Murder at the Falls (23 page)

Tom nodded.

“So you know about that,” Spiegel said. “I had been thinking about firing him, but I was reluctant to do so. He had been a good friend for so long. But the
ARTnews
affair was the last straw. I didn’t even know about it until I went to an artists’ reception in Soho one evening. Everybody there was asking me about it; a few, I think, believed it—those who didn’t know me. Afterward, I went to a party and it was the same thing. When I got back to Paterson that night, I went up to the diner for some eggs, and Randy was there. I confronted him about it, hoping he would show some remorse, maybe even apologize. I was prepared to forgive him. But he was as arrogant as ever. He was spouting the ‘If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t be where you are’ line. That’s when I decided I couldn’t put up with him anymore. On the way back to the mill—we were both on foot—I asked him to start moving his belongings out. He said he wouldn’t, and I threatened to evict him. I was very angry; I felt betrayed. I also told him I was going to retract the gift agreement that gave him ownership upon my death of the paintings that I had loaned him over the years.”

Charlotte noticed how his left hand gripped the arm of the wheelchair; the tension was all the more apparent by contrast with the limpness of his legs.

“That’s when he started swinging,” Spiegel continued. “We fought for a while—we were at the far end of the parking lot, where it comes right up against the river—but I was no match for him. He had been a wrestler in high school and college, and he was still very fit.” He patted his rounded belly. “I was no fighter to begin with, and the years hadn’t helped. The last thing I remember—apart from seeing stars, that is—is the right hook he landed to my jaw.” He paused to take another swig of his Scotch, which he swallowed thoughtfully. Then he went on, speaking more slowly now: “The next thing I knew, I was in the river. Randy had thrown me in, thinking I was dead, I guess. It must have been the shock of being immersed in the cold water that brought me to. Before I had really figured out what was going on, the current had carried me under the Spruce Street Bridge, and then over the S.U.M. dam. The dam isn’t high; most of it’s under water. It’s only a drop of eight feet or so, but the surprise of going over was enough to jolt me into the realization that I was headed for the Falls. I was terrified: I knew that if I went over, I would die.”

“I had to force myself to think, but once my head was clear I realized what I had to do. I had to get over to the other side of the river to where there’s a backwater that collects behind the remains of an old dam at the head of the gorge. If I stayed where I was, I’d go over the Falls. Thank God I’m a good swimmer, because the current was strong; it had been raining for several days. It took all my strength, but I finally got over—or so I thought. But at the far side, I was sucked into the current. It carried me over the top of a rock outcropping at the base of the dam that I spoke of, for about fifteen feet, and then dropped me over the lip of the Falls.” He paused to ask if they wanted refills.

Charlotte and Tom shook their heads; they didn’t want him to stop.

Spiegel took another sip of his drink, and continued: “I thought that was it, but as I went over I got caught in the crotch of a tree trunk that was wedged diagonally across the chasm at the head of the Falls. Its being there was a miracle, really. Though I’ve since noticed that a lot of tree trunks get stuck there in just the same way. It’s where the chasm is the narrowest; it’s only about eight feet wide at that point. I find myself going back to the Falls a lot—I’m drawn to the place, especially after a storm. Maybe it’s because I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Anyway, I managed to shimmy down the tree, but there was nowhere to go from there. The lower end was still sixty feet or more above the water. Even if I had survived a jump—and there were lots of rocks below—I would have been up against two hundred and eighty feet of rock-filled chasm. The best I could hope for was to hang on until morning and pray that someone would rescue me, but I had injured my arm when I was going over the rocks—I later found out it was broken—and hanging on until morning was an impossibility.

“It was then that I noticed, just below me, a stone archway that crowned the entrance to a tunnel. In all the times I had visited the Falls, I had never noticed that tunnel entrance before: it was always covered up by the spray, and by the vegetation growing between the rocks on the face of the old dam. Just below the archway was a steel reinforcing beam spanning the opening. There was nothing else for me to do but to try to jump down into the tunnel. I figured I could do it in two stages: first onto the steel beam, and from there into the tunnel itself. The first jump would be the hardest—the beam was less than a foot wide. But it wasn’t that far, and I made it all right. From there, I could see into the tunnel. It was dark, but I could make out a wide ledge on the tunnel wall about fifteen feet below me. If I could land on that, I could get a better sense of where the floor of the tunnel was. I managed to jump down onto the ledge, but once I landed I realized that I was only halfway there. The floor of the tunnel was another twenty feet beneath me. I jumped for a third time, and this time I wasn’t so lucky. I broke my leg. It just snapped; it sounded liked a dry twig breaking.

“I didn’t know it at the time,” he continued, “but the opening wasn’t the entrance to a manmade tunnel, but rather a natural tunnel, actually a rock fissure that’s a continuation of the chasm. It had been used as the tailrace for a nineteenth-century turbine that pumped water from the river into a holding reservoir. The water company had covered over the fissure, and built the dam to create an intake reservoir for the pump. Anyway, there I was in this pitch-black tunnel with a broken leg. Or so I thought. Though I couldn’t feel anything in either of my legs, I thought it was just temporary. I didn’t yet realize that I’d injured my spinal cord. At this point, my only option was to see where the tunnel led, which is what I did. I had to crawl, of course. Or rather, pull myself along with my good arm. I had—still have—a lot of arm strength as a result of lugging canvases around. Actually, I have even more arm strength now, from working out with dumbbells and on the parallel bars. It was hellish, crawling through that dank, dark tunnel. There were rats, too. I could hear them squeaking. All I could think of was a cave I once visited in California. When the first explorers went into it, they found old skeletons of Indians who had fallen into the opening and couldn’t get out. I thought that’s what would happen to me.

“I must have finally passed out, because when I came to, it was day. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.” He laughed bitterly at the irony. “I continued crawling, but it was less scary because of the light. I didn’t know the purpose of the tunnel, but I figured it must have something to do with the buildings on the other side of the Falls: there are two of them—quaint old little brick structures. At one point, I came to a shaft, which I’ve since learned was the old turbine pit. Sure enough, when I came to the end of the tunnel, there were stairs leading upward to a trapdoor. As far as I was concerned, they were the stairs to heaven.

“I wanted to get out right away, of course, but there was no way I could at that point. I was exhausted, and my broken arm was very painful. Oddly enough, it didn’t occur to me to wonder why my leg didn’t hurt too. Also, the pressure was off now that I knew there was a way out. I fell asleep again, and when I woke up it was five o’clock. I still had my watch on”—he held up his wrist—“it’s a waterproof one. Once I was awake, I started to think. Now that I knew I was going to live, I got mad—furious. How could that little shit have tried to kill me after all I did for him? I started thinking about revenge. That’s when the idea occurred to me of taking on a new identity. I waited until nightfall, and then crawled out. It was much easier than I thought it would be. The trapdoor opened into the basement of what I now know is the old water company pump house. I had to break a window to get out—the door was padlocked—but I managed. Then I crawled to a park bench, and asked the first guy who came along—a dog walker—if he would call a cab for me from the phone booth up at the stadium. I told him I had a bum leg. He did, and within fifteen minutes, a cab came to pick me up. The cabbie helped me to the car. I had him take me to my mother’s. I thought of going to Louise’s, but I knew she’d never be able to keep the secret. And Bernice was too far: she lives in Manhattan. Besides, she wouldn’t have done well in the Florence Nightingale role. I ended up staying at my mother’s for four months. All that time, I was planning my revenge.”

“Who set your broken bones?” asked Charlotte.

“My mother,” he said. “She used to be an orthopedic nurse. Later on, she drove me to the Kessler Institute every day for physical therapy; it’s in West Orange. She didn’t approve of the new identity, but she went along with it. She’d do anything for me, God bless her. Establishing my new identity was much easier than I would have thought. Randy took care of the hardest part for me by forging the suicide note, and Bernice took care of the rest. With the two of them fighting tooth and nail over my work, who would have believed that I was actually
alive
? With my death established, it was just a matter of changing my appearance, and getting new papers. I let my hair grow out—I had been dyeing it, and grew a beard. I hadn’t realized how white it had become. My mother joked that it had turned white overnight. Then I got the tinted contacts and the glasses. I had also lost a lot of weight, which I managed to keep off. I even tried changing my mannerisms and my way of speaking. I practiced with a video camera. I wasn’t very good at that aspect, but I discovered that it didn’t matter. People are really much more interested in themselves than they are in you, particularly if you’re in a wheelchair. If you’re in a wheelchair, people don’t look closely at you. In that respect, you’re like a homeless person.”

“What about the papers part?” asked Tom.

“I forged the birth certificate. For someone with my background in graphics, it wasn’t hard. The birth certificate was the key: once I had that, I could get a driver’s license, credit cards, even a passport. The spinal cord injury helped me get this apartment. The city sets a certain number of these apartments aside for the handicapped. The fact that I was handicapped
and
an artist made me a shoe-in. I guess I’m subject to some kind of fraud action because my real income exceeds the limitation, but I doubt the city is going to prosecute. As an aside, this is a great place for a paraplegic to live. Because it’s a national historic district, it has to be barrier-free. There are curb cuts and wheelchair ramps everywhere you go. It’s not so easy in a lot of other places. I’ve had to go to Soho a couple of times on business, and I found it next to impossible to get around. You never see people in wheelchairs there. But”—he smiled—“I digress. To get back to my story: I resented the wheelchair at first. But then I realized that it was a metaphor for my new life. I was discovering how much I didn’t need: money, reputation, the society of other artists, even the use of my legs. It was like that game that therapists play with their patients, encouraging them to imagine that they’re dead so they can figure out what matters to them and what doesn’t. I also realized how much of my earlier behavior had been reinforced by people who expected me to act in certain ways, and conversely, how liberating reinventing myself could be.”

Charlotte was well aware of this aspect of taking on a new identity. It was one of the elements of acting that intrigued her, and one that tended to keep actors from getting mired down in life. She supposed that’s why actors were often such good company; they continued to grow, discovering new attitudes, opinions, and sides of themselves with each new role. “What about your revenge?” she asked.

“It was a game for me—to torment Randy with the paintings. I liked the elegance of the idea: to use the skills that he claimed were his to get back at him. I thought of it in terms of the movie
Gaslight
. I was gaslighting him.”

Tom nodded at Charlotte in acknowledgment of her astuteness. But it wasn’t so surprising that she and Spiegel had hit on the same idea. The movie was a lesson in how to drive someone slowly mad.

Spiegel continued: “The paintings were my primary
modus operandi
, but I did other things too. I telephoned him at all hours of the night, the idea being to screw up his REM sleep. When he had his phone disconnected, I called him at the diner. I had someone tailing him ’round the clock, so I knew when he’d be there. I paid kids to bump into him on the street, to let the air out of his tires, to break into his car and turn on the lights so that the battery would go dead. Subtle stuff like that.”

“What about bugging his phone?”

“That wasn’t me. I think it must have been his imagination. Though I was pleased when I heard he’d called in a countersurveillance consultant. It meant that my scheme was getting to him. Childish, maybe, but it gave me enormous satisfaction. I think I would have gone mad without it. If I’d had any reservations initially, they were canceled by what he did after I ‘died.’”

“The threat to sue for palimony, you mean?” Charlotte asked.

Spiegel nodded.

“Did Randy know it was you who was gaslighting him?”

“I don’t know. Probably in his more lucid moments, but only subconsciously. In his less lucid moments everything I did contributed to his general paranoia. I hang out at the Question Mark Bar. It’s right down the street: flat all the way, with curb cuts at all the intersections. I play pool there; it’s one of the physical activities I can indulge in. Anyway, Randy used to come in sometimes, and I cultivated his friendship. It was part of the game for me.”

“Was your ultimate aim to drive him so crazy that he would kill himself?” asked Charlotte.

“I never thought that much about my ultimate aim, as you put it. For me, the medium was the message. If I
had
wanted him to kill himself, it wasn’t a conscious wish.” He thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “But he was killing himself anyway, so it wouldn’t have mattered, would it?”