“Not helping her as they should have. But that’s beside the point. They want to help her now.”
“When she doesn’t need their help.”
“She needs it, Dante. She’s going to have a baby.”
Dante’s mind whirled. Each time he’d made love with Verna he’d used a condom. She’d also taken birth control pills. They both knew how an early, unwanted pregnancy could alter their lives. Neither wanted to take the chance.
But nothing was perfect.
“Orvey’s left the ranch, too, Dante.”
It took Dante a few seconds to grasp what Strong had told him. “You mean with Verna?”
“No. Maybe that’s what he should have done. He said he didn’t have it in him, that he was afraid and couldn’t make it. And Verna didn’t want him. I think probably they were both right.”
“Damn it!” Dante said. He kept repeating it, slamming his fist into his pillow.
Strong must have heard the softened blows over the phone. “You want to come back to the ranch for a few days, Dante? Your grades can take it.”
“You sure Orvey isn’t with Verna?”
“He went the opposite direction.” There was disdain in Strong’s voice.
“Then Verna’s all alone with this.”
“It’s how she wants it. And she’s got family, Dante.”
“I oughta. . God, I don’t know!”
“She doesn’t want to see you again. She’s thought it out. You’ve gotta respect her wishes, Dante. She. . left a letter for you. I mailed it yesterday, figuring once I did that, I’d get up the courage to call you rather than have you read it cold. It should be in today’s mail.”
“Damn it, Adam!” Dante couldn’t hold back the sobs any longer.
“C’mon home, son. Come home to the ranch.”
Dante didn’t answer until he got his gasping sobs under control. He felt cold, but he noticed with surprise that his hands were sweating, slippery on the phone. “This weekend,” he said. “I can’t get there till this weekend. I’ve got a big calculus test.”
“Whatever you want,” Strong said. He sounded as if he might start sobbing himself.
“Goddamn that Orvey! Why the fuck-”
“You’ve gotta get used to it, Dante. It’s something that happened. A part of life you’ve got no choice but to learn to live with.”
“Don’t I know it?”
“You gonna be okay there by yourself?”
“I’ve always been okay by myself.”
“Dante, that’s not right. You don’t have to think like that anymore.”
“I know, Adam.” Dante wiped his nose with the back of his wrist. “Thanks for calling and letting me know.”
“I wish it hadn’t been necessary. I sure as hell do.”
Though his eyes brimmed with tears, Dante had to smile. Adam Strong using profanity. It didn’t happen very often. That touched Dante more than anything.
Verna, Orvey, they didn’t just mess themselves up; even if they didn’t mean to, they hurt a lot of people, caused so much pain. It might go on for years.
“Thanks again,” Dante said softly, and hung up.
He felt so much older lying there. Like an old man who’d somehow found himself in a young man’s room. He realized he’d been old the first day he arrived at the ranch. Too much of him had died after his father killed his mother.
He’d begun to die when the gun his father aimed at him clicked on a bullet that hadn’t fired.
Verna’s letter wasn’t in that afternoon’s mail, but it arrived the next day. Dante didn’t open it. He knew why Verna didn’t want him, the only reason it could be: she’d seen beneath the thin new skin to the old Dante, the real Dante. He’d stared into the mirror last night and seen the real Dante himself, like sharp bones pushing through the flesh of a corpse.
He used both hands to crumple the unopened envelope with Verna’s handwriting on it into as small a damaged object as possible, then dropped it in one of the trash receptacles that were placed around the campus.
Verna was simply something that had happened.
Something in the past.
38
This time when the Night Sniper’s simple typed note bearing a theater seat number arrived in Repetto’s mail, they didn’t have to waste time figuring out which theater.
“This is it,” Repetto said, standing up from his desk chair and showing Meg and Birdy the note. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” Meg asked, replacing the plastic lid she’d just removed from her Styrofoam coffee cup. She’d been prepared to sit at her desk, get her caffeine fix, and work the phones.
“We don’t have to play by his rules this time.” Repetto pointed to the
Meg and Birdy looked. A play at the off-off Broadway theater Candle in the Night was circled:
“If he stays true to form, the Night Sniper’s next victim’s going to be the beggar man,” Repetto said.
“Big
“Everything is,” Repetto said. “That’s one way he yanks our strings. But this is the only play listed with ‘beg’ in the title. It might not be the only place we have to search, but it should be the first.”
Fast and sure, when he decided it was time to move, Meg thought. It was one reason she respected Repetto.
He was already on his way out.
Meg and Birdy followed, Meg taking a hurried sip from where the tab was bent back on her cup’s plastic lid and scalding her tongue.
Candle in the Night was located in SoHo, in what used to be a restaurant. Repetto remembered having dinner there years ago with Lora and one of her clients, who was writing a book about cops and pumped him for information. There were show posters outside it now, advertising
The theater was larger than it appeared from outside. Stepped wooden platforms had been installed to provide unobstructed seating. The stage was narrow and seemed to be at a slight angle to the audience. There was lots of lighting equipment in shadows overhead, and the set, what appeared to be an English drawing room or club, was surprisingly professional and richly detailed.
The seats on each side of a center aisle were a bit worn looking and had probably been acquired when an
