No Safe Place (47 page)

“In World War Two,” Kerry went on, “we believed that common sacrifice for the common good was the duty of all our citizens. But somewhere in the last half of this century, the ideal of common citizenship vanished from our public life.”

Kerry paused, eyes sweeping the crowd. “One of the ugliest
truths of Vietnam was that the Americans who died there were disproportionately poor, disproportionately black, disproportionately less educated. And one of its ugliest legacies is the elitist notion that the only men and women who now need serve our country are those for whom the military is a jobs program. Those people, to be blunt, who are far less fortunate than you.”

Lara saw the young black man who had been Kerry’s questioner stiffen in his chair. “A country,” Kerry continued, “is more than a place to live. And justice is more than ensuring that you keep more of what you earn.

“Justice, to be sure, means equity among the races and between men and women. But it also means this: that all young persons who are able should give some small part of their lives—their passions, their energies, their ideals—in a common cause. Or we will exacerbate this growing division—the America of the inner city, the worst schools, the least hope; the America of the shopping mall, the gated community, the best education money can buy. The kind of education you’re getting …”

Turning, Lee McAlpine leaned her head near Lara’s. “This is either incredibly nervy,” she murmured, “or a very clever way of not pandering to minorities.”

It’s far simpler,
Lara wanted to say.
When Kerry does something unorthodox, you want to reduce him to a more evolved Dick Mason, instead of a man with an eye for social irony and contradiction, and a preference for the truth.
The thought startled her: for that moment, she had thought of the press as “you.”

In the pool, Nate Cutler had resumed his pursuit of Kit Pace. Now all that was between them was an
L.A. Times
reporter, one arm on Kit’s shoulder, whispering urgently.

At the podium, Kerry glanced at his notes and then gazed out again. “What I propose today is a national service requirement. Two years, at any time before you turn thirty, to be spent in any way—the Peace Corps, charitable foundations, the military, or a wide range of public interest work—that you feel embodies
your
best contribution to our country and to a better society.”

“Pandering?” Lara remarked to Lee. “Unless I misunderstood him, he’s just reinstituted the draft.”

“I don’t expect all of you to welcome this,” Kerry was
saying. “But I implore you to consider it, not just for your country but for yourselves. Because I’ve never known anyone who helped a child to read, or an old person to feel loved, who thought less of himself for doing that. Just as I’ve never known anyone whose sense of self was strengthened by ignoring those in need.” As Kerry’s eyes swept the crowd, he continued in a softer voice. “As Robert Kennedy told another generation of Berkeley students, ‘In your hands, not with Presidents or leaders, is the future of your world and the fulfillment of the best qualities of your own spirit …’”

Kerry’s questioner stood, applauding, then others. And in that moment, Lara saw Nate Cutler catch Kit Pace.

Lara watched them. Forehead next to Kit’s, he briefly whispered; except for a nod, almost imperceptible, Kit was still.

Lara was suddenly aware of Lee McAlpine, following her gaze. Turning to Lee, she asked, “What did
you
think?”

Lee gave her a quizzical look, then smiled faintly. “I think he got away with it, don’t you?”

Lara nodded.

Afterward, they left the auditorium, stepping into the sunlight. Leaning against the press bus, Nate talked to Kit alone, his face and gestures a pantomime of quiet urgency. Walking beside Lara, Lee murmured, “What’s that about, I wonder?”

Lara felt the same sick feeling—alienation, fear, shame. “I wonder too,” she answered.

Nate watched Kit’s eyes narrow in restrained anger. “Where did you get this, Nate?”

Though tense himself, Nate managed to smile. “Come on, Kit. All I want is time with him.”

“And all I can do is ask if he wants to dignify this crap, which you seem to have gotten off a bathroom wall. He’s running for President, after all. That tends to take up his time.”

Nate stared at her, face hard, voice low. “Do you people really think you can sit on this? If they had a relationship, we’ll find it …”

“
What
relationship? Warm looks? A dinner or two?”

“You don’t make love at dinner, Kit. Or
we’d
be even closer than we are.”

Kit’s eyes became distant, opaque. Her tone held muted disgust. “And that’s what you want to ask him.”

“Among other things.” Nate’s voice was a staccato whisper. “She’s on the fucking
bus
with us,
covering
him. If he refuses to answer, we’ve got every right to print
that
, too. And everything else we know.”

“Such as?”

Nate felt his temples throb. “You’ve got forty-eight hours, Kit. Me and the senator, alone.”

Kit stared at him, then nodded. “I’ll get back to you,” she said, and walked away.

As a young state rep was about to slip into the car with him, Kerry saw Kit Pace place her hand on the man’s arm.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, “but I need to talk to Kerry.”

Briefly, Kerry apologized. Even before Kit sat beside him, uncharacteristically subdued, he knew what this was about.

Kit glanced at Joe Morton and Dan Biasi, sitting in the front seat, seemingly oblivious. “Cutler’s in the pool today,” she said. “This won’t wait.”

It was a moment that Kerry had hoped would never come. He tried to imagine what Kit thought of him, how she might interpret what she knew. But there was no way to ask, or to explain.

Once more, Kit’s eyes flickered toward the two agents. “Nate’s spelled out his area of inquiry,” she told him. “Unless you give him an interview in forty-eight hours, he says your refusal is a story in itself.”

Kerry turned away, staring out the window as the Berkeley campus slipped behind them. “Will Cutler accept you as an intermediary?”

“No.” Kit’s tone was candid, unflinching. “You can see the problem here.”

Turning, Kerry managed a slight smile. “I used to be a prosecutor, Kit. If you can’t prove the underlying charge, trap your target in a lie.”

Kit nodded. “Whether she went to your place. Whether you went to hers. Anything they think they can prove that looks damning.”

Kerry looked down. “It really is Hobson’s choice, isn’t it? If I
say no, maybe I’m a liar. If I say yes, she came to my place, it’s ‘Why? What hours? When did she leave?’ It never ends.”

He heard Kit exhale. “I don’t want to know anything about this, Kerry, and I don’t care. We bought a day, and now
News-world
’s spelled this out, just as I demanded. So I need an answer for Cutler.”

“Cutler,”
he said disgustedly. “Can we stretch this out any more, I wonder?”

Kit frowned. “I don’t know,” she answered. “But that forty-eight hours isn’t an arbitrary deadline. It’s the last day
News-world
can get a story into print for next Tuesday’s edition. After leaking the story on Monday, so everyone will read it.”

Even as he nodded, Kerry struggled with his disbelief that loving Lara had come to this. That two years of grueling effort, spent on the brink of exhaustion, could now mean nothing. That his hopes of becoming President could rest on what he told Nate Cutler.

“I keep thinking of something I read once, Kit: ‘Character is who you are in the dark.’” His tone was musing. “It’s why I try hard not to lie. In this business, you have to have some idea of who you are, or you’re lost. That’s always been Dick Mason’s problem.”

Kit’s voice was firm. “That’s why it’s better you be President than Mason, Kerry. No matter what you say to Cutler.”

For a long time, Kerry gazed out the window as they crossed the Bay Bridge, watching the skyline of San Francisco move closer. “Tell Cutler I’ll see him on Sunday,” he said.

By the time the motorcade reached the Mission District, Dolores Park was bright with sun, its line of palm trees a vivid green against a flawless blue sky.

Lara and Lee McAlpine trundled off the press bus with the others, heading for the bleachers at the far side of the crowd. The speakers’platform was flanked by blocks of houses whose windows faced the park. It was a Secret Service headache, Lara knew—too many lines of fire. But the crowd was large and festive, primarily Latin, men and women in jeans and cotton shirts or dresses chatting in English or Spanish. Here and there were groups of kids let out of school, waving colorful banners. Spotting a cluster of nuns, Lara smiled to herself, knowing that Kerry would like seeing them.

“Did you see the Field Poll this morning?” Lee asked. “Forty-two to forty-one in favor of Mason, with seventeen percent undecided. They say it could be the closest primary ever.”

“Depends on turnout,” Lara answered. “Kilcannon’s got to get minorities to the polls. Latinos in particular.”

Lee scanned the crowd, swelling to cover the sweep of grass. “At least three thousand, I’d guess. Not bad.”

Lara nodded. “You know what’s sad, though? What’s happened to this neighborhood. This park’s a microcosm—drug dealing, gang murders at night, people afraid to come here. It’s been like this since I was in high school, slowly getting worse.”

On the speakers’ platform, Kerry appeared in shirtsleeves.

Lara experienced the now-familiar ache; the sense of loss; the jarring fear for his safety. The strange complicity between
two people who could no longer speak, yet knew the truth of a relationship that could, in a moment, end his chances. Then a
Latina county supervisor began Kerry’s introduction, her amplified voice cutting through the hum of the crowd, and Lara saw three middle-aged women raise a banner. “Senator,” it asked, “if an unborn child is a ‘life,’ why commit murder?”

For an instant, Lara was still. Turning again to Kerry, she tried to screen out everything but her job.

Twenty feet away, Nate watched Kilcannon’s face, trying to gauge whether he seemed dispirited.

“This,” Kilcannon began, “is a community under siege.

“There is a certain class of politician, in this state and in this country, who try to win elections by finding a minority group to run against. For some, that target has been Latino immigrants—whether legal or illegal.” Stopping, Kilcannon surveyed the crowd. “Because politicians looking for a scapegoat don’t want to make distinctions, or admit the facts.”

This speech would be aimed at galvanizing Latinos, Nate knew, but what was more notable was that Kilcannon was not afraid to polarize. This was the great secret of American politics, Nate believed. True leaders make choices; the moral difference is which ones. It was something Kilcannon seemed to understand, and Mason did not.

“But the facts,” Kilcannon went on, “are appalling.

“We’ve cut off the elderly and frail from government services for the sin of immigrating legally.

“We deny the children of illegal immigrants—those exploited in the dirtiest jobs—any chance to rise above where they started.

“We force adults not to be immunized.

“We force mothers not to seek prenatal care.”

The crowd was silent; Kilcannon’s face had a passion so visceral that Nate could feel it. “But for every person,” he said clearly, “to whom we deny basic health care, we double the threat of public contagion and the cost of emergency treatment. For every child we deny an education because we think it the son or daughter of illegals, we add to the population of gang members, criminals, the illiterate and the hopeless. For every adult we scare away, we will pay the price in dollars and in human misery—not just among immigrants but in the population at large.”

Nate watched the crowd again. Kilcannon had them, Nate thought; most seemed to listen intently, almost hungrily, eyes fixed on the candidate.

“Ask any cop,” he told them, “any doctor, any teacher. Ask anyone who deals with the consequences of these blindly punitive policies.” Pausing, Kilcannon added softly, “Ask yourselves.

“Ask yourselves, and then ask yourself
this
question: Isn’t it time to take matters into your own hands?

“I want you to support me, that’s true. But no leader can help a community unless it takes enough pride in its own people and its own streets to fight for itself, vote by vote and block by block.

“Tell your state and city government what you need and are willing to do to improve your own lives. And, if that doesn’t work, tell
me
…”

Nate started at the hand on his shoulder.

Turning, he saw Kit Pace, her face an amiable mask for those around them. “He’ll see you on Sunday,” she murmured. “When I know his schedule, I’ll give you a time.”

At the corner of his vision, Kerry saw Kit with Cutler. Hastily, he faced the crowd again as a yellow banner rose above it, demanding to know how he could murder the unborn.

He stopped speaking, just for a moment, and then blocked it out of his mind.

“Please,” he implored, “don’t let apathy and despair be as real for your children as it may seem to you.”

Pausing, Kerry found his coda, a link between his own life and theirs. “You, like my immigrant parents, and all the children of immigrants I knew when I was young, have helped to make this a stronger, better country. Now help each other, help your families, help yourselves.”

As Lara listened, Lee McAlpine said, “When he’s like this, Kil-cannon seems like a real person.”

Lara gave her a small smile. “Compared to what?” “Compared to Mason. Who seems like a real politician. All the time.”

It was true, Lara thought. But what she could not tell Lee was
that
this
was closest to who Kerry was; that it was the politician in Kerry who seemed to her more invented.

She began looking for her cameraman, to file her report.

It was as if, for this moment, the applause was not for Jamie, but for him.

Grinning, Kerry turned to Supervisor Susan Estevez, a community activist whose hair had gone from black to gray in the years between his brother’s death and now. Together, they stepped off the platform and into the crowd, the police and Secret Service agents scrambling after them.