Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

  “What about the fresh puddle of blood below the scape? The scrap of fabric? The AB-pos sample? That’s no mirage.”

  “Okay. Okay. But it’s still only a puddle of blood. Blood—particularly in that neighborhood, means absolutely nothing. They got blood there up to their asses. It leads nowhere. We checked out hospitals, emergency rooms, morgues. We talked to every doctor in the area who might have treated an injured man that night.”

  Mooney rose and started marching up the room, brandishing an arm above his head. “Five. Count, ‘em. Five people dead over the past six years. All from junk dropped on their heads from a rooftop.”

  “Stuff drops from rooftops every day,” Mulvaney’s voice pleaded. “You happen to live in a city where fifty percent of the buildings, particularly in ghetto areas, are falling apart.”

  “And that, too,” Mooney whirled, leaping on his words. “How come it’s always in the same area. The West Forties, anywhere west of Eighth to Tenth avenues. Ghettos. Slums. Derelict structures. And always the spring.”

  “So what? So it’s always the spring.”

  “April or May. As we approach the summer solstice. Don’t that say anything to you? Virgo and Aries in conjunction?”

  “Oh, Jesus. If it ain’t the fucking stars now.”

  “It’s no accident, I’m telling you. Five deaths. All similar. All the same time of the year. Basically the same locale. It’s no accident.”

  Mulvaney’s eyes narrowed. “So that’s how you come up with this?” Once again, he snatched the letter up and read. “ ‘I have the strongest gut feeling . . our rooftop friend will strike again, etc.’ And then this business. ‘I am willing to lay six to two odds it happens on or around the sixteenth.’ ”

  “And I was right, goddammit. Right on the money.” Mulvaney tilted his head and drew his tongue across his lower lip. The pugnacious thrust of his chin conveyed the sense of a reptile coiled to strike. “Come on, Mooney. You can level with me. Out of what hat did you pull this? Your letter is postdated the fourteenth of May. How did you know this thing was gonna happen on the sixteenth of May? And just like you said. With a forty-pound block dropped off a rooftop.” Mulvaney flung the letter back at him with disgust. “The commissioner’s been on the phone to me all day, reaming my ass. All because of this goddamned letter. How come I didn’t know? he says. And how come Mooney knew? You really didn’t predict this, Mooney. This is some kind of gimmick, isn’t it? You had it rigged.”

  “Sure, sure. I had it rigged. I had advance information from the Bombardier himself. He sent me a postcard. Who’s the guy got creamed, did you say? Is he dead?”

  “He may as well be.”

  Mooney cocked a wary eye at the chief.

  “Some say he’s lucky,” the chief continued. “I don’t. This bag of concrete busted his spine. He’ll never walk again. Poor bastard is some kind of dancer.”

  The fog hovering above Mooney’s bourbon-sodden mind was slowly lifting. “Where is he—this guy? Can I see him?”

  “See him?” Mulvaney sat back in his chair and laughed ruefully at the ceiling. “Don’t you understand? The commissioner says you’re in charge of the whole investigation now. You can see anyone you fucking please. Take as many men as you need. The rest of this city can go to hell. But you get this Bombardier for me, Mooney, and you get him quick. I want Dowd off my back.”

  Mooney frowned and started out. “Thanks for your good wishes.”

  “Mooney,” the chief cried after him. Mooney turned. “I don’t suppose it’s any secret. It won’t break my heart to see you go.”

  “Twenty-four months, Larry. That’s all you have to wait.” Mooney stared back at him gloomily. “All you assholes up here. Sit on your butts for thirty years. Hang your hat on a pension. All you do is count nickel-and-dime raises and argue with the PBA about sick days. You never wanna hear anything that’s gonna make you get up off your duffs and work. ‘Accidental,’ ‘Accidental.’ Bullshit, accidental. The only thing you’re browned off about now is the fact I wrote a letter and got the commissioner to put a blowtorch under your ass. Well, glory hallelujah. My compliments to the commissioner. It’s about fucking time. So long, pal. See ya in the funnies.”

  Mooney doffed his battered fedora, winked spite fully and swaggered out.

  “Hey, Mooney,” Defasio called to him in the outer office.

  Mooney glowered and kept right on going. Defasio scurried out from behind the desk and started after him. “Hey. Where you going? I hear you’re headin’ up this thing. Burned Mulvaney good, didn’t you?”

  “That son of a bitch,” Mooney smoldered, “I’ll make his ass blister before this thing’s over.” Defasio clapped his hands and hooted. “Hey, listen. Before you go. Someone was in here lookin’ for you. Some dame.”

  Mooney stiffened. “A dame?”

  “A lady.”

  “Who?”

  “How the hell should I know? A big job. Red hair and a deep voice. Said her name was Baumholz or something.”

  At first the name failed to register. Then it dawned. “Oh, Jesus.”

  There was a look of playful mockery in Defasio’s eyes. “A bit long in the tooth, as they say, but not a bad looker. Not at all bad.”

  Mooney glowered and started forward again. Defasio followed him out to the stair. “A little on the hefty side, but personally I like that sort of thing.”

  “Stuff it, Defasio.”

  “Sure.” The younger man smirked. “Sure, Frank. I understand. Anyway, she left this for you.”

  A small white envelope came forward at the end of the younger man’s arm. When Mooney’s hand failed to accept it, he slowly crammed it into the detective’s breast pocket. Still grinning, he turned and strolled back into the office.

  Out on the landing, by himself, Mooney waited for a moment, gazing down at the envelope stuck half out of his pocket. Slowly, warily, he reached down, as if it were booby-trapped, then carefully plucked it out and opened it. Two crisp hundred-dollar bills lay tucked away inside. Along with that was a ticket for a reserved field seat at Aqueduct for the following Sunday.

  26

  Mooney was not good at hospitals. He did not like talking in whispers and deferring to doctors. He despised the smell of antiseptics, of Formalin, of Lysol and bedpans, of corridors reeking of urine. He did not like walking down hallways and seeing doors opening on beds curtained off. A glimpse of frightened eyes, a skull-like head limp upon a pillow. The prospect of death. In short, hospitals made him profoundly uneasy. Yet he knew he must see Jeffrey Archer.

  “Only a few minutes,” the nurse whispered. “He’s under heavy sedation.”

  “Does he know what’s happened to him?”

  “He’s perfectly lucid.”

  “But he doesn’t know the extent of his injury?”

  “I don’t think the doctors have told him.”

  “About his spine?” Mooney inquired.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not permitted …”

  Mooney saw the girl’s eyes flutter and shift to avoid his gaze. “That’s all right,” he whispered, hovering awkwardly outside the door. “I understand … A dancer, wasn’t he?”

  “He’s lucky to be alive,” the nurse said.

  “You call that lucky?”

  The girl frowned. “You can go in now. Follow me, please.”

  Several paces behind the nurse, he tiptoed into the gray cloistral shadows of the private room, queasy, as he’d always been, at the prospect of viewing catastrophic illness.

  With a brisk single motion the girl swept aside white curtains that squealed round on a ceiling track, revealing a figure lying on a hospital bed. It took several moments for Mooney to decipher his impressions; first a head; then a face dominated by frightened eyes. Only then did Mooney grasp the fact that the long white tubular shape out of which the head emerged was a cast which encased the body from chin to foot.

  The girl lit the table lamp beside the bed and leaned down to whisper. “How are you feeling
, Mr. Archer?”

  Mooney saw cracked dry lips move and overheard feeble mumbling.

  “Would you like something to drink? A little juice or water?”

  There was a glass of half-drunk orange juice on the table with a clear plastic angle straw inside it. The nurse held it while the head on the pillow sucked feebly. Mooney hovered awkwardly at the foot of the bed.

  “Mr. Archer,” the nurse went on. “This is Detective Mooney. He’d like to ask you a few questions. Do you think you’re up to that?” The girl smiled cheerfully. Mooney watched the young man’s eyelids flutter in response. “That’s fine,” she said, then turned to Mooney and whispered, “Only a few minutes. He’s very weak.”

  Mooney lumbered forward to the head of the bed. He placed himself directly in the young man’s line of vision for he could see that Archer could not move his neck. Looking down at the pale, haggard face, the detective saw a young man, barely in his twenties, fair, delicate, with gaunt, poetic features.

  “Mr. Archer.” Mooney stooped over, suddenly conscious that his voice was too loud. He lowered it and started over. “Mr. Archer, Detective Mooney here. Sorry to bother you at a time like this, but I got a few questions if you’re up to it. It won’t take but a minute.” He laughed unconvincingly and swallowed. The effort of stooping over strained his back and made him slightly breathless. “Can you hear me?”

  Mooney could see both comprehension and fright in the young man’s eyes. He was no more than just a kid, in a strange city, drastically, irreversibly injured, and scared out of his wits. He still didn’t know what had hit him.

  Wanting to speak, the boy swallowed with great effort, causing the Adam’s apple in his throat to bob up and down.

  “You don’t have to talk,” Mooney smiled. “If you wanna nod or use your eyes, that’s just as good.” Once again the parched lips moved. Mooney stooped a little lower to listen. “What? What’s that? Oh, you can talk. Good. Sure. Either way’s okay with me. I’m easy.” Mooney withdrew his note pad and pencil. He sighed and proceeded to write. “Can you give me some idea of how all this happened?”

  The head on the pillow rolled heavily to the left, more the result of gravity than its own volition.

  Mooney was a man who could confront unblinking the most grisly carnage in the city morgue, but Jeffrey Archer made him profoundly uneasy. “Let me try and help.” He stood up and nearly tipped the juice over the night table. “You were comin’ home Tuesday night. You’d been to the theater. Right?” The eyes sparked momentarily.

  “It was around eleven-fifteen. You were walkin’ down Forty-third, just west of Eighth. You went past 243 West Forty-third and … now you tell me.” Mooney looked down at young Archer and waited.

  He had closed his eyes again and it appeared to Mooney that he had drifted back off. Unwilling to disturb him, yet reluctant to leave without the information he needed, the detective waited for what seemed an interminable time. Outside in the corridor, carts rolled past, rattling trays of medication and luncheon plates. Suddenly the air was full of the warm bland odor of mashed potatoes. Someone laughed in the room next door.

  “Jeffrey,” Mooney called softly, trying to rouse him. “Jeffrey? Can you hear me? This is Detective Mooney. I’m still here.”

  The eyes fluttered open with an expression of childish wonder. For a while they focused on the ceiling, then slowly rolled round and settled on the detective.

  “This is Mooney. I’m still here. Can you tell me what happened?”

  Jeffrey Archer’s befogged mind appeared unable to grasp the question.

  “Do you know what happened to you, Jeffrey?” Mooney persisted. “Did you see anyone? Anything? Is there anything you want to tell me?”

  This time the pause was not quite so long. “Roof,” he muttered. “Roof.”

  Mooney leaned forward. “Someone on the roof. You saw someone on the roof?”

  Archer’s nod was barely perceptible, but it was there.

  “You saw him?”

  The nod came once again.

  “Could you describe him?”

  There was a pause. Archer closed his eyes again. But this time it appeared to Mooney that he was summoning energy for some huge exertion of will. “Mr. Archer? … Jeffrey?” he whispered and restrained the impulse to prod him. “Jeffrey?”

  The eyes struggled open again.

  “Could you possibly describe him? The man who dropped … who did this?”

  To Mooney’s amazement, the young man smiled— a ruined, feeble little grin. The head stirred, or more possibly a breeze from somewhere had rustled faintly the wavy chestnut hair. Mooney heard him mutter something beneath his breath and bent down as if to scoop up the words. “What’s that? I’m sorry … I can’t … I’m afraid I don’t … Angel?” Confused, the detective repeated the word several times, looking for signs of corroboration. “Was that ‘angel’ you said, Jeffrey?”

  Again the smile—this time a little more crumpled and depleted.

  “Angel,” Mooney pondered and scribbled it into his pad. With a faint gasp he stood erect, closed his pad and tucked it away. “I see from your driver’s license you’re from Evansville, Indiana.”

  The head drooped and the frightened eyes closed. “Has your family been notified? Do your people know?”

  Once again the eyes opened. This time they were hard. Full of defiance and self-awareness.

  “Okay, okay,” Mooney said placatingly. “But sooner or later …”

  “No.”

  The force behind that word astonished the detective. He waited there, helplessly. He had run out of ideas and now merely rolled his tongue over dry lips. “All right, Jeffrey. You’re the boss.”

  Mooney planted his fedora hard on his head and stared gloomily down at Archer. The young man appeared to have finally dropped off. Mooney sighed and switched off the night lamp. For a while he stood quietly in the thickening shadows. A warm orange light glowed in the doorway from the corridor outside. Mooney’s hand rose and stretched tentatively forward. It retracted, then inched forward again, touching at last with the back of his finger the young man’s neck exposed above the lip of the full-length cast that encased him.

  Even as Mooney departed the room, still walking on tiptoe so as not to violate the hushed sanctity of convalescence, his eye swept across the back of a squat, drab figure in a brown messenger’s uniform.

  He stood at the counter of the reception area, stooping slightly toward the nurse seated there. He was in the process of handing her a tall plant wrapped in cellophane with a bright lavender bow tied gaily round its middle.

  The image flitted swiftly across Mooney’s visual field and was quickly gone, supplanted by a host of others swarming through the corridors before him and mingling with his own dark thoughts.

  “Boyd,” the messenger at the desk repeated the name to the nurse on duty there. “Mr. A. Boyd.”

  “Just that? No other message?”

  “That’s all I’ve been given. Just that. Best wishes, Mr. A. Boyd.”

  “He’ll know who it’s from then, I take it?”

  “I guess so.” The messenger shrugged and trundled off.

  27

  “You gotta be crazy.”

  “Not crazy. Just dumb to have overlooked something so obvious for so long.”

  “But it’s over a year ago.”

  “So? They keep records.”

  “Not emergency ward activity. Only the regular inpatient, outpatient stuff. You got thousands of people stumbling in and out of emergency wards day and night in this city. Every wino and stumblebum who needs his nose bandaged. Where the hell am I supposed to start?”

  “With the Yellow Pages, dummy. Under ‘Hospitals, New York City.’ Start with the night of April 30, 1979. What the hell are you asking me for? You’re a big boy. You’re supposed to know where to start. You wanna be a detective? So go be a detective.”

  Michael Defasio stood limp and depleted in his shirt-sleeves. Seated before him like some im
perious zoo gorilla, Mooney lorded over a landscape strewn with the husks and rinds of assorted junk foods. With a slow, oddly fastidious motion, he swiped a smear of grease off his fleshy chin.

  “You know how many hospitals there are in New York City?” Defasio spoke in a soft, faintly tremulous voice.

  Mooney sat back in his seat and extracted a kingsized Hershey bar from the inside pocket of his jacket. “No. Tell me.”

  “Probably upward of two hundred. And what about doctors? Have you forgotten all the doctors’ offices in the area of West Forty-ninth Street?”

  “We’ll check them after we check the emergency wards.” Mooney stripped the candy bar wrapping with a sharp yank. “Look. I’ll run this thing past you once more. When did the last fatality occur?” Defasio moaned and palmed his forehead. “Oh, Jesus.”

  “When?”

  “April 30, 1979.”

  “Where?”

  “At 423 West Forty-ninth. Only six blocks from where Archer got creamed the other night.”

  “Marvelous.” Mooney rammed the last half of the bar into his maw. “And the ME told you, only at least a dozen times, that the quantity of blood found at the bottom of the fire escape that night, and out in the alleyway, suggests a fairly serious injury. A possibly severed blood vessel, he said, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “So, if you were losing blood fast, where would you head first? The nearest hospital, right? Six’ll get you ten that if it were an artery or something like that, you’d go for a hospital before a private physician’s office. Okay?”

  “Okay, okay,” Defasio snapped.

  “Easy, easy. Don’t get your hot Latin blood up.”

  “So I start by looking for a hospital in the vicinity of 423 West Forty-ninth.”

  “Right. You start with the hospitals on the West Side, beginning with the closest to Forty-ninth, going as far north as Seventy-second Street, as far south as Eighth Street, and as far east as the river.” The younger man scowled.

  “Now, another point,” Mooney continued. He enjoyed greatly the role of pedagogic browbeater. “How did our Bombardier get to the hospital?”