19

The Weeder took the news badly. The color drained from his face. His eyes narrowed. A lid twitched. He peered distractedly at the street between two slats of the Venetian blind.

“I swear to you,” Snow said from across the room, “I didn’t tell him where you were.”

“He could have followed you.”

“I saw him hail a cab. I saw him leave. I lost myself in a crowd at Copley Square. I changed buses twice.”

“He could have traced the call when you phoned him back.”

“I dialed from a downtown booth.”

The Weeder watched an automobile cruise slowly past Esther’s house. When it disappeared from view he turned to stare at Snow. “I don’t understand how you could do something that dumb,” he said impatiently. His eyes darted around the room, settled on a pewter candlestick with a cream-colored candle in it. He went over and hefted it, absently measuring its weight. “I know those people in Washington-they’re all alike. What else did you tell him?”

Snow looked at the candlestick, then at the Weeder. “That’s all. I give you my word.”

“You didn’t tell him about my pretending to be a Soviet spy?”

“I didn’t say a word about that part.”

“You said I was trying to prevent an atrocity. That’s all?”

“I told him about the attempts to kill you.”

‘Three attempts. Did you tell him there were three attempts?”

Snow nodded. “I described the first two-the man with the tattoos who tried to incinerate you, the business in the library when they pumped out all the air.”

“Did he believe you?”

Snow smiled nervously. “Silas, you’re frightening me,” she whispered.

“I have to know if he believed you,” the Weeder insisted. “Everything … everything … depends on it.”

“I don’t think he really believed me until I told him about the third time they tried to kill you-until I told him I was there and witnessed the whole thing.”

Some of the tension seemed to seep from the Weeder’s face muscles. To Snow it looked like a tide receding. A thin attempt at a sheepish grin spread across his lips. “Tell me again what he said this morning,” he ordered.

“I told you twice already.”

“Tell me a third time.”

“He said he had nosed around. Those were his exact words. He said he was convinced you had stumbled onto something important. He said that you and he had to put your heads together.”

“I could go downtown and call him,” the Weeder remarked.

“He won’t talk to you over the phone. He thinks it’s too dangerous. He says he absolutely has to meet with you.” Snow reached out to rest her fingers on the Weeder’s knuckles. “I know Michael Fargo, Silas. I’d trust him with my life.”

“You’re trusting him with my life,” the Weeder pointed out.

Snow said very quietly, very convincingly, “If it comes down to it, I’d trust him with your life too.”

“That’s easy for you to say-”

Snow retorted angrily, “It’s not easy for me to say at all. This is the first time since Jeb’s-” She took a breath, started over again. “You mean a great deal to me.”

The Weeder asked reluctantly, “Where does he want to meet me?”

“In a fish restaurant near the wharfs. Tomorrow. At noon.”

“Do you have to confirm it?”

“He said not to call him back-the less we used the phone, the better, he said. He’ll be there. He’s counting on me to talk you into coming.”

“I don’t know,” muttered the Weeder.

The room was growing dark. He walked over to the blind and parted the slats with a finger and looked out again. The street was deserted. The yellowish lights the city had recently installed made everything in sight look unreal, invented. He noticed a sliver of a moon hanging over the roof of the house across from them. That, at least, looked genuine enough. “There was a sliver of a moon the night my man Nate made his way across Long Island to Flatbush and Molly,” he remembered.

Snow sensed he was slipping into a role, into an incarnation, but she refused to follow him; refused to recite lines someone else had spoken; refused to live a life that had already been lived.

The Weeder set the candlestick down on a floorboard. He found a match and, cupping a palm around the flame, lit the wick. Instantly, shadows danced across the wall. His eyes brightened and he looked around as if he had suddenly been transported to a magic lantern theater. “I love shadows,” he whispered. He stared at the candle, spellbound by the thinness, the blueness, the stillness of the flame leaping from it.

Snow limped over to him and drew him to his feet and put her arms around his neck. She shivered, got control of herself, kissed him on the lips. And smiling a smile that held back a torrent of tears, she started to undo the tiny buttons down the front of her shirt.