Free Night-Bloom by Herbert Lieberman

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?”
    Watford gazed across at his roommate who lay, eyes open, staring blankly at the ceiling. “There were witnesses to the accident, weren’t there?”
    “Yes, witnesses,” the man replied in a manner that could have suggested affirmation or indifference. His eyes appeared to be transfixed on some indeterminate point across the room.
    “You took their names, of course?” Watford persisted.
    “Whose names?”
    “The witnesses. The people on the site. You did get their names?”
    The man shook his head dazedly.
    A look of puzzlement crossed Watford’s face and he shrugged.
    “Well, I’m sure glad you made it here on time. The nurse told me they had you on the table for three and a half hours, sewing up your leg. Too bad about the witnesses though. You could’ve taken the city for a bundle. Say, aren’t you going to eat your breakfast? With all that blood you lost, you need to get your strength back.”
    The man closed his eyes and merely nodded. Watford, however, was far from discouraged. He was feeling very fit that morning and the good spring weather had contributed mightily to a sense that he had licked the dark memories of the recent past. The sad indignity of banishment from his sister’s home in Pittsburgh. The bleak embattled days of Inez. There was even a certain guarded optimism he felt about his prospects for the future. For the nonce, however, he was happy to be alive, secure and cozy in the hospital.
    Watford grew curious about the sort of work the gentleman at his side might be engaged in. He was not so forward, however, as to ask the question directly.
    “Say, what was your name again? ‘Fraid I didn’t quite catch it the first time.”
    “Boyd,” the man murmured through lips taut with pain.
    “What was that?”
    “Boyd—Anthony Boyd.”
    “Boyd?” Watford pondered. “Don’t think I know any Boyds. Has your family been notified? Your wife?”
    “Abroad. Visiting relatives.”
    “Don’t you think she should know?”
    “No. No need. Only worry her.”
    “Is there anyone else? Any family to be notified?”
    “No. No one else.”
    “What about your job? Shouldn’t someone be told there?”
    “Not necessary. Not necessary.”
    There was an awkward silence. Then Watford resumed. “Can’t wait to get out of here and get back to work,”