No Safe Place (32 page)

She would not have had to explain this to Kerry. No one had to ask him to imagine pain; it was one of the many reasons why he, not Mason, should be President. And now Lara might bring Kerry down.

The press would be so moral, Lara thought, when it came to Kerry himself. But the campaign swirling all around her was a dance of ethical light and shadow: the hired guns who migrated from one candidate to another; the staffers and reporters who traded secrets after sex; the sources whose half-truths, leaked for their own benefit, gave reporters a story which justified their existence for that day. Was her lie any worse, Lara wondered, when she would have told the truth—whatever the damage to herself—if it could save him?

She wished she could tell him this. Give him that much, at least. But Kerry was on his own. Two years ago, that had been what she thought was right; now, it was how this had to be.

Lara stared out the window.

Waiting for Kerry’s motorcade, the press pool clustered on the tarmac, a clump of reporters, Minicams, boom mikes. Four years before, briefly covering Dick Mason for the
Times
, Lara had learned what reporters called it: the death watch.

The stated purpose of the pool, of course, was to provide
coverage for everyone else—file film; stray quotes from the candidate; snippets of news. But, since the murder of John F. Kennedy, the second purpose was to cover an assassination. It was to the pool that history owed the photographs of Bobby Kennedy dying, the maiming of George Wallace, the wounding of Ronald Reagan. Of James Kilcannon, lips open to speak, moments from death.

Everyone knew what day this was.

The pool would be more alert, their nerves on edge. Four years ago, covering Mason, Lara had imagined each step in case the candidate went down: calling in extra reporters on her cell phone; sending others to whatever trauma center received the wounded man; getting close to see how bad the wounds were, who the assassin was, what happened around the body; dictating the story to her paper. It was always a question in Lara’s mind: once the gunshots sounded, would she recoil, or would she observe and report, as was her job? Even before she loved Kerry, she prayed that nothing would happen and, if it did, that she would not be in the pool.

This was up to fate. Day by day, the pool rotated alphabetically by news organization: the networks, magazines, newspapers, and radio each had their representatives. Sometime before Tuesday, Lara and her cameraman would be among the pool.

The motorcade arrived.

Lara watched the pool scramble toward Kerry’s black Lincoln. He got out, a distant figure with wavy ginger hair, appearing slight next to his protectors from the Secret Service. In a crowd, Lara knew, the press pool was part of the Service’s calculations—they recognized the pool reporters and could concentrate on strangers. There were even rumors that the Service considered the pool as potential human shields. “It should be
their
ass,” she had heard one reporter grouse, “not mine.”

Now they milled around Kerry, a single wriggling organism. Yesterday afternoon he had stopped to chat with reporters, shake hands with the local police. Now Kerry rushed past, flanked by the Service and his aide, Kevin Loughery, with Kit Pace hovering to hear any stray remark so that she could break in, deflect it, spin it. In less than a minute, Kerry was inside the
plane.

So this was what they would do now. It would not take long
for the press to notice that they were no longer seeing anyone but Kit, for Nate to guess that Lara had gone to Kerry or someone close to him. If she were Kit, she might put out some diversionary rumors about threats, fears of violence centered on the anniversary of his brother’s death. That might help for a day or so.

The plane began cruising down the tarmac. Moments later, they were in the air; only then did Lara realize that she had spoken to no one except, in her imaginings, Kerry.

Boarding the bus on Van Ness Avenue, Sean sat alone.

His stomach churned. Surreptitiously, he took an antacid pill from inside the pocket of his jacket, slid it into his mouth, and began chewing it to chalk.

It was ten forty-five. In less than two hours, he had placed thirty-eight phone calls, made twenty-three contacts, identified eleven voters for Kerry Kilcannon. Kate Feeney had worked alongside him. Even as he dialed, Sean was aware of her face, pale and delicate in profile; her fresh skin; the sheen of her hair, pulled back in the same blond ponytail. But girls had never liked him, never understood the way he wanted to protect them, to make them better. When Kate smiled at him between calls, he hovered between confusion and distrust.

Eyes veiled, Sean glanced around the bus.

The faces seemed alien; the polyglot mix of whites, Asians, Latins, and blacks intensified his sense of being adrift in a strange city, his fear of being known. It was like entering the boys’ home where the social worker had taken him. Alone at fourteen, he would lie awake in the bunkroom, afraid that they would learn about his father and his mother, about Sean himself. For Sean already knew that the people you wanted love from abused you, or abandoned you, or died.

Even Father Brian, whose faith he had come to share, would betray him if he knew what was in Sean’s heart. For a moment, as he remembered, tears came to Sean’s eyes.

The boys’ home had been clean and orderly, the safest place Sean had known. Father Brian had understood that his fights were to protect himself, or someone younger. It was the priest who taught him that God loved the weak, the young, the innocent. The unborn child.

It was like a flash of lightning in the brain. When Sean was sixteen, the meaning of his life was suddenly so clear that he was shaken, then uplifted. God had blessed him with the gift of anger, not for random fighting, but to be His soldier.

Now, through the window of the bus, Sean read the street sign: “McAllister.”

The block was dingy—sex shops, decaying stores, flophouse hotels. Sean saw a bearded man with a shopping cart, then a woman who sat on the steps of a hotel, vacant-eyed from drugs, mouthing words to no one. You can see the soul of a society, Father Brian once said, by the people it leaves in the street. But Sean felt only revulsion; there were such places in Boston, streets where men could buy a woman’s body, anything at all. This woman’s face was like his mother’s …

When Father Brian had suggested in his gentle way, shortly before graduation, that God might not mean for him to be a priest, Sean had applied to join the Boston police. Then the police psychologist had shown him pictures, asked about his parents, even about his dreams. A few weeks later, they denied his application. Out of pity, Father Brian had given him a job.

Sean Burke, the soldier of God, was to help maintain the boys’ home and the church whose name it bore, Saint Anne’s.

Alone in the sanctuary, Sean had prayed for answers.

It was a chill Boston morning, Sean recalled—much like the morning, two days ago, when he had executed the abortionist. But God had given him no sign. Torn between hope and bitterness, Sean had stepped from the church, feeling the mile-square Irish enclave of Charlestown envelop him. The neighborhood seemed changeless: the shabby triple-deckers with a family on each floor; the small and darkened bars, many without signs; the stubborn code of silence that prevented one townie from betraying another to the cops. A man could be born in Charles-town, go to the parish school, find work at the naval yard, marry a girl from Saint Anne’s, eat and drink, procreate and die, all within a few blocks of his birthplace. Sean stood on the steps of his church, imagining his own death—the caretaker, disappearing like a raindrop in the ocean.

At the bottom of the steps, a man waited for him.

He was about thirty, with tightly curled brown hair, a gaunt
face, and black eyes so intense that Sean thought of an
archangel. The man came toward him, holding out a piece of paper.

Sean froze.

The man placed the paper in Sean’s hand. “Please,” he said. “Read this.”

Though his voice was soft, it held an urgency, as if much depended on Sean’s answer. Sean took the leaflet. Seeing its first words, he felt a current pass from the stranger to him.

If life is sacred,
the leaflet asked,
how can we tolerate murder?

Slowly, Sean looked up into the stranger’s eyes. “I’m Paul Terris,” the man said. “From Operation Life …”

The bus sighed to a stop.

Startled from thought, Sean saw first the street signs, Second and Harrison, and then the storefront he was looking for. The Gun Emporium.

Eyes downcast, hoping to preserve his anonymity, Sean got off the bus.

On the flight to Fresno, Nate Cutler checked his watch. Perhaps he only imagined Lara watching him from across the aisle.

For the last three hours, he had been trying to accost Kit Pace. But on the plane and on the ground, Kit seemed surrounded by, or busily in search of, representatives of the California media. Now she stood at the front of the press section, two rows from him—just enough distance that to call out to her would make Nate conspicuous. “This is always a bad day for Kerry,” he heard her murmur to the earnest young woman from the
Sacramento Bee
. “Every year. I’m not sure you’ll be seeing him back here. But he’ll make time for you up front on the flight to Sacramento …”

The
Sacramento
fucking
Bee, Nate thought.

At seven this morning, his editor had authorized him to ask Kilcannon the question.

As Nate rose to speak to her, Kit vanished through the curtain.

Alone in his hotel suite, Clayton Slade stood abruptly. “Can you confirm that?” he said into the telephone.

“We don’t know,” the head of opposition research answered.

“We’re trying to get the files. But they’re over twenty years old, and it looks like Mason’s had them sealed.”

Clayton paused; waiting on his second line was an urgent call from Tony Lord, the lawyer negotiating the debate rules with Mason’s people. “Other than breaking the law,” Clayton directed, “do everything you can.”

The cavernous store was empty but for a stocky man with wiry hair, polishing a rifle on the counter.

The sound of his own footsteps on the wooden floor made Sean stop. Self-conscious, he gazed at the racks of shotguns on the wall, the glass cases filled with handguns, shining a metallic black or silver beneath the fluorescent lights.

The dealer put down his shotgun. “Can I help you?” he asked.

Sean walked toward him, watching his face. The dealer’s eyes, a liquid brown, combined with his smile to give him the pleasant aspect of a man who gave his spare change to the homeless.

“I was thinking about a handgun,” Sean murmured. “To protect myself.”

The man nodded briskly—no explanations were needed here. “What kind?”

“Nine millimeter, maybe.”

Stooping, the man unlocked a gun case, then placed a slender black gun on the counter.

Sean flinched; the gun was so like the one he had used in Boston that he could feel its lightness in his pocket, see the mist of his breath in the chill morning air. For a moment, Sean was certain that the dealer must know who he was.

Mute, he took the weapon in his hand.

“You like this one?” the dealer asked. “Just sign the forms, and in fifteen days it’s yours.”

Startled, Sean blinked.

The dealer appraised him closely, eyes narrowing. “You know about the waiting period, right?”

Slowly, Sean shook his head.

“Fifteen days.” The man’s tone was flat, disgusted. “State law—been that way since after that guy shot Kilcannon.
This
one’s brother.”

Sean stared at him, speechless.

“Yeah,” the man said. “I know. Maybe someone can do us another favor.”

Sean felt his skin tingle. “Fifteen days,” he murmured.

“Uh-huh. Some animal rapes your wife on the fourteenth day, you get two free tickets to the ACLU dinner dance.
If
she lives.”

Eyes shut, Sean let his fingers graze the trigger. “What if you need it?”

“Ask the politicians.” The man paused, and then his voice grew quiet. “You buy one on the street, brother, or maybe in a pawnshop if they’re willing to chance it. Whatever piece of crap you can find, from whatever piece of crap is selling it. But
we
can’t break the law.”

Sean put down the gun. “In fifteen days,” he murmured, “I’ll be gone.”

The man’s mouth worked, showing his frustration. “Maybe you’re coming back.”

Sean jammed both hands in the pockets of his coat and walked away.

Outside, he stopped, startled by the brightness of the noonday sun. The dealer would remember him, a strange man wanting the same gun that had killed the abortionist. For two blocks, Sean half walked, half ran, until he saw the bus coming and swerved across the street to catch it.

The doors hissed open. Eyes averted, Sean dropped six quarters in the till and took a seat behind the driver.

Tomorrow Kerry Kilcannon would be in San Francisco. Sean was unarmed, unaware of Kilcannon’s schedule, running out of time. A soldier of God without a weapon.

Trying a pawnshop, Sean knew, might increase the risk still more.

Through the window, the neighborhood turned rancid again. “Talk to a naked woman,” a sign said. “Seventy-five cents a minute.”

You buy one on the street, brother … Whatever piece of crap you can find, from whatever piece of crap is selling it.

Sean pulled the cord. A bell chimed; at the next corner, the bus came to a stop, jerking abruptly, and Sean stumbled onto the street.

“Prepare to step through the looking glass.” Tony Lord’s voice was crisp and a little sardonic. “Was it only a couple of months ago, Clayton, when you proposed that the senator and Mason debate under the Lincoln-Douglas rules? A free-for-all, where the candidates can question each other directly?”

“In New Hampshire. Dick’s people ran from
that
one like Dracula from garlic.” Pacing, Clayton felt constricted by the telephone cord. “Kerry’s quicker on his feet, and Mason’s more programmed. The last thing Dick wants is spontaneity.”