No Safe Place (12 page)

“Doesn’t someone else have this room reserved?” Kerry asked. “Maybe for an Amway meeting?”

“Anthony’s Legions,” Kit Pace said dryly.

Clayton shrugged. “We’ve got another half hour, Kerry, reviewing Frank’s greatest hits. Thirty-second spots of you at your most adorable.”

“Hate to miss it,” Kerry said, standing. “But I’ve got
Good Morning San Diego.
A whole fifteen minutes, and it’s free. I don’t even have to watch myself.”

The telephone rang. Clayton rose to answer, listened for a moment, and then signaled Kerry to stay.

“What is it?” Kerry asked.

Clayton took a moment to answer. “Dick Mason just landed in Boston. He’s speaking in front of the abortion clinic in an hour.”

We should have guessed,
Kerry thought. “New federal legislation,” he said at once. “Unleash the resources of the FBI. Anything this President can do for him.”

The room was quiet again. Then Nat Schlesinger shrugged. “It’s still a one-day story.”

Frank Wells looked up at Kerry. “Maybe you should go to one of the funerals. Preferably a woman’s—the nurse or the receptionist.”

“No,” Clayton said crisply. “Kerry will call the families. But he won’t follow Dick Mason around like a little dog, trying to be more like him. This campaign will be won in California, and we’ve already got a plan.”

He had made himself sound quite confident, Clayton thought. But the look on Kerry’s face as he left, pensive and preoccupied, mirrored his own questions.

At eight o’clock, when Nate Cutler returned to the Hyatt, the press assembly area buzzed with nervous activity.

Some of his colleagues had picked up their laundry—“Turn in by 9:30 p.m., back by 8:00 a.m.,” the hand-lettered sign said—and were leaving their suitcases on the stretch of sidewalk designated by the Secret Service. A Secret Service agent and two San Diego cops with a metal detector and a dog trained to sniff out explosives were going through their luggage,
which
the Service would not return until they reached that night’s hotel. No one complained about the security: everyone knew that John Hinckley Jr. had shot Ronald Reagan while standing amidst the press corps; everyone remembered that the last presidential candidate to be murdered was Kerry Kilcannon’s brother, shot by an assassin who had insinuated himself among the stage crew. Nate put his Secret Service ID tag around his neck and went to the private dining room reserved for Kil-cannon’s entourage.

In the opinion of the press corps’s resident epicures, the dining experience provided by Kilcannon’s people was better than Mason’s but worse than Bob Dole’s—which, according to campaign lore, had set the modern standard for fine dining. Nate had been too distracted by Katherine Jones to eat, so he scooped up some scrambled eggs and sat with Lee McAlpine from
Time
and Sara Sax from
Newsday
. Lee was small, dark, and feisty; Sara was willowy and sometimes so fey in manner that Nate was still astonished that her reporting was crisp, smart, and to the point. They would provide him with some distraction, Nate hoped; he had been forced to leave his editor a somewhat cryptic message, and the notes folded in the pocket of his sport coat still unsettled him quite badly.

“What’s up?” Nate asked Lee.

She shrugged. “You’ve seen the schedule. This is the day that Kerry Kilcannon reveals the answer to the age-old question ‘What do women want?’”

Nate grinned. “What
do
women want? My ex-wife forgot to tell me.”

Lee gave Sara a slightly wicked look. “I can only vouch for what Sara wants.” She nodded toward Dan Biasi of the Secret Service, dark and slender and earnestly handsome, eating at a table by himself. “Sara spotted him in Portland last night, protecting the candidate from TV reporters who trip over their own feet. Now she wants to fuck him—”

“Lee,”
Sara protested.
“Jesus.”

Nate turned to her. “Is that true, Sara? You’re a Secret Service groupie?”

Sara rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “He looks nice, okay? I’m thirty, I’m horny, and I haven’t been laid in three months.”

“Who has?” Nate inquired, and put an avuncular hand on Sara’s shoulder. “But, Sara,
we
can help. Look around you—you’ve got friends here. Why go to an outsider?” Pausing, Nate had a brief ironic thought, then added, “I don’t think that’s even ethical.”

Sara raised her eyebrows and made a show of surveying each table for prospects among the press. Nate and Lee followed her gaze; it stopped abruptly at three burly camera guys from the networks—in attitude and outlook, the blue-collar contingent of the press corps, variously featuring a ponytail, a Dallas Cowboys cap, and a Marine Corps tattoo. When Mr. Tattoo produced a cigar, Lee burst out laughing.

“I rest my case,” said Sara.

“What?” Nate asked her. “You were wanting
foreplay
?”

“I thought so,” Sara responded. “And not from little red bugs, either.”

“The Cowboys hat is the tip-off,” Lee observed.

Nate smiled. “Sometimes a hat is only a hat. But a cigar always smells.”

Lee gave him a droll look. “We are so clever, aren’t we? And it’s early yet.”

“Nate has an advantage,” Sara put in. “He filed his story last night, he doesn’t look hungover, and somehow he got a haircut—”

“
I
did the haircut,” Lee said.

Nate nodded gravely. “We were going to have sex, but we were both too tired. So I buffed her nails instead.”

Abruptly, Lee seemed bored with banter. “What do you two make of what Mason’s doing?” she asked. “This Boston trip.”

Nate chose not to answer; what he might know made him closemouthed. “You try,” he said to Sara. “I’ve got no idea.”

Sara thought for a moment. “I can imagine Mason lying awake thinking,
California killed this guy’s brother, and now they’ll think they owe him.
It’s not just the abortion issue; Mason’s looking to borrow a little sympathy, especially from women, remind them of what a feeling guy he is. I mean, Boston’s not the World Trade Center, but it’s the only tragedy we’ve got. At least until some airplane crashes.”

Lee nodded, then turned to Nate. “No theory at all? You’ve usually got two or three.”

Never forget, Nate told himself, how perceptive these women are. “Not a one,” he answered, and then his pager beeped.

Edgy, Nate checked the message, then stood. “Better run,” he said. “Bus leaves in fifteen minutes.”

Lee gave him a probing look. “What is it?” she asked. “The Pulitzer Prize Committee?”

Nate smiled. “Yeah. They’re calling to apologize.”

He went quickly to find a pay phone—something with a hard connection, where no one could overhear.

Nate hunched inside the open phone booth. Next to him, a pompous businessman was talking about computer chips; Nate’s editor, Jane Booth, spoke as loudly as she could. Her office door was shut, she had assured him, and no one else would hear.

“It’s a killer story,” she said, “with two big questions: ‘Can we source it?’ and if we can, ‘Will we decide to print it?’”

Nate could already imagine an agonized series of editorial meetings—the political editor, the managing editor, the executive editor, and even the publisher would have to approve every step their reporters took, and the decision as to whether
News-world
should change the course of this campaign would be weighed with care. Substance was important, and so was appearance: the press’s fascination with itself was such that if
Newsworld
printed the story, their competitors would follow with ten other stories, detailing how the decision was made to end a presidential candidacy and, in all likelihood, the career of a now-famous woman journalist.

“What do you think?” Nate asked. “If it’s true, will we print it?”

“We damned well
should
.” Jane’s tone was combative, as if she was preparing for argument with her male colleagues; Nate could imagine her, gray-haired and gaunt and more than a little intense, pacing as she spoke. “To me, the first thing that makes this story a legitimate public issue is that it sheds real light on who Kilcannon is. People should know what drives him.”

Nate glanced at the man next to him. “The idea that we’re
explaining
him ignores the fact that we’d be
eliminating
him. Were we just explaining Gary Hart? Or was there a serious
question of judgment there?”

“There’s one
here
too,” Jane snapped. “Kilcannon was sleeping with a reporter who covered him. That’s not like fucking some model for No Excuses jeans.”

“So pull up what she wrote about him,” Nate replied. “Maybe she gave him a break, maybe she didn’t.”

“Do you think
we
should give
her
a break, Nate?”

The question had an edge and more than one dimension—whether Nate would push the story; whether he was soft on Lara Costello; whether he’d gone native after three months of covering Kilcannon; whether he really wanted some competitor to beat them. “No,” he said in a lower voice. “But I’ve got a confidential counseling document which describes a woman in emotional extremity—one who only felt comfortable talking to a stranger who was ethically bound to protect her secrets. I remember some of the things I told my marriage counselor—”

“Nobody cares about your little kinks,” Jane cut in, “and no one should. You’re not running for President.”

“Believe me, I never would. But I understand your point.”

Mollified, Jane spoke in a practical tone. “The real problem is sourcing it. Our rule is still two sources, even now, and you say this woman doesn’t want to speak on the record.”

“The
real
problem,” Nate answered, “is proving it. In theory, any nut job with a political ax to grind could put any fiction in a document and swear to God it’s true.”

“You believe Costello was a patient, don’t you? Would this counselor make that up too?”

“Probably not, and we can probably prove it, even if
that’s
supposed to be confidential.” Nate checked his watch. “Look, Jane, only two people in the world know the truth. At some point we’re going to have to ask them, even if all we get is lies. I need to know when and how to approach Kilcannon.”

There was a thoughtful pause. “Wait on that, okay? Cos-tello’s here in Washington and easier to get to. I’ll ask someone who knows her to invite her out to lunch.”

Imagining Lara’s feelings, Nate became queasy at the thought of such an ambush. He knew the pressures
Newsworld
could put on her, the implicit threats to check with neighbors or ex-colleagues should Lara deny an affair. He remembered an incident during the last campaign, when several second-tier
papers
tracked a bogus rumor that a conservative presidential candidate had contracted AIDS. The supposed source had been a nurse at a private clinic. One reporter had threatened her; another sent her roses; still another arrived at her home with toys for her cat; several more descended on her neighbors and then her employer. Finally, the woman had quit her job and moved.

“If someone saw Lara leave his apartment at five in the morning,” Nate said at last, “that looks like an affair. An affair makes this counselor’s story a lot more credible. And if Lara claims she never saw Kilcannon except in public, and
that
looks like a lie, then she’s a lot less credible about everything. The catch is that once we start visiting friends and neighbors, our competition is likely to find out.”

“True,” Jane answered. “What I’m recommending is that this afternoon we send someone to knock on this counselor’s door, at the address you gave me in Maryland.”

“Be sure to ask her who she gave this memo to. If I understand this woman’s motivation, I can’t imagine her calling Anthony’s Legions. Even Katherine Jones swears the lady never talked to them.”

“So where
do
you think this is coming from?”

“I’ve been trying to figure that out.” Glancing at the adjacent booth, Nate saw that the businessman was gone. “My thought is the GOP. Maybe they think Dick Mason will be easier to beat.”

“Wouldn’t they wait until Kilcannon was nominated,” Jane said promptly, “
then
let this out? That way they’d win in a walk.”

That made sense, Nate admitted to himself. “Suppose they think the counselor’s shaky?” Nate responded. “If it’s Mason, wouldn’t one of his people go to whatever reporter he’s closest to and say, ‘I’ve got the story of a lifetime, and the deal is it didn’t come from us’? Why so elliptical, unless it’s the Republicans and they don’t want to get caught picking the Democratic nominee?”

“Maybe. Anyhow, we’ll try to trace how the memo got to Katherine Jones.” Jane’s tone became thoughtful. “The timing of this argues for Dick Mason, you know. He’s the one who needs this out before Tuesday.”

Already, Nate thought, they had focused on the campaign—
who was doing what to whom. Lara Costello was beginning to
seem like the victim of a drive-by shooting, or maybe one of the three dead people in Boston Dick Mason was using for fodder. But Jane had reminded him of a central fact: whoever had planted the story,
Newsworld
did not control it, and the leaker’s desire to see it printed would be as keen as the instincts of Nate’s rivals.

“If you’re right about Mason,” he said, “his campaign may slip it to someone else unless we move by the weekend. Even to the Net or the
National Enquirer
, if Mason’s desperate enough. He’ll hope that some paper in the mainstream press will report what the
Enquirer
’s reporting and that the rest of us will fall into line. With great reluctance, of course.”

Jane laughed softly. “As someone once said, ‘Politics ain’t beanbag.’ Neither is journalism.”

“Well,” Nate said, “better run. Tell me when to approach Kil-cannon’s press secretary. And leave a message on voice mail to let me know what’s happening.”

“Will do.”

“Oh, and one more thing. Send someone over to my apartment, and FedEx me some lightweight clothes I can wear in paradise. This wool sport coat is feeling like chain mail.”

Jane laughed again. “I’ll have them send your Hawaiian shirts,” she promised.