I was younger and deluded myself about some things,” he said.

“But Zarra has since talked to you about what happened?”

“For a while, we were quite open,” Creeley said.

“You said for a while – you mean he grew secretive again? When?”

“During the last few months,” Creeley said. “I should have guessed he was again involved with my son.”

***********

Zarra woke to day light and cold.

The fire had gone out, and he eased out of his sleeping bag to start it again, grabbing up handfuls of twigs he knew would not provide enough heat. A missing link in the stain glass window showed a significantly white world outside, and admitted fluttering of the storm into the room. A small pile of white had formed on the inside sill.

Fetterland stirred in his sleeping bag and glanced up at Zarra, his eyes thick with the glaze of fever. "Where are you going?"

"To get more firewood. But only God knows where I'll find dry wood in this storm."

Fetterland's fever had stripped him of his usual paranoia. He only nodded as Zarra went out into even colder hall, then finally, into the blizzard itself. Fears of being seen soon evaporated.

Zarra could not have seen more than a few feet ahead as he made his way down the long drive to Valley Road, thus was just as invisible to any one else's observation.  His trail vanished as he walked, leaving him with the potential problem of finding his way back in the white out conditions.

The wind sculpted the snow into huge drifts, yet left large vacancies between so that Zarra could steer himself passed the deepest sections and he reached the road less weary than he might have otherwise. He turned away from downtown towards Clifton, where a more suburban landscape started. He was not looking for woods now, even though he had brought his small ax. He needed wood he didn't have to cut and soon found what he sought at a site where a house was still under construction.

The wooden framework looked particularly ghostly in the storm, snow dusted its upper surface. While most of the framing had been completed, workers hadn't yet picked up all the scrap, and he stuffed bits and pieces into the now empty backpack, and into one of the more sturdy bags left over from his sleeping gear. He also grabbed a few larger pieces that he could drag along back to the castle.

This required several trips to provide enough wood for a long stay, yet once he had a significant blaze going inside the castle, he could rely on more the wet wood dried by the fire, which could be acquired nearer to the castle.

If he thought about calling home to assure his family of his relative safety, he never acted on the inclination. Family members later reported being concerned about him and even called the department to make note of his being missing.

In his trips back and forth to the castle, Zarra must have wondered if either of them would survive, the storm swirling around him, and making each step a struggle. When finished, he apparently crawled back into his sleeping back for another nap.

***********

"Read it to me again," Fetterland said, his sweating face shimmering in the fire light. His eyes glowed like red coals.

"I already read it to you twice," Zarra complained, shoving the paper towards Fetterland. "Read it for yourself, if you're so interested."

"You know I can't read good, just read it once more, I won't ask again."

Zarra sighed and straightened the paper, leaning slightly towards the fire so he could make out the print. It detailed the account of the last hours, and the report of an eyewitness claiming Fetterland could not have survived the fall, and recounting background information about how terrible a criminal Fetterland was.

"That's Wilson," Fetterland said with a laugh. "He would put a bullet in my head if he could shoot straight."

"Maybe you should get out of town for a while after you've recovered," Zarra suggested.

"And let people think I've run away, no way," Fetterland said. "I've got some scores to settle, not just with Red Bone, but with a host of other people who are supposed to be my friends."

"Just get some sleep," Zarra said. "You need to heal before you go off on your rounds of revenge."

"Yeah, revenge," Fetterland mumbled, and was soon asleep again.

************

Fetterland got sicker, his fever growing so intense Zarra began to mumbling about him dying.

"I should go fetch you a doctor," Zarra told Fetterland.

"You try and I'll shoot you and the doctor," Fettlerland, waving his pistol vaguely in Zarra's direction.

So Zarra sat at the boy's side except to fetch more branches from the woods behind the castle, feeding Fetterland nearly continuous cups of soup, helping Fetterland hobble outside to piss the liquid out again.

Fetterland talked a lot, mumbling in his delirium, sometimes articulate enough for Zarra to make out a name or a situation, but never with enough context for him to understand where in Fetterland's life the scene fit or if it was merely some terrible fantasy shaped out of the boy's illness.

Two days had passed since the shooting in the graveyard. The storm had come, dumped its load onto Paterson then moved on, leaving the city to dig itself out from under the 18 inches.

Fetterland continued to mumble and often, called out "Momma."

"Don't go, Momma," Puck yelled at one point. "He didn't mean it, Momma. It was my fault. I told him it was okay. I wanted him to love me. I..."

Then later, Puck cried out again.

"You drove her away, you son of a bitch! She caught you trying to stick your prick up my ass -- and she left. She said she hated you. She said she hated me. She said we were two of a kind and deserved each other. She said she deserved better than both of us. But I'm not like you, Old Man. I don't want to stick my prick in every little boy's butt. I don't want to stick my nose in no fucking books, pretending like the world doesn't exit. You say I'm no good. Maybe that's right. But who made me that way? Who's driving me out now when I need him most?"

And then, hours after that, Fetterland reverted to calling for his mother again, begging her not to go, to come back, begging for her to make the cops stop beating him.

Zarra listened, gripping the edge of a broken chair through most of it, the splinters less painful than the diatribe.

Sometimes Zarra drifted into a dream state in which Fetterland's delirium became his own, and yet always, Zarra jolted awake to some truly excruciating cry. Then, he would remain awake for a time, too terrified to return to those dreams.

Only gradually did Fetterland's ranting stop, as the fever lessened and the boy's breathing slowed. After a while, the boy slept the way ordinary people did, and Zarra fell into a deep slumber of his own, mumbling something about his uncle Charlie, and Vietnam, and when, finally, he was certain Fetterland would not die, Zarra stumbled out of the castle, and down the hill, heading back into the heart of Paterson to his mourning uncles and his home devoid of Charlie.

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