King 9
Wilson, looking as out of shape as his prison garb as he had in his former uniform, glanced up when I entered the room for the second interview. A glint of desperate hope registered in his tiny black eyes. He even smiled as he shoved his thick, sweaty hand at me to shake.
"I'm glad you were willing for an additional interview," I said.
"Anything I can do to help," he said and lowered his bulk back onto the trembling metal chair the jail staff had supplied us.
Wilson, wisely, had decided not to contest the charges, dealing many of them away as part of the plea arrangement. But he was due for sentencing, a matter that was merely delayed by mine and other investigations. The more he cooperated, the lower his eventual sentence would be.
And he was being very, very cooperative.
Yet in that puffy expression, the deeper realization had set in that he could not avoid prison entirely, and that once behind bars -- whether a state facility or an even more serious federal correctional facility -- he would suffer greatly, and perhaps not survive.
He sweat profusely. His pale blue shirt showed dark circles of sweat under each arm and his broad brow bubbled over, forcing him at interviews to pat at his face with a paper towel.
I had a thick folder containing many of Wilson's reports on his contact with Zarra over the years, although not everything.
"I want to know about the woman Zarra got involved with," I said, consulting my notes, "this Patty Mills."
"There were two women," Wilson said.
"Two? I don't have any information about a second woman involved in this."
"You wouldn't," Wilson said, seeming pleased about his ability to provide me with information no one else had, that glow of hope rising to a new luminance in his eyes. "She came before this last one, but she was around at the end -- in fact, it was on account of the first one that I got entangled with Zarra again. He came looking for her up at the falls."
"This was when?"
"Sometime in March," Wilson said. A check of records later placed the date as March 16. "The mayor was mad at me again and put me back on patrol duty. I've always been in trouble with this mayor, when he was mayor the first time, but especially when he got back and decided to straighten up the force. He kept telling me to lose weight and to stop strong-arming the merchants. Every time he got a complaint from somebody, he dumped me back onto the street to teach me a lesson. This time, he figured park duty would teach me a good lesson since I had to get out of the car to patrol, and the temperature had dropped. A girl had just tried to jump over the falls and the mayor vowed to increase security to keep it from happening again. But the mayor didn't check on me much, so I could pretty much park the car down at the Falls View Grill's parking lot and nod off and nobody was the wiser."
"And you saw Zarra there?"
"He bumped right into the side of my car like he didn't see it," Wilson said. "It was the queerest thing. Here I hadn't seen the guy since he was a kid, and he pops out of the dark. I didn't put a name to his face at first, although when I think back on it, he hadn't changed all that much. His hair was shorter, and he looked less ragged, but he had the same chiseled face and the same curious stare. He looked stoned, blinking at me and my car as if wondering how we got in his way, and then he stumbled on."
Wilson immediately thought the worst. Kids often bought dope down in the historic section and wandered up to the park near the falls to smoke or shoot it up.
"I knew about everything he had done as a kid, and thought maybe he'd been away a while," Wilson explained. "I also thought he was up to no good. He kept easing in and out of the shadows along Spruce Street like he didn't want anybody to see him. That made me suspicious."
Zarra, apparently, had not dressed for the cooler nights, wearing instead a thin denim jacket, ragged jeans and a scuffed pare of sneakers, warming his hands by wrapping them around a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee.
Paterson had a queer air, that night, thick with the change of season and the coming of dusk. A heavy mist had settled over most of the city, encircling the street lights, spoiling any view of the expensive highway ramps federal authorities had installed to access the interstate highway. The fog dampened the usual sounds of the city, too, reducing the hum of highway traffic to a dull, distant buzz. With rush hour over even the beeping on the local streets had faded as well, so Zarra might have been strolling through a Paterson not of 1986, but a century earlier, with only the clop, clop, clop of horse hooves missing. The fog did things to the street lights, too, making them look as dim as gas lamps had been, leaving only small circles of yellow at their base, puddles of light through which the Zarra passed.
Puffs of smoke eased out the broken windows of the mostly-empty mills’ buildings, a detail Zarra apparently did notice, pausing briefly to peer inside at the even dimmer lights. Inside, junkies huddled around trashcan fires, heads nodding from their recent acquisition.
Zarra shivered, then continued his climb.
"I could hardly seen him in the dark," Wilson said, "only when he passed a light or against the snowy backdrop of the hills beyond the falls."
Garret Mountain, on the other side of the Great Falls bridge, still held onto winter that the city had already started to give up. Patches of white gleamed through the fog as elbows of ice showed at the cracks of the mountain's cliffs. Winter's surrender would take another month, as the snow and ice melted drop by drop off its surface, each drop working its eventual way down into the dismal brown surface of the Passaic River.
By the time Wilson had started his car and steered it over the slick surface of Spruce Street, Zarra had reached the spiked iron fence that marked the boundary of the lower park. The cars and the parking lot beyond the fence remained veiled by fog, as was the bust of Alexander Hamilton, position to look down on the face of the falls.
A local history book claimed this spot was the place Hamilton first stood after his turbulent trip up from Newark. Natives and trappers had exaggerated reports of its size, but not its beauty. The crash of white froth stirred up visions in Hamilton's head, shaping America's first industrial city out of its mists.
Until then, the still nameless Paterson had served as a way station for farmers in route to markets near Paulus Hook. A few scattered farms littered the landscape on either side of the turnpike. A tavern clung to the shore of the river where the turnpike crossed the bridge into Totowa.
Although George Washington had slept here during a brief halt in his retreat from New York, it took Hamilton to think of building a city here. Most tourists insisted on standing at the foot of the bust to stare out at the falls the way he had, searching the craggy stone face of the falls for a glimpse of the sleeping old man poet William Carlos Williams claimed the falls portrayed.
Zarra avoided the lower park, making his way up the sharp incline towards the gate to the upper park instead. To his right, a small brick building appeared just inside the spiked fence. Even in the fog, the brass sign gleamed, its emblazoned letters spelling out the historic name of the Society of Useful Manufacturers. The dark windows on either side of the bolted front door made the building look like a frowning face, peering down on the dead section of the historic city. The office had served no official function for nearly a century.
The society -- made up of mostly Dutch and English settlers -- had helped sculpt Hamilton's vision out of the falls and the spread of nearby farms. To accomplish this, the society borrowed cash from the newly-elected state governor, William Paterson. When the strikes struck down the mills in 1913, the society died as well, with this small building as its grave stone.
Zarra passed this building, too, and climbed up a slightly steeper incline, pausing at the gate into the upper park. To his left, a dilapidated fence separated the park from the river, the deceptively smooth surface just visible at the shore. To protect unwary boatmen from slipping over the greater falls, city engineers had installed a three-foot drop a hundred yards upstream. From the water, rivermen could not see the chasm or even the point at which the water broke its edge. Many boats had tumbled into the torrent, crashing into the gnashing stone teeth below. In weeks of little rain and the slow thaw of snow, the jagged ledges showed the collection of captured old tires, broken tree trunks and other debris.
Zarra paused again, perhaps feeling the vibrations of the water rushing through underground via ducts towards the much larger building that made up the city's power plant. Although constructed in the 1930s to help satisfy the city's growing hunger for power, the place had closed down by the time I started with the prosecutor's office, abandoned to vandals and drug addicts. But as the price of electricity rose, the city fathers reopened the facility, installing new generators as well as a new, higher fence around the buildings to keep the kids out. The body of the building made up one wall of the lower canyon, its giant generators spilling out smells of ozone into the fog.
Zarra either didn't see the small sign warning visitors not to enter the park after dark or chose to ignore it. But the moment he stepped inside, Wilson pounced.
"I flipped on my overhead lights and rolled the car through the gate after him," Wilson said. "He turned. He froze."
Under the glare of lights, Zarra looked smaller than he was, his feet planted in the frozen over puddles in a defensive posture, years of training giving him more grace than he'd displayed as a younger man -- but a frighteningly dangerous adversary, then and now.
Wilson did not immediately get out of the car, but allowed Zarra's eyes to adjust to the bright lights. The fat cop wanted to make certain Zarra knew he was a cop before making a move.
Behind Zarra, two bridges crossed over the chasm, one designed to allow tourists a closer glimpse of the water as it tumbled over the edge -- mist playing on their down turned faces like sweat.
The other bridge contained a gray, metal viaduct, the joints of which spilled water, streams of rust-colored liquid dripping down its sides like blood.
Zarra glanced over his shoulder at the tourist bridge, then frowned, seemingly puzzled by the newly installed gate and glittering silver lock that suddenly prevented anyone access.
"I don't think he was planning to run," Wilson said. "He just looked at it as if he wondered how the gate got there."
The bridge itself was normally fenced in -- like a batting cage -- to keep crazy kids from playing dare devil by balancing themselves on the rails. But the gate was a recent addition by the mayor after the latest attempted suicide.
"That's when I got out of the car and asked him what he was doing in the park after dark," Wilson said.
Wilson -- although heavy set during their earlier encounters -- had gained a lot of weight over the decades, but his mean features had not changed, especially his stare. Even street thugs who didn't know his vicious reputation, drew back when he fixed his stare on them. Not so with Zarra.
Shorter hair and twenty years had stripped Zarra of the innocent look he had carried around with him as a kid. He looked more like a soldier than a hippie, but his oval face still maintained its stubborn air.
"I'm not hurting anything," Zarra said.
"I didn't say you were," Wilson snapped. "But the sign's posted on the gate if you'd taken time to read it."
"No one listens to that."
"You should," Wilson said.
Then, Zarra squinted, struggling to make out Wilson's features against the glare of the headlights.
"You're Wilson?" Zarra said.
"That's right."
"He kept glancing over his shoulder at the fence between him and the river," Wilson recalled, "searching for something along the shore."
In the fog, odd shapes showed, the curved edges of old tires or the sharp collection of branches stuck like food in the teeth of the falls.
"I asked him what the hell he was looking for," Wilson said. "Then he looked back at me, his hard eyes focused on my face. He stepped towards me and shoved a piece of paper into my hands."
It was a wrinkled piece of newsprint clipped from the previous day's Paterson Evening News.
The headline read: LEAPER SAVED FROM FALLS.
The photograph accompanying the story showed a pale figure posed against the background of stone with firefighters reaching out to her. Distance had prevented the photographer from capturing the details of her face, but Wilson recognized the girl well-enough, since her little trick had generated the idea that put Wilson on patrol here.
"So?" Wilson asked.
"So read it," Zarra said.
Wilson took the paper and bent so that the headlight shone over his shoulder and onto the newsprint:
Jumper Suzanne Martin was rescued by Paterson police and fire fighters on Tuesday after she attempted to leap from the viaduct bridge into the Passaic River. Officials said the daring rescue was achieved as result of new training offered by the state. Miss Martin was admitted to the psychiatric wing of St. Joseph's Hospital where she was expected to undergo evaluation. She was, according to a police spokesman, "shaken but not hurt." The police said they could find no current address though they believe she once resided in Paterson.
The rescue marked the first thwarted suicide attempt off the falls in 50 years, although records show over a hundred people have taken the plunge since 1959. Mayor Frank X. Graves, Jr., vowed to put an end to the gruesome pattern, and has ordered the two bridges over the falls closed to the public.
"I know this seems like a radical step," Graves said. "But I don't intend to let Paterson become the suicide capital of the world."
The mayor said the ban could be partially lifted in the city council comes to a consensus on hiring a tour guide. The post was vacated four years ago as a budget-cutting measure.
"If the council refuses to hire someone, then those bridges will stay closed," the mayor said. "It is a public safety issue."
Wilson later told me that the newspaper was wrong on at least two accounts. Creeley Jackson, who had served as tour guide here for years, had resigned, not been fired.
The newspaper had also failed to account for one other person that had survived the falls since 1959: Puck Fetterland's.
Wilson handed the clipping back.
"So?" he asked.
"So I'm looking for her," Zarra said.
"That loony? What the hell for?"
"I knew her."
Wilson snorted. "You know every loony?"
"From a long time ago," Zarra said. "I lost track of her until I saw her picture in the newspaper."
"And you expected to find her here? Why didn't you go over to the medical center. That's where they always bring the looneys who want to jump off here."
"I did. They let her go."
"They what?"
"They gave her some pills and sent her on her way."
"After what she did?"
"They said she didn't have insurance. So they threw her out."
"But that girl's out of her mind. They ought to have locked her up and thrown away the key."
"They said they'd treat her. But as an outpatient, on a pay as you go basis."
"They're as nuts as she is. She'll just go and take another leap."
"Which is what I figured. That's why I came here."
"Not on my beat, she won't," Wilson growled.
Wilson later told me the whole encounter made him edgy. He figured the girl would have to show up sooner or later.
"And the last thing I needed was to have some twit charging over those falls while I was on duty," he said. "The mayor would transfer me to the dog pound."
"So what about this Suzzane Martin?" I asked.
Wilson shrugged. There something he apparently did not want to talk about, even to get time off from his eventual sentencing.
"Go talk to the bums," he mumbled. "They know all about her."
Comments
Post a Comment