An excerpt from “Under the Whitestone Bridge: Death at the Music Mansion Reunion” by Kirpal Gordon

 

Chapter 1

 

Playing the birthday concert for Faith, my mentor’s mentor, was a love supreme.

But if I knew that the concert’s aftermath would result in the felony arrest of my mentor Pavel Trzaska, I never would have entertained the idea of going. Nor convinced him to go. Nor convinced him that I, Orfea Goodnight, his twenty-two-year-old female writing apprentice and fellow musician, should come along on the journey from New Orleans to New York City.

From the second story bathroom window of Faith’s house, I watched red and blue colors flash like strobe lights from multiple police vehicles making the officials appear to be moving in slow motion. Under a dark orange moon that rose above Manhattan’s skyline in the west, police were cordoning off the side of the house with yellow NYPD tape just outside the parlor’s window where Faith spent much of her time. That’s where Gil and Red earlier in the evening had unveiled their birthday gift to her: a rocky grotto shaped in a semi-circle with a gurgling water feature. It was landscaped by Gil and the small wooden deer drinking at the pond’s edge was sculpted in wood by Red.

Now it was the scene of a crime.

At the end of a winding unpaved lane the Faith’s property sat hidden on three sides by Norway spruce, cedar of Lebanon and black pine. Bordering the East River near Boosters Beach, between the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge to the left and the Throgs Neck Bridge to the right, the house—what everyone calls the Music Mansion—was a sprawling three-story Victorian structure. With its wrap-around porch and large parlor that opened into a living room, it proved to be an excellent location for the Saturday night concert—at least until the last song when a gun shot rang out.

We heard a scream and then a splash.

Immediately, band members rushed to the grotto and pulled the victim’s bloody head out of the small rock-rimmed pond. I happened to be outside at the time talking on my cell phone with my boyfriend Rogelio, and I saw the whole thing go down.

My bandmates checked for a pulse, found none and called 911. A patrol car, which I later learned was sitting at Whitestone Park three blocks away, arrived two minutes later, took one look at what happened and called in. More police cars rolled up.

Watching the cops move around the crime scene showed me how clueless they were.

Compared to what I witnessed, all that they gathered from their interviews with the band and the audience was a four-word chronology: shot, scream, splash, death. How many variations would they consider: Was the victim shot dead by a bullet or frightened to death by getting shot at? Was the shot unrelated to the victim? What was that splash: the sound of a human head hitting the water or maybe just the victim’s foot or a rock that had been dislodged by the bullet? Was the bullet and the splash even related? As for who uttered the scream that followed the shot, was that the victim, the shooter or a third party caught by surprise chancing upon the scene? 

The evidence would not add up; it kept telling a different story.

I’m no expert on forensic science, but things appeared to be getting most foul, mon ami. When the medical examiners’ team patted down the victim, they found no entry wounds and no bullets. Instead, they found wads of cash in the pockets of his pants and shirt. I watched as they photographed and bagged five wallets, a collection of jewelry, a snub-nosed gun (possibly just fired) and a small vial (possibly of poison) from inside his overcoat.

Didn’t this new evidence suggest the alleged victim might also be a victimizer, likely to be found guilty of criminal trespass, theft, possible armed robbery and attempted assassination?

Back to shot-scream-splash-death: What if the victim had been rifling through people’s coats in the vestibule of the house, stashing the valuables in their coat and pockets, got discovered and called on it, ran at top speed out of the front door and down the steps, made a left, headed toward the water feature, turned their head, saw the gun in the hand of their pursuer and at the sound of its discharge simply dove for cover accidentally slipping on the wet mossy rocks and crushing their skull or drowning? That’s certainly not murder, but could be construed as involuntary manslaughter for the trigger-happy pursuer.

Instead, what if the fleeing victim/victimizer approached the water feature, turned their head, fired their snub-nosed gun at their pursuer, turned too quickly, lost their balance, screamed and made a splash by smashing their head into the pool or its rocky edge or its metal pipe? Involuntary manslaughter for the gardening team of Red and Gil would be a long shot. But suicide could be on the table just as easily as an accidental death.  

The slope was getting slippery, and until the arrival of the autopsy and toxicology reports, anything was possible. For example, was the alleged victim in bad health, inebriated or under the influence of drugs? In that case, merely running from a pursuer could give our victim a heart attack. To take it a turn darker and make everyone at the concert a suspect: Since poison is already in possible play and there’s food and drink everywhere, what if the victim had eaten or drank something intended to take their life? Such a possibility would prove pre-meditation and justify a claim of murder. But what if the victim had an allergy and died from eating something as common as peanuts or shellfish—then who’s to blame?

Nothing was clear and so much of the story seemed improvisational.

Who was the victim and who were their victims?

Little was said among the detectives, but the plot was thickening.

With their wall of lights turned up to superbright, the CSI unit inspected the grotto and sculpture. Sure enough, they found a bullet buried in the deer’s wooden left foot at water’s edge. When extracted with needle-nosed pliers and put it a plastic evidence bag, I got a bad feeling. Because the concert’s last song was a solo instrumental played by Hope, the police would soon realize that anyone else in the band—Smokey, Gil, Red, Liv, me or Pavi—could have slipped out of the parlor and onto the lawn or porch with time enough to shoot the escaping victim/victimizer at the grotto.

I’m not saying Pavi shot anyone, only that his return home was growing catastrophic.

The cops finished taking the last of the photos, put the dead body into a black bag, zipped it up and headed toward the flashing vehicles. Once the ambulance left the gray-pebbled driveway, I could see what had been hidden from my view: a blue squad car over whose trunk stood lanky, gray-haired, dumbfounded Pavi, spread eagled. New York’s Finest frisked him and handcuffed him, mirandized him and accordioned all six feet and three inches of him into the back seat.

Hope and Liv ran out from the porch.

“You got the wrong person,” Hope shouted.

“Come back and arrest us,” Liv shouted. “We did it.”

They failed to outrun the squad car which left for the police station.

From her room below me I heard Faith crying.

In the driveway under a taxus shrub Red and Gil were consoling a distraught gal who I had seen at the concert. I got the impression she was their old friend, but the news they shared did not seem good.

As for me, spying on everyone from the safe distance of the second-floor window, I felt less like an observer and more like an accomplice. I ought to have prevented this death from happening, and no matter how I tried to play it off, I knew I was responsible. I may only be Pavi’s sex-crazed, know-nothing writing apprentice and music nerd, but I had promised his girlfriend Cajun Karen in New Orleans that I would look after him. I owed it to her. Not only that, in a long line of writing apprentices he had mentored, I was only his second female apprentice—the first didn’t work out so well—and I felt a sisterly duty to those who might come after me.

I should add that I love the guy, you know, platonically.

I knew I had to do more than just watch the police haul his ass away. So I dashed down the stairs, collected what I thought of as relevant evidence of my own guilt, slipped into my blue Jetta and followed at a safe distance the caravan of civilian and law enforcement vehicles headed for the 109th Precinct in downtown Flushing.

Winter in Whitestone: A Holiday Shout

      A world of little kid secrets it was when by chance, waking from sleep, asphalt streets & factory-blackened ground lay carpeted knee-deep in skyfall’s coconut marshmallow avalanche. As we ambled along powder-puffed, tall-treed Powells Cove Boulevard, blizzards blotted out the decaying seafront’s gangrenous plank & broken tugboat, & when hailstorms finally ceased, a serenity of snow & ice had descended upon our unheralded outpost of New York Harbor.
      Car crash, rock salt, slush slide & blood drip met up ahead on the Bronx-Whitestone, a buckling suspension bridge spanning the East River under which the white stones that gave old Clintonville its new name sat buried & longshoremen’s tall tongues still tell the tale on sleet-hoary evenings in run-down gin mills like the Crew’s Rest, but in the era of Ike, JFK & LBJ, it seemed that every cobbled clump of corner store cluster included a watering hole packed with beefy barkeeps cursing like troopers, dressed in apron & tie among crumbling corduroy, quarter beer & pipe smoke, serving toothless stumble bums rum-soaked who shuffled key notes heaven-sent inside greatcoats, while across the street a pre-Gortex world of cotton long johns shrunk at ankle & wrist held unshaven gypsy men cowering wind-whipped under dimly lit Bohack’s selling freshly timbered evergreens silent like Buddha holding a flower.



      A pothole-frozen, vapor trail, crystalline cold hike it was along unpaved Cryders Lane a winding mile home from St. Luke’s Grammar School in ill-fitting ear muffs & woolen mittens out of mothballs, steel-buckled rubber galoshes over Thom McAnn shoes to guard against wet gusts that blew Little Bay frosty over abandoned piers. There were chores to do or our knuckled heads would be met by a world of woe from mothers’ leather strap or the backhands of hard-headed, jack-hammering dads. So we ran along the service road, dug out the snowed-in, shoveled sidewalks & rested in the heart of the old village where stood our tiny library next to Crawley’s, the hole in the wall our dads crawled home from on Friday nights, & beyond that stood the Odd Fellows Hall where the Pocahontas Society met. Not a single Matinocock who once hunted these hills was alive to join, but my immigrant grandmas were members & decided their kids should meet.
      Raised on catastrophe, wary of strangers, certain how perilous was winter & the other three seasons yet voyaging across an ocean for a freer way of life with a more level playing field, these grandmas, Cassie & Frieda, re-shaped superstition & tradition to make in America a place for a savior for whom, like them and their loved ones, there was no room at the inn. Such were their stories of salt-of-the-earth glory spoken to us in their Old Country accents, & like the man called Christ, their bones knew the catharsis that comes from overwhelming crisis. In spite of plastic Santas tied to antennae, Chanukah candles orange in windows, flood-lit mangers & magi, the grandmas understood that winter holds an unfathomable dread, a mystery that the older religions of our newer immigrants reflect---Egyptian, Persian, Chinese, East Indian---that round & round the eons spinning, we arise from & return to a Vast Unknowable Nothing, that change is our identity & death merely the removal of a tight shoe, ideas to shake the terror of our non-existence out of us that we might make fuller use of what redeems night’s darkest hour before the dawn of a new year entire.
      The ghosts of our grandmas are winking at us between falling flakes of snow to remind us the crying, hungry baby emerging between shit & piss, as Augustine called our human birth, is not just Yeshuwa Mithra but the world herself, that whole worlds are being born tonight in every Bethlehem, a word that only means “mill town” in Aramaic. At their graves of white stone our grandmas’ absence tells us to make ready a place for the guest who arrives without invitation, like a raven in the snow, at our window with a broken wing.
--Kirpal Gordon (from Eros in Sanskrit: Lyrics & Meditations; for more go to KirpalG.com/books.htm)

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An Interview with Whitestone's Author Jason Antos

KIRPAL GORDON: As you know, Giant Steps Press has many connections to north Queens.  While researching the old neighborhood on the internet, I came across Whitestone, your pictorial history of the neighborhood in a brief 127 pages, and was knocked out by the maps, paintings, sketches, post cards, documents, photographs and your astute commentary which delivers an imagistic memory lane experience for a local like me and a cautionary tale to all New Yorkers about the risks of overdevelopment.  Told in your informed but impassioned voice, it's a testimony to our unique hamlet sitting alongside the East River between the Bronx-Whitestone and Throg's Neck Bridges.  Because you argue so well for the value of history, it seems fitting that you dedicate the volume to your grandmother, Evelyn Kaye, who is seen in a photograph with Joe Dimaggio.  How did the project come about?

JASON ANTOS: Since childhood, I have been a great admirer of history. For years I had been writing short pieces for local papers and for University publications. As a lifelong resident of Whitestone, I remember exploring different areas of the town when I was growing up. I would walk down by the abandoned CYO and hang out in the remains of the Hammerstein House. I knew I had something. There was definitely a story to tell. 

KIRPAL GORDON: Divided into seven chapters that open with Dutch settlers and the Matinecock tribe, you take us through the arrival of the British Empire, Francis Lewis and the Revolutionary War period, Governor de Witt Clinton's homestead in an 1854 photograph, Walt Whitman's stay and the Civil War, the arrival of the Long Island Rail Road in 1869, the population explosion that began with the opening of the Queensboro Bridge in 1909, the neighborhood's brief stint as a seaside resort which brought celebrities and more development and the continuing impact of immigration throughout the two world wars and into the 21st century.  That's an amazing amount of dedicated research.  Who helped you find all that out?

JASON ANTOS: Since Whitestone was my first book, I had to become a detective and figure out one step at a time where to find material. I began at the Queens Historical Society which led me to the Bayside Historical Society. From there I went to the Queens Library Central branch to Long Island Division (now called The Archives). The Queens Library has an endless amount of information on Queens. The best part is that it is all open to the public!

KIRPAL GORDON: Among the most telling photographs in the book is a shot of Harvey Firestone's mansion before it was torn down to accommodate the Cryder House.  The sense that the neighborhood's actual history has gotten buried alongside such development is unmistakable.  Ironically, just down the road sits the Hammerstein mansion.  Turned into the highly regarded eatery Ripples on the Water, I see from the cover of your book that the original mansion has been rebuilt on the old grounds.  What do you make of these two tales?

JASON ANTOS: It is all about fate. The Hammerstein home was privately owned until Le Havre was built in the early 1950s. Originally known as the Levitt House Apartments, the complex acquired it as their club house. Firestone's house was owned by Mrs. Michele who operated a bed and breakfast. She sold the property for the building of Cryder House. Hammerstein's home was luck enough to be purchased by a group who wanted to turn it into a catering hall. This allowed the building to remain long enough to be recognized as National Landmark.

KIRPAL GORDON: In the last section, the construction of the two suspension bridges to the Bronx really captures the sense of a leafy, once bucolic neighborhood in transition.  How do we keep Whitestone green while limiting the growing McMansion-ization of its homes?

JASON ANTOS: That is up to the people, our local politicians and zoning laws. The laws have to be enforced and perhaps changed so that Whitestone can retain some of its small town feel.

KIRPAL GORDON: What most impressed me in your telling is Whitestone's unique heritage as a place of tolerance.  You point out that the Dutch and the Native Americans coexisted peacefully, which is indeed a rarity in the colonial era. In addition, the Flushing Remonstrance, the New World's first legislation insuring freedom of religious choice, was signed in 1657.  Ever since, Whitestone has been home to a wide range of religions: Quaker, Dutch Reform, Methodist, Episcopal, Roman Catholic, Greek and Russian Orthodox, Jewish, Lutheran and of late people from Korea and Far Eastern Asia.  What factors play into this open-mindedness?

JASON ANTOS: I think when a neighborhood is multicultural and tolerant, that atmosphere becomes evident to all people. This creates a sense of calm and attracts diversity. When one group moves out the other stays and grows creating a continuous cycle. 

KIRPAL GORDON: Beyond your present duties as a reporter on the neighborhood for the Queens Gazette, you have penned three other books on Queens for Arcadia.  Tell us more about those projects.

JASON ANTOS: After the success of Whitestone: Images of America (2006), I followed with Shea Stadium: Images of Baseball (2007), Queens: Then and Now (2009) and Flushing: Then & Now (2010).

Jason Antos is a reporter for the Queens Gazette.  To peruse or purchase Whitestone, see http://www.amazon.com/Whitestone-Images-America-Jason-Antos/dp/0738546283.