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.
