“A repertory company, like the Old Abbey,” Peter finished. It was one of Old Giff’s more repeated riffs, and Giff repeated a lot of his riffs. Yet Peter had never been relegated to spear-carrying. He had been too good to waste on the chorus, for even a single production.
“Yes, exactly. And Perri had played by the rules, taking parts large and small, doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work. The year after she was the lead in The Lark, she did chorus in Brigadoon with no complaint. It was one thing to cancel Whistle-I think even Perri knew it was a stretch-but to see Kat, who had never auditioned for a school play, waltz in and end up with a plum lead in a show that her father had lobbied for…well, I’m sure it stuck in Perri’s craw. She didn’t even try out for the spring play this year-Our Town, which I chose because I thought she would be a wonderful Emily. She was mad at me. She was mad at everyone, it seemed, this past year.”
“Well, that explains it, doesn’t it?” Peter didn’t see how he could ever lead the conversation back to himself now, not in a graceful way.
“Maybe,” Giff said, rubbing his cheeks again. “Maybe. You know what you should do?”
“What?”
“You should speak-or sing, yes, sing-at today’s assembly. We should pick an appropriate song. For Kat.”
“I don’t know…” Peter was thinking of the songs he had sung to Kat three years ago, made-up songs that he would be mortified to re-create for anyone, ever.
“Not a show tune, just something sweet and simple. A hymn-well, not a hymn-hymn, someone would complain, and it would be so Madalyn Murray O’Hair all over again. But you should sing. Or speak.”
“I don’t think so, Giff.”
“Oh, you must. You must, Peter. For me. For Kat.”
And so it happened that Peter Lasko stood before the assembled student body of Glendale High School after a series of presentations-by the principal, by the county executive, by a pretty young guidance counselor who encouraged students to come talk to her about anything, absolutely anything, with the promise of absolute confidentiality.
Like any actor worth a damn, he had stage fright, but he’d never had it in such overwhelming proportions before. Willing his legs not to shake, Peter clasped his arms across his chest and leaned into the mike, singing the song that Giff, the principal, and the guidance counselor had finally agreed was appropriate: “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” It was, ironically, a show tune and a hymn. Peter sang in a clear, unaffected tenor, although it is doubtful that anyone heard the final, powerful build, for the girls in the auditorium began to cry so hard and so lustily that they drowned him out, almost as if he were starring in Bye Bye Birdie. Suffer indeed.
Peter, who had been Billy Bigelow in Carousel, realized he’d never had a chance to sing this particular song before, given that it’s first performed over Billy’s dead body. And in the reprise, at the play’s end, Bill just stands to the side, a ghost, praying for his daughter to hear the choir’s words and heed them, to know that she is loved, that he would always be there for her even if he was dead.
The last note, while not the highest, was a bitch, even transposed to a friendlier key for his tenor range, but Peter nailed it. You’ll never walk alone. You’ll never walk A-LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONE.
He absolutely nailed it, not that anyone heard.
21
The Kahns were adamant that they did not want to speak to the police in Perri’s room, but neither did they want to leave her for even a few minutes. Middle-class people, used to having rights, they assumed this ended the discussion. They couldn’t leave their daughter, they didn’t want to be interviewed in front of their daughter, so the police would have to come back later.
But they were also reasonable people, and when it was explained that the conversation could not be postponed, they agreed to take turns, meeting with Lenhardt and Infante in the hospital’s food court one at a time. Lenhardt allowed them to think he was accommodating them, but it was what he had wanted all along, getting each parent alone. He was surprised they didn’t insist on calling their high-priced lawyer, but it probably didn’t occur to them that they needed legal advice. Good.
First came the father, Zachary Kahn, although his wife called him Zip. Lenhardt began by asking about that, a way of settling in, as if he were making small talk with the father of one of Jessica’s or Jason’s friends.
“An old nickname,” the man explained, grasping his cup of black coffee in two hands as if it were a winter day and he was trying to warm himself. “I gave it to myself, in my twenties. I wanted a nickname, and I liked that comic Zippy the Pinhead, so I anointed myself Zip. Twenty years later I’m still Zip. The follies of youth.”
“I always wanted a nickname, too. But my mom insisted that people call me Harold. Not Harry or Hal. Now I can’t bear it when someone shortens my name straight off, without even asking.”
Zip Kahn-what an unfortunate name to carry into adulthood-looked as if he wanted to say something normal, something expected, except he no longer knew what normal was. He and his wife had been at the hospital for almost seventy-two hours, going home only to shower. Of course Lenhardt couldn’t know what the guy looked like on a typical day, but there were traces of energy and vitality. Zip was stocky and athletic-looking, with a round face and an admirably thick crop of hair, the kind that never fell out and barely grayed.
“As I told you Friday, we traced the gun,” Lenhardt said, plunging in. “To Michael Delacorte.”
“Right. Perri baby-sat for the Delacortes.” He seemed to think this fact explained and closed the discussion.
“Now that we’ve checked it out, we don’t see any of the other girls having access to that gun. But I also have to assume you didn’t know it was in your daughter’s possession.”
Like a boxer getting a second wind, the guy seemed to sharpen through sheer will. “How can you be so sure the gun was ever in her possession? Have you been able to make that connection with certainty? Opportunity doesn’t equal certainty.”
Eddie Dixon had prepared the parents well, then.
“Your daughter worked for them. The other girls didn’t.”
“And Dale Hartigan was pals with Stewart Delacorte. For all you know, he took the gun, and his daughter took it from him, and that’s how it came to be at the school.”
Yeah, right. “We’ll ask him about that. Believe me. We’ll ask him.”
“Okay, then.” Said emphatically, as if something important had been settled. Lenhardt did not want to be unkind to the man, but he needed to tug him gently back to reality, away from the paranoid rationalizations he was using to comfort himself.