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Authors: Herbert Lieberman

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BOOK: Night-Bloom
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A jowly, unshaven detective at the location was answering questions fired at him from a brash young female reporter.

Yes, he suspected foul play. Yes, there was some evidence that someone had been on the roof a short time before. Yes, someone, possibly injured, had been observed fleeing from the scene a short time later. And yes, this was indeed similar in pattern to five other such incidents over the past half-dozen years. Details were unclear. Witnesses were being sought. But, as of this moment, no one had yet come forth who might be able to supply descriptions of the fleeing figure. They were looking particularly for a man into whom the fleeing individual was said to have bumped. A telephone number, a hot line, was then flashed on the screen for the aid of those who had been in the vicinity at the time and might have seen something of significance.

A short time later, the plump, rosy nurse came in to check Watford. Finding him fast asleep, she tucked the blankets almost maternally about him. Sleeping, she noted, he seemed boyish and defenseless. There was something sad about him, she thought, then turned off the TV and moved across to the white-haired gentleman stirring intermittently in and out of anesthesia.

He murmured something and she knelt down the better to hear. “It’s all right. All right, m’dear. I’m here now. You’re doing fine. Just fine.” The lovely Gaelic lilt of her voice made it sound like a lullaby.

She adjusted the flow of liquid nourishment gurgling down the long yellowish tubes leading from the suspended glassine bags into his nose. He was a proper gentleman, she noted. His white hair spread out like a halo on the pillow gave him the look of some transfigured saint.

The man’s eyes fluttered open and he mumbled something. She tucked him under the chin playfully. “There now. How are we? You’re looking better already. You did quite a job on yourself. The doctor had to put twenty stitches into your leg. But you’re going to be just fine now. What’s that, m’dear? What did you say?”

The man’s parched lips moved feebly, struggling to shape sounds.

“What’s that, dear? I can’t …”

Something deep within the man, far down, sounding like a croak or a hoarse dry rattle, issued from his throat.

“What’s that, my dear?” she asked. “I’m sorry. I can’t hear you.”

11

“This guy, San Cristobal. Says he saw a man, directly after the drop, running east on Forty-ninth between Eighth and Ninth. Time approximately ten fifty-five.”

“East? That puts him running toward the scene of the crime. Brilliant, Defasio. You show great promise. Next, we got here Weingarten, Sarah. Lives in the building next door. Returning home last night, approximately eleven-ten. Claims to have seen a suspicious-looking black guy lurking in the alleyway between two buildings.”

“Just lurking? Not running?”

“Lurking is the word she used. Says so right here on the transcript of the call.”

“Lots of black guys lurking around Forty-ninth Street that time of night.”

“Right again, Defasio. And, besides, Weingarten has called in fourteen times before and always with some suspicious-looking black guy lurking. She’s got lurking black guys up her ass. Next?”

In a back office just to the rear of the squad room of Manhattan South Precinct, Frank Mooney shuffled through a file of white index cards. In all, he had nearly a hundred such cards, each one representing a telephone response to the hot line number that had been flashed on TV screens the night before. He sat at a desk littered with police mug shots, paper cups, and half-eaten crullers on greasy wax paper.

Opposite him sat a dark, intense-looking young man with a smooth boyish face that would seem more fitting on a square somewhere in Tuscany than in a precinct squad room off Times Square. Except for a carefully coiffed wave of black hair at the nape of his neck, he was completely bald and his manner suggested that of a man nursing some chronic grievance. His name was Michael Defasio and he was Mooney’s young partner.

“… we got here now one Boorzoonian, Amadeo. Rug merchant, 316 West Forty-ninth. Says he was out walking his dog round eleven
P.M.
and a gang of Puerto Rican kids comin’ up Eighth Avenue tried to swipe the dog.”

“So?” Mooney fumed. “Are we investigatin’ dog-napping or skull bashing? What makes him think they had anything to do with a forty-pound cinder block dropping off a rooftop on Forty-ninth Street?”

“They were coinin’ from that direction, weren’t they?”

“So were a million other people. Forget about Bosoomium. Next.”

“Callahan, Mary …”

The stupefying drudgery of sifting through mostly moronic eyewitness telephone depositions droned on into the late night. Just past midnight the energies of the younger man began to flag noticeably. Not so Mooney, however, eyes closed and seated Buddha-like, coiled in curlicues of cigarette smoke, tirelessly absorbing information.

By 12:30
A.M.
they had reduced all one hundred file cards into two distinct packs. The first, by far the larger, contained all of those depositions already dismissed as wildly improbable; the second, consisting of four or five cards, contained bits and shreds of information Mooney was eager to pursue.

One of the cards described having seen a man loitering in the vicinity of the building from which the lethal block had fallen. The witness claimed that she had never seen this man in the neighborhood before, but finally took notice after observing him in the same spot on four consecutive days, apparently watching the building. On her deposition she described the man as white, middle-aged, average height, basically nondescript. No special distinguishing characteristics. She could not be any more specific.

The next two cards described a youth, possibly eighteen, white, 180 pounds, six feet. He was fleeing the area at the time of the incident. While the physical descriptions on the two cards were nearly identical, one witness had the youth fleeing west on Forty-ninth Street, while the other had him fleeing east. However, since the physical descriptions of the fleeing youth tended to corroborate each other, as did the time at which he was observed fleeing, Mooney felt that the two cards were worth the time and effort of a follow-up.

A fourth card, and one of the most promising, was a deposition from a young Italian man, a construction worker, also resident of the building from which the block had fallen. He claimed to have had an assignation with a young woman on the site of the fatal drop. Occasionally, he said, they would meet on the roof, share a bottle of wine and make love.

That night he reached the roof earlier than his lady friend. While he waited for her there in a tangle of transoms, antennas and chimney pots, he thought he’d have a cigarette. As he struck his match he became aware out of the corner of his eye that he was not alone. About a hundred feet away at the ledge he spied a man, or what he assumed to be a man. It was a dark night, moonless, overcast, and what he saw in the distance was merely a shape, a silhouette.

At the moment in which his match burst into flame, casting its maximum illumination, the two men on the roof became acutely aware of each other. The man at the ledge started at once for the stairway door. But instead of continuing in that direction, he appeared to change his mind and veered sharply right, across the roof, then climbed over the side, down the fire escape.

For a moment the young construction worker stood frozen to the spot. A strapping big fellow, he admitted to a spasm of terror.

At last he summoned the courage to go over to the spot where the figure had disappeared. In that dim illumination he could see nothing but the spidery tangle of grill work from the fire escapes nearest the upper stories. Below, however, he could hear the clatter of footsteps rattling down the iron rungs of the escape ladders. There was a moment of silence, followed shortly by a sharp grating thud, as of heels impacting on the cement of the alleyway below. A short groan ensued, followed by footsteps running, then silence.

In the next moment, the girl arrived. He told her what had happened. Instead of remaining on the roof, they concluded that it might be prudent to go downstairs. That’s when they discovered from neighbors in the halls that a man lay dead on the sidewalk in front of the building, a forty-pound cinder block having cleft his skull.

The last card in Mooney’s file was that of a retired postal worker, a widower, and resident of the same building, who’d been watching Johnny Carson and claimed to have glanced up just in time to see a fleeting shape on his fire escape. He happened to have the apartment on the first floor, and his fire escape, about twelve feet off the ground, fronted on the alleyway.

As he stood up to confront the intruder, the figure simply vanished over the side, making the drop between the last rung of the ladder and the alleyway below.

The old gentleman heard a groan, no doubt the same groan heard by the Italian construction worker, followed by the same running footsteps. He threw open his window and went out onto the fire escape to see what he could see. Whoever or whatever had been there was clearly gone, but just below him, directly beneath the fire-escape ladder and in the light cast from his own windows, he could see a bright splash of red.

“Any word from the ME on those blood samples?” Mooney glanced up from the cards into the tired, petulant features before him. “Hey, Defasio,” he snapped his fingers. “Do I bore you? Wake up.”

“They’re typing them now. We oughta have ‘em first thing in the morning.”

“And that patch of stuff they found on the ladder?”

“It’s a piece of raincoat fabric. Probably from a pocket. They got it out now with a fiber expert. That’s gonna be a lot of nothing.” .

“Oh?” Mooney snapped rubber bands round his packet of cards. “Get it for me.”

“Sure—First thing in the morning.”

“Right now.”

“Come on, Mooney. Don’t break my chops.”

“I said, go get it for me.”

“How special can raincoat fiber be? They’ll tell you it’s Egyptian cotton and rayon. So, big deal. What the hell’s it gonna get you?”

“Get it for me now.”

Defasio’s expression appeared strained. “It’s nearly eight o’clock. There’s no one down there this hour. Gimme a break, for God’s sake, will ya?”

“Now,” Mooney snarled. “I don’t go to bed. You don’t go to bed.”

Sergeant Defasio ground his teeth. There was a strong undercurrent of dislike between the two men. From a career point of view, to have been partnered with Mooney was tantamount to a demotion and the younger man knew it. “I told you, it’s with an expert. Probably in some laboratory. I’ll get it for you first thing in the morning. Lemme go, will ya, Mooney? I ain’t seen my kids in three days. My wife’s ready to run off with the circus.”

“You’d both be better off. All right, go home. Get out of my face. Just be down here nine
A.M.
tomorrow. You hear me, nine
A.M.
Wear soft shoes. We got a lot of walkin’ to do. Get me that swatch first thing. Then we’re goin’ over and see us some people at 310 West Forty-ninth.”

Defasio rose and grabbed his jacket. “Aren’t you goin’?”

Mooney was still shuffling through the cards, a distant, abstract look in his eye, shuffling as if he were a magician, conjuring the numbers.

“Hey, Mooney? Ain’t you goin’ home at all?”

“What the hell for?” Mooney’s eyes swarmed upward. “It’s almost time to come back. I’ll hang around awhile.”

The big, rumpled, slightly disreputable-looking detective pulled a stack of
Racing Forms
out of his desk top. “I’ll catch up on some reading. Hey, since you’re goin’ home early, Defasio, whyn’t you pick me up a few burgers and a couple of Cokes before you leave?”

12

“You’re a lucky man, I’ll say that. A very lucky man.”

Watford stretched luxuriously in bed, a tray of soiled breakfast dishes balanced on his covered knees. It was 9:00
A.M.
and the soft May sunlight slanted through the rain-mottled plate windows of the room. Outside, the tips of spruce and newly bloomed dogwood spiked upward from the hospital courtyard just below.

Amiable and chatty, Watford rattled on at the gray, motionless figure supine in the bed beside him. “I’d judge you have an airtight case against the city. Imagine just going off like that and leaving a manhole uncovered. It’s inexcusable. The height of irresponsibility. There were witnesses, I take it?”

BOOK: Night-Bloom
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