Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

  The policemen gave him medication for the scratches, ice for the bump on his head and then coffee and doughnuts in the late afternoon. They had asked him a number of questions about himself and what he had been doing out on the Quintius property. He told them that he’d only wanted to say hello to Quintius whom he’d met in the hospital several years before. He’d liked Quintius and had read about the tragedy he’d recently suffered with his son. He’d only wanted to say hello and wish him the very best for the New Year.

  He was asked if he wished to contact his attorney. He said he had no attorney and even if he had, there’d be no reason to do so. He had no wish to cause trouble, for Quintius, or himself.

  They took identification from his Social Security card and driver’s license. It was getting on to 5:00 P.M. and they were both anxious to get home to their families and their own Christmas dinners. One of them, however, would have to stay if Watford was to remain in custody.

  Looking at him there in the cell, in his white shirt and tie, his nicely turned out flannel suit, he looked no more threatening than, say, a sort of affable crackpot. As it drew closer to 5:00 P.M., Watford appeared to them increasingly harmless—even slightly put upon. In the absence of any charges, there appeared to be no compelling reason to detain him further. With each passing minute, the temptation grew greater to release him.

  Somewhere just after five, they put Watford back in the patrol car and drove him down to Huntington Depot with a one-way ticket to Pennsylvania Station. They patted him on the back, wished him a Merry Christmas and extracted from him a promise that he would never try anything so foolhardy again. At least not in their jurisdiction.

  Once on the train, chugging down the track west out of Huntington, Watford’s mask of affability quickly faded. A man seated opposite him noted at once the glower, and could not help but overhear the incessant muttering comprised principally of obscenities. The fact that it had all come leaching out like raw sewerage from such a pleasant-looking fellow made it all the more disquieting. At the next stop the man got up and changed his seat for one in a different car.

  All the way into New York, Watford smoldered like burning rags. The idea that he’d spent most of Christmas Day in a fetid little jail cell was infuriating enough. However, the fact that he’d been consigned there by Quintius was absolutely insupportable. Once again Quintius had disavowed him, this time treating him like a common criminal.

  By the time the train had reached Penn Station not only had Watford worked himself into a fresh pique of rage, but now all the old familiar flags of massive migraine were flying.

  Leaving the station and walking out between the great marble pillars fronting Seventh Avenue and Thirty-third Street, Watford weaved his way dizzily through crowds of holiday travelers. As the dreaded vise of pain gripped the back of his neck, creeping insidiously forward like an iron claw round his temple, all the light, color and motion of the gaudy night took on the impression of a great blur, shapes dimly discerned through a pane of rain-streaked glass.

  Walking through the clogged, whirling streets, he moved unsteadily, giving the impression of mild intoxication. He noted with an almost clinically scientific detachment that he was unable to walk a straight line. Instead, he had to thread his way very deliberately, with an uncontrollable obliqueness for which he had constantly to correct, like a sailboat on a very broad tack.

  What he sought now was a cab. He needed to get home before the attack struck full force.’ Home to bed and blessed Mother Demerol. Out on Seventh Avenue he wandered, dazed by the full roar of noise and light. The nature of his condition tended to amplify the jarring effect of the streets, increasing his state of confusion. He tried unsuccessfully to orient himself. At one point, holding his throbbing head between his hands, he started walking south when he’d intended to go north.

  At the corner of Thirty-second and Seventh he waited for a red light to turn green. Intending to flag a cab, he stepped, or rather lurched, headlong off the curb, misjudging its height completely. He stumbled, waving at an onrushing cab, but his timing was off. The cabdriver had seen him even though he’d waved late. In an effort to reach him, the driver veered sharply left from the middle of Seventh Avenue. Watford, grasping the driver’s predicament, wobbled forward out into the street. Another car, just to the left of the cab, loomed suddenly out of nowhere, impaling Watford on the converging spikes of its blinding headlights.

  There was time to step back, but he didn’t. Instead, he did something very curious. He raised his arms, stretching them out wide, then turned and faced the juggernaut directly.

  Afterward, after the ambulance had driven off, the driver, badly shaken as he tried to answer the traffic policeman’s questions, insisted, as improbable as it sounded, that Watford had walked directly into the path of his car. Caught in the headlights, the figure, the man swore, coming at him arms outstretched, was smiling.

  70

  “How long has he been here?”

  “About a week. As a matter of fact, one week ago Thursday night. He asked to be brought here expressly. Favors the accommodations. Requested his old room. It just happened to be available.”

  The two of them smiled, Mooney and Dr. Ramsay, a pair of improbable conspirators drawn together through the bond of shared secrets.

  The detective shook his head with an air of weary sagacity. “So you thought you got rid of him?”

  “You don’t get rid of Watford that easily.”

  “You should never have bothered trying to discharge him. What’s he in for this time?”

  “Bilateral fractured tibias and fibulas. We had to take his spleen out.”

  “What’s all that supposed to mean?”

  “It means he’s pretty sick. Police report says he walked deliberately in front of a car.”

  Mooney lifted his battered fedora and whistled softly.

  Ramsay nodded. “I guess he just can’t bear to leave us. How come you’re back?”

  “He called me. Sent me this first.” Mooney pulled a Christmas card out of his inside pocket. It bore a view of three Magi on camels following a star above the desert. “Followed this up with a phone call. Told me he had to see me.”

  Ramsay waved an arm expansively. “By all means. He my guest. He’s holding court right down the hall.”

  “You have any idea what’s on his mind?”

  “Not the foggiest.”

  The two men stared at each other as if trying to divine each other’s thoughts. Mooney started to speak, slapped his knee instead, then rose with a groan. “Well, I guess I’ll amble over now. What room?”

  “Same as before: 1501.”

  “How’s his overall condition?”

  “The leukemia’s spread all through him. According to his white blood cell count, he ought to be dead.”

  Mooney stared hard at the floor for a moment, then turned abruptly and left.

  Room 1501 was a double, about thirty feet from Ramsay’s office. When Mooney walked in, Watford was sitting up, having his dinner and watching the evening news. He appeared comfortable, relaxed, perfectly at home. Forking small portions of meat fastidiously into his mouth, seasoning his salad with Plasticine envelopes of dressing, he gave the impression of one who completely dominated his own small space.

  As Mooney entered, he looked up at once and smiled. There was something sly in his expression, as if he were enjoying some private joke.

  Mooney frowned, on the verge of saying something unpleasant, but Watford waved him to silence. In the next instant the smile was gone and his mood was at once disturbingly sober.

  “That bastard Quintius.” He shook a finger at the detective. “I finally remembered what he told me in the hospital. He said he killed someone. That’s what he told me. Now I recall. The son of a bitch said he dropped a block on someone’s head off a rooftop.”

  71

  It was icy cold that night and flurries of wet snow pelted slowly down as Mooney left the hospital. He drove at a brisk clip all the way out
to Cold Spring Harbor.

  Once past Forest Hills, the expressway was dismal and empty. The flurries had escalated into a fast hail that hissed and rattled on the Buick’s rooftop. Whooshing away, the wipers cut wide arcs in the frosty windshield. Outside, the big calcium highway lights, ringed with halations, cast a stark white glare on the slick roadway unraveling before him.

  Mooney watched the phantom of a red taillight up ahead receding into vapory distance and wondered what mad demons sent him speeding over icy slick roads this night.

  It was uncanny the way Watford had suddenly uttered those careless words spoken to him by a man waking from the stupor of anesthesia over two years ago. “Son of a bitch dropped a block on someone’s head off a rooftop.”

  The words rang out like pealing bells in Mooney’s ear. Evidence of guilt. How else could Watford have known that? No way, unless he’d been told. Mooney hadn’t told him. He’d only said that the man was quite possibly a murderer. The fellow’s method of operation had been left unsaid. If only he could now forage the seemingly incontrovertible link between A. Boyd and P. Quintius. He almost thought he could.

  Still, maddeningly, beneath the giddy sense that he was within a hairbreadth of vindication was that taunting undercurrent of doubt—a doubt that sprang from the knowledge that whatever evidence he boasted had as its questionable source Charles Watford.

  Mooney’s foot pressed down harder on the accelerator. The studded snow tires of the Buick clattered over the lightly powdered macadam. He had not bothered to call the Quintius home to announce that he was coming. If he had, he felt certain that an audience would have been denied. Had he then been so foolish as to insist, he would have undoubtedly been referred to a lawyer. And also, he had no authority there. The case was officially closed, Gary Holmes committed for life to a psychiatric institute upstate.

  Arriving at Cold Spring Harbor, he got directions to the house at a filling station. In another ten minutes he was there. As the car turned between the two big stanchions and rolled in second gear up the gravel drive, he had a picture of Dowd and Mulvaney trying to explain themselves to the press. He laughed softly to himself.

  A diminutive, apple-cheeked German lady in a starched white uniform answered the front door.

  “Mr. Quintius, please.”

  “He is expecting you?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  She eyed the detective warily. “Whom shall I say is calling, please?”

  “Captain Mooney. New York City police.” He flashed his badge.

  She leaned forward and read it with her lips, then stared up at him standing in a cone of light cast from the big coach lanterns just outside the door. His hat dangled at his thigh and a light, white powder mantled the shoulders of his coat.

  The woman studied him a moment longer, then signaled him to come in out of the snow, standing to one side as he entered.

  “One moment, please. You would wait right here?”

  She disappeared noiselessly down a long hall and through a divider made from a pair of large Coromandel screens. From just beyond that point voices, muffled and tentative, drifted back at him. They came from an area defined by a soft diffusion of orange light. In the next moment he could hear two pair of footsteps treading back up the passage.

  The woman confronting him now was tall and striking. She wore a blue silk peignoir and satin slippers. Her feet seemed disproportionately small for her height. The little apple-cheeked German lady hovered just behind her, smiling hospitably.

  “I’m Isobel Quintius. Can I help you?”

  Mooney showed his badge again. “Captain Mooney. New York City police. Sorry to barge in like this.” She eyed him with distrust. “You wanted to see my husband?”

  “If that’s okay.”

  “In connection with what, may I ask?”

  “If it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to speak directly to him.”

  Her tone grew noticeably sharper. “In connection with my son, William Quintius?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  Her perturbation deepened. “Then it must have something to do with that awful little man who showed up here last week.”

  Mooney made a wry face. “What awful little man?” But he knew the answer even as he asked the question. “You mean Charles Watford?”

  “Yes. That’s the man.” She caught her breath. “My husband has not been well. We’ve been through a great deal over the past several months.”

  “I understand.”

  “My son, William …”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “So far as that other unfortunate incident,” she hurried on in a whisper, “I’m certain that my husband would prefer to drop the whole matter.” Mooney nodded, preferring to let her misjudge entirely the intention of his visit. “Well, then, if I might just see Mr. Quintius—”

  “Well,” she continued to watch him charily, “perhaps just for a few minutes. He’s really quite tired.”

  “I understand,” Mooney murmured with an air of doglike obedience. “This shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”

  A grandfather clock intoned deeply from some distant, unlighted area of the house above them. Suspicion flashed again in Mrs. Quintius’s eye and for a moment he held his breath, certain she was about to withdraw everything she’d just conceded.

  “Helga,” she called over her shoulder, “please show the captain out to the greenhouse.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Quintius.”

  “Wait here, please,” the little German lady whispered to him. “I’ll get my coat.”

  Mooney nodded gratefully.

  “Remember.” Isobel Quintius had once again recovered her icy demeanor. “Ten minutes. No more.”

  “I understand,” Mooney replied and watched her turn and quickly vanish between the Coromandel screens.

  72

  She’d left him off at the front door of the greenhouse and told him to go right on in. He was to follow the big center aisle, then turn right and go to the very end.

  Mooney watched the woman move off across the powdery snow. Waiting outside in the chill blasts gusting off the Sound, he huddled in his overcoat and peered into the greenhouse through one of the wide panes. Then with a sigh of resignation, he stepped in, dosed the door behind him and waited there, listening to the sound of his own breathing in the gloomy half-light.

  The place had the feeling of a hot moist cave. A light glowing from some point deep within the structure poured through the thickish air, casting a mottled greenish sheen like that of underwater light against the glass walls.

  In the next instant he was aware of the foliage, the sheer profusion of it—plants, trees, vines, fronds, flowers, of every imaginable shape and color, the size of them magnified threefold in that strange demi-light. The fragrance of it all, thousands of huge, extravagant blooms, breathing in the warm moist shadows, was overpowering.

  Mooney leaned against the wall, almost dizzy from the suffocating sweetness of it. Then he heard the snipping. He glanced up instantly like some predatory creature hearing the telltale sound of its quarry. It was a clicking sound—rapid, metallic.

  Mooney started to walk toward the light. The Mound of his own footsteps banging rudely over the wide-planked floors struck him as the desecration of a kind of holy place.

  Where the big center aisle branched, Mooney veered sharply right as he’d been told. He was confronted at once by a long, tubular structure, a glass tunnel at the end of which he descried a broad white circle of illumination. At roughly the center of that stood a figure. It was that of a man who appeared to be working over a long bench.

  As he strode up Quintius recognized him at once. “You’re the fellow who was with that crazy man who came to my gallery.”

  He removed a pair of mud-streaked rubber gloves, taking the hand that Mooney proffered. There was no trace of surprise or alarm in his face. Not so much as even a hint of uneasiness. It crossed Mooney’s mind with some disquiet that
his visit there was not entirely unexpected.

  “I take it your being here has something to do with that person [his pronunciation of the word conveyed disdain] who showed up here the other day.”

  Mooney reflected. “I just heard about that from your wife. Too bad, isn’t it. He’s a very sick man.” Quintius chuckled lightly. “You don’t have to tell me.”

  The blade of Quintius’s trowel glittered momentarily, then plunged deep into the potted soil. He’d been thinning out some of his bushier, more extravagant roses. He had a number of fresh shoots he was repotting. A stream of water drummed hollowly from a tap into a steel basin as he deftly spaded dark rich humus into big terra-cotta pots. “You mind if I just go about my work here?”

  “Sure. Go ahead. Don’t let me interrupt.” Quintius took up his trowel again and furrowed deeply into one of the big pots. “Just go on talking. I’m listening.” He spoke with his eyes riveted to the design of new cuttings he was planning for one of the clay pots. “Just what is your connection with this— man?”

  “That’s a long, complicated story,” Mooney said. A sharp little grin darted at the edges of his lips. “It has something to do with the fact that he says he once shared a hospital room with you.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “At Beth Israel. Two years ago.”

  Quintius’s huge rubbered fingers tamped a squirming shoot into the rich soil.

  “And obviously,” Mooney continued, “there are some good reasons to believe that you did, or I wouldn’t be here …”

  Quintius’s trowel never missed a stroke. “Then what?”

  “Then it would be my duty to tell you that you’re a prime suspect in the deaths of six people and to advise you of your rights.”

  Quintius completed tamping, then glanced up, seemingly unperturbed. “I’m aware of my rights, thank you. What six people?”

  “Six people who died as a result of objects dropped from rooftops over the past seven years. Another man has been crippled for life.”