Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

“Well, how the hell would I know, for Chrissake? If I get finished with everything tomorrow.”

  “Well, I’ve got to know. ‘Cause if you are, I’ll shop for dinner.”

  “Don’t shop. We’ll go out.” He looked at her impatiently. “I’ll try to make it for dinner. But I can’t do the track.”

  Disappointment crept into her eyes. Several people stopped by to say good night. She started to show signs of irritability. When they were alone again she said, “Well, this is all just a bit too iffy for me. I’m going out to the track Saturday and Sunday. If you want to have dinner, you know where to find me. You’ve got the key.”

  29

  “What about a gunshot wound, April 16?”

  “Nope. I got no gunshot wound April 16. I got a reported coronary went to Mount Sinai, May 4,1979. A DOA.”

  “Why would I want a DOA? And I told you, April 30. It’s April 30, 1979.”

  “Okay. Okay. Don’t blow your stack. I’m tryin’ to help. You can see I’m up to my ass in work here. I got a sick dispatcher, and five drivers out with flu and the shits and Godknowswhatelse. I don’t need all this aggravation.”

  The two men stood in the untidy rear office of the Fordham Cab Company on 138 Street, just off the Grand Concourse. Beyond the large glass window of the office was a gloomy, cavernous garage. The light emanating from within it was a kind of aquarium green through which the rapid flashes of cab yellow darted like tropical fish.

  From beyond the glass, horns blared, drivers shouted, brakes squealed, taxis hovered, stranded in the air atop hydraulic lifts, while mechanics probed their innards from below. Tools whirred and ratcheted. The din was frightful and the air reeked from a palpable yellow smog of fumes.

  The time was roughly 3:40 P.M. Mooney was tired. This was the ninth such garage he’d been to that day. His head whirled and he believed he was suffocating. “I keep telling you I’m looking for a guy who was bleeding heavily from an injury—probably in the area of the leg or thigh. This was on the night of April 30, 1979, around 11:00 P.M. in the vicinity of Forty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue. The driver would have probably taken him to a doctor or a hospital in that area.”

  Mr. Melvin Wasserman, the owner and manager of the Fordham Cab Company, chewed fretfully on the saliva-sodden tip of a cheap, unlit cigar. He wore a pair of heavy, black-frame glasses, one broken arm of which was held in place by means of a thick rubber band.

  “Didn’t I go through all this once before with one of your people a couple of weeks ago?”

  “That was probably my partner.”

  “What the hell am I doing it again for?”

  ” ‘Cause he didn’t find anything.”

  “Well, what can I tell you I didn’t tell him already?”

  “Just double-checking, that’s all.”

  An enormous black man thrust his head in the door. “Hey, Melvin—Where’s that distributor cap? Come on, man. I gotta move this stuff out.”

  “Hold your water. I’m comin’— Hey, look, Lieutenant—” Mr. Wasserman turned back to Mooney and appealed. “I’d really like to help you out, but like I told you”—he held up the slim, grease-streaked plastic folder of driver emergency reports as if for emphasis—“I got nothing here for the night of April 30, 1979. If you don’t believe me, have a look for yourself.”

  “Is it true,” Mooney asked, “that a lot of your drivers don’t report emergencies even when they’ve been involved in one?”

  Mr. Wasserman tilted his head to one side and shrugged. There was a tough, sagacious little smile about his lips. “What do I know? I only work here. But between you and me—and you gotta remember, I’m driving cabs for thirty years—for a hack to fill out one of those police emergency forms is pure hassle and heartburn. Now I ask you, Lieutenant, as an honest, patriotic, law-abiding citizen. What the hell would any man in his right mind wanna go and do a stupid thing like that for?”

  Toward 5:00 P.M. Mooney was over near the Yankee Stadium, finishing his final stop for the day.

  This time it was the Atlas Cab Company and the man in charge was a sallow, funereal apparition by the name of Bucarella.

  “I tell you, Lieutenant …”

  “I know, I know.” Mooney wiped his damp forehead with a rumpled handkerchief. “Your drivers don’t file emergency reports. Too much of a hassle, right?”

  Mr. Bucarella smiled apologetically. “I didn’t say that. But maybe it’s true. Some of our boys do file reports though.” He moistened a thumb with his tongue and continued flicking through an open file drawer. “I got reports here for May 4, May 7, May 16, May 22, but I don’t see nothin’ here for April 30.” Mooney sighed and hauled himself to his feet. “I didn’t think you would.”

  Mr. Bucarella seemed genuinely sorry. “It’s over a year and a half ago, and that’s very hard.”

  “I understand. Thanks anyway,” Mooney started out.

  “You say there was a lotta blood?” Mr. Bucarella called out to him from behind the desk.

  “That’s right. We found a lot of it in an alley near the scene of the crime.”

  “So, you think there would have been a lot of blood in any cab that picked the guy up?”

  “Hadda be.”

  “The reason I ask,” Mr. Bucarella continued in his gentle, slightly self-deprecating manner, “is cause we had a cab in here awhile back got so messed up with blood from a fare that we hadda tear out the seats and replace them. It was an awful mess.”

  “Oh?” A vague flicker of interest flared momentarily in Mooney’s eye. “When was that?”

  Mr. Bucarella shrugged sadly. “I don’t know. But I guess I could find out.” He rose slowly and shuffled to a set of green metal files behind him. It was then that Mooney noted for the first time the clubfoot and the large, ungainly prosthetic shoe.

  Shortly, Mr. Bucarella extracted a manila folder bound with a thick rubber band on which was scrawled the word REPAIRS. Starting from the front and moving backwards, he rifled through a stack of invoices, sometimes reversing his field and going forward again. The process was slow and Mooney was impatient to get home, take his shoes off and put his feet up.

  “Here’s a whole new transmission job we hadda do. Brand-new Ford, right off the assembly line. Can you imagine that?”

  “No, I can’t,” Mooney grumbled dispiritedly.

  The process dragged on for another fifteen minutes. Mooney’s face purpled with impatience.

  “Jeez. It oughta be right here.” Mr. Bucarella kept licking his thumb, flicking back and forth over the frayed, grease-streaked invoices that recorded a sorry history of deterioration and mechanical inefficiency.

  “Ah,” said Mr. Bucarella, faint triumph in his voice. “Repair rear seat. Replace rear floor carpet. Mitkin Brothers. Automotive Reupholstering. Six hundred eighty bucks. Highway robbery. That oughta be it. No wonder I couldn’t find it. I was lookin’ in the records for 1980.”

  “When was this?” Mooney stepped round the desk and peered down at the invoice.

  “It was in 1979.”

  “When in seventy-nine?”

  Mr. Bucarella studied the barely legible carbon scrawl on the pink slip. “May 7. But that’s when it went to Mitkin. Coulda been sittin’ around here a week, too. That close enough?”

  “I’ll buy that.” Mooney’s reply was a dry whisper. He drew his breath in and held it until he felt a slight inflation of his stomach. “Can you tell me who was driving that cab?”

  Mr. Bucarella moved his spectacles up and down the ridge of his nose, squinting at the pink invoice trembling in his hand. “Can you make out that number, Lieutenant?”

  Mooney took the slip and held it up to the light. The numbers in the lower-left-hand corner were scribbled and the carbon was badly smeared.

  “Looks like four digits,” Mooney said.

  “It is. It’s the hack number. They’re all four digits.”

  “The first looks like a five and the last a seven, but I can’t make out the two digits in the middle.
”

  Mr. Bucarella took the slip back and for a while the two of them tried to decipher the numbers. With the aid of a slab of glass used for magnification, they confirmed that 5 and 7 were the initial and terminal digits, but the two middle numbers would not yield to any interpretation.

  “Wait a minute,” Mr. Bucarella said. It was now slightly past 7:00 P.M. The lights from a small Spanish bodega twinkled in the gathering twilight beyond the window. “Just let me check my registry for 1979.”

  “I’d appreciate that,” Mooney said hopefully. “Can I use your phone a minute?”

  “Help yourself. It’s right over there in the corner.” He dialed Fritzi and to his surprise found her in. She’d been to the track and won several hundred dollars. She was excited. “I told you that Belvedere had guts. She came up six lengths in the stretch. You should have seen her, Frank. She was just beautiful. How’d it go with you?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I might be on to something.” They chatted awhile longer and gradually he felt less tired. “Hey, listen, can we still have supper?”

  “I’ve got a sirloin in the freezer. I’ll take it out.”

  “What about some fries, too?”

  “No fries. Forget about fries. We’ll have a salad, and I’ve got a nice cold melon in the fridge.”

  “Okay, okay,” he grumbled. “Gimme about an hour.”

  When he hung up, Mr. Bucarella was awaiting him. The tentative little smile he wore gave his face a slightly crooked cast. Mr. Bucarella, it was clear, did not smile easily.

  “It was 5107,” he said, “because my registry reports 5107 was out of commission during the week of May 1 to May 7, 1979.”

  “Great,” Mooney said, his spirits rising cautiously. “Who was the driver?”

  “That’s easy.” Mr. Bucarella adjusted his glasses and once again ran his finger down the long white tally sheet of his hack registry.

  “In seventy-nine, 5107 was checked out to Rudolph Uliano.”

  Mooney flicked out his small white pad and pencil. “Great—can you give me his address?”

  “I can give you his address, but I’m afraid it won’t help you very much.”

  Mooney looked up from his pad and felt his heart sink. He gazed into Mr. Bucarella’s sad sweet smile. “Rudy died eight months ago.”

  30

  “Put your leg up over mine.”

  “The right one?”

  “Right. Over my thigh.”

  “Like this?”

  “Right. Now slide sidewards.”

  “Like this?”

  “Right. Now just sort of ease forward.”

  “Where are you, for Chrissake? I can’t find you.”

  “Never mind about me. I’ll find you. Come forward a little and then left. Give me your hand. I’ll guide you.”

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  Fritzi Baumholz rolled sidewards across the huge, naked shape beneath her. When she slid off Mooney’s massive flank, the springs of the king-sized mattress wheezed beneath them, releasing a gasp of air under pressure, like a pair of huge bellows.

  “Okay,” Mooney persisted. “Let’s try sideways.” She could see that his failure had mortified him. Fritzi was a handsome woman, large but by no means fat, and splendidly proportioned. Every part of her was firm and muscular. She had the frame of an athlete, and in the nude, with her ruddy skin and her long tawny hair that came undone and tumbled on her shoulder, she was a pleasing sight. That had made it all the harder for Mooney. If she had been somehow less attractive, he might have felt less pressured. In the darkened room there, with only the lights of the city shining in, he had a glimpse of his own unsightly girth. The outline of his paunch rose and fell like the white-parchment belly of some huge dying fish turned upward on its back.

  He was grotesque, he thought. Fit not for the mutual exchange of tender gestures between normal man and woman, but only for the kind of beastly coupling he could find in the storefront cesspools of the West Side. There it was all easy, you never had to look at the girl and, more than likely, you would never see her again. When it was over, the exchange of moneys and sexual favors, one could leave, unburdened of any sense of having failed oneself.

  “You’ve been eating again, Frank. You’re bigger and fatter. You can’t go on like this. Mind you, I’m not as concerned about the sex part as I am about your health.”

  “Oh, Jesus, don’t start lecturing me now about cholesterol and blood pressure.”

  “If I do, it’s because I’m fond of you. Under all that blubber there’s a very attractive man.”

  Mooney folded his arms stolidly across his bare chest and stared at the dark ceiling. “I can’t help it, I tell you, I’m doing my best.”

  “Your best is not good enough. We’re going to reduce your calories by another three hundred. If necessary, we’ll go to a straight liquid diet. Until you get down to about 180 pounds, you’re not fit to share a bed with a decent woman.”

  “A hundred and eighty,” Mooney whimpered. “Christ—that’s another twenty pounds. As it is, I go around with my tongue hanging out all day. I’m sick of drinking water to fill the hole inside me.”

  She turned and looked up at him over her shoulder, then threw an arm across his chest. There was an arch little smirk on her face. “Just think how swell you’ll look when we go to the beach this summer.”

  “Forget about that. I’m goin’ to no beach.”

  “And we’re going to take you downtown and get you all gussied up with a whole new wardrobe. You’re looking awfully dowdy, Frank.”

  “That’s just the way I like it. Dowdy Frank, that’s me.”

  “And I want to get you some nice blazers for the tracks. And some spring plaids … and …”

  “Drop it, for Chrissake. Just let me be.”

  Her finger dallied in the hairy nest of his chest, inscribing little circles. From somewhere deep within him a groan as ancient as time rose into the muffled darkness. A phrase, barely audible, trailed off in a sigh.

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s what?”

  “Whatever you just said. What was it?”

  “I said I don’t have no business here.”

  “That’s true. Not at two hundred pounds. At about one eighty you’re in like Flynn.”

  “Leave me alone, Fritzi. Lemme go.”

  “Who’s holding you? You can go any time you please. Back to Fritos and Devil Dogs.”

  “Knock off, I said. Lemme be. I’m tired fighting.”

  “Tired? You? You’re a young boy.”

  “I’m sixty-one.”

  She sat up and squinted at him in the dark. “You told me you were fifty-eight.”

  “I was lying. I’m sixty-three.”

  “You just said sixty-one.”

  “I was still lying. Listen, I’m dead, I tell you. I’m a tired old fart. For all I know, I may be eighty.”

  She tossed him one of those gay, slightly mocking glances. “You’re willing to settle for that?”

  “Sure, I’m willing. More than willing. I got no records to break. No one to impress. Hey, what the hell are you doing?”

  She suddenly rolled over and came up astride him. “Fritzi—what the hell—”

  “How does that feel?”

  “Oh, jeez …”

  “Shut up, Mooney and hold me. I’ve got lovely bosoms, don’t I?”

  An airless gasp broke from his lips. She turned and stretched full-length beside him. Warm lips sought his. “You are going to lose weight, Mooney. I swear it. I’m going to render you like a stuffed goose. You may hate me for it, but by the time I’m finished with you, you’re going to be a goddamned sex symbol.”

  31

  It had been months since he had thought about the boy, and then only at night, by himself. He didn’t like to think about it. The waste, the pity, the total uselessness of it. A strong, vital young man, totally innocent of any wrongdoing, cut down like that in the prime of life. An aspiring dancer, now a quadriplegic consigned t
o the prison of a wheelchair for the rest of his life.

  Plodding along the crowded street in that unseasonably raw evening, he raised his collar higher and retracted his neck deep within it. Then, for some unaccountable reason, he recalled having the temerity or the foolhardiness to have sent the plant around to the hospital by special messenger. A sharp detective might easily have made the connection. How many messenger services were there in the city anyway? Surely they kept records of deliveries to hospitals— but of course it was highly doubtful that they kept records of the contents of such deliveries.

  Even so, it was a rash, stupid thing to have done. But he’d thought of it then as a kind of atonement. Putting himself at risk like that was a kind of self-purification. Surely the police would be monitoring all of young Archer’s mail, and particularly gifts from perfect strangers. Wouldn’t they be the first to be suspected, those who’d made offerings seeking expiation for their crimes? What could the police now make of the name A. Boyd given with no return address? Suddenly he viewed the whole exercise as cheap and theatrical—snickering up his sleeve at >how close he could entice the law while still shrewdly evading it.

  He thought if he walked vigorously, exhausting himself, he would forget about the boy. Whenever he had ghosts (and it was often), he would banish them by means of strenuous physical activity. A hard, driving, self-punishing relentless walk until the heart banged and the calves ached. It had worked for him in the past. All the others: Catalonia, O’Meggins, Quigley, Soong, and Ransom. After violent exercise, the phantoms relented and would drift quietly off, as if flayed from his body. Not so Archer. The others had died, so it was easier to banish them. But Archer had survived. He lived in a hospice in Staten Island attended by Carmelite nuns who specialized in the care of quadraplegics.

  He knew all about it. He’d kept abreast of young Archer by means of newsclips. Periodically, he’d even phone the rehabilitation center, identifying himself as a relative in town very briefly and merely calling to inquire how the boy was getting on.

  Respectfully, even eagerly, they’d answer all his questions. No one ever challenged the authenticity of the calls, and at the Conclusion of each, invariably he’d add, “I’d rather Jeffrey didn’t know I was asking about him. I wouldn’t want him to think we were concerned.”