Night-Bloom

by Herbert Lieberman

  Quintius grew pensive, then took up his trowel once more. Mooney had to give the man credit. If he was playing a part, he was doing it to perfection. There was no discernible lapse, no self-betraying sign of protest or alarm. Not even any attempt to defend himself. Quite the contrary, he now appeared solicitous, even helpful.

  “Haven’t I read something about that recently?”

  “You probably have. A man by the name of Holmes confessed to the killings. At present he’s in a mental institution up in Wingdale. Too whacko to stand trial.”

  “Then why bother me? May I have those shears, please.”

  Mooney continued to speak as he passed the shears across the potting table. “I’m bothering you because Holmes is innocent. His confession, I’m sorry to say, was pretty much wrung out of him.”

  “I see. And you believe I’m guilty. What evidence have you?”

  “Only circumstantial, but in time I’m convinced I can prove it.”

  In truth, Mooney was convinced of no such thing.

  Even if he could establish beyond doubt that Quintius and Watford had shared a hospital room, it was quite a leap from there to prove in the absence of eyewitness testimony that Quintius was the Bombardier.

  “By chance, can you tell me your blood type?”

  “AB-positive,” Quintius replied at once. “Anyone who’s served in the army knows that. But that’s hardly evidence.”

  “Only of a minor sort. What’s a bit more disturbing is that you registered at the hospital in a name other than your own. And while you were there recovering from surgery, you confessed to Charles Watford that you’d just killed a man by dropping a cinder block on his head from a rooftop.” Quintius’s shears snipped on with no perceptible break in rhythm. “Did Mr. Watford tell you that?”

  “He did.”

  “And you believe this poor, admittedly”—he cast about for Mooney’s word—“whacko creature?”

  “Poor, yes. Unstable, yes. But not entirely whacko.” Mooney watched his expression for the slightest reaction.

  Quintius thumbed a fresh young cutting into the rich black humus. “A matter of degree, then, his lunacy?”

  “It wouldn’t be hard to puncture his credibility as a witness in a court of law, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “Exactly.” Quintius nodded. “Is there anything further I can do for you?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is.” The detective smiled back directly level into Quintius’s eyes. “Would you mind dropping your trousers so I can see if there’s any recent surgical scars on your butt.” Quintius was neither flustered nor surprised. If anything, he seemed amused. “I’m afraid it’s getting late, Captain. You’d better get back to the city before this snow gets much worse.”

  “If you’re innocent,” Mooney pressed harder, “there’s nothing to hide.”

  “I have nothing to hide, but you’re quite beyond your authority coming out here. This is the jurisdiction of Suffolk County.”

  “If you prefer, I can request that the Suffolk police ask you to drop your trousers.”

  Quintius disregarded the facetiousness. “Let me give you my attorneys’ number. Take the matter up with them. In the meantime”—he rose, extending his hand—“my best to Mr. Watford. And good night.”

  “You’ll make it easier on all of us if you confess.” Once again there was the wry, likable smile, made oven more so by a kind of noble fatigue. “I wish I could, Captain, if only to get you and Mr. Watford off my back. But if I did, I’d be just as crazy as Mr. Holmes. I’m not a murderer. I’m quite well respected in my business, in this community. And, frankly, I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s why I’m suggesting that you take the matter up with my lawyers—the way any sensible man would who suddenly found himself accused of murdering six people.”

  The calm, unruffled affability of it rattled Mooney.

  He’d been expecting something else. He couldn’t say exactly what, but patient, good-natured indulgence was certainly not it.

  He had just about played his last card when he happened to glance around at some of the larger potted plants surrounding Quintius. Just behind him, in the uttermost branches of an eight-foot succulent, he noted an enormous white bloom. Easily twelve inches across, the flower nodding from the burden of its own weight appeared to have just bloomed.

  “May I ask what that flower is?”

  Quintius turned and gazed up at it. “Hyalocereus Grandiflora. More commonly known as nightblooming cereus.”

  It was as if Mooney had been punched in the stomach. The fact that he was still able to smile astonished him. “That’s what I thought it was.”

  “Are you familiar with nightbloomers?”

  “Not really. But I know someone who has one just like that. By any chance do you know a Mr. Anthony Boyd? From Wilmette? He’s an authority on the subject.”

  Up till that moment he had failed to get any sort of a rise out of Quintius; this time, however, he knew he’d succeeded. Something appeared to pass across the man’s eyes. It was like a film or a shift in light. So fast it was, so slight, as to be nearly imperceptible. But this time it was there and he’d seen it. For that moment alone it had been worth the trip.

  Footsteps echoed hollowly behind him. He turned to see Isobel Quintius materialize out of the shadows. She had tossed a trench coat over her shoulders; the blue of the peignoir trailed well below the hem of it. On her head she wore a yellow rain wimple tied beneath her chin. Beads of melting snowdrops glistened on its broad, floppy brim. She looked apprehensively back and forth from one of them to the other.

  “I’m just on my way, Mrs. Quintius.” Mooney buttoned his overcoat and tucked his collar up around his ears. “Afraid I kept him a bit beyond the ten minutes I’d promised. We just discovered that we have a mutual passion for flowers.” Mooney smiled at her, and nodded at Quintius. “Don’t bother to show me out. I can find my way.”

  73

  “Nightblooming cereus. Are you familiar with nightbloomers?” Mooney’s voice rang in the cold vacancy of the car. He had a vision of Jeffrey Archer belted into a motorized wheelchair; a pencil for writing stuck between his lips, a potted plant beside his bed; a small white card skewered onto its topmost branches; BEST WISHES, A. BOYD. “Son of a bitch. Gotcha, smartass. Wriggle and squirm all you please. You’re mine.”

  Driving through the eerie muffled silence of the .snow-covered countryside toward the expressway, Mooney gloated. “His eyes—that thing in his eyes when I said Boyd. Up until that moment he was perfect. Not a false note. Then Boyd, Wilmette and bang. That slight wince as if he’d been nipped. Son of a bitch. Two’ll get you five, when the judge orders that bastard to drop his pants there’ll be suture scars. A fuckin’ railroad track runnin’ from the back of the thigh right up into his can.”

  “What did he want?”

  Quintius had begun to rinse off his potting tools and sponge the mud droppings from the aluminum sink top down the gurgling drain.

  “Was it something to do with that awful business last week? That dreadful man?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Isobel waited, expecting more.

  Quintius gazed up from the sink, cold water from the tap streaming down his mud-streaked hands. “Well?”

  “That man,” Quintius went on. “What’s his name?”

  “Watford.”

  “Yes. That’s it—Watford. He claims I shared a hospital room with him two years ago.”

  “Two years ago? You weren’t in any hospital two years ago.”

  “I know.” Quintius smiled oddly.

  She watched him dry his hands with a wad of paper towels. Her face wore a petulant expression. “How odd. When two years ago?”

  “May.”

  “Where was I?”

  “London—Ruth was having the baby and you went over to help Freddy.”

  “Oh, yes. Of course.” Her distress lightened momentarily. “But even if you had shared a room with him?
What’s all that supposed to mean?”

  Quintius spun the spigot off and shrugged. “That detective, Mooney. The fellow who was just here. He seems to feel it implicates me in murder.”

  Her brow arched and she stared at him a long moment. “Murder?‘You?”

  “Not just one, Isobel.” Quintius laughed oddly. “A whole series. Six people. I’m accused of dropping cinder blocks from rooftops onto people’s heads. Me? Can you imagine?”

  In the next moment they were both laughing wildly. Tears streaked down Isobel’s flaming cheeks.

  That night at Beth Israel Hospital, Watford began to hemorrhage. His leukocyte count had nearly doubled to the point where his white blood cells so outnumbered the red that there was real danger that he would suffocate. Massive transfusions were ordered and he was immediately put on oxygen. Dr. Ramsay was called at home. Watford was not expected to last the night.

  74

  “You have no case.”

  “And I’m telling you I do.” Mooney’s face was red. He thrust a trembling finger at the district attorney, then swung it about in a half-arc to include Commissioner Dowd and Captain Mulvaney. “You’re all scared. You’re frightened that if this thing is opened again, you’re all gonna look like jackasses. Well, you are. You’ve got the wrong guy.”

  “You haven’t proved a thing by me, Mooney,” Dowd thundered. “Not a goddamned thing.”

  “What have you given us that’s new?” the district attorney asked. He was a sallow figure with bad skin, and when he spoke it was with an air of earnest but infuriating commiseration. “Let’s be realistic, Frank. You don’t really expect me to bring new charges with this kind of evidence?” He held up the sheaf of reports and depositions Mooney had filed over the past five years. “A man shares a hospital room with another man. Incurs injury to his thigh. Happens to cultivate exotic cactuses that bloom one night a year. The other man, a known drug addict and admittedly a kook, accuses Mr. Thigh-injury of being the Bombardier. To add to all this our key witness is presently at death’s door. Now I don’t mean to make light of what you say or sound facetious, Frank, but doesn’t all this strike you as just a bit airy, possibly insubstantial?”

  As the DA had just described the facts, it certainly did. Mooney was not about to admit that, however. “No more airy than some feebleminded retard who was railroaded …”

  “Now just a minute …” Mulvaney sprang to his feet. “Railroaded.”

  “That’s right. Railroaded.” Mooney thumped the desk top. “I oughta know. I spoke to the poor, dumb son of a bitch.”

  Dowd rose to his feet. “I will not sit here and …”

  “Sit down, Phil,” the DA thundered.

  “I won’t sit here and be a part of this.”

  “Sit down, for God’s sake, and let’s try to act like reasonable people.”

  “Let him be reasonable.” Dowd wagged a finger at Mooney, then slumped back into his chair. Sighing, the DA turned back to Mooney. “Now, Frank, let’s hear exactly what you have to say.”

  “I’ve already said what I have to say. I say they extracted this confession from Holmes. They grilled that poor dim bulb for forty-eight hours straight. He’d have confessed to anything. The mayor’s blowtorch was up your collective asses and you needed a quick patsy.”

  A sharp yelp went up. Mortified, the DA sprang from one to the other. “Quiet. Be quiet, for God’s sake. This is a municipal office. The walls have ears.” He waved his arm wildly at the bookshelves and the door leading to the anteroom beyond. “Come on, Mooney. You know that’s unfair. Holmes wasn’t railroaded. I was there too. I spoke with him. Simple-minded, yes. But perfectly capable of comprehending his actions. Medically sane according to the law’s definition. Yes, he was questioned for a long period of time, but he had court-appointed attorneys with him every minute. You know that as well as I do. Now, you don’t call that railroaded, do you?” Mooney grumbled something and sank deeper into his chair. The DA continued: “And when the cinder block was found in the guy’s apartment …”

  “That was a setup,” Mooney interrupted. “Holmes planted that there himself. The guy wanted to be indicted.”

  Dowd groaned and flung his hands up. “Howie, don’t bother. You’re talking to rock.”

  The DA disregarded the commissioner, continuing instead to bear down on Mooney. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again, Frank. You’ve got no case. If you did, I’d be the first to admit my mistake and take my lumps. You ask me now to petition the Suffolk county police to physically examine Quintius for surgical scar tissue, but so far you haven’t given me a scintilla of hard evidence. Not a witness. Not a fingerprint. I’m not going out to Suffolk and make a jackass of myself.”

  Mooney gazed around and took a last desperate fling: “What about Quintius’s own confession?”

  “You mean to Watford? In the hospital? That’s Watford’s word against Quintius’s.” The DA tossed his head back and laughed. “Given everything you know about Watford’s history, would you have the guts to bring a word of his testimony into court with you?” The DA sensed wavering convictions. He probed now for the soft points. “So what am I supposed to go back into court with—a bit of circumstantial evidence? Some mildly diverting coincidences, and Frank Mooney’s gut feelings? I’m sorry, Frank. I’m afraid I have to agree with the commissioner and the chief. Unless you can bring me something more substantive than you have, I’m not going to reopen this can of worms.”

  Mooney sat smoldering in his chair under the collective gaze of his adversaries. He stared straight ahead, declining to meet their eyes. When at last he spoke, his voice was ominously quiet. “What about Mr. Holmes up there in Wingdale? What about him?”

  “What about him?” Dowd asked. “You haven’t proved the man’s not guilty. And even if he isn’t, like you say, Wingdale’s probably the best break the poor bastard’s had his whole misbegotten life.”

  “Beats sleeping on roofs,” Mulvaney added. Mooney swung his gaze round to each of them. There was a sly, suddenly defiant expression in his eye. “What if I go to the press myself? Tell my side?” The DA leaned forward on the desk, clasping his palms before him. When he spoke again the room was very still. “You go to the media with this story, Frank, and you’re all alone. Peter Quintius is a highly respected businessman with gilt-edged credentials, and a triple-A credit rating. When they hit you for libel and defamation of character, don’t look this way for help. You’re all by yourself out there. And this time there’s no coming back in with a raise and a promotion. This time it’s for keeps. Finis.” He studied the effect of his words on the detective. “Believe me, Frank. Finis.”

  JANUARY-MAY/‘83

  75

  Winter in New York along about the end of January is an ungodly thing. The November fun of wool socks and heavy overcoats pales quickly. Snow, once white and purifyingly beautiful, takes on a grim, used look. Sub-zero temperatures, icy blasts, and the harsh, unremitting gray of daily life in the city will break the spirit of all but the heartiest.

  It was now mid-February and though spring was a mere month off, winter showed not the slightest inclination of relenting. The inclement weather continued to come, rolling vengefully down out of Canada and the Northwest. The streets outside East Seventy-third Street were coated with a brown dirty slush, surmounted by innumerable pyramids of dog droppings. All day and night mephitic steam swirled out of the sewers and up into the gloomy avenues and byways. The pavements, indifferently shoveled by reluctant building porters, glistened with small archipelagos of lethal ice that had to be negotiated by the wary walker at risk of shattered limbs.

  If cold weather had disheartened Mooney, his encounter with Dowd, Mulvaney and the district attorney had just about demolished him. Torn between certain conviction that the wrong man had been charged with the cinder-block killings, and his desire to hold on, by the fingertips if need be, for the two more years that would afford him graceful retirement, he had swallowed pride, kept his mouth shut and cre
pt back into his corner.

  But winter and loss of self-esteem had taken its toll. Fritzi recognized the symptoms and without bothering to consult packed a small bag for each of them and reserved a pair of seats on an American Airlines Friday-night flight to Barbados.

  When Mooney came home that evening, she huddled him protesting and muttering into a cab and off they went to Kennedy Airport. Several times he tried to get out of the cab, citing the pressing nature of his work. But Fritzi had all the answers, having first confirmed with the department that he still had several weeks of unused vacation left over from the year before.

  They were in Barbados by 11:00 P.M., stepping off the plane out of February into the moist velvet warmth of a tropical night.

  As they cleared customs the airport bustled with traffic. Outside, the Barbadian cabdrivers in shirtsleeves scurried about, shouting destinations and hustling for customers.

  Fritzi hailed the fellow who was piping “Discovery Bay.” He was an immense, Buddha-like figure with a high voice and a glistening black moon of a face framed in the most cordial of smiles. He escorted them to his car outside, loaded them courteously into the rear, then raced back with their tickets to redeem their luggage.

  They drove across the island from the airport with the windows down, through winding narrow roads lined with sugarcane and shanty villages. The soft night full of the shrill piping of tree frogs and drenched with hibiscus and oleander flooded in upon them.

  In forty minutes they were at the hotel. Discovery Bay was a sprawling colonial plantation, a broad expanse of white porticoes and immaculate stone verandas, set amid the dark shadows of encroaching foliage.

  Their room, a private cabana, opened directly onto the beach. In another twenty minutes they had changed clothes, swam in the warm turquoise water of an illuminated pool and were having a nightcap at the outdoor bar.

  Mooney glanced over his shoulder. He looked about disparagingly but she could see that he was impressed. “They got a racetrack here?”