Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

  Whimpering, clinging to him for dear life like a chastised child seeking forgiveness for its mischief, at last Myrtle fell asleep. Shortly her jaw fell open and she started to snore. Some scorched effluvia of malt Scotch and cigarettes rose from her mouth as if from some dank rotting place within her.

  20

  He left early the following morning while she was still asleep, packing his few belongings in his canvas duffle—shirts and underwear, toilet items, his two or three medical reference books and, of course, the physician’s black bag. The Pan Am purser’s uniform, freshly cleaned and pressed, as he always kept it, still encased in an envelope of cellophane, he would carry on a hanger over his shoulder.

  Moments before departing he cracked the door of the bedroom and looked in upon her. The room was dark and chill, and from the rumplement of the bed rose a faint distant snoring.

  He had managed, in the time he had been there, to put together nearly a thousand dollars in savings. Now he peeled off seven hundred-dollar bills from his cache, clipped them together, and slipped them into a First National City of Kansas envelope. On the outside of the envelope he scrawled the date and the words “For Myrtle, Love, Charley.” Then, propping the envelope against a glass cruet on the Formica breakfast table, he hoisted his bag, slung his purser’s uniform over his shoulder and departed.

  Although Detective Birge’s passion for interrogation appeared to have flagged noticeably in the past week, as far as Watford knew, the police still considered him a prime suspect in the attempted holdup of First National City. The truth of the matter was that Birge’s superiors had told him to forget about Watford. All of their attempts to get Bidwell to implicate his friend had, in fact, failed and Watford was no longer a suspect. Birge, of course, had not bothered to pass that information on to Watford.

  Watford’s situation, as he himself viewed it, seemed desperate. He had absolutely no idea where he was going, no destination, little money and, more importantly, he was out of Demerol and already experiencing the scary precursors of deprivation.

  For all of its seeming desperation, there was something in the situation that he vaguely enjoyed. It had a kind of exciting chanciness. Like shooting craps in a casino, it carried with it the potential for either stunning victory or catastrophic loss. He didn’t mind that. He rather liked the idea of starting in anew somewhere. All he asked was a fair crack at it.

  By 7:00 a.m. he was out at a small suburban air terminal with perhaps a dozen other passengers. It was a gray, forlorn little operation set in a wide arid disk of prairie. There were perhaps two or three small buildings, a squat gray control tower, a couple of World War II-vintage Quonset huts, and a red wind-socket flapping disconsolately in the chill morning breeze. The runways, crisscrossing out on the field, looked untended and unkempt, with a tatty carpet of brownish grass growing up between them.

  Watford checked the arrivals and departures on the flight board. The only thing going out at once was a Frontier Airlines twin-engine prop plane flying directly from Kansas City up to Denver. He had no wish to go to Denver, but just at that moment Watford spotted a KCPD patrol car drawn up outside the main building. He thought about Denver for a moment and quickly decided he was going there.

  Marching up to the Frontier reservations desk, he inquired if anything was open on their 7:20 to Denver.

  The ticket agent smiled wryly over the rims of his spectacles. “At this hour of the morning, everything’s open.”

  Watford made a conspicuous display of his Pan Am purser’s uniform which he carried slung across his shoulder. He explained that he had to get up to Denver to pick up a flight. He was a little short of cash, however. Did Frontier have a reciprocal exchange arrangement with Pan Am for their employees?

  The agent had never heard of anything like an interairline ticket-exchange program for employees, but Pan Am was the big time and he wasn’t anxious to show his ignorance. “You have any identification?” the agent asked.

  Watford flashed his old Pan Am ID Card with his photograph and number boldly imprinted on the glossy plastic. The agent never noticed the expiration date.

  “Hold on,” he said. “I’ll see if I can’t get you on.” The red Frontier twin-engine prop plane was sitting out on the runway. Watford could see it there through the big observation windows, being refueled, baggage being hoisted up through its cargo bays. Glancing over his shoulder, he noted that a policeman had gotten out of the patrol car and was staring into the terminal through the glass doors.

  The Frontier agent had dialed directly out to the plane and in the next moment had the captain on the phone. He explained Watford’s situation. They exchanged a few pleasantries, then the agent hung up.

  “Captain says he’d be delighted to have your company up to Denver.” He scribbled something on a ticket, stamped a boarding pass and handed it to Watford. “Leave your bag right there. I’ll see to it that it gets on board.”

  Watford handed over his bag. “Hope I can return the favor someday.”

  “Hope you can, too,” the agent laughed. “Good flight, Mr. Watford.”

  By that time the policeman was walking into the terminal. He appeared to be looking for someone. Without further adieus, Watford made for the large glass doors leading out to the field. He swung through them, descended a flight of steps and stepped out onto the cold tarmac of the service area. Still carrying his Pan Am purser’s uniform slung across his shoulders, he ambled out across the weed-strewn field to the Douglas 340, just that moment beginning to spin its props in preparation for a takeoff.

  * * *

  The flight up to Denver was a little over an hour. It was a smooth, uneventful run, part of which Watford spent up in the cabin having coffee and crullers as special guest of the captain.

  On arrival at Denver International, Watford thanked the captain and the crew of Frontier’s flight 270 and disembarked. Once inside the terminal he made his way to a mezzanine lavatory before claiming his luggage. Standing at a sink he washed his face, carefully combed his hair and then dried himself thoroughly at one of those hot-air machines. Outside once again, looming dead ahead, he found himself confronted by a clear Lucite balustrade running the full length of the mezzanine. He walked slowly to it and looked down over the swarm of humanity flowing through the main lobby of the terminal below.

  He stood there for several minutes, a dazed, dreamy expression on his face, the hint of an odd little smile playing about the corners of his mouth. He lifted his right leg over the balustrade, then his left, then stepped easily, almost unthinkingly out into space, dropping forty feet to the hard terrazzo floor below. During the descent the single thought that occupied his mind was the fervent hope that he would not fall upon and hurt anyone.

  “All right, all right, coming through. Give us some room here. Give the guy some air…”

  A blur of color swarmed before his woozy vision. He lay flat on the floor, people crowding and pushing all about him, the wail of sirens coming at him over cold empty distances.

  “Oh, Charley, Charley, what have you gone and done now?”

  “Out of the way, for Chrissake. Let the stretcher through.”

  “Charley, Charley. What a fool thing to go and do. Rolling in poison ivy just so they’d have to put you in the infirmary. What’s your father going to say? Sent home from camp like that. I swear, I just don’t know what I can tell him this time.”

  Someone kneeling above him. Warm breath beside his ear. Strong, gentle, reassuring hands. He Celt himself being lifted and rolled onto a canvas. “Jesus, what the hell happened to him?”

  “Guy over there says he just stepped off the mezza nine.”

  “He’s okay. He’s okay. Give the guy some air, for Chrissake.”

  “Okay. The show’s over. Everyone go home now.”

  “Charley, how could you?”

  “We’re going to take you down to the hospital, Mr. Watford.” The warm breath in his ear again. “Nothin’ to worry about. Looks like you may have busted an an
kle. Now when I say raise your hips and roll over, you do just that. Got it? Good. Now raise.”

  In the ambulance he passed out from the pain, but not before he’d managed to extract a dose of Demerol from the accompanying intern.

  “Fracture of the right calcaneous,” a voice came at him out of the dark. “Not serious but painful. We’ll have to operate to pin the heel. You better plan on being with us a few weeks. Is there anyone you want us to notify? Family? Friends?”

  “How long?” Watford asked dazedly.

  “Two weeks, at least,” the doctor replied.

  Watford affected dejection; inwardly he was rejoicing. Safety. Reprieve. Quittance from all further worry and the chase.

  “Need something for the pain, Doctor,” he mumbled.

  “Wasn’t he given anything in the ambulance?”

  “Demerol, Doctor,” Watford heard a nervous nurse explain.

  “Only two hundred milligrams,” Watford, wincing, half-rose off the cot. “It’s barely touched me.”

  “We’ll take care of that right away. Nurse, have the dispensary send up …”

  “Demerol,” Watford gasped.

  “Sure— You have any allergies?”

  Watford’s head rolled left and right.

  “Nurse, let’s start him on meperidine. Fifty milligrams. Tablets.”

  “Liquid. I prefer the liquid. Intravenous. Seven hundred milligrams.”

  The bed felt good, and after the shot there was no pain. Only the cool numb spot in the center of his forehead, and voices softly muted and distant. The cruel vise of anxiety had suddenly relaxed and he was at peace between the stiff medicinal-smelling sheets of the hospital bed. He had come home again.

  21

  May 13, 1981

  Dear Commissioner Dowd:

  I’ve tried to write this letter four times already … I …

  Dear Commissioner Dowd:

  In regard to the series of deaths from falling objects over the past five years, it has come to my …

  Dear Commissioner:

  I wish to dispute directly the findings of the 6th Homicide Detectives with special regard to …

  Purple with exasperation, Mooney shredded the brown paper bag upon which he’d been scribbling, wadded it in his meaty fist and flung it aside. It hit the wall with a dull thud. The lank marmalade tabby dozing just below the point of impact raised its head, flicked an ear, yawned widely and dropped back to sleep.

  It was 10:00 a.m. of a Sunday morning. Mooney sat at the kitchen table in his underwear. Coffee mug, a hag of greasy crullers, a half-dozen heavily notated Racing Forms strewn across the streaked plastic top. At that moment a kettle shrieking to a boil behind him and a battered thirties Philco portable tuned in to WCBS for the racing news were the total components of his universe.

  Mooney snatched up the crumpled sheet of wax paper in which the crullers had been wrapped. Smoothing the edges of it carefully, he snatched the handicapping pencil from behind his ear and was ready once again to compose.

  In addition to his morning costume of skivvy and boxer shorts, he wore black half-length socks gartered at his bulging calves and highly polished black oxfords reserved exclusively for Sundays and the track.

  The coup de maître to the entire morning ensemble was a black shoulder holster containing a .45-Colt service revolver strapped like phylacteries across his capacious middle. Why Mooney felt the need for munitions in his underwear at that time of a Sabbath morning was not immediately apparent. It might have had something to do with the feeling of vulnerability that near nudity produced in him. Clothed, the man could be as brazen as a peacock; unclothed, he appeared suddenly embarrassed and defenseless.

  Guns notwithstanding, there was something oddly touching about Mooney in his outsized underwear, scrawling figures through a track of confectioners’ sugar on a sheet of greasy wax paper, lips moving as he strained for words that might achieve some semblance of literate expression.

  Dear Mike:

  I don’t ask favors. Nor am I one to complain, and you will agree I make no waves. If I am pushed, however, I push back. I know just where I stand with the Force, and pretty much what I can expect from it. I don’t like for the most part the men of Midtown South, and I sure don’t expect them to like me.

  I write now with regard to the five deaths over the past six years in the Hell’s Kitchen area, and to protest the reluctance of the 6th Homicide’ Detectives to rule conclusively that death in each case was intentional, cold-blooded murder, due instead to accidental causes such as masonry falling naturally from buildings onto the street. Now I ask you, is that not ridiculous?

  I myself in the past year have interrogated three people, all of whom claim to have seen a possible suspect. Two actually saw the suspect at the scene of the crime. A third saw a man fleeing from the scene of the crime.

  True, one was a kid about eleven years old. The second and third, however, strike me as solid. One actually saw the possible suspect on the roof at the actual time of a fatal drop. The other observed a suspect on his fire escape moments after the drop.

  How the 6th Homicide guys could ignore this, or wave it away like it didn’t exist just for the sake of “what’s easy” so as to classify this as accidental is beyond …

  The old Philco crackled. Phil Kearney, the racing commentator, was going over the field at Aqueduct for that day. Mooney dropped his pencil, reached across to raise the volume and listened.

  “… Eighth race … 1 ⅛ miles (1:47), allowances purse, $11,000. Three-year-olds and upward.” Mooney snatched up his pencil again and started to write, this time on the back of a nearby cleaning ticket. “Claiming or starter. Three-year-olds—119 pounds; older, 122 pounds.” The announcer droned on in high nasalities … “Value to winners, $6600; second, $2420; third, $1320; fourth, $660. Mutual Pool $240,079.”

  Mooney scribbled hectically, glanced at his watch, then once again snatched up his draft to the commissioner.

  … The real reason for my writing is that I believe beyond any reasonable doubt that these five deaths were in no way “accidental.” I have studied the files on all five cases and I am pretty much convinced they are the work of some kind of nut case. Maybe a religious freak of some sort who performs something like a ritual sacrifice once a year or so.

  I have noted, and called the attention of my colleagues to this, the royal dunderheads of Manhattan South and the 6th Homicide, all to no avail. The fact that all these fatal drops occur without exception in the spring of the year, three having occurred in April and two in May, appear to make no impression on them.

  It is now, as of this writing, May 13th. So far April has been quiet, but I now have the strongest gut feeling that sometime this month our rooftop friend will strike again. I see no sense appealing to my buddies. They are mostly dim bulbs with nothing but suet between their ears. May I talk with you? This is urgent. Believe me, this nut case is going to strike again soon.

  I am willing to lay 6 to 2 odds it happens on or around the 16th. The offer is open to you and all comers.

  Respectfully,

  Francis X. Mooney

  22

  “Pardon me. Is this seat taken?”

  “Which seat?”

  “The seat right here. The one with your coat on it.”

  Mooney pretended not to notice the empty seat beside him, despite the fact that it was blatantly occupied by his neatly folded coat. He looked up from his Racing Form. The woman towering above him pointed to the coat.

  “That is your coat, isn’t it?”

  “That coat?” Mooney made a vain effort to disassociate himself from the garment.

  “That’s right. That coat right there.”

  “Oh, sure. The seat,” Mooney grumbled, then lugged his coat up and laid it down untidily across his knees. “Help yourself.”

  “You’re very kind.”

  Mooney grumbled something and screwed his gaze to the Form, while the lady settled beside him. She was a tall, impressive figure,
nearly six feet, not fat, by any means, but amply proportioned. Everything about her, in fact, was of noble scale—legs, torso, head, all crowned with a mane of startling red hair, the shade of which was absolutely natural.

  Her features contained the same air of bold extravagance—the large, well-shaped nose, the fine expanse of eyes, a full, well-shaped mouth, all framed within large, well-sculpted bones. Tousled, slightly overpainted, she had the blousy, unbuttoned look of some latter-day Mistress Quickly. Mooney was instantly aware of something heavy and sweet wafting upward from beneath her outer clothing. Seated at last, she plucked a copy of the Form out of the depths of a deep, reticulated bag. Propping onto the bridge of her nose, the tortoiseshell lorgnette dangling from a chain round her neck, she proceeded to scan the charts.

  Mooney was peeved. It was not merely the awkward inconvenience of having to drape his coat across his lap. More pointedly, it was the strong sense of disapprobation he felt in the presence of women at the track. Particularly betting women. His own mother would never have dreamed of going to the track, no less betting there.

  Several times he glanced up from his Form to gaze out at the drab monotony of the landscape sliding backward past the window—the cheek-by-jowl congestion of sprawling barrack-residences, row upon row of bogus colonial facades, followed shortly by the little saltbox houses farther out, and then the gaudy blur of billboard posters all along the tracks.