No Safe Place (37 page)

Kerry nodded. “I look at what he’s doing—to Lara and to me—and it’s hard to distinguish Cutler from our friend with the megaphone. Politically, the intent’s pretty similar.” Kerry’s voice, though soft, had an edge. “
Newsworld
must think this is very important to our nation’s future.”

Clayton folded his hands across his stomach. “Cutler cornered Kit today. He wants a private moment with you, to discuss a ‘personal matter.’ You’ve got three days, he says, or they’ll go with what they have.”

Kerry felt his anger return, harder and more certain. “Will they now? Without specifying the question? Tell Kit to wait him out—he’ll be back, I’m sure of it. And we’ll have bought some time.”

Clayton studied him. “Unless you’ve decided what to do, time doesn’t help.”

Kerry gazed at the floor. “Would
Mason
have done that today?” he finally asked. “Will he do that if he’s President? No, he’ll show up at the funeral of some poor victim, to hug the survivors. And after that, he’ll go on to whatever trivia the polls tell him is safest. Maybe preschool training in pedestrian skills.” After a moment, he looked up at Clayton. “Run those ads, pal. I don’t want to lose this race.”

Clayton’s gaze was unflinching. “Then you’ll have to lie.”

Kerry fell silent. “Imagine being Lara,” he said at last. “Waiting for me to decide. For both of us.”

Clayton’s eyes were veiled, perhaps from a sense of irony he need not express aloud. “There’s something else. About Mason.”

Kerry turned to him. “What is it?”

“We have a tip from a cop in Darien, where Mason started out in politics.” Clayton’s voice was quieter yet. “It’s wife beating, Kerry.”

Kerry could feel his own astonishment. “Jeannie?”

“She called the police, our man says, then filed a complaint. But Mason had the files sealed.”

Kerry exhaled. After a time, he asked, “Do we know whether he did it again? Or where the files are now?”

“About the files, they’re in storage.” Clayton’s tone was even. “If Mason’s guilty of domestic violence, even once, he’s a dead man. Or at least severely wounded.”

“Jeannie Mason,”
Kerry murmured. “This must have been years ago.”

“Over twenty. We’re checking everywhere they’ve lived since then, to see if there’s something fresher. Unless you tell me to stop.” Clayton paused a moment. “If Mason’s the one who fed the Lara story to
Newsworld
, this incident alone should be enough to keep him from giving it to anyone else. Assuming it’s still under their control, the Mason people will make a deal. They’ll have no choice.”

“
If
it was Mason,” Kerry retorted. “But we don’t know that.”

“What about their debate proposal? It fits with everything else—those hecklers yesterday, Mason flying to Boston, Lara. Mason’s coming after you, Tony Lord thinks, and Tony doesn’t know what we do.” Clayton’s voice became emphatic. “If Dick beat Jeannie, and it happened more than once, does it matter
who
leaked Lara’s story? It won’t matter to the press.”

Kerry stared at him. “It matters to
me
.”

“But should it? The result’s the same—he looks worse than you do.” Clayton’s tone was soft again. “I know that you don’t like this. Neither do I. But I’m trying to be practical. You don’t deserve to lose because of Lara. The country deserves better too.”

Kerry turned from his friend. The adrenaline rush from his speech—the crazy combination of elation and fear—had vanished. He watched the headlights of the motorcade cutting through the darkness, lighting palm trees and military barracks, the edge of Mather Field. On the tarmac was the distant shadow of his plane, the
Shamrock
, waiting to fly them to San Francisco. But what he thought of was Jeannie Mason and her family, and then his own family long ago.

“The President was right,” he said. “You think you know what it takes to run. But you don’t.”

Beside him, Clayton stared ahead. “And so?”

“So I’m a Catholic, not a Quaker. Find out what else is there.”

“So,” Kate Feeney asked Sean, “how did you do?”

The question startled him. He had been absorbed in his search for a gun—the dealer who could not help him, the street hustler he did not trust. But Sean found himself still sitting in Kilcannon headquarters, at nine in the evening, after hours of calls to strangers.

“I did all right,” he managed to say. “But there’s lots of undecideds.”

Kate frowned, thoughtful. “Some of mine are waiting for the debate. That’s good for Kerry, don’t you think?”

Sean nodded. It was hard to speak.

“Well,” she said, “Kerry’s coming here tomorrow. That should help.”

Sean stared at the table. “I wonder if we’ll get to meet him.”

“God, I’d
love
to.” Kate no longer sounded tired. “I think he’s the best thing that could happen to this country. He’s so caring and honest, and he doesn’t play political games.”

So caring,
Sean thought bitterly.
So honest.
What did she really know about this ally of abortionists, breaker of promises, traitor to his own religion? Standing, he shoved both hands in the pockets of his blue jeans.

Kate looked up at him. Her guileless expression held pity for his awkwardness, Sean suspected—or, worse, concealed disquiet. “Aren’t you sticking around for pizza?” she asked.

For an instant, Sean wished to stay. Just to be alone with her, to have her understand his silence. Then his own distrust, the fear of rejection, hit him like a slap in the face.

“No,” he said. “Tomorrow I’m coming in early.”

He turned and walked away.

Rick Ginsberg stood amidst a knot of people—listening, nodding, providing guidance. Sean waited, a few feet distant, not wanting to be part of them.

At last, Rick noticed him. He wiped his glasses, looking weary, as the mahogany-skinned receptionist told him they were nearly out of leaflets. “I’ll call them,” he said tiredly. “First thing.”

Satisfied, she headed toward the pizza. Rick put on his
glasses, regarding Sean with a wry, complicit smile.
It never ends,
the smile said.
You know how it is.

“What’s up, John?”

“Nothing, really. It’s just that Senator Kilcannon’s coming tomorrow, and I wondered …” He shrugged, eyes on the tile.

“You want to meet him.” Rick’s tone was patient. “That might be tough, tomorrow. We’ve already got people going to the events, and you’ve been great on the phones.”

Sean looked up at him. “It would mean a lot.”

Rick studied him. Quietly, he answered, “Then I’ll see what I can do.”

It was nine-thirty in San Francisco before the weary band of reporters reached the Saint Francis Hotel, another hour before Nate was able to retrieve his luggage and locate his room. That made it one-thirty a.m. in Washington; when he called his editor at home, it took her five rings to answer, and her voice sounded thick and dazed.

Without apology, Nate said, “Your message read ‘urgent.’”

“Yeah,” Jane answered. “There’s something more.” Abruptly, she seemed to have awakened. “Sheila Kahn talked to one of Costello’s ex-neighbors—a retired army colonel who detests Kilcannon’s politics and told Sheila he ‘knew the little bastard on sight.’

“Anyhow, this man claims he was walking his greyhound one fine spring morning, and who should come out the front door of the building but Kerry Kilcannon, wearing a tuxedo. Kilcannon saw him, the colonel says, and looked the other way. Then he walked to an old compact car with New Jersey plates saying ‘USS’ and drove off.”

Was it
that
night, Nate wondered. “Did this guy ever see him with Lara?”

“No. Never with her. And only that once.”

Nate lay back in his bed. That the memory was so clear did not surprise him; in a white evening dress, Lara had looked so slim and elegant that she had, figuratively speaking, stopped his heart. It was the moment when Nate had stopped deluding himself and begun wondering what to do. “This would have been three years ago,” he asked, “right?”

“How did you know
that
?”

“Lara and I were both at the
Times
. She’d invited Kilcannon to the Congressional Correspondents Dinner—a real coup for a rookie. But I didn’t figure they were fucking.”

“Well, they were, it seems. Staying over at her place wasn’t smart.”

For another moment, Nate was quiet. He could also remember when Lara had first mentioned Kerry Kilcannon, months before that dinner. How soon after that, Nate wondered, had Kilcannon begun to see Lara as he did?

“It’s not enough,” Nate said at last.

“Of course not.” Jane’s tone was filled with impatience. “But surely for a question, or to catch Kilcannon in a lie. When are you meeting with him?”

Nate could feel his own frustration. “Kit Pace is stonewalling me. When I tried to tell her this was for his ears only, Kit did the old ‘tell me why I should bother him at a time like this …’”

“Because you’re
you
,” Jane snapped. “And from
News-world
, not the fucking
Wichita Bugle
. Don’t they know what we can do?”

“Of course. I even gave her a deadline—seventy-two hours.” Pausing, Nate made himself sound less defensive. “Maybe Lara’s told Kilcannon. Kit figures we can’t run this without telling them what it is, and she’s playing for time.”

There was silence on the other end. “She’s right,” Jane answered tersely. “And we don’t have time. Tell Kit that we want Kilcannon tomorrow, and what we want to ask him. In case Kit’s forgotten what she already knows.” Jane’s voice filled with real anger. “It’s totally unethical: Costello’s not a reporter, she’s Kilcannon’s fifth column. She deserves whatever happens as much as he does.”

At ten forty-five—one forty-five in Newark—Clayton told Carlie how much he loved her, and slowly put down the telephone.

They had a deal: no matter how late, Clayton could call. She missed him, of course, but there was something else neither needed to say—that Clayton did not sleep well without hearing that, as far as Carlie knew, the twins were fine. No matter that they were in college now; since Ethan’s death, for Clayton not to ask felt like an act of carelessness. It was deeper than superstition, much more than a habit.

Tonight, as so often, after Clayton asked about the twins, Carlie asked how Kerry was.

This association, too, was something they both understood. When they were at the hospital, waiting for their son to die, Kerry had stayed up with them. His wife was the one person with whom Clayton had shared the deepest secret of Kerry’s life and how it had begun. So that two nights before, when Clayton told her Lara was back, Carlie had emitted a long sigh. Not for the politics of it but for Kerry himself.

Go back to Washington,
they had told him after Ethan’s funeral.
We’ll be all right …

If Kerry had stayed with them, Clayton wondered now, would it ever have happened? But this was hindsight: they—and perhaps Kerry—had known nothing.

Restless, Clayton turned on the television, the nightly tracking polls strewn next to him on the bed.

In five minutes of channel surfing, he saw two “Mason for President” ads stressing the Vice President’s “consistent
support for every woman’s right to choose.” But the local CBS station featured Mason himself.

The Vice President had flown back from Boston to San Francisco the night before, Clayton knew, and the news clip showed him at a breakfast for entrepreneurial women. As Clayton watched, Mason looked up from his text and said firmly,
“By the way, I want to emphasize what I’ve said many times before—economic opportunity for women goes hand in hand with reproductive freedom …”

The telephone rang.

“Looked at the numbers?” Jack Sleeper asked without preface.

“Oh, yeah,” Clayton answered. “Still down three percent statewide. But Kerry was strong all day, and he says to run the ad where he gets shot. I’ve already told Frank.”

“Thank God,” Jack said fervently. “Kerry could win the whole fucking thing. Not just this, but the presidency.”

Except for
Newsworld,
Clayton thought. Jack’s relief was so evident that he was glad the pollster did not know.

On the screen, the well-dressed businesswomen rose to applaud Mason.
“The highlight for many,”
the reporter’s voice broke in,
“was Mason’s linkage of economic progress with reproductive choice …”

“You’ve seen Dick’s ads,” Clayton said to Sleeper. “The stuff on choice.”

“
He
sees what we see, Clayton. Among pro-choice women, the gap’s widening—we’re down another three in the Bay Area.” The pollster’s voice was firm. “I was right last night. Do a pro-choice event in San Francisco, where the problem’s worst.”

Tired, Clayton stared at the poll numbers. “I’ll talk to Senator Penn,” he said at last. “San Francisco’s her base, and we damn sure need her help.”

Sean Burke stared at the television, transfixed.

He was in shirtsleeves, standing on a platform before a crowd of farmers, suddenly speaking from Sean’s heart.
“I am quite certain,”
Kerry said,
“that someone who chooses to take the life of another human should forfeit his right to live …”

He understands,
Sean thought.
He knows that I am coming
for him, that God’s law imposes death on the murderers of children. That his own death is retribution.

Absolved, Sean shivered.

The picture changed. Now Kerry stood in a park, his every word an accusation …

“The notion that James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights so that racists and sociopaths and madmen could slaughter innocent men, women, and children with assault weapons or handguns is one of the most contemptible notions that an irresponsible minority has ever crammed down the throats of its potential victims …”

Sean felt a sudden wave of nausea.

He hurried to the bathroom. When he bent over the sink, spasms racking his body, his spittle was flecked with blood. Kerry’s voice accused him still.

Sean dried his face. The lesson life had taught him, he remembered, was to trust no one. Least of all the street kid who had promised him a gun.