Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

  “Not yet. He hit again the other night. Only this time I’m afraid the guy wasn’t as lucky as you were.”

  “Lucky?” The word made Archer smirk. This time Mooney noted the crooked, somewhat off-kilter cast of his features. It was then he realized that only one-half of Archer’s face was capable of smiling. The other was paralyzed.

  “Could’ve been worse,” Mooney remarked.

  “You mean death? That would’ve been better.” He stared at Mooney, challenging him to open his eyes and take in the full horror of the picture.

  “I’m not pretending you didn’t get a lousy break.”

  “Okay, then,” Archer snapped. He’d won his point. He didn’t want pep talks and bromides about how much was still left in life that he could do. Even now in his head he dreamed of leaps and turns and grand batements—the exquisite freedom of soaring. “You think you’ll ever get this guy?”

  “We’re giving it our best shot.” Mooney appeared slightly defensive, as if he could read in the young man’s eyes a judgment on his own professional performance. “That’s why … you see … I came. I just thought we might run through the whole thing once more. That is, if …”

  “It’s a long time ago.”

  “As best as you can recall. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “I’m not sure I recall anything.”

  “The last time we talked you were coked to the gills with sedatives and pain-killers.” Mooney flipped hastily through his pad. “You mentioned something then about suddenly looking up.”

  “And seeing a figure on the rooftop.”

  “That’s right.” Mooney found the page in his pad and read with his lips, “Arms outspread like an angel. Any more about that? I mean, any sharper detail?”

  Archer reflected a moment. He made a gesture as if he’d wanted to shrug, but his neck brace restrained him. “No. Nothing. Only that I kept thinking over and over again in my head how everything was the moment before. Who I was the moment before. How happy I was. And then … after. The moment after. And how things might have been now had I just stepped an inch or two to the right or left. Or walked slower or faster …”

  Mooney watched him silently, nodding his head, fathoming something of Archer’s unreconcilable bitterness. The capriciousness of fate. The unjust, irrevocable nature of its sentence.

  One of the Carmelite sisters entered, her starched white robes whispering over the cool tiled floors. A bland waxen face smiled at Mooney from beneath the enormous brim of a white-winged bonnet, then turned its quiet gaze to her charge. She carried a two-gram dosage glass of pale green liquid directly over to Archer and held it to his lips. He drank with his eyes closed. When he opened them again he smiled up at her like a child who’d been vouchsafed a special treat. “More,” he pleaded appealingly.

  “Not so much as a drop, Archer,” the sister scolded with her gentle severity. “I’m here to medicate you— not launch you into the cosmos.” She turned to Mooney. “Not much longer, now. He needs his rest.” After she’d gone they sat together, quietly chatting about nothing in particular. At one point Archer confided to him that his parents had come only once to see him. It had been a lacerating experience. All the time they were there they’d blamed him for what had happened. Had he but listened to them, had he never come to New York to pursue his frivolous dream, he’d be fine today. Married, possibly, with children. A good job at his father’s factory, and all that.

  “It hasn’t been entirely rotten, though.” The ruined boyish smile broke once again across his crippled face. “I’ve made a lot of friends since then.”

  “Friends?”

  “People. They write. They tell me they’ve read about me in the papers or heard about me on TV. Mostly, it’s a lot of rubbish about faith and God. Praying and keeping up hope. That sort of thing. I’ve had a couple of hundred of those. I answer them all.”

  “That’s good,” Mooney said, suddenly anxious to leave.

  “Some even send gifts. Sweaters, ties, socks they’ve knit themselves. I got about a dozen paperweights, letter-openers, wallets, souvenirs. Here,” he indicated with a movement of his eyes a shelf above his shoulders, “look at some of those.”

  Mooney rose and lumbered halfheartedly to the shelves. There, indeed, was a multitude of gift offerings, bric-a-brac and various oddments sent to Archer by strangers who had read about his plight.

  There were curios, knickknacks, small toys, vases, ashtrays, puzzles, numerous small inexpensive objects intended to amuse—to make more tolerable the hours of the invalid consigned for the rest of his days to the bondage of a wheelchair. Each bore upon it a message of courage and faith from a well-wisher:

  Dear Mr. Archer:

  I heard about you on the news. Have Faith. Christ heals.

  Mrs. Viryl T. Crider

  2523 Avenue C

  Dayton, Ohio

  Dear Mr. Archer:

  I have been paralyzed since age 12. I have just celebrated my 73rd birthday. Life is beautiful.

  Olive Denby

  41 Congress Street

  Bethlehem, New Hampshire

  Dear Jeffrey:

  God has not forgotten you.

  Millard F. Cowley

  RFD

  Turnbull, Utah

  Mooney moved without enthusiasm from one specimen to the next, reading their scant messages of hope with a sense of odd distaste. “You keep all their letters?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “I have to. I write them all back. Someday I’ll make a scrapbook.”

  Mooney’s peregrinations led him to a tall, dangling green plant with long spatulate leaves that shot off in a dozen directions. Very near the top was a small card tied securely round an upper branch. Slowly, with his lips he read the simple message inscribed there: “Best wishes, A. Boyd.” Mooney stood staring up at it, skewered amid the tanglement of tall, rubbery branches. His eyes watered slightly. Before anything had actually registered in his mind, some deep buried part of himself recognized and identified the tiny card with its brief message indited in a small, immaculate hand.

  “Best wishes,” he repeated the words half aloud to himself. “A. Boyd.”

  His throat was dry as he carefully untied the card from the branch and took it down as though it were a damaged bird unable to fly. His blood quickening, he carried it back to the young man in the wheelchair. Holding the card up before him, he said, “Where’d you get this?”

  Archer shaped the words softly with his lips. “Best wishes, A. Boyd.” The name appeared to mean nothing to him.

  “It was tied up on that big plant over there,” Mooney said.

  “The big cactus, you mean?”

  Mooney cocked an ear at him. “How did you get it?”

  Archer appeared perplexed.

  “How did it come to you? Messenger? Special delivery?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Oh come on. You must.” Mooney was suddenly aware of the gruffness in his voice. Instantly his tone softened. “I mean, when did you get it?”

  “When I was in the hospital. Right after the accident.”

  “But you don’t know who brought it? How it arrived?”

  “By messenger, I guess. I was still pretty much out of it most of the time. When I awoke, it was just there. On the night table. It was much smaller then. It’s grown like wild in just a year.”

  “Is that all you can remember?”

  Something in Mooney’s voice alarmed the young man.

  “That’s all. I never heard from the guy again. Why? What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Mooney muttered numbly. “I don’t know what it is.” He continued to stare down hard at the card in his hand.

  “Sister Avila knows all about that plant. Soon as she saw it she knew what it was. It’s some kind of cactus. They have the biggest blossoms you’ve ever seen. And you know something strange about them—they bloom just one night a year.”

  “One night a year,” Mooney mumbled.

  “That’s right.
Cereus, I think she calls it, night-blooming cereus.”

  Mooney turned and gazed at the boy. There was a crooked little smile on his face.

  54

  “Don’t you ever pull that stuff again.”

  “I didn’t do it. I swear.”

  “You hear me, Watford? Once more, just once more and you’re out. Now that comes straight from Ramsay. And believe me, Ramsay is not one for idle chatter.”

  “I don’t care what Ramsay says. I didn’t …”

  “You lie, Watford. You lie like other people breathe. The truth of it is that you lie so much you don’t even know when you’re lying anymore.”

  “I don’t have to take this.”

  “No, you don’t. You can get up and leave anytime. I’ll be delighted to see you go. You’re not worth the time and the money it costs to keep you here. Imagine the gall … Needles lying right out next to the bed, along with that phial. Believe me, Watford, they’re gonna find out who’s supplying you, and when they do …”

  “I haven’t had Demerol in weeks.”

  “You low-down suffering …”

  “Someone put those things there.” Watford glared down at the hypodermic and the empty phial beside his bed. “Someone’s trying to frame me.”

  “Now who’d care enough about you to want to frame you? The only one framing you is you. Don’t you ever call that dispensary again and make out you’re Doctor this or Doctor that. You hear me?”

  “But I’m telling you, I didn’t.”

  “Now you listen up, Watford. The next time is it. You pull that stunt once more and you’re back out on the street faster than you can say DEMEROL.”

  “I told you I haven’t had any stuff for weeks.”

  “You lie. For shame. You suffering skunk.”

  “Stop shouting at me.”

  Watford’s last words were uttered through a long, piteous wail. The sound of it was eerie and slightly unearthly, like that of muezzins summoning the faithful to worship. Whatever its tonal qualities, the device worked. It had the effect of derailing the nurse momentarily.

  Nurse Emmy Blysworth was a tiny, leathery West Indian of indeterminate age, and framed out of sinew and tendon. She was a mere five-foot-two, but when she rose to one of her fine moral dudgeons, as she was wont on occasion to do, she conveyed the impression of one much taller.

  “Stop shouting?” she mouthed his words incredulously as a knot of nerves throbbed in her cheek. “Stop shouting? If you think this is shouting, my man, you’re in need of some real shoutin’ lessons. I’ve seen five of my sister nurses here—good decent ladies all—driven off this ward because of you. Five nurses in two weeks, Mr. Watford, whose only sins was they tried to serve you too well.”

  Glaring down at him, a glint of demonic merriment flashed in her eye. “Now, you hear me, Watford. You may not know this yet, so I’m gonna tell you. No matter what thieving, skunking, lying dirty tricks you pull, I’m here to stay. You can leave all the needles and phials around you like. That don’t embarrass me at all ‘cause you’re in a fight now. And when it’s over, I can promise you, just as I’m standin’ here before you, only one of us still gonna be around.”

  Before Watford could reply, a pert pink face thrust its head through the door. “Visitor for Watford.” Watford sat halfway up in bed. “It’s my sister. I wrote her last week.” His eyes sparkled with relief.

  The Irish nurse hovering in the doorway frowned. “This don’t look like any sister to me, Watford. Can he have his guest, Blysworth?”

  Nurse Blysworth scowled. “I can’t see what for anyone’d care to call on him, but show ‘em in. I’m just on my way out.” Muttering, she moved off. Then at the door the peppery little black lady turned and glared back at him. “Now you mind, Watford. Hear?”

  Even as she was departing, another was arriving. The shadows of late afternoon had begun to slant across the hospital room and the figure that hovered momentarily in the doorframe loomed large within the mote-filled sunlight. Coming at Watford, its motion seemed implacable and the face, though at once familiar, he could not immediately place.

  “Mr. Watford.” Mooney thrust a beefy paw at him. “Sorry to bother you like this.”

  Watford’s innards turned and then he recalled. Oh, my God, he said to himself. Oh, my God. The words sounded over and over again in his head as he struggled to smile. “Nice to see you.” Oh, my God— Myrtle—Jesus—Oh, dear God, what the hell now— “Haven’t seen you for a while,” the detective went on affably. “Just thought I’d drop over—say hello. Your next-door neighbor, Mrs. Stein, said you were here.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Stein, was it? Nice lady.” Watford smiled desperately.

  “Happened kind of suddenly, didn’t it?”

  “Yes. Very. Some trouble I had in the army. Relapse, you know.” Trying hard to smile, he felt his face out of control, as if his expression was all wrong, stamped with guilt. Looking at Mooney, he was certain the detective knew everything.

  His mind whirled. It’s that pharmacy. They got my fingerprints. They searched the house while I was here and found the Demerol. Oh, Jesus, Jesus.

  “I’m afraid I’ve had some bad luck.” Watford spoke feebly, making a shameless pitch for leniency. “Very sick, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve had news from the doctor. I’ve just been told I have leukemia.”

  Mooney stared down at the floor, casting about for something to say.

  “Only a matter of time.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You mind passing me those pills there?”

  Mooney handed him a small box of tablets.

  “Asparaginase. Extract of asparagus, as you may have guessed.” Watford’s laugh was high and thin. “Specific in the treatment of chronic myelogenous leukemia.” He pronounced it with a touch of braggadocio, as if he were enormously proud of his accomplishment. Like an overly precocious child, he rattled off a great deal of information about his long-range prognosis. He’d been reading up on it in books in the hospital library, he said.

  From the way he spoke, the prognosis was decidedly gloomy. Yet’, as Mooney listened, it occurred to him that horrendous as the story was, the man either didn’t grasp its full implication or else he didn’t seem to care. Further, he had the dim but growing suspicion that all of Watford’s talking, his compulsive spewing of words, hopping illogically from one subject to the next, was a stall to prevent him from getting down to the business for which he’d come.

  “Mr. Watford?”

  “They say we’ll have thunder showers tonight. We need it. Might break this awful humidity. You know, when I was a child my father—”

  “Mr. Watford. I have a couple of questions I’d like to ask—”

  “Questions?” His heart banged in his chest. Oh, Christ. Oh, God. “Look, I don’t know anything. Honest.”

  Mystified, Mooney gazed at him. The man’s pallor was alarming. He’d gone white, the color of parchment, and his lips trembled.

  He rattled on disjointedly. “I’m really not well. If you don’t believe me, ask Dr. Ramsay. He says I’ve only got a few months left, and now, now”—his eyes started to water unashamedly—“Now, they say I’ve been stealing medication. Stealing. Me. Can you imagine?”

  “Look,” he said, clearing his throat, “I just wanted to ask a few more questions about that man who shared the room with you at Beth Israel two years ago.”

  “What man?” Watford was momentarily bewildered. “Oh, him.”

  “Yes. Remember, I already questioned you about him.”

  “Oh, sure, that’s okay. Sure. Go ahead.” Watford giggled nervously.

  Mooney pulled out his pad of scribbled notes. “Two weeks ago you said this Mr. Boyd—”

  “Boyd?”

  “That’s his name.”

  “The man in the bed next to me? In the hospital?”

  “That’s right. Only you said you didn’t recall that name.”

  “Yes,” Watford said and his
eyes glowed. Then, just as quickly his expression drooped. “I still don’t. He was sort of a strange fellow.”

  “Strange? In what way?”

  Having revealed the fact that the man was strange, Watford was at a loss to elucidate the precise quality of that strangeness. Mooney attempted to help him. “Did he look strange? His appearance, I mean?”

  “No. It wasn’t that. He was sort of nice-looking. Pleasant, actually.”

  “Pleasant?” Mooney scribbled, recalling Baum’s theory of the murderous God-fearing chap in the gray flannels. “How old, would you say?”

  “Fifty. Sixty. I don’t know.”

  Mooney repeated the words beneath his breath as he scribbled onto the page. Dr. Kurt Baum’s silhouette came more sharply into focus.

  “Was there anything special about him? Distinctive?”

  Watford thought a moment. By that time he wanted genuinely to help. “No. I don’t believe so. There was nothing especially distinctive. Hey, what do you want this guy for, anyway? What did he do?”

  “He’s killed a few people.”

  “Oh.” Watford nodded. His response to the information was one of almost astonishing indifference. He reflected a moment longer. “Gosh, he seemed awfully nice to me. How do you know?”

  “I don’t. I’ve got a pretty good hunch though. I’m trying to locate the guy. That’s why I came to see you.”

  Watford smiled dreamily.

  To Mooney the man’s smile appeared to reflect a harmless idiocy, yet he was clearly the key to everything. “Can you give me a physical description of the man? Was he tall or short?”

  “Tall. At least he appeared to be. He was lying down all the time. Under sheets. Didn’t I give you all this already?”

  “Yeah, but what the hell—give it to me again. How tall would you say? Six feet?”

  “Sure—he could’ve been six feet.”

  “Could’ve been?” Mooney wore a face of despair. “That’s right. And thin. He looked thin. Actually a little sickly, but he’d lost a lot of blood. And, like I said, pleasant-looking. A teacher or a musician or something. He didn’t look like any killer, if you know what I mean.”